TRUMP is seriously dangerous

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Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Oct 17, 2016 3:59 pm

:P
The GOP Bloodbath: Roger Stone Threatens Donald Trump

By Eternal Hope
Sunday Oct 16, 2016 · 9:43 PM CDT
Image

Roger Stone is the latest rat to jump the sinking ship. In the following tweet, he says that he is not bound by a certain non-disclosure agreement that he signed:


Daily Newsbin speculates:

“It turns out the entity with which I signed a non-disclosure agreement for the Trump campaign was never legally constituted,” Roger Stone tweeted on Sunday, adding the hashtag “#invalid.” The message couldn’t have been more clear: he’s threatening to spill the beans on Trump, despite the fact that the two men have been friends for decades. Stone had been a political advisor to the Donald Trump campaign last year before quitting in a dispute over the direction in which Trump was taking his candidacy. But according to numerous accounts, Trump has continued to rely on Stone’s advice from time to time in an informal capacity. However today’s tweet was a clear throwing down of the gauntlet, and in public no less.
And Politico reports that Mr. Stone is happy to cooperate with the FBI:

Stone, a longtime GOP operative and one of the youngest members of Richard Nixon’s infamous 1972 reelection bid, has taken on an outsized role in the murky world of the WikiLeaks documents thanks to his personal boasts of having regular contact with the group’s founder, Julian Assange, through “mutual friends.”

Several months ago, Stone predicted an October surprise that would disrupt Clinton’s campaign and his recent Twitter posts suggested Podesta would soon be facing scandal, including an August update stating, “Trust me, it will soon the Podesta’s time in the barrel. #CrookedHillary”

Speaking to reporters earlier this week on Clinton’s airplane, Podesta confirmed he’d spoken to the FBI on Sunday as it probed the criminal hack into his email and he leveled a charge that Stone had “advance knowledge” of the document leaks.
This is typical Republican behavior. When the heat gets too hot, it’s time to look out for number one.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/10/1 ... -democrats


Stone ‘happy to cooperate’ with FBI on WikiLeaks, Russian hacking probes
Officially, the FBI has refrained from giving any public signals that it’s investigating Trump associates.
A longtime Donald Trump confidant said Friday he is unfazed by calls for a federal investigation into allegations he’s colluding with WikiLeaks and Russian intelligence to sabotage Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
In an interview with POLITICO, Roger Stone said the FBI hasn’t contacted him to discuss his relationship with WikiLeaks and a series of anti-Clinton public statements that Democrats interpret as evidence he was well aware of the hacking into campaign chairman John Podesta’s Gmail account.
Story Continued Below
“I have not” heard from the FBI, Stone said. “But I’d be happy to cooperate if they decided to call me.”
Stone, a longtime GOP operative and one of the youngest members of Richard Nixon’s infamous 1972 reelection bid, has taken on an outsized role in the murky world of the WikiLeaks documents thanks to his personal boasts of having regular contact with the group’s founder, Julian Assange, through “mutual friends.”
Several months ago, Stone predicted an October surprise that would disrupt Clinton’s campaign and his recent Twitter posts suggested Podesta would soon be facing scandal, including an August update stating, “Trust me, it will soon the Podesta’s time in the barrel. #CrookedHillary”
Speaking to reporters earlier this week on Clinton’s airplane, Podesta confirmed he’d spoken to the FBI on Sunday as it probed the criminal hack into his email and he leveled a charge that Stone had “advance knowledge” of the document leaks.
John_Podesta_gty_629.jpg
The Podesta emails
Stone’s comments, combined with a swirl of additional controversies surrounding the role of other former Trump advisers with ties to Russia have prompted several Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, to request a wider federal investigation into some of the people who have been in the GOP nominee’s orbit.
On Friday, the top Democrats on four House committees repeated a request for the FBI to investigate the connections between Trump's presidential campaign and the alleged Russian hacks of Democratic organizations and figures, citing new comments from Stone.
"Troubling new evidence appears to show that the Trump campaign not only was aware of cyberattacks against Secretary Clinton’s campaign chairman, but was openly bragging about it as far back as August," wrote the congressmen, Reps. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, John Conyers of Michigan, Eliot Engel of New York and Bennie Thompson of Mississippi.
Also Friday, former Acting CIA Director Mike Morell said during a conference call organized by the Clinton campaign that several of the GOP nominee’s former staffers “may be in this more deeply and may have relationships with Russia, perhaps financial relationships or other relationships and they’re working on behalf of the Russians to get this material out and spread this around.”
“I don’t want to go overboard and say we know for sure, but I’m deeply concerned about it. It requires a full investigation and it requires the American people to know the truth here before Election Day,” Morell said.
On the call, Morell specifically named Stone, former campaign manager Paul Manafort and Carter Page, an investment banker who Trump in an interview with the Washington Post editorial board once described as a foreign policy adviser. CNN reported in August that the FBI and Justice Department had already opened a broad investigation that covers alleged corruption of the pro-Russian former president of Ukraine and his ties to Manafort.
Yahoo News, meanwhile, reported last month U.S. intelligence officials were looking into Page’s meetings with Russian officials where the adviser allegedly discussed lifting sanctions on the country if Trump won the White House. Page, who the Trump campaign says is not connected to the Republican nominee, wrote FBI Director James Comey last month asking him to put a “prompt end” to any inquiry looking into his ties to Russia, according to a letter first published by the Washington Post.
161410-john-podesta-getty-1160
Podesta tweaks WikiLeaks chief on Twitter
By BRENT GRIFFITHS
Officially, the FBI has refrained from giving any public signals that it’s investigating any of the Trump associates. During a House Judiciary Committee hearing last month, for example, Rep. Jerry Nadler singled out Stone for his acknowledged ties to Assange and the operative’s comments acknowledging the prospective leaks of the hacked documents. The New York Democrat then asked if Comey if his investigators had conducted any interviews with Stone.
“I don’t want to confirm whether there is or is not an investigation,” the FBI director replied, declining any additional comment.
But several current and former officials who have worked in the Justice Department, FBI and intelligence community said they have little doubt federal law enforcement is looking into the different questions surrounding the different current and one-time Trump campaign operatives. After all, Podesta confirmed he’s spoken with the FBI as part of its examination into his email hack. And last Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and director of national intelligence James Clapper issued an unprecedented statement signaling with high confidence that the Russian government was trying to meddle in the U.S. presidential election via cyber espionage.
“The way that DOJ works, once they start looking at something they don’t look at very narrow discrete questions when there are other related questions swirling around. They try to get the rest of the picture,” said Matthew Miller, a former Obama administration Justice Department spokesman. “It stands to reason,” he added, “they’d already be investigating the Trump campaign.”
A current Justice Department official agreed with the outlines of that assessment.
"You follow the evidence and the evidence leads you to wherever it takes you," the DOJ staffer told POLITICO. "That is how the investigation into the recent breaches will be done. You gather the pieces of the puzzle and put them together."
"Sometimes it leads to a guy in his basement. Sometimes it leads you to the People's Liberation Army [in China]. And sometimes it leads you to Iran's Revolutionary Guards,” the DOJ source added.
Multiple sources with a law enforcement background explained that the FBI — if it was investigating Stone or others — would likely still be in an evidence collection stage and nowhere near the point where they were ready to publicly question him, especially on a politically sensitive topic so close to Election Day.
“There’s no way they’d do that before the election,” said Jim Garland, a former senior Obama DOJ official who served as then-Attorney General Eric Holder’s deputy chief of staff. But given the series of Stone’s public remarks and familiarity with the WikiLeaks troves, Garland predicted the operative should expect a call. “Without a doubt he’s earned himself a subpoena.”
161014_elijah_cummings_getty_1160.jpg
Dems request FBI investigation of Trump campaign links to hacks
By TIM STARKS
Stone, meantime, pushed back in the interview on the Democrats’ demands for an investigation into his ties to the WikiLeaks saga, calling his accusers “partisan hacks with not a leg to stand on.”
“No, I don’t work for the Russians. I don’t work for the Russian intelligence. I have no Russian clients. I’ve not received any money from Russia directly or indirectly. It’s a dead end,” he said. “I’ve spent my entire political career as an anti-communist.”
Stone explained that he’s neither met nor spoken with Assange and he insisted that he’s played no role in the release of the hacked documents.
“I’m not orchestrating the activities or disclosures of WikiLeaks,” Stone said.
As for the hacked emails to date that have been released — a mish-mash of thousands of messages that included the first glimpses into Clinton’s private Wall Street speeches and tense personal battles inside the Clinton Foundation – Stone said what’s out so far is just “small potatoes compared to what I’m told is coming.”
Asked if he was concerned that the document dumps would lose their punch with the public if they continued surfacing in small batches each day through the end of the campaign, Stone replied, “I have a greater concern that certain media outlets have lost their journalistic objectivity. They’ll bury stories they won’t like or not report them at all.”
The WikiLeaks trove to date has only covered Clinton operatives, and the Democratic nominee’s campaign has declined to comment on the veracity of the emails. While Stone said he’d encourage the publication of documents pertaining to Trump or his campaign, he said he doubted they’d find anything incriminating because the real estate mogul doesn’t use e-mail. “All they’d learn,” Stone said, “is the inner workings of a real estate company.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/r ... sia-229821
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby 82_28 » Mon Oct 17, 2016 4:02 pm

