#He's Jimmy Carter with a Fox Attitude
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Democrats see chance of Texas victory for first time in decades | US & Canada
Democrats once wrote off Texas as a guaranteed victory for Republican presidential candidates, but in 2020, Democratic party activists sense an opportunity to snatch victory from the GOP for the first time in more than four decades.
With 38 Electoral College votes at stake - the second-highest number in the country - Democratic success in Texas would all but eliminate a path to victory for President Donald Trump.
“The only thing Republicans have to do, typically, to win an election in Texas is to win their primary and avoid getting hit by a bus by election day,” said Harold Cook, a political analyst and a veteran of Democratic Party campaigns in Texas . "But Trump has damaged the Republican brand such that it has made it competitive in a general election."
Jimmy Carter was the last Democratic presidential candidate to win Texas, in 1976. In 1994, Bob Bullock was re-elected Lieutenant Governor, the last year Democrats won in state-wide elections.
Over years of Republican dominance, Democrats largely avoided pouring resources into the state and the party's power continued to shrink. For Democrats, Texas became something of a forgotten state, much like California for Republicans.
'Blue' Texas?
But as the population of Texas began to change in the 2000s, Democrats started to see glimmers of hope for a turnaround. Dreams of a “Blue Texas” swelled in 2018, when voters in the state flipped two US House seats from Republican to Democrat. That year, Democratic Senate challenger Beto O'Rourke came within just 2.6 percentage points of defeating the Republican incumbent, Senator Ted Cruz.
Ted Cruz, left, and Beto O'Rourke, right, shake hands following their first Senate debate in Dallas, Texas, on September 21, 2018 [File: Nathan Hunsinger/The Dallas Morning News via AP, Pool]
O'Rourke drew voters from increasingly Democratic metropolitan centers like Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and even Houston, where Cruz lives. O'Rourke's momentum drew attention - and fundraising dollars - from Democrats nationwide, and despite his narrow loss, the close race provided Democrats with a roadmap for how they could turn the state blue by boosting voter turnout in those cities and the surrounding suburbs.
“What Beto's campaign showed us is that when people show up to vote and have hope that their vote will matter, then it is in play,” said Andy Brown, who served as finance director on O'Rourke's 2018 Senate campaign. “There's no longer a defeatist attitude that there's no possible way to win in Texas. In fact, it is very possible. ”
The Real Clear Politics polling average shows Trump pulling slightly ahead late in the race, leading by 2.6 percentage points. Although during the summer, the two were neck and neck, which signalled to Biden's campaign that this reliably red state could be obtainable.
Biden's campaign went on the offensive in July with an advertisement addressing the novel coronavirus pandemic that addressed Texas by name.
Democrats took another swing in October, spending $ 6 million on Texas ads while Biden's wife, Jill Biden, attended events in three major Texas cities. Biden's running mate, Kamala Harris, is scheduled to campaign in the state on Friday, notable for a member of the Democratic ticket to be in Texas so close to election day.
Jill Biden, right, waves to supporters while campaigning for her husband Joe Biden on October 13, 2020, in Dallas, Texas [LM Otero/AP Photo]
Just four years ago, the thought of Democrats pouring precious campaign resources into a state like Texas would have seemed ludicrous. Trump walloped Hillary Clinton by nine percentage points.
Trump's win, however, was by the smallest margin of victory for Republicans in Texas since 1996, a possible sign that more Texans could be open to hearing a Democratic pitch. This year the Republican National Committee sent the Texas state party $ 1.3 million in support funds for the election, a sign that Republicans in the state could need extra help.
Republican skepticism
Texas Republicans, however, are sceptical Democrats can bring in enough votes to overcome years of support for the GOP. Rick Perry, Texas's longest-serving governor and Trump's former Secretary of Energy, pointed to the lack of Democratic victories in recent elections as evidence that democratic hopes for success in the state are overblown.
“It's the same old story,” Perry told Fox News in an August interview. "I hope the Democrats come and spend a tonne of money here, because they will get their hat handed to them again in Texas."
While the Senate race was close in 2018, the gubernatorial contest was anything but. The incumbent, Republican Greg Abbott, dominated the race with 55 percent of the votes. Four years earlier, nearly 60 percent of Texans supported him.
Demographic shifts
But the Texas population is rapidly changing. Between 2018 and 2019, more people moved to Texas from other regions than any other state. The population grew by 367,215 during this time, swelling to 29 million people. Most migrants arrived from California, according to estimates from the Texas Realtors' Association.
As the number of Texans grows and the demographic makeup becomes increasingly younger and less white, the Lone Star State is looking within reach for Democrats, whose success has depended on high turnout from a diverse coalition of ages and ethnic backgrounds.
While Trump has worked to fire up his base, he has done little to bring in new voters, particularly minorities and women, groups that are gaining in political power in rapidly changing Texas.
“It's the combination of the Biden-Harris ticket, the demographic changes, but above all: Donald John Trump. He's a terrible fit for Texas Republicans, and they were slow to realise that, ”said Richard Murray, a professor of political science at the University of Houston. “Texas doesn't have many older whites that didn't go to college. Our working force here is now largely minorities, particularly Hispanic. What worked elsewhere - just blowing off Latinos, immigrants - is a disaster in Texas. ”
Like battleground states around the country, the presidential race in Texas will likely be won or lost in the suburbs of the state's largest cities. These areas have seen massive growth in numbers of non-white voters, as well as a population boom from people moving from other states.
Latino voters, in particular, could help swing the vote this year, experts said.
A poll conducted in September by the University of Houston and Univision found that 66 percent of Texas Latino voters planned or were inclined to vote for Biden, compared to 25 percent for Trump. Perhaps more consequentially, the surveyed an incredibly high level of enthusiasm from these voters, with nine out of 10 responders saying they “are certain” to vote in 2020.
“We have not seen numbers that high for several election cycles. Those are impressive and possibly historic numbers. This is definitely a year where the Latino vote in Texas will be significant in potentially shaping the state politically, ”said Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political scientist and host of a podcast centred around Texas called Party Politics. “Latino voters are not a monolith. But what we're finding is the slow trend is towards them supporting Democrats. ”
Record turnout
Texas is already shaping up to see record voting turnout. By the end of the first day of early voting, more than 900,000 Texans cast ballots either in person or by mail, a record. By the end of the first week, more than four million people had voted, according to the Texas secretary of state. As of this writing, nearly 17 million Texans are registered to vote, an increase of 1.85 million from four years ago. The state does not register voters by party, so it can be difficult to decipher how many of those registered are likely to swing either way.
Voters line up and wait to cast a ballot at the American Airlines Center during early voting on October 15, 2020, in Dallas, Texas [LM Otero/AP Photo]
But Texas Democrats are heading into the final stretch of the election feeling more bullish about a presidential election than they have in years.
“I think we are right on the cusp,” said Cook of a Democratic turnaround. “I don't know if we'll get over the finish line two years from now or four years from now. But Texas doesn't just get to be a Republican freebie anymore. They have to work for it or it's not going to happen. ”
#world Read full article: https://expatimes.com/?p=12879&feed_id=12421
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American Backyard!
Oh how many times have I gotten on here and complained about those pesky trump supporters who went out and voted for a second-rate-tabloid-cover-celeb-turned-short-lived reality TV show host, a remarkably bad businessman with half a dozen failed businesses, multiple bankruptcies including a casino of all things, failed marriages to strange women, a father who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, a draft dodger, and a racist (see lawsuits pertaining to renting to African Americans. Also see full page ad regarding the Central Park Five). Those supporters said he spoke to them but really, they spoke for themselves when they decided that this person should be the president. He didn’t speak for anyone. I hate to use Billy Joel’s lyrics but he didn’t start the fire, it was always burning...
We tend to say that these people are brainwashed. Well, maybe they are and maybe they aren’t. Most of them go to work every day, raise families, have mortgages and bills, take vacations, and like pretty most people in this country, are consumers, so they can’t be completely stupid. They just have their mind set regarding what they think is important and how they feel about other people in this country. They also show what knowledge they do and don’t have about current affairs, important issues, the world, the future, etc. But above all they have shown us all that they are certainly susceptible to the branding of trump’s campaign back in 2016, but really, they aren’t the only ones who voluntarily follow the piper to the river. There are others...
