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Trump Says He'll Never Quit Presidential Race, but GOP Exodus Has Begun |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=37309"><span class="small">Chas Danner, New York Magazine</span></a>
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Sunday, 09 October 2016 08:23 |
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Danner writes: "Donald Trump, facing the biggest crisis of his campaign over the emergence of a recording in which he brags about his ability to sexually assault women, remained defiant on Saturday, telling the Wall Street Journal that there was 'zero chance' he would quit the presidential race."
It's going to be a long weekend. (photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
Trump Says He'll Never Quit Presidential Race, but GOP Exodus Has Begun
By Chas Danner, New York Magazine
09 October 16
 onald Trump, facing the biggest crisis of his campaign over the emergence of a recording in which he brags about his ability to sexually assault women, remained defiant on Saturday, telling the Wall Street Journal that there was “zero chance” he would quit the presidential race, and additionally telling the Washington Post that, “I’d never withdraw. I’ve never withdrawn in my life.” Those comments have come in response to widespread outrage from GOP officials and politicians, many of whom are now saying they will not vote for Trump and are calling on him to drop out of the race and be replaced by vice presidential candidate Mike Pence, even though that doesn’t seem very feasible at this late stage in the campaign.
That exodus began on Friday evening, as the reality of Trump’s 2005 Access Hollywood remarks was sinking in, and picked up pace on Saturday, when even John McCain ended up abandoning the Republican nominee. This was all was despite Trump releasing a taped apology after midnight on Friday in which he did sort of apologize for his boasting about groping women, but also called the story a “distraction” before insisting that Hillary and Bill Clinton were much worse than he is. Trump also assured the Journal that his family understands because “they’re very loyal,” and that he has been receiving “unbelievable support” from his base since the video came out. Trump thus expects the outrage to blow over as he thinks it has after all the other horrifying things he has said over the course of his presidential campaign. “People get it. They get life,” he added, about why voters will forgive him for saying that he could freely grab women by the genitals because he was famous.
Or, expressed in a more CAPS-LOCK way:
A growing list of GOP lawmakers don’t agree anymore. Kelly Ayotte, who is in a tight race to hold onto her Senate seat in New Hampshire, and who had taken fire earlier in the week for implying at a debate that Trump was a good role model for children, is now openly opposing him. She announced on Saturday that she’ll be writing in Pence’s name on election day, and that, “I wanted to be able to support my party’s nominee, chosen by the people, because I feel strongly that we need a change in direction for our country. However, I’m a mom and an American first, and I cannot and will not support a candidate for president who brags about degrading and assaulting women.” (Nevertheless, the campaign for Ayotte’s Democratic opponent, Governor Maggie Hassan, has already put out an attack ad tying her to Trump’s comments.)
Arizona Senator John McCain has never been fond of Trump, but the 2008 Republican presidential nominee had agreed to support him in the interests of party unity — at least until Saturday. After airing a number of grievances against Trump, McCain announced in a statement that Trump’s pro-groping remarks were the final straw, and the senator was calling for Trump to drop out. McCain also announced that he and his wife Cindy will instead write in “the name of some good conservative Republican who is qualified to be President” on election day.
On Friday, Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz also unendorsed Trump, announcing that, “I can no longer in good conscience endorse this person for president,” though he didn’t say that Trump should quit the race. Utah Senator Mike Lee did make that request, however:
It’s occurred to me on countless occasions today that if anyone spoke to my wife, my daughter, my mother or any of my five sisters the way Mr. Trump has spoken to women, I wouldn’t hire that person. I wouldn’t hire that person, wouldn’t want to be associated with that person, and, I certainly don’t think I would feel comfortable hiring that person to be the the leader of the free world.