I have totally seen the "comments" around and about as trump is about to take the "shackles" off that are trying to "smooth" the coming impact. They're hitting liberal websites and shit. Like you start reading something and think you agree with something and then wallop! It was all a pro trump time spent without knowing it. Anyway. An observation.

EDIT: And by "liberal" I am talking places like BoingBoing for instance.
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby Jerky » Mon Oct 17, 2016 4:23 pm

82, could you elaborate on your point? What do you mean about Boing Boing stories?

J
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Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby 82_28 » Mon Oct 17, 2016 4:36 pm

There are random people you do not typically see commenting at such places. That's all I meant. That's it. I only was someone who noticed it all of a sudden. It's not from what I can tell a full on barrage. But it is there and it seems anomalous.
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby Jerky » Mon Oct 17, 2016 5:09 pm

Holy crap! The TREASON talk is heating up already!

http://lawnewz.com/crazy/group-files-fb ... d-treason/
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Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby Iamwhomiam » Mon Oct 17, 2016 5:59 pm

I doubt treason for his russian relations, but maybe sedition.
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Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby MacCruiskeen » Mon Oct 17, 2016 7:08 pm

Image
"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966

TESTDEMIC ➝ "CASE"DEMIC
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Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Oct 17, 2016 8:22 pm

This Billionaire Once Bashed Women’s Right To Vote, Now He’s Donating To Trump
Of course.
10/17/2016 02:37 pm ET | Updated 4 hours ago

Executive Editor, Business and Technology, The Huffington Post

JIM WATSON VIA GETTY IMAGES
Peter Thiel once wrote that women getting the vote was bad for democracy. Here he is speaking at the RNC in July.
This is just too perfect: A tech billionaire who’s publicly said that giving women the vote was bad for democracy is giving $1.25 million to Donald Trump, who would likely win the U.S. election if women didn’t have the right to vote.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pet ... s_politics




John McCain: Republicans will block “any Supreme Court nominee” of Hillary Clinton

http://www.salon.com/2016/10/17/john-mc ... y-clinton/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby Sounder » Mon Oct 17, 2016 9:05 pm

That's too bad, I thought we might get a break from the Hillary shilling.
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Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby maco144 » Mon Oct 17, 2016 9:36 pm

Given the continued leaks of even more damning evidence of Hillary being the complete antithesis of what the United States and global community needs in an American President I wonder who will still be in this thread espousing Trump as the option who is seriously dangerous.
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Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Oct 17, 2016 10:26 pm

Trump TV could be Fox News on steroids
By Callum Borchers October 17 at 1:31 PM

Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Bangor, Maine, on Oct. 15. (Sarah Rice/Getty Images)
Let's play a game of “connect the dots.”

Dot No. 1: The Financial Times reported Monday on the latest indication that Donald Trump might launch a cable TV station if he loses the presidential election.

Dot No. 2: Also Monday, the Huffington Post published an article under the headline, “Is Shep Smith the future of Fox News?”

Here is the connection: Trump TV would be much more viable in a future in which the straight-shooting Shepard Smith really is the face of Fox News.