Many people have laid blame on Bernie supporters and Democrats who stayed home because they hated Hillary Clinton for trump’s election. Of course let’s just put aside for a moment that it was The Electoral College and not the American voters who put donnie in The White House. And what a white house it is at the moment... What I find bothersome is the correlation between trump voters, Bernie Or Busters, and Never Hillarys, that all led to what should have been a larger gap between popular votes between the presidential candidates. The difference in votes for Clinton was more than the entire population of Chicago, and what was said to be a bad turnout was actually the third highest turnout in the last ten elections. Yup. Imagine that. Only 2008 (Obama/McCain, #1) and 2004 (W/Kerry, #2) had higher turnouts than trump/Clinton.
So what’s my beef? Why am I still writing this? Why are you still reading it? Thank you by the way, you totally rock! My issue is that before we make fun of the trumpaholics out there who we like to brag were brainwashed or conned by Russian trolls, we need to address the others who suffered the same fate, and if not by trolls or some elaborate scheme to alter election turnout, which obviously did NOT work, then the attitudes of certain American voters.
The Bernie or Busters, did they or did they not show up on election day to cast their votes to keep trump out and put Clinton in? We will NEVER know that statistic and anyone who tries to tell you some stats on it is likely full or crap. There is NO way to track that. Nada, Nyet. All the info for that comes 100% from Op/Ed pieces. The Never Hillary crowd that supposedly didn’t show up at the polls... Really? Seriously. Really? She won by almost three million votes in the third most popular election in over three-and-half decades. 1980. Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Mt. St. Helen’s, Post-its, CNN, and the Republican campaign against Jimmy Carter that led people to believe that Carter was weak and Reagan was strong, using some somewhat dirty tricks and obvious lies to convince the general public that America needed Ronnie. There’a pattern they’ve utilized several times now to win, besides stealing elections using The EC. Bash Carter. Bash Kerry. Bash Clinton. We’ll leave Gore out of this because although he was cheated, he also was a wishy washy candidate. So let’s get to my formal complaint!
IF you voted for donald trump in 2016 I accuse you of being inept at voting. IF you refused to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 because Bernie got screwed, (and I truly believe he did, trust me, I was a “Brunch with Bernie” fan for many years), I accuse you of being inept at voting. IF you didn’t vote for the only Dem on the ballot or stayed home on election day because you hate Clinton I accuse you of being inept at voting. Hello “president” trump. Thank you. Let’s face it, the election was NOT affected by Bernie or Busters. It was NOT affected by Never Hillarys. It was absolutely affected by the crooked hands of The GOP. Do not play into the blame game. EVERYTHING you heard about Bernie or Busters and Never Hillarys was in HINDSIGHT. That is how they want to manipulate 2020, and it will work because no one will read this but if enough people vote like in Obama/Romney, where the gap was almost five million, we have a chance of ousting the vile sellouts in DC we are stuck with.
NO MORE BLAME GAME! If things are really important to people in this country, on both sides, which hold a vast majority to the goofball maga hat wearing toadies and photobombers on Fox News and other truly fringe group websites that overstate their audiences and the wonderful groups that profit off them because they are nothing more than a demographic, (who btw will suffer greatly if trump is out of DC), like a lot of hardcore “Christians” and “patriots”, then the people of America will speak. The best part is that the voting booth is one of those rare places where you truly do have control of how you feel. And NEVER forget that local voting is imperative to your community, even if you feel letdown by federal voting. It all starts with our mayor, your city council, your state, etc.
We absolutely cannot go through another four years of this bullshit. DO what you can to get people to vote. It may seem useless at times but in the end it really isn’t. You might not win but you still have a voice, and someone somewhere is watching. And remember, your local elections are truly some of the most important that you might partake in as they will directly affect you the most and the quickest. Let’s not get sloppy America! This is your backyard!
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Former President Carter out of surgery, no complications
ATLANTA — Former President Jimmy Carter was recovering Tuesday following surgery to relieve pressure on his brain from bleeding linked to recent falls.
A statement from his spokeswoman said there were no complications from the procedure, performed at Emory University Hospital for a subdural hematoma, blood trapped on the brain’s surface.
Carter, 95, will remain in the hospital for observation, said Deanna Congileo, his spokeswoman at the Carter Center.
The statement said the Carters thank everyone for the many well-wishes they have received, and Congileo doesn’t anticipate making more announcements until he’s released.
It was unclear how long Carter might be hospitalized, said his pastor, the Rev. Tony Lowden.
“If anybody can make it through this Jimmy Carter can. His will to serve is greater than his will to give up,” said Lowden.
The Carter Center said the bleeding was related to Carter’s recent falls. He used a walker during his most recent public appearance.
The first fall, in the spring, required hip replacement surgery. He hit his head falling again on Oct. 6 and received 14 stitches, but still traveled to Nashville, Tennessee, to help build a Habitat for Humanity home shortly thereafter. And he was briefly hospitalized after fracturing his pelvis on Oct. 21.
Carter’s wife of 73 years, Rosalynn Carter, is with him at the hospital, Lowden said. “She won’t leave his side,” Lowden said.
Large bleeds, usually after major trauma, can be life-threatening. But often, especially in elderly patients, the injury is a slow leak that takes a while to build up until initial symptoms such as headaches and confusion appear, said Dr. Lola B. Chambless, associate professor of neurological surgery at Vanderbilt University.
“It’s very typical in this setting to see these develop a few weeks or even a month or so after a fall,” said Chambless, who has not treated Carter.
To relieve pressure, surgeons most commonly drill one or two small holes through the skull to drain the leakage site. Larger bleeds causing more severe pressure may require removing a piece of skull.
Carter has been through a series of health problems in recent years.
He received a dire cancer diagnosis in 2015, announcing that melanoma had spread. After partial removal of his liver, treatment for brain lesions, radiation and immunotherapy, he said he was cancer-free.
Despite his increasingly frail health, the nation’s oldest-ever ex-president still teaches Sunday school about twice monthly at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains in southwest Georgia.
The church asked for prayers for Carter and his family in a message on its Facebook page. The church has announced that Carter will not be teaching his Sunday school class this week.
Carter candidly discussed his own mortality on Nov. 3, during his most recent appearance at their church. Referring to his cancer diagnosis, Carter said he assumed he’d die quickly after finding out the extent of his illness.
“Obviously I prayed about it. I didn’t ask God to let me live, but I just asked God to give me a proper attitude toward death. And I found that I was absolutely and completely at ease with death,” he said.
Since then, Carter said he’s been “absolutely confident” in the Christian idea of life after death, and hasn’t worried about his own death.
from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2019/11/12/former-president-carter-out-of-surgery-no-complications/
from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2019/11/12/former-president-carter-out-of-surgery-no-complications/
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James Fallows was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences today, honoring nearly 50 years of work in the media. Since being commissioned to write a profile of the senator from Texas, presidential hopeful, and “cool cat” Lloyd Bentsen in 1974, he has done most of that work as a writer, editor, blogger, and sometime talking head at The Atlantic over the course of a 40-plus-year tenure interrupted just twice by stints as a speechwriter in Jimmy Carter’s administration and the editor of U.S. News & World Report. Fallows has held multiple roles in his time at the magazine; he's now an Atlantic staff writer.
Over the past half century, Fallows has published millions of words in the magazine and on the website, composing thousands of articles and dozens of cover stories about politics and global affairs. Beyond his prolific production of long-form stories, Fallows has in more recent years become a beloved blogger, connecting with readers through shorter and more frequent online posts. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Fallows began compiling entries for the “Trump Time Capsule” to “catalogue some of the things Donald Trump says and does that no real president would do” —and went on adding to it even after Trump became president and continued doing those things.
His writing comprises its own kind of time capsule: a contemporaneous history of the events and developments of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He described the experience of owning a personal computer when most people still didn’t, covered the Vietnam War origins of the guns now at the center of domestic gun-control debates, and questioned the merits of Reagan-era military spending as the Cold War drew to an end. His insight, extensive reporting, and engaging writing have made his articles essential reading in their moments of publication and have lent them a timeless relevance, and resonance.
These eight pieces, written over the course of Fallows’s Atlantic career, offer a glimpse of what the American Academy of Arts and Sciences honored today.
