Monday, May 9, 2016

In battle for women’s vote, Trump cites Bill Clinton infidelity as Hillary shrugs off personal attacks

Sometimes the Truth Hurts.

Donald Trump this weekend again dragged Hillary Clinton’s personal life into the political campaign fray, including her husband’s infidelity, as the potential general election rivals compete for the critical women’s vote.
Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, said Saturday at a rally in Spokane, Wash., that Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, “was the worst abuser of women in the history of politics."
And he called Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, an “enabler” because “she treated these women horribly. … And some of these women were destroyed, not by him, but by the way that Hillary Clinton treated them after everything went down."
To be sure, winning women voters will be key to winning the general election.
More than half of all voters in the 2012 presidential race were women, and at least 53 percent of them voted for President Obama over GOP nominee Mitt Romney, according to exit polls.  
Trump's attacks Saturday appeared to be in response to reports that Priorities USA, the lead super PAC backing Clinton, has reserved $91 million in TV advertising, which will start next month and in part focus on Trump’s statements and actions regarding women.
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“Two can play that game," said Trump, in a likely preview of a bruising and personal general election battle.
Trump’s run for the nomination perhaps suffered its biggest setback when he retweeted an unflattering picture of the wife of primary rival Texas Sen. Ted Cruz -- a move he later said he regretted.
Amid criticism about his treatment of women, the billionaire businessman also has touted a history of hiring women to top jobs in his real estate and entrepreneurial empire.
At a later rally Saturday, in Lynden, Wash., Trump repeated that former President Clinton’s denial of a relationship with a White House intern later lead to his impeachment.
"Do you remember the famous, 'I did not have sex with that woman?' " Trump asked. "And then a couple of months later, 'I'm guilty.' And [Hillary Clinton] is taking negative ads on me."
Trump also sought to downplay past comments about women in venues like the Howard Stern radio show in the days before he was a politician.
He said some were made in the name of entertainment, while others, like his criticism of actress and talk show host Rosie O'Donnell, were warranted.
"Who the hell wouldn't speak badly about Rosie O'Donnell? She's terrible," he said.
Clinton told CNN on Wednesday, after Trump became the GOP’s presumptive nominee, that she felt certain that Americans won’t take a chance on electing a "loose cannon" like him.
And she appeared to warn Trump that others have tried and failed to defeat her politically with similar personal attacks.
"If he wants to go back to the playbook of the 1990s, if he wants to follow in the footsteps of those who have tried to knock me down and take me out of the political arena, I'm more than happy to have him do that," she said.

Paul Ryan Cartoon


Palin says she'll work to unseat Ryan over Trump snub


In a dustup between former GOP vice presidential candidates, Sarah Palin said Sunday she will work to unseat House Speaker Paul Ryan after Ryan refused last week to endorse Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
Palin, who was on the 2008 Republican ticket, said on “State of the Union” she “will do whatever I can” to support Ryan’s primary challenger in Wisconsin’s first district. Ryan’s snub of Trump was “not a wise decision of his,” Palin said.
“His political career is over, but for a miracle, because he has so disrespected the will of the people,” said Palin, who was governor of Alaska from 2006 to 2009.
She suggested that Ryan would be “Cantor-ed,” referencing ex-Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s June 2014 Virginia primary loss to an upstart challenger and his ousting from GOP leadership.
Ryan is facing businessman Paul Nehlen in the Aug. 9 Republican congressional primary. Palin said she has not yet spoken to Nehlen, but Nehlen had obviously heard the news Sunday morning, retweeting two links to the Palin interview from his personal account.
Ryan's spokesperson declined to comment on the Palin remarks when contact by FoxNews.com.
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Ryan, who was a vice presidential candidate in 2012, was first elected to Congress in 1998 and was chosen as speaker of the house in 2015. Though he has been somewhat critical of several Trump statements in the past, Ryan still stunned many in the political world on Thursday when he declined to throw his weight behind his party’s likely November standard bearer.
“I’m just not ready to do that at this point,” Ryan said on CNN. “I’m not there right now.”
Palin told host Jake Tapper she believes Ryan’s own presidential ambitions are keeping him from supporting Trump.
“You know, I think why Paul Ryan is doing this, Jake, it kind of screws his chances for the 2020 presidential bid that he’s gunning for,” she said. “If the GOP were to win now, that wouldn’t bode well for his chances in 2020 and that’s what he’s shooting for. So a lot of people with their ‘Never Trump’ or ‘Now Right Now Trump’ mantra going on, they have different reasons. I think that one is Paul Ryan’s reason.”

