Presumptuous Politics

Saturday, October 15, 2016

Chelsea Clinton Cartoons

Why Clinton's Emails are not being Covered by CBS,ABC, CNN?

Voters who have relied on the network evening newscasts for information about the 2016 presidential candidates saw four times more airtime devoted to controversies involving presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump than to the scandals surrounding his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
Indeed, the only Clinton scandal to receive more than a minimal amount of attention from the networks during the primaries was the ongoing investigation of Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server and her mishandling of classified information while serving as Secretary of State. The networks paid little or no attention to a host of other Clinton controversies that likely would have been big news if they had been associated with her GOP opponent.
MRC analysts reviewed all 1,099 stories on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts which talked about the presidential campaign between January 1 through June 7, including weekends. This tally includes 950 full reports and interview segments; 66 short items read by the anchor; plus 83 stories on other topics that included some discussion of one or more of the candidates.
The overall amount of campaign airtime is extraordinary: 2,137 minutes of coverage, or more than one-fourth (26.1%) of all evening news airtime during this period, excluding commercials and teases.
Nearly half of that airtime (1,068 minutes) was spent talking about Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, compared to 583 minutes of coverage for Hillary Clinton. Clinton’s rival for the Democratic nomination, Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders, came in third, with 366 minutes of coverage, more than any of Trump’s GOP rivals.
Compared to Clinton, a much higher percentage of Trump’s airtime (40 percent, or 432 minutes) was spent discussing the controversies surrounding the Republican’s candidacy. Only 18 percent of Clinton’s coverage (105 minutes) was spent discussing similar controversies, as network reporters paid scant attention to stories that would have garnered far more airtime had Trump been involved.

For example, the lingering questions about Clinton’s handling of the 2012 Benghazi attack drew only 77 seconds of evening news airtime from January 1 through June 7. Clinton’s participation in a racially-charged comedy skit with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (about running on CP time — “cautious politician time”) was skipped by ABC and NBC’s evening broadcasts, getting just 51 seconds of airtime on the April 12 edition of the CBS Evening News.
The potential conflict-of-interest scandal surrounding the Clinton Foundation and Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State was given a paltry 44 seconds of coverage — half of which came when her socialist rival Bernie Sanders brought it up during the waning days of the Democratic primaries.
“Do I have a problem when a sitting Secretary of State and a foundation run by her husband collects many millions of dollars from foreign governments?” Sanders asked in a soundbite re-played on the June 6 Nightly News. “Do I have a problem with that? Yeah, I do.”
Neither ABC nor CBS mentioned Sanders complaint that night, nor did any follow up in the days that followed.
Clinton’s e-mail server scandal was the most-covered candidate controversy of the primary season, with more than 47 minutes of airtime. The only other Clinton controversy to crack the Top 20 was discussion of Bill Clinton’s past adultery and alleged mistreatment of women — a topic only covered because it was brought up by Trump.
And, most of the network coverage was framed not around the controversy of Clinton’s actual conduct, but the notion that Trump was going too far by raising the issue of the former President’s infidelity. On the May 19 Evening News, for example, CBS’s Nancy Cordes labeled it “harsh” of Trump to bring up the case of Juanita Broaddrick, who in 1999 accused Clinton of raping her in 1978. That same night, ABC’s David Muir said Trump was “proving nothing is off limits,” while NBC’s Andrea Mitchell accused Trump of engaging in “aggressive personal attacks.”

The other 18 controversies on the Top 20 list were all related to the GOP candidate: violence at some of Trump’s rallies (31 minutes); his racially-charged criticism of the judge in the Trump University fraud case (27 minutes); his history of liberal policy positions and shift to the left on some issues after his last GOP rival dropped out of the race (24 minutes); and history of sexist rhetoric and charges of crude behavior with women (22 minutes).
These are obviously valid topics for news coverage, but contrast the amount of network airtime Trump’s problems received with the same statistics for key controversies surrounding Hillary Clinton: her big money speeches to Wall Street banks, and her refusal to release transcripts of those speeches (7 minutes, 35 seconds); and her reliance on massive campaign contributions from the wealthy (6 minutes, 50 seconds).
When cameras caught Clinton angrily yelling at a Sanders supporter over the issue of contributions from those in the fossil fuel industry (“I am so sick of the Sanders campaign lying about me!”) the flap drew just 72 seconds of coverage on the NBC Nightly News, 40 seconds of coverage on ABC’s World News Tonight, and a mere 16 seconds on the CBS Evening News.
When in May Clinton suggested on a radio show that she believed in space aliens (“There are enough stories out there that I don’t think everybody is just sitting, you know, in their kitchen making them up”), only ABC’s World News Tonight bothered to tell viewers, with a light-hearted one minute, 43 second story on a Sunday night broadcast.
“Clinton’s enthusiasm is winning over one part of the electorate,” ABC correspondent David Wright wryly noted. “‘Finally,’ tweeted one sci-fi fan, ‘she has my vote!’”
If Donald Trump had suggested little green men had visited Earth, his comments likely would have been highlighted as evidence that the Republican candidate is unsuitable for the presidency.
The networks have left no stone unturned in their vetting of Trump. But this is a race between two candidates, and they have an equal obligation to report on the scandals, controversies and gaffes surrounding Hillary Clinton.

Ryan's High-Wire Act: Speaker struggling to navigate GOP tensions on Trump

Did Speaker Ryan misplay his dealing with Donald Trump?

When Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin initially balked at accepting the House speakership last fall, it was widely understood that his biggest headaches would come from the staunchly conservative members of the Republican conference, such as the lawmakers in the Freedom Caucus, who had routinely made life miserable for Ryan’s predecessor, John Boehner.
Instead, as Ryan closes out his first year as the top elected Republican in Congress, he finds himself at odds with the Republican Party’s controversial nominee for president, and struggling to navigate intra-party tensions that make what Boehner endured seem quaint by contrast.
“Paul Ryan is my friend,” GOP vice presidential nominee Mike Pence said on “Fox and Friends.” “But honestly, I'd like to see Republican leaders supporting the Republican nominee for president of the United States.”
Pence’s comments came shortly before Ryan addressed a group of College Republicans in Madison, Wisconsin, the speaker’s home state and the latest setting for Ryan’s high-wire act, which sees him balancing obligations to down-ballot candidates with the traditional support a speaker offers to his party’s nominee.
Facing growing discontent among his own conference for his recent treatment of Trump – whom the speaker effectively abandoned on Monday, following the release of an old audio tape on which Trump could be heard making lewd comments about kissing and groping women – Ryan lashed out at Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, calling her agenda for America “arrogant” and “condescending.”
In the America Clinton will refashion in her image, Ryan added, “There is no room to run, no chance to grow, or to fail for that matter. People are not needed, they are counted and sorted. This is how you can so casually classify whole groups of people as ‘baskets of deplorables.’”
In the same set of remarks, however, Ryan brandished the six-point policy plan that he and the GOP conference have developed over the course of the year and declared, “This is our party's vision for America” – a subtle but unmistakable assertion that Trump is not the face of today’s Republican Party.
And during the question-and-answer session, Ryan again appeared to keep his distance from the nominee: “I know many people are still making their choice. I know some people are avoiding making any choice at all. And I don't begrudge anybody for that.”
Trump, for his part, has alternated between vowing to work “arm in arm” with Ryan to defeat the “Obama-Clinton disaster" and blasting the speaker last Tuesday, in a Twitter post, as “weak,” “ineffective” and “disloyal.”
“If you sneeze, [Ryan] calls up and announces, 'Isn't that a terrible thing?'” Trump told Bill O’Reilly on “The O’Reilly Factor” that evening. “So look, I don't want his support, I don't care about his support.”
Ryan’s difficulties since taking office – manifest, for example, in the Republicans’ failure to bring a budget to the floor, an acute embarrassment for a speaker who formerly served as chairman of the budget committee – underscore the growing rift between GOP leaders and the GOP base. That rift was only magnified by the Republican electorate’s embrace of Trump in the primary season, when the real estate billionaire, a recent convert to conservatism, drew some 14 million votes, a record.
Republican leaders, however, have bristled at Trump’s mercurial style and ideological heresies, and have downright recoiled from his occasional use of vulgar language and the latest controversy to hit his campaign: the flood of allegations this week by women claiming Trump made unwanted sexual advances on them over the years, allegations the candidate has dismissed as lies.
Some have suggested that Ryan could have handled the difficult situation better; his disavowal of Trump on Monday, in response to the lewd audio recording, came on the day after Trump turned in a strong debate performance against Clinton and appeared, to many eyes, to have recovered from the controversy, or at least to have made up some lost ground.
“Paul Ryan didn't need to do that,” said Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard, in an interview for “On the Record” with Brit Hume on October 10. “You know who doesn't do that and I think probably has the same generally low opinion of Trump as Paul Ryan does? And that's Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader.”
Most analysts, however, see Ryan – whose speakership has also included some successes, such as resolution of the so-called “doc fix” hole in Medicare funding and a bipartisan measure addressing Puerto Rico’s debt – contending with singular challenges that even Boehner, toppled by opponents from within his own conference, did not have to confront.
“Ryan is having a terrible time in this Trump chokehold,” said A.B. Stoddard, associate editor and columnist at RealClearPolitics. “If he distances himself permanently and completely from Trump, he fears – and his members fear – Trump voters will not turn out. They'll come and only vote for the top of the ticket, they won't support down-ballot Republicans, and that could imperil the majorities in the House and the Senate.
“If he embraces him,” Stoddard added, “in a way to try to enthuse those voters – as more and more allegations of groping and other sort of scandalous revelations come to the fore – it makes it more likely there is a Democratic wave in the House, and Ryan could lose his majority that way. So he really is in an untenable position.”

