tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23316137036995687612024-03-05T02:51:05.961-08:00Richard's Recommended ReadingSince there are other opinions besides my own, oddly enough, you may want to check out what other people think or how they visualize the world. That's what this site is for. I've compiled lengthier articles that I found to be particularly interesting, insightful or entertaining. Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.comBlogger265125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-41508808219069461222023-12-09T11:39:00.000-08:002023-12-09T11:39:58.639-08:00The Biggest ‘Greedflation’ Study Yet Looked At 1,300 Corporations. Many Were Lying To You About Inflation.<p style="text-align: center;"> (Story by Ryan Hogg, Fortune.com,
8 December 2023)</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As they rolled their eyes at the frustratingly familiar
sight of price markups on grocery store aisles, the shopper of 2022 might have
wondered whether corporations were doing everything they could to keep prices
down as inflation hit generational highs. The answer now appears to be a
resounding no. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A joint <a href="https://www.ippr.org/files/2023-12/1701878131_inflation-profits-and-market-power-dec-23.pdf" target="_blank">study</a> by the think tanks IPPR and Common Wealth found
profiteering by some of the world’s biggest companies forced prices up
significantly higher than costs during 2022.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Greedflation</b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Inflation soared across the globe last year, peaking near
11% in the Eurozone and above 9% in the U.S.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The source of that high inflation has become a well-trodden
line. Analysts have typically laid the blame on supply chain bottlenecks
created by excess demand during the COVID-19 pandemic and exacerbated by
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The war also increased energy prices, leading to further
rises in inflation as suppliers factored in higher transport and running costs.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">While this obviously contributed to rising prices, the
report finds that company profits increased at a much faster rate than costs
did, in a process often dubbed “greedflation.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Profits for companies in some of the world’s largest
economies rose by 30% between 2019 and 2022, significantly outpacing inflation,
according to the group’s research of 1,350 firms across the U.S., the U.K.,
Europe, Brazil, and South Africa.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Inflation: What goes up doesn’t always come down<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the U.K., the research found that 90% of profit increases
occurred among just 11% of publicly listed firms. Profiteering was more broad
in the U.S., where a third of publicly listed firms were responsible for most
of the increase in profits.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The biggest perpetrators were energy companies like Shell,
ExxonMobil, and Chevron, who were able to enjoy <a href="https://fortune.com/europe/2023/07/27/shell-totalenergies-profits-drop-oil-and-gas-prices/" target="_blank">massive profits</a> last year as demand moved away from
Russian oil and gas. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Food producers including Kraft Heinz realized their own
profit surges. The war in Ukraine rocked global grain supplies and fertilizer
prices, significantly increasing the cost of food, which remains sticky. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The findings add to a growing body of research seeking to
highlight the role of major businesses in forcing up inflation last year. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A June <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2023/06/23/Euro-Area-Inflation-after-the-Pandemic-and-Energy-Shock-Import-Prices-Profits-and-Wages-534837" target="_blank">study</a> by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) found
that 45% of Eurozone inflation in 2022 could be attributed to domestic profits.
Companies in a position to benefit most from higher commodity prices and
supply-demand mismatches raised their profits by the most, the study found.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">CEOs of the world's biggest companies <a href="https://fortune.com/2023/03/16/inflation-is-still-the-800-pound-gorilla-in-the-room-say-ceos-fortune-500/" target="_blank">consistently</a> sounded the alarm on inflation as a
significant barrier to growth. Many blamed rising input costs on their own
price hikes. However, lots of those CEOs appear to have instead used the panic
of rising costs to pump up their balance sheet.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In April, Société Générale economist Albert Edwards <a href="https://fortune.com/2023/04/05/end-of-capitalism-inflation-greedflation-societe-generale-corporate-profits/" target="_blank">released a scathing note</a> saying he hadn’t seen
anything like the current levels of corporate greed in his four decades working
in finance. He said companies were using the war in Ukraine as an excuse to
hike prices in search of profits.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“The end of Greedflation must surely come. Otherwise, we may
be looking at the end of capitalism,” Edwards wrote. “This is a big issue for
policymakers that simply cannot be ignored any longer.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Prices coming down</b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Inflation is now beginning to regulate in most major
economies and coming closer to most Central Banks’ targeted 2%. Some companies
that previously passed rising costs onto customers to continue making a profit
have now sought to repay them with price cuts.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Last week, Ikea stores owner Ingka’s deputy CEO said the
company would be spending $1.1 billion to absorb inflation and bring down the
prices of goods in its stores.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“People have thin wallets, but they still have needs,
dreams, and frustrations,” Juvencio Maeztu <a href="https://fortune.com/europe/2023/11/29/ikea-stores-owner-plans-spend-1-billion-cut-prices-2024-sign-global-deflation-walmart/" target="_blank">told <i>Fortune</i></a>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In November, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon <a href="https://fortune.com/2023/11/16/walmart-ceo-deflation-retail-prices-inflation/" target="_blank">suggested</a> the era of high inflation in the U.S. was
over, and shoppers may soon begin to experience a contraction in prices—known
as “deflation”—in company stores.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/the-biggest-study-of-greedflation-yet-looked-at-1-300-corporations-to-find-many-of-them-were-lying-to-you-about-inflation/ar-AA1lcmku?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=6fbb3fd382af417fa0e50f8798e3f4a6&ei=39">https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/the-biggest-study-of-greedflation-yet-looked-at-1-300-corporations-to-find-many-of-them-were-lying-to-you-about-inflation/ar-AA1lcmku?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=6fbb3fd382af417fa0e50f8798e3f4a6&ei=39</a>
<o:p></o:p></p>Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-34623719022547414122022-07-24T10:33:00.002-07:002022-07-24T10:33:59.171-07:00Is 'wokeness' responsible for US and European heat waves? Absolutely.<p> With record temperatures steam-pressing the United States
and much of Europe, Africa and Asia, many in my Science-Is-A-Hoax Facebook
group have posed a sensible question: Is "wokeness" to blame for
these heat waves?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As a white man with access to the internet and an
unwillingness to care about anyone besides myself, I can tell you the answer
is, indisputably, yes. <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/04/18/ron-desantis-video-wokeness-school-board/7356355001/" target="_blank">Liberal wokeness</a> is causing temperatures to rise and
forcing me to leave my Hummer idling in the driveway with the AC on and the
doors open in an attempt to cool the air around my house.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">President Joe Biden and his windmill-hugging liberal minions
will tell you the soaring temperatures have something to do with “climate
change” or “global warming” or “humanity’s unwillingness to stop destroying the
planet, thereby guaranteeing its own extinction.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, if you believe that, I have a coastal
bridge to sell you! (FULL DISCLOSURE: Bridge is currently underwater and will
require minor heightening and repairs.)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On Tuesday, the National Weather Service, which notoriously
attempts to influence conservatives with left-wing concepts like “facts” and
“data,” forecast “<a href="http://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/discussions/hpcdiscussions.php?disc=pmdspd" target="_blank">dangerous heat</a>” across the country, ranging from the
high 90s to triple digits. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In a heat advisory, the Weather Service wrote: “Take extra
precautions if you work or spend time outside. When possible reschedule
strenuous activities to early morning or evening. Know the signs and
symptoms <a href="https://forecast.weather.gov/wwamap/wwatxtget.php?cwa=usa&wwa=Heat%20Advisory" target="_blank">of heat exhaustion and heat stroke</a>.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">You don’t get to tell me what to do, you Marxist
meteorologists. I’m an American, and if I want to go out in the backyard and
dump used motor oil in the pond while breathing in the welcoming smoke of my
neighbor’s tire fire, I will do so without knowing the signs and symptoms of
heat exhaustion, thank you very much. Commies.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Now back to why wokeness is to blame for the heat, and for
everything I don’t want to be forced to care about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wokeness is an effort to get a person
like me to treat people who aren’t exactly like me with some level of basic
human decency, usually through onerous requests like respecting their identity
or faith, not making offensive jokes at their expense or having to make almost
immeasurably small adjustments to the way I speak or live my life.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It could involve a person saying, "I use he/him
pronouns and would appreciate you using them when you refer to me," and me
saying, "That would require me to be considerate, and I can't do that
because my brain is busy figuring out new ways to 'own the libs' on
Twitter."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Or it could involve a teacher giving my child the historical
context of racism in America so he can grow up with a full understanding of our
nation's complicated past, when I would prefer that teacher stick to the
teachings of Sean Hannity, who once said: "The U.S. is the <a href="https://www.cc.com/video/mr1053/the-colbert-report-sean-hannity-loves-america" target="_blank">greatest, best country God has ever given man</a> on
the face of the earth.“<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When confronted with wokeness, I have two options: Listen,
understand and do my best to make another person’s life better (HAH!); or get
extremely angry and vent about it online.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Obviously, I always choose the second option, which is bad
for global temperatures because getting angry online causes my brain to start
functioning, and the friction involved in firing dormant synapses generates
SERIOUS heat.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Now imagine how many of me there are in this country and
around the world and how much heat our brains are cranking out when we get
angered by woke-ism. Is that enough to explain why <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/07/19/europe-heatwave-uk-temperature-record-broken/10094289002/" target="_blank">the United Kingdom shattered its previous high-temperature
records</a> on Tuesday, with one village in eastern England hitting 104.5
degrees Fahrenheit?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">No, not quite. The other woke-induced issue contributing to
these heat waves is the voluminous hot air released by Republican politicians
and right-wing pundits when they are angry about wokeness, which is all the
time.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin recently released a
weather-changing blast of hot air when he <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/27/politics/ron-johnson-school-shooting-wokeness-comments/index.html" target="_blank">blamed school shootings like the one in Uvalde, Texas, on
wokeness</a>: “We stopped teaching values in so many of our schools. Now we’re
teaching wokeness, we’re indoctrinating our children with things like CRT,
telling some children they’re not equal to others, and they’re the cause of
other people’s problems.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nikki Haley, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations
and possible GOP presidential candidate, <a href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1549462055253598213?s=20&t=cq-HqawTAezOkubjD_GCJw" target="_blank">spiked the room temperature in Fox News’ studio</a> Tuesday,
saying America needs to "get rid of all this woke stuff” and start
fighting for “normal people.” <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Do you see the harm you’re doing to the environment, you
woke warriors? You’re causing people like Haley to warm the earth’s atmosphere
with fired-up comments suggesting you’re not normal. Should she have kept that
thought to herself and never admitted she had it to anyone, anywhere, ever?
Yes. But you folks in the “let’s all take the infinitesimally small measures
necessary so everyone can be their true selves” crowd forced Haley to say
it out loud in a billowing puff of hot air and now WE HAVE FLIGHTS GETTING
CANCELED BECAUSE <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2022/07/18/extreme-heat-wave-europe-uk/10087274002/" target="_blank">AIRPORT RUNWAYS ARE MELTING</a>!!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Shame on all of you for trying to force us normals to think
about someone other than ourselves. You woke-ists have nobody but yourselves to
blame for these heat waves. Either that or I typed this column outdoors
by the tire fire without knowing the signs and symptoms of heat exhaustion.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/is-wokeness-responsible-for-us-and-european-heat-waves-absolutely/ar-AAZMHNs?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=c99e491693c84d17b89a2463959b05a6 </p>Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-44171393166683755802022-06-11T10:59:00.005-07:002022-06-11T10:59:50.273-07:00School Shootings: One Of My Students Asked If I’d Stand Between Them And A Gunman. Here’s What I Said.<p> <span style="text-align: center;">(By
Amanda Mayes, Huff Post, 30 May 2022)</span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p>“Ms. Mayes? If a gunman came in here, would you protect us?
Would you stand between us and the gunman?”
It was about two months into my third long-term substitute teaching
position at my high school alma mater. I returned when my high school mentor
was diagnosed with cancer. When he came back in remission, I stayed to continue
to build and shape the community that had given me a sense of self in my
formative years.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This group of students was still new to me, but I adored
them. Sure, they had their moments when they would rather be sucked into a
phone screen than discuss the ramifications of gerrymandering, the intricacies
of supply and demand, or the Gilded Age.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But teenagers deserve more credit than we ever give them.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">They are kind, intelligent, insightful and bold. I was
supposed to be their teacher, but I learned so much about myself and the world
from them. When they are of age to vote, they will ignite this world with
compassion. We do not deserve them, especially when we continuously fail to
protect them.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">That day, I was running my first active shooter drill.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When I sat in these same desks and walked down these same
halls six years earlier, the only scenarios we rehearsed were for tornadoes,
fires, and asking a special someone to prom.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But this is the new normal. My students were restless. It
was a planned drill ― not always a given, as some drills are enacted without
warning. But the notice did little to calm nerves and suppress the reality that
we must rehearse for the possibility of our own deaths.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I reviewed my lesson plan, glared at the finicky overhead
projector, took a sip of coffee, and waited. No one knew when the principal’s
voice would come over the intercom, triggering the drill.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The drill came and went, and melted into the new normalcy of
a modern school day, with full knowledge that our paper-thin classroom walls
were no match for automatic weapons fire.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But this is not normal. This should not be normal.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We ask our teachers to do so much — to be educators, caregivers,
counselors, nurses, peacekeepers, custodians, disciplinarians. And now we ask
them to be human shields.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When I stumbled into teaching, it had not crossed my mind
that I would have to grapple with my own mortality and weigh the worth of my
life against those of my students, despite growing up in this era. I was in
third grade when Columbine stunned the world of education. I was in 11th grade
when the Virginia Tech shooting happened.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Yes. Yes, of course I would,” I told the teenager who had
asked if I would protect my students.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I made the decision to sacrifice myself to save my students
should an active shooter enter my classroom. Part of teaching is believing in
the future and believing in a better future. My students must survive to make
that future a possibility.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But it is not a decision I should have to make.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">With each new mass shooting, the arguments against
common-sense gun restrictions appear like clockwork:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>“If we armed the teachers, this wouldn’t happen.”</i><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I am an educator. A mentor. A helper. A guide. A light. I
will not be relegated to a role of perpetuating this American culture of
violence. I will not be complicit in the weaponization of myself and my fellow
teachers.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>“This is the price we pay for our Second Amendment
freedoms.”</i><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Why have many in this country decided that owning weapons
outweighs the safety and lives of our children and teachers? How many dead
students and dead teachers is your “freedom” worth to you? How high are you
willing to set the price to defend an amendment that has been outpaced by
technology? How is worrying about being shot at school or a movie theater or a
grocery store freedom? Your paranoia and misguided belief that <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/603528-i-wanted-you-to-see-something-about-her-i-wanted-you">“courage
is a man with a gun in his hand”</a> has corrupted the original intent of
an antiquated amendment.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We accept reasonable limitations to our other rights. Why is
this such a struggle with the right to bear arms?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>“Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”</i><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It is beyond time to limit access to tools used to kill more
efficiently. Why are you so terrified of your neighbor that you need an assault
rifle? Or feel the need to conceal and carry when you do your weekly grocery
shopping? This is a reflection of you — of your need for false power, of your
suspicions, of your cowardice — not a reflection of the society you purportedly
fear. An AR-15 or other military-grade weapon serves no purpose other than that
of destruction.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>“This is an act of a mentally ill person.”</i><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Stop equating mental illness as a requisite for murder.
Start supporting mental health care. Start normalizing discussion about mental
health. Start considering the mental health of those affected by gun violence.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>“Now is not the time for politics. Now is the time to
send thoughts and prayers.”</i><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Thoughts and prayers comfort those left behind. They also
assuage the consciences of those who plan to do nothing, who will continue to
support the status quo because it is comfortable, familiar, and politically expedient.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">These days I occasionally teach political science as an
adjunct at a college. Every classroom I enter triggers the same process: Check
the door. Take note of how it locks. Plan how to cover the windows. Find
potential barricades. Make a plan. Rehearse.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This process is more difficult at a college because the
classroom is not mine. It is used by several faculty members throughout the
day. Desks arrangements may be reconfigured. The blinds may be opened or
closed. Keys may be misplaced. A first aid kit may have vanished to another
room.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Each time the classroom could be different, which
necessitates quickly generating a new plan. I have lost sleep running different
scenarios in my mind to be prepared for the next day.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Creating a plan in case of an active shooter is second
nature now. It is part of the process. Along with preparing my lecture notes
and stashing my best dry erase markers, I think of ways to save the lives of my
students.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This should not be normal.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Instead of asking teachers to take on the impossible, to
accept the reality that they could die doing their job, ask yourself: Who
would have to be gunned down in your life for you to act?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Yes. I will sacrifice my life for the lives of my students.
But do not let this become my reality the next time I teach. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do not let my life and the lives of my
students fade into statistics.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/teachers-school-shootings-uvalde-texas_n_6293d1c7e4b05cfc269bee94?ncid=APPLENEWS00001">https://www.huffpost.com/entry/teachers-school-shootings-uvalde-texas_n_6293d1c7e4b05cfc269bee94?ncid=APPLENEWS00001</a>
<o:p></o:p></p>Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-49176693159564739392022-05-25T20:57:00.003-07:002022-06-11T11:01:40.042-07:00 School Shootings: The GOP’s Only Answer To School Shootings Didn’t Help In Uvalde, Texas<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">(By
Alex Yablon, Slate, 25 May 2022)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p>In the recent annals of American political rhetoric, there
have been few more consequential statements of ideology than NRA chief Wayne
LaPierre’s post–Sandy Hook truism that “the only thing that stops a bad guy
with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” The
line has gone from crisis PR spin to Republican Party dogma. But while the
“good guy with a gun” mantra has the ring of tough guy common sense, the
empirical evidence suggests armed cops and civilians do less than nothing to
deter mass shooters.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Look no further than <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/texas-republicans-armed-teachers_n_628dc1d9e4b0933e736c4979">Texas
Republicans’ responses</a> to this week’s mass shooting in the small town
of Uvalde, the deadliest at an elementary school since Sandy Hook. <a href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1529209566436655104">Speaking to
Newsmax</a>, Attorney General Ken Paxton, the top law enforcement and public
safety officer in the state, said: “We can’t stop bad people from doing bad
things. … We can potentially arm and prepare and train teachers and other
administrators to respond quickly. That, in my opinion, is the best answer.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="display: none; mso-hide: all;">Top of Form<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="display: none; mso-hide: all;">Bottom of Form<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Of course, this is Texas. It’s not like potential good guys
with guns were thin on the ground in Uvalde. Law enforcement actually engaged
the shooter <i>before</i> he got into the elementary school. Indeed,
as the Austin American-Statesman <a href="https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2022/05/24/live-updates-uvalde-texas-school-shooting/9913969002/">reported</a>,
it was actually a <i>school guard—</i>a good guy with a gun—who confronted
and failed to prevent the shooter’s entry. For years, though, Texas has
encouraged teachers to <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/03/07/texas-school-district-to-arm-teachers-with-weapons/">pack
heat</a>. In the wake of a 2018 shooting at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas,
Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation that encouraged schools to do exactly what
Ken Paxton now demands. It mattered little back then that Abbott was responding
to killings at a school that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/santa-fe-school-had-a-shooting-plan-armed-officers-and-practice-and-still-10-people-died/2018/05/19/58b1b55e-5b8d-11e8-8b92-45fdd7aaef3c_story.html">already
had two armed guards</a> and a plan to put guns in the hands of teachers.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As Republicans like Abbott and Paxton double down on the
same pro-gun proliferation response to every mass shooting, evidence
accumulates that weapons are rarely effective means of deterring or stopping
mass shootings. Last year, a group of
public health scholars <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2776515">published
a study</a> in the Journal of the American Medical Association examining
133 school shootings from 1980 to 2019. An armed guard was present in about a
quarter of the incidents in the study. Those schools actually suffered death
rates <i>nearly three times higher</i> than schools without armed
guards. Similarly, a 2020 review of gun policy research by the RAND Corporation
think tank <a href="https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/laws-allowing-armed-staff-in-K12-schools.html">found
no evidence</a> that the presence of more guns had any effect on gun
violence. Criminologists at Texas State University found that <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-shooter-study-2000-2013-1.pdf">unarmed
staff or the shooters themselves</a> are far more likely to bring a school
shooting to an end than someone with a gun returning fire.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So-called good guys with guns fail to effectively deter or
end mass shootings for a variety of tactical and psychological reasons. For one thing, it’s actually very hard to
shoot straight in a situation like a mass shooting. RAND analysts have found
that even highly trained NYPD officers only hit their intended target in <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG717.html">19 percent of gunfire
exchanges</a>. Winning a gunfight with a shooter only becomes more difficult
when the perpetrator carries a semi-automatic rifle like an AR-15, as the
Uvalde suspect and many others have done. These weapons have a much longer
range and are far more accurate than the kinds of pistols typically used by
police and civilian concealed carriers, allowing shooters to keep responders
far enough away that their own weapons will be of little use. The Uvalde
gunman, for instance, <a href="https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2022/05/24/suspect-info-heres-what-we-know-about-the-18-year-old-shooter-who-officials-say-killed-his-grandmother-14-students-and-1-teacher/">managed
to overpower two officers</a> whom he encountered on his way to the
elementary school.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the most extreme cases, a single gunman with a
semi-automatic rifle can stymie an entire SWAT team for hours: Back in 2015, a
single gunman assaulting a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood with an AK-style
rifle<a href="https://www.thetrace.org/2015/12/colorado-springs-shooter-standoff-gun-magazines/"> held
off police for the better part of a day</a> before surrendering. The idea that armed guards and teachers could
deter shootings in the first place presumes mass shooters behave rationally,
weighing risks, when in fact the opposite is true. As the JAMA authors <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2776515">noted</a>,
“many school shooters are actively suicidal, intending to die in the act, so an
armed officer may be an incentive rather than a deterrent.” Considering the long odds of taking down a
determined shooter equipped with an assault rifle, armed police and bystanders
sometimes have difficulty motivating themselves to actually engage at all, as
happened so infamously in the Parkland shooting when <a href="https://www.local10.com/news/local/2021/05/13/judge-rules-2-bso-fired-after-parkland-massacre-should-get-jobs-back-but-bso-says-it-stands-firm/">two
sheriff’s deputies apparently hid from the gunman</a>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So Republicans’ preferred response to mass shootings
operates in the realm of fantasy. The standard-issue liberal response—to ban
guns in a country where they outnumber people—is at this point not much more
realistic. That’s not to say there is no way to prevent a lot of mass
shootings, however. Civil gun seizure
orders, known as “red flag” laws, are a promising but underutilized means of
preemptively intervening when gun owners show signs they will hurt themselves
or others. If a gun owner makes a threat or behaves dangerously—committing
violent misdemeanors or torturing animals, for example—“red flag” laws allow
family, school workers, medical professionals, and law enforcement to petition
a judge for an emergency temporary order confiscating the dangerous person’s
weapons. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The laws function like more commonplace personal restraining
orders. Many states created civil gun seizure procedures in the wake of the
2018 Parkland shooting (though not Texas), and the NRA <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/03/19/under-pressure-nra-voices-support-gun-violence-restraining-orders/433716002/">even
offered limited support for the measures</a>. A <a href="https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M19-2162">2019 case study</a> of
California’s law, passed in the wake of the 2014 Isla Vista shooting, found the
orders were used in 21 cases where gun owners had made credible threats of mass
shootings. It’s at least conceivable that this law prevented other
possible atrocities.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Good guys with guns fail to stop bad guys with guns in the
moment because mass shootings are rare, surprising, and unpredictable events.
Red flag laws are effective because mass shooters are, by contrast, pretty
predictable: They almost always display clear warning signs that they are a
danger to society and themselves. The Uvalde shooter was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/25/uvalde-texas-school-shooting-gunman/">no
exception</a>: According to friends, he engaged in self-harm, shot a BB gun at
strangers, and expressed a desire to kill. He also posted frequently on social
media about his desire for guns. If Texas had the appropriate legal machinery
in place, the people in the shooter’s life who had been so alarmed by his
behavior might have had an opportunity to act before it was too late.<o:p></o:p></p>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/gop-school-uvalde-shooting-response-guys-with-guns.html">https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/gop-school-uvalde-shooting-response-guys-with-guns.html</a></span>Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-42955453353180054142022-01-30T10:48:00.000-08:002022-01-30T10:48:28.350-08:00Why Did Spotify Choose Joe Rogan Over Neil Young? Hint: It’s Not A Music Company<p style="text-align: center;"><b>(By
Travis M. Andrews, Washington Post, 28 January 2022)</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><b><o:p> </o:p></b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiW5Fnx6vGzkoYHqeEWFTrEDXl_-JGdRz7uTEx9N7UIncWXKuWpsqIqz_InwzVQvEeTbs9yFEPcE1l8KCAEoDKUZ4_uSTYaRKw6aVL3R-33lGcPNby0Je_d4KESDih6yelAmsAr2lI_EPF2Z8_78hF9NmjNv-a_HHsrBuSUQHJrpmyu37NfxcL30HWj" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="641" data-original-width="916" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiW5Fnx6vGzkoYHqeEWFTrEDXl_-JGdRz7uTEx9N7UIncWXKuWpsqIqz_InwzVQvEeTbs9yFEPcE1l8KCAEoDKUZ4_uSTYaRKw6aVL3R-33lGcPNby0Je_d4KESDih6yelAmsAr2lI_EPF2Z8_78hF9NmjNv-a_HHsrBuSUQHJrpmyu37NfxcL30HWj" width="320" /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">Neil Young, left, and Joe Rogan. (AP)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In one corner was Joe Rogan, the stand-up comedian and
former “Fear Factor” host turned provocative podcaster.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the other stood Neil Young, the
multi-Grammy-winning rock legend with a lifelong passion for progressive
causes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The battle lasted two days, and
Rogan won without making a peep.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Young started the scuffle when he posted a letter to his
website Monday, addressed to his manager and an executive at his record label,
demanding that his music catalogue be removed from Spotify in response to “fake
information about vaccines.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Specifically, Young cited Joe Rogan — who hosts “The Joe
Rogan Experience” podcast — and has suggested healthy, young people shouldn’t
get vaccinated. After catching the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/coronavirus/?itid=lk_inline_manual_7" target="_blank">coronavirus</a>, Rogan also praised ivermectin, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/09/01/ivermectin-covid-treatment/?itid=lk_inline_manual_6&itid=lk_inline_manual_23&itid=lk_inline_manual_7">a
medicine used to kill parasites in animals and humans</a> that has no
proven anti-viral benefits. “I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY
that I want all my music off their platform,” he wrote. “They can have Rogan or
Young. Not both.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Two days later, without a word from Rogan, Spotify began the
process of removing the famed rocker’s music, including his best-known hits
such as “Heart of Gold,” “Harvest Moon” and “Rockin’ in the Free World.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The speed of Spotify’s decision to sideline
Young was jarring. So why did the company do it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The answer is simple: This isn’t really a
story about Rogan or Young. It’s a story about Spotify. And, despite public
perception, Spotify isn’t a music company. It’s a tech company looking to
maximize profits.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><u>Spotify’s quest
to dominate the podcast space<o:p></o:p></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The company hasn’t been shy about its desire — in 2019,
Spotify announced it was <a href="https://investors.spotify.com/financials/press-release-details/2019/Spotify-Technology-SA-Announces-Financial-Results-for-Fourth-Quarter-2018/default.aspx">planning
to spend</a> up to $500 million to acquire companies “in the emerging
podcast marketplace.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That year it
purchased Gimlet Media, home of podcasts such as “Reply All,” “Homecoming” and
“Where Should We Begin? With Esther Perel,” for <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/2/6/18213456/spotify-podcast-gimlet-anchor-q4-results">an
estimated $230 million</a>. It also spent <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/2/21755151/spotify-podcasts-anchor-stats-data-wrapped-2020" target="_blank">more than $100 million</a> on Anchor, a platform that lets
users create and share their own podcasts.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The next year, Spotify spent <a href="https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/spotify-acquires-the-ringer-196-million-cash-bill-simmons-1203502471/">nearly
$200 million</a> to acquire the Ringer and its suite of popular podcasts,
such as “Binge Mode,” “The Press Box” and its founder’s “The Bill Simmons
Podcast.” And, of course, it reportedly spent more than $100 million to acquire
exclusive rights to a single show: the extremely popular, rabble-rousing “Joe
Rogan Experience.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I think it comes
down to, just frankly, business,” said John Simson, the program director for
the business and entertainment program at American University. “In the music
side of things, [Spotify is] paying out roughly 70 percent of all the revenue
that comes in. It goes right back out as royalties. They’re looking for other
places where the revenue split isn’t that dramatic. … Podcasts were certainly
their go-to.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The plan seems to be working. Spotify <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/27/spotify-says-u-s-podcast-listeners-now-use-its-service-more-than-apple-podcasts/" target="_blank">reportedly overtook</a> Apple Podcasts last year to become
the largest podcast provider in the United States.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><u>Spotify’s
strained relationship with musicians<o:p></o:p></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As Spotify built its podcasting empire, it has been
increasingly criticized by the musicians who use the platform. In December,
rapper T-Pain <a href="https://twitter.com/tpain/status/1476032631255060490?s=21">tweeted</a> a
breakdown of how many streams it takes for a musician to make $1 on various
services, pointing out that on Spotify it takes 315 while on Apple Music it’s
128. Several months earlier, artists and music industry workers, organized
by <a href="https://www.unionofmusicians.org/justice-at-spotify">the Union
of Musicians and Allied Workers</a>, protested outside Spotify offices around
the world — bringing petitions signed by more than 28,000 people that were
demanding, among other things, higher payouts for artists.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“I don’t think of any of these platforms as being music
companies that actually care about music. I think of them like technology
companies,” said Gabriel Teodros, a Seattle-based hip-hop artist who wrote a
viral Substack blog in December titled “<a href="https://gabrielteodros.substack.com/p/theres-no-money-in-streaming">There’s
no money in streaming</a>.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even so,
Teodros said he was surprised at the “swiftness” with which Spotify decided to
remove Young’s music, rather than Rogan’s podcast. “I thought it might be a
long, drawn-out thing.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Other big-name artists have also feuded with Spotify —
Taylor Swift pulled her music from the platform until it met her demands — but
none seemed to spark widespread change. That leaves Teodros wondering if
Young’s protest is “going to be a moment where public perception of public
streaming platforms are forever altered, or is it just a blip?”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Young has received an outpouring of support from across the
political and social spectrum: “I’m with #NeilYoung,” <a href="https://twitter.com/GeraldoRivera/status/1486548712818196489">tweeted</a> Geraldo
Rivera. “Waiting on all the musicians to step up and back Neil Young. Where are
you?” <a href="https://twitter.com/donwinslow/status/1486491902618714112">tweeted</a> author
Don Winslow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s not that dropping
Young won’t inflict any pain on Spotify. Most of his music is more than 18
months old, and older tunes have become popular during the pandemic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So it should come as no surprise that the day after Spotify
announced the removal of Young’s catalogue, SiriusXM said it would revive “Neil
Young Radio,” a channel dedicated to Young’s music and storytelling, for a
brief stint.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“When you have an
opportunity to present an iconic artist still at the height of his creativity,
you don’t hesitate to do it, again,” Steve Blatter, the company’s senior vice
president and general manager of music programming, said in a pointedly cheeky statement.
“Outspoken, brave, and a true music icon, Neil Young is in a rare class of
artists, and we are honored to collaborate with him to create a special audio
experience for his fans.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><u>Young’s plea to
other musicians<o:p></o:p></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“I sincerely hope that other artists and record companies
will move off the SPOTIFY platform and stop supporting SPOTIFY’s deadly
misinformation about COVID,” Young <a href="https://m.neilyoungarchives.com/news/1/article?id=Spotify-In-The-Name-Of-Truth">wrote</a> on
his blog on Wednesday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whether anyone
will follow remains to be seen. Many of the artists who could take up his
battle cry — elder statesmen of rock with large enough catalogues to hurt the
streaming service — no longer own their own music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the past few years, Bruce Springsteen, Bob
Dylan, Paul Simon, Tina Turner, Stevie Nicks, the David Bowie estate and many,
many more have sold their entire catalogues for large sums. Younger artists,
including John Legend and Ryan Tedder, have begun joining in.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In most of these cases, the artist sold both the publishing
and the recording copyrights. That means, unless they have a special clause
around how their music is used, they don’t have any power to dictate where
their tunes appear. And Simson, the American University professor, said such
clauses are rare. “The reason [these companies] are paying all that money is
that these streaming services are driving up value” of those catalogues.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In his blog post, Young wrote that removing his music from
Spotify will equate to “losing 60% of my world wide streaming income.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So while other artists — particularly his
contemporaries — rallying around the legend and pulling their music from the
platform might sound like a nice rock-and-roll idea, it’s probably not going to
happen.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><u>Is losing one
artist enough to force Spotify to change?<o:p></o:p></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Then there’s the question of how much impact a single artist
can have. The numbers look staggering. The Weeknd, an extreme outlier,
currently garners 86.6 million monthly listeners. Adele has 60 million. Drake
has about 53.6 million monthly listeners. Taylor Swift has about 54 million;
BTS has 42.3 million.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If one or two of them pulled their music, how many of
Spotify’s 172 million subscribers would actually delete their accounts? How
many of its 381 million monthly users would stop listening?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Spotify is probably counting on the inertia
aspect. Once you’re on a particular streaming platform, you’re likely to stay
there because you’ve got your playlists, you’re familiar with it,” Simson said.
“It just feels scary to all of a sudden have to move.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And those are just the top artists. What about everyone
else? As <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/05/eve-6-band-twitter-max-collins/?itid=lk_inline_manual_58">Eve
6 frontman Max Collins</a> sarcastically <a href="https://twitter.com/Eve6/status/1486558737661714432">tweeted</a>, “if
spotify doesn’t take neil young seriously i bet they’ll heed the demands of
eve6.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Now consider that Rogan has an estimated 11 million
listeners <i>per episode</i>. He usually posts four to five of them each
week, and they frequently last longer than three hours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Spotify bought Rogan’s podcast,
Stephanie Liu, an analyst with the research firm Forrester, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/business/media/joe-rogan-spotify-contract.html">told</a> the
New York Times, “This is part of Spotify’s bigger bet on podcasts. Spotify is
buying not only Joe Rogan’s extensive and future content library, but also his
loyal audience.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To retain that audience, they need Rogan. Plus — and this is
key — he’s exclusive to Spotify. Very few musical artists are. Neil Young’s
albums are on Amazon, Apple and several other services. Rogan’s library is only
on Spotify. You don’t need Spotify to listen to Young, but you do need it to
listen to Rogan.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><u>The power of
Joe Rogan<o:p></o:p></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“If podcasting is Spotify’s biggest strategic bet, then Joe
Rogan is the biggest piece of that,” said Tatiana Cirisano, a music industry
analyst and consultant at MIDiA Research. “Other podcasters might be looking at
this and wondering, ‘Is Spotify safe for what I want to say?’ ”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She added that while Rogan’s audience may be
large, it’s also narrow. His audience skews young and male. He plays the role
of provocateur, beholden to no political belief system. While that obviously
appeals to his fans, it’s unlikely those who don’t agree with him are tuning
in.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“It’s a lot easier to serve a huge audience of music fans
than it is to serve a huge audience of podcast listeners. [A] music genre isn’t
a polarizing thing,” Cirisano said, adding that while people may listen to
various genres of music, they’re much less likely to listen to podcasts across
the political spectrum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Losing an artist
doesn’t necessarily mean losing all the fans of that artist. But lose Rogan,
and his listeners aren’t likely to switch to Michelle Obama’s podcast, which is
also on Spotify.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/04/28/joe-rogan-podcast-vaccine-coronavirus/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_69">Joe
Rogan is using his wildly popular podcast to question vaccines. Experts are
fighting back.</a></i><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Cirisano said this could be a “crucial moment” for Spotify,
and that Young had forced them to choose between two influential talents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She is, however, doubtful that Young’s move will
persuade many people to quit Spotify.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I
think it takes a lot for people to switch platforms,” Cirisano said. “I’m not
sure if anyone aside from the top 1 percent of Neil Young stans are going to do
that.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/01/28/spotify-joe-rogan-neil-young/">https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/01/28/spotify-joe-rogan-neil-young/</a>
<o:p></o:p></p>Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-61922410636664790222021-12-14T20:39:00.003-08:002021-12-14T20:39:41.584-08:00Fox Stays Silent About New Texts That Expose Hannity & Ingraham's Jan. 6 Hypocrisy<p><span style="text-align: center;">(By
Brian Stelter, CNN Business, 14 December 2021)</span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Fox News did not bother to air Monday night's meeting of the
House committee investigating the 1/6 attack. Neither did Newsmax or One
America News. So right-wing TV audiences did not hear when Rep. Liz
Cheney <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/13/politics/january-6-meadows-contempt-report-vote/index.html" target="_blank">revealed</a> that some of Fox's biggest stars pressed Mark
Meadows for help during the siege of the Capitol. "Mark, the president needs to tell
people in the Capitol to go home," Laura Ingraham texted Meadows.
"This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy."</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">She knew. They all knew. They all knew the truth right away.
But by the night of 1/6, Ingraham was spouting conspiracy theories about
"ANTIFA" and excusing the peaceful "patriots" who, let's be
clear, paraded into DC based on a lie she pushed over and over again. Fox's
pro-Trump programming was partly to blame for the Big Lie, so when that lie led
to violence, of course some of the hosts panicked and tried to put out the
fire.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On Monday, Cheney read two other texts from Fox stars to
Meadows from 1/6. One was from Brian Kilmeade: "Please, get him on TV.
Destroying everything you have accomplished." The other was from Sean
Hannity: "Can he make a statement, ask people to leave the Capitol?"
Cheney didn't specify what time those texts were sent. But I was struck by
Hannity's casual tone about the unfolding terror. At least Kilmeade said
"please, get him on TV."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The 1/6 committee has thousands of other texts and emails.
Cheney shared just a tiny sampling on Monday. But the tiny sampling is deeply
embarrassing for Fox and the Murdochs. As Maggie Haberman said, this
"undercuts efforts by everyone whose name she read who might say Jan. 6
wasn't that bad." It "wasn't that bad" has been one of Fox's
dominant themes this year. This banner on "Don Lemon Tonight"
captured it perfectly: "Fox hosts and Donald Trump Jr. knew exactly what
was happening and now they pretend it didn't happen."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">"These texts prove something essential," Amanda
Carpenter <a href="https://www.thebulwark.com/fox-hosts-begged-trump-to-stop-the-january-6-attack-on-the-capitol/" target="_blank">wrote for The Bulwark.</a> "No matter what they say
now, Trump's loyalists knew at the time that what was happening at the Capitol
was not a peaceful protest. They knew that it was a dangerous attack on
American democracy. And they knew that Trump was responsible for it. That's why
they sent the texts pleading with him, through his staff, to make it
stop."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Or as SE Cupp put it on CNN just now, "Fox News
viewers, you have been had."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Yes -- but here's what the Fox hosts will likely say if
they're ever challenged about this. They'll say they condemned the riot at the
time. And they all did, if only briefly. But Hannity and Ingraham also continued
to lie about the election and strongly suggest that leftists were to blame for
the Capitol chaos. And many Fox hosts have bashed other media outlets for
continuing to report on the prosecutions and the probes -- in other words, for
continuing to care about the terror. The memory-holing effort has been so
extensive precisely because figures like Ingraham knew how bad it was. When she
wrote "this is hurting all of us," I'm certain she wasn't thinking
about America or the rule of law. She was thinking about "us" in the
Trump-controlled Republican party. But she was right: This is hurting all of
us.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Total silence from Fox<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It's crucial to note that Fox didn't air the 7pm ET hearing
live or address the revelations about the texts later in the day. "Fox
viewers are being shielded from the Fox hosts' urgent texts to Meadows,"
MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell <a href="https://twitter.com/Lawrence/status/1470555573905199105" target="_blank">commented</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hannity actually gabbed with Meadows during
the 9pm hour but "did not mention the texts at all," as The Daily
Beast's Justin Baragona noted <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/sean-hannity-hosts-mark-meadows-after-their-bombshell-text-drops-ignores-it-completely/" target="_blank">here</a>. (Hannity hit back at Cheney, however, by saying
"I love how Liz is now partnered with the people that called her father a
war criminal, a murderer, and a crook. Pretty amazing!")<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">During <a href="https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1470586134501728259" target="_blank">the chat</a>, Meadows acknowledged that he is about to be held
in criminal contempt. But here's how Hannity opened the hour: "The
hyperpartisan predetermined-outcome anti-Trump January 6 committee just voted 9
to 0 to hold Mark Meadows in contempt for refusing to comply with their
orders." With that framing, why would any Fox viewer take any committee
action seriously? Further, Hannity focused on Capitol security failures; blamed
Democrats for those failures; and brought up the rioting in the wake of George
Floyd's death. This is Fox's tried-and-true approach whenever faced with the
awfulness of 1/6: Dodge or distort or deflect.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A Fox spokesperson did not respond to my request for comment
about the texts on Monday night.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fox-stays-silent-about-new-texts-that-expose-hannity-and-ingraham-s-jan-6-hypocrisy/ar-AARMXis?ocid=entnewsntp">https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fox-stays-silent-about-new-texts-that-expose-hannity-and-ingraham-s-jan-6-hypocrisy/ar-AARMXis?ocid=entnewsntp</a>
<o:p></o:p></p>Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-23846055733807161072021-11-11T08:29:00.004-08:002021-11-11T08:29:48.877-08:00‘I Think We Should Throw Those Books In A Fire’: Movement On Right To Target Books<p style="text-align: center;"> <span style="text-align: center;">(By
Aaron Blake, Washington Post, 10 November 2021)</span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p>Perhaps the most <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/11/05/2-quotes-that-defined-democrats-bad-election-day/?itid=lk_inline_manual_2" target="_blank">infamous quote of the 2021 Virginia governor’s race</a> —
and indeed of <i>any </i>2021 race — belongs to Democrat Terry
McAuliffe: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should
teach.”</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What many people might not have fully processed is that the
quote stemmed from <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/10/26/perfect-distillation-2021-politics-is-banned-book-controversy-2013/?itid=lk_inline_manual_4" target="_blank">a debate about books in schools</a>. Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin
(R) had attacked McAuliffe for, as governor, vetoing a bill to allow parents to
opt their children out of reading assignments they deem to be explicit. The
impetus was a famous book from Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, “<a href="https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B000TWUTYG&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_5TEQKSJ8TBA3VW3SHJPZ&tag=thewaspos09-20&reshareId=CAZHGSDVYW0FJ72KRG0Q&reshareChannel=system" target="_blank">Beloved</a>,” about an enslaved Black woman who kills her
2-year-old daughter to prevent her from being enslaved herself.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">While that effort took place years ago, it was rekindled as
a political issue at a telling time. Not only are conservatives increasingly
targeting school curriculums surrounding race, but there’s also a building and
often-related effort to rid school libraries of certain books.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The effort has been varied in the degree of its fervor and
the books it has targeted, but one particular episode this week showed just
what can happen when it’s taken to its extremes. Shortly after the election
result in Virginia, a pair of conservative school board members in the same
state proposed not just banning certain books deemed to be sexually explicit,
but burning them.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As the Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star <a href="https://fredericksburg.com/news/local/education/spotsylvania-school-board-orders-libraries-to-remove-sexually-explicit-books/article_6c54507a-6383-534d-89b9-c2deb1f6ba17.html" target="_blank">reported Tuesday</a>:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Two board members, Courtland representative Rabih Abuismail
and Livingston representative Kirk Twigg, said they would like to see the
removed books burned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I think we should
throw those books in a fire,” Abuismail said, and Twigg said he wants to “see
the books before we burn them so we can identify within our community that we
are eradicating this bad stuff.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Abuismail
reportedly added that allowing one particular book to remain on the shelves
even briefly meant the schools “would rather have our kids reading gay pornography
than about Christ.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It’s easy to caricature a particular movement with some of
its most extreme promoters. And there is a <a href="https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/classics" target="_blank">demonstrated history of efforts to ban books in schools</a>,
including by liberals. Such efforts have often involved classics such as “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Huckleberry-SeaWolf-Illustrated-Classic-ebook/dp/B08XHW78XN/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=" target="_blank">Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</a>,” “<a href="https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B00K0OI42W&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_BBHJ8EB5D818DKZM4N9G&tag=thewaspos09-20" target="_blank">To Kill a Mockingbird</a>” and “<a href="https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B001BC2ZS6&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_SXPBAV87YP4QKKZM29NN&tag=thewaspos09-20" target="_blank">Of Mice and Men</a>” for their depictions of race and use of
racist language more commonly used at the time the books were written. More
recently, conservatives have often challenged books teaching kids about LGBTQ
issues.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But advocates say what’s happening now is more pronounced.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“What has taken us aback this year is the
intensity with which school libraries are under attack,” said Nora Pelizzari, a
spokeswoman at the National Coalition Against Censorship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She added that the apparent coordination of
the effort sets it apart: “Particularly when taken in concert with the
legislative attempts to control school curricula, this feels like a more
overarching attempt to purge schools of materials that people disagree with. It
feels different than what we’ve seen in recent years.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Even as the news broke Tuesday in Virginia, another school
board just outside Wichita, announced that it was removing 29 books from
circulation. Among them were another Morrison book, “<a href="https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B000TWUTYQ&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_YV8FCGRHYYZAYWN663YF&tag=thewaspos09-20" target="_blank">The Bluest Eye</a>,” and writings about racism in America
including August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play “<a href="https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B07V64WTH9&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_3E40AMSDF6YG6TQ5N6W5&tag=thewaspos09-20" target="_blank">Fences</a>,” as well as “<a href="https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B00L0M73ZM&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_2SP7Q6DYP53M2GKWGN7E&tag=thewaspos09-20" target="_blank">They Called Themselves the K.K.K.</a>,” a history of the white
supremacist group. The books haven’t technically been banned, but rather aren’t
available for checking out pending a review.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“At this time, the district is not in a position to know if the books
contained on this list meet our educational goals or not,” a school official
said in an email.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The day before, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) issued an
executive order calling on state education officials to review the books
available to students for “<a href="https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/gov-abbott-wants-statewide-standards-on-school-books-to-eliminate-obscene-content/2809320/" target="_blank">pornography and other obscene content</a>.” Abbott indicated
before the order that such content <a href="https://gov.texas.gov/uploads/files/press/TroxellDan.pdf" target="_blank">needed
to be examined and removed if it was found</a>. He reportedly did not specify
what the “obscene content” standard for books should be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Abbott added Wednesday that the Texas
Education Agency should report any instances of pornography being made
available to minors “<a href="https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2021/11/10/gov-greg-abbott-calls-tea-education-report-pornography-texas-schools-prosecution/6369086001/" target="_blank">for prosecution to the fullest extent of the law</a>.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The effort builds upon <a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/Texas-lawmaker-launches-probe-of-school-16565861.php" target="_blank">a review launched last month by state Rep. Michael Krause (R)</a>,
who is running for state attorney general. Krause is targeting books that
“contain material that might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or
any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex or convey
that a student, by virtue of their race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist,
or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Krause doesn’t say what he intends to recommend about such
books, but he accompanied his inquiry with a list of more than 800 of them,
including two Pulitzer Prize winner “The Confessions of Nat Turner” by William
Styron and Pulitzer finalist “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There has also been an effort by Republicans in Wisconsin
not focused on books, but broadly on the use of certain terminology in teaching
students. As <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/574567-woke-multiculturalism-equity-wisconsin-gop-proposes-banning-words-from" target="_blank">The Hill’s Reid Wilson reported</a> about the state GOP’s
particular effort to ban critical race theory from schools:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">[State Rep. Chuck] Wichgers (R), who represents Muskego in
the legislature, attached an addendum to his legislation that included a list
of “terms and concepts” that would violate the bill if it became law.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Among those words: “Woke,” “whiteness,”
“White supremacy,” “structural bias,” “structural racism,” “systemic bias” and
“systemic racism.” The bill would also bar “abolitionist teaching,” in a state
that sent more than 91,000 soldiers to fight with the Union Army in the Civil
War.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The list of barred words or
concepts includes “equity,” “inclusivity education,” “multiculturalism” and
“patriarchy,” as well as “social justice” and “cultural awareness.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Back in September, a school district in Pennsylvania
reversed a year-long <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/09/24/pennsylvania-school-book-ban-diversity/?itid=lk_inline_manual_33" target="_blank">freeze on certain books almost exclusively by or about people
of color</a>. A similar thing happened in Katy, Tex., near Houston, where
graphic novels about Black children struggling to fit in were <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/debate-over-black-author-s-book-texas-highlights-concerns-over-n1281647" target="_blank">removed and quickly reinstated last month</a>. Many such fights
have been concentrated in Texas.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There has also been a recent effort by a conservative group
in Tennessee to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/critical-race-theory-roils-tennessee-school-district-2021-09-21/" target="_blank">ban books written for young readers about the civil rights
struggle</a>. Supporters cite the <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2021/05/05/tennessee-bans-critical-race-theory-schools-withhold-funding/4948306001/" target="_blank">anti-critical race theory law</a> the state passed earlier
this year. And school officials in Virginia Beach recently announced they’d
review books, including ones about LGBTQ issues and Morrison’s “The Bluest
Eye,” after <a href="https://www.pilotonline.com/news/education/vp-nw-virginia-beach-banned-books-20211007-imqhy4n4cvfcvjlesp56gyx5ka-story.html" target="_blank">complaints from school board members</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, oftentimes the books involved are the
same.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As the Los Angeles Times <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-11-08/texas-schools-ordered-to-investigate-books" target="_blank">reported this week</a>, such battles are part of a much larger
debate over excluding books that has been injected with new intensity amid the
anti-critical race theory push and now, apparently, with the demonstrated
electoral success of that approach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
Spotsylvania County, Va., example is an important one to pick out. While the
two members floating burning books have <a href="https://fredericksburg.today/2020/08/16/abuismail-not-wearing-masks-not-anyones-business/" target="_blank">aligned with</a> <a href="https://fredericksburg.com/news/education/twigg-endorsed-in-the-livingston-race/article_1e737040-aafe-5da5-b80a-8c33bd27c9bb.html" target="_blank">conservatives</a>, the vote was unanimous. It was 6-0 in favor
of reviewing the books for sexually explicit content. School officials
expressed confidence in their vetting process but acknowledged it’s possible
certain books with objectionable content got through that process.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The question, as with critical race theory, is in how wide a
net is cast. Sexually explicit content is one thing; targeting books that make
students uncomfortable or deal in sensitive but very real subjects like racial
discrimination is another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is
clearly an audience in the conservative movement for more broadly <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/11/10/4-10-republicans-dont-like-schools-teaching-about-history-racism/?itid=lk_inline_manual_42" target="_blank">excluding subjects involving the history of racism</a> and
how it might impact modern life. And while it’s difficult to capture the
targeting of books on a quantitative level nationwide, this is an undersold
subplot in the conservative effort to raise concerns about what children might
learn in school.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/11/10/i-think-we-should-throw-those-books-fire-movement-builds-right-target-books/?utm_campaign=wp_todays_headlines&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_headlines&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3541dc9%2F618cf7c59d2fdab56b84bbc5%2F59698df69bbc0f6d71c2fb70%2F44%2F71%2F618cf7c59d2fdab56b84bbc5">https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/11/10/i-think-we-should-throw-those-books-fire-movement-builds-right-target-books/?utm_campaign=wp_todays_headlines&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_headlines&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3541dc9%2F618cf7c59d2fdab56b84bbc5%2F59698df69bbc0f6d71c2fb70%2F44%2F71%2F618cf7c59d2fdab56b84bbc5</a>
<o:p></o:p></p>Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-48644885077788694762021-09-05T10:23:00.000-07:002021-09-05T10:23:25.466-07:00COVID Effects On Businesses<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><b style="text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">How The Pandemic
Pushed Restaurant Workers Over The Edge</span></u></b></p></blockquote>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">(By Eli
Rosenberg, Washington Post, 24 May 2021)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p>Jim Conway started working in restaurants in 1982, making
$2.13 an hour, plus tips. And though the
world has changed significantly in the nearly 40 years since then, his hourly
wage has not. At the Olive<b> </b>Garden outside of Pittsburgh where he
worked when the pandemic hit last year, he was making $2.83 an hour, the
minimum wage for tipped workers in Pennsylvania, plus tips. So after being
furloughed for months last spring, Conway, 64, decided to retire.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Being paid the rough equivalent of a chocolate bar an hour
from the chain was little incentive for him to stick it out longer in the
industry after so many years, especially with tips no longer a reliable source
of income and lingering health concerns about covid-19.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The main issue for me was safety,” Conway
said. “There are lots of people who don’t want to participate in the old ways.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Conway is one of the millions of workers who left the
restaurant industry during the pandemic and haven’t come back. The industry has
1.7 million fewer jobs filled than before the pandemic, despite posting almost
a <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTS7200JOL">million</a> job
openings in March, along with hotels, and raising pay 3.6 percent, an average
of 58 cents an hour, in the first three months of 2021.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Restaurant chains and industry groups say a shortage of
workers like Conway is slowing their recovery, as the sector tries to get back
on its feet amid sinking covid<b> </b>cases, falling restrictions and
resurgent demand in many areas around the country.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The issue has quickly become political, with Republicans
blaming the labor crunch on the Biden administration’s move to boost federal
unemployment insurance supplement, which has been a central part of the
government’s response to the pandemic for most of the past year. GOP leaders
and business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce say the extra
unemployment insurance is a disincentive for some workers to return to work.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In interviews with The Washington Post, 10 current and
former workers expressed a wide range of reasons they are or were reluctant to
return to work. Some, like Conway, have left the industry or changed careers,
saying they felt like the industry was no longer worth the stress and volatility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Others said jobs that didn’t pay enough for
them to make ends meet no longer felt appropriate to them. Others left after
disputes with managers — over issues around safety and pay — and other flash
points that have emerged in the past year.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">All described the pandemic as an awakening — realizing that
long-held concerns about the industry were valid, and compounded by the new
health concerns. And forced to stop working or look for other jobs early on in
the pandemic, many realized they had other options.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The staffing issue has actually a lot more
to do with the conditions that the industry was in before covid and people not
wanting to go back to that, knowing what they would be facing with a pandemic
on top of it,” said Crystal Maher, 36, a restaurant worker in Austin, who’s
become more active on the industry’s labor issues in the past year. “People are
forgetting that restaurant workers have actually experienced decades of abuse
and trauma. The pandemic is just the final straw.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Tonya Breslow, the owner of Mis en Place, a restaurant
staffing firm, said a huge number of restaurants she works with are dealing
with shortages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The firm recently
surveyed 2,000 line cooks and back-of-the-house restaurant workers nationally
and found just over a quarter, 26 percent, reported leaving the industry,<b> </b>while
41 percent of workers said they were still employed in the industry. That left
about a third of respondents who had not gone back to work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of that group, most workers said they were
not yet back, because they were either looking for the right opportunity, they
had concerns about safety during the pandemic, or they did not plan to return
to the industry.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>A turbulent industry<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The restaurant industry is famously volatile, home to strong
personalities, tense workplaces, grinding hours and unpredictable scheduling.