I wrote last week about how certain opinion programs on Fox News have fled the confines of reality in defense of the Republican nominee — but that will be a short-term trend if polls hold true and Trump falls short on Nov. 8. A postelection evaluation of the network's long-term direction seems likely, given that Fox News hasn't really had a moment to catch its breath since the stunning ouster of longtime chairman Roger Ailes in the middle of the major-party conventions.

The new direction could be toward the political center, according to HuffPo's profile of Smith.

Since the forced departure of Roger Ailes — who has now gone on to advise the spawn of Fox News, the Trump campaign — Rupert Murdoch's two sons, James and Lachlan, have taken a bigger role inside the network. If they get their way, some of the knuckle-dragging, opinion-heavy approach to politics may be less welcome at headquarters, clearing the way for journalists like Smith, Chris Wallace, Bret Baier and Megyn Kelly. The brothers are reportedly working hard to woo Kelly, hoping she'll stay at Fox past the election and help shape the network's post-Ailes identity.

In a more grounded Fox, Shep would take on a much greater role. In his most recent meeting with Murdoch, he asked where Murdoch felt the center of gravity was going to move post-Ailes, whether toward news or toward the opinion side. “He said, ‘I'm a newsman. I want to be the best news organization in America,’ ” Shep recalled.

A “more grounded Fox” would open a gap in the media market — a gap Trump TV could fill. Imagine a split in which Fox News becomes more newsy, with center-right pundits who represent traditional Republican perspectives, while Trump TV becomes the new home for the kind of populist-nationalist rhetoric he espoused during the campaign.

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Trump certainly has the personnel to make it happen. As the Huffington Post noted, Ailes is now an adviser. The Trump campaign's chief executive is Steve Bannon, the chairman of Breitbart News. Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner — who is involved in preliminary TV talks, according to the Financial Times — is the owner and publisher of the New York Observer.

That's a lot of combined media savvy. And a lot of money.

Just think of the (hypothetical) lineup this group could put on the air:

6-9 a.m.: Billy Bush runs the point on a morning show with Scottie Nell Hughes and Milo Yiannopoulos.
9-11 a.m.: John Nolte and Joel Pollak read the latest headlines from Breitbart.
11 a.m.: Ben Carson discusses foreign policy.
Noon: Carl Higbie and Pete Hegseth lament the deterioration of the U.S. military under Hillary Clinton.
1 p.m.: Chris Christie gets stuck with a lousy midday time slot, after thinking he would land a prime-time show.
2 p.m.: Jerry Falwell Jr. and Mark Burns lead a program about Christianity under attack in Clinton's America.
3 p.m.: Kellyanne Conway shoots down negative Trump headlines that might appear elsewhere in the rest of the media.
4 p.m.: Jeffrey Lord relives the greatness of Ronald Reagan.
5 p.m.: Trump TV's answer to “The Five” features Newt Gingrich, Katrina Pierson, Kayleigh McEnany, John Phillips and Adriana Cohen.
6 p.m.: Omarosa Manigault reports on Trump's latest business successes.
7 p.m.: Rudy Giuliani anchors a legal-themed program focused on the many ways the Clinton administration is breaking the law.
8 p.m.: Rush Limbaugh rails against liberals' obsession with “consent.”
9 p.m.: Ann Coulter delivers her nightly update on the scourge of illegal immigration.
10 p.m.: Alex Jones explains how the government is turning men gay through estrogen-lined juice boxes.
11 p.m.-6 a.m.: Infomercials for Trump golf courses, hotels, steaks, ties and other tremendous products.
This is assuming Trump TV fails to pry Sean Hannity away from Fox News and is unable to convince Matt Drudge to go on camera. In a perfect world, those guys get shows, too.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the ... -steroids/


Under FBI pressure, Roger Stone publicly threatens to spill the beans on his pal Donald Trump

http://www.dailynewsbin.com/news/roger- ... ump/26329/



Democrat Group Files Treason Complaint Against Roger Stone

http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/17/democ ... z4NOsvvQOY

Donald Trump's 'Rigged Election' Claims Raise Historical Alarms

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-el ... ms-n667831

The Nazi echoes in Trump's tweets

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la ... story.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Oct 18, 2016 8:24 am

Trump's Apocalyptic Message: Biblical Prophecy, Survivalist Ideologue and Racist Conspiracies In One Package

Evangelical and white power constituencies take his message literally.
By John Feffer / Tom Dispatch October 13, 2016


The world according to Donald Trump is very dark indeed. The American economy has tanked. Mexico has sent a horde of criminals over the border to steal jobs and rape women. The Islamic State, cofounded by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, is taking over the globe. “Our country’s going to hell,” he declared during the Republican primaries. It’s “like medieval times,” he suggested during the second presidential debate. “We haven’t seen anything like this, the carnage all over the world.”

For Trump, it’s not morning in America, it’s just a few seconds before midnight on the doomsday clock. Although his campaign doggedly continues to promise a new beginning for the country, the candidate and his advisers are sending out a very different message: the end is nigh. These Cassandras all agree that, although Obama’s two terms were no walk in the park, the stakes in 2016 are world-destroyingly higher. If Clinton is elected, the future could be, as conservative political operatives Dick Morris and Eileen McGann titled their recent book, Armageddon.

Presidential challengers often paint a grim picture of the world of the incumbent, overstating the case for dramatic effect. Ever the showman, Trump has no compunction about repeatedly going way over the top, calling the U.S. military a “disaster” because it’s supposedly underfunded and the United States a “third-world country” thanks to its precipitous economic decline. Trump talks as if he were the hybrid offspring of Karl Marx and Ann Coulter.

Trumpworld, however, is a photographic negative of statistical reality. The U.S. economy has been on an upswing for the last several years (though its benefits have been anything but evenly distributed). Nationally, violent crime is on the decline (though murder rates are soaring in some cities like Chicago). The Obama administration averted war with Iran and negotiated a détente with Cuba (though it continues to wage war in other parts of the world and has maintained sky-high Pentagon spending). If the Obama years are hardly beyond criticism, they are hardly beneath contempt either.