Former 'Black Men for Bernie' leader now backing Trump

While many analysts dismiss Donald Trump’s chances of winning over black voters, the Republican nominee has an unlikely ally making his case -- the founder of a group that once rallied black voters for Bernie Sanders.
Bruce Carter, who led "Black Men for Bernie," told FoxNews.com he had a change of heart after he traveled to urban communities and saw the levels of poverty in Democrat-controlled areas of the country.
“Once I got involved, I realized that the Democratic Party was operating as if they own the country, and that was a major turn off for me,” Carter said. “I didn’t want to represent a party that saw its people in that way.”
Carter, from Texas, has since formed “Trump for Urban Communities” – a grassroots organization he says is reaching out to black voters in big cities from Jacksonville, Fla., to Philadelphia, to Charlotte, N.C., seeking to convince first-time voters, working families and others to vote Republican in November.
“Donald Trump is the best presidential candidate, who I believe has the experience and the wherewithal to give urban communities economic and educational opportunities,” he said.
The task is a steep climb for Republicans. President Obama won 90 percent of the black vote in 2008 and 2012, and Hillary Clinton likewise is expected to sweep among the same group. Expectations among some analysts that black voters might abandon her in the primaries in favor of Sanders did not materialize -- her so-called "firewall" held.
Trump nevertheless has tried to make inroads, promising jobs, attacking Hillary Clinton for once referring to some young black criminals as “superpredators” and asking voters: “What do you have to lose?”
Even this outreach has been peppered with controversy. In the first presidential debate, he took heat for saying African-Americans and Hispanics are “living in hell.” Meanwhile, critics say his call for the return of controversial stop-and-frisk policies are also hurting his outreach to black voters who believe such policies disproportionately target them.
President Obama on Friday also mocked Trump's overall attempt to cast himself as a "populist." Noting Trump's billionaire status, Obama repeatedly said at a rally in Cleveland, "Come on, man."
Carter said while Trump's law-and-order rhetoric doesn't exactly help Trump in that area, he suggested the backlash may be exaggerated. Further, he said the Clintons are not as popular as they're made out to be.
However, Carter said Republicans need to do better, get on the ground and talk to people in those communities – something he says the Trump campaign, and Republicans in general, have been woeful at doing, and something he says "Trump for Urban Communities" is doing right now.
"I talk about poverty, unemployment rates and then I show them who they’ve been voting for, and I give them history," he said.
He says much of it depends on Republican willingness to engage directly in those communtiies.
“To use Donald Trump’s language -- What do the Republicans have to lose by investing in urban communities?”

Clinton campaign plotted to withhold Obama emails

Judicial Watch: Clinton endangered US and now lying about it

Hillary Clinton's campaign considered asking the White House to withhold any of her emails to or from President Obama on the same day Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, issued a subpoena for her records.
The revelation emerged in the seventh batch of emails obtained illegally from the inbox of John Podesta, Clinton's campaign chair, and published Friday by WikiLeaks.
"Think we should hold emails to and from potus [sic]?" Podesta wrote to Cheryl Mills, Clinton's former chief of staff, on March 4, 2015.
"That's the heart of his exec privilege," Podesta said. "We could get them to ask for that. They may not care, but I seems [sic] like they will."
Gowdy issued a subpoena for Clinton's Libya-related record on that same day.
Notes from the Fbi's closed investigative file, which were made public by the bureau last month, showed Obama had used a pseudonym when communicating with Clinton on her private server.
Huma Abedin, Clinton's former deputy chief of staff, expressed shock when she was shown copies of emails between Obama and Clinton during her Fbi interview. To date, emails between Clinton and Obama have not been made public.
In July, the White House exerted executive privilege over an undisclosed number of Benghazi-related documents and refused to provide them to Gowdy's committee. The move came four months after Clinton's campaign weighed whether to ask the White House to pursue such a strategy.

Emails show calculations behind Clinton trade deal waffling

Trump and Clinton spar over trade, NAFTA and TPP

Newly leaked emails show the political calculations that went into Hillary Clinton's decision to back away from supporting the controversial Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade deal aides privately conceded she would "ultimately" support.
The deliberations were revealed in hacked emails purportedly from Campaign Chairman John Podesta's account that WikiLeaks has published.
In one March 25, 2015, message shortly before Clinton entered the race, senior speechwriter Dan Schwerin sent senior staff, including Podesta and communications director Jennifer Palmieri, a draft letter on trade.
“This draft assumes that she's ultimately going to support both TPA and TPP. It focuses on what needs to happen to produce a positive result with TPP, and casts support for [Trade Promotion Authority] as one of those steps,” he wrote.
At the time of the emails, Congress was preparing for a heated debate on what's known as trade promotion authority (TPA), which would give the White House power to fast-track deals like the TPP. However, Clinton primary foe Bernie Sanders was an ardent opponent of the Pacific nation trade pact, arguing it's bad for workers.
At the time, Clinton found herself in an awkward spot, having been a past supporter, as some union figures spoke out against the deal. In a November 2012 speech in Australia, Clinton infamously proclaimed that TPP “sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade.” The statement dogged Clinton throughout the primary campaign, and Republican Donald Trump since has repeatedly used it in debates and on the campaign trail.
Clinton would eventually back off her support, saying in an interview with PBS in October 2015, "I am not in favor of what I have learned about it. ... I don’t believe it’s going to meet the high bar I have set." (According to her current website, Clinton would “reject trade agreements, like the TPP, that don’t meet high standards.”)
In an email right before Clinton's reversal, Schwerin acknowledged the difficult line the campaign was trying to walk.
“This is indeed a hard balance to strike, since we don’t want to invite mockery for being too enthusiastically opposed to a deal she once championed, or overclaiming how bad it is, since it’s a very close call on merits,” he wrote on Oct. 6, 2015.
This followed months of internal debate over the problems the TPP issue was causing with unions and voters.
In an April 13 email, pollster John Anzalone advised against “making this decision in a policy vacuum or just because we are concerned about a story of her changing her mind or taking on Obama.”
He went on to note the political peril of “getting on the wrong side of Labor on the only issue they care about has ramifications on the ground” in early primary states.
“I say we suck it up and be as definitive as possible from the beginning that we don’t like these deals. We will be right with voters and right with labor. We get no integrity gold star for staying pure on this issue because of one line if friggin [Hillary Clinton’s book] Hard Choices or because this is a key issue for a lame duck president,” he wrote.
Campaign Manager Robby Mook replied that “the boss won't be comfortable putting her foot down.”
Anzalone continued to press the political danger of angering labor. He said he's concerned the issue is “eating us alive for being on the wrong side and giving Progressives a real reason to try and push someone more weighty into the primary.”
As late as June 2015, Clinton was making the case internally for TPP, circulating a column by former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers in The Washington Post arguing that rejecting TPP would damage American leadership.
“Damning w[sic] faint praise but good arguments,” she told senior foreign policy adviser Jake Sullivan. Podesta disagreed, saying the deal ran counter to the concerns of average Americans, while Sullivan stressed the importance to American power. In response, Clinton said Sullivan’s arguments would work with “more sophisticated audiences or interviews.”
The issue of TPP was the primary reason that the AFL-CIO executive committee recommended in July 2015 to delay its endorsement of Clinton until she had moved closer to their position on trade issues.
The Trump campaign seized Thursday on the email revelations, pointing to the March email acknowledging Clinton's continued support as evidence she "lied."
"Today’s email release reveals what we already knew, that Hillary Clinton supports TPP and TPA and she lied about it to the American people at the debate," Trump spokesman Jason Miller said in a statement.