GOP Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia also withdrew her support on Saturday, insisting she “cannot and will not support a candidate for president who brags about degrading and assaulting women,” and calling on Trump to “reexamine his candidacy.” Republican Representative Martha Roby of Alabama tweeted on Saturday morning that she wants Trump gone too:
Her fellow Alabaman, Rep. Bradley Byrne also ditched Trump on Saturday, as did Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock, New Jersey Rep. Scott Garrett, and Nebraska Rep. Jeff Fortenberry. Utah Rep. Mia Love, who had never endorsed Trump, confirmed on Saturday that she would not be voting for him either. Before that, Colorado Rep. Mike Coffman said on Friday that, “For the good of the country, and to give the Republicans a chance of defeating Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump should step aside.” In Nevada, Rep. Cresent Hardy is out, and Rep. Joe Heck withdrew his support and asked that Trump step down at a rally in Las Vegas on Saturday, but that apparently didn’t go over so well with his supporters:
South Dakota’s John Thune — the number three Republican in the Senate — is also now off the Trump train and wants Pence to take his place, as does Idaho Senator Mike Crapo, who cast blame on Trump’s “pattern of behavior” and “disrespectful, profane, and demeaning” comments toward women. Colorado Senator Cory Gardner is out too as of Saturday afternoon, and Republican governors Dennis Daugaard, of South Dakota, and Gary Herbert, of Utah, are also done with the Donald. And Illinois Senator Mark Kirk and Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, who had both long ago disavowed Trump, are now calling for his replacement as well.
More than 50 prominent Republican elected officials were off the Trump bandwagon by Saturday evening:
Also:
Carly Fiorina, who had run against Trump in the GOP primaries, also called on Trump to step aside on Saturday, writing on Facebook that Trump “does not represent me or my party” and that he has “manifestly failed” in his responsibilities as a nominee. She was preceded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Rob Engstrom, who tweeted on Friday night that Trump was “fundamentally offensive and unqualified” and called on him to bow out. Trump can take Alex Smith, the chair of the national College Republicans, off his email list as well, since Smith also washed his hands of the candidate on Saturday, remarking that “the Party of Lincoln is not a locker room, and there is no place for people who think it is.”
Even Hugh Hewitt, the conservative radio host who has made his show a port in the storm for Trump in the past, is walking away from the candidate:
But not all Republicans are calling for Trump’s withdrawal just yet, though there has been near-unanimous rejection and outrage over his comments from pretty much everyone with a pulse and a Twitter account.
Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, was reported to be “beside himself” on Friday after the Trump recording came out, but though he cancelled a Saturday appearance, he later released a statement maintaining his support for Trump:
As a husband and father, I was offended by the words and actions described by Donald Trump in the eleven-year-old video released yesterday. I do not condone his remarks and cannot defend them. I am grateful that he has expressed remorse and apologized to the American people. We pray for his family and look forward to the opportunity he has to show what is in his heart when he goes before the nation tomorrow night.
Then again, this is just as likely to be true amidst such a crisis:
The event Pence was supposed to attend on Saturday was to be in Wisconsin and hosted by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who disinvited Trump from the event on Friday. Ryan also said on Friday that he was “sickened by what I heard” on the Trump recording and that he hoped, “Trump treats this situation with the seriousness it deserves and works to demonstrate to the country that he has greater respect for women than this clip suggests.” That Saturday Wisconsin event didn’t end up going over so well with Trump supporters, either.
Trump donors are apparently less than pleased as well. A prominent Trump bundler told CBS News on Saturday that he “could not tell you how many” calls he has received from ticked-off donors wanting their money back. Another report indicates that the RNC might be getting cold feet as well, since they suddenly paused part of a pro-Trump mailing campaign on Saturday.
So who else is still aboard the S.S. Trumptanic? Stalwarts Ben Carson, Sean Hannity, and Rudy Giuliani seem to still be defending the candidate, as are many of Trump’s backers in the Evangelical Christian community. On Friday, Hannity acknowledged on his Fox News show that “nobody is going to defend” Trump’s comments, but then worked to shift attention to Bill Clinton’s sex scandals and at one point even went biblical in joking that “King David had 500 concubines for crying out loud.” As for Giuliani? Well:
But while the suddenly default assumption by Republicans rejecting Trump is that he can be replaced with Pence, is that actually true? Politico reports that RNC lawyers are investigating it, but the odds look beyond long, especially if Trump doesn’t actually quit:
On Friday night, RNC chair Reince Priebus told an aggrieved state party chair that he realized a public dumping of Trump by the party would sink the nominee’s remaining chances. He said the committee would take 48 hours to reevaluate its election strategy, according to a Republican operative briefed on the conversation. The RNC saw the departure of two low-level field staffers in the states on Friday night and is expecting more, according to the operative.