In dispensing with what one of his senior aides called the “reality-based community,” George W. Bush’s administration attempted to create an alternative, on-the-ground reality, particularly through the direct exercise of American military power -- and we know how well that turned out. Trump seems to have even less interest in the “reality-based community.” He’s evidently convinced that the sheer power of his own bluster, even without the firepower of that military, should be sufficient to alter our world. After all, didn’t it win him a loyal following on TV and -- to the disbelief of politicians and media commentators everywhere -- the Republican presidential nomination?

The reality-based community -- which Trump labels the “elite” -- wants nothing to do with him. The discrepancy between his rhetoric and what other people call facts explains in part why even conservative elites -- prominent Republicans like Brent Scowcroft and John Warner, conservative columnists like George Will, and even neoconservatives like Bill Kristol, not to speak of right-leaning newspapers like The Arizona Republic and the Dallas Morning News -- have made historic decisions to abandon their party's presidential nominee.

But don’t kid yourself. There is method to Trump’s particular version of madness. He and his slyly smiling running mate Mike Pence are playing up their vision of scorched-earth America not just to win general political points but to appeal to a very specific set of voters by tapping into the apocalyptic strain in American politics. The evangelicals, anti-globalists, and white power constituencies that form the bedrock of his support hear in Trump’s blasts more than just a set of fun-house facts. When the Donald says that Hillary is "the devil" and America’s going to hell, this constituency -- steeped in Biblical prophecy, survivalist ideology, and racist conspiracies -- takes him literally. America is on the verge of (take your pick): the Rapture, an end-of-days contest between American patriots and U.N. invaders, or an all-out race war to the finish.

And here’s what makes Trump’s carnivalesque presidential campaign especially topsy-turvy. He’s been slouching toward just about every kind of Armageddon imaginable, except the genuine planetary ones that are -- or should be -- almost unavoidable these days. He has, after all, dismissed climate change as a “hoax” and a Chinese scam. He is so blasé about nuclear weapons that he’s been comfortable with the thought of American allies Japan, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia developing their own. He has nothing whatsoever to say about potential global pandemics (but plenty to spout about the potentially malign effects of vaccinations).

To grasp the nature of such genuine dangers requires at least a minimal understanding of science. It also requires a genuine concern that the world as we know it could indeed end in our lifetimes or those of our children and grandchildren.

Of course, not everyone thinks the apocalypse is a bad thing.

The Rise of the Evangelical Right

It wasn’t particularly difficult to portray 1980 as a gloomy time for America. The spike in oil prices in 1979 had sent the U.S. economy into a tailspin and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was propelling the two superpowers into another cycle of Cold War tensions. Iranian radicals were holding 52 U.S. diplomats and citizens hostage in Tehran, which produced a daily (and, thanks to Ted Koppel’s Nightline reports, nightly) humiliation for President Jimmy Carter and his administration.

As the Republican Party’s presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan responded to these developments by continually playing up the image of an America in decline. His grim vision of that American future cemented his ties to an ascendant right wing within the evangelical community. As early as 1971, intellectual historian Paul Boyer pointed out, Reagan claimed that “the day of Armageddon isn’t far off.” He was referring then to turmoil in the Middle East and the pivotal role of Israel there. “Everything is falling into place,” he added. “It can’t be long now.”

Reagan was not exactly an easy sell to the Bible belt. Divorced and anything but a devoted churchgoer, he was closely associated in the public mind with that Sodom of the West Coast, Hollywood. In the 1980 election, he was also up against Jimmy Carter, a born-again Christian who openly discussed his faith.

Admittedly, Reagan benefitted from the endorsement of the Moral Majority, founded by Reverend Jerry Falwell in 1979, and he began playing directly to the religious crowd by establishing a new tradition of inserting “God bless America” into his speeches. But it was those repeated references to Armageddon that cemented his relationship with the religious right. Apocalyptic thinking is central to the worldview of evangelicals. Indeed, it’s what principally distinguishes them from mainstream Christians. “The one thing that affects how they live their daily lives,” writes historian of religion Matthew Avery Sutton, “is that they believe we are moving towards the End Times, the rise of the Antichrist, towards a great tribulation and a horrific human holocaust.”

The mainstream media was shocked that Reagan then brought such doomsday rhetoric into the Oval Office. “It is hard to believe that the President actually allows Armageddon ideology to shape his policies toward the Soviet Union,” the New York Times editorialized just before the 1984 election. “Yet it was he who first portrayed the Russians as satanic and who keeps on talking about that final battle.” Reagan easily went on to win a second term. Later, George W. Bush would employ similar apocalyptic references to justify the invasion of Iraq and unqualified support for Israel, and it didn’t prevent him from winning a second term either.

When Barack Obama became president in 2008, however, evangelicals suffered a significant drop in political influence. They continued to cling to Congress and a few Supreme Court justices -- along with their guns and religion -- but they had little leverage over a president that a majority of Republicans believed to be a foreign-born Muslim. (You’re either with us or you’re born in Kenya.)

Eight years later, the evangelical community faced an embarrassment of riches in the Republican primaries: a couple of born-again candidates (Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz), several evangelical Catholics (Rick Santorum, Marco Rubio, and Jeb Bush), and even an evangelical Seventh Day Adventist (Ben Carson). In comparison, Donald Trump came up way short on the faith front. Many evangelicals were skeptical of him because, like Reagan, he did not fit the mold of an upstanding Christian candidate. He’d been divorced, indulged in high-profile extramarital affairs, taken pro-choice positions, came from that East Coast Gomorrah, New York City, and even refused to ask Godfor forgiveness. Once he won the party’s nomination, however, Trump’s approval rating rose sharply among evangelicals who represent one-fifth of the voting public. Seventy-eight percent of them now support him, according to a recent Pew survey.

Trump has triumphed among evangelicals in part by changing his views. For instance, he now claims that he plans to repent before God (in some unspecified future) and swears that he will help restore the evangelical voice to politics. He has become firmly anti-abortion and traded in a more even-handed approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict for the hardline position of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that finds favor in the evangelical community. He has even convinced some evangelicals that his new relationship with Jesus has turned him into what James Dobson calls a “baby Christian.”

Trump also appeals to a certain pragmatic streak among evangelicals. They have become convinced that only he can tip the Supreme Court in the right direction, roll back the nuclear agreement with Iran, and hold back a potential tide of social protest. “Trump speaks to the profound fears animating so many white evangelicals today,” says R. Marie Griffith, director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University. “Above all, the fear that they and their values are being displaced by foreign, immigrant, and Muslim forces as well as by domestic movements such as Black Lives Matter, gay rights, women’s rights, and more.”