Issues like tip and wage theft, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/rape-in-the-storage-room-groping-at-the-bar-why-is-the-restaurant-industry-so-terrible-for-women/2017/11/17/54a1d0f2-c993-11e7-b0cf-7689a9f2d84e_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_30" target="_blank">sexual harassment</a>, and drug and alcohol abuse can be
widespread, and there is often little in the way of formal job benefits such as
health care, vacation time, sick pay or a livable minimum wage, though many
workers do well in tips during flush times.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Turnover is a way of life; the average job tenure for hourly
food service workers is less than two months, according to data compiled by Mis
en Place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This constant churn was
affecting Jazz Salm’s life even before the pandemic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The 37-year-old had worked for Carrabba’s
Italian Grill, a Florida-headquartered chain, at different locations for more
than 15 years, but said she had to find another job after one of the
restaurants’ outposts, near Miami, burned down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>She got a job at a Chili’s in that area in early March of last year, but
was furloughed when the pandemic shuttered the business after her first week.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It took her months to get approved for unemployment
insurance in Florida, as the state’s system struggled to process the flood of
applications in the early months of the crisis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>By the end of summer, Salm found a job at a Walmart, after moving back
in with her mother in Sarasota. But shortly after starting work there, she
registered a fever during the screening the store administered to workers
before they clocked in, and was sent home to quarantine. The company required a
two-week, quarantine, she said, even though she had tested negative days a few
days before developing the fever.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Walmart pays employees if they’re sent home for <a href="https://one.walmart.com/content/dam/us-wire-wm1/documents/company/community/emergency-disaster-preparedness/covid-19/Emergency_Leave_FAQ.pdf" target="_blank">failing a health screening</a>, but Salm said she was unaware
of the benefit, and thought she’d have to go two weeks without a paycheck.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She decided to quit the job and drive up the
coast to go stay with a friend who had invited her to come live at her house in
Upstate New York. She slept in her car along the way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She said she tried to find a job at a
restaurant but couldn’t. So she started taking care of her friend’s 81-year-old
father-in-law, who had just returned from the hospital after receiving
chemotherapy for throat cancer. The money takes care of her rent, groceries and
some spending money.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">She said she may return eventually to the food service
industry in Florida,<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/05/08/restaurant-jobs-shortage-workers-miami/?itid=lk_inline_manual_44" target="_blank"> where restaurant owners have complained</a> vociferously
about the worker shortage, but it will take her time. She won’t be fully
vaccinated<b> </b>until mid-June, for starters. And she wonders about
getting trained and going into medical caregiving full time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I’m trying to trust the process and hope
that this all works out and there’s not another spike or anything else,” she
said. “The restaurant industry really doesn’t guarantee the money that I used
to make, with this pandemic. Because if it flares up again, or God forbid
something happens in the restaurant, you have to close it down, you’re out of
work for weeks and there’s nothing you can do to make money. Other than find
another job.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Losing the city’s best<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Allan Creasy, 39, had worked in restaurants and bars for
more than two decades, most recently as a bartender at Celtic Crossing, an
Irish bar in Memphis, where he was <a href="https://www.memphisflyer.com/the-citys-best-bartender-steps-away-after-15-years" target="_blank">voted the city’s best bartender</a> three times over the
years by readers of the city’s alt-weekly newspaper, the Memphis Flyer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like others, Creasy said<b> </b>the
pandemic proved to be the tipping point for him, exacerbating long-standing
labor issues in the industry and drawing attention to how low his wages were:
$2.13 an hour before tips — the minimum wage for tipped positions in Tennessee
and at the federal level.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">After three months back at the bar after the initial
lockdown, Creasy decided to quit and pursue a career change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I didn’t come back to the same job I left
previously,” he said. “It was very difficult to constantly have to police
people about mask-wearing. It was very difficult to try to bartend and run out
to the back parking lot to deliver to-go food, and to deal with Uber Eats
drivers and the like, while making significantly less money than I’d been
making previously.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And the pay had gotten worse — with his income dropping from
about $60,000 a year around 2011 to less than $40,000 before the pandemic, he
said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I’ve seen the number of people
who are passionate about the restaurant industry slowly ebb away over the last
20 years,” he said. “In my opinion, it’s because the server’s minimum wage
hasn’t changed. There is this belief that servers and bartenders are
interchangeable.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Creasy, who has a
bachelor’s degree in history, has been doing fundraising and social media work
for a local political action committee since. He’s making about the same amount
of money he did at the bar but doing something that feels closer to his heart
with less risk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“You had so many folks
working in the industry because they loved it, but now so many folks found a
job in a warehouse making $15 an hour, or making as much money driving for Uber
Eats, all these different businesses,” he said. “It’s not that we’re on
unemployment. We did our unemployment stint, and we found something else.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nathaniel Santiago, 20, who works at a McDonald’s in the
Fort Lauderdale area in Florida, said he believes the industry’s low wages are
playing a role.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had to move back in
with his parents last year after losing his job at a manufacturing facility,
before finding work at the fast-food chain, where he said he’s making $11 an
hour — just $1,760 per month for full-time work, with no health care. That’s
about $4 an hour below what is estimated to <a href="https://livingwage.mit.edu/" target="_blank">be a living wage </a>for
a single person with no children in that area — the minimum amount calculated
for a person to be able to meet basic standards of living.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">He also believes unemployment insurance is playing a role in
the shortage, saying he’s heard from some friends and family members who say
they are happy getting by with support from the government in the meantime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“We need to pay workers $15 an hour at the
moment,” he said. “People want to talk about inflation or that if you pay
everybody $15 an hour, everything is going to get more expensive, but it
already is. Food, clothing, gasoline, rent — you name it.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Peter DeQuattro, 36, a line cook in Memphis
who recently left a job because it paid less than $15 an hour, said he thinks
the pandemic has changed the paradigm for low-wage workers — giving people more
confidence to demand better wages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“There
is a growing movement of people, including myself, that just flat out refuse to
work for somebody that isn’t willing to pay a living wage,” he said.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Companies dangle bonuses, incentives, appetizers<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There are signs that businesses<b> </b>are reacting to
the shortage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Companies<b> </b>that
pay less than $15 an hour — the amount many liberal economists and labor
advocates say should be a baseline to provide people with something closer to a
living wage<b> </b>in many areas of the country — are increasingly
dangling incentives, bonuses and pay raises in front of workers in the hopes of
staffing<b> </b>up. Pay is increasing in the industry as well: The median
wage for nonmanagement restaurant and bar workers rose 70 cents an hour, to
$14.50, in the past three months — a significant 5.1 percent jump.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Costco, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/05/10/chipotle-wages-15-worker-shortage/?itid=lk_inline_manual_72" target="_blank">Chipotle</a> and McDonald’s are among the publicly traded
companies that have announced wage increases in recent weeks, and others, like
Target, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/17/target-is-raising-its-starting-wage-15-an-hour/?itid=lk_inline_manual_72" target="_blank">raised their wages in 2020</a> as the pandemic drew more
attention to the plight of workers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Local
media outlets have been flooded with tales of the worker shortage, written
mostly from the perspective of businesses, from <a href="https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/worker-shortage-leads-santa-fe-businesses-to-offer-hefty-bonuses/article_97d0ff70-ace2-11eb-9a9c-ff5b71eb9882.html" target="_blank">Santa Fe</a> to <a href="https://www.hartfordbusiness.com/article/businesses-offer-bonuses-higher-pay-in-bid-to-reverse-worker-shortage" target="_blank">Connecticut</a>. A brewery in Albuquerque is offering workers a
free 64-ounce growler of beer after every shift; Applebees is offering <a href="https://www.fairfieldcitizenonline.com/living/article/Applebee-s-offering-Apps-For-Apps-16165010.php" target="_blank">free appetizers to people</a> who apply to jobs, as it
seeks to hire thousands of workers across the country.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Breslow, the owner of the<b> </b>staffing firm Mis en
Place, knows restaurant<b> </b>owners who are offering bonuses as high as
$3,000 to new hires, and others who are adding health insurance and 401(k) benefits
to employee<b> </b>incentive packages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“The country is scrambling to get that 33 percent,” Breslow said,
referring to those workers who have not returned to the industry. “The leverage
is unreal.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/05/24/restaurant-workers-shortage-pay/">https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/05/24/restaurant-workers-shortage-pay/</a>
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><b><u><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Perfect Storm Making Everything
You Need More Expensive<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">(By
Hanna Ziady, CNN Business, 9 June 2021)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p>Steel, lumber, plastic and fuel. Corn, soybeans, sugar and
sunflower oil. Houses, cars, diapers and toilet paper. Prices are <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/12/economy/april-inflation-price-increases/index.html" target="_blank">rising</a> almost everywhere you look. The <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/18/economy/china-steel-iron-infrastructure-pandemic-intl-hnk/index.html" target="_blank">post-pandemic recovery</a> is in full swing and the global
economy is <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/26/business/global-shipping-supply-chains/index.html" target="_blank">struggling to keep up</a>. Following a collapse at the start of
the pandemic as businesses closed and millions of workers lost jobs, demand has
rebounded with a vengeance, spurred by government stimulus and consumers flush
with<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/04/19/business/consumer-saving-spending-boom/index.html" target="_blank"> savings</a>.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But companies that idled factories or put workers on
furlough during lockdowns are now unable to secure enough raw materials to
build the houses, make the cars or assemble the appliances that are suddenly in
high demand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Companies are furiously
trying to restock inventories following last year's global recession, straining
supply chains already reeling from the pandemic to breaking point. A shortage
of shipping containers and bottlenecks at ports have made matters worse and
increased the cost of moving products around the world. Throw in accidents,
cyberattacks, extreme weather and the huge disruption caused by the desperate
hunt for cleaner sources of energy, and you have a perfect storm.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There's no telling how long demand will outpace<b> </b>supply,
especially as the pandemic continues to rampage through some of the world's
biggest economies.<b> </b>But there have already been shortages of
everything from microchips and chicken to chlorine and cheese, and prices are
spiking.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The big question is whether shortages and price hikes are
temporary byproducts of the pandemic, or if the global economy is changing in
ways that could permanently hike the cost of doing business and usher in a new
era of inflation. The answer has huge implications for workers,<b> </b>investors,<b> </b>companies
and governments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What is certain is that, for now at least, inflation is back
and it's widespread.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Inflation in
countries that belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development surged in April to the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/02/economy/inflation-oecd/index.html" target="_blank">highest level</a> since 2008. Energy price hikes boosted
average annual inflation across OECD countries to 3.3%. But prices are rising
even when volatile food and energy costs are excluded.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>How did we get here?<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">With US <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/30/business/gas-prices-memorial-day/index.html" target="_blank">gasoline prices</a> at a seven-year high, it's easy to
forget that oil futures crashed last year. Brent crude, the global benchmark,
briefly plunged below $20 a barrel last April, as coronavirus lockdowns
cratered demand from airlines, motorists and manufacturers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Brent has since shot up to over $70 a barrel
on a dramatic turnaround in demand. US oil hit $70 a barrel on Sunday for the
first time in nearly three years. A similar phenomenon is playing out across a
host of commodities, industries and products.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>"We've never really had anything quite that violent and rapid, both
in terms of the change down and the change back up," said George Calhoun,
director of the quantitative finance program at the Stevens Institute of
Technology in New Jersey. "It's clear that [the economic rebound] created
a lot of disruptions, not just in supply chains, but in business models."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Take the auto industry, a prime example of how the events of
the past year have upended supply chains, changed consumer behavior and are now
fueling price pressures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pandemic
temporarily shuttered car factories last year, while the recession that
followed torpedoed sales. When automakers responded by cutting back vehicle
production and thus orders for microchips, semiconductor manufacturers
reassigned spare capacity to companies making smartphones, laptops and gaming
devices — products in high demand from housebound consumers.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Then, when car sales bounced back faster than expected,
manufacturers found themselves at the back of the line for chips. Widespread
shortages have forced the likes of Ford (<a href="https://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=F&source=story_quote_link">F</a>), Volkswagen (<a href="https://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=VLKAF&source=story_quote_link">VLKAF</a>), Fiat
Chrysler (<a href="https://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=FCAU&source=story_quote_link">FCAU</a>) and Nissan (<a href="https://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=NSANF&source=story_quote_link">NSANF</a>) to
slash production and idle plants in some cases.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That has pushed the price of new cars higher and boosted demand for used
vehicles, which are now <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/12/economy/april-inflation-price-increases/index.html" target="_blank">one of the main sources</a> of inflation in the United
States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rental car companies,
which <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/04/21/business/car-prices-record-high-short-supply/index.html" target="_blank">sold thousands of vehicles</a> early on in the pandemic to
shore up their finances, are adding to the crush of demand and holding on to
stock that would otherwise have been put up for sale.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the same time, stimulus checks and low
interest rates have made vehicle purchases more accessible to households, many
of which want to avoid public transportation and carpooling during the
pandemic.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The price of used cars and trucks in the United States
jumped 10%<b> </b>over the previous month in April — the biggest increase
since 1953, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Prices were up 21%
compared with a year earlier, making used cars the primary driver of April's
surge in US consumer prices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"Demand
continues to exceed supply for new vehicles and we expect this to continue
through 2021, in part due to the production disruption," Mike Jackson, the
CEO of AutoNation (<a href="https://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=AN&source=story_quote_link">AN</a>),
one of America's biggest car dealers, said on an earnings call with analysts in
April.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"More important though,
interest rates and consumer preference for vehicle ownership versus ride share
and public transportation are supporting demand," he added.
"Americans want individual transportation."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Commodity prices surge<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As the pandemic recovery takes hold, the cost of raw
materials needed to produce consumer goods and power vast infrastructure
spending in China is soaring. US President Joe Biden's infrastructure proposal
would only increase demand if approved by Congress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Booming investment into green technologies is
also adding to strong demand for metals such as aluminum and copper, which are
used in electric vehicles. Tesla (<a href="https://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=TSLA&source=story_quote_link">TSLA</a>) recently
added $2,000 to the price of its Model 3. CEO Elon Musk <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/01/business/tesla-prices-elon-musk/index.html" target="_blank">blamed</a> rising raw materials costs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Iron ore, copper and steel, used to make
cars, houses and electrical appliances, have hit record price levels in recent
weeks. The Bloomberg Commodity Spot Index, which tracks price changes across a
range of metals and agricultural commodities, has jumped roughly 60% over the
past year.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In Shanghai, the price of rebar, a type of steel used to
reinforce concrete, has fallen from record levels in May but is still 16% more
expensive than at the end of last year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rising
costs have pushed <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/09/economy/china-factory-commodities-intl-hnk/index.html" target="_blank">producer price inflation in China</a> to its highest level
in nearly 13 years. The country's producer price index — which measures the
cost of goods sold to businesses — soared 9% in May from a year ago, according
to government data released Wednesday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
the United States, lumber shortages tied to sawmill shutdowns earlier on in the
pandemic have spiked prices, adding nearly $36,000 to the price of an average
new home, according to an analysis by the National Association of Home Builders
Association.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It's not just the construction sector that's feeling the
heat. The rising costs of resin and pulp, for example, are
prompting Procter & Gamble (<a href="https://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=PG&source=story_quote_link">PG</a>) and Kimberly-Clark (<a href="https://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=KMB&source=story_quote_link">KMB</a>) to <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/04/20/business/procter-and-gamble-diapers-tampons/index.html" target="_blank">increase the prices</a> of household staples such as
tampons, diapers and toilet paper. A
growing list of crises on the supply side has exacerbated the commodities
crunch. The <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/26/business/global-shipping-supply-chains/index.html" target="_blank">Suez Canal blockage</a> delayed goods shipments in March.
Drought in South America has weighed on corn and sugar output. A <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/15/investing/oil-price-rise-texas-snow/index.html" target="_blank">deep freeze in Texas</a> and the Colonial Pipeline
ransomware attack tightened the market for plastic <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/09/business/gas-price-spike-fears/index.html" target="_blank">and fuel</a>, while India's Covid-19 outbreak disrupted ports
and supply chains. "It's really
been a perfect storm," said Warren Patterson, head of commodities strategy
at ING.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The latest problem: JBS Meat, a major beef and pork producer,
suffered a cyberattack that forced the company to shut down plants in North
America and Australia last week. Factories have since come back online but the
disruption could cause wholesale meat prices to jump, analysts said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Food prices are already rising due to a surge
in demand for agricultural commodities such as corn and soybeans driven by
China, where demand for animal feed is soaring as hog herds recover from
an <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/04/business/china-pork-swine-fever-pigs/index.html" target="_blank">African swine fever outbreak</a>, according to Patterson. The
government has also been rebuilding depleted domestic corn reserves, he added.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On the supply side, dry weather in Brazil, Thailand and
Europe has weighed on crop yields, while Russia, the world's leading wheat
exporter, has implemented an export tax to bolster domestic supplies and cool
prices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Global food prices rose for a
twelfth consecutive month in May and at their fastest monthly rate in more than
a decade, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. The FAO Food
Price Index, which tracks a wide range of products, was nearly 40% higher last
month than its level a year ago.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">While the cost of raw ingredients accounts for a small
portion of the price that consumers pay for goods in supermarkets and
restaurants, food companies such as Nestlé (<a href="https://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=NSRGY&source=story_quote_link">NSRGY</a>) and Unilever (<a href="https://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=UL&source=story_quote_link">UL</a>) have
already announced price increases on certain product lines in response to
commodity inflation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An increase in
supply could ease prices gains, particularly because at these levels there is
strong incentive for farmers to plant more crops, Patterson said. In other
words, the trend could be temporary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"The
move we've seen across most commodities is part of the usual recovery, a cyclical
uplift," he added. "As we see the global economy normalize, once
we've recovered, demand will ease off and I expect prices to. I'm not of the
view that we're in a commodities super cycle."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Logistics and labor costs climb<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Commodities are not the only factor driving prices higher,
however.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Logistics and labor costs have
also increased and a <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/01/economy/worker-shortage-us-chamber-of-commerce/index.html" target="_blank">shortage of workers</a> in some industries could intensify
pressure on companies to raise wages even further.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"When it comes to the economy we're
building, rising wages aren't a bug; they're a feature," Biden said in
a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/05/27/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-economy-2/" target="_blank">speech</a> during a recent visit to Cleveland, Ohio.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Labor shortages, which have also become a
problem in Europe, are partly related to the speed at which economies reopened
and are likely to normalize once welfare payments dry up, stimulus checks have
been spent and workers in sectors such as hospitality and travel feel more
confident that businesses won't be forced to shut again, said Andrew
Kenningham, chief Europe economist at Capital Economics.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But that's little consolation to companies trying to get
products out the door. For Whirlpool (<a href="https://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=WHR&source=story_quote_link">WHR</a>),
which makes washing machines, fridges and ovens, the rising cost of
commodities, labor and logistics has led to several rounds of price increases.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"That's the only way to mitigate
significant cost inflation," CEO Marc Bitzer said in an interview with
Bloomberg Television last month. "There is talk or hope that this is a temporary
blip. We see it elevated for a sustained period," he added.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Supply chain constraints have forced the
company to make products based on the goods it has available rather than on
customer orders. "That is anything but efficient or normal but that's how
you have to run it right now," Bitzer said. "The supply chain is
pretty much upside down."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In Germany, the industrial heart of Europe, supply chain
disruptions exacerbated by the Suez Canal blockage offer one possible
explanation for an unexpected drop in industrial orders in April, according to
Carsten Brzeski, head of research at ING.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A growing list of companies around the world have flagged higher supply
chain costs — from engine manufacturer Cummins (<a href="https://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=CMI&source=story_quote_link">CMI</a>) to
exercise equipment maker Peloton (<a href="https://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=PTON&source=story_quote_link">PTON</a>) —
partly driven by soaring shipping charges, which have made it much more
expensive to move goods. If demand remains elevated, more firms may opt to pass
these costs on to customers.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Logistics Managers' Index, a US economic indicator,
attests to rising cost pressures in supply chains. The monthly gauge asks
corporate supply chiefs where they see future expenses relating to inventory,
transportation and warehousing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In <a href="http://www.the-lmi.com/may-2021-logistics-managers-index.html" target="_blank">May</a>, respondents predicted that over the next 12 months
costs across all three categories would experience their highest increase in
the nearly 5-year history of the index.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>The end of easy choices<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">With price hikes apparent on store shelves and in official
data, inflation expectations among businesses and consumers are rising,
according to various surveys. That in itself poses a challenge. If businesses
and consumers think that higher prices are here to stay, they may change their
behaviors in ways that cause price pressures to persist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, workers might demand higher
wages, forcing companies to increase the price of their goods and placing
additional upward pressure on salaries.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">At least for now, central bankers are of the view that price
hikes will prove transient and are unlikely to lead to persistently higher
inflation — even as some economists including former US Treasury
Secretary <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/26/economy/inflation-larry-summers-biden-fed/index.html" target="_blank">Larry Summers</a> and former Bank of England
governor <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-06-07/make-no-mistake-the-risk-of-inflation-is-real-mervyn-king?sref=VYQZzSZK" target="_blank">Mervyn King</a> sound the alarm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"Neglecting inflation leaves global
economies sitting on a time bomb," Deutsche Bank economists warned in a
research note this week. If central banks wait too long to raise interest rates
they will be forced into "abrupt" policy changes, causing significant
disruption to markets and the economy, they argued.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Yet Federal Reserve officials remain sanguine.
"Although continued vigilance is warranted, the inflation and employment
data thus far appear to reflect a temporary misalignment of supply and demand
that should fade over time as the demand surge normalizes, reopening is
completed, and supply adapts to the post-pandemic new normal," Lael
Brainard, a Federal Reserve governor said in a <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/brainard20210601a.htm" target="_blank">speech</a> last week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Policymakers in the United States and Europe are "looking
through" upward pressure on prices and "basing monetary policy
decisions on where they think inflation will be in two years' time rather than
in the next six to 12 months," said Kenningham of Capital Economics.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Still, whereas a year ago concerns centered on deflation,
the risks now are "much more balanced and possibly tilted to the upside in
some cases," Kenningham told CNN Business.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>"The risks of inflation rising on a sustained basis are much higher
in the United States than in Europe," he added, pointing to far more
generous financial support for US households, which has propped up income and
helped boost savings to levels not seen in more than 70 years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"In brief," wrote the Deutsche Bank
economists, "the easy policy decisions of the disinflationary 1980-2020
period appear to be behind us."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/09/business/rising-prices-inventories-post-pandemic/index.html">https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/09/business/rising-prices-inventories-post-pandemic/index.html</a>
<o:p></o:p></p>Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-24066465163265572732021-09-04T10:22:00.005-07:002021-09-04T10:24:59.644-07:00Marvel And DC Comics Face Backlash Over Pay: ‘They Send A Thank You Note And $5,000 – The Movie Made $1 Billion’<p style="text-align: center;"> As comics giants make billions from their storylines and
characters, writers & artists are speaking out about the struggles for fair
pay.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">(Sam Thielman, The Guardian, 9 August 2021)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>W</b>atch any superhero movie and you will see a credit
along the lines of “based on the comic book created by”, usually with the name
of a beloved and/or long-dead writer or artist. But deep, deep in the credits
scroll, you will also see “special thanks” to a long roster of comic book
talent, most of them still alive, whose work forms the skeleton and musculature
of the movie you just watched. Scenes storyboarded directly from Batman comics
by Frank Miller; character arcs out of Thor comics by Walt Simonson; entire
franchises, such as the Avengers films or Disney+ spinoff The Falcon and the
Winter Soldier, that couldn’t exist without the likes of Kurt Busiek or Ed
Brubaker.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The “big two” comic companies – Marvel and DC - may pretend
they’ve tapped into some timeless part of the human psyche with characters such
as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/superman">Superman</a> and
the Incredible Hulk, but the truth is that their most popular stories have been
carefully stewarded through the decades by individual artists and writers. But
how much of, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s (MCU) $20bn-plus box office
gross went to those who created the stories and characters in it? How are the
unknown faces behind their biggest successes being treated?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Not well, according to Brubaker who, with Steve Epting,
revived Captain America’s sidekick Bucky Barnes to create the Winter Soldier,
portrayed by Sebastian Stan in Marvel’s films and shows. “For the most part,
all Steve and I have got for creating the Winter Soldier and his storyline is a
‘thanks’ here or there, and over the years that’s become harder and harder to
live with,” Brubaker recently wrote in<a href="https://us13.campaign-archive.com/?u=12703963b24c2d94a368d4082&id=ab914d96ea"> a
newsletter</a>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“I have a great life as a writer and much of it is because
of Cap and the Winter Soldier bringing so many readers to my other work,” he
added. “But I also can’t deny feeling a bit sick to my stomach sometimes when
my inbox fills up with people wanting comments on the show.” (Marvel told the
Guardian it had to “decline to comment out of respect for the privacy of
[Brubaker and Epting’s] personal conversations [with the company].”)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Comic creators are “work-for-hire”, so the companies they
work for owe them nothing beyond a flat fee and royalty payments. But Marvel
and DC also incentivise popular creators to stay on with the promise of steady
work and what they call “equity”: a tiny share of the profits, should a
character they create or a storyline they write become fodder for films, shows
or merch. For some creators, work they did decades ago is providing vital
income now as films bring their comics to a bigger audience; they reason – and
the companies seem to agree – it’s only fair to pay them more. DC has a
boilerplate internal contract, which the Guardian has seen, which guarantees
payments to creators when their characters are used. Marvel’s contracts are
similar, according to two sources with knowledge of them, but harder to find;
some Marvel creators did not know they existed.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A Marvel spokesman said there was no restrictions on when
creators could approach the company about contracts, and said that they are
having ongoing conversations with writers and artists pertaining to both recent
and past work. A DC spokesman did not return multiple requests for comment. But
the use of these contracts is at these companies’ discretion and the promised
money can fall by the wayside.</p><p class="MsoNormal">“The squeaky wheel gets the grease,” Jim Starlin, who
created Thanos, <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/marvel-and-dcs-shut-up-money-comic-creators-go-public-over-pay-1234983043/">recently
told the Hollywood Reporter</a>; Starlin negotiated a bigger payout after
arguing that Marvel had underpaid him for its use of Thanos as the big bad of
the MCU. Prolific Marvel writer Roy Thomas got his name added to the credits of
Disney+ series Loki after his agent made a fuss. But these are creators that
Marvel needs to keep happy; things can go very differently if nobody cares when
you complain.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Bestselling author Ta-Nehisi Coates, who wrote a run of
Marvel’s Black Panther and followed Brubaker and Epting’s Captain America run
with his own a few years later, says that he believes Marvel has moral
obligations to its artists and writers that go beyond contracts. “Long before I was writing Captain America, I read [Brubaker
and Epting’s] Death of Captain America storyline, and Return of the Winter
Soldier, and it was some of the most thrilling storytelling I’d ever read,”
Coates says. “I’d rather read it than watch the movies – I love the movies too
– but it doesn’t seem just for them to extract what Steve and Ed put into this
and create a multi-billion dollar franchise.”</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Coates says he feels fairly treated when it comes to his own
work, but he is adamant that lesser known names deserve better treatment from
the big studios, no matter what their contracts say: “Just because it’s in a
contract doesn’t make it right. If I have some kind of leverage over you, I can
get you to sign a contract to fuck you over. It’s just legalist.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Over the decades, Marvel and DC have become parts of Fortune
500 companies: the Walt Disney Company owns Marvel, and DC is owned by a
subsidiary of AT&T. Now, deciding what share of the success their comic
creators deserve is a matter of complex wrangling between Marvel and DC, which
want to maintain good relations with their talent, and the vast bureaucracies
above them.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Among creators, there is a general sense that it has become
harder to get paid at Marvel. One source told the Guardian that Marvel subtracted
its own legal fees from a protracted negotiation over royalty payments. Others
who have worked for DC and Marvel say both count on artists and writers
preferring not to spend time chasing them for royalties.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Lawyer up, always, with comic book company contracts,” says
Jimmy Palmiotti, longtime writer of DC characters such as Jonah Hex and Harley
Quinn. “They are not in the business of feeding you the math.” Once a year,
freelancers are allowed to audit the returns on their creations for DC and
Marvel, but Palmiotti says it happens too rarely: “I can count on one hand the
number of creators who’ve actually audited a major comics company.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">According to multiple sources, when a writer or artist’s
work features prominently in a Marvel film, the company’s practice is to send
the creator an invitation to the premiere and a cheque for $5,000 (£3,600).
Three different sources confirmed this amount to the Guardian. There’s no
obligation to attend the premiere, or to use the $5,000 for travel or
accommodation; sources described it as a tacit acknowledgment that compensation
was due.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Marvel declined to comment on
this, citing privacy concerns. “We can’t speak to our individual agreements or
contracts with talent,” said a spokesman.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Several sources who have worked with Marvel say that
remuneration for contributing to a franchise that hits it big varies between
the $5,000 payment, nothing, or – very rarely – a “special character contract”,
which allows a select few creators to claim remuneration when their characters
or stories are used. There are other potential ways to earn more – many former
writers and artists are made executives and producers on Marvel’s myriad
movies, cartoons and streaming series, for example – but those deals depend on
factors other than legal obligation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I’ve
been offered a [special character contract] that was really, really terrible,
but it was that or nothing,” says one Marvel creator, who asked not to be
named. “And then instead of honouring it, they send a thank you note and are
like, ‘Here’s some money we don’t owe you!’ and it’s five grand. And you’re
like, ‘The movie made a billion dollars.’”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Both Marvel’s “special character contract”, or DC’s equivalent,
a “creator equity” contract, are ways to keep creators happy enough that they
don’t hold back all of their original creations for competitors. DC pioneered
these contracts back in the 1970s and 1980s, responding in part to Marvel’s
treatment of Captain America creator Jack Kirby. Jim Shooter, then Marvel’s
editor-in-chief, refused to return original art to Kirby unless he signed a
lengthy release form allowing the company to adapt his creations – including
the Incredible Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Black Panther and the X-Men
– without any compensation. DC saw an opportunity to score PR points, and
offered Frank Miller, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons what appeared to be much
better contracts for works such as Ronin and Watchmen. (The company used a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/23/watchmen-is-by-far-the-best-adaptation-of-the-comic-but-should-fans-watch-it">technicality</a> to
renege within a few years).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Brubaker has recalled once attending Comic-Con, where he
watched Roz Kirby yell at Jim Shooter about his mistreatment of her husband in
the middle of a panel on creators’ rights. (The panel, incidentally, included
Moore and Miller, who were celebrating the apparent fairness of their own
contracts at DC.) Decades later, Brubaker helped Marvel find success with his
Captain America run with Steve Epting. According to sources, Brubaker and
Epting showed up in tuxedos to the premiere party for Captain America: The
Winter Soldier, a movie directly based on their comics, only to find that they
weren’t on the list. Brubaker texted Sebastian Stan, the actor who played his
and Epting’s character, Bucky Barnes, and he let them in.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Some creators told the Guardian that they did not know that
Marvel even had the special character contract like DC. In fact, the Guardian
has seen an application for the “Marvel Special Character Contract”, in which
creators can formally ask Marvel whether one of their characters qualifies for
extra payouts. In the application form, Marvel explicitly reserves the right to
tell creators their characters aren’t original enough to get the bonus, warning
that “the decisions are final” and not subject to appeal. DC uses the same
measure; in 2015, the studio <a href="https://bleedingcool.com/comics/dc-comics-in-ructions-over-gerry-conways-allegations/">was
criticised</a> for cancelling payments to writer Gerry Conway for his
character Power Girl, which the company retroactively decided was derivative of
Supergirl and therefore ineligible for the contract, <a href="https://gerryconway.tumblr.com/post/117619743363/who-created-caitlin-snow-on-theflash-according">according
to Conway</a>. He no longer receives payments for her, he confirmed to the
Guardian. DC did not respond to request for comment.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Power Girl incident highlights how ethically fuzzy these
contracts are, since they’re issued by DC and Marvel, drawn up unilaterally by
the companies, and paid out when the companies account for their many films, TV
shows, video games, trading cards, action figures and sundry other merch. One
creator, who asked to remain anonymous, said he and other creators sometimes go
to Target to take pictures of action figures of their characters for which
payments are due, to demonstrate that their cheques are short.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">DC and Marvel came into their own at a time of change in
copyright law. The Copyright Act of 1976 <a href="https://www.cbr.com/superman-copyright-faq/">gave artists the one-time
right to cancel their contracts</a> with IP holders, an option many
exercised after witnessing the mistreatment of<a href="https://ohdannyboy.blogspot.com/2012/07/curse-on-superman-movie-look-back-at.html"> Superman
creators Jerry Siegel</a> and Joe Shuster, who were left penniless. Artist
Al Jaffee once claimed his pay cheques from EC Comics were issued with
contracts on the back, so he couldn’t cash them without signing over the rights
to his work. This was a common practice throughout the industry, <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Comic_Book_Implosion/Da9mDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=back+of+the+check+contracts+DC+Comics&pg=PA59&printsec=frontcover">including
at Marvel</a>, and one that was reevaluated in the wake of the act.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As comics publishers evolved into major media operations,
their staff grew concerned about mistreatment of talent. There were famous
fights over royalties, and thorny questions over what credit was due to
thousands of co-creators working in a shared universe. In 2000, a consortium of
publishers founded a charity to directly aid artists who’d fallen on the
hardest times, called <a href="https://www.heroinitiative.org/">the Hero
Initiative</a>. (Marvel is a founding member, and AT&T lets employees
donate directly from their paycheques.) By the 1980s, people who worked in
comics at every level were fans, in the same way that even the ushers on
Broadway can sing and dance if called upon. In 1986, DC editor Paul Levitz and
DC president Jeanette Kahn were working on new schemes to more fairly
compensate writers and artists. Moore, Gibbons, and Miller’s contracts were
meant to usher in a new era of fairness. It was a long time coming: some were
already looking askance at DC after its treatment of Siegel and Shuster came to
light during the production of the 1978 film Superman.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But Moore and Gibbons’s Watchmen was a huge success, going
through multiple reprints – unprecedented for a graphic novel – and DC never
had to let its right to republish lapse, so it never did. The pair had a right
to a share of merchandise profits; DC produced merch, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_G6qDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA237&lpg=PA237&dq=DC+moore+gibbons+merchandise&source=bl&ots=ENPp_K5bAs&sig=ACfU3U045Vh1nVhZ4yBvxZi7IXv0KD44fQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwirwpbCjovyAhWUX8AKHc_jDoAQ6AEwEXoECBwQAw#v=onepage&q=DC%20moore%20gibbons%20merchandise&f=false">classified
it as “promotional items”</a> and told Moore and Gibbons they weren’t owed
anything. The vaunted in-house contracts that can make creators’ lives livable
can always be subverted.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To the extent that there is any semblance of fairness in the
industry now, it’s primarily Levitz’s doing, alongside Kahn and Karen Berger,
who is now at Dark Horse Comics. Levitz left DC in 2009, but his influence is
still felt across the industry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“You
want to create a situation where you never get to the old Russian joke where
they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work,” Levitz says. “You want people
to win when the companies win. I’m proud of the fact that we improved the
quality of how we treated creative people.” More than one creator recounts
calling Levitz to ask for more money because of a scene in a lucrative <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/batman">Batman</a> movie that
lifted plot points or names from their work, then being shocked when they got
it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Many of his peers say that Levitz was a bulwark against
meddling by executives at Warner Brothers. For years, he blocked the
publication of Watchmen sequels, of which Moore and Gibbons disapproved –
something DC did soon after Levitz left, to widespread condemnation. Without
another Levitz, the “big two” are once again attracting the criticism that led
to the creation of these elusive “special” contracts in the first place. Some
creators have left the medium entirely, but others have founded their own
studios, such as Image and Dark Horse, providing creators with alternative
outlets. As Marvel and DC may find, more creators – Brubaker and Jupiter’s
Legacy creator Mark Millar are already among them – will simply not work for
them again.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/09/marvel-and-dc-face-backlash-over-pay-they-sent-a-thank-you-note-and-5000-the-movie-made-1bn?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1">https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/09/marvel-and-dc-face-backlash-over-pay-they-sent-a-thank-you-note-and-5000-the-movie-made-1bn?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1</a>
<o:p></o:p></p>Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-83324846951305387032021-04-27T20:19:00.001-07:002021-04-27T20:19:24.158-07:00Oscars Analysis: How Chadwick Lost, Frances Won and the Show Went Off the Rails<p> (By Scott Feinberg, The Hollywood Reporter, April 26,2021)</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Sunday night's 93rd Academy Awards brought an end to the
longest Oscar season in 87 years — one that considered 14 months' worth of
films, and that wrapped up 441 days after the 92nd — at downtown Los Angeles'
Union Station, which, as others have noted, was fitting, because it was, in
some ways, a trainwreck.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The show was produced by extremely talented people (<b>Steven
Soderbergh</b>, <b>Stacey Sher</b> and <b>Jesse Collins</b>)
under unenviable circumstances (during a global pandemic, with most commercial
films pushed to next season when more movie theaters will have reopened, etc.).
But the Oscars are not graded on a curve, and unfortunately far too many
decisions about the ceremony were badly miscalculated.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I can only assume that the producers insisted upon and the
Academy granted them final cut, and the producers, recognizing that <i>nothing</i> could
stop this from being the lowest-rated Oscars in history, decided to try a bunch
of out-there stuff: not only not having a host (for the third year in a row),
but also having no comedy bits, music performances or film clips; giving a
biographical sketch of virtually every nominee; waiting until deep into the
show to present a highly anticipated award; presenting not one but two Jean
Hersholt Humanitarian Awards on the air; not playing off any longwinded
acceptance speeches; and presenting best picture as the third-to-last award of
the night, rather than the last.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The good news, I suppose, is that we now know beyond any shadow
of a doubt that the Academy's longtime accountants, PwC, do not share the
voting results with the producers before the envelopes are unsealed, because
there is no way that the producers would have <i>chosen</i> to end
the show with the best actor Oscar going not to the late <b>Chadwick
Boseman</b> (<i>Ma Rainey's Black Bottom</i>), whose widow was in
attendance and ready to give a speech, as she had at virtually every other
awards show this season, but instead to <b>Anthony Hopkins</b> (<i>The
Father</i>), who apparently couldn't be bothered to show up.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The producers gambled, hoping for a big emotional moment to
end the show, and unfortunately lost in shocking fashion — not because Hopkins
isn't a worthy winner (he is), but because the night ended with a gut-punch
rather than a group celebration. (For the record, best picture has been the
last award presented at every Oscars ceremony since 1972, when <b>Charlie
Chaplin</b> was given an honorary award after best picture was announced.
It also was not last at several ceremonies early in the Academy's history, but
was at the vast majority of them.)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What, by the way, was all the hoopla about the telecast
being like a movie? Yes, it was shot with high-def cameras, but other than
that? It feels like that was something the producers felt they had to say in
order for the telecast to receive the classification of a film/TV production,
which, in turn, allowed them to have attendees go maskless while on-camera —
which itself was a bit questionable, not because it wasn't safe (everyone in
attendance was COVID-tested multiple times), but because it doesn't really
model best practices for the world at a time when even the vaccinated president
of the United States is still masking up, and sets up Hollywood to be called
"a bunch of hypocrites."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Anyway, more interesting than the show is how we wound up
with the 23 winners that we did.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Chloé Zhao</b>'s <i>Nomadland</i> was the best
picture frontrunner from start to finish, which is not an easy thing to sustain
(ask the folks behind <i>La La Land</i>), especially in a season as long
as this one — people often tire of the same narratives and winners.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Academy's preferential ballot makes predicting best
picture trickier than it used to be, but the reality is there weren't any
alternatives to <i>Nomadland</i> of the same caliber, and no one
fellow nominee ever really gained enough momentum to seriously threaten it —
not even the Netflix-backed <i>Mank</i>, with its field-leading 10 noms,
or <i>The Trial of the Chicago 7</i>, a movie theoretically built for the
preferential ballot.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Nomadland</i> is a beautifully made movie that has
something to say about America today (even if it is set a few years ago), and
when people head into the Dolby for future Oscars ceremonies and scan the names
of past best picture winners, nobody will blink an eyelid when they see <i>Nomadland</i> among
them, as it also would have won in most recent years, as would have Zhao, who
became the second woman and first woman of color to win best director. In other
words, no pandemic-era asterisk necessary.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Something that should be noted about <i>Nomadland</i>'s
rise and endurance: It's a testament to the taste and understated but effective
campaign skills — working within a budget — of Searchlight's departing
chiefs <b>Nancy Ultey</b> and <b>Steve Gilula</b> (and
their team), class-acts who previously won top honors for <i>Slumdog
Millionaire</i>, <i>12 Years a Slave</i>, <i>Birdman</i> and <i>The
Shape of Water</i> and, deservedly enough, get to go out on top.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Another notable thing about <i>Nomadland</i>'s victory:
It is the first truly female-centric best picture winner since <i>Terms of
Endearment</i> 37 years ago! Winners like <i>Chicago</i> and <i>Million
Dollar Baby</i> had male leads alongside female leads, but <i>Nomadland</i> was
The <b>Frances McDormand</b> Show.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It's appropriate that McDormand became only the second woman
to have won at least three best actress Oscars (<b>Katharine Hepburn</b> won
four) — she's that good — although it must have been tough for <b>Glenn
Close</b> to have to watch that from the audience, as Close's loss in the
supporting category (for the decidedly mediocre <i>Hillbilly Elegy</i>)
makes her 0-for-8, the worst Oscar record of any actress ever. Poor <b>Diane
Warren</b> also lost again, making her 0-for-12 in the song category.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I was one of the few who predicted McDormand's win,
reasoning that if Academy members loved <i>Nomadland</i> as much as
they seemed to, then they clearly must have loved McDormand's performance, too,
since the two are inextricable. Moreover, in a season in which the top
contender, according to one Academy member with whom I corresponded, was
"apathy," one could feel confident that voters actually watched <i>Nomadland</i>,
if no other film, prior to voting.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Promising Young Woman</i> was also a best picture
nominee, meaning it, too, was widely seen and admired, so I assumed <b>Carey
Mulligan</b> also had a real shot. But I never really bought the idea
that <b>Viola Davis</b> was going to win for <i>Ma Rainey</i>,
even after her surprising SAG Award win, given that the Academy overlooked her
film in the best picture category. (This fact should have also given many of us
more pause in assuming that Boseman would win over Hopkins, whose film, <i>The
Father</i>, was a best picture nominee, and had already proven popular enough
to win BAFTA Awards for Hopkins and adapted screenplay.)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It's unfortunately brutally hard to win an Oscar as a film's
sole nominee, especially this year, when Academy members who did vote saw fewer
movies than in years past, and, I would guess, the percentage of Academy
members who voted at all was lower than in any other year. Frankly, I suspect
that most voters cast their final ballots without having even watched <i>The
United States vs. Billie Holiday</i> (featuring <b>Andra Day</b>'s
Golden Globe-winning performance) or <i>Pieces of a Woman</i> (for
which <b>Vanessa Kirby</b> won Venice's best actress prize).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">By the way, the fact that most voters only watched a handful
of nominees is also probably why, to the surprise of most, the best original
song Oscar was awarded to "Fight for You" from <i>Judas and the
Black Messiah</i> — a best picture nominee — and not to more heavily
campaigned songs from, say, a film that was in contention for but missed a best
picture nom ("Speak Now" from <i>One Night in Miami</i>), a
non-English-language film ("Io si [Seen]" from <i>The Life Ahead</i>)
or a <b>Will Ferrell</b> comedy that was otherwise never part of the
awards conversation ("Husavik" from <i>Eurovision Song Contest:
The Story of Fire Saga</i>).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Sometimes, though, a true underdog can ride a wave all the
way to the winner's circle — pardon the pun, you'll get it in a moment — as was
the case with the documentary <i>My Octopus Teacher</i>. It was amazing to
watch the organic rise of this film, which was not even one of Netflix's
internal top priorities until relatively late in the season, when it became
undeniable that people simply loved the movie and told all of their friends
about it. The fact that it ended up beating <i>Time</i> and <i>Crip
Camp</i> is something that would have been unimaginable just a few months
ago. It's a great win for South Africa and octopuses everywhere.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Meanwhile, five years after #OscarsSoWhite, the Academy
certainly seems to have significantly addressed its struggles with inclusion.
Not only was the best picture directed by a woman and the best director that
same woman, but both supporting acting winners were people of color (<i>Judas</i>' <b>Daniel
Kaluuya</b> and <i>Minari</i>'s <b>Yuh-jung Youn</b>, who gave
the speeches of the night); the best original screenplay winner was a promising
young woman (<i>Promising Young Woman</i>'s <b>Emerald Fennell</b>); <i>Ma
Rainey</i>'s <b>Mia Neal</b> and <b>Jamika Wilson</b> became
the first-ever Black winners of the best makeup/hairstyling award; statuettes
were awarded to <b>H.E.R.</b>, one of the writers of "Fight for
You," and <b>John Batiste</b>, one of the composers of the score
for <i>Soul</i>, both people of color (<i>Soul</i>, incidentally, was the
first Pixar film to feature a Black protagonist); and, in one of my favorite
results of the night, <i>Two Distant Strangers</i>, a film about police
brutality, won best live-action short, making writer/co-director <b>Travon
Free</b> the first-ever Black winner of that award.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Oscars producers also leaned into diversity in their
selection of presenters, which is admirable, although one can't help but wonder
what middle-America made of the fact that only four of the 18 presenters
— <b>Bryan Cranston</b>, <b>Brad Pitt</b>, <b>Harrison Ford</b> and <b>Joaquin
Phoenix</b> — were white males.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The ratings will be out tomorrow. My guess is they will not
look pretty. It will be interesting to see how the Academy and ABC react as
they begin thinking about the next Oscars ceremony a year — or, more likely,
just 10 months — from now, back at the Dolby. But for now, and perhaps for
years to come, the conversation regarding the 93rd Oscars will probably center
on how a planned farewell to a wonderful actor and gentleman, Boseman, went so
terribly wrong.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/oscars-2021-analysis-how-chadwick-lost-frances-won-and-the-oscars-went-off-the-rails">https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/oscars-2021-analysis-how-chadwick-lost-frances-won-and-the-oscars-went-off-the-rails</a>
<o:p></o:p></p>Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-82960605043958619882020-11-25T18:22:00.004-08:002020-11-25T18:24:09.013-08:00The 2020 Election Wasn't 'Stolen.' Here Are All The Facts That Prove It.<p><span style="text-align: center;"> (By
Andrew Romano and Jon Ward, Yahoo News, 12 November 2020)</span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p>The United States has been conducting presidential elections
for 232 years. No modern candidate <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/11/no-modern-presidential-candidate-refused-to-concede-heres-why-that-matters/" target="_blank">has ever refused to accept the results and recognize the
winner’s legitimacy</a>. In this sense,
2020 could be different from any contest since the Civil War — if President
Trump continues to claim that President-elect Joe Biden “stole” the election
from him.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But every indication is that the 2020 election, conducted in
the midst of a pandemic, with by far the most votes ever cast, was run honestly
and the results tabulated accurately — a tribute to the professionalism and
integrity of officials across the country.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Before Election Day, the Trump administration invited a
delegation of 28 international experts from the Organization of American
States, which has reported on elections around the world, to observe the vote.
Its preliminary report <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/presidential-election-was-honest-report-international-observers-invited-by-the-trump-administration-193613745.html">found
zero evidence of significant fraud</a>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The New York Times recently spoke to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/us/politics/voting-fraud.html" target="_blank">top election officials in 49 of 50 states</a>. Not one,
Democrat or Republican, reported “that fraud or other irregularities played a
role in the outcome of the presidential race.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On Nov. 12, the coordinating council overseeing the voting
systems used around the country <a href="https://www.cisa.gov/news/2020/11/12/joint-statement-elections-infrastructure-government-coordinating-council-election" target="_blank">said in an unprecedented statement</a> distributed by
Trump’s own Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) that “the
November 3rd election was the most secure in American history” and that “there
is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or
was in any way compromised.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“While we
know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about
the process of our elections,” the statement continued, “we can assure you we
have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and
you should too.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/10/dhs-fact-checking-trump-conspiracies-435821" target="_blank">the head of CISA</a> has spent the last week
explaining <a href="https://twitter.com/CISAKrebs" target="_blank">on
Twitter</a> and on the agency’s “<a href="https://www.cisa.gov/rumorcontrol#post" target="_blank">Rumor Control</a>”
website why none of the stories of so-called fraud that Americans may be
encountering on social media or alternative news sites represent anything out
of the ordinary.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Yet these ominous-but-ultimately-overblown stories continue
to circulate online — stories of pollsters falsifying their surveys to hurt
Trump, of dead people voting, of observers being blocked from watching the
count, of mysterious batches of Biden votes suddenly materializing in
Democratic cities, of computer glitches changing the results, and so on.As a
result, millions of people continue to worry that maybe something happened in
2020 that’s never happened before. They wonder if maybe the election <i>was</i> stolen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It wasn’t.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What follow are the facts, and just the facts, on each of
the major “fraud” rumors flooding your inbox and your newsfeed.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Even if all of these rumors were true, which they aren’t,
they wouldn’t add up to enough votes to overturn the outcome: Biden is on track
to beat Trump by 5 million votes nationwide and by tens (or even hundreds) of
thousands of votes in key states.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
while some allegations could end up exposing real fraud — because real fraud
happens in every election — history shows that such incidents will be few, far
between and ultimately inconsequential.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In 2014, Loyola Law School professor and voting expert
Justin Levitt investigated every general, primary, special and municipal
election held since the year 2000. Of more than 1 billion ballots cast, he
found just <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/08/06/a-comprehensive-investigation-of-voter-impersonation-finds-31-credible-incidents-out-of-one-billion-ballots-cast/" target="_blank">31 credible instances</a> of potential voter
impersonation, which is one of a few ways that cheating can actually occur.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape
id="Picture_x0020_18" o:spid="_x0000_i1042" type="#_x0000_t75" style='width:468pt;
height:6.75pt;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square'>
<v:imagedata src="file:///C:/Users/Forem/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image003.png"
o:title=""/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img border="0" height="9" src="file:///C:/Users/Forem/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image004.png" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_18" width="624" /><!--[endif]--></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>RUMOR: Democrats and Dominion Voting Systems tampered
with computers to change the results<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>REALITY: Officials quickly fixed isolated glitches and
accidents, only two of which involved Dominion and none of which affected the
final vote count<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">No election goes off without a hitch, and in the internet
era, technology can compound some of the usual mistakes. But there’s a big
difference between Democrats conspiring with Dominion Voting Systems to “hack”
election and delete Republican votes and the kind of minor, easily detectable
and correctible data-entry accidents and software glitches that complicate any
computer-based enterprise.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The first is what Trump & Co. darkly speculate, without
evidence, to have taken place in close-run states. The second is what actually happened.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Consider the example of Antrim County, Mich., a Republican
stronghold where unofficial results initially showed Biden beating Trump by
roughly 3,000 votes — a sharp reversal from Trump's performance there in 2016.
Trump supporters flagged the discrepancy. Tweets about it went viral. Soon
conservatives such as Ted Cruz were calling for investigations and alleging
that maybe the same election-management software used in Antrim County (Dominion
Voting Systems) had screwed up the statewide count.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Experts eventually figured out what went wrong: An election
worker had “configured ballot scanners and reporting systems with slightly
different versions of the ballot, which meant some results did not line up with
the right candidate when officials loaded them into the system,” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/technology/no-software-glitches-are-not-affecting-vote-counts.html" target="_blank">according to the New York Times</a>. By then local officials
had already caught and corrected the error — even before another round of
review conducted by Republican and Democratic “canvassers” that is designed to
catch such mistakes. In the revised count, Trump beat Biden by roughly 2,500
votes.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But these facts haven’t deterred Trump allies from seizing
on other, unrelated examples of routine tech-related errors to falsely
insinuate some sort of nefarious conspiracy involving Dominion. In Oakland
County, Mich., election workers mistakenly counted votes from the city of
Rochester Hills twice, according to the Michigan Department of State — then
spotted and fixed their error. An incumbent Republican county commissioner kept
his seat as a result.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“As a Republican, I am disturbed that this is intentionally
being mischaracterized to undermine the election process,” Tina Barton, the
clerk in Rochester Hills, said in a video she posted online. “This was an
isolated mistake that was quickly rectified.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Oakland County used software from a company called Hart
InterCivic, not Dominion.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Meanwhile in Georgia, glitchy software updates affected how
poll workers checked in voters in Spalding and Morgan counties, which
both <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/04/georgia-election-machine-glitch-434065" target="_blank">halted voting for a few hours</a>. In another Georgia county,
Gwinnett, a different glitch delayed the reporting of results. Gwinnett County used Dominion; the other counties did not.
In any case, <a href="https://www.gwinnettcounty.com/web/gwinnett/home/stories/viewstory/-/story/2020_General_Election_Results" target="_blank">the issues did not affect the counts</a>. Trump won Spalding
County by 21 points and Morgan County by 42; Biden won Gwinnett by 18.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Elsewhere, fringier far-right activists have vaguely <a href="https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/nov/10/pamela-geller/debunking-hammer-and-scorecard-election-fraud-cons/" target="_blank">theorized</a> that secret CIA computer systems called
“Hammer” and “Scorecard” hacked the election on Biden’s behalf, pointing to
momentary inconsistencies in CNN’s unofficial, on-air vote tallies for the 2019
Kentucky gubernatorial race as evidence. There is no proof that Hammer and
Scorecard exist, and even if they did, experts say they would not be able to
intercept the digital transmission of vote results and change them without
being detected; officials always compare the transmitted results to paper
receipts from the original machines before certifying the outcome. “The Hammer and Scorecard nonsense [is] just that —
nonsense,” <a href="https://twitter.com/CISAKrebs/status/1325188644966117376" target="_blank">tweeted
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director Chris Krebs</a>.
“This is not a real thing, don’t fall for it and think 2x before you share.”</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Yet Twitter and Facebook posts from Trump and White House
press secretary Kayleigh McEnany falsely implied that the isolated issues in
Michigan and Georgia were signs of widespread problems with the election. On
Thursday, the president even went so far as to tweet that Dominion itself had
deleted millions of his votes — a claim with no basis in reality. He followed
up Sunday and Monday by echoing <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/q-fades-qanon-s-dominion-voter-fraud-conspiracy-theory-reaches-n1247780" target="_blank">baseless conspiracy theories</a> alleging Democratic
control of Dominion, which have been <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/posts-falsify-ties-between-election-tech-firm-and-democrats/2020/11/10/f112591e-239c-11eb-9c4a-0dc6242c4814_story.html" target="_blank">debunked as well</a>. The president has not provided a shred of
proof that software switched or deleted a single one of his votes — let alone
the tens or even hundreds of thousands he would need to overturn his losses in
Michigan, Georgia and elsewhere.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Not to be deterred, however, Georgia’s two Republican
senators, who are jockeying for advantage in their Jan. 5 runoff elections,
called on Brad Raffensperger, the state’s Republican secretary of state, to
resign because he had “failed the people of Georgia.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“That is not going to happen,” Raffensperger said in a
statement. “My job is to follow Georgia law and see to it that all legal votes,
and no illegal votes, are counted properly and accurately. … As a Republican, I
am concerned about Republicans keeping the U.S. Senate. I recommend that
Senators Loeffler and Perdue start focusing on that.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape
id="Picture_x0020_15" o:spid="_x0000_i1039" type="#_x0000_t75" style='width:468pt;
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<v:imagedata src="file:///C:/Users/Forem/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image003.png"
o:title=""/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img border="0" height="9" src="file:///C:/Users/Forem/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image009.png" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_15" width="624" /><!--[endif]--></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>RUMOR: Biden won only because of ‘illegal’ votes<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>REALITY: Actual illegal votes are rare, and the courts
are considering all credible charges<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In every election, some people cast ballots that end up not
counting because they run afoul of state election law for one reason or
another. It’s critical to the integrity of the election — and public trust in
America’s democratic process — that officials identify and disqualify such
votes. Every state has numerous safeguards in place to ensure that’s exactly
what happens.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But the mere existence of irregularities doesn’t invalidate
an election. If it did, no election would be valid. Scale is important here,
too. Illegal votes can affect the outcome only if enough of them benefit the
winner to potentially account for his or her entire margin of victory. “One would have to show, at minimum, more illegal votes than
the margin between the candidates,” <a href="https://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/" target="_blank">Richard
Hasen</a>, a law and political science professor at the University of
California, Irvine, and a nationally recognized election law expert, recently
explained. “That would be quite an extreme scale of fraud. Let’s see what the
evidence is.”</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The evidence of illegal votes in the 2020 election has been
exceedingly thin.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One of the most detailed complaints about the possibility
that ineligible voters cast ballots, or that votes were manufactured, came in a
lawsuit filed in Michigan on Nov. 9. A pro-Trump <a href="https://townsquare.media/site/656/files/2020/11/election-crimes-lawsuit.pdf" target="_blank">lawsuit</a> against the city of Detroit, filed by
the <a href="https://www.greatlakesjc.org/about-us/who-we-are/" target="_blank">Great Lakes Justice Center</a>, claimed that election workers
were told not to check signatures on mail ballots, that extra mail ballots were
brought in and all counted for Biden, that election workers backdated mail
ballots so they could be counted, and that they “used false information to
process ballots.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The lawsuit also claimed election observers were blocked
from watching vote counting at key moments, that votes from ineligible voters
were counted and that a handful of city workers “coached” voters to cast
ballots for Biden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the city filed a
detailed response, knocking down the allegations and saying they reflected “an
extraordinary failure to understand how elections function.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Election workers at the TCF Center, a Detroit convention
center where much of the county’s vote tabulation took place, were instructed
not to check mail-ballot signatures during the count, the city said, because
signature matching had already been done before the ballots arrived at the
facility.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Complaints made in the Great Lakes lawsuit about mail
ballots — known in Michigan as absent voter ballots — being backdated, with the
implication that they had arrived after Election Day, were also plainly false,
the city said. “No ballots received by the Detroit City Clerk after 8:00 p.m.
on November 3, 2020 were even brought to the TCF Center,” the city’s attorneys
wrote. “No ballot could have been ‘backdated,’ because no ballot received after
8:00 p.m. on November 3, 2020 was ever at the TCF Center.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As for the notion that ineligible votes were counted, or
that votes were concocted out of thin air and assigned to names of people who
didn’t vote, the city said that what Republican observers inside TCF really saw
was election workers correcting an error by some election workers at satellite
locations, who failed to complete a process that allowed some mail ballots to
be counted. It was necessary to enter the date for these ballots to allow them
to count, the city said. “Every single ballot delivered to the TCF Center had already
been verified as having been completed by an eligible voter,” the city said.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The charge of extra ballots being brought in was related to
the arrival of blank ballots that were sent to TCF for use by election workers.
These ballots were given to election workers so they could function as
duplicate ballots in case legitimate ballots were damaged and could not be read
by voting machines, the filing said. “Michigan election law does not call for partisan
challengers to be present when a ballot is duplicated; instead, when a ballot
is duplicated as a result of a ‘false read,’ the duplication is overseen by one
Republican and one Democratic inspector coordinating together,” Detroit’s
lawyers wrote. “That process was followed, and Plaintiffs do not — and cannot —
present any evidence to the contrary.”</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Trump campaign, in <a href="https://cdn.donaldjtrump.com/public-files/press_assets/1.-11-10-20-trump-v.-benson-w.d.-mich.-complaint-final.pdf" target="_blank">a lawsuit of its own</a> filed Tuesday in the U.S.
District Court for the Western District of Michigan, claimed there were cases
in which “ballot duplication was performed only by Democratic election workers,
not bipartisan teams.” This claim has <a href="https://www.masslive.com/news/2020/11/presidential-election-2020-michigan-judge-dismisses-president-donald-trumps-campaign-lawsuit-in-dispute-over-absentee-ballots.html" target="_blank">already been dismissed</a> in one lawsuit filed last week
by the Trump campaign in <a href="https://www.djournal.com/news/national/michigan-court-of-claims-judge-denies-relief-sought-in-trumps-michigan-ballot-lawsuit/article_4ac1033d-1f4f-505f-ae4f-7509b626c60b.html" target="_blank">Michigan’s Court of Claims</a>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The accusation of “false information” was based on records
that list some voters as having been born in the year 1900. The city said some
mail ballots that arrived between Sunday night and Tuesday — all before the
close of polls on Tuesday night — needed to have the birth date manually entered
due to a software “quirk.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Election workers entering the birth date for those ballots
used Jan. 1, 1900, as a “placeholder date” until the ballot entry could be
matched to the voter’s entry in the state voter file. “That birthday will
appear in several places in the electronic poll book record for a limited
period,” the city said. That leaves the allegation of city workers “coaching” voters
to cast ballots for Biden, a claim made by a city worker named Jessy Jacob in
the lawsuit.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The city said that if this were true it would be “contrary
to the instructions given to workers at the satellite locations,” but also said
it was “curious that Ms. Jacob waited until after the election to raise these
allegations.” The city noted that Jacob had been furloughed prior to the
election, was brought back to work during election season in September and was
furloughed again immediately after the election. The filing also pointed to evidence on social media that two
of the individuals who signed affidavits in the Great Lakes lawsuit were
adherents of the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Detroit lawyers also pointed out that Trump received
almost three times as many votes in Detroit in the 2020 election as he did four
years ago: 12,654, up from 4,972 in 2016. (The vote for Biden in Detroit this
year was just under 234,000, which was about 1,000 votes less than Hillary
Clinton’s total in 2016. But Biden won the state by almost 150,000 votes.)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Nothing about those numbers supports the theory of fraud
being advanced. Nothing about those numbers supports the completely
unsubstantiated claims of tens of thousands of improperly processed ballots,”
the city said.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b>RUMOR: ‘Dead people’ voted for Biden<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>REALITY: The Trump campaign hasn’t been able to produce
more than one or two potential examples of ‘dead people’ casting ballots (and
no one knows who they voted for)<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It’s a <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2000/10/was-nixon-robbed.html" target="_blank">perennial claim in American politics</a>: <i>The only
reason my candidate lost is because a bunch of dead people voted for your
candidate. </i>And Trump ally Lindsey Graham, the recently reelected
Republican senator from South Carolina, is its latest proponent.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“The Trump team has canvassed all early voters and absentee
mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania, and they have found over 100 people they think
were dead [and] 15 people that we verified that have been dead who voted,”
Graham <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/shows/sunday-morning-futures" target="_blank">said during a Fox News interview</a>. “Six people registered
after they died and voted. In Pennsylvania, I guess you’re never out of it.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Graham isn’t alone in accusing the deceased of meddling in
the election; members of Trump's family and supporters like former House
Speaker Newt Gingrich and former acting Director of National Intelligence
Richard Grenell have repeated similar charges. Meanwhile, a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/08/tech/michigan-dead-voter-fact-debunking/index.html" target="_blank">series of viral tweets and videos shared by Trump fans</a> have
also accused various Michigan residents — some with birth dates from the turn
of the 20th century — of casting absentee ballots from beyond the grave. The implication is that somehow Democrats filled out and
fraudulently submitted ballots in the names of dead people in order to lift
Biden to victory.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But that just doesn’t compute.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In reality, 13 states actually count absentee ballots
submitted by living voters who then die before Election Day, <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/blog/2020/10/20/what-if-an-absentee-voter-dies-before-election-day-.aspx" target="_blank">according to the National Conference of State Legislatures</a>.