Meanwhile, the RNC has lawyers examining the possibility of putting forth another nominee one month from Election Day, with ballots already printed and early voting in progress in some states, according to two other Republicans. “RNC has an army of lawyers right now looking at Rule 9 and ballot questions,” said one, a Republican strategist. The RNC’s Rule 9 pertains to filling vacant nominations.
But the lawyers have concluded that Trump would have to cooperate in any attempt to replace him, said another Republican in touch with the committee. “The fact remains that he can only be replaced if he quits or dies. And he’s declared today he’s not planning on doing either.”
Or maybe desperate Republicans can fantasize about this kind of extremely unlikely scenario:
The Washington Post puts its foot down and reports that the GOP is definitely stuck with Trump, pointing out that:
More than 34,000 Republican voters have already cast their ballots for the 2016 general election according to the U.S. Election Project, 8,000 of them in the battleground state of North Carolina and another 5,000 in Florida. Not all of those ballots were cast for Donald Trump, it’s safe to assume, but it’s more than likely that most of them were. And that, in a nutshell, is why it’s far too late for the Republican Party to dump Donald Trump from their ticket.
They go on to note that the GOP “could amend [Rule 9] to dump Trump, for example, but that would take a majority of the party’s Rules Committee and two-thirds of the entire party. This would be neither fast nor, necessarily, successful.” In addition, ballot deadlines have already passed in several key swing states, and good luck winning without them.
But if the GOP is stuck with Trump, are they necessarily stuck with Trump at the top of their ticket? Writing at Vox, Constitutional law professor Akhil Reed Amar argues that “there is one last chance for the Republican establishment to dump Trump: by flipping the ticket and putting the plodding, but at least plausible, Mike Pence in charge.” He says that such a move would not require a formal ballot change, but would require Trump to pledge that he would step aside after taking the oath of office on Inauguration Day, making Pence the president (unless Trump wants to reassert his rights to the office later on):
Even if Trump initially resists taking the pledge, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Leader Mitch McConnell can force Trump’s hand by threatening to retract their endorsements of him unless he pledges to flip. Pence himself could also threaten to quit, in advance of the election, unless Trump takes the deal. Their leverage only grows if the gap that opened this week between Clinton and Trump in the polls widens.
The Flip does not depend on Trump’s ongoing good faith. Once it is publicly announced and voters act in reliance on it, Pence can and must enforce the deal even if Trump later tries to back out.
All Pence needs to do post-inauguration, if Trump tries to weasel out, is to declare Trump disabled under another clause of the 25th Amendment — Section Four. So long as the Cabinet and the Congress back Pence in this power play, Pence prevails. The 25th Amendment does not specify all the possible and permissible reasons for declaring someone incapable of discharging his or her duties. It merely states that the Cabinet and Congress must concur that this is the case. And why shouldn’t they concur, given that this deal would have been blessed by voters on Election Day?
A bit far-fetched? Perhaps, but in this consistently insane election cycle, it’s certainly been proved that anything is possible again and again.
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The Age of Decline, Apple Pie, and America's Chosen Suicide Bomber |
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Sunday, 09 October 2016 08:08 |
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Engelhardt writes: "From the moment the first scribe etched a paean of praise to Nebuchadnezzar into a stone tablet, it's reasonable to conclude that never in history has the media covered a single human being as it has Donald Trump."