Clinton campaign persuaded Bill to cancel Wall Street speech over Hillary's opposition

Clinton attorneys answer questions in email lawsuit

WASHINGTON – Hillary Clinton's campaign asked former President Bill Clinton to cancel a speech to a Wall Street investment firm last year because of concerns that the Clintons might appear to be too cozy with Wall Street just as the former secretary of state was about to announce her White House bid, newly released emails show.
Clinton aides say in hacked emails released Friday by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks that Hillary Clinton did not want her husband to cancel the speech, but after a "cool down period" was eventually convinced that canceling was the right step.
Campaign manager Robby Mook said he realized canceling the lucrative speech would disappoint both Clintons but "it's a very consequential unforced error and could plague us in stories for months."
The Clintons' paid speeches have been an issue throughout the campaign, particularly Hillary Clinton's private speeches to Wall Street firms. Hillary Clinton earned about $1.5 million in speaking fees before launching her presidential campaign, while Bill Clinton reaped more than $5 million from banking, tech and other corporate interests, according to financial documents filed by Hillary Clinton.
The campaign has never released transcripts of Hillary Clinton's speeches, but the hacked emails did reveal excerpts flagged by her advisers as potentially concerning.
In the excerpts, Clinton talked about dreaming of "open trade and open borders" in the Western Hemisphere. She also says politicians sometimes need to have "both a public and a private position" on issues.
Bill Clinton was scheduled to speak to Morgan Stanley executives in April 2015, a few days after his wife was set to launch her bid for president.
"That's begging for a bad rollout," Mook wrote in a March 11, 2015, email.
In a later email, Mook says he feels "very strongly that doing the speech is a mistake" with serious potential consequences for Hillary Clinton's campaign. "People would (rightfully) ask how we let it happen."
Hillary Clinton was scheduled to campaign in Iowa, "where caucus goers have a sharply more negative view of Wall Street than the rest of the electorate," Mook wrote. "Wall Street ranks first for Iowans among a list of institutions that 'take advantage of every day Americans,' scoring twice as high as the general election electorate. ... This is a very big deal in my view."
Clinton's longtime aide, Huma Abedin, assured Mook the next day that Clinton was fine with canceling the speech, especially if Bill Clinton agreed. The candidate "just needed a cool down period," Abedin wrote.
The emails were among thousands published this week by WikiLeaks, which has been releasing a series of emails hacked from the accounts of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
U.S. intelligence officials last week blamed the Russian government for a series of breaches intended to influence the presidential election. The Russians deny involvement.
Podesta's hacked messages offer insight into the various strategies and responses considered by those close to Clinton as they grappled with pitfalls in her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, including the 2009 decision to use a private email server while serving as secretary of state.
In a separate email, Clinton aides discussed how to explain her 2001 support for an overhaul of the nation's bankruptcy system. Sanders was citing past criticism by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., as evidence of Clinton's favoritism to Wall Street.
Clinton defended the vote in a TV interview earlier this year, saying she pursued language to ensure women received child support if a spouse went into bankruptcy. In a Feb. 7 email, adviser Ann O'Leary noted that Clinton had overstated her case: "She said women groups were all pressuring her to vote for it. Evidence does not support that statement."
Clinton spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri said Friday that the campaign has taken unspecified precautions to secure its emails. Asked whether officials were considering releasing all of Podesta's emails at once, Palmieri said, "That is what the Russians would like us to do and we are not going to do that."
Emails released Friday also show that Clinton's daughter, Chelsea, used a second alias to communicate with her mother's campaign: Anna James. Chelsea Clinton also used the alias Diane Reynolds, according to emails previously made public.

Friday, October 14, 2016

Sitting During the Anthem Cartoons

Crowd yells racial slur after youth players take knee during National Anthem, coach says

A big thank you goes to Colin Kaepernick for helping Race Relations.