“The Passionless Presidency”
May 1979
In the last year of Carter’s administration, Fallows assessed where the president had gone wrong. “After two and a half years in Carter’s service,” he wrote. “I fully believe him to be a good man.” But he observed that Carter lacked “the passion to convert himself from a good man into an effective one, to learn how to do the job.” As a result, he wrote, Carter’s achievements failed to live up to his intentions.
“Living With a Computer”
July 1982
The first successful personal-computer models were released to consumers in the mid-1970s; Fallows got his at the end of that decade, and wrote about it for The Atlantic three years later. He described both how the machine had improved his writing and editing process and the new distractions and dangers it posed before making specific recommendations to readers. “I’d sell my computer before I’d sell my children,” he wrote. “But the kids better watch their step.”
“Immigration: How It’s Affecting Us”
November 1983
Following the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act amendments, which lifted quotas governing immigrant nationalities, the flow of immigrants into the United States from the developing world increased significantly. With the rise in newcomers came a rise in anti-immigrant sentiments—sentiments that Fallows challenged in this 1983 article. “In countless ... places … the words heard in the air, the clothes and faces seen on the street, the courses taught in the schools, have all changed because of immigration,” he wrote. “But it is far from clear to me that the changes under way are ominous or bad.”
“How the World Works”
December 1993
The end of the Cold War in the early 1990s was celebrated as a victory for the laissez-faire capitalism championed by Americans. But in 1993, Fallows explored alternate approaches driving growth in economies around the world—and the ways they echoed moments from the history of the United States. “Every country that has caught up with others has had to do so by rigging its rules: extracting extra money from its people and steering the money into industrialists’ hands,” he asserted.
“Why Americans Hate the Media”
February 1996
Fallows tackled this enduring question at a time when Fox News and the internet were still in their infancy and most Americans got their news from television and newspapers. His conclusion: There was a gulf between how the public and the media saw the world. Viewers wanted substance, and the media was covering the game instead. “The most depressing aspect of the new talking-pundit industry,” Fallows wrote, “may be the argument made by many practitioners: the whole thing is just a game, which no one should take too seriously.”
“The Fifty-First State?”
November 2002
Four months before American troops invaded Iraq, Fallows laid out why they shouldn’t. By entering the war, he argued, the United States would end up mired in a potentially decades-long period of occupation during which it would have to take responsibility for running and protecting Iraq. “The day after a war ended,” he cautioned, “Iraq would become America’s problem.”
“China Makes, the World Takes”
July/August 2007
By 2007, China had become the manufacturing center of the world—the subject of much hand-wringing over the years from people who feel the associated jobs should return to American workers. But Fallows argued that Americans shouldn’t be so resistant to China’s new economic role. “Are we uncomfortable with the America that is being shaped by global economic forces?” he asked. “If so, those trends themselves, and the American choices behind them, are what Americans can address. They’re not China’s problem.”
“The Tragedy of the American Military”
January/February 2015
Beneath frequent displays of support for the troops, Fallows assessed in 2015, America was “a country willing to do anything for its military except take it seriously.” And that relationship was good for neither the country nor the military. He described the dangers posed by the public’s “reverent but disengaged attitude,” and the more serious engagement that should take its place.
from The Atlantic http://bit.ly/2IqOtsg
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Business Legal stunner fails to fell Trump but reckoning could be coming
Business Legal stunner fails to fell Trump but reckoning could be coming Business Legal stunner fails to fell Trump but reckoning could be coming https://ift.tt/2PxIAto
Business
(CNN)After one day where truth and facts triumphed, America is back to its alternative realities.
The convictions of two
close associates of President Donald Trump
in a mind-bending double-header drama in two cities on Tuesday were a moment of clarity in the legal morass that has thickened around the White House over the last 19 months.
Yet anyone who thought that being implicated in a crime in one of the most sensational political moments of recent history would soon temper Trump’s behavior, stop his White House peddling untruths or reshape the political terrain that sustains his presidency is being disappointed — at least for now.
Certainly, in years to come that tumultuous hour on Tuesday could turn out to be the moment when the Trump presidency began to unravel and the Teflon armor that shielded the President from scandals and outrages that would doom normal politicians was finally penetrated.
After all, months of obfuscation and attacks on Robert Mueller could not halt the legal process that’s likely to send former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and the President’s former fixer Michael Cohen to jail for years. And the real meat of the special counsel’s investigation into alleged collusion with Russia is yet to be revealed.
But in the immediate term at least, it seems nothing has changed in Washington.
The White House is back to peddling narratives that defy fact, attacking the media and lifting talking points from conservative opinion hosts. Trump is making new assaults on legal propriety. Republicans are dodging reporters in the Capitol to avoid being called to account for the President’s latest transgression. Democrats, owing to the GOP’s power monopoly in Washington, can only stir outrage and fire blanks — at least until the midterm elections.
‘What in the world are we going through?’
Trump’s defenders can still argue that although Cohen and Manafort, and the already disgraced Trump acolytes
Rick Gates
and
Michael Flynn
, have been felled by Mueller, the President has not been charged or been proved to have colluded with Russia or obstructed justice.
But his attitude on Wednesday hardly fit the profile of someone who had done nothing wrong or who is convinced the legal process should be allowed to play out to its conclusion.
He made up a legal loophole to argue that the hush money paid to women before the 2016 election who alleged they had affairs with him — payments Cohen said were made at his direction — did not break the law since it did not come from campaign funds.
“They didn’t come out of the campaign and that’s big,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News. “It’s not even a campaign violation.”
Trump is also again brazenly tearing at the boundaries of presidential decorum, dangling the possibility of a pardon before Manafort, who might just be tempted to cooperate with Mueller, now that he’s probably going to jail for most of the rest of his life.
“I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family. ‘Justice’ took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to ‘break’ – make up stories in order to get a ‘deal.’ Such respect for a brave man!” Trump tweeted.
Former Watergate special prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste bemoaned the possibility that the President might be considering a pardon for a man convicted of massive tax fraud and called on political leaders to come together to head off a moment of national peril.
“What in the world are we going through in this country?” Ben-Veniste told CNN’s Erica Hill.
At the White House, press secretary Sarah Sanders held a previously unscheduled briefing to press home the President’s counterattack.
She dismissed the notion that Trump was in legal trouble at all over Cohen’s accusation, which effectively boiled down to the sitting President of the United States being accused of a crime.
“As the President has said and we’ve stated many times, he did nothing wrong. There are no charges against him and we’ve commented on it extensively,” she said.
When asked by a reporter whether Trump’s now-discredited statement on Air Force One that he knew nothing about the payment to former porn star Stormy Daniels, she attacked the messenger:
“I think that’s a ridiculous accusation. The President, in this matter, has done nothing wrong.”
Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, are stuck in their perpetual dance, tiptoeing around Trump’s latest misadventures in fear of his Make America Great Again base. House Speaker Paul Ryan, once seen as the moral conscience of the GOP, is nowhere to be seen nor heard.
“I’m not very happy about it,” said Utah’s Sen. Orrin Hatch, who earlier this year said the current presidency could be the greatest in history, but he added Wednesday that Trump should not be blamed for his staff.
Louisiana’s Sen. John Kennedy said he didn’t see what the fuss was about in the Cohen and Manafort convictions.
“You know, I’m sorry. I don’t see any deeper meaning in this other than you have to pay your taxes and you can’t lie on a loan application,” he told reporters.
South Carolina’s Sen. Lindsey Graham, a sometime Trump golf partner, punted.
“Rather than answer a bunch of hypotheticals, I’ll do what I did in the Clinton — when Ken Starr issued his report. I read it, I’ll make a decision,” he said.
Democrats are gamely repurposing the latest Trump crisis in their almost certainly futile bid to scuttle the President’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, but are limited by their purgatory in the minority.
Hawaii’s Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono nixed a meeting with Kavanaugh, to bolster Democratic calls for the nomination to be put on hold given Tuesday’s events.
But Democrats are also still wary of using the “I” word, partly to avoid giving Trump a rallying issue that could motivate his supporters in the midterm elections.