A poster of Donald Trump in the backyard of a supporter. (photo: AFP)
The Age of Decline, Apple Pie, and America's Chosen Suicide Bomber
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDisaptch
09 October 16
TD is taking the Columbus Day weekend off. The next post will appear on Tuesday, October 11th. In the meantime, do check out our donation page. We still have quite a list of great books on offer from TomDispatch regulars. For a donation of $100 or more ($125 if you live outside the U.S.), you can get a signed, personalized copy of one of them and, in return, we get the sort of support that we always truly need. TomDispatch really does rely on its readers to make a difference. Those among you who are Amazon customers, remember that if you go to Amazon via a TD book link like this -- Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World -- and then buy anything, whether a book we recommend or a pair of sneakers, we get a modest cut. All in all, you keep us going. See you soon!
-Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch
The Age of Decline, Apple Pie, and America's Chosen Suicide Bomber
And Truly, This Is Not About Donald Trump...
 rom the moment the first scribe etched a paean of praise to Nebuchadnezzar into a stone tablet, it’s reasonable to conclude that never in history has the media covered a single human being as it has Donald Trump. For more than a year now, unless a terror attack roiled American life, he’s been the news cycle, essentially the only one, morning, noon, and night, day after day, week after week, month after month. His every word, phrase, move, insult, passing comment, off-the-cuff remark, claim, boast, brazen lie, shout, or shout-out has been ours as well. In this period, he’s praised his secret plan to destroy ISIS and take Iraqi oil. He’s thumped that “big, fat, beautiful wall” again and again. He’s birthered a campaign that could indeed transport him, improbably enough, into the Oval Office. He’s fought it out with 17 political rivals, among others, including “lyin’ Ted,” “low-energy Jeb,” Carly (“Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?”) Fiorini, “crooked Hillary,” a Miss Universe (“Miss Piggy”), the “highly overrated” Megyn Kelly’s menstrual cycle ("You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever"), always Rosie O’Donnell (“a slob [with] a fat, ugly face”), and so many others. He’s made veiled assassination threats; lauded the desire to punch someone in the face; talked about shooting “somebody” in “the middle of Fifth Avenue”; defended the size of his hands and his you-know-what; retweeted neo-Nazis and a quote from Mussolini; denounced the outsourcing of American manufacturing jobs and products while outsourcing his own jobs and products; excoriated immigrants and foreign labor while hiring the same; advertised the Trump brand in every way imaginable; had a bromance with Vladimir Putin; threatened to let nuclear weapons proliferate; complained bitterly about a rigged election, rigged debates, a rigged moderator, and a rigged microphone; swore that he and he alone was capable of again making America, and so the world, a place of the sort of greatness only he himself could match, and that’s just to begin a list on the subject of The Donald.
In other words, thanks to the media attention he garners incessantly, he is the living embodiment of our American moment. No matter what you think of him, his has been a journey of a sort we’ve never seen before, a triumph of the first order, whatever happens on November 8th. He’s burnished his own brand; opened a new hotel on -- yes -- Pennsylvania Avenue (which he’s used his election run to promote and publicize); sold his products mercilessly; promoted his children; funneled dollars to his family and businesses; and in an unspoken alliance (pact, entente, détente) of the first order, kept the nightly news and the cable networks rolling in dough and in the spotlight (as long as they kept yakking about him), despite the fact that younger viewers were in flight to the universe of social media, streaming services, and their smartphones. Thanks to the millions, billions, perhaps trillions of words expended on him by nonstop commentators, pundits, talking heads, retired generals and admirals, former intelligence chiefs, ex-Bush administration officials, and god knows who else that have kept the cable channels churning with Trump on a nearly 24/7 basis, he and his remarkable ego, and his now familiar gestures -- that jut-jawed look, that orange hair, that overly tanned face, that eternally raised voice -- have become the wallpaper of our lives, something close to our reality. If he were an action film, some Hollywood studio would be swooning, because never has a single act gotten such nonstop publicity. We’ve never seen anything like him or it, and yet, strange as the Trump phenomenon may be, if you think about it for a moment, you’ll realize that there’s also something eerily familiar about him, and not just because of The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice.
In a world where so many things deserve our attention and don’t get it, rest assured that this is not about Donald Trump. It really isn’t.