A suburban Pittsburgh youth football league says it is investigating reports of racial slurs being hurled at an all-black team after some took a knee during the national anthem.
Woodland Hills head coach Marcus Burkley tells WPXI-TV his team was playing Bethel Park on Saturday when two or three of his 12- and 13-year-old players took a knee. He says that's when the racial slurs started coming from the stands. Some of his players told him kids on the mostly white opposing team also used the slur.
He says police were eventually called as tensions mounted.
The president of the Bethel Park Junior Football League says it's investigating.
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has been widely criticized for his similar form of protest. He cites racial injustice.

Clinton 'does not recall' ordering destruction of emails from personal server in testimony

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has said she "does not recall" ordering emails related to State Department business to be deleted or permanently erased from her personal server after she left her post in 2013, according to sworn testimony made public Thursday.
The testimony, obtained by the conservative group Judicial Watch, marked the first time Clinton was forced to answer questions under oath about her private email system. A federal judge had ordered the former secretary of state's legal team to turn over written responses to questions about the so-called "homebrew" server, which was kept in her New York home during her tenure as America's top diplomat.
Clinton and her legal team objected to all or part of 18 of the 25 questions put to her by Judicial Watch. She also filed eight separate general objections to the process under which the questions were being asked.

Clinton email investigation

In her responses, Clinton used some variation of "does not recall" at least 21 times.
In the testimony, Clinton says that it was her "expectation" that all her "work-related and potentially work-related e-mails [sic]" had been turned over to the State Department by her lawyers when she determined that she had "no reason to keep her personal e-mails [sic]."
That statement contradicts testimony by FBI Director James Comey this past July. Comey told the House oversight committee that "thousands" of work-related emails were not returned.

Clinton also denied sending a 2011 memo warning State Department employees not to conduct official business from personal email accounts.
Clinton said the memo, like all notices sent from the State Department, concluded with her last name as "a formality ... it did not mean that she sent, authored, or reviewed the cable."
Clinton also said she did not recall receiving a February 2011 memo warning her of increased attempts to hack into private email accounts belonging to senior State Department officials.
Clinton was also asked when she decided to use her private email account to conduct government business and whom she consulted in making that decision.

Clinton said she recalled making the decision in early 2009, but she "does not recall any specific consultations regarding the decision."
Asked whether she was warned that using a private email account conflicted with federal record-keeping rules, Clinton responded that "she does not recall being advised, cautioned, or warned, she does not recall that it was ever suggested to her, and she does not recall participating in any communication, conversation, or meeting in which it was discussed."

Clinton noted in her testimony that her use of a personal email account for official business dated to her time as a Senator from New York, and insisted that she decided to use the server "for the purpose of convenience."
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the group's lawyers will closely review Clinton's responses.

"Mrs. Clinton's refusal to answer many of the questions in a clear and straightforward manner further reflects disdain for the rule of law," Fitton said.

Campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said Clinton has answered these same questions in multiple settings for over a year, and her answers Thursday "are entirely consistent with what she has said many times before."

Bill Clinton accusers slam wife's candidacy: 'Hillary is only for one woman, and that's herself'

Three women who have accused former President Bill Clinton of offenses ranging from sexual harassment to rape relived their encounters with him Thursday night.
Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey joined Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a news conference prior to Trump's debate with Hillary Clinton Sunday to discuss their experiences. On Thursday, they spoke to Fox News' Sean Hannity in an exclusive interview on "Hannity".
"I thought that we might possibly be able to bring this out and influence people," said Broaddrick, a former nursing home administrator who claimed she was raped by Bill Clinton during his campaign for Arkansas governor in 1978, "and be able to tell them that Hillary is not for all women. Hillary is only for one woman and that’s herself."
"Everybody is calling Bill Clinton's crimes infidelities," said Willey, a former Clinton White House volunteer who in March 1998 accused Bill Clinton of assaulting her five years earlier. "Rape, sexual assault, sexual harrassment ... are not infidelities. They are crimes and misdemeanors."
All three women accused Bill or Hillary Clinton of pressuring them to keep quiet about their alleged assaults. Broaddrick described an encounter with Hillary Clinton weeks after her busband, then the Arkansas attorney general, allegedly attacked her.
"She comes straight to me and says to me, big smile, very pleasant voice, says to me, 'I’m Hillary Clinton. It’s so nice to meet you. I just want to thank you for everything that you do for Bill’s campaign,'" Broaddrick said.
At that point, she added, Clinton grabbed Broaddrick's arm, pulled her close and said, "Do you understand everything you do?"
"I felt like at that moment, she knew everything and was saying, 'You better keep quiet,'" Broaddrick said Thursday.
When asked why she didn't go to the police, Broaddrick said of Bill Clinton, "He could close the doors of my business ... He was the police."
The future 42nd president asked Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee, to keep quiet about their alleged encounter in May 1991.
"He said, 'You're a smart girl, let's keep this between ourselves,'" said Jones, who later sued Clinton for sexual harassment.
Hannity was also joined by the fourth woman who appeared with Trump at the pre-debate press conference: Kathy Shelton, who says Hillary Clinton besmirched her character while defending a man Shelton accused of raping her when she was 12 years old in 1975.
As part of her defense, Clinton (then known as Hillary Rodham), described Shelton in an affidavit as "emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and engage in fantasizing." She also accused Shelton of falsely claiming to have been attacked in the past.
"All of these things ... were intended to force Kathy to undergo further psychological evaluation and interrogation," Shelton's attorney Candice Jackson told "Hannity."
"If she was for children, she would not have put me through what I went through," Shelton added.
A decade later, Clinton was recorded telling an Arkansas newspaper that Shelton's attacker had passed a lie detector test, which as she put it, "forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs."
Shelton says the exchange proved Clinton attacked her in the affidavit despite knowing her client was guilty.
"She [was] gonna win her first case whatever it takes," Shelton said. "Whether she needs to lie, cheat or steal."