So some of these so-called illegal votes are, in fact, perfectly legal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Elsewhere, states prohibit counting the votes
of people who are no longer alive. They do this in two ways: by disqualifying
the early votes or mail ballots of residents who wind up dying before Election
Day and/or by promptly flagging voters who have recently died so officials can
cross-reference the voter rolls and discount any ballots cast in their name.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It’s a complicated, fast-moving process, and sometimes the
human beings in charge of it make mistakes. One viral video, for instance,
purports to show that “118-year-old ‘William Bradley’ voted via absentee ballot
in Wayne County, Mich.” But what actually happened, <a href="https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/nov/05/facebook-posts/no-dead-voter-named-william-bradley-didnt-vote-det/" target="_blank">according to Politifact</a>, is that Bradley’s son — also named
William Bradley and residing at the same address, but not born in March 1902
and definitely not deceased — voted with his own ballot, which officials then
incorrectly attributed to his father.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“No
ballot was cast for the now deceased Bradley,” Politifact explained. “This was
a clerical error, not voter fraud.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Another Michigan voter, named Donna Brydges, was also cited
in viral pro-Trump videos because her birth date was listed as 1901 in the state’s
qualified voter database. Turns out that Brydges is 75 and voted legally; her
DOB was merely a placeholder.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“It is important to note that some state registration systems
indicate a missing date of birth by adopting filler dates, such as 01/01/1900,
01/01/1850, or 01/01/1800,” a 2017 report about duplicate voting from the
Government Accountability Institute noted. “The vast majority of votes cast by
individuals appearing to be over 115 years old had these three erroneous
birthdates.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Likewise, CNN <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/08/tech/michigan-dead-voter-fact-debunking/index.html" target="_blank">recently checked</a> 50 of the more than 14,000 names on a
list of allegedly dead-but-registered Michigan voters making the rounds on
Twitter and found that only five of them voted in 2020 — and all five are, in
fact, alive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>None of the 37 actually
dead people in CNN’s sample cast a ballot.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Whatever the exact figures, we’re talking about a small
handful of ballots here — nowhere near the number Trump would need to catch up
in Michigan, where he trails by about <a href="https://mielections.us/election/results/2020GEN_CENR.html" target="_blank">147,000
votes</a>, or Pennsylvania, where he trails by <a href="https://www.electionreturns.pa.gov/" target="_blank">45,000</a>. A suit
filed by a conservative foundation in Pennsylvania alleged that the state
included 21,000 dead people on its voter rolls. But “the court found no
deficiency in how Pennsylvania maintains its voter rolls,” according to a
spokeswoman for the state attorney general’s office, and “there is currently no
proof provided that any deceased person has voted in the 2020 election.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And even then there’s no reason to think the dead favor
Democrats over Republicans. In October, a man in Luzerne County, Pa. — a
registered Republican — <a href="https://www.pennlive.com/news/2020/10/pa-man-accused-of-trying-to-sign-his-dead-mother-up-for-mail-in-voting.html" target="_blank">was charged with felonies</a> after <a href="https://ujsportal.pacourts.us/DocketSheets/MDJReport.ashx?docketNumber=MJ-11102-CR-0000622-2020&dnh=HZcxqzneUpTcKoVw50krog%3d%3d" target="_blank">trying</a> to apply for a mail ballot in his dead mother’s
name. On Nov. 7, meanwhile, Trump campaign adviser Corey Lewandowski provided
what he said was “one concrete example” of dead-voter fraud, pointing to <a href="https://www.swgfuneralhome.com/obituary/Denise-Ondick" target="_blank">an
obituary</a> for Denise Ondick of West Homestead in Allegheny County, Pa.,
who died on Oct. 22 — one day before election officials received her
application for a mail-in ballot, according to <a href="https://www.pavoterservices.pa.gov/pages/ballottracking.aspx" target="_blank">online records</a> from the Pennsylvania Department of
State, and 11 days before the county received and recorded her vote. The
Trump <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-11-10/single-nevada-case-shows-futility-of-trump-effort-to-reverse-election-result" target="_blank">campaign has cited a single, similar incident in Nevada</a>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In an interview with the <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/news/trump-biden-vote-fraud-philadelphia-pittsburgh-rudy-giuliani-lawsuits-20201108.html" target="_blank">Philadelphia Inquirer</a>, Ondick’s daughter said she helped
her mother fill out an application for a mail ballot in early October, before
the elder Ondick died of cancer, but that she could not explain why the ballot
had been sent in after her mother’s death. Ondick’s husband said he couldn’t
recall doing anything with the ballot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ondick’s
daughter also said her mother had planned to vote for Trump.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Lewandowski said Ondick was “one of many” examples of
dead-voter fraud the Trump campaign would be asking the courts to review. So
far, the campaign has not revealed any additional details or mentioned any
other specific cases.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b>RUMOR: Democrats blocked Republican observers from
watching the count<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>REALITY: Republican lawyers for the Trump campaign have
admitted in court that this is false<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Republicans have focused these complaints on Detroit and
Philadelphia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“We’re seeing this pattern
in Democratic city after Democratic city, but the worst of the country right
now is Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, were they’re not allowing election observers
in, despite clear state law that requires election observers being there,
despite an order from a state judge saying election observers have to be within
6 feet of the ballot counting,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said on Nov. 5, on Sean
Hannity’s Fox News show. “I am angry and I think the American people are angry
because by throwing the observers out, by clouding the vote counting in a
shroud of darkness, they are setting the stage to potentially steal the
election,” Cruz said. These <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/cruz-graham-add-fuel-to-trumps-inflammatory-votefraud-charges-230059453.html">allegations
were repeated</a> by Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But the Trump campaign’s own lawyers <a href="https://twitter.com/TimAlberta/status/1324561121567789056/photo/1" target="_blank">acknowledged in a hearing</a> that there have been
Republican observers in the room at all times since mail ballots began to be
opened and counted at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Their counsel admitted at the hearing, after
questions from the court, that they had several representatives in the room,”
said the Philadelphia City Commissioners in a statement. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The commissioners, two Democrats and one Republican who
oversee voting in the city, said there were between 15 and 19 Republican
observers present all day on Nov. 5.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hawley
also said that “some states [were] going to court to try to stop poll watchers,
people just observing the ballot counts.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“I mean, that is deeply, deeply disturbing,” he said.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">That was another false claim. The city of Philadelphia
appealed <a href="https://twitter.com/ByJohnLMicek/status/1324381039666626560" target="_blank">a ruling</a> that partisan observers should be allowed to
oversee the work of election officials from as close as 6 feet away. There was
never an allegation in the suit that poll watchers were being barred from the
room. The Trump campaign’s lawsuit had alleged that its observers,
who were in the room with unobstructed views, wanted to get closer so they
could challenge individual mail ballots if there was no signature on the outer
envelope, or if the voter had written the wrong date on the envelope.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The city’s <a href="https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7319287/11-5-20-Philadelphia-Petition-PA-SC.pdf" target="_blank">appeal argued</a> that state law does not permit those
kinds of challenges, a decision the state legislature made in recognition that
allowing challenges to individual ballots would slow down the processing of a
historic number of mail ballots during the COVID-19 pandemic. Challenging the eligibility of voters to cast mail ballots
had to be done when the ballots were requested, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/tammy-patrick-5a383182/" target="_blank">Tammy
Bruce</a>, a former Arizona elections official, told Yahoo News.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Observers in the room are entitled to see that mail ballots
are being examined for signatures and that they were properly placed inside a
privacy envelope, and to monitor for anything else of concern, such as the
destruction or discarding of ballots.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gingrich,
also on Fox, claimed poll watchers had been “physically excluded” from
overseeing vote counting.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">He pointed specifically to Detroit, where there were
complaints about election officials covering the windows of a counting room at
the TCF Center.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“You have a precinct
where you don’t let anyone in. They’re boarded up,” Gingrich claimed. “I would
take every precinct that blocked poll watchers and not count their votes.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But a Detroit city attorney said the windows
were blocked because ballots were being counted closely enough to them that
members of the public could take photos that might disclose the privacy of
voters’ ballots.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were “hundreds of
challengers from both parties … inside the Central Counting Board all afternoon
and all evening,” <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/05/media/detroit-windows-covered-ballots-vote-center/index.html" target="_blank">said Detroit attorney Lawrence Garcia</a>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The city of Detroit noted in a court filing that “more than
200 Republican challengers were present at the TCF center, and at no time were
they limited to fewer than one challenger for every Absent Voter Counting
Board. While six feet of separation was necessary for health reasons, the
Department of Elections provided large computer monitors at every counting
board, so that challengers could view all information as it was inputted into
the computer.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“When it became clear
that the number of challengers had reached or exceeded the lawful quota and the
room had become over-crowded, additional challengers were not admitted until
challengers from their respective parties voluntarily departed.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When Yahoo News asked Gingrich what proof he had of
observers being “physically excluded” from vote-counting centers, a Gingrich
spokesman essentially admitted there was none. “With regard to the people being
kept from watching ballots being counted, we now have a better understanding of
the situations in Philadelphia and Detroit,” said Louie Brogdon, editorial
director of Gingrich 360, a consulting and media production firm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“When Speaker Gingrich made his earlier
comment, he was speaking on the best information he had at the time,” Brogdon
said.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b>RUMOR: Democrats suddenly ‘found’ new, fraudulent Biden
votes to beat Trump<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>REALITY: Counting mail ballots took a long time in some
states, like Pennsylvania, because the Republican Party blocked reforms that
would have avoided this problem</b></p><p class="MsoNormal">In the days after Election Day, Trump said several times
that Democrats were trying to cheat him by “finding” votes for Biden. “They are finding Biden votes all over the
place — in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. So bad for our Country!”
the <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1324032541544927233" target="_blank">president tweeted</a> just before noon on Wednesday, Nov.
4. His mention of those three states is
telling. They are the same ones that Yahoo News was writing about for three
months leading up to the election, raising awareness about what one
Pennsylvania Republican <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/how-a-pennsylvania-law-could-delay-presidential-election-results-for-days-or-even-weeks-205118975.html">warned
in September</a> was a “man-made disaster … that easily could be avoided.”</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The disaster happened. It didn’t have to. And it created
space for the president to falsely claim that votes were being “found” when in
fact they were simply being counted in a delayed fashion. The delay was caused
— seemingly intentionally — by the Republican Party itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Here’s what happened. After the outbreak of COVID-19 in the
late winter and early spring, most states allowed all voters to cast ballots by
mail in the spring and early summer, during primary elections. Over the summer,
some states moved back to a focus on in-person voting. But most stuck with
expanded access to voting by mail. For many states this was new. But five states have conducted
their elections by mail for years now: Colorado, Utah, Washington, Oregon and
Hawaii. Two more, Arizona and California, have done their elections mostly by
mail for a few years.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As states moved to voting by mail, most had rules that
allowed election clerks to process those ballots as they arrived. As Ohio
Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/rust-belt-states-that-will-decide-election-have-hamstrung-their-ability-to-report-results-top-gop-election-official-says-090039383.html">told
Yahoo News in August</a>, “We can start processing those right away, meaning:
Cut the envelope, open, verify the information on it, put it through the
scanner, but not hit ‘tabulate.’ That can’t happen until 7:30 on election
night.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a result, Ohio had most of
its mail ballots counted early on election night. Most states did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania —
the same three states mentioned by Trump in his tweet — refused to make a
change allowing clerks to process mail ballots like the rest of the country.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Action was needed from the state legislature, and in all
three states the Republican Party held majorities in both the state Senate and
the state House.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>LaRose himself warned
of a “really terrible situation” if these legislatures didn’t make a simple
change, giving clerks time to process mail ballots before Election Day.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In other words, the GOP knew its lack of action was going to
delay the counting of mail ballots by several days, and either did nothing or —
as in the case of Michigan — gave clerks one day ahead of Election Day to
process mail ballots, rather than the week or two that experts and election
officials recommended.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In Pennsylvania, Republicans at first allowed clerks to
start processing mail ballots 21 days before Election Day, but then cut that
down to three and included a number of “poison pill” ideas in its bill that
guaranteed Democrats would oppose it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There has been no evidence of ballots being added. That has
happened before <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/here-are-all-the-stories-trump-has-cited-as-evidence-of-a-rigged-election-155551232.html">in
Philadelphia</a>, but on a very small scale. In May, an election judge
there <a href="https://whyy.org/articles/philly-judge-of-elections-pleads-guilty-to-election-fraud-accepting-bribes/" target="_blank">pleaded guilty</a> to adding a total of 113 votes over
three elections from 2014 to 2016 to help judicial candidates running for a
local court.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The point made by LaRose
and other Republican experts is that even isolated examples of cheating, <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/what-is-voter-fraud-yahoo-news-explains-191816016.html">which
do happen</a>, do not add up to a conspiracy. To manipulate tens of thousands
of votes without detection is not possible given the multiple layers of
security and accountability involved in running elections, experts say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of those layers is the postelection audit
that each state conducts itself to ensure that the result was accurate.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b>RUMOR: Pollsters falsified their results to suppress the
GOP vote<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>REALITY: Republicans turned out in record numbers even
though pollsters mistakenly underestimated Trump again<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Last Thursday, Trump told reporters that pollsters had
deliberately produced false surveys showing Biden with a big lead in order to
suppress Trump votes and help Biden win the election.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He followed up Monday night with <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1325961116359516160" target="_blank">a series of tweets</a> repeating the same claim.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“.@FoxNews, @QuinnipiacPoll, ABC/WaPo,
NBC/WSJ were so inaccurate with their polls on me, that it really is tampering
with an Election,” Trump wrote. “They were so far off in their polling, and in
their attempt to suppress - that they should be called out for Election
Interference … ABC/WaPo had me down 17 points in Wisconsin, the day before the
election, and I WON! In Iowa, the polls had us 4 points down, and I won by
8.2%! Fox News and Quinnipiac were wrong on everything… The worst polling ever,
and then they’ll be back in four years to do it again. This is much more then [<i>sic</i>]
voter and campaign finance suppression!”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Trump is right about one thing: Pollsters <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/why-the-polls-were-wrong-about-trump-again-234138787.html">again
underestimated the president’s support</a> in key (mostly Midwestern)
states such as Iowa and Wisconsin, four years after he first beat his Rust Belt
polling numbers to eke out a narrow Electoral College victory over Hillary
Clinton. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trump is wrong, however, that
this polling miss was part of some sort of plot to propel Biden to the
presidency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are two reasons for
this. First, these errors are the opposite of deliberate — instead, they’re a
source of embarrassment for pollsters nationwide. And second, even if
they <i>had </i>been deliberate, they didn’t actually “work.” They
didn’t stop Republicans from voting.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Polling is a business, and accuracy is the coin of the
realm. As <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/election-polling-trump-biden-liberty-vittert" target="_blank">Fox News contributor Liberty Vittert</a>, a data science
professor at the Washington University in St. Louis, recently explained,
“Pollsters poll on many more issues than political campaigns, and their
businesses depend on their reputations for accurate polling.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To believe that dozens of pollsters independently falsified
their results to boost Biden, in other words, you’d also have to believe that
somehow they were all independently willing to sabotage their reputations and
hurt their businesses on the slim chance that Trump’s passionate base would see
Biden’s inflated numbers and decide to stay home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The president’s accusation doesn’t make
sense,” Vittert wrote. “Think about it: why would any business hire a pollster
if it thought the polling was inaccurate?”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Instead, the truth is that pollsters <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/11/14/20961794/education-weight-state-polls-trump-2020-election" target="_blank">labored mightily to improve their methodologies</a> after
missing a lot of non-college-educated white Trump voters in 2016 — and now, in
2020, they’ve missed again, perhaps because many of those voters simply aren’t
as willing as highly engaged, COVID-era Democrats to pick up the phone and
participate in a practice they’ve already rejected as “fake news.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This phenomenon is called <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/11/10/21551766/election-polls-results-wrong-david-shor" target="_blank">non-response bias</a>. Pollsters are not proud of their failure
to correct for it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The reason why the
polls are wrong is because the people who were answering these surveys were the
wrong people,” pollster David Shor recently explained. “The problem [is that]
one group of people [is] really, really excited to share their opinions, while
another group isn’t. As long as that bias exists, it’ll percolate down to
whatever you do.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The flip side of this phenomenon, as Shor put it, is that
“these low-trust people still vote, even if they’re not answering these phone
surveys.” The 2020 results bear this out. Not only did Trump receive <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-president.html" target="_blank">more than 72 million votes</a> — the second-most in U.S.
history, after Biden’s 78 million — but Senate Republicans in Texas, Michigan,
Colorado, North Carolina and Georgia actually beat the president’s share of the
vote in their respective states.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Together,
these stats suggest that far from being discouraged by Trump’s unpromising poll
numbers, Republicans turned out in force on Nov. 3. It’s just that more people
voted for Biden.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/the-2020-election-wasnt-stolen-here-are-all-the-facts-that-prove-it-184623754.html">https://www.yahoo.com/news/the-2020-election-wasnt-stolen-here-are-all-the-facts-that-prove-it-184623754.html</a>
<o:p></o:p></p>Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-2121682832876445152020-03-28T09:48:00.000-07:002020-03-28T09:49:56.353-07:00Why Do The Airlines Need A Bailout? They Made A Fortune Over The Past Decade. Now They’re Demanding $50 Billion To Stay In Business.<br />
<div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
(By Henry Grabar, Slate, 17 March 2020)</div>
<br />
If Washington doesn’t do something, all U.S. airlines are
going under. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was the message that
industry lobby Airlines for America delivered on Monday, arguing that under the
most likely scenario, all seven major U.S. passenger carriers would run
out of money between July and December. The group <a href="https://www.airlines.org/news/a4a-statement-on-covid-19/">asked</a> for
$50 billion in assistance from the federal government, divided evenly
between grants (free money) and low-interest loans. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span>
<br />
That’s a lot. For comparison, the feds <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Chapter_11_reorganization">spent
$50 billion</a> to bail out General Motors during the financial
crisis—most of which was repaid. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has
been a little more than two years since American Airlines CEO Doug Parker <a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/business/local-companies/2017/09/28/american-airlines-doug-parker-tells-analysts-i-don-t-think-we-re-ever-going-to-lose-money-again/">told investors</a>,
in an instant business school cautionary tale, “I don’t think we’re ever going
to lose money again.” How time flies when a viral pandemic ravages the earth.<br />
<br />
Help is on the way, President Donald Trump said on Monday.
The coronavirus outbreak and the sudden decline in air travel is “not their
fault,” the president observed, “they were having record seasons.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fact check: true. Airlines are coming off
a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/26/airline-labor-unions-for-pilots-flight-attendants-want-raises-in-2020.html">remarkable
10-year run</a>. Delta’s <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/deltas-profit-rises-on-strong-demand-and-cheaper-fuel-11579003282">profits</a> for
each of the past five years, back from 2019 to 2015, were $4.8 billion, $3.9
billion, $3.2 billion, $4.2 billion, and $4.5 billion. Mergers have given the
big four (Delta, United, American, and Southwest) about 80 percent of the U.S.
market. With oil prices low and the economy humming along, it has been a great
time to run an airline.<br />
<br />
So now that the lean times are here—admittedly, a surprising
turn of events for us all—where did all that money go? Why are
multibillion-dollar airlines held to a budgeting standard that, if it were
adopted by a typical American household, would seem totally
irresponsible? And why, if they blew through all that cash, should we help
them now?<br />
<br />
The last question is the easiest to answer: because we have
no choice, if we want to maintain our national travel infrastructure. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first question—where’s the money?—is also
not so complicated. Over the past decade, according to Bloomberg, U.S.
airlines <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-16/u-s-airlines-spent-96-of-free-cash-flow-on-buybacks-chart">spent
96 percent</a> of their cash profits on stock buybacks to
enrich investors and their own executives, whose positions often come with
stock holdings.* <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As for <i>why </i>airlines
behave with relatively little foresight, that’s more complicated.<br />
<br />
Investors see little reason for airline companies—or any
other companies—to have cash on hand. In 2017, analysts at McKinsey <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/the-real-story-behind-us-companies-off-shore-cash-reserves">concluded</a> that
the 500 largest companies in the U.S. (excluding banks) had about 20 percent of
their revenues in cash. That was too much, they thought. “While companies do
need to hold some cash to do business,” they wrote, “in the past
we’ve found that companies can typically do with cash balances of less
than 2 percent of revenues.” (This cash is mostly held off shore, but
that’s another story.)<br />
<br />
By keeping cash in the bank, executives weren’t just
depressing their own salaries. They were also making their companies look bad.
They risked the ire of activist investors who saw cash as “unproductive
capital,” <a href="https://news.delta.com/following-13-billion-profit-sharing-payout-delta-employees-will-be-paid-640000-volunteer-hours">workers</a> who <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1985-03-13-8501140598-story.html">saw
cash reserves as raises</a> that hadn’t been paid, and even savvy
consumers, who would protest stingy service and aging equipment. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so at the end of a record decade in
profits, according to Bloomberg, American had $7 billion on
hand, United $4.9 billion, and Delta $2.9 billion.<br />
<br />
Those rainy-day funds still sound like a lot of money, but
there’s another problem with airlines. Historically, they were
considered a bad investment prone to bankruptcies. In 2007, Warren
Buffett wrote, “if a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he
would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down.”*
(Even Buffett came around and bought stock in the big four in 2016.) Despite
this recent merger-driven boomlet, they are low-margin,
capital intensive businesses. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Low
margins mean your savings don’t get you far. At the rate it’s going now,
United’s blockbuster 2019 profits will be spent down in less than 90 days. The
company says it’s losing $1.5 billion a month. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Capital-intensive means it’s hard to tighten
your belt. You can save some money on fuel and food, but not on labor or rent.
You still have to pay banks or leasing companies for your planes. You can’t
save those seats for later, or fly twice as many flights when business picks up
again. There is no factory to shut down. Even if you ground flights, many
costs are fixed.<br />
<br />
Which brings us to the current pandemic-induced crisis, and
the fifth reason—after the unprecedented disruption, shareholder capitalism,
low margins, and a capital-intensive business—that airlines do not have enough
money sitting around: moral hazard. America won’t let the airlines fail, and
the people who run the airlines know it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nobody wants to bail out executives and
shareholders who spent years lining their pockets as hundreds of thousands of
owner-operated restaurants go out of business. But letting the planes go down
would put nearly a million people out of work and deprive the country of nearly
all its long-distance travel infrastructure.<br />
<br />
The mergers that helped the companies throw off such big
profits have left us with corporations so fundamental to American life they are
basically utilities. Let McDonald’s go under and you still have Burger
King. Let American Airlines shutter and Dallas will be as distant as Timbuktu. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The question for Congress, then, is not
whether to save the airlines—but how to redraw corporate governance to fix its
bad incentives.<br />
<br />
After Sept. 11, Congress passed an airline bailout of grants
and loans. It was designed to help airlines obtain insurance again, but it also
included caps on CEO pay and “golden parachutes” for departing executives. In a
bigger bailout, the public can demand more significant oversight. “We won’t let
this look like the bank bailout of 2008, nor can you compare the two,” Sara
Nelson, the president of the flight attendants’ union, <a href="https://twitter.com/FlyingWithSara/status/1239642994183155716">said</a>
on Twitter. “The airline industry didn’t cause the pandemic and money should
come with significant conditions to help workers and keep planes flying,
not enrich shareholders or pad executive bonuses. Airlines must commit to
maintaining payroll. It means no bonuses, no buybacks, & no breaking union
contracts in bankruptcy. Companies should commit to pay a min $15 wage and
board seats for workers.”<br />
<br />
It’s a good template for how Washington should approach the
crisis: With an open mind toward fixing corporate America’s problems. In the
New York Times, the antitrust advocate Tim Wu <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/opinion/airlines-bailout.html">writes</a>
that we should force airlines to cap or abolish fees and take steps to undo
industry consolidation. Over in Europe, Italy has announced it will nationalize
Alitalia, and other European airlines will not be far behind. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whatever we decide to do with the airlines
will be just an appetizer to the considerably more fraught negotiation that’s
just around the bend, over the future of <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/154944/boeing-737-max-investigation-indonesia-lion-air-ethiopian-airlines-managerial-revolution">death-plane
producer</a> Boeing, whose departing CEO Dennis Muilenburg <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/business/boeing-dennis-muilenburg-severance.html">walked
away</a> with more than $60 million earlier this year.<br />
<br />
One thing is for sure: The central condition of any assistance
has got to require airlines keep their profits in the bank for the next time
this happens (as was required for automakers after the 2008 crash—Ford has $37
billion in reserve). This pandemic is a surprise. The next one won’t be. If <i>you’re</i>
expected to keep your savings on hand, so should American, United, Southwest,
and Delta.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://slate.com/business/2020/03/airlines-bailout-coronavirus.html">https://slate.com/business/2020/03/airlines-bailout-coronavirus.html</a>
<br />
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-59293118446682494292020-03-28T09:27:00.000-07:002020-03-28T09:32:27.051-07:00<br />
<div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Taylor Swift And Kanye West's 'Famous' Phone Call
Video Leaks: Read The Transcript</span></u></b></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">(By Melody Chiu,
People Magazine, 21 March 2020)</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Four years after
Kim Kardashian <a href="https://people.com/celebrity/kim-kardashian-releases-phone-call-between-taylor-swift-and-kanye-west/">shared
an edited phone call</a> between her husband<a href="https://people.com/music/taylor-swift-says-kanye-west-moment-burrowed-into-psyche/">
Kanye West and Taylor Swift</a> discussing his “Famous” lyrics, extended
portions of the conversation were leaked online late Friday night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In clips posted to Twitter, the rapper, 42,
is heard asking Swift, 30, to release his new song on her Twitter account. “So
my next single, I wanted you to tweet it … so that’s why I’m calling you. I
wanted you to put the song out,” he tells the Grammy winner on the phone.</span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">After telling
Swift he included a “<a href="https://people.com/music/kanye-west-famous-demo-taylor-swift-sex/">very
controversial line</a>” about her in the song, the pop star nervously asks West
what the lyrics are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>West then tells
Swift he’s been mulling over the lyrics for eight months and warns her “it’s
gonna go Eminem a little bit” and to “brace yourself for a second.”</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">A wary Swift asks
if it’s “gonna be mean,” and West acknowledges even Kim initially felt it was
“too crazy” but had come around. “It’s like my wife’s favorite f—ing line,” he
says.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDUvwZUDRhoxFMLP_bfSvsRp-oxnfA9Gr1At9JZXCwvKa3NMJdtQgtX_4flt_MffrcWBJSSf_CHJR4buHqoG1GkvVMEYfr19TLiqw0bifLAtyXq8OPztFlo8E3CEYiBepwK0TnFpCuvrs/s1600/Swift+West+Kardashian+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1124" data-original-width="1600" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDUvwZUDRhoxFMLP_bfSvsRp-oxnfA9Gr1At9JZXCwvKa3NMJdtQgtX_4flt_MffrcWBJSSf_CHJR4buHqoG1GkvVMEYfr19TLiqw0bifLAtyXq8OPztFlo8E3CEYiBepwK0TnFpCuvrs/s400/Swift+West+Kardashian+1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Taylor Swift, Kanye West and Kim
Kardashian West- Kevin Mazur/WireImage</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">RELATED: </span></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><a href="https://people.com/music/kanye-west-famous-inside-his-and-taylor-swifts-relationship-history/">Taylor
Swift and Kanye West’s Rocky History: A Timeline</a></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">“So it says, ‘To
all my Southside n— that know me best/ I feel like <a href="https://people.com/tag/taylor-swift/">Taylor Swift</a> might owe me sex,”
continues West with a chuckle. Responds Swift with a laugh: “That’s not mean.”</span></div>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Further
discussing his proposal to have her release the song, Swift — who expresses
relief that the lyrics aren’t about her being “that stupid dumb bitch” — tells
West she needs to “think about it because it is absolutely crazy.”</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Later in the
call, West tells Swift the original lyric he wrote was, “To all my Southside n—
that know me best/ I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex.” (The lyric
that made it into the final version of the track is “For all my Southside n—
that know me best/ I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made
that bitch famous”)</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">In another leaked
portion, West asks Swift how she would feel if he included a line that said “I
made her famous,” to which she warily responded: “Did you say that? Well, what
am I going to do about it? It’s just kind of, like, whatever at this point. But
I mean, you gotta tell the story the way it happened to you and the way that
you’ve experienced it. Like, you honestly didn’t know who I was before that.
Like, it doesn’t matter if I sold 7 million of that album before you did that,
which is what happened. You didn’t know who I was before that. It’s fine. But
um, yeah, I can’t wait to hear it.”</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">West also
promises Swift—who encourages West to protect his relationship with Kim after
he tells her his wife prefers him saying “owes me sex” instead of “might still
have sex”—to send her the final version of the track.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I’m going to send you the song and send you
the exact wording and everything about it, right? And then we could sit and
talk through it,” West tells Swift, who has long contended she never heard the
song before its release.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">After “Famous”
was released in February of 2016, <a href="https://people.com/celebrity/kanye-west-did-not-call-taylor-swift-for-approval-over-bitch-lyric/">Swift’s
rep told PEOPLE</a> the singer “declined and cautioned him about releasing a
song with such a strong misogynistic message. Taylor was never made aware of
the actual lyrics, ‘I made that bitch famous.’” </span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkhW_PnrnT06oifJRfb3LfQvgA0PvpXD5hvFsppX6GWW8w1KbJeIMNmQrGFTQpxCCxIb2959nhkjMeWiKqQxsdYNbFwDDMwdDtWhg10R-UsHo_uiIy3tnU6TF_hGbT9NOHtNBwKqmKuXQ/s1600/Swift+West+Grammy+Speech.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1075" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkhW_PnrnT06oifJRfb3LfQvgA0PvpXD5hvFsppX6GWW8w1KbJeIMNmQrGFTQpxCCxIb2959nhkjMeWiKqQxsdYNbFwDDMwdDtWhg10R-UsHo_uiIy3tnU6TF_hGbT9NOHtNBwKqmKuXQ/s400/Swift+West+Grammy+Speech.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Kanye West and
Taylor Swift - Christopher Polk/Getty Images</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">In June of 2016,
Kardashian West told <i>GQ </i>the singer had told her husband she would
“laugh” and tell media she was “in on it the whole time” in a phone call. Then
a month later, the <i>Keeping Up with the Kardashians</i> star branded Swift a
snake on social media and leaked edited snippets from the call on her Snapchat
account.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“If people ask me about it,
look, I think it would be great for me to be like, ‘He called me and told me
before it came out . . . Joke’s on you, guys. We’re fine,’” Swift is heard
saying in the footage <a href="https://people.com/celebrity/kim-kardashian-releases-phone-call-between-taylor-swift-and-kanye-west/">Kardashian
West posted on Snapchat</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Swift’s rep was
quoted in the <i>GQ</i> article as saying that “much of what Kim is saying is
incorrect. Taylor has never denied that conversation took place. It was on that
phone call that Kanye West also asked her to release the song on her Twitter account,
which she declined to do. Kanye West never told Taylor he was going to use the
term ‘that bitch‘ in referring her. A song cannot be approved if it was never
heard. Kanye West never played the song for Taylor Swift. Taylor heard it for
the first time when everyone else did and was humiliated. Kim Kardashian’s
claim that Taylor and her team were aware of being recorded is not true, and
Taylor cannot understand why Kanye West, and now Kim Kardashian, will not just
leave her alone.”</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Moments after
Kardashian West posted snippets of the call, <a href="https://people.com/celebrity/taylor-swift-slams-kim-kardashian-and-kayne-west-over-famous/">Swift
released a statement on her Instagra</a>m slamming the couple. “Where is the
video of Kanye telling me he was going to call me ‘that bitch’ in his song? It
doesn’t exist because it never happened. You don’t get to control someone’s
emotional response to being called ‘that bitch’ in front of the entire world,”
the singer wrote.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">“Of course I
wanted to like the song. I wanted to believe Kanye when he told me that I would
love the song. I wanted us to have a friendly relationship. He promised to play
the song for me, but he never did. While I wanted to be supportive of Kanye on
the phone call, you cannot ‘approve’ a song you haven’t heard. Being falsely
painted as a liar when I was never given the full story or played any part of
the song is character assassination.”</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">While Swift went
on to record and tour <i>reputation</i>, a dark album inspired by the <a href="https://people.com/music/taylor-swift-kim-kardashian-kanye-west-feud-backlash-vogue/">depressive
period she went through</a> following the drama, Kanye West has remained mum
about the feud while Kardashian West told Andy Cohen last January <a href="https://people.com/music/kim-kardashian-has-moved-on-from-taylor-swift-feud/">she
was “over it.</a>”</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">For a
transcript of the newly leaked portion of Swift and West’s phone conversation,
keep reading below:</span></b><br />
<b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: —old school
s—, yeah. I’m doing great. I feel so awesome about the music. The album’s
coming out Feb. 11. I’m doing the fashion show Feb. 11 at Madison Square Garden
and dropping the album Feb. 12, that morning. It’s like …. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Aw
thank you so, so much. Thank you. It feels like, real. I don’t know, just ‘Ye,
Apple, Steve Jobs-type music. Like, so my next single, I wanted you to tweet it
… so that’s why I’m calling you. I wanted you to put the song out.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: What would
people … I guess it would just be, people would be like, “Why is this
happening?” And I had something to do with it, probably.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: The reason
why it would happen is because it has a very controversial line at the
beginning of the song about you.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: What does it
say? [nervous laughter]</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: It says, and
the song is so, so dope, and I literally sat with my wife, with my whole
manager team, with everything, and try to rework this line. I’ve thought about
this line for eight months, I’ve had this line and tried to rework it every
which way, and the original way that I thought about it is the best way, but
it’s the most controversial, so it’s gonna go Eminem a little bit, so can you
brace yourself for a second?</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: Yeah…</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: Okay,
alright. It says—wait a second, you sound sad.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: Well, is it
gonna be mean?</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: No, I don’t
think it’s mean.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: Okay, then
let me hear it.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: Okay, um …
and the funny thing is when I first played it and my wife heard it, she was
like “Huh? What? That’s too crazy, blah, blah, blah.” And when Ninja from Die
Antwoord heard it, he was like, “Oh God, this is the craziest sh—! This is why
I love Kanye,” that kind of thing. It’s like my wife’s favorite f—ing line. I
just wanted to give you some premise of that, right?</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: Okay.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: So it says,
“To all my Southside n— that know me best/ I feel like Taylor Swift might owe
me sex.” [chuckles]</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: [chuckles]
That’s not mean.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: Okay. Yeah,
well, this is the thing why I’m calling you because you got an army. You own a
country of motherf—ing two billion people, basically, that if you felt that
it’s funny and cool and like hip hop and felt like, you know, just <i>The
College Dropout</i> and the artist like, ‘Ye that you love, then I think that
people would be like way into it, and that’s why I think it’s super genius to
have you be the one that says, ‘Oh, I like this song a lot, like, yeah,
whatever. This is cool. Whatever, it’s like, I got like s— on my album where
I’m like, “I bet me and Ray J will be friends if we ain’t love the same bitch.”</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: Oh my
[laughs]. I mean, I need to think about it because you hear something for the
first time, you need to think about it because it is absolutely crazy. I’m glad
it’s not mean though. It doesn’t feel mean, but like, oh my God, the build-up
you gave it. I thought it was gonna be like that stupid dumb bitch, like, but
it’s not. Um, so I don’t know. I mean, the launch thing, I think it would be
kind of confusing to people, but I definitely like, I definitely think that
when I’m asked about, of course I’m gonna be like, “Yeah, I’m his biggest fan.
I love that. I think it’s hilarious,” but um, I’ll think about it.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: Yeah, you
don’t have to do—you don’t have to do the launch and retweet. That’s just an
extra idea that I had, like, but if you think that that’s cool, then that’s
cool. If not, we are launching the s— like on just GOOD Fridays, on Soundcloud,
the site, s— like that.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: You know, the
thing about me is like, anything that I do becomes a feminine think-piece, and
if I launch it, they’re gonna be like, “Wow,” like this thing—like they’ll just
turn it into something that … I think if I launch it, it honestly like, it’ll
be less cool ‘cause I think if I launch it, it adds this level of criticism,
‘cause having that many followers and having that many eyeballs on me right
now, people are just looking for me to do something dumb or stupid or lame, and
it’s like almost … I don’t know, like I kind of feel like people would try to
make it negative if it came from me. Do you know what I mean?</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: Yeah.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: I
try to be super self-aware about where I am, and I feel like, I feel like right
now I’m like this close to overexposure.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: Well, this
one, I think this is a really cool thing to have.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: I know, it’s
like a compliment [laughs].</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: I had this
line where I said—and my wife really didn’t like this one because we tried to
make it nicer. So I said, “To all my Southside n— that know me best/ I feel
like me and Taylor might still have sex,” and my wife was really not with that
one. She was way more into “She owes you sex,” but then the owe part was the
feminist group-type s— that I was like, “Ahhh.”</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: That’s the
part that I’m kind of—I mean, they’re both really edgy, but that’s the only
thing about that line is that it’s like gonna … the feminists are gonna come
out, but I mean, you don’t have to give a f—, so…</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: Yeah,
basically. Well, what I give a f— about is just you as a person and as a
friend. I want things—</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: That’s sweet—</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: —that make
you feel good. I don’t wanna do rap that makes people feel bad, like of course
like I’m mad at Nike, so people think like, “Oh, he’s a bully. He ran on stage
with Taylor. He’s bullying Nike now, this $50 billion company.”</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: Why are
people saying you’re bullying Nike?</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: Because on
“Facts” I said like, “Yeezy, Nike out here bad, they can’t give s— away.”</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: Yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that’s just what you do though.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: [laughs]</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: [laughs] I
mean, I wouldn’t say that it’s like possible to bully a company like Nike
where—I mean, um, yeah, I mean, go with whatever line you think is better. It’s
obviously very tongue-in-cheek either way, and I really appreciate you telling
me about it. That’s really nice.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: Oh yeah. I
just had a responsibility to you as a friend. I mean, thanks for being, like,
so cool about it.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: Thanks. Yeah,
I really appreciate it. The heads-up is so nice. You’d be surprised how many
people just do things without even asking or seeing if I’d be okay with it, and
I just really appreciate it. I never would have expected you to tell me about a
line in one of your songs. That’s really nice that you did.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: You mean like
unexpected s— like you taking the time to give someone a really, really
valuable award and then they completely run for president right afterwards?
Like unexpected in that kind of way? [laughs]</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: [laughs] We
have not talked about what happened.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: I just
thought that was wavy. It was vibe-y. The funny thing is I thought about the
weed and the president … both of those things I thought about in the shower the
day before and just started laughing like crazy. I was like, I gotta say that I
had just smoked some weed, and then say I’m gonna run for president. So those
are my bases of … I knew I wanted to say the thing about going to like the
Dodgers game with my daughter and like getting booed and that being scary, and
I knew I wanted to say, like, me changing and thinking about people more since
I had a daughter. And then I wanted to say the weed thing. And then I wanted to
say the president thing. And everything else was just like off the cuff.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: Oh my God. It
was definitely, like, it stole the show. And then the flowers that you sent me.
I Instagram-ed a picture of them and it’s the most Instagram likes I’ve ever
gotten. It was like 2.7 million likes on that picture of the flowers you sent
me. Crazy.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: It’s some
connection or something that I think is really important about that moment when
we met on stage. There’s something that I think is really important about that,
and where humanity is going, or now where me and Kim are, and having a family
and just everything, the way things are landing. So it’s always—relationships
are more important than punchlines, you know.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: Yeah, I mean,
I don’t think anybody would listen to that and be like, “Oh, that’s a real
diss.” Like, “She must be crying about that line.” And I think because of how
crazy and strange and fateful the way we met was, I think we have to pick our
moments to do stuff together and make sure it’s only really cool stuff.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: Yeah,
exactly. We can’t have it, like, be somebody else’s idea that gets in front and
they’re, like—because if you’re like a really true, creative, visceral, vibe-y
type person, it’s probably hard for you to work at a corporation. So how can
you give a creative—creative ideas and you’re working in a house of
non-creativity? It’s like this weird … so whenever we talk directly—okay, now
what if later in the song I was also to have said, uh, “I made her famous”? Is
that a—</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: [hesitant]
Did you say that?</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: Yes, it
might’ve happened [laughs].</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: Well, what am
I gonna do about it?</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: Uh, like, do
the hair flip?</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: Yeah, I mean,
um, it’s just kind of like, whatever, at this point. But I mean, you’ve got to
tell the story the way that it happened to you and the way that you’ve
experienced it. Like, you honestly didn’t know who I was before that. Like, it
doesn’t matter if I sold seven million of that album before you did that, which
is what happened. You didn’t know who I was before that. It’s fine. But, um,
yeah. I can’t wait to hear it.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: I mean, it’s
fun. It’s definitely—you’re ready to trend. That’s all I can say.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: Uh, what’s
the song called?</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: Uh, it might
be called “Hood Famous.”</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: Oh, cool. Is
it going to be like a single-single, or is it going to be a Soundcloud release?
What are you doing?</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: Oh, this one
right here is like f—ing song of the year-type territory.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: Oh my God,
amazing. That’s crazy. Oh my God. Speaking of song of the year, are you going
to the Grammys?</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: Uh, you know
what? I was thinking to not do it. But I thin</span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">k that this song—you know what?
I’m going to send you the song and send you the exact wording and everything
about it, right? And then we could sit and talk through it. But if the song
goes and f—ing just—</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: …they just
look at us and go … Even if we’ve made an incredible achievement, it’s harder
for people to write down our names for some reason. That’s just human nature.
It’s envy. It’s asking people in our industry to vote for the people who are
already killing it.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: Yeah. It’s,
like, so many people wanted Meek Mills to win because Drake was just killing it
for so long, and they were just like, “We just need like Meek Mills to like—but
I think, you know, okay, so that has my mind going through a lot of places to
problem-solve. I was talking to Ben Horowitz. Do you know this guy? He’s a VC.
Ben Horowitz out of San Fran. But he’s down with that.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: I know that
name. I don’t know him.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: It’s just
like the San Fran clique, you know, that type of thing. Like he stays down the
street from Mark Zuckerberg and s— like that. So I was talking to him and I was
like, “Bro.” Like me, I’m in personal debt. I’m in debt by a good like $20, 30
million, ever since the fashion … and still have not made it out of it. So that’s
part of the reason why I had to go to Roc Nation and the touring deals evolved,
and it allowed the whole town to try to feel like they could control Kanye or
even talk to me like I’m regular or have agents do it, but they saw they
couldn’t. It’s like even in debt, he moves around like he’s like a billionaire.
I’m like, yeah, I’m a cultural trillionaire! I might have financial debts. So I
told Ben Horowitz, I was like, “You guys, you, Mark Zuckerberg or whoever, Tim
Cook, you guys have to clean that up.” So I’m sending Ben Horowitz my current
balance. That means that l’m not up $50, not up 100 million, not up 200
million, not up 300 million. No. Negative $20 million, currently. I, Kanye
West, the guy who created the genre of music that is The Weeknd, that is Drak
—the guy who created—every single person that makes music right now, favorite
album is <i>The College Dropout.</i> Every single person that makes music. </span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">But I’m rich
enough. Like, I went into debt to my wife by $6 million working on a f—ing
house, less than like a few months ago, and I was able to pay her back before
Christmas and s— like that. So, you know, when I talk about Nike, the idea that
they wouldn’t give me a percentage, that I could make something that was so
tangible, when Drake was just rapping me into the motherf—ing trashcan, that I
could have something that was tangible that showed my creativity and expressed
myself, that also could be a business that I could have a five-times multiple
on and actually be able to sell it for like $100 million, $200 million or a
billion dollars, that was very serious. Every conversation, every time I’d
scream at Charlemagne or scream at Sway, that was really, really, really
serious. </span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">And it also was
with my family. I felt like, look, if I’m just the angry black guy with some
cool red shoes from Nike five years ago, I was going to be visiting my
daughter, as opposed to be living with her. It would’ve been like, enough is
enough. It wouldn’t have been cool anymore, because it would have been a group
of people, including my wife, that all had at least like $500, 400 million in
their account. And then you get the angry black man at the party talking about
“I’m the one that put Kim in the dress! I’m the one that did this!” But it
never realized itself. So that’s one of the things I just talked to Ben. And I
talk about it on the album. Talk about personal debt and s—. Just the idea
like, “Oh s—, this dude with this f—ing Maybach that makes f—ing $50 million a
tour still hasn’t lined it up or came out of the point when AEG and Live Nation
wouldn’t give him a deal.” The debt started after <i>Watch the Throne,</i>
because I got no deal. But I still was doing my creative projects on my own,
shooting a film, doing a fashion show, just trying to be very Disney, be very
visceral, be creative. And…</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: I mean, I’m
sure you’ve thought about this up and down, but I mean, is there a way to
monetize these in a way that you thought would still feel authentic but make
them into a multi-billion dollar company?</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: Well, that’s
what we’re going to do. That’s what we’re in the plans of. I’m 100 percent
going to be like a multi, multi, multi-billionaire. I think it’s fun that I can
like be like Charlie Sheen and be like, “Hey, like, I got AIDS.” You know,
like—to me, I told Drake that the other night. I was like, “Yo, Drake, I’m in
personal debt.” And for me to tell Drake, the f—ing number one bachelor in the
world that can f—ing rap anybody into a trashcan, that lives four blocks down
the street from my wife and like basically f—s all of her friends, that I’m in
personal debt, it’s such a like putting down the sword or putting down the hand
or opening, showing the hand. </span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">That I don’t have
my poker face on with any of you guys. I’m just me. I’m just a creative. You
know, everything I did, even when it was mistimed, whatever it might’ve been
from a—it’s always, like, from a good place, and I know that I’ll overcome it
and I know that the world will overcome it. Because, like, I’m going to change
the world. I’m going to make it—I’m gonna make people’s lives better on some
post-Steve Jobs, Howard Hughes-type s—. Like, I’m going to do things with
education. I’m going to do things that help to calm down murders in Chicago or
across the globe. </span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Things that help
to calm down police brutality, to equalize the wealth amidst the class system.
Because there’s a bunch of classes of wealthy people that hate Obama because
he’s more social and he wants the people who don’t have anything to have
everything. And in my little way, by learning how to design, design is something
that’s only given to the rich currently. The exact color palette that Hermès
uses versus the color palette that Forever 21 uses—a color palette is extremely
important. </span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Color is important. You know, the knowledge of proportions, you
know, the size of our house versus the size of someone else’s houses, and just
the dynamics of that proportion. Like, I don’t want this conversation to go
too, too long, but I wanted to give you a bit of where I’m at and the
perspective that I’m at and the way … the fact that I am the microprocessor of
our culture. </span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Meaning like, I
can figure out how to give Rihanna a Mary J. Blige-type album. I can figure out
how to get the fashion world to accept my wife, and thus the whole family. I
can figure out a lot of impossible … I can figure out how to make something
that you’re wearing to the airport, five years after the entire globe was like,
“Hang that n— alive and f— him, and let’s watch him die, slowly, publicly.” So,
it’s a lot. I figured that out for myself, so it’s a lot of s— that we
collectively, with the power that you have and your fans, the power my wife
has, the power that I have, that we can do to really make it where it’s not
just the rich getting richer, but you know, make it not just a f—ing charity,
not singing for Africa, but change things in a way that people can experience
s— themselves, a piece of the good life. You know?</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: Yeah. I mean,
they’re amazing ideas and amazing concepts, and I definitely would love to talk
to you more about it. I know you have to do something right now, but I love
that that’s where you’re headed. And it’s been like that. I mean, when we went
to dinner, there were the rumblings of those ideas. I like that you’re always
thinking outward. And over the last six, seven, eight years, however long it’s
been since that happened, I haven’t always liked you, but I’ve always respected
you. And I think that’s what you’re saying when you say like, you know, “I
might be in debt, but I can make these things happen, and I have the ideas to
do it, and I can create these things or these concepts.” Like, I’m always going
to respect you. And I’m really glad that you had the respect to call me and
tell me that as a friend about the song, and it’s a really cool thing to do,
and a really good show of friendship. So thank you.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: Oh, thank you
too.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: And you know,
if people ask me about it, look, I think it would be great for me to be like,
“Look, he called me and told me the line before it came out. Like, the joke’s
on you guys. We’re fine.”</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. I think that’s pretty much the switch right there.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: Yeah. Like,
you guys want to call this a feud, you want to call this throwing shade, but
you know, right after the song comes out, I’m gonna be on a Grammy red carpet,
and they’re gonna ask me about it and I’ll be like, “He called me and sent me
the song before it came out.” So I think we’re good.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: Okay. I’m
gonna go lay this verse, and I’m gonna send it to you right now.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: Oh, you
just—you haven’t recorded it yet?</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: I recorded
it. I’m nuancing the lines. Like the last version of it says, “me and Taylor
might still have sex.” And then my wife was like, ”That doesn’t sound as hard!”</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: Well, I mean,
she’s saying that honestly because she’s your wife, and like, um … so I think
whatever one you think is actually better. I mean, obviously do what’s best for
your relationship, too. I think “owes me sex,” it says different things. It
says—”owes me sex” means like, “look, I made her what she is. She actually owes
me.” Which is going to split people because people who like me are going to be
like, “She doesn’t owe him s—.” But then people who like thought it was badass
and crazy and awesome that you’re so outspoken are going to be like, “Yeah, she
does. It made her famous.” So it’s more provocative to say “still have sex,”
because no one would see that coming. They’re both crazy. Do what you want.
They’re both going to get every single headline in the world. “Owes me sex” is
a little bit more like throwing shade, and the other one’s more flirtatious. It
just depends on what you want to accomplish with it.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: Yeah, I feel
like with my wife, that she probably didn’t like the “might still have sex”
because it would be like, what if she was on a TV show and said, “Me and Tom
Brady might still have sex” or something?</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: You have to
protect your relationship. Do what’s best. You just had a kid. You’re in the
best place of your life. I wouldn’t ever advise you to f— with that. Just pick
whatever. It’s cause and effect. One is gonna make people feel a certain way,
and it’s gonna be a slightly different emotion for the other. But it’s not—it
doesn’t matter to me. There’s not one that hurts my feelings and the other
doesn’t.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: Yeah. It’s
just, when I’m pointing this gun, what I tried to do differently than two years
ago, is like when I shoot a gun, I try to point it away from my face. So one is
a little bit more flirtatious and easier, I think, so really, that means the
conversation is really—one is like a little bit better for the public and a
little bit less good for the relationship. One is a little bit worse for the
public and better for the relationship.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: Yeah. I can
hear it. But it’s your goals, really. I mean, you always just go with your gut,
obviously. But, um, amazing. Send it to me. I’m excited.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: All right,
cool. Thanks so much.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">TS: Awesome, I’ll
talk to you later.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: All right,
cool. Peace. Bye. [to camera] We had to get that on the record.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Cameraman: I’m
sorry. The battery on this thing died.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">KW: It’s just
when it dies, you get some s— like Kanye talking to Taylor Swift explaining
that line? There’s gotta be three cameras on that one. We can’t miss one
element.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<a href="https://people.com/music/taylor-swift-kanye-west-famous-phone-call-leaks/?did=504399-20200323&utm_campaign=ppl-nonewsubs_relationship-builder&utm_source=people.com&utm_medium=email&utm_content=032320&cid=504399&mid=31250606084">https://people.com/music/taylor-swift-kanye-west-famous-phone-call-leaks/?did=504399-20200323&utm_campaign=ppl-nonewsubs_relationship-builder&utm_source=people.com&utm_medium=email&utm_content=032320&cid=504399&mid=31250606084</a>
<br />
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-18649956894999704892020-03-28T08:58:00.000-07:002020-03-28T09:28:00.418-07:00Stock Buybacks Enriched Companies And Their Leaders — At Everyone Else’s Expense.<br />
<div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">(Gary Rivlin, Washington
Post, 27 March)</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">The titanic
coronavirus stimulus package, if it passes, comes with a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-finance-202/2020/03/26/the-finance-202-banks-win-long-sought-deregulation-in-coronavirus-rescue-package/5e7be6e0602ff10d49ad4bc7/?tid=lk_inline_manual_1&itid=lk_inline_manual_1">condition</a>
for the businesses it bailed out: They can’t use taxpayer money to buy back
shares of their own stock. Companies such as American Airlines, which <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/opinion/airlines-bailout.html">spent
$15 billion</a> on buybacks in the past half-dozen years, and Boeing, which
initiated <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/airlines-and-boeing-want-a-bailout-but-look-how-much-theyve-spent-on-stock-buybacks-2020-03-18">$43
billion</a> over the past decade, have earned notoriety for depleting their
cash reserves through these moves and then telling the government they are
broke and need help.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">The prohibition
is a popular one. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2015/06/04/sen-elizabeth-warren-decries-stock-buybacks-and-high-ceo-pay-seeks-overturn-rules/iXvsq8lGI6KOFsFY5w7FUP/story.html">calls
</a>this practice a “sugar high for corporations” that “boosts [stock] prices
in the short run” but destroys value over the long run. Other critics call it
an “<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-12-21/workers-won-t-profit-from-corporate-tax-windfall">accounting
trick</a>” for corporate chieftains to enrich themselves and their shareholders
at the expense of workers. Even President Trump offered this <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing-8/">admonition</a>:
“I don’t want to give a bailout to a company and then have somebody go out and
use that money to buy back stock in the company,” he said Sunday.
“. . . So I may be Republican, but I don’t like that.”</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Even businesses
not participating in the bailout will be less likely to initiate stock buybacks
in the coming months. In a depression, many simply won’t have the cash. And if
they do, they’ll recognize the wisdom of building their reserves in an
uncertain time. AT&T, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and McDonalds are among the
corporations that since the outbreak have announced they are suspending their
buyback programs.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Yet that means
only a temporary pause in a practice that has flourished in corporate America:
U.S. companies spent $1.09 trillion on buybacks in 2018, according to Winston
Chua at TrimTabs, an asset management company. That was the highest on record,
Chua said. The $900 billion companies spent in 2019 was the second-highest.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">And
unfortunately, the practice is toxic for working Americans. Between 2003 and
2012, companies in the S&P 500 devoted 54 percent of their earnings to
buying their own shares (and an additional 37 percent to paying out dividends),
according to a <a href="https://hbr.org/2014/09/profits-without-prosperity">study</a>
by William Lazonick, an economist at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.
That left less than 10 percent for research and development, plant
modernization, raises for workers, and other more productive uses of profits.
It used to be that workers did well at corporations that did well. That’s no
longer true, and buybacks are a big part of the reason.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">For decades,
stock buybacks were considered market manipulation and, if not quite outlawed,
were strongly discouraged, says Lenore Palladino, an economist at the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst. That changed in the deregulation sweep
of the 1980s under Ronald Reagan. In 1982, the Securities and Exchange
Commission <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/8/2/17639762/stock-buybacks-tax-cuts-trump-republicans">loosened
its definition of stock manipulation</a>, opening the floodgates. What had been
a frowned-upon activity that put a company at risk of an SEC investigation soon
became standard practice.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Today,
shareholders love buybacks, in which a company spends its profits to purchase
more control of itself. The maneuver pushes up share prices — not because a
company is killing it in the marketplace but because there are fewer shares to
trade (less supply, higher cost). It also helps a company look better: A key
measure used by analysts and investors is “earnings per share.” Dividing the
same revenue by fewer shares makes this metric magically rise.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Chief executives
love buybacks as well. The vast majority of their pay comes in the form of
stock options and stock grants. Buybacks increase the value of the shares
they’ve already earned and help them earn more. And CEO compensation is tied to
share price, so they have good reason to push the value up any way they can.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">But buybacks have
become a major driver of income inequality and help explain why members of the
top 0.1 percent (which includes most high-ranking corporate executives) “reap
almost all the income gains, good jobs keep disappearing, and new employment
opportunities tend to be insecure and underpaid,” as Lazonick put it in a 2014
Harvard Business Review study called “<a href="https://hbr.org/2014/09/profits-without-prosperity">Profits Without
Prosperity</a>.” He argued that American workers were no longer prospering
because companies no longer shared wealth with them.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Corporate executives are twice as likely to sell their own stock during
scheduled buyback periods, according to research by Palladino. Some companies
even borrow money to cover the costs of a buyback. “They really are the tip of
the spear of how large corporations have operated for the benefit of the
wealthiest shareholders and corporate insiders at the expense of everyone
else,” Palladino says.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">The Trump tax cut
only accelerated the practice. Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the
corporate tax rate fell 40 percent, from 35 percent to 21 percent. That meant a
lot more cash in the coffers of the country’s biggest companies. When top
executives and their political allies were selling the cut, they <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAeo7jcXc-M">promised new investments in
America</a> and its people. Instead, stock buybacks reached a crescendo. Some
companies didn’t even wait for Trump to sign the bill. The board of directors
at Pfizer, which had already approved $6.4 billion in buybacks before the tax
cut, authorized an <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pfizer-buyback/pfizer-announces-new-10-billion-share-buyback-hikes-dividend-idUSKBN1EC281">additional
$10 billion</a> pre-signing. Also jumping the gun were Home Depot, which
announced a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-home-depot-outlook-investor-day/home-depot-sets-15-billion-share-buyback-investment-plan-idUSKBN1E01D9">$15
billion buyback</a>, and Bank of America, which committed to a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/bank-of-america-stock-price-buyback-tells-investors-shares-are-cheap-2017-12">$5
billion buyback</a>.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">As they bought up
stock, many companies failed to deliver on their promises to workers. By the
end of 2018, Senate Democrats had assembled a <a href="https://www.democrats.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/The%20Trump%20Tax%20Law%20And%20Trump%20Economics%20Are%20Failing%20American%20Workers.pdf">list</a>
of companies that had put some of their tax savings toward buybacks while
initiating layoffs. They included General Motors, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan
Chase, which laid off hundreds of workers that year despite a $3.7 billion
windfall from the tax cut. The company committed to more than $50 billion in
buybacks in 2018 and 2019 before announcing that it was temporarily abandoning
its repurchasing plan.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Still, it wasn’t
until the country’s airlines fell on hard times this month that buybacks
ignited a major public debate. The same day the news broke that the airlines
had asked the federal government for <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/22/us-airlines-dont-need-bailout-stay-business/?tid=lk_inline_manual_24&itid=lk_inline_manual_24">more
than $50 billion in loans, guarantees and cash grants</a>, Bloomberg News
reported that the major air carriers had spent <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-16/u-s-airlines-spent-96-of-free-cash-flow-on-buybacks-chart">96
percent of their cash</a> over the past decade on stock buybacks. American, for
instance, went deep into <a href="https://www.ccn.com/fasten-your-belts-american-airlines-investors-flying-into-another-bankruptcy/">debt</a>
while spending $15 billion on buybacks. All told, six of the country’s largest
airlines approved roughly <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/airlines-and-boeing-want-a-bailout-but-look-how-much-theyve-spent-on-stock-buybacks-2020-03-18">$47
billion in buybacks</a> over the past decade, spurring outrage.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Members of
Congress have offered a number of solutions to this problem. Senate Minority
Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Bernie Sanders have been touting an idea to bar
buybacks unless companies pay their workers at least $15 an hour, provide seven
days of paid sick leave, and offer health-care and retirement benefits. Another
bill (the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/915/text">Reward
Work Act</a>, introduced by Sen. Tammy Baldwin last March) and its House <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/3355">companion</a>
(introduced by Reps. Jesús García and Ro Khanna) would ban open-market stock
buybacks and require public companies to allow their workers to elect one-third
of their board members. Sen. Sherrod Brown’s <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/2391/text?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22Stock+Buyback+Reform+and+Worker+Dividend+Act%22%5D%7D&r=1&s=1">proposal</a>
would have companies give their workers $1 for every $1 million spent on
buybacks.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">For the moment,
though, there’s only a temporary freeze in buybacks. American workers are about
to suffer the effects of an economic depression. The eventual recovery should
help them, too, not just their bosses.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<br />
<i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">This essay is
published in partnership with the nonprofit newsroom <a href="https://www.typeinvestigations.org/" title="www.typeinvestigations.org">Type
Investigations</a>. Nina Zweig provided research assistance.</span></i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"></span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/stock-buybacks-gouged-workers-the-measure-stopping-them-comes-too-late/2020/03/27/d6170752-6fcb-11ea-b148-e4ce3fbd85b5_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_todays_headlines&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_headlines">https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/stock-buybacks-gouged-workers-the-measure-stopping-them-comes-too-late/2020/03/27/d6170752-6fcb-11ea-b148-e4ce3fbd85b5_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_todays_headlines&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_headlines</a>
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<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-31135152343886110272020-01-19T11:35:00.000-08:002020-01-19T11:41:31.061-08:00‘You’re A Bunch Of Dopes And Babies’: Inside Trump’s Stunning Tirade Against Generals<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">(By Carol Leonnig & Philip Rucker, Washington Post, 17 January 2020)</span><br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2331613703699568761" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2331613703699568761" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2331613703699568761" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2331613703699568761" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">There is no more
sacred room for military officers than 2E924 of the Pentagon, a windowless and
secure vault where the Joint Chiefs of Staff meet regularly to wrestle with
classified matters. Its more common name is “the Tank.” The Tank resembles a
small corporate boardroom, with a gleaming golden oak table, leather swivel
armchairs and other mid-century stylings. Inside its walls, flag officers
observe a reverence and decorum for the wrenching decisions that have been made
there.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Hanging
prominently on one of the walls is The Peacemakers, a painting that depicts an
1865 Civil War strategy session with President Abraham Lincoln and his three
service chiefs — Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, Major General William
Tecumseh Sherman, and Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter. One hundred fifty-two
years after Lincoln hatched plans to preserve the Union, President Trump’s
advisers staged an intervention inside the Tank to try to preserve the world
order.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">By that point,
six months into his administration, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Director
of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn, and Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson had grown alarmed by gaping holes in Trump’s knowledge of history,
especially the key alliances forged following World War II. Trump had dismissed
allies as worthless, cozied up to authoritarian regimes in Russia and
elsewhere, and advocated withdrawing troops from strategic outposts and active
theaters alike.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Trump organized
his unorthodox worldview under the simplistic banner of “America First,” but
Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn feared his proposals were rash, barely considered,
and a danger to America’s superpower standing. They also felt that many of
Trump’s impulsive ideas stemmed from his lack of familiarity with U.S. history
and, even, where countries were located. To have a useful discussion with him,
the trio agreed, they had to create a basic knowledge, a shared language.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="display: none; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-hide: all;">President Trump spoke about his former defense secretary at a Cabinet
meeting Jan. 2, saying he was not "too happy" with how Jim Mattis
handled Afghanistan. (The Washington Post) </span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">So on July 20,
2017, Mattis invited Trump to the Tank for what he, Tillerson, and Cohn had
carefully organized as a tailored tutorial. What happened inside the Tank that
day crystallized the commander in chief’s berating, derisive and dismissive
manner, foreshadowing decisions such as the one earlier this month that brought
the United States to the brink of war with Iran. The Tank meeting was a turning
point in Trump’s presidency. Rather than getting him to appreciate America’s
traditional role and alliances, Trump began to tune out and eventually push
away the experts who believed their duty was to protect the country by
restraining his more dangerous impulses.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="display: none; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-hide: all;">AD</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">The episode has
been documented numerous times, but subsequent reporting reveals a more
complete picture of the moment and the chilling effect Trump’s comments and
hostility had on the nation’s military and national security leadership.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Just before 10
a.m. on a scorching summer Thursday, Trump arrived at the Pentagon. He stepped
out of his motorcade, walked along a corridor with portraits honoring former
chairmen of the Joint Chiefs, and stepped inside the Tank. The uniformed
officers greeted their commander in chief. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General
Joseph F. Dunford Jr. sat in the seat of honor midway down the table, because
this was his room, and Trump sat at the head of the table facing a projection
screen. Mattis and the newly confirmed deputy defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan,
sat to the president’s left, with Vice President Pence and Tillerson to his
right. Down the table sat the leaders of the military branches, along with Cohn
and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. White House chief strategist Stephen K.