In terms of any presidential candidate from George Washington to Barack Obama, Trump is little short of a freak of nature. There’s really no one to compare him to (other, perhaps, than George Wallace). Sometimes his pitch about America -- and a return to greatness -- has a faintly Reaganesque quality (but without any of Ronald Reagan’s sunniness or charm). Otherwise, I dare you to make such a comparison.
Still, don’t be fooled. As a phenomenon, Donald Trump couldn’t be more American -- as American, in fact, as a piece of McDonald’s baked apple pie. What could be more American, after all, than his two major roles: salesman (or pitchman) and con artist? From P.T. Barnum (who, by the way, became the mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut, late in life) to Willy Loman, selling has long been an iconic American way to go. A man who sells his life and brand as the ultimate American life and brand... come on, what’s not familiar about that?
As for being a conman, since at least Mark Twain (remember the Duke of Bridgewater and the Dauphin, who join Huck and Jim on their raft?) and Herman Melville (The Confidence Man), the charm of the -- excuse the phrase under the circumstances -- huckster in American life can’t be denied. It’s something Donald Trump knows in his bones, even if all those pundits and commentators and pollsters (and for that matter Hillary Clinton’s advisers) don’t: Americans love a conman. Historically, we’ve often admired, if not identified with, someone intent on playing and successfully beating the system, whether at a confidence game or through criminal activity.
After the first presidential debate, when Trump essentially admitted that in some years he paid no taxes (“that makes me smart”) and that he had played the tax system for everything it was worth, there was all that professional tsk-tsking and the suggestion that such an admission would deeply disturb ordinary voters who pay up when the IRS comes knocking. Don’t believe it for a second. I guarantee you that Trump senses he’s deep in the Mississippi of American politics with such statements and that a surprising number of voters will admire him for it (whether they admit it or not). After all, he beat the system, even if they didn’t.
Whenever I see Trump and read accounts of his business dealings, I’m reminded of what 1920s Chicago crime boss Al Capone told British journalist Claud Cockburn: "Listen, don't get the idea I'm one of those goddamn radicals... Don't get the idea I'm knocking the American system. My rackets are run on strictly American lines. Capitalism, call it what you like, gives to each and every one of us a great opportunity if only we seize it with both hands and make the most of it." Trump’s “rackets” are similarly “run on strictly American lines.” He’s the Tony Soprano of casino capitalism and so couldn’t be more American.
My father was a salesman. I grew up watching him make his preparations to sell. I existed at the edge of his selling universe and, though I thought I rejected his world, the truth is that, given the chance and under the right circumstances, I still love to sell myself. It’s addictive in the most American way. There was as well another aspect of that commonplace world of fathers I once knew and that I now recognize in Trump’s overwhelming persona: the bully. That jut-jawed stance, the pugnacious approach to the world, that way of carrying both one’s body and face that seems inbuilt and offers the constant possibility of threat -- it was the norm of the world I grew up in. It was what fathers looked like (and must still in so many families). It was, in short, an essential part of the pre-Trumpian world, a manner, a way of being that The Donald has distilled into an iconically brutal version of itself, into not the commonplace bully -- schoolyard variety -- but The Bully. Still, at least to me, and I think to many Americans, it couldn’t be more recognizable and, I suspect, for people raised among the bullies, the thought of having such a bully in the Oval Office and speaking for you for once is strangely appealing.
Just in case you were wondering at this point, I’m serious: this is not about Donald Trump.
And yet, don’t believe that everything about The Donald is old hat and familiarly American. In this strange election season, there are aspects of his role that are so new they should startle us all. Begin with the fact that he’s the first declinist candidate for president of our era. Put another way, he’s the only politician in the country who refuses to engage in a ritual -- until now a virtual necessity for American presidential wannabes, candidates, and presidents: affirming repeatedly that the United States is the greatest, most exceptional, most indispensable nation of all time and that it possesses the “finest fighting force in the history of the world.”
