Trump 34: Leading the Alternate Reality

[fraurosena]

Oh good grief. What is this? 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[AmazonGrace]

45 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Oh good grief. What is this? 

 

It's a shiny object.

My lawyer just got indicted but you will be MURDERED if the Democrats win

[Gobsmacked]

12 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

Man not smart: 

 

In a way she did gestate a turkey. Him,  her dear little Donald. He is certainly The worst  Turkey the world has a present. 

[AmazonGrace]

 

 

[AmazonGrace]

He still lies, even after the Cohen tape in which they discussed the payments beforehand. He says he knew about the payments later.

[47of74]

I just saw this on Avvo

Quote

I may be in trouble, bigly, and none of my lawyers are helping!

I ran for President- of my condo association, that’s all, not President of the US or anything like that, but the last President — we’ll call him Barry — ran it into the ground, and I’m not even sure he owns a condo in my building. I think he owned a condo in Kenya. Anyway, I just wanted to Make America Great Again.

Anyway, my one lawyer just pled guilty paying hush money to a porn star using my corporate funds to influence the condo election. My campaign manager just got convicted of tax fraud. The, uh, Condo Ass’n Counsel has been cooperating with prosecutors, and the Condo Attorney General recused himself— if I knew he was gonna do that, I would have left him in Alabama, believe me!

And my new lawyer goes on TV and just vomits out his mouth. “Truth isn’t truth.”

Not sure how long it'll stay up on that site.  So far no lawyers have responded. 

But still, lol.

[Gobsmacked]

A life long habitual lying liar won't stop lying. He doesn't  know he is lying. It's his normal, his own strange unfathomable Donald world.  

[fraurosena]

Answer: a presidunce.

[Gobsmacked]

He really is the king of the Emerald ( or Golden city in his Donald scenario), just not hiding away behind the curtains. 

 

[AmazonGrace]

Who calls Democrats "elites" except Donald Trump?

[GreyhoundFan]

"Steven Tyler Demands Trump Stop Playing Aerosmith Songs at Rallies"

Spoiler

Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler is demanding President Donald Trump stop using the band’s songs at rallies, like the one held at the Charleston Civic Center in West Virginia on Tuesday (August 21). The band’s 1993 hit “Livin’ on the Edge” was played as Trump devotees entered the venue, which has a capacity of 13,500. Tyler has in turn sent a “cease and desist” letter through his attorney Dina LaPolt to the White House accusing the President of willful infringement in broadcasting the song, which was written by Tyler, Joe Perry, Mark Hudson.

Citing the Lanham Act, which prohibits “any false designation or misleading description or representation of fact … likely to cause confusion … as to the affiliation, connection, or association of such person with another person,” Tyler’s attorney contends that playing an Aerosmith song in a public arena gives the false impression that Tyler is endorsing Trump’s presidency.

The matter has come up previously with another Aerosmith song, “Dream On,” which Trump used during his 2015 election campaign. Following a similar letter stating, “Trump for President needs our client’s express written permission in order to use his music” and that the campaign “was violating Mr. Tyler’s copyright,” BMI drove the point home and pulled the public performance rights for the song. Public performance rights for “Livin’ on the Edge” are administered by ASCAP.

During the rally, President Trump spoke about immigration, trade and politics, peppered with his usual banter  about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Earlier in the day, Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime former personal attorney, pleaded guilty to eight criminal counts in federal court on Tuesday, including campaign finance violations related to payments made to women who claim to have had affairs with Trump.

Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, was also found guilty Tuesday on eight of 18 counts in his federal trial over fraud charges. The case involved work Manafort did on behalf of a pro-Russian government in Ukraine. Shortly after the verdicts were announced, President Trump told reporters: “I feel badly for Paul Manafort” and called him “a good man.”

Read portions of Tyler’s letter to the White House below:

It has come to our attention that President Donald J. Trump and/or The Trump Organization
(collectively, “Mr. Trump”) have been using our client’s song “Livin’ On The Edge” in
connection with political rally events (the “Rallies”), including at an event held yesterday at the
Charleston Civic Center in Charleston, West Virginia on August 21, 2018. As expressly outlined
in the Previous Letters, Mr. Trump does not have our client’s permission to use any of our
client’s music, including “Livin’ On The Edge”.