House Democratic leader
Nancy Pelosi told The Associated Press on Wednesday
that impeachment is still “not on the table” even though some liberals believe that if Trump did conspire with Cohen in the way it appears from his court testimony, he may have already committed a high crime or misdemeanor that is the standard for House of Representatives action against a President.
A ‘reckoning’ will come
It’s become a cliché that nothing —
insulting war hero Sen. John McCain,
cozying up to Russian leader Vladimir Putin or
elevating white supremacists
— derails Trump. Tuesday’s events could become just another data point in that trend. And if the special counsel finds no evidence of collusion with Russia or obstruction of justice, Trump will be able to credibly assert that his name is clear.
But no one knows where Mueller’s probe will lead, if Trump or his campaign is guilty of collusion or obstructing justice. Presidencies can take years to unravel, as the varied experiences of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter show.
There’s also little doubt that Tuesday’s legal stunners, and the news that White House Counsel
Donald McGahn testified to Mueller for 30 hours,
have seeded new dark clouds around the President that could manifest themselves in ways impossible to predict right now.
And while Democrats are currently powerless, they could cripple Trump’s presidency and make his life a misery with incessant investigations if they win the House in November
A Democratic rout would prompt Republicans to consider whether sticking with Trump and a strategy solely reliant on his base is wise in the 2020 election.
So while it may seem that Trump’s political and legal luck is holding, it may erode over time and the furor surrounding Tuesday’s convictions could be a major reason why.
Some Trump opponents are still optimistic that the President is set for a demise.
“I believe in the wisdom and the good faith of the American people,”
Norm Eisen,
White House ethics czar during the Obama administration, said on CNN International.
“Let’s let it unfold. He is going to meet his day of reckoning.”
CNN’s Clare Foran and Lauren Fox contributed to this report.
Read More | Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN,
Business Legal stunner fails to fell Trump but reckoning could be coming, in 2018-08-23 06:41:30
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Business Legal stunner fails to fell Trump but reckoning could be coming
Business Legal stunner fails to fell Trump but reckoning could be coming Business Legal stunner fails to fell Trump but reckoning could be coming http://www.nature-business.com/business-legal-stunner-fails-to-fell-trump-but-reckoning-could-be-coming/
Business
(CNN)After one day where truth and facts triumphed, America is back to its alternative realities.
The convictions of two
close associates of President Donald Trump
in a mind-bending double-header drama in two cities on Tuesday were a moment of clarity in the legal morass that has thickened around the White House over the last 19 months.
Yet anyone who thought that being implicated in a crime in one of the most sensational political moments of recent history would soon temper Trump’s behavior, stop his White House peddling untruths or reshape the political terrain that sustains his presidency is being disappointed — at least for now.
Certainly, in years to come that tumultuous hour on Tuesday could turn out to be the moment when the Trump presidency began to unravel and the Teflon armor that shielded the President from scandals and outrages that would doom normal politicians was finally penetrated.
After all, months of obfuscation and attacks on Robert Mueller could not halt the legal process that’s likely to send former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and the President’s former fixer Michael Cohen to jail for years. And the real meat of the special counsel’s investigation into alleged collusion with Russia is yet to be revealed.
But in the immediate term at least, it seems nothing has changed in Washington.
The White House is back to peddling narratives that defy fact, attacking the media and lifting talking points from conservative opinion hosts. Trump is making new assaults on legal propriety. Republicans are dodging reporters in the Capitol to avoid being called to account for the President’s latest transgression. Democrats, owing to the GOP’s power monopoly in Washington, can only stir outrage and fire blanks — at least until the midterm elections.
‘What in the world are we going through?’
Trump’s defenders can still argue that although Cohen and Manafort, and the already disgraced Trump acolytes
Rick Gates
and
Michael Flynn
, have been felled by Mueller, the President has not been charged or been proved to have colluded with Russia or obstructed justice.
But his attitude on Wednesday hardly fit the profile of someone who had done nothing wrong or who is convinced the legal process should be allowed to play out to its conclusion.
He made up a legal loophole to argue that the hush money paid to women before the 2016 election who alleged they had affairs with him — payments Cohen said were made at his direction — did not break the law since it did not come from campaign funds.
“They didn’t come out of the campaign and that’s big,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News. “It’s not even a campaign violation.”
Trump is also again brazenly tearing at the boundaries of presidential decorum, dangling the possibility of a pardon before Manafort, who might just be tempted to cooperate with Mueller, now that he’s probably going to jail for most of the rest of his life.
“I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family. ‘Justice’ took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to ‘break’ – make up stories in order to get a ‘deal.’ Such respect for a brave man!” Trump tweeted.
Former Watergate special prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste bemoaned the possibility that the President might be considering a pardon for a man convicted of massive tax fraud and called on political leaders to come together to head off a moment of national peril.
“What in the world are we going through in this country?” Ben-Veniste told CNN’s Erica Hill.
At the White House, press secretary Sarah Sanders held a previously unscheduled briefing to press home the President’s counterattack.
She dismissed the notion that Trump was in legal trouble at all over Cohen’s accusation, which effectively boiled down to the sitting President of the United States being accused of a crime.
“As the President has said and we’ve stated many times, he did nothing wrong. There are no charges against him and we’ve commented on it extensively,” she said.
When asked by a reporter whether Trump’s now-discredited statement on Air Force One that he knew nothing about the payment to former porn star Stormy Daniels, she attacked the messenger:
“I think that’s a ridiculous accusation. The President, in this matter, has done nothing wrong.”
Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, are stuck in their perpetual dance, tiptoeing around Trump’s latest misadventures in fear of his Make America Great Again base. House Speaker Paul Ryan, once seen as the moral conscience of the GOP, is nowhere to be seen nor heard.
“I’m not very happy about it,” said Utah’s Sen. Orrin Hatch, who earlier this year said the current presidency could be the greatest in history, but he added Wednesday that Trump should not be blamed for his staff.
Louisiana’s Sen. John Kennedy said he didn’t see what the fuss was about in the Cohen and Manafort convictions.
“You know, I’m sorry. I don’t see any deeper meaning in this other than you have to pay your taxes and you can’t lie on a loan application,” he told reporters.
South Carolina’s Sen. Lindsey Graham, a sometime Trump golf partner, punted.
“Rather than answer a bunch of hypotheticals, I’ll do what I did in the Clinton — when Ken Starr issued his report. I read it, I’ll make a decision,” he said.
Democrats are gamely repurposing the latest Trump crisis in their almost certainly futile bid to scuttle the President’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, but are limited by their purgatory in the minority.
Hawaii’s Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono nixed a meeting with Kavanaugh, to bolster Democratic calls for the nomination to be put on hold given Tuesday’s events.
But Democrats are also still wary of using the “I” word, partly to avoid giving Trump a rallying issue that could motivate his supporters in the midterm elections.
House Democratic leader
Nancy Pelosi told The Associated Press on Wednesday
that impeachment is still “not on the table” even though some liberals believe that if Trump did conspire with Cohen in the way it appears from his court testimony, he may have already committed a high crime or misdemeanor that is the standard for House of Representatives action against a President.
A ‘reckoning’ will come
It’s become a cliché that nothing —
insulting war hero Sen. John McCain,
cozying up to Russian leader Vladimir Putin or
elevating white supremacists
— derails Trump. Tuesday’s events could become just another data point in that trend. And if the special counsel finds no evidence of collusion with Russia or obstruction of justice, Trump will be able to credibly assert that his name is clear.
But no one knows where Mueller’s probe will lead, if Trump or his campaign is guilty of collusion or obstructing justice. Presidencies can take years to unravel, as the varied experiences of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter show.
There’s also little doubt that Tuesday’s legal stunners, and the news that White House Counsel
Donald McGahn testified to Mueller for 30 hours,
have seeded new dark clouds around the President that could manifest themselves in ways impossible to predict right now.
And while Democrats are currently powerless, they could cripple Trump’s presidency and make his life a misery with incessant investigations if they win the House in November
A Democratic rout would prompt Republicans to consider whether sticking with Trump and a strategy solely reliant on his base is wise in the 2020 election.
So while it may seem that Trump’s political and legal luck is holding, it may erode over time and the furor surrounding Tuesday’s convictions could be a major reason why.
Some Trump opponents are still optimistic that the President is set for a demise.