Email: Clinton campaign tried to move back Illinois primary

Hillary Clinton's campaign tried to move the Illinois presidential primary to a later date, saying a contest held after the Super Tuesday primaries might stop momentum for a moderate Republican candidate and emphasizing that Clinton and her husband "won't forget" a political favor, emails made public on Thursday show.
A November 2014 email hacked from the accounts of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta was among nearly 2,000 new emails published by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks. The email, from Clinton's future campaign manager Robby Mook to Podesta, said Obama administration officials should use their connections in the president's home state to try to push back the March 15 Illinois primary by at least a month.
"The overall goal is to move the IL primary out of mid-March, where they are currently a lifeline to a moderate Republican candidate after the mostly southern Super Tuesday," Mook wrote. "IL was a key early win for (GOP presidential candidate Mitt) Romney" in 2012.
While the request would come from Obama, the president and former Illinois senator, "the key point is that this is not an Obama ask, but a Hillary ask," Mook said.
"The Clintons won't forget what their friends have done for them," he added. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, famously gave special attention to allies considered "friends of Bill."
Clinton's campaign said the FBI was investigating who hacked Podesta's email. Vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine told ABC's "The View" Thursday that the FBI and director of national intelligence have said "the Russian government is behind" the hack, adding that "anybody that would hack to try to destabilize an election, you can't automatically assume that everything in all of these documents are even real."
Questions were raised on social media about the speed with which Russia Today, a news site funded by the Russian government, tweeted about Podesta's e-mails, the latest in a series of hacked emails published by WikiLeaks. The group said the e-mails were visible on its website "well before" it started tweeting them.
RT dismissed the questions as conspiracy theories. "We were fastest on #Podestaemails6, faster than @wikileaks, and the US conspiracy machine can't handle it," the network said in a tweet.
On the Illinois issue, Mook suggested that Bill Daley, a former White House chief of staff and longtime Illinois power broker, should reach out to Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan to make the request.
Mook made it clear it would be a tough sell because Madigan and other Illinois Democrats "feel forgotten and neglected by POTUS," a reference to Obama.
Daley, whose father and brother were both Chicago mayors, told The Associated Press that he called Madigan as requested, but warned Clinton's team that moving the primary was unlikely because of a short time-frame.
"I made the call and talked to Mike and he listened and understood the reasoning," Daley said. "But my own judgment was the likelihood that either side would want a primary later in the legislative session was going to be slim to none."
The Illinois legislature moved up the 2008 primary to benefit its favorite son, then-Sen. Barack Obama, in his bid for the White House. The primary was held in early February that year to give Illinois more influence, but then moved back to its traditional date in mid-March.
This year the primary was held as scheduled on March 15. Clinton won the Democratic primary, while Donald Trump won the Republican contest.

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Bill Clinton Cartoons

FBI, DOJ roiled by Comey, Lynch decision to let Clinton slide by on emails, says insider