Bannon was in the outer ring of chairs with other staff, taking his seat just
behind Mattis and directly in Trump’s line of sight.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Mattis, Cohn, and
Tillerson and their aides decided to use maps, graphics, and charts to tutor
the president, figuring they would help keep him from getting bored. Mattis
opened with a slide show punctuated by lots of dollar signs. Mattis devised a
strategy to use terms the impatient president, schooled in real estate, would
appreciate to impress upon him the value of U.S. investments abroad. He sought
to explain why U.S. troops were deployed in so many regions and why America’s
safety hinged on a complex web of trade deals, alliances, and bases across the
globe.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">An opening line
flashed on the screen, setting the tone: “The post-war international
rules-based order is the greatest gift of the greatest generation.” Mattis then
gave a 20-minute briefing on the power of the NATO alliance to stabilize Europe
and keep the United States safe. Bannon thought to himself, “Not good. Trump is
not going to like that one bit.” The internationalist language Mattis was using
was a trigger for Trump.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Oh, baby, this
is going to be f---ing wild,” Bannon thought. “If you stood up and threatened
to shoot [Trump], he couldn’t say ‘postwar rules-based international order.’
It’s just not the way he thinks.”</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">For the next 90
minutes, Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn took turns trying to emphasize their
points, pointing to their charts and diagrams. They showed where U.S. personnel
were positioned, at military bases, CIA stations, and embassies, and how U.S.
deployments fended off the threats of terror cells, nuclear blasts, and
destabilizing enemies in places including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, the Korea
Peninsula, and Syria. Cohn spoke for about 20 minutes about the value of free
trade with America’s allies, emphasizing how he saw each trade agreement
working together as part of an overall structure to solidify U.S. economic and
national security.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Trump appeared
peeved by the schoolhouse vibe but also allergic to the dynamic of his advisers
talking at him. His ricocheting attention span led him to repeatedly interrupt
the lesson. He heard an adviser say a word or phrase and then seized on that to
interject with his take. For instance, the word “base” prompted him to launch
in to say how “crazy” and “stupid” it was to pay for bases in some countries.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Trump’s first
complaint was to repeat what he had vented about to his national security
adviser months earlier: South Korea should pay for a $10 billion missile
defense system that the United States built for it. The system was designed to
shoot down any short- and medium-range ballistic missiles from North Korea to
protect South Korea and American troops stationed there. But Trump argued that
the South Koreans should pay for it, proposing that the administration pull
U.S. troops out of the region or bill the South Koreans for their protection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“We should charge them rent,” Trump said of
South Korea. “We should make them pay for our soldiers. We should make money
off of everything.”</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Trump proceeded
to explain that NATO, too, was worthless. U.S. generals were letting the allied
member countries get away with murder, he said, and they owed the United States
a lot of money after not living up to their promise of paying their dues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“They’re in arrears,” Trump said, reverting
to the language of real estate. He lifted both his arms at his sides in
frustration. Then he scolded top officials for the untold millions of dollars
he believed they had let slip through their fingers by allowing allies to avoid
their obligations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“We are owed money
you haven’t been collecting!” Trump told them. “You would totally go bankrupt
if you had to run your own business.”</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Mattis wasn’t
trying to convince the president of anything, only to explain and provide
facts. Now things were devolving quickly. The general tried to calmly explain
to the president that he was not quite right. The NATO allies didn’t owe the United
States back rent, he said. The truth was more complicated. NATO had a
nonbinding goal that members should pay at least 2 percent of their gross
domestic product on their defenses. Only five of the countries currently met
that goal, but it wasn’t as if they were shorting the United States on the
bill.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">More broadly,
Mattis argued, the NATO alliance was not serving only to protect western
Europe. It protected America, too. “This is what keeps us safe,” Mattis said.
Cohn tried to explain to Trump that he needed to see the value of the trade
deals. “These are commitments that help keep us safe,” Cohn said.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Bannon
interjected. “Stop, stop, stop,” he said. “All you guys talk about all these
great things, they’re all our partners, I want you to name me now one country
and one company that’s going to have his back.”</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Trump then
repeated a threat he’d made countless times before. He wanted out of the Iran
nuclear deal that President Obama had struck in 2015, which called for Iran to
reduce its uranium stockpile and cut its nuclear program.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It’s the worst deal in history!” Trump
declared.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">“Well, actually
. . .,” Tillerson interjected.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I don’t want to hear it,” Trump said, cutting
off the secretary of state before he could explain some of the benefits of the
agreement. “They’re cheating. They’re building. We’re getting out of it. I keep
telling you, I keep giving you time, and you keep delaying me. I want out of
it.”</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Before they could
debate the Iran deal, Trump erupted to revive another frequent complaint: the
war in Afghanistan, which was now America’s longest war. He demanded an
explanation for why the United States hadn’t won in Afghanistan yet, now 16
years after the nation began fighting there in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist
attacks. Trump unleashed his disdain, calling Afghanistan a “loser war.” That
phrase hung in the air and disgusted not only the military leaders at the table
but also the men and women in uniform sitting along the back wall behind their
principals. They all were sworn to obey their commander in chief’s commands,
and here he was calling the war they had been fighting a loser war. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“You’re all losers,” Trump said. “You don’t
know how to win anymore.”</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Trump questioned
why the United States couldn’t get some oil as payment for the troops stationed
in the Persian Gulf. “We spent $7 trillion; they’re ripping us off,” Trump
boomed. “Where is the f---ing oil?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trump
seemed to be speaking up for the voters who elected him, and several attendees
thought they heard Bannon in Trump’s words. Bannon had been trying to persuade
Trump to withdraw forces by telling him, “The American people are saying we
can’t spend a trillion dollars a year on this. We just can’t. It’s going to
bankrupt us.”</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">“And not just
that, the deplorables don’t want their kids in the South China Sea at the 38th
parallel or in Syria, in Afghanistan, in perpetuity,” Bannon would add,
invoking Hillary Clinton’s infamous “basket of deplorables” reference to Trump
supporters.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Trump mused about
removing General John Nicholson, the U.S. commander in charge of troops in
Afghanistan. “I don’t think he knows how to win,” the president said, impugning
Nicholson, who was not present at the meeting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Dunford tried to come to Nicholson’s defense, but the mild-mannered
general struggled to convey his points to the irascible president.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Mr. President, that’s just not . . .,”
Dunford started. “We’ve been under different orders.”</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Dunford sought to
explain that he hadn’t been charged with annihilating the enemy in Afghanistan
but was instead following a strategy started by the Obama administration to
gradually reduce the military presence in the country in hopes of training
locals to maintain a stable government so that eventually the United States
could pull out. Trump shot back in more plain language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I want to win,” he said. “We don’t win any
wars anymore . . . We spend $7 trillion, everybody else got the oil and we’re
not winning anymore.”</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Trump by now was
in one of his rages. He was so angry that he wasn’t taking many breaths. All
morning, he had been coarse and cavalier, but the next several things he
bellowed went beyond that description. They stunned nearly everyone in the
room, and some vowed that they would never repeat them. Indeed, they have not
been reported until now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I wouldn’t go
to war with you people,” Trump told the assembled brass.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Addressing the room, the commander in chief
barked, “You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.”</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">For a president
known for verbiage he euphemistically called “locker room talk,” this was the
gravest insult he could have delivered to these people, in this sacred space.
The flag officers in the room were shocked. Some staff began looking down at
their papers, rearranging folders, almost wishing themselves out of the room. A
few considered walking out. They tried not to reveal their revulsion on their
faces, but questions raced through their minds. “How does the commander in
chief say that?” one thought. “What would our worst adversaries think if they
knew he said this?”</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">This was a
president who had been labeled a “draft dodger” for avoiding service in the
Vietnam War under questionable circumstances. Trump was a young man born of
privilege and in seemingly perfect health: six feet two inches with a muscular
build and a flawless medical record. He played several sports, including
football. Then, in 1968 at age 22, he obtained a diagnosis of bone spurs in his
heels that exempted him from military service just as the United States was drafting
men his age to fulfill massive troop deployments to Vietnam.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Tillerson in
particular was stunned by Trump’s diatribe and began visibly seething. For too
many minutes, others in the room noticed, he had been staring straight,
dumbfounded, at Mattis, who was speechless, his head bowed down toward the
table. Tillerson thought to himself, “Gosh darn it, Jim, say something. Why
aren’t you saying something?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, as he
would later tell close aides, Tillerson realized in that moment that Mattis was
genetically a Marine, unable to talk back to his commander in chief, no matter
what nonsense came out of his mouth.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">The more
perplexing silence was from Pence, a leader who should have been able to stand
up to Trump. Instead, one attendee thought, “He’s sitting there frozen like a
statue. Why doesn’t he stop the president?” Another recalled the vice president
was “a wax museum guy.” From the start of the meeting, Pence looked as if he
wanted to escape and put an end to the president’s torrent. Surely, he
disagreed with Trump’s characterization of military leaders as “dopes and
babies,” considering his son, Michael, was a Marine first lieutenant then
training for his naval aviator wings. But some surmised Pence feared getting
crosswise with Trump. “A total deer in the headlights,” recalled a third
attendee.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Others at the
table noticed Trump’s stream of venom had taken an emotional toll. So many
people in that room had gone to war and risked their lives for their country,
and now they were being dressed down by a president who had not. They felt sick
to their stomachs. Tillerson told others he thought he saw a woman in the room
silently crying. He was furious and decided he couldn’t stand it another
minute. His voice broke into Trump’s tirade, this one about trying to make
money off U.S. troops.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">“No, that’s just
wrong,” the secretary of state said. “Mr. President, you’re totally wrong. None
of that is true.”</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Tillerson’s
father and uncle had both been combat veterans, and he was deeply proud of
their service.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">“The men and women
who put on a uniform don’t do it to become soldiers of fortune,” Tillerson
said. “That’s not why they put on a uniform and go out and die . . . They do it
to protect our freedom.”</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">There was silence
in the Tank. Several military officers in the room were grateful to the
secretary of state for defending them when no one else would. The meeting soon
ended and Trump walked out, saying goodbye to a group of servicemen lining the
corridor as he made his way to his motorcade waiting outside. Mattis, Tillerson,
and Cohn were deflated. Standing in the hall with a small cluster of people he
trusted, Tillerson finally let down his guard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“He’s a f---ing moron,” the secretary of state said of the president.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">The plan by
Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn to train the president to appreciate the
internationalist view had clearly backfired.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“We were starting to get out on the wrong path, and we really needed to
have a course correction and needed to educate, to teach, to help him
understand the reason and basis for a lot of these things,” said one senior
official involved in the planning. “We needed to change how he thinks about
this, to course correct. Everybody was on board, 100 percent agreed with that
sentiment. [But] they were dismayed and in shock when not only did it not have
the intended effect, but he dug in his heels and pushed it even further on the
spectrum, further solidifying his views.”</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">A few days later,
Pence’s national security adviser, Andrea Thompson, a retired Army colonel who
had served in Afghanistan and Iraq, reached out to thank Tillerson for speaking
up on behalf of the military and the public servants who had been in the Tank.
By September 2017, she would leave the White House and join Tillerson at Foggy
Bottom as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security
affairs.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">The Tank meeting
had so thoroughly shocked the conscience of military leaders that they tried to
keep it a secret. At the Aspen Security Forum two days later, longtime NBC News
correspondent Andrea Mitchell asked Dunford how Trump had interacted during the
Tank meeting. The Joint Chiefs chairman misleadingly described the meeting,
skipping over the fireworks.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">“He asked a lot
of hard questions, and the one thing he does is question some fundamental
assumptions that we make as military leaders — and he will come in and question
those,” Dunford told Mitchell on July 22. “It’s a pretty energetic and an
interactive dialogue.”</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">One victim of the
Tank meeting was Trump’s relationship with Tillerson, which forever after was
strained. The secretary of state came to see it as the beginning of the end. It
would only worsen when news that Tillerson had called Trump a “moron” was <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/tillerson-s-fury-trump-required-intervention-pence-n806451">first
reported</a> in October 2017 by NBC News.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Trump once again
gathered his generals and top diplomats in December 2017 for a meeting as part
of the administration’s ongoing strategy talks about troop deployments in
Afghanistan in the Situation Room, a secure meeting room on the ground floor of
the West Wing. Trump didn’t like the Situation Room as much as the Pentagon’s
Tank, because he didn’t think it had enough gravitas. It just wasn’t
impressive.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">But there Trump
was, struggling to come up with a new Afghanistan policy and frustrated that so
many U.S. forces were deployed in so many places around the world. The
conversation began to tilt in the same direction as it had in the Tank back in
July.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“All these countries need to start
paying us for the troops we are sending to their countries. We need to be
making a profit,” Trump said. “We could turn a profit on this.”</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Dunford tried to
explain to the president once again, gently, that troops deployed in these
regions provided stability there, which helped make America safer. Another
officer chimed in that charging other countries for U.S. soldiers would be
against the law.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“But it just wasn’t
working,” one former Trump aide recalled. “Nothing worked.”</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Following the
Tank meeting, Tillerson had told his aides that he would never silently
tolerate such demeaning talk from Trump about making money off the deployments
of U.S. soldiers. Tillerson’s father, at the age of 17, had committed to enlist
in the Navy on his next birthday, wanting so much to serve his country in World
War II. His great-uncle was a career officer in the Navy as well. Both men had
been on his mind, Tillerson told aides, when Trump unleashed his tirade in the
Tank and again when he repeated those points in the Situation Room in December.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“We need to get our money back,” Trump told
his assembled advisers.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">That was it.
Tillerson stood up. But when he did so, he turned his back to the president and
faced the flag officers and the rest of the aides in the room. He didn’t want a
repeat of the scene in the Tank.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I’ve
never put on a uniform, but I know this,” Tillerson said. “Every person who has
put on a uniform, the people in this room, they don’t do it to make a buck.
They did it for their country, to protect us. I want everyone to be clear about
how much we as a country value their service.”</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Tillerson’s
rebuke made Trump angry. He got a little red in the face. But the president
decided not to engage Tillerson at that moment. He would wait to take him on
another day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Later that evening, after
8:00, Tillerson was working in his office at the State Department’s Foggy
Bottom headquarters, preparing for the next day. The phone rang. It was
Dunford. The Joint Chiefs chairman’s voice was unsteady with emotion. </span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Dunford had much
earlier joked with Tillerson that in past administrations the secretaries of
state and Defense Department leaders wouldn’t be caught dead walking on the
same side of the street, for their rivalry was that fierce. But now, as both
men served Trump, they were brothers joined against what they saw as disrespect
for service members. Dunford thanked Tillerson for standing up for them in the
Situation Room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“You took the body blows
for us,” Dunford said. “Punch after punch. Thank you. I will never forget it.”</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Tillerson,
Dunford, and Mattis would not take those body blows for much longer. They
failed to rein in Trump’s impulses or to break through what they regarded as
the president’s stubborn, even dangerous insistence that he knew best. Piece by
piece, the guardrails that had hemmed in the chaos of Trump’s presidency
crumpled.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">In March 2018, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-the-end-no-one-was-more-surprised-that-tillerson-was-fired-than-tillerson/2018/03/13/68d71b18-2672-11e8-874b-d517e912f125_story.html?tid=lk_inline_manual_92" title="www.washingtonpost.com">Trump abruptly fired Tillerson</a></span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"> <span lang="EN">while the secretary of state was
halfway across the globe on a sensitive diplomatic mission to Africa to ease
tensions caused by Trump’s demeaning insults about African countries. Trump
gave Tillerson no rationale for his firing, and afterward acted as if they were
buddies, inviting him to come by the Oval Office to take a picture and have the
president sign it. Tillerson never went.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Mattis continued
serving as the defense secretary, but the president’s sudden decision in
December 2018 to withdraw troops from Syria and abandon America’s Kurdish
allies there — one the president soon reversed, only to remake 10 months later
— <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-announces-mattis-will-leave-as-defense-secretary-at-the-end-of-february/2018/12/20/e1a846ee-e147-11e8-ab2c-b31dcd53ca6b_story.html?tid=lk_inline_manual_93" title="www.washingtonpost.com">inspired him to resign</a>. Mattis saw Trump’s
desired withdrawal as an assault on a soldier’s code. “He began to feel like he
was becoming complicit,” recalled one of the secretary’s confidants.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">The media
interpretation of Mattis’ resignation letter as a scathing rebuke of Trump’s
worldview brought the president’s anger to a boiling point. Trump decided to
remove Mattis two months ahead of the secretary’s chosen departure date. His
treatment of Mattis upset the secretary’s staff. They decided to arrange the
biggest clap out they could. The event was a tradition for all departing
secretaries. They wanted a line of Pentagon personnel that stretched for a mile
applauding Mattis as he left for the last time. It was going to be “yuge,”
staffers joked, borrowing from Trump’s glossary.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">But Mattis would
not allow it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“No, we are not doing
that,” he told his aides. “You don’t understand the president. I work with him.
You don’t know him like I do. He will take it out on Shanahan and Dunford.”</span><br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2331613703699568761" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2331613703699568761" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Dunford stayed on
until September 2019, retiring at the conclusion of his four-year term as
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. One of Dunford’s first public acts after
leaving office was to defend a military officer attacked by Trump, Army
Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official who
testified in the House impeachment inquiry about his worries over Trump’s
conduct with Ukraine. Trump dismissed Vindman as a “Never Trumper,” but Dunford
stepped forward to praise the Purple Heart recipient as “a professional,
competent, patriotic, and loyal officer. He has made an extraordinary
contribution to the security of our nation.”</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">By then, however,
Trump had become a president entirely unrestrained. He had replaced his raft of
seasoned advisers with a cast of enablers who executed his orders and engaged
his obsessions. They saw their mission as telling the president yes.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">This article
is adapted from <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Very-Stable-Genius-Testing-America/dp/1984877496/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=a+very+stable+genius&qid=1578582466&sr=8-1" title="www.amazon.com">“A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of
America,”</a> which will be published on Jan. 21 by Penguin Press. </span></i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"></span><br />
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<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-23098771431593628692019-08-26T10:13:00.000-07:002019-08-26T10:15:38.996-07:00Jay-Z Didn’t ‘Sell Out’ By Dealing With The NFL. This Is Just How Activism Works.<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By Michael Eric Dyson, Washington Post, 23 August 2019)</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2331613703699568761" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In 1963, Malcolm
X, who advocated armed self-defense of black folk in the face of white
supremacy, flayed Martin Luther King Jr., who preached nonviolent resistance to
social injustice. “The white man pays Rev. Martin Luther King, subsidizes Rev.
Martin Luther King, so that Rev. Martin Luther King can continue to teach the
Negroes to be defenseless,” Malcolm charged. He was a “modern Uncle Tom.”
Elsewhere, Malcolm <a href="http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/ows/seminars/aahistory/BestWeapon.pdf" title="nationalhumanitiescenter.org"><span style="color: #0563c1;">dubbed</span></a> King “the best weapon that the
white man . . . has ever gotten.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I remembered
these bitter charges as controversy dogged the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/08/13/nfl-is-partnering-with-jay-z-entertainment-social-justice-initiatives/" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span style="color: #0563c1;">announcement</span></a> this month that Jay-Z’s company,
Roc Nation, had signed a contract with the National Football League to advise
on live music, entertainment and social justice projects. Jay had stood up for
former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. He <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/10/01/jay-z-sent-a-message-wearing-a-colin-k-jersey-during-snl/" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span style="color: #0563c1;">wore Kaepernick’s jersey</span></a> while performing on
“Saturday Night Live,” <a href="https://blackamericaweb.com/2018/12/21/jay-z-is-attempting-to-talk-travis-scott-out-of-performing-at-super-bowl-halftime-show/" title="blackamericaweb.com"><span style="color: #0563c1;">advised</span></a> other performers to boycott the Super
Bowl halftime show and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN5Arl9JUuw" title="www.youtube.com"><span style="color: #0563c1;">rapped</span></a> on 2018’s “Apes---,” “I said no to the Super
Bowl: You need me, I don’t need you/ Every night we in the end zone, tell the
NFL we in stadiums, too.” Now he’s doing business with the organization that
colluded to banish Kaepernick for kneeling during the national anthem to
protest racial injustice. Associated Press sports columnist Paul Newberry
called Jay a “<a href="https://apnews.com/fe539d1c5d9045d98cfdcf7f028baff9" title="apnews.com"><span style="color: #0563c1;">total sellout</span></a>,” suggesting he’d buried his conscience in
cash. Kaepernick’s lawyer said Jay’s “cold blooded” move “crosses the
intellectual picket line.” Jay’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/08/15/jay-z-defends-nfl-partnership-colin-kaepernick-marks-third-anniversary-protest/?arc404=true" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span style="color: #0563c1;">justification</span></a> : “I think we’ve moved past
kneeling. I think it’s time for action.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Kaepernick and
Jay-Z are not the modern-day equivalents of Malcom and King, but those pairs
reflect an eternal tension — the outside agitators who apply pressure and the
inside activators who patrol the halls of power, bringing knowledge and wisdom
— in civil rights and black freedom movements. King worked with the Eisenhower,
Johnson and Kennedy administrations to better conditions for black folk and to
craft civil rights legislation. Jay, for his part, has advocated for social
justice in his music and beyond the stage for more than two decades — by
writing <a href="https://time.com/4821547/jay-z-racism-bail-bonds/" title="time.com"><span style="color: #0563c1;">op-eds</span></a> and <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/jay-z-meek-mill-reform-alliance-criminal-justice-783228/" title="www.rollingstone.com"><span style="color: #0563c1;">creating an organization</span></a> to lobby for criminal
justice reform; by <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2015/05/jay-z-and-beyonc-reportedly-bail-out-protesters.html" title="www.vulture.com"><span style="color: #0563c1;">bailing out</span></a> Black Lives Matter protesters; by
supplying <a href="https://thegrapevine.theroot.com/jay-zs-roc-nation-offers-legal-counsel-to-phoenix-famil-1835576034" title="thegrapevine.theroot.com"><span style="color: #0563c1;">legal help</span></a> for black victims of racism; by
creating documentaries about victims like <a href="https://ew.com/tv/2018/07/30/rest-in-power-trayvon-martin-story-review/" title="ew.com"><span style="color: #0563c1;">Trayvon Martin</span></a> and <a href="https://theundefeated.com/features/how-jay-z-and-an-orange-is-the-new-black-actor-brought-kalief-browders-story-to-the-screen/" title="theundefeated.com"><span style="color: #0563c1;">Kalief Browder</span></a>; and by <a href="https://www.thefader.com/2016/10/06/jay-z-kalief-browder-mass-incarceration-human-issue-police-brutality" title="www.thefader.com"><span style="color: #0563c1;">speaking out</span></a> about police brutality and racial
injustice.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The choice
between Kaep and Jay, between Malcolm and King, is a false one. We need all of
them, and it is far too early to judge what Jay will make of this opportunity
with the NFL.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Jay’s action fits
into a tradition of social protest, forged by Jesse Jackson, that extends
King’s work: You protest a company — say a shoemaker or an auto dealership —
for its unjust practices; you force those involved to acknowledge their error;
you negotiate for better terms of engagement; you interact with the folk you
once protested in an effort to make progress. In 1996, after several Texaco executives
were <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/04/business/texaco-executives-on-tape-discussed-impeding-a-bias-suit.html" title="www.nytimes.com"><span style="color: #0563c1;">taped making racist comments</span></a> about 1,400 black
employees who had filed a class-action discrimination suit against the company,
Jackson organized a picket protest, then forged connections with Texaco board
members that led to a corporate mea culpa and an out-of-court settlement of
more than $175 million with the company’s black workers.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">This reflected a
shift in civil rights strategy from street protests to suite participation.
Jackson leveraged the threat of boycotts and the rhetoric of persuasion to get
more blacks placed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/16/business/jesse-jackson-sets-up-office-to-monitor-corporate-action.html" title="www.nytimes.com"><span style="color: #0563c1;">on corporate boards</span></a>, compel banks and major companies
to direct more business to minority-owned contractors, and help integrate more
black and other minority folk into the nation’s economic power base.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">It is true that
the NFL did not explicitly acknowledge wrongdoing in Kaepernick’s case, though
the league did <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/02/15/colin-kaepernick-eric-reid-settle-collusion-grievances-against-nfl-teams/" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span style="color: #0563c1;">settle</span></a> his grievance lawsuit in February,
suggesting that it recognized his claim of collusion as a real legal threat.
Jay cannot make a team hire Kaepernick, and perhaps Roc Nation could have
refused a contract until Kaepernick got a job, which would have been a just
outcome. But it is also true that social justice doesn’t hinge exclusively on
Kaepernick’s employment. The fact that many team owners support <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/trump-doesnt-get-the-nfl-its-not-about-power-unleashed-but-power-with-purpose/2017/09/23/08bdec8c-a0a0-11e7-8ea1-ed975285475e_story.html" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span style="color: #0563c1;">an openly racist president</span></a> demands an attempt
to grapple with them. And it may be a sign of progress that those same owners
got into business with a rapper who calls President Trump a “<a href="https://ew.com/tv/2018/01/28/jay-z-trump-shithole-superbug/" title="ew.com"><span style="color: #0563c1;">superbug</span></a>.” Jay’s noisy opposition to white nationalism is just
as important as how his partnership may provide the league cover.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Jay did not write
off protest when he said we are “past kneeling.” He simply cast Kaepernick as a
runner in a relay race rather than a boxer fighting alone in the ring. The <a href="https://players-coalition.org/about/" title="players-coalition.org"><span style="color: #0563c1;">Players
Coalition</span></a>, for instance, was founded in 2017 by Philadelphia Eagles safety
Malcolm Jenkins and former receiver Anquan Boldin to tie kneeling to serious
and thoughtful action. It promotes social justice advocacy, education and
distribution of resources on the local, state and federal levels. When it <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/sports/wp/2017/11/29/nfl-and-players-complete-agreement-on-league-support-of-activism/?noredirect=on" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span style="color: #0563c1;">accepted</span></a> nearly $90 million from the NFL to
advance its agenda in November 2017, then-49ers safety Eric Reid, Kaepernick’s
courageous compatriot, <a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/10/21/eric-reid-malcolm-jenkins-players-coalition-seperated-midfield-eagles-panthers" title="www.si.com"><span style="color: #0563c1;">called</span></a> the thoughtful Jenkins a “sellout” and a
“neocolonialist.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But consider its
efforts so far. As part of the $89 million that the players got the NFL to
commit over a seven-year period, $8.5 million was allocated in 2018. Players
identified <a href="https://players-coalition.org/key-pillars/" title="players-coalition.org"><span style="color: #0563c1;">key issues</span></a> of racial and social inequality
where they thought they could make the biggest impact, including police and
community relations, criminal justice reform, and educational and economic
advancement. Players led the working group that distributed millions to the
Advancement Project, the Center for Policing Equity, the National Juvenile
Defender Center, the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, the Campaign for Black Male
Achievement, the Civil Rights Corps and VOTE. After Trump <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-disinvites-philadelphia-eagles-from-white-house-visit-citing-national-anthem-dispute/2018/06/04/d23ffa84-684e-11e8-bbc5-dc9f3634fa0a_story.html" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span style="color: #0563c1;">canceled</span></a> a White House invitation to celebrate
the Eagles’ 2018 Super Bowl victory, Jenkins skipped a traditional news
conference and <a href="https://www.sbnation.com/2018/6/6/17435154/malcolm-jenkins-signs-philadelphia-eagles-you-arent-listening" title="www.sbnation.com"><span style="color: #0563c1;">drew attention</span></a> with a series of signs clarifying
that player protests weren’t about the national anthem but about social
inequality.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">When white
institutions and individuals sincerely ask for help, it is a good thing to
supply it. (That sincerity may be doubted and only later revealed to be
genuine, or the request may begin as insincere but evolve with more contact and
better understanding.) Malcolm X once famously rebuffed a young white student
who tracked him down in New York to ask what she could do to help the cause.
His response took her aback: “Nothing.” It makes for great theater and dramatic
storytelling, but it was the wrong answer.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Things are never
ideal, and systems of white oppression co-opt us all: teachers, leaders,
advocates, athletes, organizers. Look at me. I have spent nearly <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/african-american-focus/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/dyson-michael-eric" title="www.encyclopedia.com"><span style="color: #0563c1;">five decades</span></a> — in speeches, books, my courses —
advocating for social justice. I also work at Georgetown University, a school
that sold 272 enslaved souls, including children, to bankroll its future. This
is how the world works: All of us have blood on our hands and dirt beneath our
nails, and we can scarcely afford to reject every institution we encounter as
irretrievably tainted.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The charge of
being a sellout, and the instinct to “cancel” people indicted in this way,
often comes full circle. (Malcolm was later deemed a traitor to his cause and
murdered by members of his own group.) The language of betrayal cannot provide
lasting moral satisfaction. Instead, we need a vocabulary of moral
accountability and social responsibility that is nuanced and capacious, giving
us air to breathe and room to grow.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Jay’s deal with
the NFL represents a valid and potentially viable attempt to raise awareness of
injustice to black folk, and to inspire the league to embrace just action for
the black masses. It may fail — and it certainly should not be used to diminish
Kaepernick’s noble, iconic battle — but the effort is not a repudiation of
justice. It is an attempt to make justice real for black folk far beyond the
elite circles in which Jay and Kaepernick travel. Jay-Z, whose résumé is
suffused with activism that cost him money instead of accruing him profit, has
earned the right to try this. Even if Jay stands to make a tidy sum with the
NFL, his history suggests that he has put his money where his ethics are — and
declined to let his capitalist instincts outweigh his ethical imagination.
Alongside scolding, resisting, protesting and cajoling, there is a need for
strategy, planning, listening, learning and moving forward to test the
application of principles embodied by people like Kaepernick.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Jay and
Kaepernick will not be the last civil rights activists who represent different
poles of the movement. This history is rich: King, Rosa Parks, the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Freedom Riders, the Congress of Racial
Equality and a host of other organizations occasionally bickered over methods
and messaging and strategy. Iconic figures got bruised (James Baldwin, iced
from speaking at the 1963 March on Washington, felt wounded but still kept up
the freedom fight), swept aside (Ella Baker didn’t get her due when working
with King’s sexist organization) or minimized (grass-roots activist Fannie Lou
Hamer wasn’t universally applauded by black elites when she lived).</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">It is not wrong
for Kaepernick to receive every nickel he has earned from Nike and the NFL, or
for Reid and Jenkins to continue to get paid for their talents in the league
they push to do the right thing. And it is hardly wrong for Jay-Z to do well
while doing good. They are all motivated by grand ideals and good ends. Even
Malcolm X, once he freed himself from his earlier narrow views, concluded that
“Dr. King wants the same thing I want — freedom!” So does Colin Kaepernick. So
does Jay-Z. And so should we.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/jay-z-didnt-sell-out-by-dealing-with-the-nfl-this-is-just-how-activism-works/2019/08/23/17178210-c520-11e9-9986-1fb3e4397be4_story.html"><span style="color: #0563c1;">https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/jay-z-didnt-sell-out-by-dealing-with-the-nfl-this-is-just-how-activism-works/2019/08/23/17178210-c520-11e9-9986-1fb3e4397be4_story.html</span></a>
</span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: "calibri";"></span>Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-17962814593662434552019-01-29T19:38:00.000-08:002019-01-29T19:39:35.620-08:00PledgeMusic, Once a Crowdfunding Haven for Artists, Now Owes Them Thousands of Dollars<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By Colin Stutz,
Billboard, 24 January 2019)</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In 2017, the electro-industrial band <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/ohgr"><span style="color: #0563c1;">ohGr</span></a> began recording its fifth
full-length album, <i>TrickS</i>, while at the same time launching a campaign
on the direct-to-fan music platform PledgeMusic. The service seemed like a good
way for the independent act founded by singer Nivek Ogre -- a member of the
band <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/skinny-puppy"><span style="color: #0563c1;">Skinny Puppy</span></a>
and a cult icon -- to cover recording costs, promote the project with
behind-the-scenes updates and host online sales for pre-orders and specialty
items. But the largest factor in ohGr's decision to go with PledgeMusic, says
producer <b>Mark Walk</b>, was that it would provide "a safe place for
supporters’ funds to be held while the project was being produced." Now,
eight months after ohGr's campaign ended, the band is still owed nearly
$100,000 and struggling to access money it needs to manufacture merchandise
fans have already purchased. All hope for a lucrative album cycle has gone out
the window.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">How ohGr's PledgeMusic campaign went from looking like a
success story to a total mess is a fitting allegory for the crowdfunding
startup that launched a decade ago and claims more than $100 million
distributed to artists across 50,000 projects. Thanks to the following ohGr had
amassed, the effort kicked off with a promising start: The project raised more
than $20,000 in just the first few days, giving a strong sense that this could
work -- not only to pay for <i>TrickS</i>, but also as a sustainable music
business model where a band could reach its audience directly, symbiotically
serving its top fans. But slowly, warning signs began popping up. Once the
album was completed in spring 2018 and digital files were delivered to
PledgeMusic, the company became unresponsive about payments. This included money
to the band for operating costs, but also specifically to manufacturers for the
CDs, vinyl, lyric books, T-shirts and other products fans had pre-ordered to
make the campaign a financial success. </span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">These delays pushed ohGr to release the album digitally on
July 18 without any physical product and resulted in ohGr touring in support of
the new album -- without the actual album to sell. While it has also
compromised other plans for the release, Walk says the band is intent on
prioritizing its fans on PledgeMusic to reward their early support.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>When Walk threatened to go to the press with
his PledgeMusic experience, he says a company employee told him, "Do you
really think anyone would care?"</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">ohGr is far from the only band that has experienced problems
with late payments from PledgeMusic, if they receive the funds at all. Last
October, after reports the startup was having trouble paying some of its top
artists on time, some major change-ups were announced: Former CEO <b>Dominic
Pandiscia</b> departed, while co-founder <b>Malcolm Dunbar</b>'s role was
elevated to global president and chief operating officer, while his fellow
co-founder Jayce Varden returned to the company. (Now sources tell <i>Billboard</i>
Varden resigned on Tuesday.) A new financial team was also implemented under
the leadership of <b>Richard Vinchesi</b>, a partner at Sword, Rowe &
Company, one of PledgeMusic's larger investors. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Per a press release at the time, these moves
promised "a more rigorous infrastructure to underpin the company's growth
initiatives," as well as a commitment to improve its "financial
resources and processes." PledgeMusic also struck a deal with leading
music financing company Lyric Financial, it announced, "to help expand its
working capital and improve payable processing."</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">But based on accounts from several artists and managers who
are still struggling to receive payments from their PledgeMusic fundraising
campaigns, those measures have not been enough to right the ship, leaving many
feeling plundered and unsure what recourse to take. A few interviewed for this
story said they were considering legal action, while most simply pledged never
to work with the company again -- telling their friends and fans to do the
same.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“We accept responsibility for the
fact that we have been late on payments over the past year,” the company said
in a statement to <i>Billboard</i> on Thursday (Jan. 24), noting it expects
payments to be brought current within the next 90 days. “PledgeMusic is working
tirelessly on this issue, and we are asking our community for their continued
support and patience.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">According an anonymous former employee who wished to remain
anonymous, the root of these problems is improper money management where
PledgeMusic failed to hold artists' campaign funds separately and securely and
instead invested it back into the company. If true, this would directly
conflict with PledgeMusic's <a href="https://www.pledgemusic.com/site/terms" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0563c1;">terms and conditions</span></a>, which state "monies collected by
PledgeMusic for a Campaign will be held on account for the Artist." The
idiom "robbing Peter to pay Paul" came up in many conversations
describing PledgeMusic's actions and as the company's growth slowed the
situation worsened. Over the last year, according to the former employee, in
effort to reduce overhead, PledgeMusic also laid off about a third of its U.S.
staff and moved out of its New York offices into a WeWork shared workspace.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The stories from artists waiting for payment are plentiful,
with outstanding sums ranging from $50 to $100,000. After <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/fastball"><span style="color: #0563c1;">Fastball</span></a> completed a
problem-free PledgeMusic campaign in 2017, the '90s pop-rockers returned to the
service last summer to host a pre-order for a 20th anniversary reissue of the
band's album <i>All the Money Can Buy</i>, featuring chart-topping hit
"The Way." The sales ended on Nov. 9, having raised $22,000 from 500
pledgers. To date, the only payment the band has received is $895.24 to cover
shipping costs on a guitar purchased by a fan in Australia. With a balance
topping $21,000 still in limbo, manager <b>Peter Wark</b> says his requests
have been consistently shuffled between different higher-ups at the company
like "a game of hot potato" without providing any clarity.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>"I was just getting really pissed off
because they weren't responding," he says. "I can deal with failure,
I can deal with excuses, but incompetence is just something that drives me
crazy. Just tell me what the fuck's up."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Instrumental world music band <b>Incendio</b> finished a
PledgeMusic campaign in September meeting 115 percent of their goal, totaling
about $6,200. Of that, the band claims a first installment of $3,300 is now
more than four months late, but requests for payment have been ignored. That
money would be used to fulfill orders made on Pledge -- a requirement to
release the remaining funds.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Folk rock duo <b>HuDost</b>, who first spoke with <a href="https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2019/01/pledgemusic-payment-problems-continue-lefsetz-weighs-in.html" target="_blank"><i><span style="color: #0563c1;">HypeBot</span></i></a> last September about payment issues with the
website, were able to obtain an initial payout from PledgeMusic -- but they are
stilled owed about $8,000. Recently, the band wrote PledgeMusic to inform the
company they would soon release a digital version of their new album to
pledgers, which should unlock a second installment of funds, and asked when
that new money would be issued. Their client manager replied saying the company
is doing its "best to ensure payments are released as they are requested,"
but that with "the current backlog" of requests they could not
"guarantee that payments will be released on time." The band is now
planning to release its album early in order to "get in queue," as
member <b>Jemal Wade</b> put it, to receive their earned payment.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Canadian rapper <b>illvibe</b> earned $500 on a
campaign with all funds going to the nonprofit Charity: Water, but payment took
more than five months and he is still waiting on $50 that was missing from the
total. Singer-songwriter <b>Mike Evin</b> says he's owed $2,900 on remaining
funds for a project that closed a month ago. <b>Joanna Wallfisch</b> has been
owed $3,000 since October, with another $2,000 due when she finishes fulfilling
her orders with her own money. <b>Amanda Duncan </b>is owed more than $3,000
for an album released on New Year's Day and hasn't been able to get a reply
from PledgeMusic. And then of course there are the thousands of fans waiting on
their orders, also now demanding action from PledgeMusic.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The PledgeMusic community is looking for answers, while
questions persist beyond when they will get paid or when their products will
arrive. Namely, why has the company continued to take on more clients, when it
seems unable to pay those it already has?<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>"Yeah I want to get paid and I want to raise a stink about what
happened to me, but I also want to raise awareness so people are not sending
money to [PledgeMusic] and contributing to new projects that artist are
starting with them," says Even. "They should not be taking on new
business."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">For some of PledgeMusic's artists who have spoken with reps
from the company, some relief has been promised soon -- but at this point,
after months of getting the runaround, it's unclear what to believe and some
are preparing for the worst. As of Tuesday, ohGr had been promised 25 percent
of its funds for operating capitol and to manufacture books on Friday. The band
tells <i>Billboard</i> it was promised more money to come when the company
receives an influx of capital in six weeks. It's not waiting around, though,
and has decided to move all sales to <a href="http://https/ohgr.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0563c1;">BandCamp</span></a>.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Meanwhile, though Fastball has fulfilled all fan orders, the
band did so at its own cost and now owes its record label on the reissue,
Omnivore Records, about $9,000 for the album costs. While the label has been
understanding to the situation, says Wark, he's concerned the money may never
come.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>"I'm genuinely worried -- I
don't know if we will get paid," he adds. "[PledgeMusic] may file
bankruptcy and then it's a big middle finger to us."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"> Read PledgeMusic's full statement here:</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">PledgeMusic has always been committed to serving artist
and fan communities. It was established by artists and was born of a need to
change the way in which the traditional music industry operated. It was
designed to help artists and their teams at every level, and we believe that
PledgeMusic has become an essential part of the evolving landscape of the music
industry.</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">That said, we deeply regret that recently we have not
lived up to the high standards to which PledgeMusic has always held itself. We
acknowledge that many artists have and continue to experience payment delays.
These delays to artists are unacceptable--not only to them, but to us.</span></i><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Since its beginning, PledgeMusic has successfully
serviced over 45K artists from emerging acts to some of the biggest names in
the industry. We've supported 60 Grammy-nominated artists and helped
springboard 100s of unsigned bands to successful careers. Our efforts have
assisted over 375 artists with chart position on the Billboard Top 200. Our
platform has provided close to $100m of revenue to its artist community.</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Mid 2017, new investors came into PledgeMusic with the
goal of strengthening the company and improving the value proposition for
artists and fans. After substantial investments in the business over the past
18 months, we believe we have made good progress to that end, but it hasn’t
been enough. That said, the company has cut its operating expenses nearly in
half over the past year. We've overhauled key parts of our financial and operating
systems, while adding talent to our roster and making enhancements to the
platform like our Vinyl Store, D2C artist store-fronting and our data
analytics.</span></i><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">While the company has made progress, we still haven't
reached our goals. PledgeMusic has been in discussions with several strategic
players in the industry who have interest in the PledgeMusic platform. We are
evaluating a number of transactions with those potential partners, and we plan
to announce details of this in the next 60 days. It is our expectation that
payments will be brought current within the next 90 days. </span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">We accept responsibility for the fact that we have been
late on payments over the past year. PledgeMusic is working tirelessly on this
issue, and we are asking our community for their continued support and
patience.</span></i><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><a href="https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8494827/pledgemusic-crowdfunding-owes-artists-thousands-late-payments"><span style="color: #0563c1;">https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8494827/pledgemusic-crowdfunding-owes-artists-thousands-late-payments</span></a>
</span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: "calibri";"></span>Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-51910724349008473452017-12-11T19:17:00.002-08:002023-05-24T20:43:10.792-07:00Anonymous Sources: The Mysteries Of Journalism Everyone Should Know<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><br /></div>
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1f83dedc7759694a311346122dd90dd6a3ab870e"></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">By
Margaret Sullivan, Washington Post, 10 December 2017)</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;"><br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">When Houston Chronicle reporters want to use information
from an unnamed source in a news story, they have to jump through a few hoops
first.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>A senior editor has to approve
it, and know who the source is. A single unnamed source is rarely enough to go
ahead with a story — there must be two sources with the same firsthand
knowledge. And one of a handful of top editors must sign off on its use before
publication.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“The one exception to the
two-source rule is when we have a ‘golden source’ — for example, the police
chief talking about an investigation,” said Nancy Barnes, the Chronicle’s
executive editor. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The vetting process is similar at many large news
organizations — and it’s just one of the practices that journalists assume,
perhaps incorrectly, that news consumers understand.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Anonymous sourcing is one of the
least-understood of the mysteries.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“A
lot of people seem to think that when we use anonymous sources,<i> we</i> don’t
even know who they are — that they’re anonymous to us,” said Washington Post
reporter Wesley Lowery. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">That’s definitely not the case. Anonymity is granted to
known sources under tightly controlled circumstances because they can’t speak
on the record with their names attached for a variety of reasons. News
organizations try to limit their use, embarking on crackdowns and then
sometimes backsliding.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Peter Baker, a
reporter in the Washington bureau of the New York Times, said (to a surprised
reaction) at a journalism conference last week that Times Washington reporters
no longer may use “blind quotes” — direct quotations with no names
attached. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I asked a few prominent journalists to describe what they
wish news consumers knew about our business, but probably don’t. I was prompted
to do so after the undercover provocateurs known as Project Veritas released a
video featuring a Post reporter and then crowed about their supposed exposé:
The video showed him describing how harshly critical of President Trump he has
found The Post’s staff-written editorials.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">That’s hardly a secret — the editorials, which represent the
consensus of the paper’s editorial board, are published, after all. (Last year,
a group of such critical editorials was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.)<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But Project Veritas was taking advantage of
the fact that news consumers don’t make a distinction between news reporters
and editorial writers. Inside The Post’s building, though, that split is clear.
News reporters and news-side editors strive for impartiality — they want to
keep their opinions out of their work. By contrast, editorial writers and
columnists are not only allowed to have an opinion, it’s in their job
description.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So, what would some of these experienced news people like
you to know? <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Ben Smith, editor in
chief of BuzzFeed, told me he wishes readers would understand that sourcing
isn’t always simple. A high-profile source isn’t always a hero and may have
motivations that have little to do with serving the best interests of
democracy.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“I have always wished the
public understood how complex and messy sourcing is, and how often sources’
motives are personal or complex. While I appreciate the romantic portrayal of
reporters and sources in movies like ‘The Post’ — and while whistleblowers
from Daniel Ellsberg to the #MeToo voices are truly heroes — Mark Felt is a
much more typical source,” Smith said, referring to the former FBI official who
became the Watergate source known as “Deep Throat,” in part because he had an
ax to grind within the Nixon-era Justice Department. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Smith added that reporting is “an ethically complicated
business whose responsibility is singularly to deliver true stories to the audience.”
But how journalists get there can be discomfiting, he observed. BuzzFeed’s
recent exposé of alleged sexual misconduct by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.)
told readers that its information was supplied by Mike Cernovich, the far-right
media personality who has promoted conspiracy theories. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Richard Tofel, president of the nonprofit
investigative reporting organization ProPublica, told me he wishes the public
would get how seriously journalists take errors.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“I don’t think people widely understand how
hard journalists work to get stories right,” he said. “Accuracy is the first
requirement journalists have of each other, for instance, when considering
hiring or promotion. Corrections (and even uncorrected mistakes) are badges of
dishonor.” </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Tofel noted that even small mistakes frequently disqualify
long stories from prestigious awards. Journalists do make mistakes, of course,
and we’ve seen far too much of that recently. “But,” he said, “reporters these
days work very hard to get stories straight, and accurate, and fair.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Frank Sesno, director of George Washington
University’s media school, told me he wishes people understood the “the vetting
process, the checks and balances that viewers never see that television
networks do (or should) as a matter of course.”</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Sesno, a former Washington bureau chief for CNN, added: “At
CNN, a whole group, the Row, exists to vet scripts, to make sure sound bites
are used in context, to fact-check. They send scripts back when there is any
question.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>There is far more checking,
corroborating, debating, arguing, vetting than any viewer could possibly know,
Sesno said.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“It belies the prevailing
narrative of ‘fake’ news — because the very systems in place are there (when
used and used correctly) to generate skepticism about stories and sources, to
put the brakes on confirmation bias and leaps of journalistic faith.”</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Of course, journalists do mess up sometimes. They can fall
prey to confirmation bias, allow anonymous sources to run amok, fail to be fair
and impartial. Perhaps most often and most foolishly, they can move too fast to
publish in a highly competitive environment.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>And then, in a business based on credibility, there’s a price to pay.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-do-you-use-an-anonymous-source-the-mysteries-of-journalism-everyone-should-know/2017/12/10/fa01863a-d9e4-11e7-a841-2066faf731ef_story.html?utm_term=.dcfdf5647657&wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1"><span style="color: #0563c1;">https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-do-you-use-an-anonymous-source-the-mysteries-of-journalism-everyone-should-know/2017/12/10/fa01863a-d9e4-11e7-a841-2066faf731ef_story.html?utm_term=.dcfdf5647657&wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1</span></a>
</span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span>Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-1002545251158026282016-08-10T18:49:00.000-07:002016-08-10T18:49:39.965-07:00John Oliver Has Given Us The Best Defense Of Newspapers Ever
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">By </span></span><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/people/kathleen-parker"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">Kathleen Parker</span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, Washington Post, 09 A</span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">ugust 2016)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimn2lrDBnXSY3KnWRtlr05iXl248ZJz8recofJ-NQmHb6h9rac8PEK4JPdZ6g6HixJAeT9W1X8ASDAHWKApnrqhD_u8cth_P1xmQj_I60h4fyHv8-luDEolQZt56We4LqyIDA-0uk84IU/s1600/JohnOliver.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimn2lrDBnXSY3KnWRtlr05iXl248ZJz8recofJ-NQmHb6h9rac8PEK4JPdZ6g6HixJAeT9W1X8ASDAHWKApnrqhD_u8cth_P1xmQj_I60h4fyHv8-luDEolQZt56We4LqyIDA-0uk84IU/s400/JohnOliver.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
John Oliver in 2014. (Eric Liebowitz/HBO)</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Every couple of
years or so, I feel the need to whine about the plight of newspapers. It’s
August. I’m Trumped out. So today’s the day.
Except that HBO’s John Oliver beat me to it with the best defense of
newspapers — ever. His recent “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” </span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq2_wSsDwkQ" title="www.youtube.com"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">monologue about the suffering newspaper
industry</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> has gone viral
in journalism circles but deserves a broader audience. Besides, it’s funny. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Leavening his important
message with enough levity to keep the dopamine flowing, Oliver points out that
most news outlets, faux, Fox and otherwise, essentially rely on newspapers for
their material. This includes, he says, pulsing with self-awareness, Oliver
himself. He’s sort of part of the problem, in other words, but at least he
knows it, which makes it okay, sort of.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The problem:
People want news but they don’t want to pay for it. Consequently, newspapers are failing while
consumers get their information from comedy shows, talk shows and websites that
essentially lift material for their own purposes. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">But somewhere,
somebody is sitting through a boring meeting, poring over data or interviewing
someone who isn’t nearly as important as he thinks he is in order to produce a
story that will become news. As Oliver points out, news is a food chain, yet
with rare exceptions, the most important members of the chain are at the
bottom, turning off the lights in newsrooms where gladiators, scholars and
characters once roamed. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Some still do,
though most are becoming rather long-ish in the tooth. (You can actually get
that fixed, you know.) That any
newspapers are surviving, if not for much longer in any recognizable form, can
be attributed at least in some part to the dedication of people who really
believe in the mission of a free press and are willing to work harder for less
— tweeting, blogging, filming and whatnot in addition to trying to write worthy
copy. Most of the poor slobs who fell in love with the printed word go unnoticed
by any but their peers.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">An exception is
Marty Baron, the unassuming executive editor of The Post, recently featured in
the film “</span></span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01AZ86ROO/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thewaspos09-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B01AZ86ROO&linkId=1113a9966aad7f1b67d6d1db8a928c98" title="www.amazon.com"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">Spotlight</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">,” about the Boston Globe’s stories under
Baron’s leadership uncovering sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. It’s a good
movie, not just because of great casting and acting but because it’s a great
tale about a massive investigative effort that led to church reform and the
beginning of healing for victims. (Not to worry, my pay comes as a percentage
of the money I make for the company. This won’t make a dime of difference.)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">My point — shared
by Oliver — is that only newspapers are the brick and mortar of the Fourth
Estate’s edifice. Only they have the wherewithal to do the kind of reporting
that leads to stories such as “Spotlight.” What happens to the “news” when
there are no newspapers left? We seem
doomed to find out as people increasingly give up their newspaper subscriptions
and seek information from free-content sources. And though newspapers have an
online presence, it’s hard to get readers to pay for content. As Oliver says, now is a very good time to be
a corrupt politician. Between buyouts, layoffs and news-space reductions,
there’s hardly anyone paying attention. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Except, perhaps,
to kitties. In a hilarious spinoff of
“Spotlight” called “Stoplight,” Oliver shows a short film of a news meeting
where the old-school reporter is pitching a story about city hall corruption.
The rest of the staff, cheerful human topiaries to the reporter’s kudzu-draped
mangrove — are more interested in a cat that looks like a raccoon. And then there’s Sam Zell, erstwhile owner of
the Tribune Co., who summed up the sad trajectory of the nation’s interests
and, perhaps, our future while speaking to Orlando Sentinel staffers in 2008.
When he said he wanted to increase revenues by giving readers what they want, </span></span><a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2008-02-06/business/0802050634_1_sara-fajardo-asked-zell-products-and-additional-revenue-puppies-don-t-count" title="articles.chicagotribune.com"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">a female
voice objected</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, “What
readers want are puppy dogs.” </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Zell exploded, </span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDy7vn7-LX4" title="www.youtube.com"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">calling her comment</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> the sort of “journalistic arrogance of
deciding that puppies don’t count. . . . Hopefully we get to the point where
our revenue is so significant that we can do puppies and Iraq, okay?
[Expletive] you.” Yes, he said that. Moral of the story: If you don’t subscribe to
a newspaper, you don’t get to complain about the sorry state of journalism —
and puppies you shall have.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/john-oliver-has-given-us-the-best-defense-of-newspapers-ever/2016/08/09/ec04219e-5e6d-11e6-9d2f-b1a3564181a1_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/john-oliver-has-given-us-the-best-defense-of-newspapers-ever/2016/08/09/ec04219e-5e6d-11e6-9d2f-b1a3564181a1_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
</span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-73832451010743564272016-08-10T18:22:00.000-07:002016-08-10T18:22:22.395-07:00Big Oil’s Master Class In Rigging The System
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">(By Sheldon Whitehouse and Elizabeth
Warren, Washington Post, 09 August 2016)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The writers, both Democrats, represent Rhode
Island and Massachusetts, respectively, in the U.S. Senate.</span></span></i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">For years,
ExxonMobil actively advanced the notion that its products had little or no
impact on the Earth’s environment. As recently as last year, it continued to
fund organizations that play down the risks of carbon pollution. So what did
ExxonMobil actually know about climate change? And when did it know it? Reasonable questions — particularly if
ExxonMobil misled its investors about the long-term prospects of its business
model or if the company fooled consumers into buying its products based on
false claims.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So now the attorneys
general of </span></span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/30/science/new-york-climate-change-inquiry-into-exxon-adds-prosecutors.html"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">Massachusetts and New York</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> are investigating whether ExxonMobil
violated state laws by knowingly misleading their residents and shareholders
about climate change. Those investigations may be making ExxonMobil executives
nervous, and their Republican friends in Congress are riding to the rescue.
House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman </span></span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/20/science/exxon-mobil-climate-change-global-warming.html?_r=0"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">Lamar Smith</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> (R-Tex.) and his fellow committee Republicans
have issued subpoenas demanding that the state officials fork over all
materials relating to their investigations. They also targeted </span></span><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19052016/house-republicans-assail-climate-fraud-investigations-exxon-lamar-smith" title="insideclimatenews.org"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">eight
organizations</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, including
the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Rockefeller Family Fund and Greenpeace,
with similar subpoenas, demanding that they turn over internal communications
related to what Smith describes as part of “</span></span><a href="http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/13/eric-schneiderman-maura-healey-subpoenaed-over-pro/"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">coordinated efforts</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">” to deprive ExxonMobil of its First
Amendment rights.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Take a breath to
absorb that: State attorneys general are investigating whether a fraud had been
committed — something state AGs do every day. Sometimes AGs uncover fraud and
sometimes they don’t, but if the evidence warrants it, the question of fraud
will be resolved in open court, with all the evidence on public display. But
instead of applauding the AGs for doing their jobs, this particular
investigation against this particular oil company has brought down the wrath of
congressional Republicans — and a swift effort to shut down the investigation
before any evidence becomes public. So far, both AGs and all eight
organizations have refused to comply. We say, good for them.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Let’s call this
what it is: a master class in how big corporations rig the system. </span></span><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=Career&cid=N00001811"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">According to the Center for Responsive
Politics</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, Smith has
received nearly $685,000 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas
industry during his career. Now he is using his committee to harass the
investigators and bully those who dare bring facts of possible corporate
malfeasance to their attention. Undoubtedly, the oil industry wants no further
attention, much less court-supervised discovery, into whether it has spent
decades deliberately deceiving the public about the harms associated with its
product. So here come Smith and his Republican colleagues with threats of legal
action designed to sidetrack state investigations and silence groups
petitioning the government to address potential wrongdoing. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">There’s plenty
for the AGs to investigate. The Union of Concerned Scientists, for example,
issued </span></span><a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/07/The-Climate-Deception-Dossiers.pdf"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">a 2015 report</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, “Climate Deception Dossiers: Internal Fossil
Fuel Industry Memos Reveal Decades of Corporate Disinformation,” and </span></span><a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/documents/global_warming/exxon_report.pdf"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">a 2007 report</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, “Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air: How ExxonMobil
Uses Big Tobacco’s Tactics to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science.” Both
reports document how the industry has protected its bottom line by funding
front organizations and scientists to put out junk science contradicting what
peer-reviewed scientists, and even the industry’s own experts, were saying
about how its products affected the environment. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Union of
Concerned Scientists President Ken Kimmell rightly </span></span><a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/press/2016/science-group-rejects-lamar-smith-subpoena"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">dismissed the committee’s request</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, saying, “Mr. Smith makes no allegation
that UCS violated any laws or regulations, and his claim, that providing
information to attorneys general infringes on ExxonMobil’s rights, is
nonsense.” Massachusetts Attorney
General Maura Healey and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman are also
fighting back. In </span></span><a href="http://www.mass.gov/ago/docs/energy-utilities/exxon/ltr-to-congressman-lamar-smith-7-26-16.pdf"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">separate letters</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, they </span></span><a href="https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2016_07_26_nyoag_letter_to_sst_objecting_to_subpoena.pdf" title="ag.ny.gov"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">told Smith</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> that they have no intention of complying
with the committee’s request. “The Subpoena brings us one step closer to a
protracted, unnecessary legal confrontation which will only distract and
detract from the work of our respective offices,” Schneiderman wrote. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Smith is not the
first fossil-fuel-backed Republican in Congress to come to the industry’s
defense. In May, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Jim
Inhofe (R-Okla.), recipient of </span></span><a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cycle=Career&type=I&cid=N00005582&newMem=N"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">$1.8 million</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> in oil and gas industry contributions since 1989,
called the state AGs’ investigation a “</span></span><a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/4/inhofe-slaps-ags-misuse-power-probe-climate-change/"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">misuse of power</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">” and “</span></span><a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/4/inhofe-slaps-ags-misuse-power-probe-climate-change/"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">politics at its worst.</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">” The greater abuse comes when
congressional committees appear to operate at the behest of the industries they
are meant to oversee. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Congressional
investigations and hearings have a unique ability to focus a nation’s attention
and bring facts of public importance to light. As committee chairmen, Smith and
Inhofe can direct their committees’ authority as they see fit, but using that
power to stifle lawful state investigations doesn’t advance the First
Amendment, it tramples on it. So we have
an alternative suggestion. If Chairmen Smith and Inhofe are concerned about the
First Amendment rights of ExxonMobil, they should each call a hearing, ask
ExxonMobil executives to testify, and give them the opportunity to set the
record straight. A committee chairman could do little more to protect any
person’s right to speak freely than to give that person the chance to testify
before Congress. We would love to hear what they have to say. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/big-oils-master-class-in-rigging-the-system/2016/08/09/03ea2df6-5e48-11e6-9d2f-b1a3564181a1_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/big-oils-master-class-in-rigging-the-system/2016/08/09/03ea2df6-5e48-11e6-9d2f-b1a3564181a1_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
</span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-86370024993639356732016-04-23T18:41:00.000-07:002019-08-26T10:37:12.600-07:00Donald Trump<div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">The Last Debate: Donald Trump Doesn’t Care About Democracy</span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By
Alexandra Petri, Washington Post, 20 October 2016)</span></div>
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2331613703699568761" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a><br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<i><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I honestly don’t believe the debates are over. You will have to demonstrate
to me slowly and gently over a period of months that there aren’t any more
debates, because I am too afraid to believe that they have really stopped.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">However, here is what I hope is my final
recap for this election season.</span></span></i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CHRIS WALLACE: Hello. I have come to your world from a different reality,
Fox News, a fact that will become apparent as this debate goes on. This is the
final presidential debate of the season, or, depending on whom you vote for,
the final presidential debate of all time. If you play your cards right, all
future elections can be settled by the spear! Now, let’s bring out the
candidates.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HILLARY CLINTON: Hello. I am dressed as Saruman the White. My best moments
this evening will occur when I am forced to defend the basic principles of
democracy, a terrifyingly low bar that this election season has set. Thank you
for making it so easy, but also, eeegh.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">DONALD TRUMP: *low guttural hiss* Tonight I have worn my RED tie.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: Who would you put on the Supreme Court? Why?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: I would definitely put human people on the Supreme Court, judges
who were people and supported people, not corporations. I think people are
people and corporations are faceless entities you sometimes give speeches to.
All I want are judges who will not drag us screaming backward into the past.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I disagree. The subtext of my whole campaign is that the past was
great! Especially for my core voters. The rest of you people, not so
much. I know that the Supreme Court needs changing because one
time, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was mean to me. If Hillary Clinton is elected,
it is important that we keep the Second Amendment intact. This is not the most
threatening thing I will say all evening.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: Okay, let’s talk about the Second Amendment. Hillary?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: Thank you. Listen, I love the Second Amendment. I lived in
Arkansas for 18 (twitch) WONDERFUL years. I oppose the way the </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Heller</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
decision was applied, because I believe in toddlers. Hooray, toddlers.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: The only thing that can stop a bad toddler with a gun is a good
toddler with a gun. And Hillary was so upset about </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Heller</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">! Look at her!
What was </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Heller</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: And now let’s talk about abortion. Donald, will your judges
overturn </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Roe v. Wade</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Maybe? Yes. Probably.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: (cracks knuckles) First off, no. Second off, I support </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Roe v.