“I believe in the wisdom and the good faith of the American people,”
Norm Eisen,
White House ethics czar during the Obama administration, said on CNN International.
“Let’s let it unfold. He is going to meet his day of reckoning.”
CNN’s Clare Foran and Lauren Fox contributed to this report.
Read More | Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN,
Business Legal stunner fails to fell Trump but reckoning could be coming, in 2018-08-23 06:41:30
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Text
Business Legal stunner fails to fell Trump but reckoning could be coming
Business Legal stunner fails to fell Trump but reckoning could be coming Business Legal stunner fails to fell Trump but reckoning could be coming http://www.nature-business.com/business-legal-stunner-fails-to-fell-trump-but-reckoning-could-be-coming/
Business
(CNN)After one day where truth and facts triumphed, America is back to its alternative realities.
The convictions of two
close associates of President Donald Trump
in a mind-bending double-header drama in two cities on Tuesday were a moment of clarity in the legal morass that has thickened around the White House over the last 19 months.
Yet anyone who thought that being implicated in a crime in one of the most sensational political moments of recent history would soon temper Trump’s behavior, stop his White House peddling untruths or reshape the political terrain that sustains his presidency is being disappointed — at least for now.
Certainly, in years to come that tumultuous hour on Tuesday could turn out to be the moment when the Trump presidency began to unravel and the Teflon armor that shielded the President from scandals and outrages that would doom normal politicians was finally penetrated.
After all, months of obfuscation and attacks on Robert Mueller could not halt the legal process that’s likely to send former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and the President’s former fixer Michael Cohen to jail for years. And the real meat of the special counsel’s investigation into alleged collusion with Russia is yet to be revealed.
But in the immediate term at least, it seems nothing has changed in Washington.
The White House is back to peddling narratives that defy fact, attacking the media and lifting talking points from conservative opinion hosts. Trump is making new assaults on legal propriety. Republicans are dodging reporters in the Capitol to avoid being called to account for the President’s latest transgression. Democrats, owing to the GOP’s power monopoly in Washington, can only stir outrage and fire blanks — at least until the midterm elections.
‘What in the world are we going through?’
Trump’s defenders can still argue that although Cohen and Manafort, and the already disgraced Trump acolytes
Rick Gates
and
Michael Flynn
, have been felled by Mueller, the President has not been charged or been proved to have colluded with Russia or obstructed justice.
But his attitude on Wednesday hardly fit the profile of someone who had done nothing wrong or who is convinced the legal process should be allowed to play out to its conclusion.
He made up a legal loophole to argue that the hush money paid to women before the 2016 election who alleged they had affairs with him — payments Cohen said were made at his direction — did not break the law since it did not come from campaign funds.
“They didn’t come out of the campaign and that’s big,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News. “It’s not even a campaign violation.”
Trump is also again brazenly tearing at the boundaries of presidential decorum, dangling the possibility of a pardon before Manafort, who might just be tempted to cooperate with Mueller, now that he’s probably going to jail for most of the rest of his life.
“I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family. ‘Justice’ took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to ‘break’ – make up stories in order to get a ‘deal.’ Such respect for a brave man!” Trump tweeted.
Former Watergate special prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste bemoaned the possibility that the President might be considering a pardon for a man convicted of massive tax fraud and called on political leaders to come together to head off a moment of national peril.
“What in the world are we going through in this country?” Ben-Veniste told CNN’s Erica Hill.
At the White House, press secretary Sarah Sanders held a previously unscheduled briefing to press home the President’s counterattack.
She dismissed the notion that Trump was in legal trouble at all over Cohen’s accusation, which effectively boiled down to the sitting President of the United States being accused of a crime.
“As the President has said and we’ve stated many times, he did nothing wrong. There are no charges against him and we’ve commented on it extensively,” she said.
When asked by a reporter whether Trump’s now-discredited statement on Air Force One that he knew nothing about the payment to former porn star Stormy Daniels, she attacked the messenger:
“I think that’s a ridiculous accusation. The President, in this matter, has done nothing wrong.”
Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, are stuck in their perpetual dance, tiptoeing around Trump’s latest misadventures in fear of his Make America Great Again base. House Speaker Paul Ryan, once seen as the moral conscience of the GOP, is nowhere to be seen nor heard.
“I’m not very happy about it,” said Utah’s Sen. Orrin Hatch, who earlier this year said the current presidency could be the greatest in history, but he added Wednesday that Trump should not be blamed for his staff.
Louisiana’s Sen. John Kennedy said he didn’t see what the fuss was about in the Cohen and Manafort convictions.
“You know, I’m sorry. I don’t see any deeper meaning in this other than you have to pay your taxes and you can’t lie on a loan application,” he told reporters.
South Carolina’s Sen. Lindsey Graham, a sometime Trump golf partner, punted.
“Rather than answer a bunch of hypotheticals, I’ll do what I did in the Clinton — when Ken Starr issued his report. I read it, I’ll make a decision,” he said.
Democrats are gamely repurposing the latest Trump crisis in their almost certainly futile bid to scuttle the President’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, but are limited by their purgatory in the minority.
Hawaii’s Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono nixed a meeting with Kavanaugh, to bolster Democratic calls for the nomination to be put on hold given Tuesday’s events.
But Democrats are also still wary of using the “I” word, partly to avoid giving Trump a rallying issue that could motivate his supporters in the midterm elections.
House Democratic leader
Nancy Pelosi told The Associated Press on Wednesday
that impeachment is still “not on the table” even though some liberals believe that if Trump did conspire with Cohen in the way it appears from his court testimony, he may have already committed a high crime or misdemeanor that is the standard for House of Representatives action against a President.
A ‘reckoning’ will come
It’s become a cliché that nothing —
insulting war hero Sen. John McCain,
cozying up to Russian leader Vladimir Putin or
elevating white supremacists
— derails Trump. Tuesday’s events could become just another data point in that trend. And if the special counsel finds no evidence of collusion with Russia or obstruction of justice, Trump will be able to credibly assert that his name is clear.
But no one knows where Mueller’s probe will lead, if Trump or his campaign is guilty of collusion or obstructing justice. Presidencies can take years to unravel, as the varied experiences of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter show.
There’s also little doubt that Tuesday’s legal stunners, and the news that White House Counsel
Donald McGahn testified to Mueller for 30 hours,
have seeded new dark clouds around the President that could manifest themselves in ways impossible to predict right now.
And while Democrats are currently powerless, they could cripple Trump’s presidency and make his life a misery with incessant investigations if they win the House in November
A Democratic rout would prompt Republicans to consider whether sticking with Trump and a strategy solely reliant on his base is wise in the 2020 election.
So while it may seem that Trump’s political and legal luck is holding, it may erode over time and the furor surrounding Tuesday’s convictions could be a major reason why.
Some Trump opponents are still optimistic that the President is set for a demise.
“I believe in the wisdom and the good faith of the American people,”
Norm Eisen,
White House ethics czar during the Obama administration, said on CNN International.
“Let’s let it unfold. He is going to meet his day of reckoning.”
CNN’s Clare Foran and Lauren Fox contributed to this report.
Read More | Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN,
Business Legal stunner fails to fell Trump but reckoning could be coming, in 2018-08-23 06:41:30
0 notes
Text
Business Legal stunner fails to fell Trump but reckoning could be coming
Business Legal stunner fails to fell Trump but reckoning could be coming Business Legal stunner fails to fell Trump but reckoning could be coming http://www.nature-business.com/business-legal-stunner-fails-to-fell-trump-but-reckoning-could-be-coming/
Business
(CNN)After one day where truth and facts triumphed, America is back to its alternative realities.
The convictions of two
close associates of President Donald Trump
in a mind-bending double-header drama in two cities on Tuesday were a moment of clarity in the legal morass that has thickened around the White House over the last 19 months.
Yet anyone who thought that being implicated in a crime in one of the most sensational political moments of recent history would soon temper Trump’s behavior, stop his White House peddling untruths or reshape the political terrain that sustains his presidency is being disappointed — at least for now.
Certainly, in years to come that tumultuous hour on Tuesday could turn out to be the moment when the Trump presidency began to unravel and the Teflon armor that shielded the President from scandals and outrages that would doom normal politicians was finally penetrated.