Another Snake In The Grass? Comey sparks debate over integrity of Clinton probe

The decision to let Hillary Clinton off the hook for mishandling classified information has roiled the FBI and Department of Justice, with one person closely involved in the year-long probe telling FoxNews.com that career agents and attorneys on the case unanimously believed the Democratic presidential nominee should have been charged.
The source, who spoke to FoxNews.com on the condition of anonymity, said FBI Director James Comey’s dramatic July 5 announcement that he would not recommend to the Attorney General’s office that the former secretary of state be charged left members of the investigative team dismayed and disgusted. More than 100 FBI agents and analysts worked around the clock with six attorneys from the DOJ’s National Security Division, Counter Espionage Section, to investigate the case.
“No trial level attorney agreed, no agent working the case agreed, with the decision not to prosecute -- it was a top-down decision,” said the source, whose identity and role in the case has been verified by FoxNews.com.
A high-ranking FBI official told Fox News that while it might not have been a unanimous decision, “It was unanimous that we all wanted her [Clinton’s] security clearance yanked.”
“It is safe to say the vast majority felt she should be prosecuted,” the senior FBI official told Fox News. “We were floored while listening to the FBI briefing because Comey laid it all out, and then said ‘but we are doing nothing,’ which made no sense to us.”
The FBI declined to comment directly, but instead referred Fox News to multiple public statements Comey has made in which he has thrown water on the idea that politics played a role in the agency’s decision not to recommend charges.
“I know there were many opinions expressed by people who were not part of the investigation – including people in government – but none of that mattered to us,” Comey said July 5 in announcing the FBI’s decision on the Clinton emails. “Opinions are irrelevant, and they were all uninformed by insight into our investigation, because we did the investigation the right way. Only facts matter, and the FBI found them here in an entirely apolitical and professional way."
Andrew Napolitano, former judge and senior judicial analyst for Fox News Channel, said many law enforcement agents involved with the Clinton email investigation have similar beliefs.
“It is well known that the FBI agents on the ground, the human beings who did the investigative work, had built an extremely strong case against Hillary Clinton and were furious when the case did not move forward,” said Napolitano. “They believe the decision not to prosecute came from The White House.”
The claim also is backed up by a report in the New York Post this week, which quotes a number of veteran FBI agents saying FBI Director James Comey “has permanently damaged the bureau’s reputation for uncompromising investigations with his cowardly whitewash of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information using an unauthorized private email server.”
“The FBI has politicized itself, and its reputation will suffer for a long time. I hold Director Comey responsible,” Dennis V. Hughes, the first chief of the FBI’s computer investigations unit, told the Post. Retired FBI agent Michael M. Biasello added to the report, saying, “Comey has singlehandedly ruined the reputation of the organization.”
Especially angering the team, which painstakingly pieced together deleted emails and interviewed witnesses to prove that sensitive information was left unprotected, was the fact that Comey based his decision on a conclusion that a recommendation to charge would not be followed by DOJ prosecutors, even though the bureau’s role was merely to advise, Fox News was told.
“Basically, James Comey hijacked the DOJ’s role by saying ‘no reasonable prosecutor would bring this case,’” the Fox News source said. “The FBI does not decide who to prosecute and when, that is the sole province of a prosecutor -- that never happens.
“I know zero prosecutors in the DOJ’s National Security Division who would not have taken the case to a grand jury,” the source added. “One was never even convened.”
Napolitano agreed, saying the FBI investigation was hampered from the beginning, because there was no grand jury, and no search warrants or subpoenas issued.
“The FBI could not seize anything related to the investigation, only request things. As an example, in order to get the laptop, they had to agree to grant immunity,” Napolitano said.
In early 2015, it was revealed that Clinton had used a private email server in her Chappaqua, N.Y., home to conduct government business while serving from 2009-2013. The emails on the private server included thousands of messages that would later be marked classified by the State Department retroactively. Federal law makes it a crime for a government employee to possess classified information in an unsecure manner, and the relevant statute does not require a finding of intent.
Although Comey found that Clinton was “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” he said “no charges are appropriate in this case.”
Well before Comey’s announcement, which came days after Bill Clinton met in secret with Comey’s boss, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, there were signs the investigation would go nowhere, the source told FoxNews.com. One was the fact that the FBI forced its agents and analysts involved in the case to sign non-disclosure agreements.
“This is unheard of, because of the stifling nature it has on the investigative process,” the source said.
Another oddity was the five so-called immunity agreements granted to Clinton’s State Department aides and IT experts.
Cheryl Mills, Clinton's former chief of staff, along with two other State Department staffers, John Bentel and Heather Samuelson, were afforded immunity agreements, as was Bryan Pagliano, Clinton's former IT aide, and Paul Combetta, an employee at Platte River networks, the firm hired to manage her server after she left the State Department.
As Fox News has reported, Combetta utilized the computer program “Bleachbit” to destroy Clinton’s records, despite an order from Congress to preserve them, and Samuelson also destroyed Clinton’s emails. Pagliano established the system that illegally transferred classified and top secret information to Clinton’s private server. Mills disclosed classified information to the Clinton’s family foundation in the process, breaking federal laws.
None should have been granted immunity if no charges were being brought, the source said.
“[Immunity] is issued because you know someone possesses evidence you need to charge the target, and you almost always know what it is they possess,” the source said. “That's why you give immunity.”
Mills and Samuelson also received immunity for what was found on their computers, which were then destroyed as a part of negotiations with the FBI.
“Mills and Samuelson receiving immunity with the agreement their laptops would be destroyed by the FBI afterwards is, in itself, illegal,” the source said. “We know those laptops contained classified information. That's also illegal, and they got a pass.”
Mills’ dual role as Clinton’s attorney and a witness in her own right should never have been tolerated either.
“Mills was allowed to sit in on the interview of Clinton as her lawyer. That's absurd. Someone who is supposedly cooperating against the target of an investigation [being] permitted to sit by the target as counsel violates any semblance of ethical responsibility,” the source said.
“Every agent and attorney I have spoken to is embarrassed and has lost total respect for James Comey and Loretta Lynch,” the source said. “The bar for DOJ is whether the evidence supports a case for charges -- it did here. It should have been taken to the grand jury.”
Also infuriating agents, the New York Post reported, was the fact that Clinton’s interview spanned just 3½ hours with no follow-up questioning, despite her “40 bouts of amnesia,” and then, three days later, Comey cleared her of criminal wrongdoing.
Many FBI and DOJ staffers believe Comey and Lynch were motivated by ambition, and not justice, the source said.
“Loretta Lynch simply wants to stay on as Attorney General under Clinton, so there is no way she would indict,” the source said. “James Comey thought his position [excoriating Clinton even as he let her off the hook] gave himself cover to remain on as director regardless of who wins.”
The decision by Comey and Lynch not to prosecute has renewed FBI agents’ belief that the agency should be autonomous.
“This is why so many agents believe the FBI needs to be an entity by itself to truly be effective,” the senior FBI official told Fox News. “We all feel very strongly about it -- and the need to be objective. But that truly cannot be done when the AG is appointed by a president and attends daily briefings.”
Adding to the controversy, WikiLeaks released internal Clinton communication records this week that show the Department of Justice kept Clinton’s campaign and her staff informed about the progress of its investigation.
Leaked emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s gmail account show the Clinton campaign was contacted by the DOJ on May 19, 2015.
“DOJ folks inform me there is a status hearing in this case this morning, so we could have a window into the judge’s thinking about this proposed production schedule as quickly as today,” Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon wrote in relation to the email documentation the State Department would be required to turn over to the Justice Department.
Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, who previously served in the U.S. Treasury Department in the Office of Chief Counsel for the IRS, where he was responsible for litigation in the U.S. Tax Court, said it was clear from the start that the FBI never intended to prosecute.
“This was a fake, false investigation from the outset,” Sekulow said.