Wade</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and Planned Parenthood. It is nice that this is finally coming up at a
debate with a woman in it. Do you think that women do this for fun? This is not
fun. This is a decision you get to make about your own life and your own body,
with your family, taking your faith into account, and I can’t imagine why you
would want the government making it for you.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: Ah, but didn’t you support partial-birth abortions?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I read somewhere that a baby can — you can just RIP a baby out of a
lady’s tummy at nine months! In the ninth month. On the final day.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: I think you’re describing a C-section.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: And if that baby from his mother’s womb untimely ripped gets Birnam
Wood to come to Dunsinane with him, you don’t get to be king of Scotland any
more.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: I honestly did not expect you had read “Macbeth” but,
okay.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: That is a recent medical text, I think.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: It’s a fictional play about a Scottish king.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I think it is just deplorable how women, they get these big bats,
huge, and they just KNOCK THE STORKS OUT OF THE SKY before the baby even has a
chance.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: You don’t know where babies come from, do you?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: Let’s move on. Immigration. Why are you right about it, and why is
your opponent wrong?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Listen, every week ICE endorses me. We need a wall, Chris. That’s
the bottom line. The wall itself would be a kind of line on the bottom of our
country. It would keep the White Walkers out and also stop the pollution of our
blood. New Hampshire especially needs this wall.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: You do realize New Hampshire is not anywhere near our southern
border, correct? Don’t answer that. It will only depress me further. I recently
met an inspiring young human anecdote who reinforced my position on borders. I
want them to be strong, and I want the chain bookstore of the same name to
reopen. Can I say also that when you went to Mexico, you conveniently forgot to
mention this at all? You choked, Donald.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: (sniffling) You are mean. I would have mentioned the wall, but
I forgot what the word was. I told Prime Minister Peña Nieto many times to
build a “biblioteca” but it turns out that is something different. We agreed
that NAFTA was bad, though. I think. I could not tell because he was not
speaking English. Look, I have been to South of the Border many times–</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: That is not in Mexico.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: President Obama deported millions of people.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: Secretary Clinton, didn’t you say you wanted a hemispheric open
market during one of your SECRET SPEECHES to OMINOUS CORPORATIONS?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: WIKILEAKS IS THE WORK OF RUSSIAN SPIES AND THAT’S ALL I’M GOING TO
SAY ON THE SUBJECT. Wait, no, I will say one more thing: the rest of that
sentence made it very clear that I was talking about energy markets.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I just need to interrupt because it sounded like Secretary
Clinton was about to say something mean about Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Putin is
a great man, so smart, strong, broad shoulders, lovely smile, looks great
astride a steed. He respects me. I think. I would</span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> like</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> to think that. It
would make me proud to have the respect of a man like that. Do you want to read
a story that I wrote about him? It is called VLADIMIR AND ME and in it we go to
South of the Border together and hold hands and look at my wall and he
compliments me like a true friend and marvels at the size of my hands.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: Maybe after the debate.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: Hard pass.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: My point is, Vladimir does not respect this woman.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: That’s because you are his puppet.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: “No puppet. No puppet. You’re the puppet.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: Wow.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: But I would be HONORED to be the puppet on his large, masculine
hand.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: This is an even vaster conspiracy, but it is not the work of the
right wing. It is the work of the Russians. Yes, I know that coming from me
this is hard to take, but, like, don’t take it from me — take it from our
intelligence agencies!</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: No, but, seriously, do you condemn foreign intervention in this
election?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Yes.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: Yup definitely me me me I definitely condemn it!</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: (sighs) I’m not actually friends with Vladimir. Not when I’m
awake. He’s not my best friend. He’s not my only friend. I have friends,
though.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: Are you okay?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: He has missiles. He’s so smart.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: How did we get here? Weren’t we talking about immigration,
like, a second ago?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: Can I just say that it’s terrifying that Donald Trump keeps saying
he thinks nuclear weapons should be on the table?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Liar.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: It’s a direct quote from you.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: That is how I know it’s a lie.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: (to camera) Allies, please, relax, in a few weeks everything will
be in my capable hands. Do not pay attention to what this man is saying. Look
at my exciting and fashion-forward suit! Please, pay no attention to the man in
front of the curtain. He speaks for nobody. He is sad and alone.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: Why is your plan for the economy better than your opponent’s plan?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: My plan will grow us 10 million jobs from the middle out!</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Instead of challenging this EXTREMELY optimistic appraisal, I would
like to go back to picking on our allies.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: (to camera) Look away.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I think we should be meaner than our allies. Why would they pay
their fair share when we are being nice to them? We should say mean things,
like, Saudi Arabia, what are you wearing? and Japan, you have *interesting*
eyes. Things of that nature.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: (bangs head against lectern) Chris, may I speak?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: Would it help if I attacked you instead of him?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: N-no — why? Why would you do that?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: You want to do more of what President Obama did, and we know that
what he did was bad.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: FACT-CHECK RATING MOSTLY TRUE!</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: Donald, fact-checking is my thing. You don’t get to fact-check.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership are both bad.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: For crying out loud, I’m against the TPP now and I will be against
it when I’m president. Yes, I said it. Not if. When.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I have a question.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: (turns to face him) Yes, Donald?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: You have so many good ideas, it sounds like. Why didn’t you do any
of them in your 30 years of experience? I was always doing bad things, using
Chinese steel, like you said, but you never even stopped me. Why didn’t you
stop me? Someone should have, I feel. I look at myself and I think, “Why didn’t
anyone stop this sooner?”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: So do I, Donald. But, speaking of my 30 years of experience, yes,
I have 30 years of experience. My worst quality is that I work too hard, I
think. I believe in women’s rights and also GOOGLE ALICIA MACHADO.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: You built ISIS.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: And it’s in 32 countries! And you say I never accomplish
anything! (to camera) But seriously ISIS is not my fault.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: Before we talk about “foreign hot spots,” let’s have the MOST
AWKWARD TRANSITION OF THIS DEBATE to, uh, domestic hot spots. Donald. Tell us
why your accusers would suddenly all come forward and make up these
awful stories?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: First off, thank you for framing the question like that. I don’t
know why, but I agree with your premise! Also, Hillary is responsible for
all the violence at my rallies. It’s on a tape, somewhere, along with her
founding ISIS.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: Do I have to remind America of how your first denial was that the
women were not attractive enough for you to assault them? Do I?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I didn’t say that.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: I HAVE THE RECEIPTS ON THIS ONE, DONALD. I may get kind of sketchy
when asked about my foundation, but, by god, I can quote you until the cows
come home.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: If “cows” was a reference to my accusers, I agree.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: It was not.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Literally no one respects women more than I do.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: (laughs)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(Audience laughs louder. The laughter builds and builds into 15 minutes of
hysteria)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: You know what isn’t fiction? Emails.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: Instead of accepting the premise that we should talk about my
emails, what if I ran through all the things you’ve done wrong that I have
highlighted in commercials? Cool by you?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: No. Tell us, was your foundation engaged in pay-to-play?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: You know what, the Clinton Foundation is great, and it does just,
you know, so much good, for children, like the toddlers whom I wanted to save
from guns earlier.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: That isn’t–</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: We gave lunches to children!</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: That’s not–</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: Delicious, healthy lunches! Lunches that my dear friend, Michelle
Obama, would have looked at and APPROVED!</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: You’re still not–</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: When they go low, we go high, as Michelle so rightly said!</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: Donald–</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Well, exactly, Chris. I was in Little Haiti the other day, and the
people there, they said the Clinton Foundation was bad.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: (looks at Trump) That’s it? I set you up like that, and that’s </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">it?</span></i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Yup.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: Then I guess I should also ask about your foundation.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Listen, the only thing the Trump foundation does is put up flags.
That is 100 percent of what we do. We would be called PFLAG but it was
taken.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: (mutters) And six foot paintings of you.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Look, if you don’t think it should be legal, you should have
outlawed it when you were in the Senate.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: Yes. Me. One senator. Personally. I should have.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: Donald, I hate that I have to ask this, because it is 2016 and we
are in America, but will you abide by the results of this election?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I will get back to you on that. The media is rigging it. They keep
taking words out of my mouth and printing them where people can read them and
form opinions about them.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: So… no? Keep in mind that if you say “no” you are invalidating,
like, every premise of our life in a democratic society.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: (shrug)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: Like, there’s this thing we have, called a peaceful transition of
power…</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Never heard of it.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: Can I say something? This is literally horrifying. I would be
shaking and quivering with fear and hiding behind the lectern if I had not
purged myself of all lesser emotions 30 years ago. All I feel now is vengeance
and righteous anger. Now I am going to tell you some specifics about military
operations that are ongoing, as though I am not shaken to my core by what was
just said, but — somewhere deep inside me, a little girl with glasses is
weeping inconsolably. But, uh, Mosul, huh?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Mosul is so sad. I really hope that Mosul is a real place, because I
am just going to repeat it over and over. I hope this isn’t one of those
Agrabah things where you trick me into saying a fake name. Listen. I know
how to fix all the military things. We just stop telling people what we are
going to do. We surprise them. It works for my birthday parties; it can work in
Iraq.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: asdfkj</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: How did you even make that sound without a keyboard?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: You bring these things out in me. Please, just vote for me,
everyone. This man is spouting horrible nonsense conspiracy theories.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Bernie Sanders is right that you have bad instincts, and John
Podesta is right that you don’t know how to make risotto.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: Anyone want to talk about Aleppo?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: I would be happy to talk about Aleppo, but honestly, it would pain
me for people around the globe to have to hear him talk about Aleppo.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: Point taken.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: We should be considered with every leppo.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">WALLACE: Any concluding remarks?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: My father was a small-business man with a squeegee and a dream.
From him, I took a natural, humanlike cadence and the ambition to make a
difference in the world. Please, America, I beg you: You can end this. Vote for
me, and you will never have to hear Donald Trump’s opinions on a national
stage again.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: “Such a nasty woman.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CLINTON: I rest my case.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 8px 0px 0px;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2016/10/20/the-last-debate-donald-trump-doesnt-care-about-democracy/?utm_term=.627ad499892e&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2016/10/20/the-last-debate-donald-trump-doesnt-care-about-democracy/?utm_term=.627ad499892e&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1</span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike><br /></strike>
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Who Gave Trump’s Taxes To The New York Times?</span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By Paul Farhi,
Washington Post, 02 October 2016)</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="display: none; margin: 0px;">A report in the
New York Times says a $916 million loss in the '90s might have allowed Donald
Trump to legally avoid paying any income taxes for almost two decades. (Sarah
Parnass/The Washington Post) </span><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">When New York Times reporter Susanne Craig
checked her office mailbox a few days ago, a thin Manila envelope immediately
caught her eye. She almost gasped when she opened it.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I thought it was a hoax,” she said Sunday.
“My reaction was, ‘No way this is real.’ ”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The typed return address read “The Trump Organization.” Inside were
three photocopied pages Craig realized could be dynamite: They appeared to be
from Donald Trump’s 1995 tax returns. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Those
were the decidedly low-tech beginnings of what may turn out to be one of the
most consequential stories of the 2016 presidential campaign. Late Saturday, </span></span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-taxes.html"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">the Times revealed</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> that Trump had declared a $916 million
loss in 1995, wiping out any federal taxes that year and setting himself up to
avoid 18 years of similar obligations. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><br /></span></span></div>
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2016/10/01/35bef778-8844-11e6-a3ef-f35afb41797f_story.html" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">The
story</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, which Trump’s
campaign did not contest or confirm, filled in one bit of the mystery
surrounding the real estate mogul’s taxes. Trump has repeatedly declined to
release his most recent returns, prompting his rival for the presidency,
Democrat Hillary Clinton, to suggest he was hiding information that could hurt
his candidacy. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Times’ story was a
rare animal, a</span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">bombshell based on a source whose identity is unknown
even to people at the news organization that broke the story. Although
anonymous sources are commonly used by journalists to elicit sensitive information,
reporters almost always know their identity, even if they don’t disclose their
names to readers or viewers. </span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">That doesn’t appear to be the case in the
Times’ story, which carried the bylines of four reporters, including Craig and
David Barstow, an investigative reporter who has won three Pulitzer Prizes. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">While Craig declined to discuss her
understanding of who sent the Trump documents, Times deputy executive editor
Matt Purdy was definitive: “We do not know the identity of the source.” </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In hindsight, however, that may have been
among the least problematic elements behind the documents Craig received that
Friday, Sept. 23. The major challenge was authenticating the three pages and
placing them in the proper context to understand Trump’s tax strategy at the
time, said Dean Baquet, the newspaper’s executive editor. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The documents “looked real,” he said. “But who
knew?”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Times described the documents as the
first pages of three filings: a New York state resident income tax return, a
New Jersey nonresident tax return and a Connecticut nonresident tax return.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Among the troubling aspects was a line on one
of the forms bearing the nine-figure sum Trump claimed as his personal loss.
The figure’s first two digits — 9 and 1 — were typed onto the form in a
different font than the digits making up the rest of the number, noted reporter
Megan Twohey. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">This raised the
possibility that the documents could be fakes, just as the unusual typescript
in documents purported to be part of President George W. Bush’s military
records was called into question after CBS News used them in a “60 Minutes II”
story in 2004. (Those documents were never definitively shown to be bogus, but
the suspicions they raised eventually led to the firings, resignations or early
retirement of people involved in the CBS story, including anchor Dan Rather.) </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In addition to corroborating publicly
available information contained on the forms, such as Trump’s Social Security
number, the Times hired several tax experts to review the documents. They
suggested that the documents were in line with accounting permissible under the
federal tax code in 1995.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The key to
authentication was a semi-retired accountant named Jack Mitnick, who had
prepared and signed Trump’s 1995 return. Barstow tracked down Mitnick in South
Florida and “over coffee and bagels,” as Craig put it, confirmed that Mitnick
had prepared them. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Mitnick also
explained the mysterious 9 and 1, telling Barstow the two digits had to be
hand-typed onto the tax form because they kept being wiped off the line when
transmitted from an electronic tax-preparation program. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Based on Mitnick’s comments and other
background material gathered by Barstow, Craig, Twohey and reporter Russ
Beuttner, Baquet decided the story was ready for publication. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But just before that, according to the
Times, a lawyer for Trump, Marc E. Kasowitz, emailed a letter to the paper
threatening “prompt initiation of appropriate legal action” if the newspaper
published the private documents. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump’s campaign did not dispute the
documents’ authenticity or question the Times’ conclusions. It instead issued a
statement that indirectly confirmed the story, reading, in part, “Mr. Trump is
a highly-skilled businessman who has a fiduciary responsibility to his
business, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally
required. Mr. Trump knows the tax code far better than anyone who has ever run
for president and he is the only one that knows how to fix it.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Baquet, interviewed Sunday morning, expressed
no regrets. “There’s no more public figure than the president and no more
public endeavor than running for president,” he said. “Given what he has said
about taxes and what he won’t show about his own, it’s important for voters to
have this information.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">As for Craig, she’s still guessing why the
source chose to send her the envelope. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Some
of it might be her experience covering Wall Street for a decade or so for the
Wall Street Journal and the Times. Part of it might be her coverage of Trump’s
business career for the Times over the past nine months, including </span></span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/us/politics/donald-trump-debt.html" title="www.nytimes.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">an
investigation this summer of Trump’s holdings</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> that revealed his businesses are carrying more
than twice as much debt as Trump has publicly disclosed.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In any case, Craig said she’d welcome more
Manila envelopes from her source. </span></span><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I sit right by the mailboxes, and I’m
constantly checking mine,” she said. “You never know what’s going to be in
there.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/2016/10/02/e7c1e0ce-88e0-11e6-b24f-a7f89eb68887_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/2016/10/02/e7c1e0ce-88e0-11e6-b24f-a7f89eb68887_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1</span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump’s Awful Boast About Paying No
Taxes</span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By Allan Sloan, Washington Post, 29 September 2016)</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">One of the things you’re supposed to do if
you want to be the leader of a company — or a country — is to set a good
example. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">That’s why I was so appalled
during the debate Monday night when Donald Trump boasted — or seemed to boast —
about having paid no U.S. income taxes for the years in which his tax returns
have become public record. “That makes me smart,” he said.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Actually, it doesn’t make him smart. It makes
him foolish. And a phony. Here’s a guy wearing an American flag in his lapel,
talking about how our country is heavily in debt and needs money badly, and
then telling us that he’s smart for not supporting the place in which we all
live. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I don’t know about you, but I
found it infuriating. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">If Trump were truly smart — and wasn’t, </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/donald-trumps-most-enduring--and-unbefitting--trait/2016/07/15/f5684848-488b-11e6-acbc-4d4870a079da_story.html"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">as I wrote in July</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, someone who lacks impulse control — he’d
boast about paying no taxes, then say that he would close the loophole or
loopholes that allowed him do that.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="7f12362d47e036457fc338a7f10fb45d6ab887e3"></a></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I suspect, as some tax mavens do, that
Trump pays little or no U.S. income tax because of Section 469 of the tax code.
That section carves out a special tax break for people who spend at least half
their working time developing or managing real estate, allowing them to use tax
losses generated by real estate to offset other income. Something regular
people aren’t allowed to do. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">If Trump were truly smart — and wanted to
lead by example, which is the very best way to lead — he would disclose his tax
returns, warts and all, and propose to close the Section 469 loophole and any
others that he or his family might be using. That would make him credible, and
a leader.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">After all, he claims to be
worth $10 billion — though I don’t remotely believe it, given his flights of
fantasy finance — so paying even a lot of income tax wouldn’t kill him. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But instead of leading, Trump is proposing
to cut rates for high-income people, presumably including himself; to eliminate
the “carried interest” loophole that gives a big tax break to hedge fund and
private-equity managers, but that I doubt benefits him; and to eliminate the
estate tax, which Hillary Clinton claimed would save Trump’s family $4 billion.
I don’t believe that number for a minute — it assumes that Trump is worth $10
billion — but he didn’t challenge it. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I
emailed Trump’s campaign Tuesday asking about these things, and whether
anything in Trump’s tax proposals would cost him or his family money. I got no
response. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Now, let’s be clear. I’m no fan of the
Clintons’ behavior, either. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I’m as
offended by Hillary and Bill Clinton’s buck-raking practices as I am by Trump’s
boast about not having paid income tax. The Clintons have knocked down tens of
millions in fees and other income since Bill Clinton left office by exploiting
the aura of his presidency. It’s repellant. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But despite their greed and money-grubbing
cluelessness — did Hillary Clinton really need the $675,000 of Wall Street
speech fees that she gobbled down during the brief interval between leaving the
State Department and beginning her presidential run? — the Clintons are showing
that they’re smart when it comes to proposing tax policy.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">How so? Because the tax increases that
Hillary Clinton is proposing on high-income people would cost her family money.
So would the changes that she’s proposing in the estate tax.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">So when it comes to taxes, Clinton is showing
that she knows how to sacrifice and lead by example. Trump is showing that he
knows how to take care of himself at the expense of the rest of us. And that’s
the bottom line. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/one-theory-of-why-trump-is-hiding-his-tax-returns/2016/09/29/4ee56ee4-858d-11e6-a3ef-f35afb41797f_story.html"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/one-theory-of-why-trump-is-hiding-his-tax-returns/2016/09/29/4ee56ee4-858d-11e6-a3ef-f35afb41797f_story.html</span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<b><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Scope
Of Trump's Lies Are Unprecedented For A Modern Presidential Candidate</span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By Michael Finnegan,
Los Angeles Times, 26 September 2016)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Donald Trump says taxes in the United States are higher than
almost anywhere else on Earth. They're not.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">He says he opposed the Iraq war from the start. He didn't.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Now, after years of spreading the lie that
President Barack Obama was born in Africa, Trump says Hillary Clinton did it
first (untrue) and that he's the one who put the controversy to rest (also
untrue).</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Never in modern presidential
politics has a major candidate made false statements as routinely as Trump has.
Over and over, independent researchers have examined what the Republican
nominee says and concluded it was not the truth — "pants on fire"
(Politifact) or "four Pinocchios" (Washington Post Fact Checker).</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump's candidacy was premised on upending a dishonest
establishment that has rigged American political and economic life, so many of
his loyalists are willing to overlook his lies, as long as he rankles the
powerful, said Republican strategist Rob Stutzman.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">"It gives him not only license, but
incentive to spin fantasy, because no one expects him to tell the truth,"
said Stutzman, who worked against Trump during the primaries. "They
believe they're getting lied to constantly, so if their hero tells lies in
order to strike back, they don't care."</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Still, Trump's pattern of saying things that are provably false has no
doubt contributed to his high unfavorable ratings. It also has forced
journalists to grapple with how aggressive they should be in correcting
candidates' inaccurate statements, particularly in the presidential debates
that start Monday.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">At a time of deep public mistrust of the news media, the
arbitration of statements of fact, long seen as one of reporters' most basic
duties, runs the risk of being perceived as partisan bias.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But so does the shirking of that role. Fox
News anchor Chris Wallace, one of the debate moderators, has faced a storm of
criticism for telling CNN: "It's not my job to be a truth squad."</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">After a Sept. 8 town hall on NBC, critics
skewered moderator Matt Lauer for failing to correct Trump's false statement
that he opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl drew
milder reprimands for letting Trump repeat the same lie twice in a July
interview on "60 Minutes," responding "yeah" both times
with no correction.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump's Democratic rival faces integrity questions of her
own. A new Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll found that 41 percent of voters
saw Trump as better than Clinton at being honest and straightforward; just 31 percent
thought that Clinton would be better than Trump in that area.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Republicans have used Clinton's use of a
private email server when she was secretary of State to cast doubt on her
honesty, saying she has been untrustworthy for decades. Her efforts to fight
back were damaged when FBI Director James Comey said in early July that she had
been "extremely careless" in her handling of emails that officials
said should have been considered classified.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Nonetheless, the scope of Trump's lies is unprecedented, and
he is dogged in refusing to stop saying things once they are proven untrue.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Buzzfeed unearthed an audio recording showing
that Trump backed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and a 2011 video in which he
called for swift military action against Moammar Gadhafi, then the leader of
Libya. In the months since then, Trump has lied dozens of times on both issues,
saying he opposed the use of force in Iraq and Libya.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump campaign spokesmen Hope Hicks and Jason
Miller did not respond to an email requesting comment on Trump's history of
falsehoods.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Thomas E. Mann, a resident scholar at the University of
California, Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies, said Trump appears to
recognize that a faction of the Republican Party has lost respect for facts,
evidence and science — presuming, for example, that anything negative said
about Obama is probably true.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Moreover,
he said, the New York business mogul once thrived as a reality television star
playing himself on "The Apprentice," and in that realm there's
"no need to have any touch with genuine reality — it's all as he defines
it.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">He's a salesman," Mann said.
"He's a con man. He's hustled people out of money that they're owed. He's
lived off tax shelters. He's always looking for a scheme and a con, and in that
sphere, you just fall into telling lies as a matter of course."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In "Trump: The Art of the Deal," his 1987
best-seller, Trump said "a little hyperbole never hurts."</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">People believe that something is the biggest
and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It's
an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of
promotion," he said.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump's
coauthor, Tony Schwartz, put it less benignly in a July interview with The New
Yorker. "He lied strategically," Schwartz recalled. "He had a
complete lack of conscience about it."</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">PolitiFact, a Tampa Bay Times site that won a Pulitzer for
its coverage of the 2008 election, has rated 70 percent of the Trump statements
it has checked as mostly false, false or "pants on fire," its lowest
score. By contrast, 28 percent of Clinton's statements earned those ratings.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">"As we noted when we awarded Trump our
2015 Lie of the Year award for his portfolio of misstatements, no other
politician has as many statements rated so far down the dial," PolitiFact
writer Lauren Carroll reported in June. "It's unlike anything we've ever
seen."</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">At a recent Trump rally in downtown Miami, supporters
vouched for his trustworthiness.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">"I
think he has been very straightforward, whether people like it or not," said
Rosario Rodriguez-Ruiz, 42, a Republican real estate broker and accountant.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Some in the audience conceded that Trump
might have cut corners in business, but said they were more troubled by what
they called Clinton's dishonesty about her email and the deadly raid on the
U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya. Miguel Pita, 56, said Trump had to
"bend the rules" to avoid taxes. "I look at it as a 'Catch Me If
You Can' type of deal," he said.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Suzanne Roberts, 61, a retired Miami finance professor, said
Clinton was "capable of spreading heinous rumors about anything, anyone,
at any time." As Elton John's "Funeral for a Friend" blasted
through the concert hall's loudspeakers, she said Trump was correct to argue
for five years that Obama was born outside the United States.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">"He was born on a naval base in Mombasa,
Kenya — that's what I think," Roberts said. "I've done some
research."</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">A few days earlier,
Trump spoke at a black church in Flint, Mich. When he started to criticize
Clinton, the pastor interrupted and asked him not to give a political speech.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">"The audience was saying let him speak,
let him speak," Trump later told Fox News.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">"That isn't true," reported National Public Radio
correspondent Scott Detrow, an eyewitness. "In fact, several audience members
began to heckle Trump, asking pointed questions about whether he racially
discriminated against black tenants as a landlord."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">When Trump released his child-care plan on Sept. 13, he said
Clinton didn't have one. She did. He has often described himself as popular
among blacks; the latest Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll found 7 percent of
black voters support him.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump also
depicts crime as rising and out of control in America's inner cities despite
years of falling crime rates. He has said that black people kill 81 percent of
white homicide victims, when in fact whites kill 82 percent of white homicide
victims, according to PolitiFact.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Marty
Kaplan, a professor of entertainment, media and society at the University of
Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, has
two theories on Trump's lies.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Perhaps he's just putting on an act, like P.T. Barnum — a
"marketer, con, snake-oil salesman who knows better, knows how to get the
rubes into the tent." Or maybe, Kaplan suggested, Trump is just
"completely unconstrained by logic, rules, tradition, truth, law.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I'm confused," he said, "whether
the whole fact-free zone that he's in is a strategic calculation or a kind of
psychosis."</span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">President Trump’s First Term: His
Campaign Tells Us A Lot About How He Would Be. </span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By Evan Osnos, The New Yorker,</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">September 26, 2016)</span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">On the morning of January 20, 2017, the President-elect is
to visit Barack Obama at the White House for coffee, before they share a
limousine—Obama seated on the right, his successor on the left—for the ride to
the Capitol, where the Inauguration will take place, on the west front terrace,
at noon. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Donald Trump will be five months short of seventy-one. If he
wins the election, he will be America’s oldest first-term President, seven
months older than Ronald Reagan was at his swearing-in. Reagan used humor to
deflect attention from his age—in 1984, he promised not to “exploit, for
political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Trump favors a
different strategy: for months, his advisers promoted a theory that his
Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, who is sixty-eight, has a secret brain
illness and is unable to climb stairs or sit upright without help, and, in
speeches, Trump asked whether she had the “mental and physical stamina” for the
Presidency.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The full spectacle of Trump’s campaign—the compulsive feuds
and slurs, the detachment from established facts—has demanded so much attention
that it is easy to overlook a process with more enduring consequences: his
bureaucratic march toward actually assuming power. On August 1st, members of
his transition team moved into 1717 Pennsylvania Avenue, a thirteen-story
office building a block from the White House. The team is led by Governor Chris
Christie, of New Jersey, and includes several of his political confidants, such
as his former law partner William Palatucci. As of August, under a new federal
program designed to accelerate Presidential transitions, Trump’s staff was
eligible to apply for security clearances, so that they could receive
classified briefings immediately after Election Day. They began the process of
selecting Cabinet officials, charting policy moves, and meeting with current
White House officials to plan the handover of the Departments of Defense,
State, Homeland Security, and other agencies.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump aides are organizing what one Republican close to the
campaign calls the First Day Project. “Trump spends several hours signing
papers—and erases the Obama Presidency,” he said. Stephen Moore, an official
campaign adviser who is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, explained,
“We want to identify maybe twenty-five executive orders that Trump could sign
literally the first day in office.” The idea is inspired by Reagan’s first week
in the White House, in which he took steps to deregulate energy prices, as he
had promised during his campaign. Trump’s transition team is identifying
executive orders issued by Obama, which can be undone. “That’s a problem I
don’t think the left really understood about executive orders,” Moore said. “If
you govern by executive orders, then the next President can come in and
overturn them.”</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">That is partly exaggeration; rescinding an order that is
beyond the “rulemaking” stage can take a year or more. But signing executive
orders starts the process, and Trump’s advisers are weighing several options
for the First Day Project: He can renounce the Paris Agreement on
greenhouse-gas emissions, much as George W. Bush, in 2002, “unsigned” American
support for the International Criminal Court. He can re-start exploration of
the Keystone pipeline, suspend the Syrian refugee program, and direct the
Commerce Department to bring trade cases against China. Or, to loosen
restrictions on gun purchases, he can relax background checks.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">But those are secondary issues; whatever else Trump would do
on January 20th, he would begin with a step (“my first hour in office”) to
fulfill his central promise of radical change in American immigration. “Anyone
who has entered the United States illegally is subject to deportation,” he told
a crowd in Phoenix in August.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">After more than a year of candidate Trump, Americans are
almost desensitized to each new failing exhumed from his past—the losing
schemes and cheapskate cruelties, the discrimination and misogyny—much as they
are to the daily indecencies of the present: the malice toward a grieving
mother, the hidden tax records, the birther fiction and other lies. But where,
in all that, is much talk of the future? By mid-September, Trump was in the
final sprint of his campaign, having narrowed the gap behind Clinton in the
popular vote from nine points, in August, to reach a virtual tie. His victory
is no longer the stuff of dark comedy or fan fiction. It is fair to ask: What
would he actually be like as a President?</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Over the summer, I interviewed several dozen people about
what the United States could expect from Donald Trump’s first term. Campaign
advisers shared his plans, his associates relayed conversations, and I
consulted veterans of five Republican Administrations, along with economists,
war gamers, historians, legal scholars, and political figures in Europe, Asia,
and Latin America.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Most of the people I spoke with outside the campaign
expected Trump to lose. But they also expected his impact to endure, and they
identified examples of the ways in which he had already altered political
chemistry far beyond the campaign. After seventy years of American efforts to
stop the spread of nuclear weapons, Trump has suggested that South Korea and
Japan might be wise to develop them. Returning from a recent visit to Seoul,
Scott Sagan, a political-science professor at Stanford who is a nuclear-arms
specialist, told me, “These kinds of statements are having an effect. A number
of political leaders, mostly from the very conservative sides of the parties,
are openly calling for nuclear weapons.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Many of Trump’s policy positions are fluid. He has adopted
and abandoned (and, at times, adopted again) notions of arming some
schoolteachers with guns, scrapping the H-1B visas admitting skilled foreign
workers, and imposing a temporary “total and complete shutdown of Muslims
entering the United States.” He has said, “Everything is negotiable,” which, to
some, suggests that Trump would be normalized by politics and constrained by
the constitutional safeguards on his office. Randall Schweller, a political
scientist at Ohio State University, told me, “I think we’re just at a point in
our history where he’s probably the right guy for the job. Not perfect, but we
need someone different, because there’s such calcification in Washington.
Americans are smart collectively, and if they vote for Trump I wouldn’t worry.”</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Many from Trump’s party say they do not expect him to
fulfill some of his most often stated vows. According to a Quinnipiac poll in
June, twelve months after he began pledging to build a “big, beautiful,
powerful wall” on the southern border, only forty-two per cent of Republicans
believed that he would achieve it.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">But campaigns offer a surprisingly accurate preview of
Presidencies. In 1984, the political scientist Michael Krukones tabulated the
campaign pledges of all the Presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Jimmy Carter and
found that they achieved seventy-three per cent of what they promised. Most
recently, PolitiFact, a nonpartisan fact-checking site, has assessed more than
five hundred promises made by Barack Obama during his campaigns and found that,
to the irritation of his opponents, he has accomplished at least a compromised
version of seventy per cent of them.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">To turn intentions into policy, previous transition teams
have produced confidential guides, known as “promise books,” that pull from the
candidate’s words in order to shape the priorities of officials across the
government. During the 2008 campaign, the Obama transition team distributed a
memo to staff members on “what qualifies as a promise.” It explained, “Words
like ‘will,’ ‘would,’ ‘create,’ ‘ensure,’ ‘increase,’ ‘eliminate’ are good
signals of specific policy commitments.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">When Trump talks about what he will create and what he will
eliminate, he doesn’t depart from three core principles: in his view, America
is doing too much to try to solve the world’s problems; trade agreements are
damaging the country; and immigrants are detrimental to it. He wanders and
hedges and doubles back, but he is governed by a strong instinct for
self-preservation, and never strays too far from his essential positions. Roger
Stone, a long-serving Trump adviser, told me it is a mistake to imagine that
Trump does not mean to fulfill his most radical ideas. “Maybe, in the end, the
courts don’t allow him to temporarily ban Muslims,” Stone said. “That’s fine—he
can ban anybody from Egypt, from Syria, from Libya, from Saudi Arabia. He’s a
Reagan-type pragmatist.”</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">William Antholis, a political scientist who directs the
Miller Center, at the University of Virginia, pointed out that President Trump
would have, at his disposal, “the world’s largest company, staffed with 2.8
million civilians and 1.5 million military employees.” Trump would have the
opportunity to alter the Supreme Court, with one vacancy to fill immediately
and others likely to follow. Three sitting Justices are in their late seventies
or early eighties.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">As for the Trump Organization, by law Trump could retain as
much control or ownership as he wants, because Presidents are not bound by the
same conflict-of-interest statute that restricts Cabinet officers and White
House staff. Presidential decisions, especially on foreign policy, could
strengthen or weaken his family’s business, which includes controversial deals
in Turkey, South Korea, Azerbaijan, and elsewhere. Trump would likely face
pressure to adopt an arrangement akin to that of Michael Bloomberg, who, when
he became mayor of New York City, withdrew from most management decisions for
his company. Trump has said only that he plans to turn over the Trump
Organization’s day-to-day control to three of his adult children: Donald, Jr.,
Ivanka, and Eric.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">As President, Trump would have the power to name some four thousand
appointees, but he would face a unique problem: more than a hundred veteran
Republican officials have vowed never to support him, and that has forced
younger officials to decide whether they, too, will stay away or, instead,
enter his Administration and try to moderate him. By September, the campaign
was vetting four hundred people, and some had been invited to join the
transition team. An analogy was making the rounds: Was Trump a manageable petty
tyrant, in the mold of Silvio Berlusconi? Or was he something closer to
Mussolini? And, if so, was he Mussolini in 1933 or in 1941?</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Michael Chertoff served both Bush Presidents—as a U.S.
Attorney in Bush, Sr.,’s Administration, and then as Secretary of Homeland
Security under George W. Bush. He was one of fifty senior Republican
national-security officials who recently signed a letter declaring that Trump
“would be the most reckless President in American history.” Chertoff told me
that he has been approached for advice by younger Republicans who ask if joining
Trump, after he has already been elected, would be regarded as patriotic,
rather than political. “I think anybody contemplating going in will have to
have a very serious look in their own conscience, and make sure they’re not
kidding themselves,” Chertoff said.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump’s Presidential plans are not shaped by ideology. He
changed parties five times between 1999 and 2012, and, early on the campaign
trail, he praised parts of Planned Parenthood (while opposing abortion), vowed
to protect Social Security, and supported gay rights (while opposing same-sex
marriage). He is governed, above all, by his faith in the ultimate power of
transaction—an encompassing perversion of realism that is less a preference for
putting interests ahead of values than a belief that interests have no place
for values.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump has relied heavily on the ideas of seasoned
combatants. Newt Gingrich, who, as House Speaker in the nineties, pioneered
many of the tactics that have come to define partisan warfare, is now a Trump
adviser. Gingrich told me that he is urging Trump to give priority to an
obscure but contentious conservative issue—ending lifetime tenure for federal
employees. This would also galvanize Republicans and help mend rifts in the
Party after a bitter election.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Getting permission to fire corrupt, incompetent, and
dishonest workers—that’s the absolute showdown,” Gingrich said. He assumes that
federal employees’ unions would resist, thus producing, in his words, an
“ongoing war” similar to the conflict that engulfed Madison, Wisconsin, in
2011, when Governor Scott Walker moved to limit public-sector employees’
collective-bargaining rights. After five months of protests, and a failed
effort to recall the Governor and members of the state senate, Walker largely
prevailed. Gingrich predicts that that chaotic dynamic can be brought to
Washington. “You have to end the civil-service permanent employment,” he said.
“You start changing that and the public-employee unions will just come
unglued.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">What, exactly, can a President do? To prevent the ascent of
what the Anti-Federalist Papers, in 1787, called “a Caesar, Caligula, Nero, and
Domitian in America,” the founders gave Congress the power to make laws, and
the Supreme Court the final word on the Constitution. But in the nineteen-thirties
Congress was unable to mount a response to the rise of Nazi Germany, and during
the Cold War the prospect of sudden nuclear attack further consolidated
authority in the White House.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">“These checks are not gone completely, but they’re much
weaker than I think most people assume,” Eric Posner, a law professor at the
University of Chicago, said. “Congress has delegated a great deal of power to
the President, Presidents have claimed power under the Constitution, and
Congress has acquiesced.” The courts, Posner added, are slow. “If you have a
President who is moving very quickly, the judiciary can’t do much. A recent
example of this would be the war on terror. The judiciary put constraints on
President Bush—but it took a very long time.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Some of Trump’s promises would be impossible to fulfill
without the consent of Congress or the courts; namely, repealing Obamacare,
cutting taxes, and opening up “our libel laws” that protect reporters, so that
“we can sue them and win lots of money.” (In reality, there are no federal
libel laws.) Even if Republicans retain control of Congress, they are unlikely
to have the sixty votes in the Senate required to overcome a Democratic
filibuster.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">However, Trump could achieve many objectives on his own. A
President has the unilateral authority to renegotiate a nuclear deal with Iran,
to order a ban on Muslims, and to direct the Justice Department to give
priority to certain offenses, with an eye to specific targets. During the
campaign, he has accused Amazon of “getting away with murder tax-wise,” and
vowed, if he wins, “Oh, do they have problems.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Any of those actions could be contested in court. The
American Civil Liberties Union has analyzed Trump’s promises and concluded, in
the words of the executive director, Anthony Romero, that they would “violate
the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution.” Romero
has said that the A.C.L.U. would “challenge and impede implementation of his
proposals,” but that strategy highlights the essential advantage of the President:
the first move. “The other branches are then presented with a fait accompli,”
according to a 1999 paper by the political scientists Terry M. Moe and William
G. Howell. After the September 11th attacks, Bush signed an executive order
authorizing warrantless surveillance of Americans by the National Security
Agency, and, though lawmakers voiced concerns, and lawsuits were filed, the
program continued until 2015, when Congress ordered an end to bulk
phone-metadata collection. Similarly, Obama has used his powers to raise
fuel-economy standards and temporarily ban energy exploration in parts of
Alaska and the Arctic Ocean.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Modern Presidents have occasionally been constrained by
isolated acts of disobedience by government officials. To confront terrorism,
Trump has said, “you have to take out their families,” work on “closing that
Internet up in some ways,” and use tactics that are “frankly unthinkable” and
“a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.” General Michael Hayden, a former
head of the C.I.A. and of the National Security Agency, predicts that senior
officers would refuse to carry out those proposals. “You are required not to
follow an unlawful order,” he has said.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Donald Trump would be the first Commander-in-Chief with no
prior experience in public office or at high levels of the military. As a
candidate, he has said that he would not trust American intelligence officials
(“the people that have been doing it for our country”) and declared, “I know
more about ISIS than the generals do.” Once he became the nominee, Trump
received his first batch of top-secret information. During a national
intelligence briefing at his offices in New York, he was accompanied by retired
Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, a senior adviser who reportedly kept
interrupting the briefing with questions and comments until Christie asked him
to calm down. (The campaign denied that account.) Trump later told a television
interviewer that the briefers’ “body language” indicated that “they were not
happy” with Obama.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Intelligence professionals faulted Trump for publicly
discussing, and politicizing, a classified briefing. Several national-security
officials told me that a determining factor in any President’s approach would
be his response to a shock—say, a crippling power outage that might be
terrorism or might not. “Would he or she be impetuous?” Jim Woolsey, a Trump
adviser who served as director of Central Intelligence from 1993 to 1995,
asked. “One thing you can be pretty sure of is that the first report is almost
always wrong, at least partially. When the President of the United States says,
‘I just got a report—the United States military forces are under attack,’ it is
very hard for anybody to stand in the way of that.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In “Trump: Think Like a Billionaire” (2004), Trump wrote that
others “are surprised by how quickly I make big decisions, but I’ve learned to
trust my instincts and not to overthink things.” He added, “The day I realized
it can be smart to be shallow was, for me, a deep experience.” He prides
himself on vengeance and suspicion. “If you do not get even, you are just a
schmuck!” he wrote, in 2007. “Be paranoid,” he said in 2000.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">For many years, Trump has expressed curiosity about nuclear
weapons. In 1984, still in his thirties, he told the Washington Post that he wanted
to negotiate nuclear treaties with the Soviets. “It would take an hour and a
half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles,” he said. “I think I
know most of it anyway.” According to Bruce G. Blair, a research scholar at the
Program on Science and Global Security, at Princeton, Trump encountered a U.S.
nuclear-arms negotiator at a reception in 1990 and offered advice on how to cut
a “terrific” deal with a Soviet counterpart. Trump told him to arrive late,
stand over the Soviet negotiator, stick his finger in his chest, and say, “Fuck
you!” Recently, a former Republican White House official whom Trump has called
on for his insights told me, “Honestly, the problem with Donald is he doesn’t
know what he doesn’t know.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Shortly after taking the oath of office, Trump would be
assigned a military aide who carries the forty-five-pound aluminum-and-leather
briefcase that holds “a manual for conducting nuclear war,” according to Dan
Zak, the author of “Almighty,” a new book on nuclear weapons. The briefcase,
known in the White House as “the football,” contains menus of foreign targets:
cities, arsenals, critical infrastructure. To launch an attack, Trump would
first verify his identity to a commander in the Pentagon’s war room, by
referring to codes on a one-of-a-kind I.D. card, known as “the biscuit.”
(According to Zak, “Jimmy Carter is rumored to have sent the biscuit to the dry
cleaners accidentally. Bill Clinton allegedly misplaced the biscuit and didn’t
tell anyone for months.”)</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">On rare occasions, a President’s nuclear orders have been
too unsettling for his staff to accept. In October, 1969, Richard Nixon told
Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird to put nuclear forces on high alert.
According to Sagan, the Stanford nuclear-arms specialist, Nixon hoped that the
Soviets would suspect that he was willing to attack North Vietnam. Laird was
appalled, and he tried an excuse: the alert would conflict with a scheduled
military exercise. Sagan recalls, “He understood that Richard Nixon believed in
the so-called ‘madman theory’ ”—deterring aggression by encouraging
America’s rivals to suspect that Nixon was irrational. “But Mel Laird believed
that the madman theory was pretty crazy, and that threatening to use nuclear
weapons over something like Vietnam was not going to be effective, and might
actually be dangerous. He tried to delay implementing the President’s orders,
in the hopes that Nixon would calm down. Nixon did that a lot; he would make an
angry comment, and if you ignored it he wouldn’t come back to it.” In this
instance, Nixon did not forget, and Laird eventually complied. The operation,
hastily organized, went poorly: eighteen B-52s, loaded with nuclear weapons,
flew toward the Soviet Union. Some came dangerously close to other aircraft, an
incident that an after-action report ruled “unsafe.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Later, another aide sought to interrupt Nixon’s control over
nuclear weapons. During the final weeks of the Watergate scandal, in 1974, some
of Nixon’s advisers regarded him as unsteady. James R. Schlesinger, who was
Secretary of Defense at the time, issued a directive to the chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff that “any emergency order coming from the president”
should be diverted to Schlesinger before any action was taken, according to
James Carroll’s “House of War,” a history of the Pentagon. The directive may
have been illegal, but it remained in place. Because many Republicans are
boycotting Trump’s campaign, those who agree to join risk being viewed, as a
former Cabinet secretary put it to me, as part of “a staff full of Ollie
Norths.” (In 1987, testifying to Congress about his role in the Iran-Contra
scandal, the White House aide Oliver L. North said, “If the Commander-in-Chief
tells this lieutenant-colonel to go stand in the corner and sit on his head, I will
do so.”)</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Watching Trump on the campaign trail, Timothy Naftali, the
former director of the Nixon Presidential Library, said, “Trump tweets what
Nixon knew not to say outside his inner circle, and we know what he said from
the tapes. What Nixon would do is project onto situations the conspiracies that
he would have concocted if in the same position. Nixon was convinced that the
Democrats were spying on him. So he spied on them. To himself, he rationalized
his actions by saying, ‘I’m only doing what my enemies are doing to me.’ ”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Nothing in the campaign has presented Trump with a broader
range of new information than the realm of foreign affairs. Asked about the
Quds Force, an Iranian paramilitary unit, he has expressed his view of “the
Kurds,” an ethnic group. During a debate in December, 2015, a moderator
requested his view of the “nuclear triad,” the cornerstone of American nuclear
strategy—bombers, land-based missiles, and submarine-launched missiles—and it
became clear that Trump had no idea what the term meant. Trump replied, “I
think, to me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation is very important to
me.”</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In April, at the request of the campaign, Richard Burt, a
former senior State Department official in the Reagan Administration,
contributed elements to Trump’s first major foreign-policy speech. Burt, who
was the American Ambassador to Germany from 1985 to 1989, had been attracted by
Trump’s talk of a more restrained, “realist” vision of American power. Burt
told me, “We were a singular superpower. That has changed. We no longer have
the unique situation of living in a unipolar world. Either way, it’s probably
just as well. We fucked it up, and not just Iraq. In a lot of ways, we’ve been
too concerned with those ambitions of nation-building, regime change, and
democracy promotion. We learned that those things are a lot harder than we
thought they were.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Although Burt contributed ideas, he is not an active Trump
supporter. In April, Trump delivered the foreign-policy speech, but Pratik
Chougule, a campaign adviser, sensed his discomfort with the subject. “You can
see his mannerisms, when he is reading the speech—everything about it just
looked uncomfortable,” Chougule, who left the campaign and is now a managing
editor at The National Interest, told me. “We were dealing with a candidate who
had made his own judgments, whether correctly or not; a traditional policy
approach was not going to be a good fit.” When Trump was asked, in March, to
name the person he consulted most often on foreign policy, he said, “I’m
speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve
said a lot of things.” He struggled to attract well-known Republican advisers,
in part because his slogan, “America First,” went beyond isolationism, to an
extractive conception of American power. “I want to take everything back from
the world that we’ve given them,” he said in April, 2015.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">His portrait of the country as a survivor in an anarchic
world has caused other countries to reëxamine their assumptions about America.
“It almost sounds like you’d have to pay to rent American troops,” a European
diplomat in Washington told me. Even discounting some of the rhetoric as due to
the heat of a campaign, the diplomat said, Trump’s success in the primary must
be understood as a measure of changing American attitudes and his own
intentions. “That feeling about burden-sharing is probably relatively deep in
his gut: There’s something wrong here—the U.S. is getting robbed.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In some cases, Trump’s language has had the opposite effect
of what he intends. He professes a hard line on China (“We can’t continue to
allow China to rape our country,” he said in May), but, in China, Trump’s
“America First” policy has been understood as the lament of a permissive,
exhausted America. A recent article in Guancha, a nationalist news site, was
headlined “Trump: America Will Stop Talking About Human Rights and No Longer
Protect NATO Unconditionally.”</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Shen Dingli, an influential foreign-policy scholar at Fudan
University, in Shanghai, told me that Chinese officials would be concerned
about Trump’s unpredictability but, he thinks, have concluded that, ultimately,
he is a novice who makes hollow threats and would be easy to handle. They would
worry about the policies of a President Hillary Clinton, who, as Secretary of
State, oversaw Obama’s “pivot” to Asia, intended to balance China’s expansion.
“She is more predictable and probably tough,” Shen said. “Human rights,
pivoting—China hates both.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump is not uniformly isolationist; he has affirmative
ideas, some of which have produced effects outside his control. When he
labelled Obama “the founder of ISIS,” the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah
rejoiced. Its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who is allied with President Bashar
al-Assad, of Syria, against ISIS, has claimed that the U.S. created extremist
groups in order to sow chaos in the Middle East. Now, it seemed, Trump was
confirming it. “This is an American Presidential candidate,” Nasrallah said on
television. “This was spoken on behalf of the American Republican Party. He has
data and documents.”</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Other militant organizations, including ISIS, featured
Trump’s words and image in recruiting materials. A recruitment video released
in January by Al Shabaab, the East African militant group allied with Al Qaeda,
showed Trump calling for a ban on Muslims entering the U.S.; the video warned,
“Tomorrow, it will be a land of religious discrimination and concentration
camps.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">One of Trump’s most consistent promises is to “renegotiate”
the Iran nuclear deal. Walid Phares, Trump’s foreign-policy adviser, has said,
“He is not going to implement it as is.” There are reasonable criticisms of the
terms of the deal, but refusing to implement it would be, in effect, “a gift to
Iran,” according to Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran specialist at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace. “The hard-line forces in Iran are looking
for a way in which this deal can unravel, but they won’t be blamed for it,” he
said. “This would be their ideal solution. The Iranians would say, ‘You’ve abrogated
your end, so we’re going to reconstitute our nuclear program.’ ”</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In July, Trump made his most dramatic foray into foreign
policy, declaring that if Baltic members of NATO are attacked he would decide
whether to defend them on the basis of whether they had “fulfilled their
obligations to us.” I asked the President of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves,
what he made of that. Ilves rejected the suggestion that his country has not
done its part for NATO. “Estonia has not sat back and waited for allies to take
care of its security,” he said. “Indeed, proportionally to our size, we were
one of the greatest contributors to the mission in Afghanistan.” Without
mentioning Trump’s name, he warned against improvising on matters of foreign
policy involving President Vladimir Putin, of Russia: “Russia’s aggression
against Ukraine—and the impact that Russian policies and actions toward
neighboring countries have had on European security as a whole—marks a paradigm
shift, the end of trust in the post-Cold War order.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">After Trump expressed his hesitations about America’s
commitment to NATO, I visited the Arlington, Virginia, office of the RAND
Corporation, a nonpartisan research institution. During the Cold War, RAND
developed the use of political-military war games—the simulation of real-world
scenarios—and four RAND contributors and analysts have received Nobel Prizes
for their work on game theory. “A game is a kind of preview of coming
attractions,” David Shlapak, the co-director of RAND’s Center for Gaming, told
me.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Shlapak said that in the spring of 2014, after Russia seized
Crimea, “the question surfaced: What could Russia do to NATO, if it was
inclined to?” To test the proposition, RAND organized a series of war games,
sponsored by the Pentagon, involving military officers, strategists, and
others, to examine what would happen if Russia attacked the three most
vulnerable NATO nations—the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">To his surprise, the simulated Russian forces reached the
outskirts of the Estonian and Latvian capitals in as little as thirty-six
hours. The larger shock was the depth of destruction. American forces, which
would deploy from Germany, Italy, and elsewhere, are not heavily armored. “In
twelve hours, more Americans die than in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined, in
sixteen years,” Shlapak said. “In twelve hours, the U.S. Air Force loses more
airplanes than it’s lost in every engagement since Vietnam, combined.” He went
on, “In our base case, the Russians bring about four hundred and fifty tanks to
the fight, and NATO brings none. So it turns into a fight of steel against
flesh.” (Based on the games, RAND recommended that NATO assign three heavily
armored brigades to the Baltic states.)</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Shlapak, who has a silver goatee and wears horn-rimmed
glasses, has been at RAND for thirty-four years. I asked him if he thought that
Trump’s suggestion of withholding support from NATO will have any impact beyond
the campaign. RAND takes no positions in U.S. elections. He said, “Deterrence
is inherently psychological. It’s a state of mind that you create in a
potential adversary, and it rests on a couple of foundational criteria. One of
them is credibility—your adversary’s confidence that if it does the thing that
you are prohibiting, the thing you seek to deter, the consequences you are
threatening will happen.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Raising the prospect of relaxing America’s defense of NATO
suggests that, for some portion of the American public, the long-standing
American commitment to defending Europe is, in a word, negotiable. “We’ve had
seventy years of great-power peace, which is the longest period in
post-Westphalian history,” Shlapak said. “I think one of the reasons we don’t
think about that, or don’t understand the value of that, is that it’s been so
long since we’ve been face to face with the prospect of that kind of conflict.”</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Closer to home, Trump’s criticism of Mexico has fuelled the
rise of a Presidential candidate whom some Mexicans call their own Donald
Trump—Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a pugnacious leftist who proposed to cut off
intelligence coöperation with America. In recent polls, he has pulled ahead of
a crowded field. Jorge Guajardo, a former Mexican diplomat, who served in the
United States and China, warns that the surge of hostility from American
politicians will weaken Mexico’s commitment to help the United States with
counter-terrorism. “Post-9/11, the coöperation has gone on steroids,” Guajardo
told me. “There have been cases of stopping terrorists in Mexico. Muammar
Qaddafi’s son wanted to go live in Mexico, and Mexico stopped him. But people
are saying, If the United States elects Trump, give them the finger.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump has always been most comfortable on the home front,
with domestic policy, built around his central promise of, as he put it
recently, “an impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful southern border
wall.” That is not, strictly speaking, a fantasy. Chertoff, who oversaw the
construction of border fences while he headed the Department of Homeland
Security, said, “It will take a lot more time than he says it is going to take,
but it’s not logistically impossible.”</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump’s political fortunes have become so intertwined with
the wall that his advisers believe he has no choice but to try. Gingrich told
me, “He has to build a wall or a fence. That’s got to be almost right away.” </span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump envisages a structure of steel and precast-concrete
panels that is between thirty-five and fifty feet tall (“There’s no ladder
going over that”), has a foundation deep enough to prevent tunnels, is a
thousand miles long—half the length of the border, because physical barriers
divide the rest—and costs up to twelve billion dollars. Independent analyses
give the cost as at least twenty-five billion dollars, adding that to build it
would take at least four years.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Other details of the plan are a delusion. To force Mexico to
pay for the wall, Trump intends to confiscate remittances sent back to Mexico
by undocumented immigrants and increase border fees and tariffs, but the legal
and practical obstacles to those actions are overwhelming, and Mexican
officials promise not to contribute. (“I’m not going to pay for that fucking
wall,” Vicente Fox, the former President, said last year.) Therefore, Trump
would need Congress to appropriate the money, and, for now, Republican leaders
are believed to consider that a nonstarter. Nevertheless, Gingrich says that he
would try to use the election schedule to pressure vulnerable incumbents into
supporting it. “Remember how many Democrats are up for election in the Senate
in 2018,” he said. Twenty-five. “Do you really want to go home as the guy who
stopped the fence? Then, by all means, but we’ll build it in ’19.”</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The most likely scenario is that, after negotiations,
Trump’s wall would end up as a small, symbolic extension of the federally
financed border fence that is already in place. Its construction was approved
by the Senate in 2006, with backing from twenty-six Democrats, including New
York’s junior senator at the time, Hillary Clinton.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">From the beginning, Trump’s most ambitious promise has been
that he would remove 11.3 million undocumented immigrants through mass
deportations and by pressuring people to leave on their own. “They have to go,”
he said, and he predicted that he could accomplish this removal in two years.
That would raise the pace of arrests twentyfold, to roughly fifteen thousand
apprehensions per day. Trump explained his idea by praising an Eisenhower-era
deportation program that “moved them way south; they never came back,” he said
in a debate last November. “Dwight Eisenhower. You don’t get nicer, you don’t
get friendlier.”</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Eisenhower’s program, Operation Wetback, was launched in
June, 1954. Led by retired General Joseph M. Swing, it used spotter planes to
locate border crossers and direct teams of jeeps to intercept them. According
to “Impossible Subjects,” a study of illegal-immigration history, by Mae M.
Ngai, in the first three months the program apprehended a hundred and seventy
thousand people, and some were returned to Mexico by cargo ship. After a riot
during one such voyage, a congressional investigation described the conditions
as those of “an eighteenth-century slave ship” and a “penal hell ship.”
Overland routes were harrowing; during one roundup, in
hundred-and-twelve-degree heat, eighty-eight laborers died. Many American
citizens were also deported by mistake.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Julie Myers Wood, who headed Immigration and Customs
Enforcement during the Bush Administration, told me that she is appalled by
parts of Trump’s immigration plan and cautioned critics not to assume that it
is impossible. “It’s not as binary as some people suggest,” she said. “You
could think of some very outside-the-box options.” A President Trump could
permit ice officers to get access to I.R.S. files that contain home addresses.
(Undocumented immigrants who pay taxes often list real addresses, in order to
receive tax-refund checks.) He could invoke provision 287(g) of the Immigration
and Nationality Act, in order to detail thousands of local and state agents and
police officers to the deportation effort. “You’d put people on a train,” she
said. “Again, I’m not recommending this. You could have a cruise ship.”</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The American Action Forum, a conservative Washington think
tank, ran budget projections of Trump’s plan: raids on farms, restaurants,
factories, and construction sites would require more than ninety thousand
“apprehension personnel”—six times the number of special agents in the F.B.I.
Beds for captured men, women, and children would reach 348,831, nearly triple
the detention space required for the internment of Japanese-Americans during
the Second World War. Thousands of chartered buses (fifty-four seats on
average) and planes (which can accommodate a hundred and thirty-five) would
carry deportees to the border or to their home countries. The report estimated
the total cost at six hundred billion dollars, which it judged financially
imprudent.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In August, when Trump’s poll numbers dropped, he spoke of
“softening” his immigration plan, but supporters balked, and, in a speech on
August 31st, he abandoned the pretense of moderation, promising to create a
“deportation task force” and go further than Eisenhower. “You can’t just
smuggle in, hunker down, and wait to be legalized,” he said. “Those days are
over.” The groups he identified as priorities for deportation constitute at
least five million people, according to the Washington Post.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump also refashioned his proposed ban on Muslims. In July,
Khizr Khan, the father of a soldier killed in Iraq, criticized Trump’s
proposal, and the candidate responded by mocking Khan’s wife, Ghazala: “She had
nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to
say.” (She subsequently spoke out eloquently.) Under sustained criticism, Trump
proposed, instead, to “screen out any who have hostile attitudes towards our
country or its principles—or who believe that Sharia law should supplant
American law.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Gingrich called for re-creating the House Un-American
Activities Committee, which was established in 1938 to investigate accusations
of subversion and disloyalty. “We’re going to presently have to go take the
similar steps here,” he said, on Fox News. “We’re going to ultimately declare a
war on Islamic supremacists, and we’re going to say, If you pledge allegiance
to ISIS, you are a traitor and you have lost your citizenship.” The committee
is not often praised; before it was abolished, in 1975, it had laid the
groundwork for the internment of Japanese-Americans, and led investigations
into alleged Communist sympathizers. In 1959, former President Harry S. Truman
called it the “most un-American thing in the country today.”</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump’s overarching argument to voters has been, in the end,
economic: as President, he would draw on his business experience, “surround
myself only with the best and most serious people,” and lead Americans to
greater prosperity. Some aides did not help fortify that proposition: Trump
fired his first campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who manhandled a female
reporter, and then forced out his chief strategist, Paul Manafort, after
Manafort was weakened by allegations of unreported lobbying and secret cash
payments from leaders in Ukraine. (Manafort has denied these allegations.)</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">To understand whom Trump trusts to put policy vision into
practice, I contacted Stephen Miller, his national director of policy, who
serves as a fiery warmup speaker at Trump rallies. Miller, who is thirty-one,
worked for Michelle Bachmann, of Minnesota, and, later, for Senator Jeff
Sessions, of Alabama, a prominent Republican critic of free-trade deals and
illegal immigration. Miller has been described by Politico as “a deeply
unsettling figure, even to many in his own party,” in part because of his
writings in college and high school. While attending Duke University, Miller
accused the poet Maya Angelou of “racial paranoia” and described a student
organization as a “radical national Hispanic group that believes in racial
superiority.” Miller asked me to speak to several of Trump’s advisers on the
economy and trade.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">For economic advice, the campaign enlisted the Heritage Foundation
economist Stephen Moore, who co-founded the Club for Growth, a conservative
lobbying group. At fifty-six, Moore is amiable and unpretentious, “a little bit
scatterbrained,” by his own description. (During the 2000 campaign, he forgot
to mark on his calendar an invitation to brief the candidate George W. Bush,
foreclosing the prospect of a job in the White House.) In 2012, he helped
Herman Cain, the former C.E.O. of Godfather’s Pizza, develop his “9-9-9” plan,
which would have narrowed the tax code to three categories, capped at nine per
cent.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Moore visited Trump on his plane, and, during a series of
meetings, he and others crafted an economic plan based on the cornerstone of
supply-side economics: cut taxes to encourage people to work and businesses to
invest. “That’s basically the theory there,” Moore said. “This is the signature
issue for conservatives since Reagan went into office. This has been the battle
between the left and the right. The liberals say tax rates don’t matter”—for
stimulating growth. “We say they do.”</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump’s team focussed, above all, on reducing the business
tax rate. Moore said, “What I recommended to him is this should be your
stimulus to the economy—do this in the first hundred days.” Economists’
reactions have been mixed. Paul Krugman, the left-leaning Nobel laureate,
argued that the supply-side argument was refuted by a basic fact: job growth
has been higher under Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama than under
George W. Bush. Moore counters that Reagan achieved job growth through tax
cuts.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The other half of Trump’s economic thinking is his view that
“we are killing ourselves with trade pacts that are no good for us.” As
President, he would have the legal authority to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific
Partnership trade deal and the North American Free Trade Agreement, to impose
tariffs on categories of goods from China, and—if the World Trade Organization
objects to his actions—to withdraw from the W.T.O., just as President Bush
withdrew from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, in 2002.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">But interviews with Trump’s trade advisers leave no doubt
that this is a kind of theatre—a bluff, which, they believe, will achieve their
aims without actual tariffs. In 2006, Dan DiMicco, the former C.E.O. of Nucor
Corporation, the largest steel producer in the United States, which has faced
heavy Chinese competition, self-published a book called “Steeling America’s
Future: A CEO’s Call to Arms.” Long before most Republicans foresaw the
political backlash against free trade, DiMicco wrote, “Shame on our government
leaders if they refuse to provide us with a level playing field on which to
compete.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">DiMicco, a blunt, barrel-chested New York native, used his
position at Nucor to publicize his argument in television interviews, and Trump
contacted him. “We had a discussion about China back then, about trade,
cheating, and all those issues,” DiMicco told me. Now a member of Trump’s
Economic Advisory Council, he has visited Trump in New York, and he prides
himself on offering unconventional advice. To deal with China, he says, the
United States should act like an aggressive patient at a dentist’s office:
“Here’s how the patient deals with the dentist: sits down in the chair, grabs
the dentist by the nuts, and says, ‘You don’t hurt me, I won’t hurt you.’ ”</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Peter Navarro, Trump’s senior policy adviser on trade and
China, is a business professor at the University of California at Irvine. He
does not speak Chinese, and he is at odds with many mainstream China scholars,
but he has directed documentaries, including “Death by China,” and written
books such as “The Coming China Wars.” During a lull at the Republican National
Convention, Navarro told me that he argues for the need to “balance the trade
deficit.” He said, “If you simply do that, it sets in motion a process where
you grow faster, there’s more employment, that pushes real wages up, and that
floods the government coffers with tax revenues, and then you’re able to pay
for the infrastructure and social services and defense, which have been
neglected.” He added, “You focus on the trade deficit and good things happen.