After all, months of obfuscation and attacks on Robert Mueller could not halt the legal process that’s likely to send former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and the President’s former fixer Michael Cohen to jail for years. And the real meat of the special counsel’s investigation into alleged collusion with Russia is yet to be revealed.
But in the immediate term at least, it seems nothing has changed in Washington.
The White House is back to peddling narratives that defy fact, attacking the media and lifting talking points from conservative opinion hosts. Trump is making new assaults on legal propriety. Republicans are dodging reporters in the Capitol to avoid being called to account for the President’s latest transgression. Democrats, owing to the GOP’s power monopoly in Washington, can only stir outrage and fire blanks — at least until the midterm elections.
‘What in the world are we going through?’
Trump’s defenders can still argue that although Cohen and Manafort, and the already disgraced Trump acolytes
Rick Gates
and
Michael Flynn
, have been felled by Mueller, the President has not been charged or been proved to have colluded with Russia or obstructed justice.
But his attitude on Wednesday hardly fit the profile of someone who had done nothing wrong or who is convinced the legal process should be allowed to play out to its conclusion.
He made up a legal loophole to argue that the hush money paid to women before the 2016 election who alleged they had affairs with him — payments Cohen said were made at his direction — did not break the law since it did not come from campaign funds.
“They didn’t come out of the campaign and that’s big,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News. “It’s not even a campaign violation.”
Trump is also again brazenly tearing at the boundaries of presidential decorum, dangling the possibility of a pardon before Manafort, who might just be tempted to cooperate with Mueller, now that he’s probably going to jail for most of the rest of his life.
“I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family. ‘Justice’ took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to ‘break’ – make up stories in order to get a ‘deal.’ Such respect for a brave man!” Trump tweeted.
Former Watergate special prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste bemoaned the possibility that the President might be considering a pardon for a man convicted of massive tax fraud and called on political leaders to come together to head off a moment of national peril.
“What in the world are we going through in this country?” Ben-Veniste told CNN’s Erica Hill.
At the White House, press secretary Sarah Sanders held a previously unscheduled briefing to press home the President’s counterattack.
She dismissed the notion that Trump was in legal trouble at all over Cohen’s accusation, which effectively boiled down to the sitting President of the United States being accused of a crime.
“As the President has said and we’ve stated many times, he did nothing wrong. There are no charges against him and we’ve commented on it extensively,” she said.
When asked by a reporter whether Trump’s now-discredited statement on Air Force One that he knew nothing about the payment to former porn star Stormy Daniels, she attacked the messenger:
“I think that’s a ridiculous accusation. The President, in this matter, has done nothing wrong.”
Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, are stuck in their perpetual dance, tiptoeing around Trump’s latest misadventures in fear of his Make America Great Again base. House Speaker Paul Ryan, once seen as the moral conscience of the GOP, is nowhere to be seen nor heard.
“I’m not very happy about it,” said Utah’s Sen. Orrin Hatch, who earlier this year said the current presidency could be the greatest in history, but he added Wednesday that Trump should not be blamed for his staff.
Louisiana’s Sen. John Kennedy said he didn’t see what the fuss was about in the Cohen and Manafort convictions.
“You know, I’m sorry. I don’t see any deeper meaning in this other than you have to pay your taxes and you can’t lie on a loan application,” he told reporters.
South Carolina’s Sen. Lindsey Graham, a sometime Trump golf partner, punted.
“Rather than answer a bunch of hypotheticals, I’ll do what I did in the Clinton — when Ken Starr issued his report. I read it, I’ll make a decision,” he said.
Democrats are gamely repurposing the latest Trump crisis in their almost certainly futile bid to scuttle the President’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, but are limited by their purgatory in the minority.
Hawaii’s Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono nixed a meeting with Kavanaugh, to bolster Democratic calls for the nomination to be put on hold given Tuesday’s events.
But Democrats are also still wary of using the “I” word, partly to avoid giving Trump a rallying issue that could motivate his supporters in the midterm elections.
House Democratic leader
Nancy Pelosi told The Associated Press on Wednesday
that impeachment is still “not on the table” even though some liberals believe that if Trump did conspire with Cohen in the way it appears from his court testimony, he may have already committed a high crime or misdemeanor that is the standard for House of Representatives action against a President.
A ‘reckoning’ will come
It’s become a cliché that nothing —
insulting war hero Sen. John McCain,
cozying up to Russian leader Vladimir Putin or
elevating white supremacists
— derails Trump. Tuesday’s events could become just another data point in that trend. And if the special counsel finds no evidence of collusion with Russia or obstruction of justice, Trump will be able to credibly assert that his name is clear.
But no one knows where Mueller’s probe will lead, if Trump or his campaign is guilty of collusion or obstructing justice. Presidencies can take years to unravel, as the varied experiences of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter show.
There’s also little doubt that Tuesday’s legal stunners, and the news that White House Counsel
Donald McGahn testified to Mueller for 30 hours,
have seeded new dark clouds around the President that could manifest themselves in ways impossible to predict right now.
And while Democrats are currently powerless, they could cripple Trump’s presidency and make his life a misery with incessant investigations if they win the House in November
A Democratic rout would prompt Republicans to consider whether sticking with Trump and a strategy solely reliant on his base is wise in the 2020 election.
So while it may seem that Trump’s political and legal luck is holding, it may erode over time and the furor surrounding Tuesday’s convictions could be a major reason why.
Some Trump opponents are still optimistic that the President is set for a demise.
“I believe in the wisdom and the good faith of the American people,”
Norm Eisen,
White House ethics czar during the Obama administration, said on CNN International.
“Let’s let it unfold. He is going to meet his day of reckoning.”
CNN’s Clare Foran and Lauren Fox contributed to this report.
Read More | Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN,
Business Legal stunner fails to fell Trump but reckoning could be coming, in 2018-08-23 06:41:30
0 notes
Text
Business Legal stunner fails to fell Trump but reckoning could be coming
Business Legal stunner fails to fell Trump but reckoning could be coming Business Legal stunner fails to fell Trump but reckoning could be coming http://www.nature-business.com/business-legal-stunner-fails-to-fell-trump-but-reckoning-could-be-coming/
Business
(CNN)After one day where truth and facts triumphed, America is back to its alternative realities.
The convictions of two
close associates of President Donald Trump
in a mind-bending double-header drama in two cities on Tuesday were a moment of clarity in the legal morass that has thickened around the White House over the last 19 months.
Yet anyone who thought that being implicated in a crime in one of the most sensational political moments of recent history would soon temper Trump’s behavior, stop his White House peddling untruths or reshape the political terrain that sustains his presidency is being disappointed — at least for now.
Certainly, in years to come that tumultuous hour on Tuesday could turn out to be the moment when the Trump presidency began to unravel and the Teflon armor that shielded the President from scandals and outrages that would doom normal politicians was finally penetrated.
After all, months of obfuscation and attacks on Robert Mueller could not halt the legal process that’s likely to send former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and the President’s former fixer Michael Cohen to jail for years. And the real meat of the special counsel’s investigation into alleged collusion with Russia is yet to be revealed.
But in the immediate term at least, it seems nothing has changed in Washington.
The White House is back to peddling narratives that defy fact, attacking the media and lifting talking points from conservative opinion hosts. Trump is making new assaults on legal propriety. Republicans are dodging reporters in the Capitol to avoid being called to account for the President’s latest transgression. Democrats, owing to the GOP’s power monopoly in Washington, can only stir outrage and fire blanks — at least until the midterm elections.
‘What in the world are we going through?’
Trump’s defenders can still argue that although Cohen and Manafort, and the already disgraced Trump acolytes
Rick Gates
and
Michael Flynn
, have been felled by Mueller, the President has not been charged or been proved to have colluded with Russia or obstructed justice.
But his attitude on Wednesday hardly fit the profile of someone who had done nothing wrong or who is convinced the legal process should be allowed to play out to its conclusion.
He made up a legal loophole to argue that the hush money paid to women before the 2016 election who alleged they had affairs with him — payments Cohen said were made at his direction — did not break the law since it did not come from campaign funds.
“They didn’t come out of the campaign and that’s big,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News. “It’s not even a campaign violation.”