However, this focus on the pragmatic desire of evangelicals to regain the kind of political influence and power they’ve lost over the last seven years only goes so far in explaining Trump’s appeal. Far more important, on millenarian websites, Trump emerges as the mysterious weapon that God is now wielding to bring the righteous closer to the rapture. “God is preparing to shake the nations of the world,” an evangelical blogger writes in a typical endorsement of the candidate, “and I believe he is going to use Donald Trump to do it.” Another asserts, “I don’t know if God will use Trump to push back the coming of the anti-Christ. However, I know that without Trump, the tribulation cannot be far away. Therefore, I have to support Trump.”

Much millenarian support comes from a belief that God has anointed Trump the ultimate disrupter of the status quo, the human wrecking ball that will smite all the structures standing in the way of Christ’s second coming. No one (other than the Donald himself) would confuse the candidate with the Messiah, but some evangelicals imagine him in the role of a John the Baptistgone slightly berserk.

Certain evangelicals believe that their candidate will avert an apocalypse spurred on by godless Democrats; others that he will hasten that apocalypse and so the second coming. Given that Trump is a mass of contradictions -- a bankrupt billionaire, the most elite of populists, a politician who has never held office -- it’s no surprise that evangelicals can read into him almost anything they want, even if they then have a difficult time interpreting his “revelations.”

Against the Globalists

The film Amerigeddon, released this year and directed by the son of right-wing actor Chuck Norris, illuminates in graphic detail the paranoid worldview of what has come to be known as the alt-right: the tech-savvy, anti-globalist, anti-immigrant movement that hitherto lurked on the fringes of the Republican Party.

“The greatest threat to our freedom lies within our own government,”Amerigeddon proclaims in its trailer. In the film, traitors inside the Beltway have joined up with global terrorists and the United Nations to bring down America. It’s a movie with everything a survivalist could ever want: outsiders using an EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) to disable the U.S. power grid, big government imposing martial law, gun owners saving the day. If you could take only one DVD to your reinforced concrete bunker, this would be it.

Given that it debuted on only a handful of screens and disappointed even those who might otherwise embrace its hyperbolic content, Amerigeddonwould be too ridiculous to mention -- if it weren’t for Alex Jones.

Jones is a talk-radio host who also runs the website Infowars. He believes that the U.S. government has covered up its involvement in everything from the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11 to the faked moon landing and WikiLeaks. He’s a libertarian (hates government), paleoconservative (hates liberals), and survivalist (his Infowars store carries a full line of “preparedness products” for the moment when the grid collapses).

A hero of conspiracy theorists the world over, Jones appears in a cameo in Amerigeddon and has used his media empire to hype the film. For someone with such unorthodox views, he has quite a following. “Jones draws a bigger audience online than Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck combined -- and his conspiracy-laced rants make the two hosts sound like tea-sipping NPR hosts on Zoloft,” wrote Alexander Zaitchek in Rolling Stone in 2011. His website attracts 40 million unique visitors a month.

Jones has made more than a cameo appearance in Donald Trump’s campaign. When the candidate appeared on his show last December, the radio host promised him that he had the support of 90% of his listeners. “Your reputation is amazing,” Trump responded, “I will not let you down.” By refusing to become a more sensible mainstream presidential candidate and continuing to post bizarre early-morning tweets, he has indeed kept that promise.

If Trump has managed to lock down the evangelical vote with nary a quote from the Bible, with the alt-right crowd he has frequently cited chapter and verse from their prophets. So, for instance, he has peddled such conspiracy theories as the foreign birth of President Obama, the “thousands and thousands” of Muslims who celebrated the attacks on 9/11, and the government-engineered drought in California. Infowars promoted all of these “facts,” while also coming up with the “Hillary for Prison” meme that took the Republican convention in Cleveland by storm. Where other candidates have a brain trust, Trump has a mere meme trust.

Jones reserves much of his wrath for what he calls “globalists.” For the alt-right, “globalist” is a code word that, like “cosmopolitan,” conjures up a shadowy network of conspiratorial (and mostly Jewish) figures: George Soros, Henry Kissinger, the Rothschilds. Jones has his own version of end times. “The globalists are building a world, in their own words, where normal human life is over,” he rants. “It’s the devil. And the churches are not going to tell you. It’s an alien force, not of this world, attacking humanity, like the Bible and every other ancient text says.”

Trump has proven as unlikely a hero for anti-globalists as he has been for evangelicals. He is an international capitalist with investments in more than a dozen countries. His signature products are produced in China and Mexico. He has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and counts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a friend.

But Trump is an outsider where it counts, at least for those who live at the intersection of conspiracy and catastrophe. He rails against international organizations like the United Nations (should be downsized) and NATO (“obsolete”). Despite his global enterprises, he has opposed free trade and threatened to pull the United States out of the World Trade Organization. He supported Brexit, inveighs against immigrants, and insists on putting “America first.”

Not surprisingly, these messages also resonate with the white men who form the core of the alt-right, even though they are generally worried neither about the coming of the Antichrist nor the arrival of the U.N.’s “black helicopters.” These true “deplorables” obsess instead about a kind of slow-motion Armageddon in which the twin threats of demography and immigration will turn America into an unrecognizable (nonwhite) hell. They welcome, of course, Trump’s broadsides against Muslims and undocumented immigrants.

At The Daily Stormer, the neo-Nazi website, editor Andrew Anglin wrote during the Republican primary: “If The Donald gets the nomination, he will almost certainly beat Hillary, as White men such as you and I go out and vote for the first time in our lives for the one man who actually represents our interests.” Trump has retweeted a number of messages that originated with the alt-right, and his hiring of Stephen Bannon, the former executive chairman of Breitbart News, as his campaign manager nailed down his connection to that community. "We're the platform for the alt-right," Bannon told journalist Sarah Posner at the Republican convention, referring toBreitbart News.

Trump is not simply a hero of the alt-right, he’s the man around which the community has now come to identify itself, the nexus of an anti-feminist, anti-Semitic, racist, conspiratorial worldview. Unlike the evangelical and survivalist communities, there is no ambivalence on the alt-right. Trump is their champion, the only person who can prevent their particular apocalypse -- the victory of multiculturalism -- from taking place.