Undoubtedly, that by-now-kneejerk urge to repeat such formulaic sentiments reflects creeping self-doubts about America’s future imperial role. It has the quality of a magic mantra being used to ward off reality. After all, when a great power truly is at its height, as the United States was in my youth, no one feels the need to continually, defensively insist that it’s so.
Trump broke decisively with this version of political orthodoxy and it tells us much about our moment that he is now in the final round of election 2016, not in the trash heap of American history. His claim, unique to our moment, is that America is not great at all, even if he (and only he) can -- feel free to chant it with me -- make America great again! Add to that his insistence that the U.S. military in the Obama era is anything but the finest fighting machine in history. According to him, it’s now a hollowed-out force, a “disaster” and “in shambles,” whose generals have been “reduced to rubble.” Not so long ago, such claims would have automatically disqualified anyone as a candidate for president (or much of anything else). That he can continually make them, and make the first of them his t-shirt-and-cap campaign slogan, tells you that we are indeed in a new American world.
In relation to his Republican rivals, and now Hillary Clinton, he stands alone in accepting and highlighting what increasing numbers of Americans, especially white Americans, have evidently come to feel: that this country is in decline, its greatness a thing of the past, or as pollsters like to put it, that America is no longer “heading in the right direction” but is now “on the wrong track.” In this way, he has mainlined into a deep, economically induced mindset, especially among white working class men facing a situation in which so many good jobs have headed elsewhere, that the world has turned sour.
Or think of it another way (and it may be the newest way of all): a significant part of the white working class, at least, feels as if, whether economically or psychologically, its back is up against the wall and there’s nowhere left to go. Under such circumstances, many of these voters have evidently decided that they’re ready to send a literal loose cannon into the White House; they’re willing, that is, to take a chance on the roof collapsing, even if it collapses on them.
That is the new and unrecognizable role that Donald Trump has filled. It’s hard to conjure up another example of it in our recent past. The Donald represents, as a friend of mine likes to say, the suicide bomber in us all. And voting for him, among other things, will be an act of nihilism, a mood that fits well with imperial decline.
Think of him as a message in a bottle washing up on our shore. After all...
This is not about Donald Trump. It’s about us.
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Leaked John Podesta Emails Show Bernie Was Right |
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Saturday, 08 October 2016 13:54 |
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Excerpt: "As Donald Trump dealt with the fallout from his disgusting comments about women in a 2005 tape, Hillary Clinton had her own unwelcomed October surprise."
Bernie Sanders. (photo: AP)
Leaked John Podesta Emails Show Bernie Was Right
By Tim Mak and Andrew Desiderio, The Daily Beast
08 October 16
Wikileaks released a tranche of emails belonging to Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta on Friday that seem to lend credence to the argument Bernie Sanders made months ago.
 s Donald Trump dealt with the fallout from his disgusting comments about women in a 2005 tape, Hillary Clinton had her own unwelcomed October surprise.
On Friday, WikiLeaks announced that it had obtained nearly 50,000 emails from the personal inbox of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, and leaked more than two thousand of them. The Clinton campaign would not confirm the authenticity of the emails, but a series of Podesta tweets seemed to indicate that his email was compromised.
The statements by Clinton, which were gleaned from documents that have yet to be authenticated by The Daily Beast, were made in private settings to big banks and Wall Street firms. The speeches appear to paint her in the worst possible light: two-faced, out of touch, secretive and subservient to Wall Street. And in the most explicit way possible, validate Bernie Sanders’ criticisms of her during the Democratic primary.
Sanders, who before his presidential bid was an independent senator and self-described democratic socialist, led a credible challenge to Clinton based on frustration with Wall Street’s access to lawmakers, the revolving door between regulators and those they regulate, and how Washington’s political class has lost touch with America’s middle class.
The emails show that Sanders, who has since endorsed Clinton, had a point.
In one email in Podesta’s inbox, first reported by BuzzFeed, the Clinton campaign appears to summarize their candidate’s most shocking statements made during private speeches to Wall Street firms and other business organizations.