Trump is also again brazenly tearing at the boundaries of presidential decorum, dangling the possibility of a pardon before Manafort, who might just be tempted to cooperate with Mueller, now that he’s probably going to jail for most of the rest of his life.
“I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family. ‘Justice’ took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to ‘break’ – make up stories in order to get a ‘deal.’ Such respect for a brave man!” Trump tweeted.
Former Watergate special prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste bemoaned the possibility that the President might be considering a pardon for a man convicted of massive tax fraud and called on political leaders to come together to head off a moment of national peril.
“What in the world are we going through in this country?” Ben-Veniste told CNN’s Erica Hill.
At the White House, press secretary Sarah Sanders held a previously unscheduled briefing to press home the President’s counterattack.
She dismissed the notion that Trump was in legal trouble at all over Cohen’s accusation, which effectively boiled down to the sitting President of the United States being accused of a crime.
“As the President has said and we’ve stated many times, he did nothing wrong. There are no charges against him and we’ve commented on it extensively,” she said.
When asked by a reporter whether Trump’s now-discredited statement on Air Force One that he knew nothing about the payment to former porn star Stormy Daniels, she attacked the messenger:
“I think that’s a ridiculous accusation. The President, in this matter, has done nothing wrong.”
Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, are stuck in their perpetual dance, tiptoeing around Trump’s latest misadventures in fear of his Make America Great Again base. House Speaker Paul Ryan, once seen as the moral conscience of the GOP, is nowhere to be seen nor heard.
“I’m not very happy about it,” said Utah’s Sen. Orrin Hatch, who earlier this year said the current presidency could be the greatest in history, but he added Wednesday that Trump should not be blamed for his staff.
Louisiana’s Sen. John Kennedy said he didn’t see what the fuss was about in the Cohen and Manafort convictions.
“You know, I’m sorry. I don’t see any deeper meaning in this other than you have to pay your taxes and you can’t lie on a loan application,” he told reporters.
South Carolina’s Sen. Lindsey Graham, a sometime Trump golf partner, punted.
“Rather than answer a bunch of hypotheticals, I’ll do what I did in the Clinton — when Ken Starr issued his report. I read it, I’ll make a decision,” he said.
Democrats are gamely repurposing the latest Trump crisis in their almost certainly futile bid to scuttle the President’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, but are limited by their purgatory in the minority.
Hawaii’s Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono nixed a meeting with Kavanaugh, to bolster Democratic calls for the nomination to be put on hold given Tuesday’s events.
But Democrats are also still wary of using the “I” word, partly to avoid giving Trump a rallying issue that could motivate his supporters in the midterm elections.
House Democratic leader
Nancy Pelosi told The Associated Press on Wednesday
that impeachment is still “not on the table” even though some liberals believe that if Trump did conspire with Cohen in the way it appears from his court testimony, he may have already committed a high crime or misdemeanor that is the standard for House of Representatives action against a President.
A ‘reckoning’ will come
It’s become a cliché that nothing —
insulting war hero Sen. John McCain,
cozying up to Russian leader Vladimir Putin or
elevating white supremacists
— derails Trump. Tuesday’s events could become just another data point in that trend. And if the special counsel finds no evidence of collusion with Russia or obstruction of justice, Trump will be able to credibly assert that his name is clear.
But no one knows where Mueller’s probe will lead, if Trump or his campaign is guilty of collusion or obstructing justice. Presidencies can take years to unravel, as the varied experiences of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter show.
There’s also little doubt that Tuesday’s legal stunners, and the news that White House Counsel
Donald McGahn testified to Mueller for 30 hours,
have seeded new dark clouds around the President that could manifest themselves in ways impossible to predict right now.
And while Democrats are currently powerless, they could cripple Trump’s presidency and make his life a misery with incessant investigations if they win the House in November
A Democratic rout would prompt Republicans to consider whether sticking with Trump and a strategy solely reliant on his base is wise in the 2020 election.
So while it may seem that Trump’s political and legal luck is holding, it may erode over time and the furor surrounding Tuesday’s convictions could be a major reason why.
Some Trump opponents are still optimistic that the President is set for a demise.
“I believe in the wisdom and the good faith of the American people,”
Norm Eisen,
White House ethics czar during the Obama administration, said on CNN International.
“Let’s let it unfold. He is going to meet his day of reckoning.”
CNN’s Clare Foran and Lauren Fox contributed to this report.
Read More | Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN,
Business Legal stunner fails to fell Trump but reckoning could be coming, in 2018-08-23 06:41:30
0 notes
Text
How dames could vote Hillary Clinton into the White House
A presidential election with the first female nominee for a major party was always going to be about gender but its own language and action of Donald Trump has galvanized dames got to make sure he never goes near the Oval Office
Moments into the final presidential dialogue, as the topic turned to abortion, Hillary Clinton gave an impassioned and unapologetic subject for the status of women right to choose.
Donald Trump had just described in graphic expressions his opinion of the methods used, falsely differentiating Clinton as being in favor of rend[ ping] the child out of the womb of the mother just days prior to birth.
An unfazed Clinton hinted the Republican nominee meet maidens she personally knew “whos been” undergone one of the worst possible choices imaginable, or travel to countries where restrictive laws obliged ladies to either undergo abortions or grow children involuntarily.
Clinton went farther than any of her precedes on an issue that often fractions the American public.Undecided voters in a CNN focus group conducted that night in October said it was her strongest minute.
But maidens find it especially poignant. Natalie, one of those undecided voters, said of Clintons response: It was important to me because I dont see the government should have hold over a womans person just like they wouldnt have limit of a mans torso.
Gender was always going to play a pivotal role in a campaign that could terminate in the election of the members of the first girl president in Americas 240 -year history and seems likely to a verify a historically huge gender chink at the polls. But it has been amplified as a result of Trumps language and behavior, startling many female voters is so that a human who boasted on tape of sexually assaulting females is not elevated to the highest part in the land.
Trump calls Clinton a nasty girl during final conversation
I wish I didnt have to say this, but, certainly, glory and respect for women and girls is also included in the ballot this election, Clinton told a audience of 11, 000 beings, many of them women and students, who came to see her share a stage with first lady Michelle Obama in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in the final weeks of her campaign.
Natasha McKay, of Charlotte, left the rally in situations of euphoria. Im certainly uplifted right now. Im in a dazzle, she alleged. Hillary is so powerful. Michelle Obama is incredibly strong. Those two together is an awesome force.
McKay mentioned the sharp distinguish between Clintons message of female empowerment and Trumps history of preparing cheapening explains about women.
Like Michelle Obama read: When they travel low, “theres going” high-pitched, McKay responded. Except Donald Trump going to be home lower and lower and lower.
The gender gap has long favored Democrats. Harmonizing to the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell University, maidens favored the Democratic nominee in 2012 by 11 objects, 2008 by 13, 2004 by three, and 2000 by 10 points.
Nevadas ladies stand divided over Trump and Clinton on eve of poll
But this year Clinton ogles set to match or even outstrip the historical 17 -point lead her husband held among women over Bob Dole in 1996. Ten recent referendums taken in October range from eight to 22 percentage points conducts, with an average advantage of 17.( In 1980 and 1984 maidens favored the Republican Ronald Reagan over his Democratic opponents Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale .)
Whereas Clinton balk away from the historic sort of her candidacy during her first bid for president in 2008, this time around the prospect of electing a woman to the White House has been a most important pillars of her narrative. But the former secretary of state could not have predicted she would be handed an opponent who has in the past referred to women as fat animals, slobs and dogs, and both bragged about and been accused of sexual assault.( He has disavowed the accusations .)
A new analysis by the Pew Research Center found that majorities of both men( 58%) and women( 62%) do Trump has little or no respect for women. Exclusively 38% of respondents conceive the Republican nominee has a great deal or a fair sum of respect for women, compared with 76% who believe that Clinton does.
And so Clinton and her allies have worked hard to target ladies from the millennials who readily distinguish as feminists to the suburban married women who typically fluctuating toward Republican but may be repelled by the believed to be casting a vote for Trump.