For all three overlapping constituencies -- evangelicals, anti-globalists, and the alt-right -- Trump has transformed the paranoid style that has long lurked beneath the surface of American politics into a genuine and open electoral force. These groups support Trump because he promises to upend the secular, reality-based, internationalist status quo. On top of that, Trump is fundamentally uninterested in the day-to-day compromises of the policy world. He even disdains politicking within the Republican Party, which appeals to the many Republicans disgusted with their own party elite. As Erick Erickson, one of his conservative opponents, puts it, “At some point, the base of the party just wants to burn the house down and start over.”

At heart, Trump is an arsonist. At some level, he’s ready to pour that gasoline and strike that match. His apocalyptic approach to everyday politics is what puts fear into the hearts of liberals and conservatives alike -- and what puts fire in the belly of the whitest of America’s insurgents.

The Real Dystopia

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg voiced the fears of many Americans when she identified New Zealand as a possible refuge from a Trumpocalypse -- as if the Republican candidate’s victory in November would be an extreme weather event that renders much of the globe other than a few remote islands uninhabitable.

And there’s no doubt that Hurricane Donald would wreck the world. His opposition to efforts to address climate change and desire for a Parexit --canceling the Paris climate accord -- would guarantee that the mercury in Mother Earth’s thermometer soars ever higher. His contempt for the global economy would undoubtedly precipitate a worldwide recession. His support for the unraveling of the European Union would lend a hand to European alt-right groups campaigning for its demise. His pledge to go mano a mano with the Islamic State would surely give that organization a new lease on life.

In the United States, meanwhile, Trump’s economic plans would further widen the gulf between the haves and have-nots, making a mockery of the blue-collar support he has attracted. He would hand considerable power over to evangelicals when it comes to transforming social policy and, by way of his Supreme Court nominations, influence the future well beyond his own term in office. Inspired by his example, alt-right forces would unquestionably bring their battles onto the streets of American cities.

Nor is Trump alone. Some version of his populist extremism can be found in every corner of the globe, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Viktor Orban’s Hungary to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines, and Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua -- not to mention the countries of other politicians, like France’s Marine Le Pen, who hope to seize power someday. Such leaders may be divided by religion, ethnicity, and even putative political ideology, but they all believe in putting their nation -- and their personal ambitions -- above the common global good. Individually, they are intent on constructing illiberal orders in their countries. Collectively, they are bent on destroying that fragile entity known as the international community and, thanks to climate change, the planet that goes with it.

Next month's election is important. But the core supporters of Donald Trump are not going to move to Canada -- or Russia -- if their candidate loses. Those who crave the simplistic, authoritarian solutions offered by dangerous populists around the world are not going to retreat into political apathy simply because of the scorn heaped upon them by the mainstream. The apocalyptic rhetoric of Trump and his followers is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The gale-force winds of this populist hurricane have been intensified by decades of polarizing economic and social policies. Whatever happens in November, the forecast is for more stormy weather ahead.
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/t ... and-racist
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They could still get him out of office.
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Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Oct 18, 2016 3:11 pm

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby MacCruiskeen » Tue Oct 18, 2016 5:25 pm

This'll go down well: from John V. Walsh at Dissident Voice - best read there for formatting and embedded links:

Donald Trump’s Unique Human Decency on Iraq

“What did he say?” not merely “When did he say it?”

by John V. Walsh / October 15th, 2016

http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/10/donal ... more-64301

What was the purpose of this whole thing (the war on Iraq)? Hundreds and hundreds of young people killed. And what about the people coming back with no arms and legs? Not to mention the other side. All those Iraqi kids who’ve been blown to pieces. And it turns out that all of the reasons for the war were blatantly wrong. All this for nothing. (Emphasis, JW)

— Donald Trump on Iraq War, August, 2004, reiterated verbatim, August, 2016.


Obviously I have thought about that a lot in the months since (her October 2002 vote in favor of the Iraq war resolution). No, I don’t regret giving the President authority.

— Hillary Clinton on Iraq War, April, 2004.


As election day approaches, it is time to ignore the noise of the moment and think clearly about the crucial issues facing us, none of which is more important than war or peace. The War on Iraq has been a touchstone for these issues over the last 14 years.

On Iraq, Clinton and her operatives have sought to avoid at all costs an accurate comparison of her position over the last 14 years to Trump’s. “What did Trump say?” has been buried by the Clintonites and company. “When did he say it?” has been slyly substituted for it. The time line has been used to equate the positions of Hillary the most notorious of hawks with that of Trump.1

Let us have a look at Trump’s words as well as the dates they were uttered. And compare them to Hillary’s:

2002.

Trump utters four words of wavering assent in September but no animated support.

Hillary votes for war “with conviction” in long speech in October.

First come Trump’s famous four words “Yeah, I guess so.” These are the four words that Trump uttered on September 11, 2002, a month before the Senate vote on the War, when Howard Stern asked out of the blue whether Trump favored invading Iraq2 These four words can be regarded as a half-hearted, off the cuff assent to the war, but they hardly amount to a well-considered position let alone a policy statement.3

The next month in October, 2002, then Senator Hillary Clinton voted in favor of the War on Iraq “with conviction” and emerged as an enthusiastic proponent of the war. She retained that “conviction” without wavering until January, 2008, at least, when Obama threatened her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination by presenting himself, falsely, as a peace candidate.4

2004.

Trump makes a passionate, humane denunciation of the war, now unchanged for 12 years.

Clinton sticks to her vote for war.

Now we come to 2004 and Trump’s first clearly articulated position on the war to appear in print. This was the inspiring statement and it has been buried in the timeline. It was published in Esquire in August of 2004, and, though not long, it is rarely quoted in full. Here it is:

Look at the war in Iraq and the mess that we’re in. I would never have handled it that way. Does anybody really believe that Iraq is going to be a wonderful democracy where people are going to run down to the voting box and gently put in their ballot and the winner is happily going to step up to lead the country? C’mon. Two minutes after we leave, there’s going to be a revolution, and the meanest, toughest, smartest, most vicious guy will take over. And he’ll have weapons of mass destruction, which Saddam didn’t have.