West Point investigating black female cadets' raised-fists photo


The U.S. Military Academy has launched an inquiry into a photo showing 16 black, female cadets in uniform with their fists raised, an image that has spurred questions about whether the gesture violates military restrictions on political activity.
West Point is looking into whether the photo broke any rules, Spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Kasker said Saturday. It's unclear how long the inquiry will take and too soon to say what consequences it could have for the cadets, who are poised to graduate May 21.
By campus tradition, groups of cadets often take pictures in traditional dress uniforms to echo historical portraits of their cadets. Indeed, a different picture of the same women, without the raised fists, was tweeted out by the chairwoman of the academy's Board of Visitors, 1980 graduate Brenda Sue Fulton.
But the fists-up image, which circulated online, led some observers to question whether the women were expressing support for the Black Lives Matter movement, which grew out of protests over police killings of unarmed black men.
The Army Times, which first wrote about the photo Thursday, said several readers had written in to say they believed the cadets were breaching a Defense Department policy that says "members on active duty should not engage in partisan political activity," with exceptions for voting and certain other things.
But Mary Tobin, a West Point graduate and mentor who knows the students, said they were simply celebrating their forthcoming graduation as a shared accomplishment, like a sports team raising helmets after a win.
"It was a sign of unity," Tobin, a 2003 graduate, said by phone. "They weren't trying to imply any allegiance to any movement."
The raised fist has served as a symbol of power and resistance for various political movements and causes. The gesture has caused controversy before, including when black American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos lifted gloved fists in black power salutes during a medal ceremony at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.
Yet the cadets, immersed in the insulated and demanding environment of West Point, didn't anticipate how their gesture would be interpreted and the attention it would draw, said Tobin, who has spoken with them about it.
"Their frame of reference is: 'Right now, we're getting ready to graduate in three weeks, I'm standing here with my sisters .... We outlasted a lot of people, black or white, male or female,' " she said.
Black women cadets are rarities at West Point, where about 70 percent of students are white and about 80 percent are men, although the percentage of women has been growing in recent starting classes.

Trump campaign defends move to fundraise, says 'plenty of time' to unite GOP


Donald Trump strategist Paul Manafort argued Sunday that Trump hasn’t misled supporters by saying during the Republican primaries that he was a self-funded candidate who “couldn’t be bought” and now trying to raise money for the general election. 
Manafort told “Fox News Sunday” that Trump made the announcement to fundraise last week after becoming the Republican’s presumptive presidential nominee, because he now leads the party and needs to match the millions of dollars that Democrats will raise to elect their candidates in November.
“He is the head of the party and will be electing not just the president, but will be electing senators, congressmen, governors and local council people,” Manafort said.
“The Democrats have said they're going to be spending hundreds of millions of dollars to try and spread lies about Donald Trump and the Republican Party. Trump has said to compete against them he will support the party and the party's efforts.”
The change was marked last week when Trump, a billionaire businessman, named a finance chairman.
Manafort said the chairman would be for Trump’s presidential campaign, with Trump at the top of the GOP’s November ballot, but acknowledged that some of the money raised will go toward Trump’s White House bid.
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Manafort, a long-time political strategist hired several weeks ago as Trump’s convention manager, also downplayed the lack of Trump support so far from the Republican establishment.
He suggested the country is still trying to process Trump becoming the presumptive nominee with an unexpected win Tuesday in the Indiana primary that knocked out the last two GOP rivals -- Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
“It’s a healing process,” Manafort said Sunday. “The media's expectations that the day after the Indiana primary … everything was going to come together in one moment was unrealistic.”
He also argued that Trump ran as an outsider and wasn't a candidate of the leaders.
“We have plenty of time to put the party together,” Manafort said. “And I think you're going to see a successful, united party.”
He also defended Trump for his attacks on Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, including bringing up the infidelity of husband President Bill Clinton and how she handled the aftermath.
He argued that Hillary Clinton has accused Trump of being unfair to women.
“Donald Trump has made it very clear he is not going to allow hypocrisy on the women's issue,” Manafort said. “He is not going to let Hillary make the case that he is against women and she is this defender of women's rights.”

Army has fewest active duty soldiers since 1940, report says

KT McFarland blasts Obama's 'cynical' use of the US military
The number of U.S. Army soldiers on active duty has been reduced to its lowest since 1940, according to a published report.
The Army Times reported this weekend that the Army's endstrength for March was 479,172. That's 154 fewer soldiers than the service's previous post-World War II low, which was reached during the Army's post-Cold War drawdown in 1999.
The current number is still well above the 269,023 soldiers on duty in 1940, the year before America entered World War II. However, the report says the active force has been reduced by more than 16,500 troops over the past year — the equivalent of about three brigades.
According to the Army Times, the Army is on track to reach its goal of reducing the number of active duty troops to 475,000 by Sept. 30, the end of fiscal year 2016. Under a drawdown plan unveiled last July, the number of active-duty soldiers would be reduced to 460,000 soldiers by the end of fiscal year 2017 and 450,000 by the end of fiscal year 2018, barring action by Congress or the Pentagon.
If those targets are met, the number of soldiers on active duty would be down 20 percent from 2010, when there were nearly 570,000 soldiers on active duty.
When the Army presented its plan last July, military officials said their hands were tied by reduced funding levels.
"These are not cuts the Army wants to make, these are cuts required by budget environment in which we operate," Gen. Daniel Allyn, vice chief of staff of the Army, said at the time. "This 40,000 soldier cut ... will only get us to the program force, it does not deal with the continued threat of sequestration."
The Army Times report said that 2,600 soldiers departed active service in March without being replaced.
In addition to those on active duty, the Army has 548,024 soldiers in reserve, for a total force of 1,027,196 soldiers. Under the drawdown plan, the total force number would be reduced to 980,000 by the end of fiscal year 2018.

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