What makes this violation even more egregious is that Mr. Trump’s use of our client’s music
was previously shut down, not once, but two times, during his campaign for presidency in 2015.
Please see the Previous Letters sent on behalf of our client attached here as Exhibit A. Due to
your receipt of the Previous Letters, such conduct is clearly willful, subjecting Mr. Trump to the
maximum penalty under the law.

As we have made clear numerous times, Mr. Trump is creating the false impression that our
client has given his consent for the use of his music, and even that he endorses the presidency of
Mr. Trump. By using “Livin’ On The Edge” without our client’s permission, Mr. Trump is
falsely implying that our client, once again, endorses his campaign and/or his presidency, as
evidenced by actual confusion seen from the reactions of our client’s fans all over social media.
This specifically violates Section 43 of the Lanham Act, as it “is likely to cause confusion, or to
cause mistake, or to deceive as to the affiliation, connection, or association of such person with
another person.”

Further, as we have also made clear, Mr. Trump needs our client’s express written permission in
order to use his music. We demanded Mr. Tyler’s public performance societies terminate their
licenses with you in 2015 in connection with “Dream On” and any other musical compositions
written or co-written by Mr. Tyler. As such, we are unaware of any remaining public
performance license still in existence which grants Mr. Trump the right use his music in
connection with the Rallies or any other purpose. If Mr. Trump has any such license, please
forward it to our attention immediately.

In addition, Mr. Tyler’s voice is easily recognizable and central to his identity, and any use
thereof wrongfully misappropriates his rights of publicity. Mr. Trump does not have any right to
use the name, image, voice or likeness of our client, without his express written permission.

Dumpy needs to listen to John Oliver:

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

Lanny Davis saying Trump's lawyers wrote a letter to Mueller saying that Trump directed Cohen to make those payments.

But he's still lying about it.

Also, Omarosa is saying that the campaign folks knew about the hush payments.

[47of74]

I see the orange fornicate wants to make ESPN play the national anthem

Quote

President Trump has started a petition that urges his followers to denounce ESPN’s “spineless” move to no longer air the national anthem before NFL games this season.

“Just after we heard a sitting governor trash America, ESPN has now decided it will no longer play the National Anthem before Monday Night Football,” Trump says in an email sent out by the Trump Make America Great Again Committee on Wednesday.

The letter signed by Trump also links to the petition and instructs supporters to sign it “by 11:59 PM tonight to get on the list of supporters that stood with me and told ESPN to play America's anthem.”

 

[Cartmann99]

50 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

I see the orange fornicate wants to make ESPN play the national anthem

ESPN needs to firmly tell him to stay in his own damn lane.

[Cartmann99]

Bless his heart, his little rally didn't fill up his bottomless pit of need:

 

[onekidanddone]

19 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

Bless his heart, his little rally didn't fill up his bottomless pit of need:

 

Well maybe his people are finally figuring out what a fraud he is.  When he says stuff like West Virginia used to be last and now it is first, and their lives haven't improved on bit maybe just maybe they have become woke, and didn't sieg heil him quite as much as he wanted.

Whom am I kidding? There are some TDs who if they were on the Titanic as it sunk would steadfastly believe him if he told them it was fake news.

[GreyhoundFan]

A good analysis: "Trump’s comparison of the Cohen allegations to Obama is entirely wrong"

Spoiler

In a Manhattan courtroom Tuesday, President Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen described how, at Trump’s direction, he worked with the head of a media company in the summer of 2016 to bury a story about an alleged extramarital affair between Trump and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Cohen also described having been instructed by Trump to bury a story about another alleged affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Both efforts, Cohen said, were “for the principal purpose of influencing the election.”

Cohen’s admission came as he admitted guilt in federal crimes associated with those actions. In the first case, he admitted to having willfully caused an illegal corporate contribution, by facilitating a payment by the National Enquirer’s parent company to McDougal. In the second, he himself made an illegal contribution by spending $130,000 to keep Daniels quiet. The judge to whom Cohen made his admissions explained the severity of the crimes: In each case, the maximum penalty was five years in prison and fines of up to $250,000.