Mr. Clinton, I know rednecks, and you, sir, are no redneck

Former President Bill Clinton has compared Donald Trump's base to "your standard redneck."
"The other guy's base is what I grew up in," he told a crowd in Fort Meyers, Fla. "I'm basically your standard redneck."
Mr. President, I know some rednecks. And you, sir, are no redneck.
Click here to get a personally-signed copy of Todd's latest book (It's driving liberals nuts)
His wife Hillary had previously smeared Trump backers as a "basket of deplorables" who are "irredeemable."
"They are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it," she said at an LGBT-themed fundraiser in New York City.
Of course, it's not all that unusual for Democrats to insult patriotic, church-going Americans.

Bill Clinton: Trump's 'standard redneck' base is what I grew up in

Bill Clinton takes a shot at the heartland, Fox News viewers

Bill Clinton suggested this week that GOP nominee Donald Trump's base is comprised mostly of "rednecks."
"The other guy's base is what I grew up in," the former president said during a campaign stop in Fort Meyers, Fla. "You know, I'm basically your standard redneck."
The former president also recounted a moment during the 2016 Democratic primary when he went to campaign for Hillary Clinton in West Virginia – a state that they lost and predicted they would lose long before voting even took place.
"[S]he said, 'There's no way that we can carry it,' and I said, 'No way,'" Clinton said Tuesday, recounting a conversation he had with his wife about campaigning in Mountain State.

Trump demands NYT retract 'libelous article' as new allegations of sexual assault emerge

Four women have accused Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump of sexual assault on Wednesday in a series of reports, adding to the already damaging revelations about his suggestive comments about women.
Trump’s campaign dismissed the allegations as having no merit or veracity, and it attacked The New York Times, accusing the media outlet of having a vendetta. In a letter from his attorneys Thursday, Trump demanded The New York Times retract what it called a "libelous article" and apologize.
"For The New York Times to launch a completely false, coordinated character assassination against Mr. Trump on a topic like this is dangerous," Jason Miller, Trump's campaign spokesman, said in a separate statement. "To reach back decades in an attempt to smear Mr. Trump trivializes sexual assault, and it sets a new low for where the media is willing to go in its efforts to determine this election."
In a story published Wednesday evening, The New York Times says 74-year-old Jessica Leeds of New York told the paper that Trump groped her on a flight more than 30 years ago. Leeds says Trump grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt.
"He was like an octopus,” Leeds says. "His hands were everywhere ... It was an assault."
In the same story, Rachel Crooks tells the paper that the real estate developer "kissed me directly on the mouth" after she introduced herself to him outside a Trump Tower elevator in 2005.
"It was so inappropriate," Crooks tells the paper. "I was so upset that he thought I was so insignificant that he could do that."
Also Wednesday night, the Palm Beach Post published claims by a Florida woman that Trump had groped her during a concert at his Mar-a-Lago estate in January 2003. The woman, 36-year-old Mindy McGillivray told the paper that she "chose to stay quiet" and did not report the incident to authorities.
Trump press secretary Hope Hicks told the Post that there was "no truth" to McGillivray's allegation, adding "this allegation lacks any merit or veracity."
Additionally, PEOPLE Magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff published a story late Wednesday detailing her own encounter with Trump in 2005 when she went to interview Donald and Melania in Mar-a-Lago.
Stoynoff says that Trump showed her one “tremendous” room and allegedly pinned her against the wall and “forcing his tongue down my throat.”
A Trump spokeswoman told PEOPLE, “This never happened. There is no merit or veracity to this fabricated story.”
During his second presidential debate with Hillary Clinton Sunday, moderator Anderson Cooper asked Trump if he had "[kissed] women without consent or [groped] women without consent"
Trump responded, "No, I have not."
Cooper's question was in response to the release of a 2005 audiotape in which Trump made lewd remarks about women in a conversation with "Access Hollywood" host Billy Bush. Trump has repeatedly dismissed the remarks as "locker room talk."
Clinton campaign spokesman Jennifer Palmieri said the new reports "sadly [fit] everything we know about the way Donald Trump has treated women. These reports suggest that he lied on the debate stage and that the disgusting behavior he bragged about in the tape is more than just words.”

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Mitch McConnell Cartoons (Mr. Flip Flopper)

Pence tells 'Hannity' Clinton is no 'Honest Abe'

Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence told Sean Hannity that he 'respectfully disagrees' with his longtime friend, Speaker Paul Ryan, who recently decided not to actively campaign for Donald Trump.
Pence said he just finished a great rally in the swing state of Iowa, and that many members of Congress were happy to help his ticket.
"[Senator] Roy Blunt asked me to come into Missouri," he said.
"Many Democrats are responding to Donald Trump's message that we can 'Make America Great Again'...like Ronald Reagan did in the '80s."
On the WikiLeaks email releases, Pence said the "pull[ed] back the curtain that Hillary Clinton is different in private than shie is in public."
"She told some donor group that you need [a public and private position on policy]," he said, noting her response in the second debate channeled the 16th president.
"I prefer dishonest Hillary to not associate herself with Honest Abe," Pence said.