What was the purpose of this whole thing? Hundreds and hundreds of young people killed. And what about the people coming back with no arms and legs? Not to mention the other side. All those Iraqi kids who’ve been blown to pieces. And it turns out that all of the reasons for the war were blatantly wrong. All this for nothing.(Emphasis, JW)


Trump calls attention to the death and injuries inflicted on Americans, as have other politicians who have criticized the war. But then he goes on to lament the deaths of innocent Iraqis as well. No other major political figure, so far as this writer knows, has expressed such sentiments. They stand in stark contrast, for example, to those of Madeleine Albright, who famously declared that the deaths of 500,000 children, due to Clinton era sanctions of the 1990s, were “worth it.”

Thus, from a humanitarian standpoint, the content of Trump’s condemnation of the war is outstanding. In fact, to grieve over the lives of Americans but not the people of Iraq is a form of racism. Trump is virtually unique among major politicians in taking this stand on the lives of innocents the US has attacked. He should be praised for it.

Let us now look at one example of how this statement of Trump’s has been handled in the “progressive” media, in an article in Mother Jones by Tim Murphy entitled, “What did Donald Trump Say on the Iraq War and When Did He Say it,” by Tim Murphy. When Murphy gets to the Esquire article above, he quotes only the first of the two paragraphs and leaves out the second, which refers to the needless loss of life. And therefore it leaves out the impressive section, which I have italicized above, bemoaning the loss of Iraqi lives! Do you think that is honest, dear reader? Or would you call it a lie of omission?

What about Trump’s consistency? The statement above remains Trump’s position; he quoted every word of it, word for word, in his foreign policy address of August, 2016. Thus he has stood by his position for 12 years.5

In 2004, Clinton stuck to her vote on the Iraq war. She said to Larry King on April 20: “Obviously I have thought about that a lot in the months since (her October 2002 vote in favor of the Iraq war resolution). No, I don’t regret giving the President authority.”

2007.

Trump adds one new feature to his critique: The war was not a mistake but based on lies by Bush.

Clinton remains solidly committed to her Iraq War vote.

In 2007 Trump added one more component in an interview with Wolf Blitzer. The added component is that the war was based on lies – not mistakes, not faulty intelligence but lies. Again no major political figure has said this, certainly not Hillary Clinton.

In the interview Trump says:

“Look, everything in Washington has been a lie. Weapons of mass destruction was a total lie. It was a way of attacking Iraq, which he (George W. Bush) thought was going to be easy and it turned out to be the exact opposite of easy. … Everything is a lie. It’s all a big lie.”


Here again Trump has remained consistent. In one primary debate he confronted Jeb Bush with the fact that his brother lied us into Iraq.

What was Hillary’s position in 2007? She remained committed to her 2002 vote, despite the call of many antiwar Democrats to apologize and admit it was a mistake. To an audience in Dover, New Hampshire, in February, she said defiantly: “If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from.” She could afford to be defiant. She was the front runner for the Democratic nomination at that point. Little did she know that Obama would be a serious contender.

2008.

Trump’s position is unchanged.

Hillary lies about the reason for her Iraq War vote.

By 2008 Obama was endangering Hillary’s bid for the presidency by presenting himself in the Democratic primary as the antiwar candidate – falsely as we can now see. In the second Democratic presidential debate, Hillary claimed she voted for the war with the understanding that Bush would wait for UN inspectors to finish their job of searching for weapons of mass destruction. But as Carl Bernstein and others have pointed out, she voted against the Levin amendment, which would have imposed precisely that restriction on Bush. In other words, she lied.

We could go on and try to pierce the fog of words in the present election to wriggle out of her strong advocacy for the criminal adventure in Iraq. But her deeds as Secretary of State speak much louder than any words she and her advisors might engineer.

More than anyone else she was responsible for the illegal bombing and regime change operation that overthrew Gaddafi and plunged Libya into a failed state riddled with Islamic extremists. She is still pursuing the same policy of regime change or destruction in countries of the Middle East and North Africa that have defied the US. Her advocacy of a no-fly zone in Syria right now is more of the same – and it assures war with Russia according to General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and possibly nuclear war. She remains virulently hawkish – irredeemably so one might say.

Is the impression conveyed by Clinton and her apologists that there is no difference between Trump and Clinton on the Iraq War correct? It is not. And it tells us that there will be an enormous difference between a Trump and a Clinton presidency. Since that difference involves the very question of human survival, what does that say about our responsibility come November 8?



FOOTNOTES:

For example, a fund raising appeal from Code Pink recently popped into my inbox with this line: “Both candidates supported the Iraq War at its inception, though both have now walked back that support.” Clearly the implication is that the two candidates have the same stance on Iraq. A vague timeline is trotted out but not a word about the content of what the candidates said. [↩]

To be complete there were actually thirteen words, “Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly.” [↩]

Trump also claims that he had frequent verbal fights with his friend Sean Hannity over the period leading up to the war with Hannity pro and Trump con. Hannity backs him up on that, but in fairness that is not evidence because it is not in the public domain. Memory can be tricky in these situations especially when a friend seeks support. So we simply cannot make a judgment about that. [↩]

To be complete, there was another Trump statement in 2003, although it is quite ambiguous and directed more at tactics than policy. In January, 2003, Trump in an interview with Neil Cavuto, before the commencement of “Shock and Awe” in March, made some comments on the War. This time there was no endorsement of the War – not even an off the cuff endorsement. Instead there was confusion, and the discussion revolved around tactics of war. Trump said, “Well, he (Bush) has either got to do something or not do something, perhaps, because perhaps (he) shouldn’t be doing it yet and perhaps we should be waiting for the United Nations, you know.” No endorsement, no outspoken opposition. (The brief interview can be found here and Trump’s summary of it in his August, 2016, foreign policy address). [↩]

Was Trump’s stand on Iraq opportunist? Trump took his position on Iraq long before he was in politics. He entered the presidential race as a candidate for the Republican nomination, not the Democratic one. At the time he entered the race, the GOP was the reliable party of war, dominated by the neocons. His position on Iraq could hardly have helped him with that crowd. So let us not call Trump’s position opportunist, designed to get votes. As he became a more serious contender, the neocons left the GOP to join the Democrats and support Hillary. [↩]


http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/10/donal ... more-64301
"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966

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Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Oct 18, 2016 5:43 pm

Revealed: 6 People Who Corroborate Natasha Stoynoff’s Story of Being Attacked by Donald Trump
BY STEPHANIE PETIT

UPDATED OCTOBER 18, 2016 AT 5:24PM EDT

Six colleagues and close friends who corroborate former PEOPLE writer Natasha Stoynoff’s account of being attacked by Donald Trump in 2005 are now coming forward. Among them is a friend who was with Stoynoff when she ran into Melania Trump later in N.Y.C.

