Saturday, October 8, 2016

Billy Bush


People might recognize Bush from his new gig on the "Today" show or "Access Hollywood." But there is, of course, another part of his bio that is thick with irony: He's a member of the Bush family. Yes, that Bush family.
Billy Bush is first cousins with former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who was favored to win the Republican nomination before Trump came along and started calling him "low-energy" and attacking him daily on the stump.

Email shows MSNBC producer gushing over Clinton in segment pitch

Email 'boxes' in Clinton case AWOL
A newly leaked email from the Clinton campaign appears to show an MSNBC producer fawning over Hillary Clinton, calling her an “amazing, intelligent woman” who is “smarter than most men,” in an effort to get an aide to appear on her show.
The April 2015 email, obtained by DC Leaks and reported by The Daily Caller, shows “All in with Chris Hayes” producer Sheara Braun pitching a “Hillary Clinton for Milennials” segment to the Clinton campaign in order to get an aide to appear. Braun presents the segment as one that would present Clinton controversies of the 90s in a positive light – referring to them as “crap and nonsense.”
 "The point of the segment is basically to inform young people about all of the crap and nonsense that Sec. Clinton and President Clinton (but mostly Sec. Clinton) had to face back in the 90s when President Clinton was running for office," Braun says to Clinton campaign spokeswoman Adrienne Elrod, "...everything from cookie-gate to stand-by-your-man-gate to Hillarycare."
The producer concludes the pitch for the show with a breathless expression of admiration for the Democratic nominee.
"The point isn’t to dwell on the past but the point is to talk about this amazing, intelligent woman who probably faced more nonsense back in the day because she is a woman...and she continues to have to face it," Braun says..
"She is smarter than most men and more qualified than most men to be president," she says.
It was not immediately clear if an aide did appear on the segment in question.

Clinton called for 'open trade and open borders' in private, paid speeches

WikiLeaks appears to reveal Clinton's Wall Street speeches

Hillary Clinton told bankers behind closed doors that she favored "open trade and open borders" and said Wall Street executives were best-positioned to help reform the U.S. financial sector, according to transcripts of her private, paid speeches leaked Friday.
The leaks were the result of another email hacking intended to influence the presidential election.
Excerpts of the speeches given in the years before her 2016 presidential campaign included some blunt and unguarded remarks to her private audiences, which collectively had paid her at least $26.1 million in speaking fees. Clinton had refused to release transcripts of the speeches, despite repeated calls to do so by her primary opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders.
The excerpts were included in emails exchanged among her political staff, including Campaign Chairman John Podesta, whose email account was hacked. The WikiLeaks organization posted what it said were thousands of Podesta's emails. It wasn't immediately clear who had hacked Podesta's emails, though the breach appeared to cover years of messages, some sent as recently as last month.
Among the emails was a compilation of excerpts from Clinton's paid speeches in 2013 and 2014. It appeared campaign staff had read all Clinton's speeches and identified passages that could be potentially problematic for the candidate if they were to become public.
One excerpt put Clinton squarely in the free-trade camp, a position she has retreated on significantly during the 2016 election. In a talk to a Brazilian bank in 2013, she said her "dream" is "a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders" and asked her audience to think of what doubling American trade with Latin America "would mean for everybody in this room."
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Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, has made opposition to trade deals a cornerstone of his campaign.
Podesta posted a series of tweets Friday night, calling the disclosures a Russian hack and raising questions about whether some of the documents could have been altered.
"I'm not happy about being hacked by the Russians in their quest to throw the election to Donald Trump," Podesta wrote. "Don't have time to figure out which docs are real and which are faked."
Podesta's comments came just hours after U.S. officials publicly accused the Russian government of directing cyberattacks on political organizations and American citizens in an attempt to interfere with U.S. elections.
The joint statement from the office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Homeland Security Department cited disclosures of "alleged hacked emails" on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks as being "consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts."
The statement didn't refer by name to the affected political institutions, but federal authorities are investigating cyberattacks on the computer systems of the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement, "It's not hard to see why she fought so hard to keep her transcripts of speeches to Wall Street banks paying her millions of dollars secret."
The emails released Friday included exchanges between Podesta and other Clinton insiders, including campaign manager Robby Mook. Most were routine, including drafts of Clinton speeches, suggested talking points for campaign surrogates and suggested tweets to be sent out from Clinton's account.
The excerpts include quotes from an October 2013 speech at an event sponsored by Goldman Sachs, in which Clinton conceded that presidential candidates need the financial backing of Wall Street to mount a competitive national campaign.
"Running for office in our country takes a lot of money, and candidates have to go out and raise it," Clinton said. "New York is probably the leading site for contributions for fundraising for candidates on both sides of the aisle, and it's also our economic center. And there are a lot of people here who should ask some tough questions before handing over campaign contributions to people who were really playing chicken with our whole economy."
In the same speech, Clinton was also deferential to the New York finance industry, exhorting wealthy donors to use their political clout for patriotic rather than personal benefit. She also spoke of the need to include Wall Street perspectives in financial reform.
"The people that know the industry better than anybody are the people who work in the industry," Clinton said.
In an April 2013 speech to the National Multifamily Housing Council, Clinton said politicians must balance "both a public and a private position" while making deals. Clinton gave an example from the movie "Lincoln," and the deal-making that went into passage of the 13th Amendment, a process she compared to sausage-making.
"It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be," Clinton said. "But if everybody's watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position."
Clinton's speeches often touched on technology and privacy. In an April 2014 speech to JPMorgan, she denounced National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden for going abroad, saying, "if he really cared about raising some of these issues and stayed right here in the United States, there's a lot of whistleblower protections."
But she told her audience that her time in the public eye left her sympathetic to privacy concerns.
"As somebody who has had my privacy scrutinized and violated for decades, I'm all for privacy, believe me," she said.
Speaking on international affairs, Clinton's comments were largely in line with her positions as secretary of state, if sometimes more blunt.
"The Saudis have exported more extreme ideology than any other place on Earth over the course of the last 30 years," she told the Jewish United Fund at a 2013 dinner.
The speech transcripts were produced under an agreement Clinton routinely imposed on any organization that hired her to speak. The contracts, such as ones crafted by the Harry Walker Agency, required the organizations to hire, at their own expense, a stenographer who would provide the transcripts to Clinton and not keep copies for themselves.
In some cases, the contracts themselves were obtained by news organizations under public records laws because Clinton was being paid to speak by public universities or colleges.