That’s the philosophy of Donald Trump.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Economist Intelligence Unit, an
economic-and-geopolitical-analysis firm, has ranked the prospect of a Trump
victory on its top-ten risks to the global economy. Larry Summers, the Harvard
professor and former Treasury Secretary, predicts that, taken together, Trump’s
economic and trade policies would help trigger a protracted recession within
eighteen months. Even if Trump stops short of applying tariffs, Summers told
me, “the perception that we might well be pursuing hyper-nationalist policies
would be very damaging to confidence globally and would substantially increase
the risk of financial crises in emerging markets.”</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">If Trump followed through on tariffs, the effects could be
larger still. Mark Zandi, a centrist economist who has advised Republicans and
Democrats and is now the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, a research firm,
forecasts that Trump’s trade plan could trigger a trade war that would put
roughly four million Americans out of work, and cost the economy three million
jobs that would have been created in Trump’s absence.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">But Trump would not need to take any of those steps to have
an abrupt effect on the economy. His belief in the power of the threat, which
he has used in private business, takes on another meaning if he is the leader
of a country with national-debt obligations. In May, Trump, whose businesses
have declared bankruptcy four times, said, “I’ve borrowed knowing that you can pay
back with discounts,” and “if the economy crashed you could make a deal.” The
notion that he might try to make creditors accept less than full payment on
U.S. government debt caused an outcry. Under criticism, he clarified, to the
Wall Street Journal, that U.S. “bonds are absolutely sacred,” but the incident
left an enduring impression on the financial community.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Anthony Karydakis, the chief economic strategist at Miller
Tabak, an asset manager, told me that a Trump victory is now generally regarded
as “a major destabilizing development for financial markets.” He went on, “If
he ever even alludes to renegotiating the debt, we will have a downgrade of
U.S. debt, and that event will cause a massive exodus of foreign investors from
the U.S. Treasury market.” In 2011, when feuding in Congress delayed raising
the debt limit, the stock market fell seventeen per cent. This would be a far
larger event. “The rating agencies could not ignore the comment,” he said. “The
cornerstone of the right to raise sovereign debt is the willingness and ability
of the government to service it normally and fully.” He added, “The markets
have no patience for stupidity or ignorance. They get scared.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">For more than a year, Trump has encouraged supporters to
regard him as a work in progress—“Everything is negotiable”—and the ambiguity
has ushered him to the threshold of power. But envisaging a Trump Presidency
has never required an act of imagination; he has proudly exhibited his
priorities, his historical inspirations, his instincts under pressure, and his
judgment about those who would put his ideas into practice. In “Trump: Think
Like a Billionaire,” he included a quote from Richard Conniff, the author of
“The Natural History of the Rich”: “Successful alpha personalities display a single-minded
determination to impose their vision on the world, an irrational belief in
unreasonable goals, bordering at times on lunacy.”</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump’s vision, even his “irrational belief in unreasonable
goals,” was never a charade. In the early decades of this century, Americans
have sometimes traced our greatest errors to a failure of imagination: the
inability to picture a terrorist, in a cave, who is able to strike; the hubris
to ignore extensive State Department predictions of what would come of the
invasion of Iraq. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump presents us with the opposite risk: his victory would
be not a failure of imagination but, rather, a retreat to it—the magical
thought that his Presidency would be something other than the campaign that
created it.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/26/president-trumps-first-term?mbid=nl_160919_Daily&CNDID=31031903&spMailingID=9542812&spUserID=MTMzMTgzMTUyMjUyS0&spJobID=1001580712&spReportId=MTAwMTU4MDcxMgS2"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/26/president-trumps-first-term?mbid=nl_160919_Daily&CNDID=31031903&spMailingID=9542812&spUserID=MTMzMTgzMTUyMjUyS0&spJobID=1001580712&spReportId=MTAwMTU4MDcxMgS2</span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">How Many
Trump Products Were Made Overseas? Here’s The List.</span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">(By Michelle Ye Hee Lee, Washington Post, 12 September
2016)</span></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">The Hillary Clinton campaign has at least two ads attacking Donald Trump
for outsourcing the production of his merchandise. Given Trump’s rhetoric
against companies shipping jobs out of the United States — he vowed not to eat
Oreo cookies anymore after Nabisco moved </span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">some U.S. factory jobs to Mexico — this is a frequent
attack on his record as a businessman.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>Trump has a long history of outsourcing a variety of his products and
has acknowledged doing so. When asked during a Republican primary debate in
Miami why voters should trust that Trump “will run the country differently from
how you run your businesses,” he answered: “Because nobody knows the system
better than me. … I’m a businessman. These are laws. These are regulations.
These are rules. We’re allowed to do it. … I’m the one that knows how to change
it.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Trump
also encouraged outsourcing to students of Trump University, the
now-defunct program that is under litigation over allegations of fraud. </span><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060507011645/http:/donaldtrump.trumpuniversity.com/default.asp?item=98255" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="color: #1955a5; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">In a 2005 post</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"> titled “Outsourcing Creates
Jobs in the Long Run,” Trump wrote that sending work outside your company “is
not always a terrible thing.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I know that
doesn’t make it any easier for people whose jobs have been outsourced overseas,
but if a company’s only means of survival is by farming jobs outside its walls,
then sometimes it’s a necessary step. The other option might be to close its
doors for good,” Trump wrote in the post.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">We searched
for sources of Trump products through publicly available data, including online
retail stores and public data of shipments at U.S. ports from 2007 through Aug.
17, 2016, gathered by the private company </span><a href="https://www.importgenius.com/" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="color: #1955a5; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Importgenius.com</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">. The data shows the last port of shipment before
entering the United States (meaning Mexico is not included) and specifies the
manufactured location for certain items. (Thanks to Kim Soffen, graphics
reporter at The Washington Post, who worked with us to analyze the imports
database.)<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>We took inventory
below. We welcome reader suggestions for any new products and sources they
find, and then we will update the list.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 22.5pt; margin: 0px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="color: #2a2a2a; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">The Facts</span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Trump
apparel </span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">The </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Dfashion&field-keywords=Trump+Dress+Shirts&rh=n%3A7141123011%2Ck%3ATrump+Dress+Shirts" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="color: #1955a5; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Donald J. Trump Collection</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"> includes ties, suits, dress
shirts, eyeglasses and other accessories.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Trump shirts
were made in China, Bangladesh, Honduras and Vietnam. </span><a href="http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2016/jun/27/thomas-perez/tom-perez-erroneously-tags-all-trump-products-made/" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="color: #1955a5; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">PolitiFact Virginia found</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"> some Trump sport coats made
in India. The Clinton campaign pointed to import data from 2007 that showed a
Trump men’s shirt shipment marked as made in South Korea.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Some of the
Trump suits on Amazon.com show they were imported, Made in USA or both. </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Donald-Trump-Mens-Button-Stripe/dp/B00LP8WVKI/ref=pd_sim_sbs_309_17?ie=UTF8&refRID=15RC61CDM37NZN0E9FTN" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="color: #1955a5; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">BuzzFeed ordered</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"> a suit that was listed as
both “imported” and “Made in USA” — and ended up with a label showing the
suits were made in Indonesia.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Users
commented on Amazon.com that the suit that BuzzFeed purchased previously
was listed as being imported from Mexico or China. This photo shows a Trump
suit that carries a “</span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153455852936212&set=a.281103166211.188678.733516211&type=1&theater%20and%20other" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="color: #1955a5; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Made in Mexico</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">” label.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Manufacturing
information online is not always reliable — for example, a </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Trump-Donald-Twill-Stripe-Shirt/dp/B003YUBG3I/ref=pd_sim_sbs_309_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=15RC61CDM37NZN0E9FTN" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="color: #1955a5; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">photo of one shirt</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"> shows a “Made in Bangladesh”
label, but the item description says it was made in China. This may be a
reflection of the different countries that products sometimes pass through
before they are ultimately shipped into the United States.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Trump
eyeglasses </span><a href="http://www.eyeglasses.com/eyeglasses/donald-j-trump-dt-85.html" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="color: #1955a5; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">are made in China</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">. Cufflinks and other
accessories do not list the source of manufacturing on Amazon.com.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">“Success by
Trump,” a cologne in the Trump Fragrance line, was manufactured in the United
States, </span><a href="http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2016/jun/27/thomas-perez/tom-perez-erroneously-tags-all-trump-products-made/" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="color: #1955a5; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">according to PolitiFact Virginia</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">. The Trump campaign’s
“Make America Great Again” hats are </span><a href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-trump-hats-cali-fame-carson-20151124-story.html" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="color: #1955a5; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">made at a Southern California
factory</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"> and are
labeled “</span><a href="https://shop.donaldjtrump.com/product-p/dtc-odtrh-wh.htm" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="color: #1955a5; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Proudly Made in USA</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Trump home
items</span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<a href="http://www.trump.com/merchandise/trump-home/" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="color: #1955a5; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Trump Home</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"> has a range of items, including chandeliers,
mirrors, bedding, table lamps, cabinets, sofas, barstools, cocktail tables and
more.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Trump
expanded the Trump Home brand internationally, including in Turkey. A Trump
Organization </span><a href="http://www.trumphomebydorya.com/pages/trump-home-press-releases" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="color: #1955a5; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">news release</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"> shows it partnered with a
global luxury furniture brand, Dorya International, to expand the Trump Home
brand to a production facility in Turkey. According to </span><a href="http://www.furnituretoday.com/article/524877-dorya-expands-trump-line" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="color: #1955a5; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Furniture Today</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">, components of the Trump by
Dorya furniture were made in Germany, particularly the brass and stainless pieces.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Several
Trump Home items are listed as made in China or imported from China — mirrors,
ceramic vases, wall decorations, kitchen items and lighting fixtures. The
Clinton campaign has pointed to a </span><a href="https://www.quickcompany.in/trademarks/1624713-trump-home" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="color: #1955a5; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">trademark registration</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"> for the Trump Home brand that shows picture frames
and other home products were made in India.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">The Trump
Home by Rogaska tabletop collection featured a crystal and china collection </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/21/garden/21qna.html" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="color: #1955a5; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">with a company based in Slovenia</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">. Trump </span><a href="http://www.downlitebedding.com/trump-hotel-bedding" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="color: #1955a5; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">bedding comforters</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"> are listed as </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Clearance-Sale-Luxury-Hypoallergenic-Comforter/dp/B00MBXX72M" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="color: #1955a5; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">made in USA</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Trump hotel
items</span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Many hotel
amenities at Trump’s hotels were manufactured overseas and imported. Trump
Hotel pens were made in China or Taiwan, and imported into the United States
via South Korea. Shampoo, body wash, moisturizers, shower caps, laundry bags,
show bags, pet collars, pet leashes and bath towels at Trump hotels are all
listed as made in China.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Trump
beverages</span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">The </span><a href="http://www.trump.com/merchandise/trump-natural-spring-water/" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="color: #1955a5; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Trump Natural Spring Water</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"> is served at Trump
hotels, restaurants and golf clubs. Trump water comes</span><a href="http://www.aquagrade.com/bottle/trump-ice-natural-spring-water/" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="color: #1955a5; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;"> from New York or Vermont</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">, and is bottled in New York.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Trump Vodka </span><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-trump-vodka/" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="color: #1955a5; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">was manufactured</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"> at a distillery in the Netherlands, supposedly
distilled five times from “European wheat,” but the distribution company
stopped carrying it in 2010. An Israeli company continued to carry Trump Vodka,
although the version sold in Israel is different from the original Trump Vodka.
The Trump Vodka produced and sold in Israel is made from ingredients that make
it kosher for Passover, which made it a popular beverage around the holidays.
But the </span><a href="http://www.jpost.com/Not-Just-News/Podcast/Exclusive-Some-Trump-Vodka-popular-as-kosher-for-Passover-spirit-may-not-be-kosher-450568" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="color: #1955a5; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Jerusalem Post reported</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"> that it turned out that not
all ingredients actually were kosher for Passover.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Note:
There’s a Trump Winery located in Charlottesville, Va., but it is reported to
be owned by his son, Eric. </span><a href="http://www.trumpwinery.com/legal/" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="color: #1955a5; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">The Trump Winery website</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"> says its name is a
registered trademark of Eric Trump Wine Manufacturing, LLC. The winery
imports glassware.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 22.5pt; margin: 0px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="color: #2a2a2a; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">The Bottom Line</span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">The Clinton
ad claims that “Trump’s products have been made in 12 other countries.” This is
correct. We know of at least 12 countries where Trump products were
manufactured (China, the Netherlands, Mexico, India, Turkey, Slovenia,
Honduras, Germany, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam and South Korea). Further, Trump
products transited other countries through the packaging and shipping process —
meaning workers in more than 12 countries contributed to getting many of
Trump’s products made, packaged and delivered to the United States.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">As our
inventory shows, manufacturing is a global process. Components of a product of
an American company are made in different parts of the world, depending on who
offers the most competitive prices, and ultimately imported into the country to
be sold to American consumers. It’s not as simple as deciding not to eat an
Oreo because Nabisco found a cheaper place to employ some of its workers.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); line-height: 21pt; margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Trump’s
practice as a businessman is not consistent with his current rhetoric against
trade as a presidential nominee — this vulnerability is backed with more than
enough factual evidence. If Trump brand customers took the same stance against
his products as he did against Nabisco, it is clear they would be left with few
Trump items to buy. However, we do know of at least four Trump products made in
the United States: “Make America Great Again” hats, bedding, water and cologne.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/08/26/how-many-trump-products-were-made-overseas-heres-the-complete-list/?tid=a_inl"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/08/26/how-many-trump-products-were-made-overseas-heres-the-complete-list/?tid=a_inl</span></span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><u><b>Trump’s history of corruption is
mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedly the corrupt one?</b></u></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">(By Paul Waldman, Washington Post, 05
September 2016)</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">In the
heat of a presidential campaign, you’d think that a story about one party’s
nominee giving a large contribution to a state attorney general who promptly
shut down an inquiry into that nominee’s scam “university” would be enormous news.
But we continue to hear almost nothing about what happened between Donald Trump
and Florida attorney general Pam Bondi.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">I </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/09/02/heres-a-tale-of-two-scandals-guess-which-one-will-get-more-play/?utm_term=.9af7df932e99"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">raised</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> this
issue last week, but it’s worth an update as well as some contextualization.
The story re-emerged last week when The Post’s David A. Fahrenthold </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/09/01/trump-pays-irs-a-penalty-for-his-foundation-violating-rules-with-gift-to-florida-attorney-general/"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">reported</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> that
Trump paid a penalty to the IRS after his foundation made an illegal
contribution to Bondi’s PAC. While the Trump organization characterizes that as
a bureaucratic oversight, the basic facts are that Bondi’s office had received
multiple complaints from Floridians who said they were cheated by Trump
University; while they were looking into it and considering whether to join a
lawsuit over Trump University filed by the attorney general of New York State,
Bondi called Trump and asked him for a $25,000 donation; shortly after getting
the check, Bondi’s office dropped the inquiry.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">At this
point we should note that everything here may be completely innocent. Perhaps
Bondi didn’t realize her office was looking into Trump University. Perhaps the
fact that Trump’s foundation made the contribution (which, to repeat, is
illegal) was just a mix-up. Perhaps when Trump reimbursed the foundation from
his personal account, he didn’t realize that’s not how the law works (the
foundation would have to get its money back from Bondi’s PAC; he could then
make a personal donation if he wanted). Perhaps Bondi’s decision not to pursue
the case against Trump was perfectly reasonable. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<i><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">[</span></i><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/09/06/yes-the-race-is-tightening-but-its-still-too-soon-to-panic-heres-why/?utm_term=.a2b8445d1c2d"><i><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Read
more: Yes, the presidential race is tightening. But it’s too early for
Democrats to panic.</span></span></i></a><i><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">] </span></i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">But
here’s the thing: We don’t know the answers to those questions, because almost
nobody seems to be pursuing them.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">For
instance, there was only one mention of this story on any of the five Sunday
shows, when John Dickerson asked Chris Christie about it on “</span><a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/face-the-nation-transcript-september-4-2016-christie-flake-gonzales/"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Face the
Nation</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">“ (Christie took great umbrage: “I can’t believe, John,
that anyone would insult Pam Bondi that way”). And the comparison with stories
about Hillary Clinton’s emails or the Clinton Foundation is extremely
instructive. Whenever we get some new development in any of those Clinton
stories, you see blanket coverage — every cable network, every network news
program, every newspaper investigates it at length. And even when the new
information </span><a href="http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/09/14-excerpts-fbis-report-hillary-clintons-email"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">serves
to exonerate</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> Clinton rather than implicate her in wrongdoing, the
coverage still emphasizes that the whole thing just “raises questions” about
her integrity.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">The big
difference is that there are an enormous number of reporters who get assigned
to write stories about those issues regarding Clinton. The story of something
like the Clinton Foundation gets stretched out over months and months with
repeated tellings, always with the insistence that questions are being raised
and the implication that shady things are going on, even if there isn’t any
evidence at a particular moment to support that idea.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">When it
comes to Trump, on the other hand, we’ve seen a very different pattern. Here’s
what happens: A story about some kind of corrupt dealing emerges, usually from
the dogged efforts of one or a few journalists; it gets discussed for a couple
of days; and then it disappears. Someone might mention it now and again, but
the news organizations don’t assign a squad of reporters to look into every
aspect of it, so no new facts are brought to light and no new stories get
written.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">The end
result of this process is that because of all that repeated examination of
Clinton’s affairs, people become convinced that she must be corrupt to the
core. It’s not that there isn’t plenty of negative coverage of Trump, because
of course there is, but it’s focused mostly on the crazy things he says on any
given day.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">But the
truth is that you’d have to work incredibly hard to find a politician who has
the kind of history of corruption, double-dealing, and fraud that Donald Trump
has. The number of stories which could potentially deserve hundreds and
hundreds of articles is absolutely staggering. Here’s a partial list:</span></div>
<br />
<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc">
<li style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump’s casino </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/nyregion/donald-trump-atlantic-city.html"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">bankruptcies</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">,
which left investors holding the bag while he skedaddled with their money</span></li>
<li style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump’s habit of </span><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/06/09/donald-trump-unpaid-bills-republican-president-laswuits/85297274/"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">refusing</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> to
pay contractors who had done work for him, many of whom are struggling
small businesses</span></li>
<li style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px;"><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/trump-university-its-worse-than-you-think"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">Trump
University</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">, which includes not only the people who got
scammed and the Florida investigation, but also a </span><a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-texas-official-says-he-was-told-to-drop-trump-university-probe/"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">similar
story from Texas</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> where the investigation into Trump
U was quashed.</span></li>
<li style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">The Trump Institute, another
get-rich-quick scheme in which Trump allowed </span><a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/07/these-grifters-inspired-trump-institute.html"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">a
couple of grifters</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> to use his name to bilk people out
of their money</span></li>
<li style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">The Trump Network, a multi-level
marketing </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/23/the-trump-network-sought-to-make-people-rich-but-left-behind-disappointment/"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">venture</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">
(a.k.a. pyramid scheme) that involved customers mailing in a urine sample
which would be analyzed to produce for them a specially formulated package
of multivitamins</span></li>
<li style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump Model Management, which </span><a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/donald-trump-model-management-illegal-immigration"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">reportedly
</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">had foreign models lie to customs officials and work
in the U.S. illegally, and kept them in squalid conditions while they
earned almost nothing for the work they did</span></li>
<li style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump’s </span><a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicagarrison/trump-seeks-more-foreign-guestworkers-for-his-companies"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">employment</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> of
foreign guest workers at his resorts, which involves a claim that he can’t
find Americans to do the work</span></li>
<li style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump’s </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/14/nyregion/after-15-years-in-court-workers-lawsuit-against-trump-faces-yet-another-delay.html?pagewanted=all"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">use</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> of
hundreds of undocumented workers from Poland in the 1980s, who were paid a
pittance for their illegal work</span></li>
<li style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump’s </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/us/politics/donald-trump-housing-race.html"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">history</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> of
being charged with housing discrimination </span></li>
<li style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump’s </span><a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-mob-organized-crime-213910?paginate=false"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">connections</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> to
mafia figures involved in New York construction</span></li>
<li style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">The time Trump </span><a href="http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1988/Trump-Agrees-To-Pay-%24750-000-Penalty-To-Settle-Antitrust-Lawsuit/id-54ea0dc590fc97d9e9e86c65336649a1"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">paid</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">
the Federal Trade Commission $750,000 over charges that he violated
anti-trust laws when trying to take over a rival casino company</span></li>
<li style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">The fact that Trump is now being
advised by Roger Ailes, who was forced out as Fox News chief when dozens
of women </span><a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/how-fox-news-women-took-down-roger-ailes.html"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">came
forward</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> to charge him with sexual harassment. According to
the allegations, Ailes’s behavior was positively monstrous; as just one
indicator, his abusive and predatory actions toward women were so
well-known and so loathsome that in 1968 the morally upstanding folks in
the Nixon administration refused to allow him to work there despite his
key role in getting Nixon elected.</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">And that
last one is happening right now. To repeat, the point is not that these stories
have <i>never</i> been covered, because they have. The point is that they get
covered briefly, then everyone in the media moves on. If any of these kinds of
stories involved Clinton, news organizations would rush to assign multiple
reporters to them, those reporters would start asking questions, and we’d learn
more about all of them.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">That’s
important, because we may have reached a point where the frames around the
candidates are locked in: Trump is supposedly the crazy/bigoted one, and
Clinton is supposedly the corrupt one. Once we decide that those are the
appropriate lenses through which the two candidates are to be viewed, it shapes
the decisions the media make every day about which stories are important to
pursue.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">And it
means that to a great extent, for all the controversy he has caused and all the
unflattering stories in the press about him, Trump is still being let off the
hook.</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/09/05/trumps-history-of-corruption-is-mind-boggling-so-why-is-clinton-supposedly-the-corrupt-one/?utm_term=.2dda0287c6b2&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/09/05/trumps-history-of-corruption-is-mind-boggling-so-why-is-clinton-supposedly-the-corrupt-one/?utm_term=.2dda0287c6b2&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1</span></a></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Weeks After Pledging Answers, Questions About Melania’s
Immigration Status Linger</span></u></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">(By Philip Bump, Washington Post, 02
September 2016)</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Donald
Trump's immigration position is, at its heart, fairly simple. People in the
country illegally will be subject to deportation if he is elected president, as
he said in his </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/31/heres-what-donald-trump-said-in-his-big-immigration-speech-annotated/"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">speech
this week</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> in Arizona. Even those who hadn't crossed the border
illegally but who had been admitted on a visa and then didn't leave are "a
big problem" in Trump's estimation. </span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">"Immigration
law doesn't exist for the purpose of keeping criminals out," he said.
"It exists to protect all aspects of American life — the work site, the
welfare office, the education system and everything else."</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">That
speech came more than three weeks after Trump's campaign promised to answer
questions about a more personal component of the immigration issue. In early
August, Trump pledged that his wife, Melania, a native of Slovenia, would </span><a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/290935-trump-on-wifes-immigration-story-she-came-in-totally" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">hold a news conference</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> explaining how
she managed to navigate the onerous process of getting a green card. He made
the pledge after a number of outlets raised questions about the timeline of her
entry into the country.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Remember
when the New York Post ran a front-page story showing nude photos of Melania
Trump? (Yes, </span><a href="https://twitter.com/nypost/status/759699825264820224" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">you do</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">.)
Politico </span><a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/melania-trump-immigration-donald-226648" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">realized</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> that the date of that shoot, 1995, put
her in the United States before 1996, the year she has said she arrived on a visa.
After that story came out, Melania Trump tweeted a broad defense of her
arrival. </span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">The
promised news conference, though, hasn't yet happened.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Curious
about the extent to which marrying an American citizen washed away any previous
immigration problems, I reached out to David Leopold, an immigration attorney
from Cleveland and former president of the American Immigration Lawyers
Association. He explained that the popular understanding of how immigration is
linked to marriage is wrong — but also noted a number of other questions
worth asking about Melania Trump's arrival in the United States.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">To the
marriage question first. The understanding in popular culture that marrying a
U.S. citizen automatically grants citizen status is incorrect. "The act of
marrying a legal permanent resident of the United States doesn't in and of
itself do anything," Leopold said. </span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">There
are </span><a href="https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-processes-and-procedures/green-card-eligibility" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">three main ways</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> in which someone can get a green
card: through an employer, through an immediate relative or through the
green-card lottery. What's an immediate relative? A son or daughter — or a
spouse, for example. Essentially, then, a potential immigrant goes from having
no immediate relative (and having to hope to win the green-card lottery) to
suddenly having one — and for that group, there is no quota on how many
green cards can be issued. A green card isn't guaranteed to the new spouse, but
it makes them eligible to begin the process.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">It isn't
guaranteed, in part, because there are restrictions on who can receive a
green card. It is not the case, for example, that an immigrant who enters the
country by illegally crossing the Southern border can simply marry an American
citizen and be granted a green card.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">"If
I marry somebody who is undocumented, the only way at this point she is going
to get a green card is if she lawfully entered the United States
originally," Leopold said. "If the person entered the country without
inspection — I married a woman who crossed the border or entered through
fraud or something like that — then she is ineligible to get a green card
in the United States." There are exceptions that apply, but this is a
critical point: If someone committed fraud or entered the country illegally,
they cannot get a green card unless they receive a waiver for doing so.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> </span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">This is
important to the question of Melania Trump.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>Here's how she </span><a href="http://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a13529/melania-trump-interview-0216/" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">explained</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> getting her citizenship, to Harper's
Bazaar:</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<i><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">I came
here for my career, and I did so well, I moved here. It never crossed my mind
to stay here without papers. That is just the person you are. You follow the
rules. You follow the law. Every few months you need to fly back to Europe and
stamp your visa. After a few visas, I applied for a green card and got it in
2001. After the green card, I applied for citizenship. And it was a long
process.</span></i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">According
to Leopold, the need to have to travel back to her home country wouldn't
accompany a visa linked to employment, in his experience.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">"The
only time I've seen that — and I've been doing this a long time, and I've
compared notes with other immigration lawyers — that the coming in and
going out, to anybody who's been around this stuff, suggests that she was on a
visitor visa, which doesn't permit work," he said. If Melania Trump came
in on a visitor visa and began working over a short period of time, the
government would assume that she entered the country fraudulently. If she told
a customs official she was entering the United States as a visitor but was
planning to work, that's a material misrepresentation.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">To get a
work-related immigrant visa, Leopold added, Trump's prospective employer would
have had to prove that Trump filled a job duty that no American could fill
— to show, in other words, that no other model in New York City would have
done that shoot. Unless, of course, she had special skills — or a special
degree.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">You may
remember that shortly before questions about Trump's status arose, she suddenly
took down her personal website. That change </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/28/melania-trump-wants-to-assure-you-there-is-nothing-mysterious-about-her-disappearing-website/"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">followed</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">
revelations that Trump claimed to have a degree that biographers from Slovenia
discovered she didn't. </span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">"At
the age of eighteen, she signed with a modeling agency in Milan. After obtaining
a degree in design and architecture at University in Slovenia, Melania was
jetting between photo shoots in Paris and Milan, finally settling in New York
in 1996," the site read. The part about the degrees, it seems, was not
true, as </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/07/19/fact-checking-the-second-day-of-the-2016-republican-national-convention/"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">our fact
checkers noted</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">We don't
know why Melania Trump claimed to have that degree — but having such
degrees could bolster an argument for a work visa. If she told an employer she
had degrees she didn't to obtain a visa (and the employer wasn't the wiser),
Melania Trump is culpable. </span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Again:
It's not clear <i>what</i> visa Trump used to enter the country and how it
related to her work experience — but she asserts that she has always been
in full compliance with immigration laws. If that's not true, it's a problem.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">"The
bottom line is, if you have procured or attempted to procure an immigration
through fraud or misrepresentation, you are inadmissible to the United States,
and you need to be admissible to the United States to get a green card,"
Leopold said. Fraud "always is part of your immigration portfolio,"
he added, saying it "sticks to you" — meaning that leaving and
reentering properly wouldn't absolve previous missteps. Nor would being married
to a citizen.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">"If
there were material misrepresentations or fraudulent representations regarding
her work or her intent to work if she came in on a visitor's visa, that would
implicate the validity of her green card," Leopold said. "And that
would then affect her citizenship, because when you apply for citizenship, one
of the questions they ask you is if have you ever sought to obtain immigration
benefits from fraud. If you don't 'fess up and answer 'yes' if you've done
that, now you have bad moral character and you're ineligible for
citizenship." In the worst case, this could lead to denaturalization —
loss of citizenship.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">How
Melania Trump obtained her green card is another question. </span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">In an interview
with Univision, a former attorney for the Trump Organization </span><a href="http://www.univision.com/univision-news/politics/questions-raised-about-melanias-marriage-history" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">said</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> that Melania Trump obtained her green
card in 2001 "based on marriage." But she married Donald Trump in
2005 and has said that she wasn't married previously.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">As noted
above, marriage is a fast track to green-card status, but it also carries
another benefit. Someone who entered the country fraudulently isn't eligible
for a green card unless they get a waiver. In this case, that waiver would have
to come from a close relative — such as a spouse — arguing that an
exception should be granted because the relative would suffer an "extreme
hardship" if the application were refused. This is "tough to
do," Leopold said, suggesting that it demands proof of legitimate economic
or emotional difficulty that would result.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">For
Leopold (who, we will note, donated to the Hillary Clinton campaign in March),
the point isn't that Melania Trump entered the country and obtained citizenship
under false pretenses. To some extent, the point is that we don't <i>know</i>
her story — which is strange, since it should be fairly simple to explain. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">More
broadly, though, Leopold sees this as a missed opportunity for Donald Trump as
a candidate. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">"To
me what this shows is this broken immigration system — I know that's a
cliche already — forces good people to do things they ordinarily wouldn't
do. Such as cross a border without authorization, such as misstate the purpose
of their trip," he said. "Clearly immigration touches his own family
very directly. If this is true, then Donald Trump has missed an important
opportunity to reach out to immigrants and say, 'I understand how difficult and
dysfunctional this system is, and I want to stand with you, and I want to fix
it.'<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>"But he's gone the other
way."</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/02/weeks-after-pledging-answers-big-questions-about-melania-trumps-immigration-status-linger/?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/02/weeks-after-pledging-answers-big-questions-about-melania-trumps-immigration-status-linger/?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1</span></a></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">What The World Could Lose In
America’s Presidential Election</span></u></b></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By Fred Hiatt,
Washington Post, 28 August 2016)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The presidential
election could be crucial to the future of democracy, and not just in the
United States. The global impact of a Donald Trump presidency would be
disastrous. But even a Hillary Clinton win won’t help reverse the worldwide
retrenchment in democracy and human rights unless she brings a change in policy
from the current administration.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">If all
of that strikes you as a bit too breathless, consider what’s happened over the past
decade. </span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The leading
authoritarian powers of the world — China, Russia and Iran — have tightened the
screws at home while becoming far more aggressive beyond their boundaries. They
have proven that the Internet, contrary to earlier expectation, can be turned
into a weapon of control. They have proven, again contrary to earlier
assumptions, that a country can enter the global economy while squelching free
speech, worship and assembly at home. They have formed a loose dictators’
alliance, working together to undermine and discredit the principles of liberal
economics and individual rights.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Meanwhile,
nations that were assumed to be safely in the camp of democracies, including
many U.S. allies, have slipped toward authoritarianism. In some, such as
Thailand, reversion has come through old-fashioned military coups. In others —
Poland, the Philippines, Hungary, Turkey, Nicaragua — elected governments are
undoing the protections of democracy.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Still
other nations, soft authoritarians that had promised greater openness, have
unapologetically gone the other way: Egypt, Ethiopia, Bahrain, Malaysia, to
name just a few.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<a href="https://freedomhouse.org/" title="freedomhouse.org"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Freedom House</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, the nonprofit organization that has been keeping
track of these things since Eleanor Roosevelt helped found it 75 years ago, </span></span><a href="https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2016"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">has the dismal numbers</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">. Over the past decade, the level of
freedom has declined in 105 countries and advanced in only 61, the group says —
and last year was the worst yet, with 72 nations losing ground. Around the
world, “press freedom declined to its lowest point in 12 years in 2015,” it
reports.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump would stoke the
dictators’ momentum in at least three ways. Most obviously, just the fact of
his presidency would serve as a four-year indictment of the democratic system.
If an unqualified bigot could rise to the top of the world’s oldest democracy,
how could Freedom House or anyone else plausibly urge other nations to adopt
our system of government?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump also would
undermine democracy abroad by virtue of his disrespect for democratic norms at
home. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">He has endorsed torture and other
illegal acts of war, disparaged freedom of the press, undermined a free
judiciary, campaigned by invective rather than debate and warned critics that
they will suffer if he is elected. And if all that is not enough to give
comfort to authoritarian rulers with similar values, Trump has expressed open
admiration for the world’s worst thugs, from Russia’s Vladimir Putin to the
butchers of Tiananmen Square.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Even if he loses,
of course, democracy’s reputation will have taken a hit: How could such a man
have become a major party nominee? But perhaps another story line will emerge,
too: Even in times of economic dislocation, even faced with an alternative that
many voters disliked, Americans were too wise to let the worst befall them.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But a Clinton presidency will shift the
global momentum only if she adopts goals that President Obama enshrined as a
candidate but largely abandoned as president. </span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Of course global
trends rest on many factors, of which U.S. leadership is only one. But when he
was campaigning, Obama cited as models Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman and
John F. Kennedy — who ensured, </span></span><a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2007-07-01/renewing-american-leadership"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">he wrote</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> in the magazine Foreign Affairs, that America
“stood for and fought for the freedoms sought by billions of people beyond our
borders.” He said his administration would work toward “building just, secure,
democratic societies” where citizens could “choose their leaders in climates
free of fear.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But democracy promotion
faded as a goal once Obama moved into the White House. In negotiations with
China, Iran, Cuba and North Korea, human rights were never a priority. He
apologized to Argentinians for America’s Cold War acceptance of its “dirty
war,” but overlooked similar or worse abuses in anti-terror allies such as
Egypt, Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia. He hoped that setting a good example at
home — ending torture, closing (as he hoped to do) Guantanamo — would resonate
overseas, but the results were disappointing.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">How far the
administration evolved from Obama’s 2007 vision can be measured in </span></span><a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/press/2016-08-11/special-pre-release-septemberoctober-issue-foreign-affairs-vice-president-joe-biden"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">an article by Vice President Biden</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> in the current issue of the same magazine
that barely mentions democracy or human rights. Biden sets tasks for the next
administration to achieve a “more peaceful and prosperous future,” none
explicitly related to freedom: deepening alliances in Asia and the Western
Hemisphere, addressing climate change and terrorism, improving ties with
regional powers. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Those are all important.
But they will all be far more elusive if democracy continues to dwindle away.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-global-stakes-of-the-2016-election/2016/08/28/6f7d0ae6-6bba-11e6-8225-fbb8a6fc65bc_story.html?utm_term=.ab52dcea4eba&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-global-stakes-of-the-2016-election/2016/08/28/6f7d0ae6-6bba-11e6-8225-fbb8a6fc65bc_story.html?utm_term=.ab52dcea4eba&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1</span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">What We Know About The Charitable Giving By Hillary
Clinton And Donald Trump</span></u></b></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="2955c67b4f145c6b6805f0278828a5cc307275da"></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By David A. Fahrenthold and Rosalind S.
Helderman , Wasshington Post, 25 August 2016)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In recent weeks,
the presidential campaign has been dominated by stories about the charitable
efforts — or lack thereof — of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">So what do we know about Trump and Clinton’s
approaches to charity — and about the charitable foundations that share their
names?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">1.) First: Didn’t
Trump say that he gave money to Clinton’s foundation, so that Clinton would
attend his third wedding?</span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Yes. He did say
that.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I said, ‘Be at my wedding,’ and
she came to my wedding,” Trump said during a Republican primary debate in
August. “You know why? She didn’t have a choice because I gave. I gave to a
foundation that, frankly, that foundation is supposed to do good.’</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">2.) Is that
true?</span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Only in part.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump has never actually given any of his own
money to the Democratic nominee’s famous family charity, the Bill, Hillary and
Chelsea Clinton Foundation.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump did,
however, send two gifts from a foundation he</span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">controls, the Donald J.
Trump Foundation.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In 2009, the Trump
Foundation sent a $100,000 “unrestricted gift” to Clinton’s charity. In 2010,
Trump’s foundation sent another $10,000, to reserve a table at a Clinton
Foundation gala. Trump did not actually attend.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But it’s a stretch for Trump to imply that he actually gave this money
personally. By 2009, only a tiny fraction of the money in the Donald J. Trump
Foundation had been given by Trump. (More on that later.)</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And Trump is wrong to suggest that these
gifts to Clinton’s foundation came before Clinton’s decision to attend his
wedding. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The gifts were in 2009 and
2010.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The </span></span><a href="http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/jul/21/carlos-curbelo/clintons-really-did-attend-donald-trumps-2005-wedd/" title="www.politifact.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">wedding </span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">was in 2005.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">3.) </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Step back.
How much money have Clinton and Trump each donated to charity?</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">For Clinton and
her husband, Bill, the total is $23.2 million between 2001 and 2015. That
figure comes from the Clintons’ joint tax returns, which the Democratic nominee
has released. </span></span><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In that 15-year
period — the years since Clinton and her husband left the White House -- they
earned about $237 million in adjusted gross income,</span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">much of it from
speaking fees and book royalties. So Clinton and her husband donated about 9.8
percent of their adjusted gross income. </span></span><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump says he is
worth far more than the Clintons. He recently claimed his net worth as more
than $10 billion. </span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But it appears he
has donated far less. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Washington
Post has identified about $3.9 million in donations since 2001 from Trump’s own
pocket. </span></span><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The most recent
of those donations was made on Wednesday, to a church in Louisiana that Trump
had visited during a tour of flood-ravaged areas the week before. Trump sent a
personal check for $100,000 to Greenwell Springs Baptist Church, whose interim
pastor is a well-known social-conservative activist, Tony Perkins. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(Louisiana’s
governor had suggested before Trump’s visit that the candidate should give to a
specific relief fund, run by the Baton Rouge Area Foundation. Trump gave
nothing to that fund). </span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Before that,
there was a $1 million gift that </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/05/24/four-months-later-donald-trump-says-he-gave-1-million-to-veterans-group/" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Trump
made in May</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> to the Marine
Corps - Law Enforcement Foundation. At the time of the gift, Trump was under
media pressure to make good on a promise he’d made four months earlier: to give
$1 million to help veterans.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Beyond that, the
evidence of Trump’s giving comes from the files of the Donald J. Trump
Foundation, which the businessman founded in the late 1980s. Since 2001, those
files show about $2.8 million in gifts from Trump himself.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But they also
show that Trump’s giving to his foundation declined sharply a decade ago. </span></span><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Then it stopped
completely. </span></span><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In the
foundation’s tax records, the last donation shown from Trump was in 2008, for
$30,000. Since then, other donors have filled the Trump foundation’s coffers
instead: Since the start of 2007, Trump has provided just 0.73 percent of all
the money donated to the foundation.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Has Trump made
any other recent donations, beyond the gifts to the veterans’ group and his own
foundation? </span></span><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">His staff </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-promised-millions-to-charity-we-found-less-than-10000-over-7-years/2016/06/28/cbab5d1a-37dd-11e6-8f7c-d4c723a2becb_story.html" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">says he
has</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">. </span></span><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But they have
provided no dollar figures, and no proof. Trump has also declined to release
his tax returns, unlike every other major-party nominee for four decades. </span></span><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Washington
Post has spent months searching </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/trump-charity-donations/" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">for
evidence </span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">of other
personal gifts from Trump, and found little. After calling more than 270
charities with ties to Trump, The Post has identified just one other personal
donation since 2008. </span></span><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">That was a gift
of less than $10,000 in 2009, to the Police Athletic League of New York. </span></span><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">There is a chance
it is a clerical error.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">4.) </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">When the two
candidates did give, what charities did they choose?</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Clintons give
nearly all their money away via a charity called the Clinton Family Foundation.
</span></span><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">It is basically a
pass-through, of a kind commonly used for charity by many wealthy people. It
does no direct charitable work, but passes money to other nonprofits. </span></span><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In all, the
Clinton Family Foundation gave away $18.4 million of the Clintons’ money
between 2001 and 2014, the most recent year for which the group’s tax returns
are available. Those donations include grants to many groups based in Arkansas,
where the Clintons were governor and first lady, and Chappaqua, N.Y., where
they moved after leaving the White House</span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">,</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> including the Chappaqua
Volunteer Ambulance Corps, the Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, the
Arkansas Community Foundation and the University of Arkansas. They also made
donations to major national charities like the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDs
Foundation.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The largest
single recipient of money from the Clinton Family Foundation was the family’s
other, far more complicated charity. </span></span><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">That’s the one
you’ve heard of: the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. </span></span><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Clintons have
given $4.3 million of their own money to it since 2001, representing 24 percent
of their personal giving in that time. More on</span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">that other Clinton
Foundation in a moment. </span></span><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In Trump’s case,
the businessman still controls where the Donald J. Trump Foundation spends its
money — even if he doesn’t provide that money from his own pocket anymore.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And tax records
show that, under Trump’s leadership, the foundation’s giving has been
relatively small-bore and scattershot. There are some repeated patterns: a
number of donations to veterans’ groups, police-department foundations and New
York-area hospitals. </span></span><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But it lacks the
sustained commitments to specific institutions and causes that many wealthy
people adopt in their giving.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In many cases,
the Trump foundation’s donations appear to have been spurred by one-off
encounters in Trump’s own life.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">For instance, the
fifth-biggest donation in the Trump Foundation’s recent history — $158,000, in
2012 — seems to have been used to settle a lawsuit against one of Trump’s golf
courses. A man named Martin Greenberg had sued, claiming a mistake at the
course cost him a huge hole-in-one prize. On the day the parties told a court
their suit was settled, Trump’s Foundation sent Greenberg’s foundation a check.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump’s
foundation also donated to at least 15 charities connected to “The Celebrity
Apprentice,” the reality show where contestants played to help a cause. On the
show, Trump would often promise a special donation “from my own wallet” — but
then, </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-promised-personal-gifts-on-celebrity-apprentice-heres-who-really-paid/2016/08/18/b8d087b4-5d9a-11e6-af8e-54aa2e849447_story.html" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">when
cameras were off</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, send a
donation from his foundation or from a production company.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And, in another
case, Trump </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/07/01/donald-trump-used-money-donated-for-charity-to-buy-himself-a-tim-tebow-signed-football-helmet/" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">used
the charity’s money</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> to
purchase a football helmet signed by then-Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow.
That $12,000 purchase, at a charity auction, might have violated IRS rules —
which prohibit a charity’s leaders from using nonprofit money to buy gifts for
themselves.</span></span></div>
<b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">5.) Wait, go
back. There are two Clinton foundations?</span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Yes. Two.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Clinton
Family Foundation is a nonprofit used by Bill and Hillary Clinton for their
personal charitable giving. The Clintons are its only donors. </span></span><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But the Clinton
charity in the news this week is the other, bigger one — the Bill, Hillary and
Chelsea Clinton Foundation. </span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">That one was
founded by Bill Clinton in 1997, while he was still president and was
originally known as the William J. Clinton Foundation. Initially, the
foundation’s goal was to raise money for the construction of Clinton’s
presidential library. After he left office, however, the foundation’s </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-inside-story-of-how-the-clintons-built-a-2-billion-global-empire/2015/06/02/b6eab638-0957-11e5-a7ad-b430fc1d3f5c_story.html" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">goals
and funding expanded rapidly</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">. It soon became the chief vehicle for Bill Clinton’s post-presidential
ambitions, a way to help charities and promote his own celebrity worldwide.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Clinton
Foundation has now raised more than $2 billion from more than 200,000 donors,
including many of the world’s richest and most powerful people and
corporations. Foreign governments have also given money; the governments of
Australia, Norway and Saudi Arabia have all given between $10 million and $25
million.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In 2005, the
Clinton Foundation launched the Clinton Global Initiative, which is now the
best known and most public arm of the organization. CGI holds a glitzy annual
meeting in New York City that brings together leaders of private companies,
non-profits and governments to talk about how to solve world problems.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The event was
designed to be a new model in global philanthropy, a global schmoozefest convened
by Bill Clinton to bring people together to talk about how to solve world
problems. At CGI, individuals and companies make public pledges to embark on
their own charitable efforts, with CGI monitoring their progress. The
conference is also a fundraiser for the foundation because it sponsored by
private companies and everyone who attends, except non-profit groups, pay
membership fees to take part. </span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Unlike the
Clintons’ family foundation, the Clinton Foundation does much of its charitable
work itself, rather than making grants to other groups. It funds initiatives to
combat disease and poverty, improve education, fight climate change, promote
women and children around the world.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In 2013, after
Hillary Clinton stepped down as secretary of state, the William J. Clinton
Foundation formally changed its name to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton
Foundation. It has indicated that if Hillary Clinton is elected president, her
and Chelsea’s names will dropped from the group’s title and it will become,
formally, the Clinton Foundation. It has also said it will cease accepting
foreign and corporate donations. Regardless of the election results, the
Foundation has said this September’s Clinton Global Initiative will be the
last.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">6.) When
people give to the Clinton Foundation, what do they get in return?</span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Clinton
Foundation is a globally recognized philanthropy, known for helping to lower
the cost of AIDs treatment and other drugs in the developing world. Its donors
have traditionally included a bipartisan array of corporate leaders and
ordinary people. If asked, many would say they gave simply to support the
charitable aims of the organization.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">As is not
uncommon in the world of charity, donors also received prestige from being
associated with the well-known organization, a reputational benefit boosted by
the group’s association with Bill Clinton, a globally popular figure.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Critics charge
that donors also gave to curry favor with the Clintons, particularly Hillary
Clinton, who has held public office and presidential ambitions for most of the
foundation’s existence.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump and other
Republicans have alleged that Clinton Foundation donors were given favors by
Hillary Clinton’s State Department. Emails have emerged showing how some
foundation donors were able to gain access — particularly in making requests
for meetings — to Clinton’s closest aides and sometimes to Clinton herself. But
the emails show that the donors did not always get what they wanted,
particularly when they sought anything more than a meeting. And there is no
evidence that foundation donors received special treatment in direct exchange
for their contributions.</span></span></div>
<b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">7.) When
people give to the Donald J. Trump Foundation, what do </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">they </span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">get in
return?</span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">That’s a lot
harder to say. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Trump foundation’s
biggest donors have been unwilling to talk about it.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Since 2007 — when Trump stopped being the
Trump Foundation’s major donor — the biggest gifts came from Vince and Linda
McMahon, the WWE wrestling moguls. They gave $5 million. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">They declined to comment about why.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The second-biggest donor in that period was a
New York man named Richard Ebers. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">He
gave about $1.8 million total. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">He
declined to comment about why.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The
third-biggest donor was NBC, which broadcast “The Apprentice.” It gave $500,000
in 2012, the same year that Trump’s suddenly began promising more “personal”
gifts to celebrity contestants’ charities (and paying with the Trump
Foundation’s money).</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">NBC, also, declined
to comment.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Among the other,
smaller donors, a few would talk about their motivations. One won an online
auction, where the prize was a lifetime membership at Trump golf clubs. Another
was a friend of Trump’s, who didn’t know what else to give him. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And there was one who seemed surprised to hear
that her company had been listed as a Trump Foundation donor at all. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“That’s incorrect,” she said, when informed
that Trump’s foundation had listed her firm as giving $100,000. “I’m not
answering any questions.” </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Then she hung
up.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/what-we-know-about-the-charitable-giving-by-hillary-clinton-and-donald-trump/2016/08/25/1b261400-6a30-11e6-ba32-5a4bf5aad4fa_story.html?wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/what-we-know-about-the-charitable-giving-by-hillary-clinton-and-donald-trump/2016/08/25/1b261400-6a30-11e6-ba32-5a4bf5aad4fa_story.html?wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1</span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Maddow’s Fascinating Duel With Trump Campaign
Manager Kellyanne Conway</span></u></b></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By Aaron Blake,
Washington Post, August 25, 2016)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<i><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Donald Trump
has </span></span></i><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-fox_us_57bb3ef5e4b0b51733a4f408"><i><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">only been doing Fox News these days</span></span></i></a><i><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">,* but on Wednesday night his new campaign
manager, Kellyanne Conway, gamely ventured into the unfriendly confines of
Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show. What followed was a fascinating, lengthy
back-and-forth over the importance of policy to Trump, among many other topics.</span></span></i></div>
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: It
is special occasion night here tonight on the "Rachel Maddow Show."
We are going to start right off at the top of the show, not with me talking for
17 straight minutes, but rather with "The Interview."</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I have had the
opportunity on this show this year to interview Democratic presidential
candidate Hillary Clinton a handful of times. I have not yet had the pleasure
of interviewing Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. I live in
hope that that interview will happen here and sometime soon.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But in the
meantime, I'm very excited to say that I've got what I think of as the next
best thing. We are joined tonight for "The Interview" by Donald
Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Kellyanne, thank
you so much for being here.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: My
pleasure, Rachel. Thanks for having me.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: I
have to ask you, self-consciously, off the top, if it is a hard decision to do
a show like this with liberal commie pinko like me. Or do you guys have a
…</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
I've never described you that way. No, it's a real pleasure. I did
want to pass along a hello from Donald Trump. I talked to him this
evening and I told him I was coming on your show. He said, that's such a
terrific idea. And I said I hope that I'm just like your warm-up band,
your B-band, and that you'll come on the show sometime too. So maybe you
convince us in the tower.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Well, I would love to do that. Let's — I don't want to spoil it, so maybe
we should just call it off right here and say, that's the end of the
interview. No.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Let me start
actually by saying, congratulations. This is your first presidential
campaign manager gig, obviously.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: As
a manager, yes.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: But
it's also the first time any woman has ever managed a Republican presidential
campaign ever, so you're in history for that.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Can I just ask you,
how you got the gig? Did you interview? Did other people
interview? How did this come about?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Well, first of all, thank you. I didn't even know I was the first female
Republican presidential campaign manager until someone pointed it out to me on
Twitter. They pointed it out for me and I said, that can't be true.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And then I
realized, I said this must be such a small group of women. And right away
I know them all, Susan Estrich and Donna Brazile and Beth Myers, and I respect
them enormously. And it took me about two seconds into the job to see how
much is on your shoulders, when you are the campaign manager.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And they did it
far longer than I did. I'm coming in toward the end of the
campaign. So hats off to them.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I think I got the
job through the way Donald Trump has promoted women in the Trump Corporation
for decades, through merit. And he saw the way I move. He knows I
don't sugarcoat things, but I'm very polite in delivering them.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Donald Trump’s
new campaign manager Kellyanne Conway made her media debut on Aug. 21. She told
ABC's This Week, "I think Donald Trump is back in Hillary Clinton's
head." <span style="display: none; margin: 0px;">Trump’s new campaign
managers says the GOP candidate just had his best week while appearing on
television shows Aug. 21.</span> (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post) </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And I felt like
we had been losing for a couple of weeks. And I just — instead of going
in there and saying, we're losing and if you have another week like this,
you're done, I just said, you know, we're a little bit behind and I think it's
good to be the underdog.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">You always say, I
never lose, I'm not accustomed to losing, fine. But we are a little bit
behind and we're really behind in some places. And so let's at least
bring it to a slightly new direction.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I think once you
have a buoyant candidate who feels comfortable doing the so-called pivot on
substance, where he has gotten so many people giving him the advice, solicited,
unsolicited, from both sides of the aisle to pivot on style, he's so
comfortable going out and telling everybody, here's my 10-point plan to reform
the Veterans Administration.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">We as a nation —
I hope it's a completely nonpartisan issue, that we as a nation share the goal
of treating our veterans fairly and with dignity and in a timely fashion for
their health care needs.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">If he goes out
and he says, here's my four-point tax plan, or here's my three-point way to
defeat ISIS, and he actually has specifics, he's so comfortable and he so
enjoys doing that.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And you can look
at the specifics, Rachel, and you can say, I disagree with them, I think this
will never work, I think it's cockamamie, but at least you can see them.
And …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
When you say pivot on substance, do you mean that he is changing some of his
policy positions?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: No,
no, I meant the pivot has been more to substance. Because I think, my own
view as a voter and as an old hand politically, Rachel, is that so much of this
campaign and the campaign coverage, but so much of the campaign has been
content-free cacophony, like no substance being discussed.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And I think
that's a shame for the voters. I don't know a billion things about a
billion things, but I know consumers, and I know voters. I've been doing
this for decades. And when I talk to voters and I look down in the focus
group, at their household income, and I look at the unemployed status and I
hear them, and I know that they deserve to at least have a full debate on the
issues this time.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And why do we
have to wait for the actual debates for that? Let's have a debate on his
vision for the next steps after the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as
Obamacare, and Secretary Clinton's.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Let's compare
them on energy independence. Let's compare them. She referred to —
in her convention speech to — I assume she meant ISIS, but she called them our
"determined enemies." He calls them ISIS. He calls them radical
terrorists.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I was offended
last year when she referred to pro-life Republicans as terrorists. I
didn't think that was nice or true, but she won't refer to the terrorists as
terrorists. So my point is …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: Do
you think she doesn't recognize ISIS as terrorists?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: I
sure hope she does. And I think she does, but why doesn't she say it?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Wait, hold on …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: Why
"determined enemies"?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
She's never called ISIS terrorists? Or she didn't in that instance?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: Of
course she has. But here she was in front of millions of people, her
largest audience ever.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: But
— okay, so but you're talking about — you're just saying let's keep it on
substance, it shouldn't necessarily be this cacophony that's just about the
campaign itself.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
It's a great word, isn't.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: It
is. But some of the cacophony has been because your candidate has picked some
unusual fights, because he has conducted himself as a candidate in a way that
really other campaigns haven't.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Right after you
started, he gave this remarkable set of remarks, where he said that he
regretted some of the things he'd said because they caused personal pain, and
he has repeatedly refused to say which of those things he regrets.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But I guess I want
to know whether or not any of those things are going to be put to bed because
he'll apologize for them. Like when he said that Judge Curiel — Judge
Gonzalo Curiel essentially couldn't do his job as a judge, he would be
inherently biased, and couldn't do that job because of his Mexican heritage,
that is something that I imagine caused great personal pain.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Did Donald Trump
ever apologize to the judge for that?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: I
don't know that he has.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: Do
you think he will?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: But
I — well, here's what I do know. I think that his now running mate,
Governor Pence, when he wasn't his running mate, put it best about the Judge
Curiel situation. He said, I know what Donald Trump meant. And
here's what it is.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Every American
deserves a fair trial with an impartial judge, but we do not question one's
impartiality based on their ethnicity, race, and a whole host of other …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Which Mr. Trump did, explicitly, for this judge.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: And
I thought — it's funny, I don't even know if Mr. Trump noticed that response at
the time, but I thought, well, that's really somebody who has worked with other
countries, that really captures it. And that's the way I feel.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But I do hope,
Rachel, that people who feel that they have been caused personal pain by Donald
Trump, looked at his regrets last week in a very public form. And it's
very unusual for anybody who is running for political office to — frankly, to
ever say that they regret causing personal pain.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And I hope that
anybody who feels that way will at least see that contrition and take that and
at least accept his regret. And …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: But
there's no apology. I mean …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Well, that would be done in private anyway.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: And
you're saying it may have been done and you don't know, or you know that it
hasn't been done?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: I
don't know either way.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Okay. And with the Khan family — I mean, with Mrs. Khan, I mean, in
terms of personal pain, he said about her that he didn't — I can tell you
exactly what he said. He said: "She had nothing to say. She
probably — maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say."</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">She rebutted that
by saying, listen, she didn't speak in that moment because she's so
grief-stricken by the death of her son that cannot speak about him without
crying. I mean, talk about personal pain.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">What an
incredibly painful thing for him to have accused her of. And, again, he
said that he regrets causing it. Do you know if he's apologized to the
Khan family directly?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: I
don't know. And I certainly hope that they heard him last Thursday in Charlotte
when he said that.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Rachel, let me
just say how I feel, if it's at all relevant. I think that the Khan's son
is a hero, and I'm glad he's in Arlington National Cemetery, and I think he
made the ultimate sacrifice, as did they, and they deserve our respect and our
gratitude.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I have four small
children, including a son. I can't even put my mind where their hearts
are, because that is a very painful thing to even think about.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But I also think
people should look at the full measure of each of these candidates and not
always judge that — well, not just judge him by one or two things that he has
said here. I just feel like we with should look at …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: To
be fair, though, I think those things that he's getting consistently judged
for, and people are not letting them go, is because they're so unusual. I
mean, for any presidential candidate, for any politician to get into a personal
fight with a gold-star family is so strange, it's so unusual.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I mean, not just
as a political miscalculation, it's just — it almost — it's humanly shocking
and I think that's why he is the only one who can ever put that to rest.