Apparently anticipating the possibility of a leak of private speech transcripts, which were a controversial issue during the Democratic primary earlier this year, Clinton Research Director Tony Carrk put together a memo with the most damaging quotes she had made in private speeches. Ironically, these were later leaked.
“I represented and worked with so many talented principled people who made their living in finance,” she said in one 2014 speech to Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, a firm that specializes in complex securities litigation on behalf of investors, according to the email that was sent to Podesta and other senior aides.
In a series of speech excerpts from April 2013 to January 2015, Clinton supported open markets in the Americas; speaks of the need for a “public and private position” while “back room discussions” are taking place; and complained that conflict of interest divestments were unnecessary for politicians.
For Clinton, it is an embarrassing revelation that strikes to her greatest vulnerability: that she can’t be trusted, doesn’t mean what she says and is too close to the big banks—all at a time when she is struggling to generate enthusiasm among the young progressives who backed Sanders over her in the primary.
Perhaps the most damaging to Clinton—and most validating to Sanders—will be her fawning speeches about Wall Street—to Wall Street. In her remarks, Clinton appears to prove Bernie right. At a Goldman Sachs symposium in 2013, Clinton said that when she began traveling as Secretary of State, people would “yell at me for the United States and our banking system” causing the financial crisis.
“Now, that’s an oversimplification we know,” Clinton assured the banking firm audience, in what is purported to be a quote from one of her speeches. “But it was the conventional wisdom.”
In another excerpt, Clinton says those who work inside a regulated industry are best poised to then regulate the industry. Too much or too little regulation is bad, she says, and those who understand the right balance are often in the industry.
“How do you get to the golden key, how do we figure out what works? And the people that know the industry better than anybody are the people who work in the industry,” she allegedly said.
Speaking about her prior run for president in 2008, Clinton also says she is beholden, in a way, to big special interests such as the big banks, because “it would be very difficult to run for president without raising a huge amount of money and without having other people supporting you because your opponent will have their supporters.”
In another instance, Clinton appears to acknowledge that she’s out of touch: “I’m kind of far removed” from the struggles of the middle class and “growing sense of anxiety and even anger in the country” because of the “fortunes” that she and former President Bill Clinton currently enjoy.
She illustrates this in another speech, when she complains about the need for politicians to avoid conflicts of interest.
“There is such a bias against people who have led successful and/or complicated lives,” she said during a speech to Goldman Sachs, according to the leaked email. “You know, the divestment of assets, the stripping of all kinds of positions, the sale of stocks. It just becomes very onerous and unnecessary.”
The leaked Clinton emails also show Clinton attacking Sanders over a position she supposedly supports. In a 2013 speech, Clinton said single-payer healthcare systems can help reduce overall costs, but cautioned that patients might have to wait longer to receive care.
Despite Clinton’s praise of single-payer healthcare, Carrk, the campaign’s research director, blasted out an opposition research memo to senior aides on October 28th, 2015, which included criticism of Sanders for his support of a “Medicare-for-all” style plan for healthcare reform—specifically, how to pay for it.
“His plan would repeal the Affordable Care Act, as well as Medicare, TRICARE [military healthcare program], Medicaid, and SCHIP [State Children’s Health Insurance Program],” according to the memo. “His proposal would cost roughly $15 trillion. Vermont tried to implement a single payer plan but scrapped it because it would cost too much.”
Without disputing the leaks, the Clinton campaign has also refused to formally authenticate them. However, the campaign did acknowledge that documents had been stolen, and went on the offensive by alleging that the Russian government has directed WikiLeaks to influence the American elections.
“We are not going to confirm the authenticity of stolen documents released by Julian Assange who has made no secret of his desire to damage Hillary Clinton,” Clinton spokesman Glen Caplin said in a statement. “Earlier today the U.S. government removed any reasonable doubt that the Kremlin has weaponized WikiLeaks to meddle in our election and benefit Donald Trump’s candidacy.”
In a series of tweets, Podesta confirmed that his email account was breached.
“I’m not happy about being hacked by the Russians in their quest to throw the election to Donald Trump,” Podesta wrote on Twitter, adding that he does not “have time to figure out which docs are real and which are faked.”