The wife of the Republican nominee denies meeting Stoynoff after the attack, but Stoynoff’s friend Liza Herz remembers being there during the chance meeting.

“They chatted in a friendly way,” Herz, who met Stoynoff in college, says. “And what struck me most was that Melania was carrying a child and wearing heels.”


Stoynoff’s story, which made national news when it broke last week and is reprinted in this week’s issue of PEOPLE, describes a run-in with Trump when she was covering him and pregnant wife Melania on assignment for PEOPLE in December 2005.

“We walked into that room alone, and Trump shut the door behind us. I turned around, and within seconds he was pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat,” she writes.

Trump vigorously denies the story and later attacked Stoynoff on the campaign trail, saying, “She lies! Look at her, I don’t think so.”

Stoynoff describes meeting Melania later year: “I actually bumped into Melania on Fifth Avenue, in front of Trump Tower as she walked into the building, carrying baby Barron. ‘Natasha, why don’t we see you anymore?’ she asked, giving me a hug.”


NATASHA STOYNOFF (SECOND FROM LEFT) POSES AT MAR-A-LAGO WITH DONALD AND MELANIA TRUMP AND THE PEOPLE PHOTO CREW IN DECEMBER 2005 // TROY WORD

NATASHA STOYNOFF FOR PEOPLE // MELANIE ACEVEDO
In a CNN interview with Anderson Cooper on Monday, Melania denied the encounter ever took place.

“The story that came out in PEOPLE magazine, the writer she said my husband took her to the room and started kissing her, she wrote in the same story about me that she saw me on Fifth Avenue, and I said to her ‘Natasha, how come we don’t see you anymore?’ I was never friends with her, I would not recognize her,” she told CNN.

PEOPLE Editor in Chief Jess Cagle says in a statement about Stoynoff’s piece, “In this week’s issue of PEOPLE (which hits newsstands in New York on Wednesday), we feature a story that includes named sources who can corroborate Natasha Stoynoff’s account – including one woman (a friend of Natasha’s) who was actually with her when she bumped into Melania Trump on Fifth Ave., as outlined in her story.”

Five other witnesses also back up Stoynoff’s account of her encounter with Trump:

Marina Grasic, who has known Stoynoff for more than 25 years, says she got a call from her friend the day after the attack. Stoynoff detailed everything about the attack, from Trump pushing her against a wall to the business mogul showing up at her massage appointment the following day, she says.


According to Grasic, her longtime friend was embarrassed and even thought of Trump’s then-pregnant wife when deciding not to come forward about the encounter.

“Natasha was also struggling about not hurting pregnant Melania if the story came out,” Grasic says. “Beyond just the attack, she was horrified by the vulgar circumstances under which she was attacked and propositioned to have an affair. She was there in a professional capacity, writing an article about their happy marriage, and after the incident Trump acted like nothing happened.


Play Video

“She was particularly concerned that if he was capable of such behavior, what else was he capable of? Certainly character assassination by a powerful man was of great concern to her, which seems warranted in light of what Trump is saying about her this week. She ultimately decided to stay quiet but be taken off the Trump beat.”

Stoynoff’s former journalism professor, Paul McLaughlin, says that the writer called him in tears looking for advice the very night of the harrowing encounter. However, he cautioned her to remain quiet in fear of how Trump may retaliate.


GREGORY PACE/FILMMAGIC
“She wasn’t sure what she should do,” McLaughlin recalls. “I advised her not to say anything, because I believed Trump would deny it and try to destroy her.”


“It was tough decision but in a he said/she said we believed she would lose,” the professor said in a tweet regarding the incident. “He seemed rather nasty at the time.”

PEOPLE East Coast Editor Liz McNeil was one colleague Stoynoff confided in about the incident. McNeil remembers the day she returned from the assignment in Florida to cover Trump and his wife’s first anniversary.

“She was very upset and told me how he shoved her against a wall,” says McNeil.

She adds, “The thing I remember most was how scared she was. I felt I had to protect her.”

Deputy East Coast News Editor Mary Green returned to PEOPLE’s New York-based staff in December 2005 after a three-year hiatus excited to reconnect with Stoynoff. However, Stoynoff was haunted by her recent experience, and she opened up to Green about the encounter.

“In an early conversation we had in her office, she told me about what happened with Donald Trump,” Green said. “She was shaky, sitting at her desk, relaying that, ‘He took me to this other room, and when we stepped inside, he pushed me against a wall and stuck his tongue down my throat. Melania was upstairs and could have walked in at any time.’

“She talked about her shock, and wondered why it had happened, if she had done anything wrong. I assured her she hadn’t. She was also angry that he had forced himself on her, that she was glad someone had interrupted him, because he was surprisingly strong.”

Another coworker who knew about the attack was Liza Hamm, who was friends with McNeil and others in a “tight-knit group” that Stoynoff opened up to.

“Natasha has always been a vivacious person who wants to believe in the best of people, and this experience definitely messed with that outlook,” Hamm says. “But she is also a consummate professional. She told me that she asked to be taken off the Trump beat, but she tried her best to move past the experience and continue to do her job well.”

Stoynoff says she knew she was opening herself up for criticism when she decided to share her story, but she’s staying strong.

“I am doing okay,” she says in the new issue of PEOPLE.


In the past week, multiple women have come out with similar claims of sexual assault against the 70-year-old Republican presidential candidate.

Stoynoff admits there’s a chance Trump simply pushed her own incident from his mind.

“It’s possible he just doesn’t remember it,” Stoynoff says. “It was over 10 years ago and I assume I am one of many, many women.”
http://people.com/politics/people-write ... d-sources/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
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Don’t forget that.
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