Legal experts who spoke with The Washington Post were explicit about the implications of Cohen’s admissions: If Cohen’s assertions about Trump’s role in the coverups is true, Trump himself is implicated in the commission of federal crimes. Trump and his allies have accused Cohen of lying, but it’s important to note that Cohen’s admissions came under oath in a court of law, with an agreed-to plea deal probably limiting his possible prison time to a little over five years, which would be at risk if he offered false testimony.

As might have been predicted, Trump railed against the Cohen assertions in tweets Wednesday morning. Specifically, the president lifted up an argument that he probably heard while watching “Fox and Friends.”

It’s a bit baffling that Trump would assert that criminal charges accepted by Cohen aren’t a crime. Perhaps he’s arguing that the alleged crimes didn’t occur or that prosecutors crafted their charges in a way to maximize Cohen’s exposure to legal risk. It’s not clear — but neither is true.

But let’s focus on the second part of Trump’s assertion, that Cohen’s charges and his actions fall into a big bucket of “campaign finance violations” that also includes violations that President Barack Obama was found to have committed. It’s a very Trumpian bit of whataboutism, waving away something severe that Trump or a Trump ally did by pointing out something minor that one of his political opponents did.

It’s certainly true that both Cohen’s admissions and the Obama campaign did things that were “campaign finance violations” in the same way that your lifting a candy bar from a convenience store as a kid and what Bernie Madoff did are both “stealing.” Which isn’t to say that the Obama campaign’s violations weren’t serious. It’s just to note that broad legal terms can cover a variety of actions.

So what did Obama do? Well, Obama didn’t do anything, really. His campaign — Obama For America — failed to report 1,300 contributions within 48 hours as required by law. It also received some campaign contributions that exceeded allowable limits from a donor for a campaign cycle and others that had incorrect dates. In total, the contributions at issue amounted to about $2 million, and the campaign paid $375,000 in fines.

What Trump is alleged to have done is to have personally instructed his attorney to facilitate an illegal contribution by a corporation with the goal of burying a negative story before the campaign and, in another case, having that attorney make an illegal payment to hide another damaging allegation. Unlike the Obama example, the violation was allegedly intentional. Unlike the Obama example, Trump and Cohen then proceeded to lie about what took place for months — until Cohen’s admission in court.

Some additional context that will shed light on the difference between what Trump did and what the Obama campaign did. A few weeks after the 2016 election, the Trump campaign also paid a fine for improperly handling campaign contributions. About 1,100 donations made to Trump’s campaign violated campaign finance laws, including donations that exceeded the allowable limit in a year.

How common are such contributions? Trump’s former attorney John Dowd made contributions to Trump’s 2020 reelection bid in excess of legal limits earlier this year. Trump’s former attorney. A failure to respond to the improper donations, a Federal Election Commission letter to the Trump campaign said, “could result in enforcement action.”

Trump recorded an interview with “Fox and Friends” host Ainsley Earhardt on Wednesday in which he reiterated his assertions about Obama.

“It’s not even a campaign violation,” he said. “If you look at President Obama he had a massive campaign violation. But he had a different Attorney General and they viewed it a lot differently.”

The implication is that Attorney General Jeff Sessions allowed charges to be brought against Cohen while Obama’s attorney general gave him a pass. That’s obviously nonsense. The difference in treatment is a function of the difference in what actually happened.

On Fox News Tuesday night, Trump defender Alan Dershowitz told host Tucker Carlson that violations like the one to which Cohen admitted guilt were “regarded as kind of jaywalking in the realm of things about elections.”

“Every administration violates the election laws; every candidate violates the election laws when they run for president,” Dershowitz added. “Usually they pay a fine or something like that.”

This is the Madoff-candy-bar equation from earlier. While many campaigns do end up violating campaign finance laws, often because of the number of contributions coming in during an election, it’s by no means the case that the allegations about Trump and Cohen are run-of-the-mill. There are often violations of the law, just as there are often violations of the rules at summer camps.