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Trump's Words Are Not 'Explicit Sex Talk.' They Describe Assault. |
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Saturday, 08 October 2016 13:53 |
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Hamblin writes: "The Republican presidential nominee has been caught on tape referring to grabbing women, positing that 'you can do anything' when you're 'a star.'"
Donald Trump. (photo: Jeffrey Phelps/AP)
Trump's Words Are Not 'Explicit Sex Talk.' They Describe Assault.
By James Hamblin, The Atlantic
08 October 16
Concern isn’t about being "lewd" or "graphic," but about being misogynistic, coercive, abusive, and dehumanizing.
 he Republican presidential nominee has been caught on tape referring to grabbing women, positing that “you can do anything” when you’re “a star.”
Some news outlets reported this as a problem of sexually descriptive words, such as “Donald Trump’s Graphic Sex Talk Audio Leaked” and “Stars React After Graphic Donald Trump and Billy Bush Convo Leaks.” Even The Washington Post—which broke the story—used the headline “Trump Recorded Having Extremely Lewd Conversation About Women in 2005.”
The thing about the Republican’s words isn't that they’re explicit or graphic. It's that they're misogynistic, coercive, abusive, and dehumanizing. And as my colleague David Graham notes, illegal: The candidate is describing forcing himself on women, bragging that they’re disinclined to object because of a power structure on which he knowingly capitalizes.
Framing this as lewd, even extremely so, is a reminder of the frequent reluctance to name sexual assault. Explicit conversations are a different thing, a part of life central to mature sexuality. If Trump, Clinton, or any other candidate or human hadn’t had explicit, graphic, lewd conversations, that would be concerning. Trump’s comments are something else.
By comparison, there would be no issue with a recording in which Trump talked about his “veiny member” and how he enjoys “thrusting to and fro until climax.” (Sorry, just making the point.) At this point I’d welcome a leaked tape in which he recounted the best sex he ever had, on a giant yacht. How it was so fantastic, and how many orgasms everyone had, and how no one cried, and he felt like God was moving through him, but it was just semen, huge amounts of amazing semen. How he sometimes weeps when he thinks about women masturbating, because human bodies instill in him a profound sense of awe. And awe isn’t easy to come by these days, let me tell you.
Explicit conversation is a bonding ritual that’s not bad or shameful. Treating it as such makes people misunderstand what explicit conversation is supposed to be—as Trump claimed when he excused his comments as “locker room banter.” To take him at his word, he misunderstands the ritual: Talking explicitly about sex is different from bragging about forcing yourself on people.
Any notion to the contrary is a product of not talking about sex frankly, openly, often enough. And then when you do, feeling like you have to brag about grabbing women “by the pussy” on a bus with Billy Bush, so you end up perpetuating archaic notions of power and forcible objectification. Because that’s what you heard someone else do. That’s what the boys at the New York Military Academy did during Trump’s formative years.
Like Trump, ever more Americans seem to feel that masculinity (as they understand it, narrowly defined) is threatened. It’s threatened specifically by “PC culture,” often used as a sweeping indictment of any attempt at decency. My colleague Molly Ball spoke to some of these men recently at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, men with chin-strap beards and novelty t-shirts calling Hillary Clinton a bitch because “it’s funny.”
Confusing humor and cruelty is born of profound ignorance, and an idea that violating codes is inherently funny. Counteract this confusion by talking about sex more openly, not less. Show that decency need not be puritanical. Chastise coercion but embrace consensual boning down. (And avoid saying “boning down” until you’ve got a good read on the room.) Because in their ignorance, toxic men are malleable. Their notions of masculinity will change with the culture that shapes them. This starts with the words that, seemingly small, frame these discussions about sex and power, respect and abuse, what’s lewd and what’s baldly inhumane.
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any of you have heard Paul Ryan say the votes are not there in the House to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Mitch McConnell has said he will not bring it up for a vote in the Senate. Larry Cohen, the past president of the Communications Workers of America and current chair of the board of Our Revolution, is not so sure.