I think as his campaign manager, you're going to get asked about those stories
again and again and again all the way through November unless ...</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: And
I can't speak for him on that, I really can't speak for him on that, because
it's very personal, I can speak for me.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: Let
me ask about policy then. Is it still the policy of the Trump campaign and of
Mr. Trump that there should be a total and complete shutdown of Muslims
entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out
what is going on. That was his statement on that matter.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Is that still the
policy of the campaign and the candidate?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
What he has said, and he repeated it, and again, people can pull it up for
themselves if they'd like, Rachel. What he said recently, when he was
delivering his entire fighting radical Islamic terrorist speech …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: The
Ohio speech, yes.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: The
Ohio speech, that's right. A week ago Monday. Seems so long ago.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: I
know, every day is a …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(CROSSTALK)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Yes, they're like dog years, in politics, I've decided.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">What he said
there was that we are going to ban people from entry here from countries that
are known exporters of terrorism, which we can't sufficiently vet. So
that is not every everybody, that's not every continent.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: But
does that statement rescind the earlier statement? Does that mean that —
I mean, it was very clear what he said in December, and he put it in writing,
right? A total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United
States. It was very clear. Is that now no longer operable as the
statement of the Trump campaign?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Should we see
this new statement about countries that have a history of exporting terrorism,
should we see that supplanting that earlier statement?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(CROSSTALK)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Well, I don't think it supplants it at all.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: So
they both exist?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: I
think that — well, yes, they do, because I think it clarifies it, in terms of,
well, what does this actually mean?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: So
what about a Muslim who wants to emigrate here from Australia?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Well, it depends. Do they have a record of terror? Are they tied to
any groups? Are they — I mean, we — look, his entire point is very
simple, Rachel, if I may.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Whether it's an
American-born lone wolf terrorist in Orlando who shoots up 49 innocent people
in a nightclub, or it's folks coming in on a fiancee visa that federal agents
I've talked to didn't even know existed, in San Bernardino, to kill 14 innocent
co-workers, or it's what happens in Nice, in Brussels, in Paris, and so many
other places around the globe, this has to stop.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And the fact is
we have to do a better job as a government, because somehow we're not doing a
great job.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: Do
you stop it by stopping all Muslims?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: No.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Okay. So that policy is no longer …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Well, you look at his speech from last Monday and I think you find your answer,
where he says, look, we are going to stop allowing countries that export
terrorists, that we can't get a good vetting system with them, and frankly ...</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
I've got the quote. He said he would suspend immigration from
"regions of the world that have a history of exporting terrorism."</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
That's right.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: So
on 9/11, four airliners were hijacked. Three of the four were piloted by
men who had most recently lived and operated their cell in Germany.
Right? We all know this, right? Hamburg, Germany. So is
Germany a country from which we will not allow immigration anymore?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: No,
not wholesale. Because there are so many other ways that we could have at
least captured, or I should say, known that those — that that particular
al-Qaeda cell was here nefariously.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I mean, who were
the people teaching them how to fly a plane in Florida that they never had an
interest in learning to land it? You know, we — after 9/11, it was see
something, say something.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But before that,
we had them — you know, they could have been monitored in a way, if there was a
reasonable suspicion that they had, that they were tied to terrorism. So
in that particular instance, with the 9/11 terrorists, it's very hard to
believe it has been 15 years, Rachel.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But with that
particular instance, I'd have to go back and review what we knew about each of
them at the time before I answer your question completely. But the
general policy is what he says it is, which is ...</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
What he says is a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United
States.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
That was — and now it's …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Before. But you are saying that's no longer operable.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: I'm
saying that you should see what he said last Monday, where he is saying suspend
it from regions or countries that are known exporters of terrorism.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Like Germany, which makes no sense.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Well, no, no …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: I
mean, there's a reason that we keep, again, not moving on from this
stuff. This was how — in December, when made this statement, right, on December
7th it was like every political firework in the country went off all at once,
because nobody could believe that somebody who was running for president of
this country by promising that if you are of a specific religion, you're no
longer allowed to come here.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(CROSSTALK)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: If
that's no longer the case, that would be a really big deal. But it can't
be that we're not supposed to hold him accountable for that statement anymore,
but he hasn't rescinded it.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In the same way
that his statement of regret, if it's meant to apply to the Khan family or the
Curiel family, we can't give him credit to that unless he actually tells us,
and tells us that he has communicated that to the Curiel and the Khan family.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The thread that
ties these things together is this is all stuff of his own making. And if
you want the campaign to not be about this stuff anymore, it seems to me like
he's the one who has to end all these controversies by telling us what he
really means.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">You're in a
position of trying to defend what he said last week, and not refer to what he
said in December, but only one of them can be true.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Well, Rachel, I have memorized the list of 22 flip-flops that Hillary Clinton
has made on policy, and they have nothing to do even with the corrupt Clinton
Foundation State Department pay-to-play connection, they have to do with
policy.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And I think
Bernie Sanders was right on many of those things when he was calling her out
for them. And we will call her out for them if others won't. So we
feel that it's legitimate …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: But
your own campaign is about your own candidate, right?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Well, no, no. There's a choice in this country.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: No?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Yes, this campaign in totem is about two candidates. And if I can say one
thing about the coverage, it's not that it's biased or slanted. It's
incomplete. It's almost as if it's a referendum on Donald Trump, it's as
if you're going to go into the ballot box on November 8th, Rachel, and it's
going to be a big picture of Donald Trump with a light like you either put a
black X over him, or you say yea. That's not the case.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: But
that's obviously what happens …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
She's running too.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
When one candidates running is planning on banning people from the United
States …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: And
the other is hiding. And the other is hiding.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Okay. But not doing press conferences is one thing. But
proposing a ban on people coming to the United States from people who are of a
specific religion, it's always going to be a referendum on that candidate.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: And
she wants total — well, I think that's unfair, actually. I think it's
actually a disservice to the voters in that he is now giving speeches, several
a week, where he's laying out specific policy prescriptions, including on the
matter of which you asked me.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Where people can
go and look and they can say, I don't believe that, or I don't like that, or
wow, I didn't realize that. Let me try to digest this.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And this is the
stage in the election cycle where voters start to want to hear your specifics
and your solutions.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: Let
me ask one more specific on that. There's this one from the Ohio speech,
the terrorism speech, which I thought was just a fascinating turn, and it was
on this issue of extreme vetting. What he's describing as extreme vetting
for people who want to emigrate to this country.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And what he said
was, in the Cold War, we had an ideological screening test. The time is
overdue to develop a new screening test for the threats we face today.
What is that about? What's the Cold War precedent for this extreme
vetting that he's talking about?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
He's basically saying, this is not the first time the country has done this, or
that it has been done. That we've done this before, but for some reason,
we've become lax. We don't do it.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
When did we do it before?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Well, he's just saying, there's a Cold War precedent. And …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: But
what is the Cold War precedent?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: For
vetting. And he's saying that in this case, it's that we — past is not
necessarily prologue, but that when you are talking about vetting, people
shouldn't comment like, oh, my God, that's a new situation.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">What if we did
vet people based on their ties to terrorism, if we did that a little bit
better? I mean, is anybody arguing that we're not letting people in the
country right now who do have ties to terrorists?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: The
Cold War precedent for what he's talking about was an ideological
vetting. He's saying we want ideological vetting of people. That
did exist in the Cold War, in the early '50s, it was called the McCarran Act,
which I'm sure you know.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Sure.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: And
Truman vetoed it and then Congress was able to pass it some other way.
But what survived very famously was thrown out by the United States Supreme Court
because it was ruled to be unconstitutional.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">So there is a
Cold War precedent for ideological vetting of immigrants. In that case,
it was to stop communist front groups. But it didn't pass constitutional
muster, and we've never had anything like that since that ever has passed
constitutional muster.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">So what he's
asking for is a new extreme vetting system, which has previously been tried and
ruled unconstitutional and we abandoned it half a century ago.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Sixty-some years ago, right?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: Yes.
So that's a hard case — so I want the pivot on substance to happen too. I
really do. But the substance …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Like four issues a week now though that he's talking about. He really
doesn't …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(CROSSTALK)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: But
he has to make sense. He has to make sense when he makes these policy
pivots in order for them to be successful.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Well, it sounds like you disagree with the policy, and that's fine. And …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(CROSSTALK)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: No,
you can't have a McCarran Act now, it's unconstitutional.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: But
that's my point too. People can look at it and say, this is ridiculous,
that's unconstitutional, you can't have that, or they can say, that may work,
and I'd like to hear more about it.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But either way, I
feel very confident that our campaign is the one of the major two now, Rachel,
that actually respects the voters, and what they tell pollsters they want,
which policy prescriptions, a conversation about substance.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I said this
before, but I'll say on your show, I would rather lose a campaign about style,
than — or who said what today about whom, than not — than lose it on
substance. Because I feel like the issue set favors us.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I mean, people in
the last 200-some polls taken on Obamacare, otherwise known as the Affordable
Care Act, you have many people who still have problems with — you have many
millions of Americans uninsured, you have people still looking for work, you
have some schools that are failing our students.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And the fact is,
Hillary Clinton, from what we're told, is going to give a speech tomorrow about
none of that. Her speech is going to be about Donald Trump.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
She's going to give a speech about you guys, that's right.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Well, but that's odd. And I watch — it's odd for this reason.
Again, it's not — she's running for president of the United States. And
presidents have to have vision and show leadership in a way that you make the
election about the future, not the past.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And you make it
about your own beliefs and your own values and vision, not just trying to make
the other person look like he takes the wings off of butterflies. It's an
odd construct. I watched Robby Mook. I watched Robby Mook in your
interview last week. I said, oh, I hope I get to do that, I watched him
interviewed my first day on the job. And I really did want to come.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Robby is such a
smart guy. He's very loyal to Hillary Clinton. He knows what he's
doing. He's a great competitor. And yet most of his — much of his
interview was about Donald Trump. And I keep looking at that and saying,
when are we going to hear from you?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I mean, scarcity
is their strategy. Politico ran a headline today that said Hillary
Clinton's strategy to run out the clock to November. I think that's a
disservice to voters. I think she just ought to lay it all out and say my
policies on X, Y and Z are right, and yours are wrong.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Kellyanne Conway is our guest. She is the campaign manager for Donald
Trump's campaign, the first woman to ever be a campaign manager in a Republican
presidential campaign. And I have just secretly chained her to the
desk. So she'll be here when we get back from the commercial break.
Hold on.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(COMMERCIAL
BREAK)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
We're back with Kellyanne Conway, campaign manager for the Donald Trump for
president campaign. One week ago tonight she became the first woman to
ever run a Republican presidential campaign.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Kellyanne, thanks
again for being here.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Thank you.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: Why
— don't take this the wrong way.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(LAUGHTER)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: Why
on earth is your candidate in Mississippi tonight if everything you could
possibly imagine that was bad for your candidate happened between now and
November and everything great for Hillary Clinton happened between now and
November, your candidate is still going to win Mississippi by double digits.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
That's right.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: Why
is he in Mississippi?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: And
Hillary Clinton is still going to win California by double digits and she has
been there raising money ...</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(CROSSTALK)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: But
she's raising money, he's doing a rally.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: Oh,
no, he had fundraiser before that.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Right, but then they're just doing the fundraising and then booking out to a
swing state. He does a rally, which means you're spending money to keep
him down there. You're paying the opportunity cost of him being somewhere
else. You're paying money to rent the venue. You're having him do
this rally.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Again, don't take
it the wrong way.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: And
it's on national news here in a non-swing state in New York.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Here he is in Mississippi, but you're wasting your donors' money. I mean,
the best possible outcome of this is that he might win by extra double
digits. Why is he there?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: He
was there because he wanted to do a rally in Jackson, Mississippi, because he —
the governor has been talking to him about coming down and he had — I don't
know if your audience is aware, but he had Mr. Farage, the leader of Brexit, on
the stage with him tonight and basically gave his big old epic Brexit speech on
American independence.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Isn't it a little weird to have the like secessionist guy give a speech in
Mississippi.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: But
in Jackson, Mississippi …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Yes, you get why that's weird, right?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(LAUGHTER)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: Go
to a Union state next time.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: But
I will tell you that I think the people who came before me developed a very
sound infrastructure. But we have inherited a schedule that we are taking
better control of in terms of I'm a very focused person and I see which states
we're going into with candidate appearances, that's both for Governor Pence and
Mr. Trump.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Our ground game,
our data operation, our field really focusing on the states that get us to
270-plus in a couple of different ways.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: You
can't get out of Mississippi because it was already planned.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Well, no, it was already planned. And honestly, when I first asked about
that rally, to give you a little inside peek, when I first asked about that
rally in a scheduling meeting last week, they said, well, it went live this
morning, you know, too bad we didn't have this conversation — it went live this
morning. And the venue was already three-quarters full.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Right, it's Mississippi.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(CROSSTALK)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: …
but it's national news. You're covering it, the rest of you are covering
it. So — and he'll be home tonight.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: So
let me ask you another one. New York. Home for Donald Trump.
The national political director for your campaign is …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: Jim
Murphy.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: Jim
Murphy, yes. Jim Murphy quoted in The New York Post two days ago that
there's going to be an all-out, full steam ahead, top speed effort in New York,
a full plan, ground game, media, Internet, direct mail, maybe phone banks for
New York.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And then the
reason I'm asking you about this, is he then told The New York Post he was
acting at your behest specifically and named you, in saying that this is why
there's such a focus on New York State, where you are on a good day, behind by
17 points. That doesn't sound like you. That doesn't sound like
your kind of focus.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: It
wasn't me. But it would be exciting to challenge Hillary Clinton here,
just on her Senate record in New York alone. I hope you get an
opportunity to interview her. I hope if she comes and enjoys her time in
this seat, Rachel, as I am tonight, that you'll ask her the question, you know,
why was your Senate record here in this state so unremarkable?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But I have a 3:30
call tomorrow with Jim and I'll ask him about that article that I had not seen.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Sorry, Jim, I didn't mean to get you in trouble.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: But
I'll say something else, Jim is onto something very important that I think is
missed in the non-conversation conversation politically, Rachel, which is, we
have great teams in different states.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">We may not be
competing at this moment. And we're going to start moving people around
to these swing states. And that's very typical of campaigns, they do
that. You decide where are your strengths, where do you want to sew up
some of these poll numbers.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Which, you know,
even in a place like North Carolina today, we're behind by 2, according to a
public poll. Arizona, we're ahead by 5. You know, things are
starting to look a little bit better. But these battleships turn slowly.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But if we have a
fabulous state director somewhere where we end up not competing as hard, and
they're talented, we'll move them around because that's what smart campaigns
do. You say, how do we refocus our talents and where do we put our
candidates?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And we've been
working with Governor Pence's staff as well in trying to do that, because he's
an incredibly strong speaker in some of these swing states. He gets large
crowds. They want to hear his message. They connect with him.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And I told
Governor Pence, you're like the golden child, you eat your vegetables, you do
your homework in homework club, he's just done a phenomenal job for this
ticket. And he keeps his own schedule.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I think every 10
days or so, we're going to try to get Trump and Pence together in one place as
well. But you'll see some changes. You're going to have a
post-Labor Day bonanza of a new type of schedule. Promise.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Okay. You used the phrase "golden child" there, which I
have to quote back to you, because that is one of the phrases that was used
ironically, or sarcastically by the new chief executive of the Trump campaign, Steve
Bannon, to describe Paul Ryan.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">He has called
Paul Ryan a liar, he has called him a golden child, and he didn't mean it in a
good way. He said …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: I
did, by the way.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: You
meant it in a good way, exactly, when you were talking about Governor
Pence. But that's not how he meant it about Paul Ryan. He once said
of Paul Ryan recently that Paul Ryan was raised in a Petri dish at the Heritage
Foundation.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">So Breitbart,
under Steve Bannon's leadership, has been the biggest media cheerleader on the
right for the resignation of John Boehner, for the defeat of Eric Cantor, and
for this year's challenge to Paul Ryan, who is the current Republican speaker
of the house. How's it going between Speaker Ryan and your campaign?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
It's going well.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Since Steve Bannon came on board? In the past week, you and Steve Bannon
came on at the same time.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
That's right, nothing has changed in terms of Speaker Ryan having endorsed
Donald Trump and Donald Trump having endorsed Speaker Ryan.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I did tease Mr.
Trump, Rachel, by saying, hey, you went and endorsed him, and he won his
primary with 84 percent of the vote, you didn't take the credit. Had I
been here, we would have taken the credit. Paul, you went from 82 to 84.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: If
you really need Paul Ryan down the stretch, he has a certain amount of power
and sway.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Yes, he's the speaker of the house.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(CROSSTALK)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: And
he would be the speaker of the house in a Trump presidency.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: So
you've now got his chief political antagonist from the conservative media with
you, running the Trump campaign. Steve Bannon has been not just a
provocateur on the right, not just a controversial guy, he specifically set his
sights on trying to destroy Paul Ryan.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">He's after John
McCain. He's after Paul Ryan. He stood up and cheered about John
Boehner, and about Eric Cantor. The way that he celebrated Eric Cantor
losing his seat. I understand, if you're a Republican insurgent why that
must be very exciting. But if you're the Republican Party, if they're
going to be responsible for a lot of the ground game and all of this stuff, how
could they work with him?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: We
had Sean Spicer in our shared office just the other day. So it's — that's
the chief strategist working on the …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: They're
just swallowing it. They're just …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: No,
they're not swallowing it. In fact, I talk to Chairman Priebus once or
twice a day now. And I really like the way that the official — you know,
the Republican Party nationally, Rachel, is treating us and working with us.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I'm really
pleased with that. And I think it comes on the heels of this — letters
people are writing, please put the resources down-ballot and please, don't
destroy the Republican Party.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Chairman Priebus
doesn't feel that way and Speaker Ryan doesn't. And I'll tell you what,
in a Trump presidency, I'll be the first one to go up and thank Speaker Ryan
and work with him. We both worked for Jack Kemp at different points in
our career.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: How
about Steve Bannon?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: Oh,
he'll do it too. Steve, yes.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
After doing everything he could to destroy him, calling him a liar and all
that?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Well, and they both have really big jobs now. So there you go. True
to say, they both endorsed Donald Trump.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(CROSSTALK)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: But
do you have to wear chain mail when you go to work? This environment that
you work in, it's like actively on fire every day.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Come and visit us, Rachel, bring your camera.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: I
absolutely will.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Come visit us in the tower. I just invited you. I just got my first
piece of hate mail to my home …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(CROSSTALK)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: Oh
no, I'm sorry.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: No,
I'm just saying, it's a crazy time, but it's very rewarding and I'm telling
you, I really think that the case for change that so many Americans are making,
that they say, 70 percent is saying, take us in a different direction, that's a
change election.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">You know, you see
the polls, including NBC's polls, Rachel, that a vast majority of Americans
dislike Hillary Clinton, distrust her. And I certainly hope that we're
not now inured to that because it has happened for so long.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I mean, there
were some serious revelations this week. And I saw someone on TV, like
someone I respect enormously from the other side of the aisle last night say
the following, while the Clinton Foundation scandal unfolding seems serious and
we'll take a look at it, but the next time Donald Trump says something crazy,
then we'll forget about this.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And I thought, if
it's worthy of examination, if the allegations of pay to play and these visits
from people, and these foreign donations are actually bothersome, then — and
actually worthy of examination on a show like yours, Rachel, then that doesn't
wash away because Donald Trump said something that day.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And that's my
point about full coverage.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: On
that issue of the Clinton Foundation, the very strong statement from your
campaign two days ago, saying the Clinton Foundation is the most corrupt
enterprise in political history. If it's such a vehicle for corruption, why
did Donald Trump donate so much money to it?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: He
donated $100,000, and certainly didn't donate for the same reason these foreign
donors did, apparently. He didn't ask to get a meeting with the secretary
of state to talk about donating to the Clinton Foundation, like apparently 85
other people did.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Well, asking and getting is not ...</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: To
the tune of $156 million.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Asking and getting is not the same thing.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: But
the Clinton Foundation does some good work. I mean, there's no question
about that. They do very important work.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: But
they're the most corrupt enterprise in political history, that's your
statement.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Apparently you can be both.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(LAUGHTER)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Apparently you can be both. So we see the good work they do around the
globe. And, you know, Rachel, I was thinking about this today, they could
do much — they could do even better, more good work, if you will, if some of
those donations weren't — you know, weren't, I guess, received as a way to, in
the State Department, and why are you giving it any — did we need to have
meetings in the State Department with foreign donors and then pretend all that
money is just for vaccinations and …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Well, there's no indication that the money went for anything other than back to
the Clinton programs.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Well, let's find out. I think Governor Christie had this right. I
think Governor Christie had this right yesterday. He said, look, we
actually don't know the facts. And three different FBI divisions asked
the DOJ to investigate, and they did not — either did not return their calls or
refused to investigate.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But Governor
Christie is right, Rachel. He said yesterday, look, we as Americans have
the need to know what the facts are before we cast a vote. I think
there's something to that. We already know how America feels about
Washington.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The lack of
transparency, the lack of accountability, the corruption, the rigged system
that helps insiders. This doesn't look good for someone who is already distrusted
and disliked by a majority of Americans.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: But
then to the same point, I don't want to go tit-for-tat on the Clinton
Foundation, and I hear you, absolutely, but to that same point, I mean, every
presidential candidate in the modern era has released his or her tax returns,
including — I mean, back to Nixon, right?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And when Nixon
set that precedent he was under audit. So it's not — being under audit is
not an excuse to not release your tax returns. The IRS says if you're
under audit, you're totally allowed to release your tax returns. And
previous presidents and presidential candidates have.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Donald Trump is
running for president in part on the basis of his financial acumen and saying
that the system is rigged. And there has been a lot of really troubling
reporting about his business practices, as well, you know, I mean, a lot of
stuff that may or may not been followed all the way to its conclusion.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But talk about
raising questions, there has been stuff. Why should this audit out only
apply to him? I mean, everybody else has released their tax returns, why
shouldn't he?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Well, that's the conclusion that his lawyers and accountants have made and the
advice they've given him and he's respecting that advice.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But I also don't
…</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: Do
you respect it? Do you think that he should release his tax returns?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Well, I do respect it only because I once thought, oh, transparency, release
your tax returns. But the fact is now that I'm there, I hear what the
advice that the lawyers and the accountants have given.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But I don't think
that we need to see his tax returns to verify his financial acumen. I
walk into the Trump Tower every day and I'm like, this guy did pretty well for
himself before I got here.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: I
want to know if he pays taxes.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: And
he — well, like you know what you want to know, Rachel, we all want to know
what taxes we would pay under his tax plan. That's a question …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(CROSSTALK)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: No,
no, trust me, I really literally want to know if he pays taxes. I have
two more things to ask you. Do you mind staying?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
No. Oh, another break.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Another break, sorry. Kellyanne, campaign manager for Donald Trump, I
promise just one more break and we'll be right back.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(COMMERCIAL
BREAK)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
We're back with Kellyanne Conway, who is the first woman to ever be the
campaign manager for a Republican presidential campaign. It is her first
presidential campaign management gig. And she has been in it for
precisely one week, most of which you've spend here in the studio with me
tonight.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(LAUGHTER)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: I
know it feels like I'm never going to let you go. I have two more
questions.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Yes.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: One
is about this health issue, and I have a very specific question about
this. So Mr. Trump personally and members of your campaign have
repeatedly now raised this question of Secretary Clinton's health.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Now the only
testimony we have of Mr. Trump's health is this letter from his
gastroenterologist saying that his lab results were astonishingly excellent and
the letter ends by saying: "If elected Mr. Trump, I can state
unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever be elected to the
presidency."</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And that's really
funny, but as a doctor's letter, it's a little bit absurd. It's a
non-serious letter. It's full of typos. It's hyperbolic. It's
unprofessional. Most of the letter has no medical meaning. It links
to a website that doesn't exist.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">If he was
elected, Donald Trump would be the oldest person to ever be sworn in as
president. Whether or not he's going to try to make Hillary Clinton's
health the issue, doesn't he owe it to the American people to release an actual
medical report, a more credible, more complete statement?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Perhaps. But I want to say something about Hillary Clinton's
health. It's not an issue that I care to comment on, because I'm not a
doctor. She's not my patient. And I can just tell you what I see
with my own two eyes which is I don't see someone who really enjoys campaigning
the way he does.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I can only tell
you about him, because I'm with him practically every day, which is, he keeps
such a crazy, ridiculous pace for a man his age, that it's very difficult for
the younger staffers, of which I'm not one, to keep up with him, Rachel.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I mean, it's
really insane. I mean, he called me yesterday and said, I need more
rallies, are we doing a rally here? What are we doing? I'm like,
you know, he doesn't just show up and do the rallies. He prepares for
them. You have to travel. He's always reading, he's always thinking,
he's always talking.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I confess, I
don't know when he sleeps.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Yes, but both you, here as his campaign and him talking about himself have made
his physical vigor actually part of what he brings to the campaign, part of
what he offers, and they've made it a contrast issue with Hillary Clinton.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But Hillary
Clinton released a normal doctor's statement. What we have got from
Donald Trump, that letter really is absurd. And we've actually contacted
the doctor who wrote it to try to get some background. It turns out he
was using a medical credential on his name that he's no longer entitled to use.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Like there's a
lot of really not upstanding things about what we know there. And so, I
mean, for one, why is — a gastroenterologist is a digestive specialist.
Why has Donald Trump been seeing a gastroenterologist for 35 years?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: Oh,
that I don't know for sure. There are certain things I just haven't
learned in the last week, Rachel, I promise.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(LAUGHTER)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: As
the campaign manager, can I please make a request?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Yes, please, absolutely.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
That we get a more substantial medical …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
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<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: I
will pass on the request. And I assure you that he does have doctors — he
has doctors and physicians. And I want to also add one more thing.
I was told by a different anchor last night on a different network, that
Hillary's doctors have released her part of her medical information, her health
history, and that she's in good health.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And I say great,
because I want her to be in excellent health. In other words, that's just
not — I think stamina is different than health. You know, vigor on the
campaign trail.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But I look at
Hillary Clinton not being out there more as a strategy. It's scarcity as
a strategy. It's that we don't want to put her out there, because when we
do, people are reminded that she doesn't meet the 70 percent of Americans who
want a change election, a new direction.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">She is the person
who has earned a majority of Americans, Rachel, saying, I dislike her and I
distrust her, but — I can't imagine what comes after the "but." What
do you mean, but? But I think I'll vote for her, I think I'll give it a
whirl.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: I
think she's — I mean, as just a political observer, I think the reason that
she's not out on the campaign trail as much doing visible events is because
they think they're winning and they don't want to interrupt the narrative.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: And
I think that's terrible and I'll tell you why. If we were winning just
because Hillary Clinton was failing or tripping over her words, or messing up
by not doing — you know, or she was down in the polls for whatever reason,
let's say the Clinton Foundation investigation helps her go down in the polls,
we're not going to disappear, I promise you, because that's not what the voters
want.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">They want to see
the candidates. They want to hear the candidates. They want to
digest their proposals that we've been discussing tonight, Rachel. And
they want to be able to see what the contrast is between these two.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Not contrast in
style, not even contrast in stamina, contrast on substance. I'm telling
you, we're going to fight her on substance. And I'm very disappointed,
from what I know publicly, that her speech tomorrow in Reno, Nevada …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: Is
going to be all about you.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: It's
not about substance.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Yes, well, it's going to be — it's about the Trump campaign, and this is my
last question for you. And I'm asking it just because I feel like I
shouldn't have to ask you, but I don't have any access to anybody else with the
campaign. So I have to ask you. It's a factual question. Is
Roger Ailes working as part of the Donald Trump campaign?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
No. He is not a formal or informal adviser. They're old
friends. I mean, he's Donald Trump. He talks to a lot of people.
Something is always ringing.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: So
that meeting at the Bedminster golf club in New Jersey on Sunday, August 14th,
that wasn't — that didn't happen? Like, this is what the New York Times
reported in terms of him coming on board to help Donald Trump prepare for the
debates, and becoming a formal or informal adviser, that didn't happen?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: I
was not there on August 14th. So I didn't see who was or was not
there. But I will tell you that they're old friends and they talk.
I'm sure they talk, and I'm sure — but he talks to many different people from
every side of the aisle …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(CROSSTALK)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Roger Ailes, no role in the campaign though?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Roger Ailes has no formally or informal role in the campaign, no. But he
is a marketing genius.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW: And
just resigned his job under a cloud of terrible sexual harassment allegations.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Thank you for having me, Rachel. I just wanted to say, thank you for
having me. I mean, I know you work hard, I work hard. But not every
woman gets what we got, which is our shot. And for that I'm most
grateful. And I feel most blessed.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I've watched you
for years on "Scarborough Country" and Tucker's show …</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Wow.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY: …
and I said, she should have her own show. And indeed, you have for a long
time. And I respect that enormously. I know you disagree with us
perhaps philosophically. But I hope Mr. Trump will take the seat one
day. But thank you for having me on.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Thank you. And back at you. You know, I think it is — you have made
history and I think women breaking glass ceilings in politics is always
important wherever it happens. And good luck to you.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CONWAY:
Thank you.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MADDOW:
Thanks, Kellyanne, really nice to see you.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">See, that was
fine. Everything went okay. We can talk to each other. It's
going to be all right.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<i><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">* It turns out
Trump will get off his Fox kick and do an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper
on Thursday night.</span></span></i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/25/rachel-maddows-fascinating-duel-with-trump-campaign-manager-kellyanne-conway-annotated/?wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/25/rachel-maddows-fascinating-duel-with-trump-campaign-manager-kellyanne-conway-annotated/?wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1</span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Okay, Here’s A Nice Column About Trump</span></u></b></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">(By Kathleen Parker, Washington Post, 19 August 2016)</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">When my
syndicate editor told me a few clients had been asking, <i>Don’t you have
anyone over there who can write something positive about Donald Trump?</i> , I
thought, well, that could be fun. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But
hard. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Then, as if the Muses and Fates
had conspired to help me in this Olympian task, everything in Trump World
changed. Not only did Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/08/19/trump-campaign-chairman-paul-manafort-resigns/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_pp-manafort-1010am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">resign</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> following reports of his
involvement in Ukrainian politics, but also Trump hired a woman, Kellyanne
Conway, to become his new </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/17/trumps-new-campaign-manager-kellyanne-conway-doesnt-like-his-name-calling/" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">campaign manager</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>And: He suddenly started being nice. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Call it
a woman’s touch or the desperation of a faltering candidate, but Trump was even
kind of cute Thursday when he expressed </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/08/18/trump-speaking-after-campaign-shake-up-expresses-regret-over-causing-personal-pain/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_trumpregret-9pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">regret</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> for some of his ill-chosen words
during the campaign, especially those that might have caused personal pain,
presumably in others. What’s next, a prayer for forgiveness of sins?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>If his comments weren’t strictly an apology,
they at least were an acknowledgment of error. They also indicated that Trump
can learn new tricks. He’s trainable and, apparently, is open to ideas not his
own.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Clearly, this was a tectonic
plate-shifting moment in a campaign previously defined by insult and arrogance.
<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Sometimes I can be too honest,” he
said, brilliantly setting up his opponent’s fatal flaw: “Hillary Clinton is the
exact opposite. She never tells the truth.” <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">It’s no
mere coincidence that Conway, a veteran of the anti-Clinton wars, is also a
pollster. Who better to turn things around than someone who pays her bills by
measuring the public’s temper? More important, Conway specializes in female
voters. Her firm, the Polling Company/WomanTrend, has monitored women’s
thinking on a variety of issues since 1995.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>Her handiwork, which previously has included telling Republicans to </span><a href="https://mediamatters.org/research/2016/08/17/media-meet-donald-trump-s-new-campaign-manager-kellyanne-conway/212458" title="mediamatters.org"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">stop</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> using the four-letter word “rape” in
campaigns, is in clear evidence with her newest client. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Which means, I suppose, that this positive
Trump column is really about Conway. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Will her
magic work to shift female and swing voters toward Trump? Which is the real
Trump? The guy who insults everybody, or the one who almost says he’s sorry and
wants to bring the country together? Can he sustain this new persona and for
how long? Attention span isn’t his strong suit, but then neither is it the
country’s. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>We are still soon to the
pivot, so we’ll wait and see. Unless Trump has been projecting someone else the
past year just to capture the conservative, white male voter who was never going
to vote for Clinton anyway, there’s every reason to believe his impetuousness
will prevail. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Moreover, it’s
questionable whether voters can be swayed by a sudden personality change, even
among those who readily grant second chances to the penitent. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Will
women suddenly forget everything Trump has said while being “too honest”? Will
African Americans buy Trump’s promise that their lives will be “amazing” if
they vote for him? Will the seed Trump planted of Clinton’s </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/08/16/trump-seeking-to-court-black-voters-calls-clinton-a-bigot-and-promises-tougher-policing/" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">bigotry</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">, seeing blacks only as votes,
take root? <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Such a statement from any
other Republican would burst into flames from the volatile combination of
hypocrisy and absurdity, but nearly everyone understands that Trump isn’t
really a Republican.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The outsider
non-politician who regrets saying hurtful words, who is sometimes “too honest”
but “</span><a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-apologizes-words-campaign-trail-lie/story?id=41496030" title="abcnews.go.com"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">will never lie</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">” to the people may surprise us.
At least he has offered a sliver of decency to those looking for something to
cling to — a little humility, a smattering of remorse, a human connection — to
help them justify voting for anybody but Clinton. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump
has been losing ground essentially because of the cumulative effect of his
persistent nastiness. Add to this his off-the-cuff remarks about maybe using
nukes and leaving NATO to its own resources, and his praise of dictators and
strongmen, and he was someone you wouldn’t want anywhere near the football.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Or oneself, as Post Editorial Page Editor
Fred Hiatt </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-final-insult-donald-trump-is-a-bore/2016/08/14/10534714-60b7-11e6-8e45-477372e89d78_story.html?utm_term=.70767ec0b1da" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">wrote</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> , saying Trump was the person you hoped
wouldn’t be seated next to you at a dinner party. On the other hand, I’ve long
admired the sentiment popularized by Alice Roosevelt Longworth: If you can’t
say something good about someone, sit right here by me. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Who
better than Trump? <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The man <i>is</i>
funny, even at his meanest. What many have found repugnant about his style was
indeed the secret to his success. People love hearing said aloud what they’re
really thinking. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But that was then — and
for now at least, it appears to be Conway’s show: No more insults, stick to the
script, focus on Clinton’s dishonesty. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It
just might work. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump Promised Personal Gifts On
‘Celebrity Apprentice.’ Here’s Who Really Paid.</span></u></b></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By David A. Fahrenthold and Alice Crites, Washington Post,
18 August 2016)</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The time had come
to fire Khloé Kardashian. But first, Donald Trump had a question.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“What’s your charity?” Trump asked.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">They were filming “The Celebrity Apprentice,”
the reality-TV show where Trump schooled the faded and the semi-famous in the
arts of advertising, salesmanship and workplace infighting. Most weeks, one
winner got prize money for charity. One loser got fired.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Kardashian told Trump that she was playing
for the Brent Shapiro Foundation, which helps teens stay away from alcohol and
drugs.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump had a pleasant surprise. Although
Kardashian could not win any more prize money, he would give her cause a
special, personal donation. Not the show’s money. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">His own money.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I’m going to give $20,000 to your charity,” Trump said, according to a
transcript of that show.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">He didn’t.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">After the show
aired in 2009, Kardashian’s charity did receive $20,000. But it wasn’t from
Trump. Instead, the check came from a TV production company, the same one that
paid out the show’s official prizes.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The
same thing happened numerous times on “The Celebrity Apprentice.” To console a
fired or disappointed celebrity, Trump would promise a personal gift.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">On-air, Trump seemed to be explicit that this
wasn’t TV fakery: The money he was giving was his own. “Out of my wallet,”
Trump said in one case. “Out of my own account,” he said in another.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But, when the cameras were off, the payments
came from other people’s money.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In some
cases, as with Kardashian, Trump’s “personal” promise was paid off by a
production company. Other times, it was paid off by a nonprofit that Trump
controls, whose coffers are largely filled with other donors’ money.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Washington
Post tracked all the “personal” gifts that Trump promised on the show — during
83 episodes and seven seasons — but could not confirm a single case in which
Trump actually sent a gift from his own pocket.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump did not respond to repeated requests for comment.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">For Trump, “The Apprentice” — and later,
“The Celebrity Apprentice” — helped </span></span><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/wp/2016/01/27/2016/01/27/deciders-trump/" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">reestablish
him</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> as a national figure,
after his fall into </span></span><a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jun/21/hillary-clinton/yep-donald-trumps-companies-have-declared-bankrupt/" title="www.politifact.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">debt and
corporate bankruptcies </span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">in
the 1990s.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">On-screen, Trump was a wise,
tough businessman. And, at times, a kindhearted philanthropist — willing to
give away thousands on a whim.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In one
instance, Trump’s sudden flourish of generosity was enough to move an insult
comedian to tears.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I’m gonna give
$10,000 to it, okay?” Trump said, offering a personal gift to singer Aubrey
O’Day after O’Day’s team lost that week’s task. Then Trump noticed another
contestant, </span></span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Lampanelli" title="en.wikipedia.org"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Lisa
Lampanelli</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> — a comedian
known as “The Queen of Mean. “Are you crying now? Lisa, what’s going on here?”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I thought that was really nice,” Lampanelli
said, her voice breaking. “I mean, it takes you 30 seconds to make that amount,
so thank you. You’re a rich man, and we appreciate it.”</span></span><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Post examined
Trump’s on-air promises as part of its</span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-promised-millions-to-charity-we-found-less-than-10000-over-7-years/2016/06/28/cbab5d1a-37dd-11e6-8f7c-d4c723a2becb_story.html" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">
ongoing search</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> for
evidence that the Republican presidential nominee gives millions to charity out
of his own pocket — as he claims. Trump has declined to release his tax
returns, which would make his charitable donations clear.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">NBC, which broadcast his show, declined to
release the episodes for review, saying it did not own the footage. Instead,
The Post relied on TV transcription services, online recaps of the show,
YouTube clips and public tax records.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In
all, The Post found 21 separate instances where Trump had pledged money to a
celebrity’s cause. Together, those pledges totaled $464,000. The Post then
contacted the individual charities to find out who paid off Trump’s promises.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In one case, the
answer was: nobody at all.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In 2012,
Trump had promised $10,000 to the </span></span><a href="https://www.latinoaids.org/" title="www.latinoaids.org"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Latino
Commission on AIDS</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, the
charity of former Miss Universe</span></span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dayana_Mendoza" title="en.wikipedia.org"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";"> Dayana Mendoza.</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> The charity said it never received the money.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In two other cases, it was not possible to
determine what happened. One charity said that somebody had paid off Trump’s
promise but declined to say who. Leaders of another charity — baseball star
Darryl Strawberry’s </span></span><a href="https://www.guidestar.org/profile/20-5687559" title="www.guidestar.org"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">foundation</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, to which Trump had promised $25,000 — did not
respond to multiple calls or emails from The Post.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In the other 18 cases, the answer was the
same — on-air, Trump promising a gift of his own money; off-air, that gift
coming from someone else.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I think
you’re so incredible that — personally, out of my own account — I’m going to
give you $50,000 for St. Jude’s,” Trump told </span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ4Q599PqSU" title="www.youtube.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">mixed martial arts star Tito Ortiz</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> in 2008.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">This was the first personal promise The Post found, from the show’s
first season.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Ortiz, at the time, was
being fired. His team had come up short in a contest to design advertising for
yogurt-based body wash. To soften the blow, Trump promised the gift to Ortiz’s
charity, </span></span><a href="https://www.stjude.org/" title="www.stjude.org"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in
Memphis</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Tax records show that the hospital was sent
$50,000 from a nonprofit, the Donald J. Trump Foundation.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">That sounds like it was Trump’s money.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But, for the most part, it wasn’t.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/trump-charity-donations/"><span style="color: windowtext; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><br /></span></span></a></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/trump-charity-donations/"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">The Washington Post has contacted more
than 250 charities with some tie to the GOP nominee in an effort to find proof
of the millions he</span></span><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">’</span></span><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">s said he donated. We've
been mostly unsuccessful. View Graphic </span></span></a></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Washington
Post has contacted more than 250 charities with some tie to the GOP nominee in
an effort to find proof of the millions he has said he donated. We've been
mostly unsuccessful. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump had </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-promised-millions-to-charity-we-found-less-than-10000-over-7-years/2016/06/28/cbab5d1a-37dd-11e6-8f7c-d4c723a2becb_story.html" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">founded
</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">the nonprofit group in
the late 1980s — and, in its early years, Trump was its only donor. But that
had changed in the mid-2000s. Trump let the foundation’s assets dwindle to
$4,238 at the beginning of 2007. After that, its coffers were filled using
donations from others, most notably pro wrestling magnates Vince and Linda
McMahon.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In 2007 and 2008 combined,
Trump gave $65,000 to his own foundation, or about 1 percent of its
incoming money.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">When he described his
gift to Ortiz on-air in 2008, it was personal, “from my own account.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Thank you very much,” Ortiz said.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Get out of here,” Trump said.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In the next few
seasons, such personal promises from Trump were relatively rare. The Post found
six such pledges in the show’s first four seasons combined.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And in at least two of those cases, the
payment didn’t come from Trump — or his foundation, which he had used to pay
Ortiz’s charity.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“What’s your charity,
Jose?” Trump asked baseball slugger Jose Canseco in an episode in 2011. Canseco
was leaving the show voluntarily because his father had become ill. As with
Kardashian, Trump said he would soften the blow with a gift. Canseco’s charity
was the Baseball Assistance Team, which provides confidential aid to minor
leaguers, umpires, retired players and others connected to the sport.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“All right, I’m gonna give $25,000,” Trump
said. “Say hello to your father.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">As
with Kardashian, that money came from Reilly Worldwide. Trump gave nothing.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Post sent a
query to Canseco: Did he think any differently about Trump after he learned
that a third party paid off Trump’s promise?</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">No comment. “He said he’s only doing paying jobs. I’m sorry,” Canseco’s
publicist wrote.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In 2012, Trump became
more generous on the air.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">That year, he
promised six $10,000 donations in a single episode. In another episode, he gave
contestant O’Day’s charity $10,000 — the gift that moved Lampanelli to tears.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">It was all Trump Foundation money.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In 2013, the gifts continued. In one episode
that year, Trump handed out $20,000 each to the charities of basketball star
Dennis Rodman, singer La Toya Jackson and actor Gary Busey.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Remember, Donald Trump is a very nice
person, okay?” he told them.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">By then, a
personal gift from Trump was no longer a rare thing. In fact, contestants had
come to expect these gifts — and even to demand them, when Trump didn’t offer
money on his own.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Give her some money.
She didn’t win nothin’,” country singer Trace Adkins told Trump in one episode
as the billionaire was firing former Playboy Playmate Brande Roderick.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Okay, I’m going to give you $20,000, okay?
All right?” Trump told Roderick.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Thank
you, Mr. Trump,” said Adkins, the man who sang “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk.” “That
was cool.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">All of that was the Trump
Foundation’s money.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In fact, The
Post’s search found that all of Trump’s promises from the show’s last three
seasons were paid off by the Trump Foundation, save one. That was the biggest
one. In 2013, Trump promised $100,000 to the American Diabetes Association, the
charity of hip-hop artist Lil Jon. He said that the gift was in honor of Lil
Jon’s mother, who had recently died.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In
that case, a production company paid.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The
Post reached out to Trump, NBC and Mark Burnett — the show’s producer — to ask
whether there was any way that these production-company checks could actually
be considered gifts from Trump himself. Had they, perhaps, been deducted from
Trump’s fees for the show?</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump and
Burnett did not respond. NBC declined to comment.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">After The Post’s
close look at Trump’s promises on the show, a mystery remained: What happened
in 2012 to make Trump so much more generous on the air?</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In the tax records of the Trump Foundation —
which Trump used to pay off most of those new promises — there is no record of
a donation from Trump himself in 2012.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In
fact, there is no record of any gift from Trump’s pocket to the Trump
Foundation in any year since 2008. (In 2011, Comedy Central donated Trump’s
$400,000 appearance fee for a televised roast.)</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But, in 2012, the
Trump Foundation’s records show a large gift from NBC, the network that aired
the show. That was more than enough to cover all the foundation’s gifts to
“Celebrity Apprentice” contestants’ charities, both before 2012 and since.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">For NBC, Trump’s “personal” donations made
for better TV. They added will-he-or-won’t-he drama to the show’s boardroom
scenes, gave uplifting notes to the “firings” and burnished the reputation of
Trump, the show’s star.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Did NBC give
Trump’s foundation money, so that Trump could appear to be more generous
on-camera?</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">An NBC spokeswoman declined
to comment.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-promised-personal-gifts-on-celebrity-apprentice-heres-who-really-paid/2016/08/18/b8d087b4-5d9a-11e6-af8e-54aa2e849447_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-promised-personal-gifts-on-celebrity-apprentice-heres-who-really-paid/2016/08/18/b8d087b4-5d9a-11e6-af8e-54aa2e849447_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1</span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
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<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump: A True
Story</span></u></b></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By David A.
Fahrenthold and Robert O’Harrow Jr., Washington Post, 10 August 2016)</span></span></div>
<br />
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<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The mogul, in a 2007 deposition, had to
face up to a series of falsehoods and exaggerations. And he did. Sort of.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="display: none; margin: 0px;">Share
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<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The lawyer gave
Donald Trump a note, written in Trump’s own handwriting. He asked Trump to read
it aloud. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump may not have realized it
yet, but he had walked into a trap.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Peter,
you’re a real loser,’” Trump began reading.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The mogul had sent the note to a reporter, objecting to a story that
said Trump owned a “small minority stake” in a Manhattan real estate project.
Trump insisted that the word “small” was incorrect. Trump continued reading: “I
wrote, ‘Is 50 percent small?’ ”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“This
[note] was intended to indicate that you had a 50 percent stake in the
project, correct?” said the lawyer.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“That’s
correct,” Trump said.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">For the first of
many times that day, Trump was about to be caught saying something that wasn’t
true. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">LAWYER:</span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> Mr. Trump, do you own 30 percent or
50 percent of the limited partnership?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP:</span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> I own 30 percent. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">It was a
mid-December morning in 2007 — the start of an interrogation unlike anything
else in the public record of Trump’s life.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump had brought it on himself. He had sued a reporter, accusing him of
being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net
worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables and brought Trump in for a
deposition.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">For two straight days, they
asked Trump question after question that touched on the same theme: Trump’s
honesty.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The lawyers
confronted the mogul with his past statements — and with his company’s internal
documents, which often showed those statements had been incorrect or invented.
The lawyers were relentless. Trump, the bigger-than-life mogul, was vulnerable
— cornered, out-prepared and under oath.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Thirty times, they caught him.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump
had misstated sales at his condo buildings. Inflated the price of membership at
one of his golf clubs. Overstated the depth of his past debts and the number of
his employees.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">That deposition —
170 transcribed pages — offers extraordinary insights into Trump’s relationship
with the truth. Trump’s falsehoods were unstrategic — needless, highly
specific, easy to disprove. When caught, Trump sometimes blamed others for the
error or explained that the untrue thing really </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">was </span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">true, in his mind,
because he saw the situation more positively than others did.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Have you ever lied in public statements
about your properties?” the lawyer asked.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I try and be truthful,” Trump said. “I’m no different from a politician
running for office. You always want to put the best foot forward.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In his
presidential campaign, Trump has sought to make his truth-telling a selling
point. He nicknamed his main Republican opponent “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz. He called
his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, “A PATHOLOGICAL LIAR!” in a recent </span></span><a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/760420894271471620" target="_blank" title="twitter.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Twitter
message</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">. “I will present
the facts plainly and honestly,” he said </span></span><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4612805/donald-trump-addresses-republican-national-convention&start=0" target="_blank" title="www.c-span.org"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">in the opening of his speech</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> at the Republican National Convention. “We cannot afford to be so
politically correct anymore.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump has
had a habit of telling demonstrable untruths during his presidential campaign.
The Washington Post’s Fact Checker has awarded him four Pinocchios — the
maximum a statement can receive — </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/03/22/all-of-donald-trumps-four-pinocchio-ratings-in-one-place/" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">39
times since he announced his bid last summer</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">. In many cases, his statements echo those in the
2007 deposition: They are specific, checkable — and wrong.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump said he </span></span><a href="http://video.foxnews.com/v/5067624354001/trump-if-i-were-president-khans-son-wouldnt-have-died/?#sp=show-clips" target="_blank" title="video.foxnews.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">opposed</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> the Iraq War
at the start. He </span></span><a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/in-2002-donald-trump-said-he-supported-invading-iraq-on-the" target="_blank" title="www.buzzfeed.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">didn’t</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">. He said he’d
never mocked a disabled New York Times reporter. He </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/08/02/donald-trumps-revisionist-history-of-mocking-a-disabled-reporter/" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">had</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">. Trump also said the National Football
League had sent him a letter, objecting to a presidential debate that was
scheduled for the same time as a football game. It </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2016/07/30/nfl-refutes-trump-claim-that-it-sent-him-a-letter-bashing-debate-schedule/" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">hadn’t</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Last
week, Trump claimed that he had seen footage — taken at a top-secret location
and released by the Iranian government — showing a plane unloading a large
amount of cash to Iran from the U.S. government. He hadn’t. Trump </span></span><a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/761511930238496772" target="_blank" title="twitter.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">later
conceded</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> he’d been
mistaken — he’d seen TV news video that showed a plane during a prisoner
release.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But, even under
the spotlight of this campaign, Trump has never had an experience quite like
this deposition on Dec. 19 and 20, 2007.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">He was trapped in a room — with his own prior statements and three
high-powered lawyers.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“A very clear and
visible side effect of my lawyers’ questioning of Trump is that he [was
revealed as] a routine and habitual fabulist,” said Timothy L. O’Brien, the
author Trump had sued.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Washington
Post sent the Trump campaign a detailed list of questions about this
deposition, listing all the times when Trump seemed to have been caught in a
false or unsupported statement. The Post asked Trump whether he wanted to
challenge any of those findings — and whether he had felt regret when
confronted with them.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">He did not answer
those questions.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In 2005, O’Brien,
then a reporter for the New York Times, had published a book called “</span></span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/044669617X?ie=UTF8&tag=thewaspos09-20&camp=1789&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=044669617X" target="_blank" title="www.amazon.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Trump Nation: The Art of Being the Donald</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">.” In the book, O’Brien cited sources who
questioned a claim at the bedrock of Trump’s identity — that his net worth was
more than $5 billion. O’Brien said he had spoken to three sources that put
the real figure between $150 million and $250 million.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump sued. He later told The Post that he
intended to hurt O’Brien, whom he called a “lowlife sleazebag.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I didn’t read [the book], to be honest with
you. . . . I never read it. I saw some of the things they said,” Trump said
later. “I said: ‘Go sue him. It will cost him a lot of money.’ ”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">By filing suit, Trump hadn’t just opened himself
up to questioning — he had opened a door into the opaque and secretive company
he ran.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">O’Brien’s
attorneys included Mary Jo White, now the chair of the Securities and Exchange
Commission, and Andrew Ceresney, now the SEC’s director of enforcement. The
lawsuit had given them the power to request that Trump turn over internal
company documents, and they used it. They arrived at the deposition having
already identified where Trump’s public statements hadn’t matched the private
truth.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The questions began with that
handwritten note and the 50 percent stake that wasn’t 50 percent.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“The 30 percent equates to much more
than 30 percent,” Trump explained. His reasoning was that he had not been
required to put up money at the outset, so his 30 percent share seemed
more valuable.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Are you saying that the
real estate community would interpret your interest to be 50 percent, even
though in limited partnership agreements it’s 30 percent?” Ceresney asked.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Smart people would,” Trump said.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Smart people?”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Smart people would say it’s much more than
30 percent.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP:</span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> I got more than a million dollars,
because they have tremendous promotion expenses, to my advantage. In other
words, they promote, which has great value, through billboards, through
newspapers, through radio, I think through television – yeah, through
television.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And they spend – again, I’d
have to ask them, but I bet they spend at least a million or two million or
maybe even more than that on promoting Donald Trump.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">LAWYER:</span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> But how much of the payments were cash? </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP:</span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> Approximately $400,000. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">LAWYER:</span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> So when you say publicly that you got
paid more than a million dollars, you’re including in that sum the promotional
expenses that they pay?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP:</span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> Oh, absolutely, yes. That has a great
value. It has a great value to me.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">LAWYER:</span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> Do you actually say that when you say you
got paid more than a million dollars publicly?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP:</span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> I don’t break it down.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">On to the next
one.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I was paid more
than a million dollars,” Trump said when Ceresney asked how much he’d been paid
for a speech in 2005 at New York City’s Learning Annex, a continuing-education
center.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Ceresney was ready.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“But how much of the payments were cash?”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Approximately $400,000,” Trump said.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump said his personal math included the
intangible value of publicity: The Learning Annex had advertised his speech
heavily, and Trump thought that helped his brand. Therefore, in his mind he’d
been paid more than $1 million, even though his actual payment was $400,000.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Do you actually say that, when you say you
got a million dollars publicly?” Ceresney asked.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I don’t break it down,” Trump said.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">As the deposition
went on, the lawyers led Trump through case after case in which he’d overstated
his success.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The lawyer played
a clip from Larry King’s talk show, in which King asked Trump how many people
worked for him. “Twenty-two thousand or so,” Trump said.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Are all those people on your payroll?”
Ceresney asked him.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“No, not directly,”
Trump said. He said he was counting employees of other companies that acted as
suppliers and subcontractors to his businesses.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Another one. In O’Brien’s book, Trump had been quoted saying: “I had
zero borrowings from [my father’s] estate. . . . I give you my word.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Under oath: “Mr.
Trump, have you ever borrowed money from your father’s estate?”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I think a small amount a long time ago,”
Trump said. “I think it was like in the $9 million range.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Another one. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In one of his own books, Trump had said about
one of his golf courses: “Membership costs $300,000. I think it’s a bargain.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Under oath: “In
fact, your memberships were not selling at $300,000 at that time, correct?”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“We’ve sold many for two hundred” thousand,
Trump said. Then, Trump pushed it upward: “We’ve sold many for, I think,
two-fifty.” </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But this was not the place to
push it</span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">.</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The lawyer had an
internal Trump document that showed the true figure — “$200,000 per
membership,” Ceresney said.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Correct,”
Trump acknowledged. “Right.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump passes the
blame</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">LAWYER: </span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">You didn’t correct it when you read the
book?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: </span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Well, I did correct it, and she didn’t
correct it. But you could have her in as a witness, and I’m sure we’ll bring
her in as a witness because what she wrote was — I asked her to change it to
“billions of dollars in debt,” and she probably forgot. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">LAWYER: </span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And when you read it, you didn’t see it?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP:</span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> I didn’t see it.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">LAWYER: </span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">You didn’t see it.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP:</span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> I read it very quickly. I didn’t see it.
I would have corrected it, but I didn’t see it. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In some cases,
Trump acknowledged he was wrong — but not that he was at fault. Instead, he
sought to turn the blame on others.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“This
is somebody that wrote it, probably Meredith McIver,” Trump said at one point
when confronted with another false statement. “That is a mistake.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">McIver, a staff writer with the Trump Organization,
</span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/20/who-is-meredith-mciver-the-trump-staffer-who-took-the-fall-for-melanias-speech/" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">blazed
into the public eye last month </span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">for having inserted plagiarized material — taken from Michelle Obama’s 2008
convention speech — in the convention speech of Trump’s wife, Melania. McIver
said it had been an innocent mistake.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But in this
deposition more than eight years earlier, Trump was blaming her for a mistake
in one of his own books, “</span></span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345481038?ie=UTF8&tag=thewaspos09-20&camp=1789&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=0345481038" target="_blank" title="www.amazon.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">How to Get Rich</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">.” In
the 2004 book, co-written with McIver, Trump described his massive debt load
during a low period in the early 1990s. “I owed billions upon billions of
dollars — $9.2 billion to be exact,” the book said as it retold the story
of his rise back to success.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The depth
of that financial hole made it seem even more impressive that Trump had climbed
out again. But the figure was wrong. His actual debts had been much less.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I pointed it out to the person who wrote the
book,” Trump said, meaning McIver.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Right
after she wrote the book?”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“That’s
correct,” Trump said.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Then the lawyer
showed Trump another book he’d written with McIver, three years later.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“In fact, I was $9 billion in debt,”
Trump read aloud. A similar error, repeated. It was McIver’s fault again.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“She probably forgot,” Trump said.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“And when you read it, you didn’t correct
it?”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I didn’t see it,” Trump said.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“You didn’t see it.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I read it very quickly,” Trump said about a
book he was credited with writing.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump makes
unsupported claims</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">LAWYER:</span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> When you wrote, “O’Brien . . . threatened
sources by telling them he can, quote, ‘Settle scores with enemies by writing
negative articles about them,’ ” what was the basis for that statement? </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP:</span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> Just my perception of him. I don’t know
that he indicated anything like that to me, but I think he probably did
indirectly. Just my dealing with him.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In other cases,
the lawyers prodded Trump into admitting that he had made
authoritative-sounding statements without any proof behind them. These
statements were another kind of untruth.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">They were not necessarily false. They might have been true.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But Trump said them without knowing one way
or the other.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“What basis do you have
for that statement?” Ceresney asked in one case, about an assertion from Trump
that O’Brien had been reported to the police for stalking.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I guess that was probably taken off the
Internet,” Trump said.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">On to the next
one.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“You wrote,
‘O’Brien . . . threatened sources by telling them he can, quote, settle scores
with enemies by writing negative articles about them,’ ” Ceresney asked,
reading Trump’s words from a legal complaint. “What was the basis for that
statement?”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Just my perception of him,”
Trump said. “I don’t know that he indicated anything like that to me, but I
think he probably did indirectly.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The
most striking example was a question at the very heart of the legal case: What
was Trump’s actual net worth?</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump had
told O’Brien he was worth up to $6 billion. But the lawyers confronted him
with other documents — from Trump’s accountants and from outside banks — that
seemed to show the real figure was far lower.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Have you ever not been truthful” about your net worth, the lawyers
asked?</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump’s answer here was that the
truth about his wealth was — in essence — up to him to decide.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and
down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings,”
Trump said. “But I try.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The interrogation
finally ended after two days. Trump’s attorney made a final demand. “I want the
record to be crystal clear that every single word, every question, every
answer, every word, is confidential,” said the attorney, Mark Ressler.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In 2009, a judge dismissed Trump’s case
against O’Brien. Trump appealed, but in 2011 that was denied, too. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Along the way, this once-confidential
deposition become part of the public record when O’Brien’s attorneys attached
it to one of their motions.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In a brief
statement this week, Trump said he felt the lawsuit was a success, despite his
loss.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“O’Brien knows nothing about me,”
Trump said. “His book was a total failure and ultimately I had great success
doing what I wanted to do — costing this third rate reporter a lot of legal
fees.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">O’Brien, now executive editor of
Bloomberg View, said Trump got that wrong. The publisher and insurance
companies covered the cost.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Donald
Trump lost his lawsuit and, unlike him, it didn’t cost me a penny to litigate
it,” he said.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px 0px 11px; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Most Blatant Falsehoods</span></span></u></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Memberships at his golf club in Briarcliff
Manor, N.Y., cost $300,000.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The memberships to this golf club were being sold
for $200,000. Trump said he arrived at the higher number by including yearly
fees that members had to pay after joining.</span></span></i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump Tower Las Vegas was mostly sold out.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump was keeping a number of units for himself.
The lawyer estimated that closer to three-quarters of the units had been sold.
Trump's response was "What would you like me to say, 'Oh, gee, the
building is not doing well, blah, blah, blah, come by the building’? Nobody
talks that way. Who would ever talk that way?"</span></span></i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump Tower Las Vegas was worth $4.3
million.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">His Seven Springs property was worth $150
million because he planned to build homes on it.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump was touting that higher value, but he had
not made any significant effort to build the homes that the value was based on.
“I don't have a plan to build homes, because I don't want to build homes,” he
said.</span></span></i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">He sold a home lot in California for about
$4 million.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Property records indicated it was $1.4 million.</span></span></i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The operating income at Trump Tower was
$17.5 million per year.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">He actually got about $4 million in the year in
question. Trump said the property was unusually vacant that year because of a
turnover in tenants.</span></span></i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">He had “zero borrowings” from his father’s
estate.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump said he borrowed about $9 million from his
father’s estate.</span></span></i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump said 22,000 people worked for him.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump was counting people who weren’t actually on
his payroll -- employees of his businesses’ subcontractors and suppliers.</span></span></i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump owned a 50 percent stake in the West
Side Yards real estate development partnership.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump
actually owned 30 percent, but he gave himself credit for a bigger stake
because he had not been required to put up money to get that share: “Because of
the fact that I put no money up, that 30 percent is equated to 50 percent.”</span></span></i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">He was paid $1 million for a single speech
in 2005.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In reality, Trump was paid $400,000 for the
speech. But, he said, advertising for the speech had added to the value of his
brand. He believed that with the value of that publicity included, the true
payment for the speech was more than $1 million.</span></span></i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">He “largely” owned the Waikiki Trump Tower
building.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">He didn’t own the building. Somebody else did.