That doesn’t mean, though, that horror-movie villains working their way through each cabin is just part of a standard camp experience.

 

[JMarie]

 

[fraurosena]

Well of course he wants it to be illegal. And of course the presidunce thinks it could be. Almost.

 

[onekidanddone]

38 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Well of course he wants it to be illegal. And of course the presidunce thinks it could be. Almost.

 

So telling the truth should be illegal?

[fraurosena]

1 minute ago, onekidanddone said:

So telling the truth should be illegal?

Don't you get it? Truth isn't truth. Therefore, if it isn't, then it's illegal. And if it is, which is isn't, but if it is, it should be. Also, legal isn't legal. Ergo, legal is illegal. And so... truth is illegal. Duh.

 

[Botkinetti]

@fraurosena if you were at all interested in selling your soul and turning your back on everything you hold to be decent I am sure you could become a speech writer for either trump or Giuliani. Your word salad made about as much sense as anything that comes out of their mouths.

[GreyhoundFan]

Because of course he did: "Trump tweets the word ‘Africa’ for first time as president — in defense of whites in South Africa"

Spoiler

President Trump on Wednesday night said he was directing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to “closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures,” as well as the “killing of farmers.”

He then quoted Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, who earlier Wednesday had railed against plans by South Africa’s ruling party to pursue constitutional changes allowing the government to redistribute land without compensation. The measure is designed to redress racial inequalities that have persisted nearly a quarter-century after the end of apartheid in 1994.

The episode represented a case study in how the president runs his administration. The apparent basis of Trump’s directions to the nation’s top diplomat were accusations leveled by Fox — accusations that echo talking points used by white-nationalist groups, including an organization that has referred to “the so-called apartheid” and the “so-called ‘historical injustices of the past.’”

The South African government responded to the president on Twitter, saying the country “totally rejects this narrow perception which only seeks to divide our nation and reminds us of our colonial past.” The government pledged to “speed up the pace of land reform in a careful and inclusive manner that does not divide our nation.”

Any attempt by the State Department to influence land policy in South Africa would probably be undermined by the absence of an ambassador to South Africa, one of Africa’s top economies. Trump has yet to name a replacement for Patrick Gaspard, who left the post in December 2016.

The alleged plight of white South Africans is a major rallying cry of far-right movements across North America, Europe and Australia. An online petition titled “Genocide of whites in South Africa,” which calls on Trump to allow “white Boers to come to the United States,” has garnered nearly 23,000 signatures.

Daniel Dale, a correspondent for the Toronto Star, observed that Trump’s tweet Wednesday marked the first time he had used the word “Africa” on the social media platform since becoming president — “to express support for white people,” Dale said, “on the recommendation” of white nationalists, whose claims had been amplified by the Fox host. An archive of Trump’s tweets indeed reveals that Wednesday’s post was his first as president that included the word “Africa.”

On his show, Carlson attacked Pompeo by name for not addressing “the seizures, which should be getting worldwide attention.”

“In other words, ‘nothing to see here,’ says Mike Pompeo’s State Department,” Carlson said.

The Fox host said he had “called over to the State Department” for comment and received what he described as a deficient response. He displayed the statement and read it aloud in full. According to Carlson, it read:

“We are aware of these reports and have been following this issue very closely for some time. South Africa is a strong democracy with resilient institutions, including a free press and an independent judiciary. South Africans are grappling with the difficult issue of land reform through an open process including public hearings, broad-based consultations, and active civil society engagement. President [Cyril] Ramaphosa has pledged that the land reform process will follow the rule of law and its implementation will not adversely affect econ growth, agricultural production, or food security.”

Carlson labeled the statement “unbelievable.”

A spokesman for the State Department told The Washington Post a comment was unavailable late Wednesday and wouldn’t confirm the authenticity of the statement presented by Carlson.

Carlson, who enjoys the coveted 8 p.m. time slot on Fox, said the South African president was “seizing land from his own citizens without compensation because they are the wrong skin color.”