'Horribly embarrassed' Billy Bush won't lose job over leaked Trump tape


Billy Bush is “horribly embarrassed” by the Donald Trump tape — while TV insiders are tittering that it must have been leaked by staffers on his former show “Access Hollywood.”
And while we’re told producers at “Today” and NBC News are appalled by his conversation with the presidential hopeful, Bush’s job at the morning show is safe.
An NBC insider said: “It happened 11 years ago … Billy was in a different place. He was a lot younger and more immature. He’s definitely embarrassed by this, but his job at ‘Today’ is safe.”
Another TV source continued, “Trump supporters might not care, but the ‘Today’ show will … they want Billy to look like ‘nice funny’ Billy, not a frat boy. The problem is that what to do if his interview subjects bring it up? He’ll have to address it on TV.”
Of his rival Matt Lauer, who isn’t happy about Bush being his heir apparent, the source added, “Somewhere in New York, Matt Lauer is having a big belly laugh.”
Bush told us in a statement, “Obviously I’m embarrassed and ashamed. It’s no excuse, but this happened 11 years ago — I was younger, less mature and acted foolishly in playing along. I’m very sorry.”

Trump apologizes for lewd remarks in video statement amid GOP uproar


Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump released a midnight video statement early Saturday apologizing for crude comments about women that he made on a 2005 audio tape as two Republican senators called on him to drop out of the presidential race.
In the video, Trump said the remarks "don't reflect who I am. I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize."
However, Trump turned on his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the latter part of the statement, accusing her of having "bullied, attacked, shamed and intimidated" her husband's "victims."
"I’ve said some foolish things, but there’s a big difference between the words and actions of other people," Trump said. "Bill Clinton has actually abused women ... We will discuss this more in the coming days." The video closed with Trump reminding viewers to tune in to his second presidential debate with Clinton in St. Louis Sunday night.
The video and audio released Friday by The Washington Post and NBC News recorded a conversation between Trump and "Access Hollywood" host Billy Bush in which Trump described an attempt to have sex with a married woman. He also brags about women letting him kiss and grab them because he is famous.
"When you're a star they let you do it," Trump says. "You can do anything." He later used a crude term for part of a woman's anatomy.
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Trump initially offered a statement of apology shortly after the video was released, saying he was sorry "if anyone was offended." He released the video statement after the scope of the damage became clear.
The remarks were met with shock and anger on all sides of the political spectrum. Sen. Mike Lee called Trump a "distraction" in a statement on his Facebook page and said it was "time for him to step aside so we can focus on the winning ideas that will carry Republicans through to a victory in November."
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told Fox13 Utah that he could no longer support Trump for president, calling the remarks "abhorrent and offensive." Chaffetz did not say whom he would support instead.
Utah Gov. Gary Herbert also withdrew his endorsement of trump, and former Gov. Jon Huntsman did call for the candidate to step aside and let running mate Mike Pence take his place
Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., also called for Trump to "step aside," adding "his defeat at this point seems almost certain."
Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., facing a tough re-election fight, tweeted that Trump should drop out and the Republican Party should "engage rules for [an] emergency replacement."
Senior Republicans on Capitol Hill expressed fears that Trump's comments could jeopardize the GOP's chances of holding onto the Senate after the November elections.
"This is bad," one senior GOP source told Fox News early Saturday. "We're going to have to re-evaluate everything."
However, the source doubted that the Republican National Committee would take the drastic step of forcing Trump to vacate the top of the presidential ticket, saying "I don't see it happening a month out. Plus, would [RNC chairman] Reince [Priebus] do that? I doubt it."
Priebus, who has stood by Trump after prior provocative comments, decried the real estate mogul's latest comments in a brief statement.
"No woman should ever be described in these terms or talked about in this manner. Ever," Priebus said.
Republicans were particularly worried about the impact on Senate races in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, the latter of which has a high number of highly educated female voters. The Nevada Senate race could also be an issue because of Hispanic voters who may be offended by Trump's prior comments about Mexican immigrants and former Venezuelan Miss Universe Alicia Machado.
When asked where the Trump comments wouldn't impact Senate candidates, one senior source replied "Alabama," a state Trump is likely to carry next month and where Sen. Richard Shelby faces little opposition for re-election.

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