Hillary Clinton and first lady Michelle Obama embracing before they address the crowd at a campaign stop in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, last week. Photo: Logan Cyrus/ AFP/ Getty Images
Emilys List, the group that works to elect pro-choice Democratic wives to public power, has targeted its outreach toward millennial women in the key battleground countries where they could play a decisive role: New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Florida and Nevada. Through a predominantly digital, multimillion-dollar safarus, the group has extended ads that include a young woman evidencing her sorenes in reading aloud paroles spoken by Trump, such as Putting a partner to work is a very dangerous act, and are used in advertise on social media scaffolds used by younger voters.
Jennifer Lawless, the director of the Women& Politics Institute at American University, did Clinton had an extraordinary grassroots enterprise. The instant Donald Trump says something, theyre be permitted to micro-target females, she said.
The most significant shift, Lawless lent, has been among marriage dames a demographic that advantages Republican and elect Romney over Obama by seven percentage points in 2012. The tape disclosed last month peculiarity Trump boasting in 2005 about groping and kissing ladies without their consent seemed to give married females a sense that they did not have to vote exclusively along party lines.
What that strip did was, especially to women who were undecided or find some appreciation of party loyalty[ to the GOP ], the strip dedicated a lot of Republican political nobilities ammunition to say, vote your shame, Lawless told, and that freed up people who might be loyal partisans to reconsider.
Meghan Milloy, a lifelong Republican, reached her breaking point with Trump well before he became the partys campaigner and courted controversy with allegations of sexual assault.
Milloy said she was appalled when Trump sparred with Megyn Kelly and insinuated the Fox News anchor asked tough questions during the first Republican primary debate because she was menstruating.
Thats when I decided he wasnt fit to be president, she remarked. I dont even think he is fit to manage a local Papa Johns.
People gather in front of Trump Tower last month to protest against Donald Trumps therapy of the status of women. Picture: Timothy A Clary/ AFP/ Getty Images
When Trump won the nomination, Milloy facilitated launch Republican Women for Hillary. Though she still considers herself a member of the Republican party and a strong republican, Milloy is disappointed with her defendant for not disavowing Trump.
If the party comes back from this and recognizes that it get crazy this year with Trump and the platform then I would certainly stick around and “il do my best” to help them rebuild after this year, Milloy mentioned. But if they redouble down like Trump has done, then I certainly wont become members of that.
Seeking to weaponize Trumps rhetoric against him, the Clinton campaign has aired a strong ad in which young girls look at themselves in the reflect against the background of the real estate moguls bullying texts. The commercial-grade aimed to target, including with regard to, married women in the suburbs of swaying positions Colorado, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
As the sex crime videotape came to light-footed, Clinton intensified her lurch against her foes management of women.
Addressing a Women for Hillary a conference call, one week before such elections, Clinton appealed to supporters on a personal level.
I are well aware that parts of such elections have been distressing to numerous dames, especially hearing about Donald Trumps behavior towards ladies over the years, she said. He enjoys stirring girls was terrible about themselves in every possible practice. He ponders defaming dames manufactures him a bigger man.
We is responsible to ensure that he and his attitude what he suggests, what he makes, what he does to girls never goes him near the White House.
Clinton too emerged with top female surrogates, from Michelle Obama to prominent women rights rulers such as the Planned Parenthood Action Fund president, Cecile Richards, and Emilys List president, Stephanie Schriock, to make a final lurch to women in must-win battlegrounds.
To be elected as a woman, you have to be 20 experiences as good as your opponent, replied Richards, whose late mother Ann Richards was herself a colonist and as district treasurer of Texas became the first woman elected statewide in roughly 50 times in 1982.
We are not comfortable in its own country with women who are strong. It is remarkable that this woman, as our own president remarks, has more event, more preparation to go into the Oval Office than anyone we can recollect, and it was just always going to be hard.
But the gendered circumstances of Clintons battle, according to Richards from the emphasis placed on her robes to her speaking mode to whether she smiles enough is what motivates females voters to make their voices heard on 8 November.
Women feel this is about much more than Hillary, “its about” make that has been going on for decades, she did. These wives seem an enormous appreciation of dignity and possession in this election.
Perhaps few moments solidified that feeling better than when Trump leaned into his microphone during the final presidential dialogue and snarled: Such a nasty woman.
Women substantiating Clinton instantly regained the term and swerved it into a rallying cry, and it became a recurring theme at safarus occasions to find women with Nasty Women shirts. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator and influential Clinton surrogate, problem a fiery castigation of Trump at a campaign rally in New Hampshire late last-place month: Nasty ladies vote.
Nasty maidens poll: Elizabeth Warren takes a swipe at Trump
It is not simply a distaste for Trump driving prospective turnout among women, according to longtime spectators of the intersection of gender issues and politics.
Theres a policy contention for why unmarried women in particular are more drawn to a Democratic programme, answered Rebecca Traister, writer of the book All the Single Dame: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation.
They are no longer the class of Americans who are living economically, socially or professionally is dependant on husbands in the way that they used to be. Barack Obama drove the Democratic advantage among unmarried women to historic degrees in 2008, with 70% support to John McCains 29%, while in 2012 single females preferred the president over Mitt Romney by a whopping margin of 36 percentage points.
With women currently holding activities, and serving as breadwinners be they unmarried, married, or same-sex spouses in large numerals, as an electorate they are increasingly moved by policies that address their concerns, Traister added.
This is why unmarried females have specially been drawn toward Clintons platform of equal pay for women, easing the burden of student lend obligation, paid kinfolk leave and protecting reproductive claims, she alleged. Clinton has emphasized her commitment to such issues since launching her safarus, and likewise focused on conjuring the minimum wage, an issue inextricably tied to gender in that wives even out two-thirds of minimum wage earners.
Jess OConnell, the executive director of Emilys List, announced Trump was simply vocalizing in politically faulty terms what Republican have long preached in more concealed language.
Single ladies are afraid the Republicans are going to turn back the clocks on them, OConnell alleged. Rejecting the gender chink in payments or wanting to punish women for the purpose of having an abortion demo a real shortage of understanding about women and their lives today.
This is when womens expressions are going to be heard.
Read more: www.theguardian.com
The post How dames could vote Hillary Clinton into the White House appeared first on caredogstips.com.
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Jimmy Carter tells church service he is ‘absolutely and completely at ease’ with death
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Former President Jimmy Carter said Sunday that he found he “was absolutely and completely at ease with death” after doctors told him in 2015 that his cancer had spread to his brain.
“I assumed, naturally, that I was going to die very quickly,” Carter said while delivering a church sermon in Plains, Georgia. “I obviously prayed about it. I didn’t ask God to let me live, but I asked God to give me a proper attitude toward death. And I found that I was absolutely and completely at ease with death.”
“It didn’t really matter to me whether I died or lived. Except I was going to miss my family, and miss the work at the Carter Center and miss teaching your Sunday school service sometimes and so forth. All those delightful things,” the 39th president added, smiling.
The son of a peanut farmer who served the United States in World War II, Carter announced he beat cancer in December 2015 after he received experimental treatment for liver cancer that metastasized to his brain. During a news conference at the time, Carter said his fate was “in the hands of God” and vowed to continue teaching Sunday school at his church “as long as I’m physically able.”
When Carter celebrated his 95th birthday on October 1, he became the oldest living former US president, a title once held by the late George H. W. Bush, who died in late 2018 at age 94.
Every Sunday, Carter gives a sermon at Maranatha Baptist Church in his home state of Georgia, but after an October 21 fall in his home that led to a minor pelvic fracture, the church said he would miss his weekly appearance. The church later announced the former president would teach as scheduled.
Carter, who has recently spoken out about the chaos of Washington, also touched on the state of the nation in his Sunday morning sermon.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if the United States of America could be a superpower in maintaining peace? … Suppose the United States was a super power in environmental policy. Suppose the United States was a superpower in treating people equally. See, that’s the kind of superpower I’d like to have,” said Carter Sunday, who once said that if he had one wish for the rest of his life it would be that he gets to see peace in the Middle East.
Carter said the United States would be a better country if people reached out to somebody who might need a friend.
“That’s the way to make the United States a superpower,” he said. “We can help the United States become more peaceful.”
from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2019/11/03/jimmy-carter-tells-church-service-he-is-absolutely-and-completely-at-ease-with-death/
from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2019/11/03/jimmy-carter-tells-church-service-he-is-absolutely-and-completely-at-ease-with-death/
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