He warned that South Africa would travel a similar path as Zimbabwe, where the expropriation of white-owned land 18 years ago caused economic shocks that destabilized the country. But the right-wing host said the problem was not just economic but also “moral,” observing a double standard when it comes to allegations of racism.

“Racism is what our elites say they dislike most — ‘Donald Trump is a racist,’ they say,” Carlson said. “But they’ve paid no attention to this at all. In fact, Ramaphosa is one of Barack Obama’s favorite leaders in the world.” Delivering the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in Johannesburg last month, Obama praised Ramaphosa — an anti-apartheid activist, trade-union leader and businessman worth $550 million — for “inspiring new hope.”

Carlson called the segment an “exclusive investigation” into Ramaphosa’s wrongs, even though the vexed issue has received considerable press coverage and sustained scholarly attention.

The dispute stretches back to the early 20th century, when South Africa’s Natives Land Act of 1913 stripped black people of the right to own land outside specific plots set aside for them. The restriction tightened during the apartheid era, as the governing National Party created desolate “homelands” for black people.

A legal basis for land restitution emerged as a new South African democracy was proclaimed in 1994. But the process was slow and riddled with bureaucratic uncertainty.

A 2017 land audit released by the consultancy Agri Development Solutions and AGRI SA, a farm lobby organization, found that nonwhites owned 27 percent of farmland in South Africa, compared with 14 percent in 1994.

A range of measures was then considered, including a proposal for the government to take land in exchange for “just and equitable” compensation, less than the market would probably demand. Another measure would have barred foreigners from buying farmland.

When Ramaphosa assumed the presidency at the end of last year, he urged consideration of expropriation without compensation, so long, he said, as the government’s actions didn’t threaten the economy or food security.

“This conference has resolved that the expropriation of land without compensation should be among the mechanisms available to government to give effect to land reform and redistribution,” he said in a closing address at his party’s conference. “It has also resolved that in determining the mechanisms of implementation, we must ensure that we do not undermine the economy, agricultural production and food security.”

Investors have raised concerns about land expropriation, particularly during a period of sluggish economic growth.

Meanwhile, some have sounded alarm bells about the racial politics of forced changes to land possession. One group that has been particularly vocal is AfriForum, a white Afrikaner rights collective, whose leaders have met with congressional staff and members of the U.S. Agency for International Development, as HuffPost documented in May.

This month, the group published a list of farms it said were being targeted for expropriation. It called the government’s plan “destructive” and “ahistoric.”

In March, AfriForum claimed the first several months of the year had already seen “15 farm murders” and “109 farm attacks” in South Africa — the potential basis for Trump’s reference to the “killing of farmers.”

“Our rural areas are trapped in a crime war,” said Ian Cameron, identified as AfriForum’s “head of safety.”

But a fact-checking website called Africa Check says it is “near impossible” to obtain an exact calculation of farm murders because of gaps in records, though it maintains that claims of a “white genocide” lack support.

According to South African court records, AfriForum has resisted efforts meant to address racial inequities and their visual markers. Praising historical figures whose names once appeared on street signs, the white-rights group said these individuals “made their contributions long before the so-called apartheid.”

The group has about 200,000 paid members, according to Al Jazeera.

Media Matters for America, the left-leaning watchdog group, accuses the AfriForum’s leaders of “exaggerating the plight of South Africa’s white farmers.” Their claims have been endorsed by figures such as Katie Hopkins, a British commentator who has compared immigrants to “cockroaches.”

Shortly after joining Rebel Media, the Canadian equivalent of Breitbart, Hopkins announced that she was going to South Africa to document the “racial war waged by black extremists who are systematically murdering white farmers.” Numerous right-wing activists and Internet personalities have undertaken similar projects.

“The Trump administration has not weighed in on this,” Carlson said on his show.

Within hours, Trump had fixed that.

 

[fraurosena]

I can imagine him standing in his bedroom, the tangerine of his face slowly turning to bright turnip as his head swivels between the three televisions surrounding him. His long wispy hair swirls around his face and he stamps his foot angrily before he shouts at the top of his lungs...