Trump had agreed to let his name be used on the building. But, Trump said, this
licensing deal was so advantageous to him that it was “a form of ownership.”</span></span></i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In the early 1990s, he was $9.2 billion in
debt.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">This was published in Trump's book "How to
Get Rich” Trump uses this figure to make his comeback seem even more
impressive. But his debt was never that high. Trump shifted the blame, saying
co-author Meredith McIver put the number in.</span></span></i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump Tower Las Vegas brought in $1.3
billion.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump acknowledged the actual value of units sold
was $956 million but said the units he was “not actively selling,” and keeping
as an investment, brought the total to $1.3 billion. Trump's falsehoods often
include specific numbers, making them easily disprovable.</span></span></i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/trump-lies/"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/trump-lies/</span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">For Trump, A New ‘Rigged’ System: The Election
Itself</span></u></b></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By David Weigel,
Washington Post, 02 August 2016)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Donald Trump, trailing
narrowly in presidential polls, has issued a warning to worried Republican
voters: The election will be “rigged” against him — and he could lose as a
result.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump pointed to several court
cases nationwide in which restrictive laws requiring voters to show
identification have been thrown out. He said those decisions open the door to
fraud in November.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“If the election is
rigged, I would not be surprised,” he told The Washington Post in an interview
Tuesday afternoon. “The voter ID situation has turned out to be a very unfair
development. We may have people vote 10 times.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Those comments
followed a claim Trump made Monday, to an audience in Ohio, that “the election
is going to be rigged.” That same day, in an interview with Fox News Channel’s
Sean Hannity, he beseeched Republicans to start “watching closely” or the
election will be “taken away from us” through fraud.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Like much of what Trump says, the “rigged”
riff defies the recent norms of politics. And it taps into fears that long
predate his campaign. One is a growing and unsubstantiated worry that elections
are being stolen. The other is a broader unease that regular Americans are
being cheated by Wall Street, by Washington and by a duplicitous media.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Those worries
have found voice in both parties this year, with Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders
(Vt.) both rallying their supporters during the Republican and Democratic
primaries with the assessment that the system is rigged. Now, Trump is reviving
the theme to highlight the possibility of voter fraud in November.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Since the 2000 election, which ended in a
legal battle that stopped recounts of ballots in Florida, paranoia about the
nation’s election system has mushroomed. According to a Pew Research Center
survey, just 48 percent of Americans were confident that “the votes across
the country were accurately counted” in the 2004 election. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">After 2012, an
election with a wider popular vote margin, that percentage fell to
31 percent. Among Republicans, it was 21 percent.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“The
idea that the person who won the presidency did so illegitimately is not new,”
said Jesse Walker, the author of “</span></span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062135562?ie=UTF8"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">The United States of Paranoia</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">,” a history of conspiracy theories.
“What’s new is the possibility of a possible loser in the presidential contest
making an issue out of it. I can’t think of another example in the last
century.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Jokes about Democrats counting
votes from dead people or bused-in fraudsters are part of the Republican lingua
franca. During his unsuccessful presidential bid, Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) often
encouraged his audiences to bring friends and family to the polls with a joke
about Democratic election theft.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I want
you to vote 10 times,” he would say. “Don’t worry — we’re not Democrats.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In his interview
with The Post, Trump offered that his chief concern about fraud was that states
without strict identification requirements would see rampant repeat voters. “If
you don’t have voter ID, you can just keep voting and voting and voting,” he
said. On Fox News, Trump’s only evidence for fraud consisted of “precincts
where there were practically nobody voting for the Republican” in the 2012
election.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In reality, voter fraud is
rare. A 2014 study by Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School, found
just 31 possible instances of fraud over 14 years of elections with a total of
1 billion votes cast. The low Republican vote in some urban centers squares
with the low support black voters gave GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign in
2012.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Still, the battle
against “voter fraud” has made gains with Republican lawmakers and conservative
journalists. Since the 2013 decision in </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Shelby County v. Holder</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> undid
some requirements of the Voting Rights Act, restrictive new voter ID and
registration laws have passed through Republican-run states. Those laws have
been challenged successfully in court, with North Carolina, North Dakota and
Wisconsin losing cases in the days before Trump made his “rigged” comments.
North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory accused judges of “undermining the integrity of
our elections.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In an interview
Tuesday with CBS12 in Florida, Trump seemed to condemn the rulings against the
states. “Some bad court cases have come down,” he said. Some of his more
freewheeling supporters went even further, with the radio host Alex Jones
warning listeners that the Obama administration might cancel the election, and
off-again, on-again adviser Roger Stone telling Breitbart News that Trump
needed to be ready for a violent post-election contest.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I think he’s gotta put them on notice that
their inauguration will be rhetorical,” Stone said. “I mean civil disobedience,
not violence, but it will be a bloodbath. The government will be shut down if
they attempt to steal this and swear Hillary in.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">To Ari Berman, a
reporter for the Nation and the author of the voting rights history “</span></span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Give-Us-Ballot-Struggle-America/dp/1250094720/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1470181753&sr=1-1&keywords=give+us+the+ballot"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Give Us the Ballot</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">,” Trump’s worry about “rigging” sounded
like an adaptation of something already mainstream among Republicans.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“There’s been a two-decade campaign on the
right to drum up fears of ‘voter fraud’ stealing elections,” Berman said.
“They’re trying to say that these voting rights victories will lead to more
fraud. They want to spin these court victories not as something that’s good for
democracy, but something that will hurt democracy. That’s what Trump is buying
into.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">At the same time,
many supporters of Sanders’s presidential run have argued that the Democratic
nomination was effectively stolen from him — another sentiment Trump has tried
to exploit. Long before the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia,
Sanders supporters asked whether a purge of New York voters, California’s slow
ballot count or the closure of polling places in Arizona’s largest county had
suppressed their votes.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“The Bernie
Sanders folks don’t believe all the ballots were counted,” Chuck Pennachio, an
academic and a Sanders delegate from Pennsylvania, said at a news conference
last week. “They don’t believe that the process was clean. If you look at the
exit polls, they don’t match up with the results in 11 of the 12 closest
states.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Every theory
about how the primaries were stolen has been debunked. The famous New York
purge, for example, disproportionately affected nonwhite voters, who had been
breaking for Clinton. The same was true of the long lines in Arizona’s Maricopa
County, which resulted from a decision by the county’s Republican-run elections
team.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But in trying to explain how some
early exit poll results diverged from vote totals, debunkers found themselves
struggling to convince their listeners. Joe Lenski, the lead pollster for exit
poll provider Edison Research, explained to the skeptical left-wing site
Counterpunch that Sanders voters and young voters had been more likely to fill
out the surveys. That did not stop the spread of theories that millions of
Sanders votes might have been switched or suppressed. Last week, when more than
200 Sanders supporters invaded a media tent at the DNC, some left behind charts
attempting to prove that vote-counters skewed the election.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Clinton’s
2.9 million-vote margin in the primaries may have set the upper bounds for
speculation that an American election had been stolen. Sanders supporters also
latched onto internal emails between staff members at the Democratic National
Committee, in which they speculated about a Clinton nomination even before the
primaries were over. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump, who
previously accused Republicans of rigging primaries through the delegate
selection process, found solace in the email scandal. Like Sanders, whose
voters he wants to convert, he had found the idea of a rigged process syncing
perfectly with his outsider brand. On Fox News, Trump tried to tell Sanders’s
supporters that they already had seen an election wrested away by the political
elite.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“It was rigged a little bit
[against] me, and we won,” he said. “It was rigged a little bit against Bernie
Sanders.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“We know it was rigged,”
Hannity said. “We’ve seen the emails.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-trump-a-new-rigged-system-the-election-itself/2016/08/02/d9fb33b0-58c4-11e6-9aee-8075993d73a2_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-trump-a-new-rigged-system-the-election-itself/2016/08/02/d9fb33b0-58c4-11e6-9aee-8075993d73a2_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1</span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump’s Ryan Snub Underscores Divisions In The GOP</span></u></b></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By Philip
Rucker, Washington Post, 02 August 2016)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Republican
presidential nominee Donald Trump escalated his war with his own party’s
leadership Tuesday by refusing to endorse House Speaker Paul D. Ryan or Sen.
John McCain, two of the GOP’s highest-ranking elected officials, in their
primary campaigns.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump’s comments — an
extraordinary breach of political decorum that underscores the party’s deep
divisions — came as President Obama delivered his sternest rebuke yet of the
celebrity mogul candidate. Obama declared Trump “unfit to serve as president”
and “woefully unprepared to do this job,” and he challenged Republican leaders
to withdraw their support of their nominee.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Obama punctuated
his remarks, delivered at a Tuesday morning news conference, by explaining that
he had never before felt compelled to so thoroughly denounce a political
opponent. While he recalled disagreeing with McCain and Mitt Romney on policy
issues in the 2008 and 2012 campaigns, Obama said that he never questioned
their qualifications or their “basic decency,” and that he knew they would “abide
by certain norms and rules and common sense. But that’s not the situation
here.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In an interview
with The Washington Post on Tuesday, Trump said he was not backing Ryan in his
primary election next Tuesday in Wisconsin, or McCain in his Arizona primary
later this month. Both have endorsed Trump but have criticized some of his
policies and statements, </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mccain-adds-latest-salvo-in-gop-dismay-over-trump-clash-with-khan-family/2016/08/01/10ca7e10-57e8-11e6-831d-0324760ca856_story.html" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">most
recently</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> his belittling
of the parents of dead U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump praised Ryan’s underdog opponent, Paul
Nehlen, for running “a very good campaign” and said of Ryan: “I like Paul, but
these are horrible times for our country. We need very strong leadership. We
need very, very strong leadership. And I’m just not quite there yet. I’m not
quite there yet.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump’s comments
underscore the continuing divisions in the GOP two weeks after the party’s
national convention in Cleveland, which was carefully choreographed to showcase
unity. Also Tuesday, Rep. Richard L. Hanna (N.Y.) became the first sitting
Republican member of Congress to </span></span><a href="http://www.syracuse.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/08/gop_rep_richard_hanna_says_hell_vote_for_hillary_clinton.html"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">declare publicly</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> his plans to vote for Democratic nominee Hillary
Clinton.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump said that Ryan has sought
his endorsement but that he is only “giving it very serious consideration.”
Responding to Trump, Ryan spokesman Zack Roday said in a statement: “Neither
Speaker Ryan nor anyone on his team has ever asked for Donald Trump’s
endorsement. And we are confident in a victory next week regardless.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump made his comments during a wide-ranging
50-minute interview Tuesday afternoon over lunch at the Trump National Golf
Club in Northern Virginia. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">He said he will
work to negotiate the terms of general-election debates in his favor, saying
that three is “the right number” but that they should not be scheduled on the
same nights as National Football League games or the baseball World Series. He
said that he should have influence in selecting “a fair moderator” for each
debate and that third-party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein should not
be allowed on stage. “I’d rather have head to head” with Clinton, Trump said.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">He took issue
with the characterization of Clinton at last week’s Democratic National
Convention as </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/democratic-national-convention-supporters-hope-to-reintroduce-clinton-to-skeptical-voters/2016/07/26/6e8d244a-52ec-11e6-88eb-7dda4e2f2aec_story.html" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">a
fighter and a change-maker</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">. “Hillary’s not a change person. She’s going to be a person to keep it
just the way it is,” Trump said, biting into his cheeseburger. “It’s going to
be four more years of Obama.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump
lashed out at the media, including The Post, which he accused of turning
sharply against him since he secured the nomination. “It’s myself really
against the media,” he said, citing what he views as “a tremendous bias against
me.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump’s statements about Ryan are
the latest hiccup in what has been a fraught relationship for the two party
leaders. Ryan endorsed Trump this spring and </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/paul-ryans-full-speech-at-the-republican-national-convention/2016/07/19/c0fd6b0c-4df8-11e6-bf27-405106836f96_video.html" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">spoke
on his behalf</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> at the
convention, but only after a period of public soul-searching.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Ryan has disagreed with Trump on several key
issues — including his proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the United
States — and he issued </span></span><a href="http://www.speaker.gov/press-release/statement-house-speaker-paul-ryan" title="www.speaker.gov"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">a statement</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> over the weekend that indirectly
criticized Trump’s comments about the Khans.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Many Muslim Americans have served valiantly in our military, and made
the ultimate sacrifice,” Ryan said in the statement. “Captain Khan was one such
brave example. His sacrifice — and that of Khizr and Ghazala Khan — should
always be honored. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Period.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Khizr Khan </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/28/the-father-of-muslim-soldier-killed-in-action-just-delivered-a-brutal-repudiation-of-donald-trump/" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">spoke
at the Democratic convention</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> with his wife, Ghazala, at his side. He said that Trump “smears the
character of Muslims” and challenged his knowledge of the Constitution. The
Khans have sat for numerous interviews in the days since, calling Trump’s
character into question.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In the Tuesday
interview, Trump defended his commentary about the Khans by saying, “I was
viciously attacked on the stage, and I have a right to answer back.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">However, his campaign acknowledged the crisis
in an email sent to congressional supporters this week with the subject line
“Urgent Pivot: Khan and TPs.” The email asked allies on Capitol Hill to defend
Trump’s heavily criticized remarks about the Khans by underscoring his
commitment to ending “radical Islamic terror” and deemphasizing his most
confrontational comments. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In the interview,
Trump rejected the suggestion that some people have concluded that he lacks
common decency. “I think frankly a lot of people agree with what I’m saying,”
he said. “I was viciously attacked on the stage. All I did was respond to it.
Pure and simple. It should’ve been a one-hour story, and they make it a longer
story.” </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">He blamed what he called “unfair
media” for giving the Khans a platform.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Nehlen,
Ryan’s primary opponent, came to Trump’s defense over his confrontation with
the Khans, for which Trump </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/08/01/trump-thanks-paul-ryans-primary-challenger-for-kind-words/"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">thanked him</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> in a tweet Monday night. Trump’s shout-out
sparked speculation that he might endorse Nehlen.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Asked about this
in the interview, Trump said Ryan’s “opponent is a big fan of what I’m saying —
big fan. His opponent, who’s running a very good campaign, obviously, I’ve
heard — his opponent sent me a very scholarly and well-thought-out letter
yesterday, and all I did was say thank you very much for your very nice
letter.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In making his comments Tuesday,
Trump may have been seeking retribution for Ryan’s dragging his feet about
endorsing Trump in May. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump’s phrasing
of his uncertainty about Ryan — “I’m just not quite there yet” — echoes what
Ryan told CNN’s Jake Tapper in a </span></span><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/05/politics/paul-ryan-donald-trump-gop-nominee/"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">May interview</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> about endorsing Trump: “I’m just not ready to do
that at this point. I’m not there right now.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">On Monday,
McCain, a Vietnam War hero, issued a lengthy statement denouncing Trump for his
comments about the Khan family. Asked about McCain’s rebuke, Trump said, “I
haven’t endorsed John McCain.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I’ve never
been there with John McCain because I’ve always felt that he should have done a
much better job for the vets,” Trump continued. “He has not done a good job for
the vets, and I’ve always felt that he should have done a much better job for
the vets. So I’ve always had a difficult time with John for that reason,
because our vets are not being treated properly. They’re not being treated
fairly.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">McCain did not comment on
Trump’s remarks Tuesday. But he did meet with Trump’s running mate, Indiana
Gov. Mike Pence, who was in Arizona on Tuesday for two rallies.</span></span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">McCain is locked
in a three-way primary — the election is Aug. 30, and early voting begins this
week — against former state senator Kelli Ward and tea party activist Clair Van
Steenwyk. A third challenger, Alex Meluskey, </span></span><a href="http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/azdc/2016/08/01/one-sen-john-mccains-primary-foes-drops-out-race/87898336/"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">suspended his campaign </span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">this week.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In the interview, Trump said he thought it was a mistake for senators to
distance themselves from him because of his popularity with the Republican
base. He singled out Sen. Kelly Ayotte — who, like Ryan and McCain, criticized
his comments about the Khans — as a weak and disloyal leader in New Hampshire,
a state whose presidential primary Trump won handily.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“New Hampshire is one of my favorite places,”
Trump said. “You have a Kelly Ayotte who doesn’t want to talk about Trump, but
I’m beating her in the polls by a lot. You tell me. Are these people that
should be representing us, okay? You tell me.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">He continued: “I don’t know Kelly Ayotte. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I know she’s given me no support — zero
support — and yet I’m leading her in the polls. I’m doing very well in New
Hampshire. We need loyal people in this country. We need fighters in this
country. We don’t need weak people. We have enough of them. We need fighters in
this country. But Kelly Ayotte has given me zero support, and I’m doing great
in New Hampshire.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Ayotte, whose aides
said she still plans to vote for Trump, responded with a statement: “I call it
like I see it, and I’m always going to stand up for our military families and
what’s best for the people of New Hampshire.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump went on to
say that if he loses the election, he will start two or three “anti-certain
candidate” super PACs, which he vowed to fund with $10 million apiece, to
savage Republicans or Democrats of his choosing in future elections. He said
his targets might include Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) or Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who
both lost in the primaries to Trump but are eyeing another run in 2020.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Hanna, a three-term congressman who is not
running for reelection this year, has bucked his party in the past on issues
including same-sex marriage and climate change. He said Trump’s prolonged feud
with the Khans was the final straw that pushed him to declare his support for
Clinton. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I saw that and felt incensed,”
Hanna told Syracuse.com. “I was stunned by the callousness of his comments.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">If the Republican
disunity is alarming Trump, he did not show it in the interview. He predicted
that he would “do great” in Ohio and Pennsylvania, where Clinton and running
mate Tim Kaine </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/07/29/clinton-kaine-kick-off-battleground-bus-tour-at-pennsylvania-rally/" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">campaigned
together</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> over the
weekend.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I’m going to do great in
states that some people aren’t even thinking about,” Trump said. “I’ve got
states that we can win that other Republican candidates wouldn’t even stop over
for dinner.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Asked which states he had
in mind, Trump paused.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Well,” he said.
“I’d rather not say. . . . That’s my attitude on the military. I don’t like
telling the enemy what I’m doing.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-refuses-to-endorse-paul-ryan-in-gop-primary-im-just-not-quite-there-yet/2016/08/02/1449f028-58e9-11e6-831d-0324760ca856_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-refuses-to-endorse-paul-ryan-in-gop-primary-im-just-not-quite-there-yet/2016/08/02/1449f028-58e9-11e6-831d-0324760ca856_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1</span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></div>
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<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<b><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Donald
Trump’s Ghostwriter Tells All</span></u></b></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By Jane Mayer, New
Yorker, 25 July 2016)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/160725_r28431-876x1200-1468523219.jpg"></a></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="/1"></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Last
June, as dusk fell outside Tony Schwartz’s sprawling house, on a leafy back
road in Riverdale, New York, he pulled out his laptop and caught up with the
day’s big news: Donald J. Trump had declared his candidacy for President. As
Schwartz watched a video of the speech, he began to feel personally implicated.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump, facing a crowd that had gathered in
the lobby of Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue, laid out his qualifications, saying,
“We need a leader that wrote ‘The Art of the Deal.’ ” If that was so,
Schwartz thought, then he, not Trump, should be running. Schwartz dashed off a
tweet: “Many thanks Donald Trump for suggesting I run for President, based on
the fact that I wrote ‘The Art of the Deal.’ ”</span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Schwartz had ghostwritten Trump’s 1987 breakthrough memoir,
earning a joint byline on the cover, half of the book’s
five-hundred-thousand-dollar advance, and half of the royalties. The book was a
phenomenal success, spending forty-eight weeks on the </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Times</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> best-seller
list, thirteen of them at No. 1. More than a million copies have been bought,
generating several million dollars in royalties. The book expanded Trump’s
renown far beyond New York City, making him an emblem of the successful tycoon.
Edward Kosner, the former editor and publisher of </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">New York</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, where
Schwartz worked as a writer at the time, says, “Tony created Trump. He’s Dr.
Frankenstein.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Starting in late 1985, Schwartz spent eighteen months with
Trump—camping out in his office, joining him on his helicopter, tagging along
at meetings, and spending weekends with him at his Manhattan apartment and his
Florida estate. During that period, Schwartz felt, he had got to know him
better than almost anyone else outside the Trump family. Until Schwartz posted
the tweet, though, he had not spoken publicly about Trump for decades. It had
never been his ambition to be a ghostwriter, and he had been glad to move on.
But, as he watched a replay of the new candidate holding forth for forty-five
minutes, he noticed something strange: over the decades, Trump appeared to have
convinced himself that he </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">had</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> written the book. Schwartz recalls
thinking, “If he could lie about that on Day One—when it was so easily
refuted—he is likely to lie about anything.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">It seemed improbable that Trump’s campaign would succeed, so
Schwartz told himself that he needn’t worry much. But, as Trump denounced
Mexican immigrants as “rapists,” near the end of the speech, Schwartz felt
anxious. He had spent hundreds of hours observing Trump firsthand, and felt
that he had an unusually deep understanding of what he regarded as Trump’s
beguiling strengths and disqualifying weaknesses. Many Americans, however, saw
Trump as a charmingly brash entrepreneur with an unfailing knack for business—a
mythical image that Schwartz had helped create. “It pays to trust your
instincts,” Trump says in the book, adding that he was set to make hundreds of
millions of dollars after buying a hotel that he hadn’t even walked through.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In the subsequent months, as Trump defied predictions by
establishing himself as the front-runner for the Republican nomination,
Schwartz’s desire to set the record straight grew. He had long since left
journalism to launch the Energy Project, a consulting firm that promises to
improve employees’ productivity by helping them boost their “physical,
emotional, mental, and spiritual” morale. It was a successful company, with
clients such as Facebook, and Schwartz’s colleagues urged him to avoid the
political fray. But the prospect of President Trump terrified him. It wasn’t
because of Trump’s ideology—Schwartz doubted that he had one. The problem was
Trump’s personality, which he considered pathologically impulsive and
self-centered.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Schwartz thought about publishing an article describing his
reservations about Trump, but he hesitated, knowing that, since he’d cashed in
on the flattering “Art of the Deal,” his credibility and his motives would be
seen as suspect. Yet watching the campaign was excruciating. Schwartz decided
that if he kept mum and Trump was elected he’d never forgive himself. In June,
he agreed to break his silence and give his first candid interview about the
Trump he got to know while acting as his Boswell.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I put lipstick on a pig,” he said. “I feel a
deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that
brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is.” He went
on, “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is
an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">If he were writing “The Art of the Deal”
today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different
title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, “The Sociopath.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="/2"></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The idea of Trump writing an autobiography
didn’t originate with either Trump or Schwartz. It began with Si Newhouse, the
media magnate whose company, Advance Publications, owned Random House at the
time, and continues to own Condé Nast, the parent company of this magazine. “It
was very definitely, and almost uniquely, Si Newhouse’s idea,” Peter Osnos, who
edited the book, recalls. </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">GQ</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, which Condé Nast also owns, had published
a cover story on Trump, and Newhouse noticed that newsstand sales had been
unusually strong.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Newhouse called Trump
about the project, then visited him to discuss it. Random House continued the
pursuit with a series of meetings. At one point, Howard Kaminsky, who ran
Random House then, wrapped a thick Russian novel in a dummy cover that featured
a photograph of Trump looking like a conquering hero; at the top was Trump’s
name, in large gold block lettering. Kaminsky recalls that Trump was pleased by
the mockup, but had one suggestion: “Please make my name much bigger.” After
securing the half-million-dollar advance, Trump signed a contract.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Around this time, Schwartz, who was one of the leading young
magazine writers of the day, stopped by Trump’s office, in Trump Tower.
Schwartz had written about Trump before. In 1985, he’d published a piece in </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">New
York</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> called “A Different Kind of Donald Trump Story,” which portrayed him
not as a brilliant mogul but as a ham-fisted thug who had unsuccessfully tried
to evict rent-controlled and rent-stabilized tenants from a building that he
had bought on Central Park South. Trump’s efforts—which included a plan to
house homeless people in the building in order to harass the tenants—became
what Schwartz described as a “fugue of failure, a farce of fumbling and
bumbling.” An accompanying cover portrait depicted Trump as unshaven,
unpleasant-looking, and shiny with sweat. Yet, to Schwartz’s amazement, Trump
loved the article. He hung the cover on a wall of his office, and sent a fan
note to Schwartz, on his gold-embossed personal stationery. “Everybody seems to
have read it,” Trump enthused in the note, which Schwartz has kept.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I was shocked,” Schwartz told me. “Trump didn’t fit any
model of human being I’d ever met. He was obsessed with publicity, and he
didn’t care what you wrote.” He went on, “Trump only takes two positions.
Either you’re a scummy loser, liar, whatever, or you’re the greatest. I became
the greatest. He wanted to be seen as a tough guy, and he loved being on the
cover.” Schwartz wrote him back, saying, “Of all the people I’ve written about
over the years, you are certainly the best sport.” </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And so Schwartz had returned for more, this
time to conduct an interview for </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Playboy</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">. But to his frustration Trump
kept making cryptic, monosyllabic statements. “He mysteriously wouldn’t answer
my questions,” Schwartz said. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">After twenty minutes, he said, Trump explained that he
didn’t want to reveal anything new about himself—he had just signed a lucrative
book deal and needed to save his best material.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“What kind of book?” Schwartz said.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“My autobiography,” Trump replied.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“You’re only thirty-eight—you don’t have one yet!” Schwartz joked.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Yeah, I know,” Trump said.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“If I were you,” Schwartz recalls telling
him, “I’d write a book called ‘The Art of the Deal.’ </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">That’s</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> something
people would be interested in.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“You’re
right,” Trump agreed. “Do you want to write it?”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Schwartz thought it over for several weeks. He knew that he
would be making a Faustian bargain. A lifelong liberal, he was hardly an
admirer of Trump’s ruthless and single-minded pursuit of profit. “It was one of
a number of times in my life when I was divided between the Devil and the
higher side,” he told me. He had grown up in a bourgeois, intellectual family
in Manhattan, and had attended élite private schools, but he was not as wealthy
as some of his classmates—and, unlike many of them, he had no trust fund. “I
grew up privileged,” he said. “But my parents made it clear: ‘You’re on your
own.’ ” Around the time Trump made his offer, Schwartz’s wife, Deborah
Pines, became pregnant with their second daughter, and he worried that the family
wouldn’t fit into their Manhattan apartment, whose mortgage was already too
high. “I was overly worried about money,” Schwartz said. “I thought money would
keep me safe and secure—or that was my rationalization.” </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">At the same time, he knew that if he took Trump’s money and
adopted Trump’s voice his journalism career would be badly damaged. His heroes
were such literary nonfiction writers as Tom Wolfe, John McPhee, and David
Halberstam. Being a ghostwriter was hackwork. In the end, though, Schwartz had
his price. He told Trump that if he would give him half the advance and half
the book’s royalties he’d take the job.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Such
terms are unusually generous for a ghostwriter. Trump, despite having a
reputation as a tough negotiator, agreed on the spot. “It was a huge windfall,”
Schwartz recalls. “But I knew I was selling out. Literally, the term was
invented to describe what I did.” Soon </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Spy</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> was calling him “former
journalist Tony Schwartz.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Schwartz thought that “The Art of the Deal” would be an easy
project. The book’s structure would be simple: he’d chronicle half a dozen or
so of Trump’s biggest real-estate deals, dispense some bromides about how to
succeed in business, and fill in Trump’s life story. For research, he planned
to interview Trump on a series of Saturday mornings. The first session didn’t
go as planned, however. After Trump gave him a tour of his marble-and-gilt
apartment atop Trump Tower—which, to Schwartz, looked unlived-in, like the
lobby of a hotel—they began to talk. But the discussion was soon hobbled by
what Schwartz regards as one of Trump’s most essential characteristics: “He has
no attention span.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="/3"></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In those days, Schwartz recalls, Trump was
generally affable with reporters, offering short, amusingly immodest quotes on
demand. Trump had been forthcoming with him during the </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">New York</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
interview, but it hadn’t required much time or deep reflection. For the book,
though, Trump needed to provide him with sustained, thoughtful recollections.
He asked Trump to describe his childhood in detail. After sitting for only a
few minutes in his suit and tie, Trump became impatient and irritable. He
looked fidgety, Schwartz recalls, “like a kindergartner who can’t sit still in
a classroom.” Even when Schwartz pressed him, Trump seemed to remember almost
nothing of his youth, and made it clear that he was bored. Far more quickly
than Schwartz had expected, Trump ended the meeting.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Week after week, the pattern repeated itself.
Schwartz tried to limit the sessions to smaller increments of time, but Trump’s
contributions remained oddly truncated and superficial.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Trump has been written about a thousand ways from Sunday,
but this fundamental aspect of who he is doesn’t seem to be fully understood,”
Schwartz told me. “It’s implicit in a lot of what people write, but it’s never
explicit—or, at least, I haven’t seen it. And that is that it’s impossible to
keep him focused on any topic, other than his own self-aggrandizement, for more
than a few minutes, and even then . . . ” Schwartz trailed off,
shaking his head in amazement. He regards Trump’s inability to concentrate as
alarming in a Presidential candidate. “If he had to be briefed on a crisis in
the Situation Room, it’s impossible to imagine him paying attention over a long
period of time,” he said.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In a recent phone interview, Trump told me that, to the
contrary, he has the skill that matters most in a crisis: the ability to forge
compromises. The reason he touted “The Art of the Deal” in his announcement, he
explained, was that he believes that recent Presidents have lacked his
toughness and finesse: “Look at the trade deficit with China. Look at the Iran
deal. I’ve made a fortune by making deals. I do that. I do that well. That’s
what I do.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But Schwartz believes that
Trump’s short attention span has left him with “a stunning level of superficial
knowledge and plain ignorance.” He said, “That’s why he so prefers TV as his first
news source—information comes in easily digestible sound bites.” He added, “I
seriously doubt that Trump has ever read a book straight through in his adult
life.” During the eighteen months that he observed Trump, Schwartz said, he
never saw a book on Trump’s desk, or elsewhere in his office, or in his
apartment.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Other journalists have noticed Trump’s apparent lack of
interest in reading. In May, Megyn Kelly, of Fox News, asked him to name his
favorite book, other than the Bible or “The Art of the Deal.” Trump picked the
1929 novel “All Quiet on the Western Front.” Evidently suspecting that many
years had elapsed since he’d read it, Kelly asked Trump to talk about the most
recent book he’d read. “I read passages, I read areas, I’ll read chapters—I
don’t have the time,” Trump said. As </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The New Republic</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> noted recently,
this attitude is not shared by most U.S. Presidents, including Barack Obama, a
habitual consumer of current books, and George W. Bush, who reportedly engaged
in a fiercely competitive book-reading contest with his political adviser Karl
Rove.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump’s first wife, Ivana, famously claimed that Trump kept
a copy of Adolf Hitler’s collected speeches, “My New Order,” in a cabinet
beside his bed. In 1990, Trump’s friend Marty Davis, who was then an executive
at Paramount, added credence to this story, telling Marie Brenner, of </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Vanity
Fair</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, that he had given Trump the book. “I thought he would find it
interesting,” Davis told her. When Brenner asked Trump about it, however, he
mistakenly identified the volume as a different work by Hitler: “Mein Kampf.”
Apparently, he had not so much as read the title. “</span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">If</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> I had these
speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them,” Trump told
Brenner.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Growing desperate, Schwartz devised a strategy for trapping
Trump into giving more material. He made plans to spend the weekend with Trump
at Mar-a-Lago, his mansion in Palm Beach, where there would be fewer
distractions. As they chatted in the garden, Ivana icily walked by, clearly
annoyed that Schwartz was competing for her husband’s limited free time. Trump
again grew impatient. Long before lunch on Saturday, Schwartz recalls, Trump
“essentially threw a fit.” He stood up and announced that he couldn’t stand any
more questions.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Schwartz went to his room, called his literary agent, Kathy
Robbins, and told her that he couldn’t do the book. (Robbins confirms this.) As
Schwartz headed back to New York, though, he came up with another plan. He
would propose eavesdropping on Trump’s life by following him around on the job
and, more important, by listening in on his office phone calls. That way,
extracting extended reflections from Trump would not be required. When Schwartz
presented the idea to Trump, he loved it. Almost every day from then on,
Schwartz sat about eight feet away from him in the Trump Tower office,
listening on an extension of Trump’s phone line. Schwartz says that none of the
bankers, lawyers, brokers, and reporters who called Trump realized that they
were being monitored. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The calls usually didn’t last long, and Trump’s assistant
facilitated the conversation-hopping. While he was talking with someone, she
often came in with a Post-it note informing him of the next caller on hold.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“He was playing people,” Schwartz recalls. On
the phone with business associates, Trump would flatter, bully, and
occasionally get mad, but always in a calculated way. Before the discussion
ended, Trump would “share the news of his latest success,” Schwartz says.
Instead of saying goodbye at the end of a call, Trump customarily signed off
with “You’re the greatest!” There was not a single call that Trump deemed too
private for Schwartz to hear. “He loved the attention,” Schwartz recalls. “If
he could have had three hundred thousand people listening in, he would have
been even happier.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="/4"></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">This year, Schwartz has heard some argue
that there must be a more thoughtful and nuanced version of Donald Trump that
he is keeping in reserve for after the campaign. “There isn’t,” Schwartz
insists. “There is no private Trump.” This is not a matter of hindsight. While
working on “The Art of the Deal,” Schwartz kept a journal in which he expressed
his amazement at Trump’s personality, writing that Trump seemed driven entirely
by a need for public attention. “All he is is ‘stomp, stomp, stomp’—recognition
from outside, bigger, more, a whole series of things that go nowhere in
particular,” he observed, on October 21, 1986. But, as he noted in the journal
a few days later, “the book will be far more successful if Trump is a
sympathetic character—even weirdly sympathetic—than if he is just hateful or,
worse yet, a one-dimensional blowhard.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Eavesdropping solved the interview problem, but it presented
a new one. After hearing Trump’s discussions about business on the phone,
Schwartz asked him brief follow-up questions. He then tried to amplify the
material he got from Trump by calling others involved in the deals. But their
accounts often directly conflicted with Trump’s. “Lying is second nature to
him,” Schwartz said. “More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the
ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is
true, or sort of true, or at least </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">ought</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> to be true.” Often, Schwartz
said, the lies that Trump told him were about money—“how much he had paid for
something, or what a building he owned was worth, or how much one of his
casinos was earning when it was actually on its way to bankruptcy.” </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump bragged that he paid only eight million dollars for
Mar-a-Lago, but omitted that he bought a nearby strip of beach for a record
sum. After gossip columns reported, erroneously, that Prince Charles was
considering buying several apartments in Trump Tower, Trump implied that he had
no idea where the rumor had started. (“It certainly didn’t hurt us,” he says,
in “The Art of the Deal.”) Wayne Barrett, a reporter for the </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Village Voice</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">,
later revealed that Trump himself had planted the story with journalists.
Schwartz also suspected that Trump engaged in such media tricks, and asked him
about a story making the rounds—that Trump often called up news outlets using a
pseudonym. Trump didn’t deny it. As Schwartz recalls, he smirked and said, “You
like that, do you?”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Schwartz says of Trump, “He lied strategically. He had a
complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by
the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">When challenged about the facts, Schwartz
says, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent. This
quality was recently on display after Trump posted on Twitter a derogatory
image of Hillary Clinton that contained a six-pointed star lifted from a
white-supremacist Web site. Campaign staffers took the image down, but two days
later Trump angrily defended it, insisting that there was no anti-Semitic
implication. Whenever “the thin veneer of Trump’s vanity is challenged,”
Schwartz says, he overreacts—not an ideal quality in a head of state.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">When Schwartz began writing “The Art of the Deal,” he
realized that he needed to put an acceptable face on Trump’s loose relationship
with the truth. So he concocted an artful euphemism. Writing in Trump’s voice,
he explained to the reader, “I play to people’s fantasies. . . .
People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the
most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of
exaggeration—and it’s a very effective form of promotion.” Schwartz now
disavows the passage. “Deceit,” he told me, is never “innocent.” He added,
“ ‘Truthful hyperbole’ is a contradiction in terms. It’s a way of saying,
‘It’s a lie, but who cares?’ ” Trump, he said, loved the phrase.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In his journal, Schwartz describes the
process of trying to make Trump’s voice palatable in the book. It was kind of
“a trick,” he writes, to mimic Trump’s blunt, staccato, no-apologies delivery
while making him seem almost boyishly appealing. One strategy was to make it
appear that Trump was just having fun at the office. “I try not to take any of
what’s happened too seriously,” Trump says in the book. “The real excitement is
playing the game.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In his journal, Schwartz wrote, “Trump stands for many of
the things I abhor: his willingness to run over people, the gaudy, tacky,
gigantic obsessions, the absolute lack of interest in anything beyond power and
money.” Looking back at the text now, Schwartz says, “I created a character far
more winning than Trump actually is.” The first line of the book is an example.
“I don’t do it for the money,” Trump declares. “I’ve got enough, much more than
I’ll ever need. I do it to do it. Deals are my art form. Other people paint
beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals,
preferably big deals. That’s how I get my kicks.” Schwartz now laughs at this
depiction of Trump as a devoted artisan. “</span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Of course</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> he’s in it for the
money,” he said. “One of the most deep and basic needs he has is to prove that
‘I’m richer than you.’ ” As for the idea that making deals is a form of
poetry, Schwartz says, “He was incapable of saying something like that—it
wouldn’t even be in his vocabulary.” He saw Trump as driven not by a pure love
of dealmaking but by an insatiable hunger for “money, praise, and celebrity.”
Often, after spending the day with Trump, and watching him pile one hugely
expensive project atop the next, like a circus performer spinning plates,
Schwartz would go home and tell his wife, “He’s a living black hole!”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="/5"></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Schwartz reminded himself that he was being
paid to tell Trump’s story, not his own, but the more he worked on the project
the more disturbing he found it. In his journal, he describes the hours he
spent with Trump as “draining” and “deadening.” Schwartz told me that Trump’s
need for attention is “completely compulsive,” and that his bid for the
Presidency is part of a continuum. “He’s managed to keep increasing the dose
for forty years,” Schwartz said. After he’d spent decades as a tabloid titan,
“the only thing left was running for President. If he could run for emperor of
the world, he would.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Rhetorically,
Schwartz’s aim in “The Art of the Deal” was to present Trump as the hero of
every chapter, but, after looking into some of his supposedly brilliant deals,
Schwartz concluded that there were cases in which there was no way to make
Trump look good. So he sidestepped unflattering incidents and details. “I didn’t
consider it my job to investigate,” he says.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Schwartz also tried to avoid the strong whiff of cronyism
that hovered over some deals. In his 1986 journal, he describes what a
challenge it was to “put his best foot forward” in writing about one of Trump’s
first triumphs: his development, starting in 1975, of the Grand Hyatt Hotel, on
the site of the former Commodore Hotel, next to Grand Central Terminal. In
order to afford the hotel, Trump required an extremely large tax abatement.
Richard Ravitch, who was then in charge of the agency that had the authority to
grant such tax breaks to developers, recalls that he declined to grant the
abatement, and Trump got “so unpleasant I had to tell him to get out.” Trump
got it anyway, largely because key city officials had received years of
donations from his father, Fred Trump, who was a major real-estate developer in
Queens. Wayne Barrett, whose reporting for the </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Voice</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> informed his
definitive 1991 book, “Trump: The Deals and the Downfall,” says, “It was all
Fred’s political connections that created the abatement.” </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In addition, Trump snookered rivals into believing that he
had an exclusive option from the city on the project, when he didn’t. Trump
also deceived his partner in the deal, Jay Pritzker, the head of the Hyatt
Hotel chain. Pritzker had rejected an unfavorable term proposed by Trump, but
at the closing Trump forced it through, knowing that Pritzker was on a mountain
in Nepal and could not be reached. Schwartz wrote in his journal that “almost
everything” about the hotel deal had “an immoral cast.” But as the ghostwriter
he was “trying hard to find my way around” behavior that he considered “if not
reprehensible, at least morally questionable.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Many tall tales that Trump told Schwartz contained a kernel
of truth but made him out to be cleverer than he was. One of Trump’s favorite
stories was about how he had tricked the company that owned Holiday Inn into
becoming his partner in an Atlantic City casino. Trump claimed that he had
quieted executives’ fears of construction delays by ordering his construction
supervisor to make a vacant lot that he owned look like “the most active
construction site in the history of the world.” As Trump tells it in “The Art
of the Deal,” there were so many dump trucks and bulldozers pushing around dirt
and filling holes that had just been dug that when Holiday Inn executives
visited the site it “looked as if we were in the midst of building the Grand
Coulee Dam.” The stunt, Trump claimed, pushed the deal through. After the book
came out, though, a consultant for Trump’s casinos, Al Glasgow, who is now
deceased, told Schwartz, “It never happened.” There may have been one or two
trucks, but not the fleet that made it a great story.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Schwartz tamped down some of Trump’s swagger, but plenty of
it remained. The manuscript that Random House published was, depending on your
perspective, either entertainingly insightful or shamelessly self-aggrandizing.
To borrow a title from Norman Mailer, who frequently attended prizefights at
Trump’s Atlantic City hotels, the book could have been called “Advertisements
for Myself.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In 2005, Timothy L. O’Brien, an award-winning journalist who
is currently the executive editor of Bloomberg View, published “Trump Nation,”
a meticulous investigative biography. (Trump unsuccessfully sued him for
libel.) O’Brien has taken a close look at “The Art of the Deal,” and he told me
that it might be best characterized as a “nonfiction work of fiction.” Trump’s
life story, as told by Schwartz, honestly chronicled a few setbacks, such as
Trump’s disastrous 1983 purchase of the New Jersey Generals, a football team in
the flailing United States Football League. But O’Brien believes that Trump
used the book to turn almost every step of his life, both personal and
professional, into a “glittering fable.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Some of the falsehoods in “The Art of the Deal” are minor. </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Spy</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
upended Trump’s claims that Ivana had been a “top model” and an alternate on
the Czech Olympic ski team. Barrett notes that in “The Art of the Deal” Trump
describes his father as having been born in New Jersey to Swedish parents; in
fact, he was born in the Bronx to German parents. (Decades later, Trump spread
falsehoods about Obama’s origins, claiming it was possible that the President
was born in Africa.)</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In “The Art of the Deal,” Trump portrays himself as a warm
family man with endless admirers. He praises Ivana’s taste and business
skill—“I said you can’t bet against Ivana, and she proved me right.” But
Schwartz noticed little warmth or communication between Trump and Ivana, and he
later learned that while “The Art of the Deal” was being written Trump began an
affair with Marla Maples, who became his second wife. (He divorced Ivana in
1992.) As far as Schwartz could tell, Trump spent very little time with his
family and had no close friends. In “The Art of the Deal,” Trump describes Roy
Cohn, his personal lawyer, in the warmest terms, calling him “the sort of guy
who’d be there at your hospital bed . . . literally standing by
you to the death.” Cohn, who in the fifties assisted Senator Joseph McCarthy in
his vicious crusade against Communism, was closeted. He felt abandoned by Trump
when he became fatally ill from AIDS, and said, “Donald pisses ice water.”
Schwartz says of Trump, “He’d like people when they were helpful, and turn on
them when they weren’t. It wasn’t personal. He’s a transactional man—it was all
about what you could do for him.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="/6"></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">According to Barrett, among the most
misleading aspects of “The Art of the Deal” was the idea that Trump made it
largely on his own, with only minimal help from his father, Fred. Barrett, in
his book, notes that Trump once declared, “The working man likes me because he
knows I didn’t inherit what I’ve built,” and that in “The Art of the Deal” he
derides wealthy heirs as members of “the Lucky Sperm Club.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump’s self-portrayal as a Horatio Alger figure has
buttressed his populist appeal in 2016. But his origins were hardly humble.
Fred’s fortune, based on his ownership of middle-income properties, wasn’t
glamorous, but it was sizable: in 2003, a few years after Fred died, Trump and
his siblings reportedly sold some of their father’s real-estate holdings for
half a billion dollars. In “The Art of the Deal,” Trump cites his father as
“the most important influence on me,” but in his telling his father’s main
legacy was teaching him the importance of “toughness.” Beyond that, Schwartz
says, Trump “barely talked about his father—he didn’t want his success to be
seen as having anything to do with him.” But when Barrett investigated he found
that Trump’s father was instrumental in his son’s rise, financially and
politically. In the book, Trump says that “my energy and my enthusiasm” explain
how, as a twenty-nine-year-old with few accomplishments, he acquired the Grand
Hyatt Hotel. Barrett reports, however, that Trump’s father had to co-sign the
many contracts that the deal required. He also lent Trump seven and a half
million dollars to get started as a casino owner in Atlantic City; at one
point, when Trump couldn’t meet payments on other loans, his father tried to
tide him over by sending a lawyer to buy some three million dollars’ worth of
gambling chips. Barrett told me, “Donald did make some smart moves himself,
particularly in assembling the site for the Trump Tower. That was a stroke of
genius.” Nonetheless, he said, “The notion that he’s a self-made man is a joke.
But I guess they couldn’t call the book ‘The Art of My Father’s Deals.’ ”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The other key myth perpetuated by “The Art of the Deal” was
that Trump’s intuitions about business were almost flawless. “The book helped
fuel the notion that he couldn’t fail,” Barrett said. But, unbeknown to
Schwartz and the public, by late 1987, when the book came out, Trump was
heading toward what Barrett calls “simultaneous personal and professional
self-destruction.” O’Brien agrees that during the next several years Trump’s
life unravelled. The divorce from Ivana reportedly cost him twenty-five million
dollars. Meanwhile, he was in the midst of what O’Brien calls “a crazy shopping
spree that resulted in unmanageable debt.” He was buying the Plaza Hotel and
also planning to erect “the tallest building in the world,” on the former rail
yards that he had bought on the West Side. In 1987, the city denied him
permission to construct such a tall skyscraper, but in “The Art of the Deal” he
brushed off this failure with a one-liner: “I can afford to wait.” O’Brien
says, “The reality is that he </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">couldn’t</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> afford to wait. He was telling
the media that the carrying costs were three million dollars, when in fact they
were more like twenty million.” Trump was also building a third casino in
Atlantic City, the Taj, which he promised would be “the biggest casino in
history.” He bought the Eastern Air Lines shuttle that operated out of New
York, Boston, and Washington, rechristening it the Trump Shuttle, and acquired
a giant yacht, the Trump Princess. “He was on a total run of complete and utter
self-absorption,” Barrett says, adding, “It’s kind of like now.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="/9"></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Schwartz said that when he was writing the
book “the greatest percentage of Trump’s assets was in casinos, and he made it
sound like each casino was more successful than the last. But every one of them
was failing.” He went on, “I think he was just spinning. I don’t think he could
have believed it at the time. He was losing millions of dollars a day. He had
to have been terrified.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In 1992, the journalist David Cay Johnston published a book
about casinos, “Temples of Chance,” and cited a net-worth statement from 1990
that assessed Trump’s personal wealth. It showed that Trump owed nearly three
hundred million dollars more to his creditors than his assets were worth. The
next year, his company was forced into bankruptcy—the first of six such
instances. The Trump meteor had crashed.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">But in “The Art of the Deal,” O’Brien told me, “Trump
shrewdly and unabashedly promoted an image of himself as a dealmaker nonpareil
who could always get the best out of every situation—and who can now deliver
America from its malaise.” This idealized version was presented to an
exponentially larger audience, O’Brien noted, when Mark Burnett, the
reality-television producer, read “The Art of the Deal” and decided to base a
new show on it, “The Apprentice,” with Trump as the star. The first season of
the show, which premièred in 2004, opens with Trump in the back of a limousine,
boasting, “I’ve mastered the art of the deal, and I’ve turned the name Trump
into the highest-quality brand.” An image of the book’s cover flashes onscreen
as Trump explains that, as the “master,” he is now seeking an apprentice.
O’Brien said, “ ‘The Apprentice’ is mythmaking on steroids. There’s a straight
line from the book to the show to the 2016 campaign.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="/7"></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">It took Schwartz a little more than a year
to write “The Art of the Deal.” In the spring of 1987, he sent the manuscript
to Trump, who returned it to him shortly afterward. There were a few red marks
made with a fat-tipped Magic Marker, most of which deleted criticisms that
Trump had made of powerful individuals he no longer wanted to offend, such as
Lee Iacocca. Otherwise, Schwartz says, Trump changed almost nothing.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In my phone interview with Trump, he initially
said of Schwartz, “Tony was very good. He was the co-author.” But he dismissed
Schwartz’s account of the writing process. “He didn’t write the book,” Trump
told me. “</span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> wrote the book. I wrote the book. It was my book. And it was
a No. 1 best-seller, and one of the best-selling business books of all time.
Some say it was the best-selling business book ever.” (It is not.) Howard
Kaminsky, the former Random House head, laughed and said, “Trump didn’t write a
postcard for us!”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump was far more involved in the book’s promotion. He
wooed booksellers and made one television appearance after another. He publicly
promised to donate his cut of the book’s royalties to charity. He even made a
surprise trip to New Hampshire, where he stirred additional publicity by
floating the possibility that he might run for President.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In December of 1987, a month after the book
was published, Trump hosted an extravagant book party in the pink marble atrium
of Trump Tower. Klieg lights lit a red carpet outside the building. Inside,
nearly a thousand guests, in black tie, were served champagne and fed slices of
a giant cake replica of Trump Tower, which was wheeled in by a parade of women
waving red sparklers. The boxing promoter Don King greeted the crowd in a
floor-length mink coat, and the comedian Jackie Mason introduced Donald and
Ivana with the words “Here comes the king and queen!” Trump toasted Schwartz,
saying teasingly that he had at least tried to teach him how to make money.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Schwartz got more of an education the next day, when he and
Trump spoke on the phone. After chatting briefly about the party, Trump
informed Schwartz that, as his ghostwriter, he owed him for half the event’s
cost, which was in the six figures. Schwartz was dumbfounded. “He wanted me to split
the cost of entertaining his list of nine hundred second-rate celebrities?”
Schwartz had, in fact, learned a few things from watching Trump. He drastically
negotiated down the amount that he agreed to pay, to a few thousand dollars,
and then wrote Trump a letter promising to write a check not to Trump but to a
charity of Schwartz’s choosing. It was a page out of Trump’s playbook. In the
past seven years, Trump has promised to give millions of dollars to charity,
but reporters for the Washington </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Post</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> found that they could document
only ten thousand dollars in donations—and they uncovered no direct evidence
that Trump made charitable contributions from money earned by “The Art of the
Deal.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="/10"></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Not long after the discussion of the party
bills, Trump approached Schwartz about writing a sequel, for which Trump had
been offered a seven-figure advance. This time, however, he offered Schwartz
only a third of the profits. He pointed out that, because the advance was much
bigger, the payout would be, too. But Schwartz said no. Feeling deeply
alienated, he instead wrote a book called “What Really Matters,” about the
search for meaning in life. After working with Trump, Schwartz writes, he felt
a “gnawing emptiness” and became a “seeker,” longing to “be connected to something
timeless and essential, more real.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Schwartz told me that he has decided to pledge all royalties
from sales of “The Art of the Deal” in 2016 to pointedly chosen charities: the
National Immigration Law Center, Human Rights Watch, the Center for the Victims
of Torture, the National Immigration Forum, and the Tahirih Justice Center. He
doesn’t feel that the gesture absolves him. “I’ll carry this until the end of
my life,” he said. “There’s no righting it. But I like the idea that, the more
copies that ‘The Art of the Deal’ sells, the more money I can donate to the
people whose rights Trump seeks to abridge.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Schwartz expected Trump to attack him for speaking out, and
he was correct. Informed that Schwartz had made critical remarks about him, and
wouldn’t be voting for him, Trump said, “He’s probably just doing it for the
publicity.” He also said, “Wow. That’s great disloyalty, because I made Tony
rich. He owes a lot to me. I helped him when he didn’t have two cents in his
pocket. It’s great disloyalty. I guess he thinks it’s good for him—but he’ll
find out it’s not good for him.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Minutes after Trump got off the phone with me, Schwartz’s
cell phone rang. “I hear you’re not voting for me,” Trump said. “I just talked
to </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The New Yorker</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">—which, by the way, is a failing magazine that no one
reads—and I heard you were critical of me.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="/8"></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“You’re running for President,” Schwartz
said. “I disagree with a lot of what you’re saying.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">“That’s your right, but then you should have just remained
silent. I just want to tell you that I think you’re very disloyal. Without me,
you wouldn’t be where you are now. I had a lot of choice of who to have write
the book, and I chose you, and I was very generous with you. I know that you
gave a lot of speeches and lectures using ‘The Art of the Deal.’ I could have
sued you, but I didn’t.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">“My business has nothing to do with ‘The Art of the
Deal.’ ”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">“That’s not what I’ve been told.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">“You’re running for President of the United States. The
stakes here are high.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Yeah, they are,” he said. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Have a nice life.” Trump hung up.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Schwartz can understand why Trump feels stung, but he felt
that he had to speak up before it was too late. As for Trump’s anger toward
him, he said, “I don’t take it personally, because the truth is he didn’t mean
it personally. People are dispensable and disposable in Trump’s world.” If
Trump is elected President, he warned, “the millions of people who voted for
him and believe that he represents their interests will learn what anyone who
deals closely with him already knows—that he couldn’t care less about them.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all?platform=hootsuite"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all?platform=hootsuite</span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<b><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Donald
Trump Threatens The Ghostwriter Of “The Art Of The Deal”</span></u></b></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By Jane Mayer, The
New Yorker, 20 July 2016)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">On the first day of the Republican National Convention,
Donald Trump made a surprise speech—and the Trump Organization’s general
counsel sent a threatening letter to Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter of “The Art
of the Deal.” </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">When Tony Schwartz, Donald
Trump’s ghostwriter for his 1987 memoir, “The Art of the Deal,” decided to tell
the public about his concerns that Trump isn’t fit to serve as President, his
main worry was that Trump, who is famously litigious, would threaten to take
legal action against him. Schwartz’s premonition has proved correct.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">On Monday, July 18th, the day that this magazine published </span><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">my
interview</span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> with Schwartz, and hours after Schwartz appeared on “Good Morning
America” to voice his concerns about Trump’s “impulsive and self-centered”
character, Jason D. Greenblatt, the general counsel and vice-president of the
Trump Organization, issued a threatening cease-and-desist letter to Schwartz. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In it, Greenblatt accuses Schwartz—who has
likened his writing of the flattering book to putting “lipstick on a pig”—of
making “defamatory statements” about the Republican nominee and claiming that
he, not Trump, wrote the book, “thereby exposing” himself to “liability for
damages and other tortious harm.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Greenblatt demands that Schwartz send “a certified check
made payable to Mr. Trump” for all of the royalties he had earned on the book,
along with Schwartz’s half of the book’s five-hundred-thousand-dollar advance.
(The memoir has sold approximately a million copies, earning Trump and Schwartz
each several million dollars.) Greenblatt also orders Schwartz to issue “a
written statement retracting your defamatory statements,” and to offer written
assurances that he will not “generate or disseminate” any further “baseless
accusations” about Trump.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">On Thursday, reached by e-mail on an airplane, Schwartz said
that he would continue to speak out against Trump, and that he would make no
retractions or apologies. “The fact that Trump would take time out of
convention week to worry about a critic is evidence to me not only of how
thin-skinned he is, but also of how misplaced his priorities are,” Schwartz
wrote. He added, “It is axiomatic that when Trump feels attacked, he will
strike back. That’s precisely what’s so frightening about his becoming
president.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">That day, a lawyer representing Schwartz, Elizabeth A.
McNamara, a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine, sent Greenblatt a response. </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">McNamara states that Schwartz “will not be
returning any of the advance or royalties from the Book, and he has no
intention of retracting any of his opinions about the character of the
Republican nominee for the presidency, nor does he have any obligation or
intention to remain silent about the issue going forward.” She describes
Trump’s cease-and-desist letter as “nothing more than a transparent attempt to
stifle legitimate criticism.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">As
McNamara notes, Greenblatt’s letter does not actually refute Schwartz’s claim
that he, not Trump, wrote the book. Instead, Greenblatt writes that Trump “was
the source of all of the material in the Book and the inspiration for every
word in the Book,” rather than the author. Greenblatt acknowledges that Trump
provided Schwartz “with the facts and facets of each of these deals in order
for you to write them down.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">On “Good Morning America,” Schwartz told host George
Stephanopoulos that “The Art of the Deal” very likely contained “falsehoods”
owing to the fact that Trump, in his opinion, has a strong propensity to
exaggerate and lie. Greenblatt attacks Schwartz’s statement, arguing that if
the book is less than accurate, then Schwartz had breached his obligations as
the book’s co-author. In response, Schwartz’s lawyer notes that because Trump
takes credit for providing “all of the material in the book,” if there are
falsehoods they must have been provided by Trump. “Any purported failure by Mr.
Schwartz to be ‘accurate in the completion of [his] duties’ would be entirely
because of misleading statements by Mr. Trump,” McNamara writes.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In his letter, Greenblatt also accuses Schwartz of having
tried to profit from his association with Trump after “The Art of the Deal” was
published, as Trump had said in a phone interview with me. Greenblatt quotes
from a friendly letter that Schwartz wrote to Trump in 1988, soon after “The
Art of the Deal” was published, in which he described their “partnership” as “a
success in every respect,” and said, “I hope we’ll be able to work together
again, on other projects.” Greenblatt does not acknowledge that when Trump
asked Schwartz to co-author a sequel to “The Art of the Deal,” Schwartz
rejected the offer. Greenblatt’s letter claims that Schwartz has “pleaded with
Mr. Trump to provide you with more work.” Schwartz says this is “totally
false,” and that he has made no business overtures to Trump during the last
twenty-eight years. Asked last night to provide any evidence that Schwartz had
ever sought work from Trump after the publication of “The Art of the Deal,”
Greenblatt said he could provide none at that moment, but would try to find
some soon. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Speaking by phone from the Republican National Convention,
in Cleveland, he added that “Mr. Trump is a bit busy tonight,” so would not be
available to back up his allegations with any specifics, either. Instead, he
cited Schwartz’s agreement, earlier this year, to a plan to issue an audio
version of “The Art of the Deal.” (Schwartz has pledged to donate all royalties
from the book in 2016 to charity.) Other than that, Schwartz reiterated to me
that he has had almost no contact with Trump, and until a few months ago had
kept almost silent about him.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I fully
expected him to attack me, because that is what he does, so I can’t say I am
surprised,” Schwartz noted. “But I’m much more worried about his becoming
president than I am about anything he might try to do to me.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/donald-trump-threatens-the-ghostwriter-of-the-art-of-the-deal"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/donald-trump-threatens-the-ghostwriter-of-the-art-of-the-deal</span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump spent more than $1 million in May reimbursing
his companies and family</span></u></b></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">(By Matea Gold and Anu Narayanswamy, Washington Post, 21
June 2016)</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Donald
Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, raised just $5.4
million in May, including $2.2 million that he loaned his campaign. Almost
as startling was how little Trump had in the bank when June began: </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/06/20/trump-entered-june-with-just-1-3-million-in-the-bank-while-clinton-sat-on-42-million-war-chest/" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">less than $1.3 million</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Where did it go? The real estate mogul does
not have much of a </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-doesnt-have-a-national-campaign-so-the-gop-is-trying-to-run-one-for-him/2016/06/09/a9e1f488-2df0-11e6-9b37-42985f6a265c_story.html" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">ground operation</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> yet or a
significant </span><a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/clinton-democrats-dominate-2016-battleground-airwaves-n594676" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">paid media effort</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">. But he managed
to shell out $6.7 million last month, including more than $1 million in
payments to Trump companies or to reimburse his family for
travel expenses. Here are some of the campaign's biggest expenditures.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Campaign
swag and printing: $958,836</span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">About a
dozen companies were paid for hats, pens, T-shirts, mugs, stickers and
printing services.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Air
charters: $838,774</span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Nearly
$350,000 of the money spent on private jets went to Trump's own TAG Air.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Event
staging and rentals: $830,482</span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">This
includes the fees for renting facilities such as the Anaheim
Convention Center ($43,000) and the Fresno Convention Center ($24,715). But the
biggest sum went to Trump's own Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., which was
paid $423,317 for rental and catering. The Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter,
Fla., got $35,845, while the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach,
Fl., was paid $29,715. His son Eric Trump's wine company received nearly
$4,000.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Payroll
and consultants: $684,337</span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump
had less than 70 people on staff in May, versus Hillary Clinton's 683. But his
top aides were paid well: now-departed campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and
deputy campaign manager Michael Glassner each received $20,000 for the
month, while the firm of Dan Scavino, director of social media, got nearly
$21,000. Eli Miller, who came aboard as the chief operating officer in mid-May,
was paid $13,038.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Data and
technology: $603,143</span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Giles-Parscale,
a San Antonio-based Web-design firm </span><a href="http://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/news/2015/06/25/you-re-hired-local-firm-tapped-to-build-donald.html" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">that began working for Trump's companies in 2011</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">,
received two big payments totaling $543,000.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Direct
mail and telemarketing: $253,969</span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">The bulk
of the payments went to a Purcellville, Va.-based company called Left Hand
Enterprises, which was registered in Delaware in late April by an incorporation
service. It is unclear who owns it.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/06/21/how-donald-trump-spent-his-campaign-money-in-may/?wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/06/21/how-donald-trump-spent-his-campaign-money-in-may/?wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<h1 align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<u><span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Does It Matter That Donald Trump Has Banned Us?</span></u></h1>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: center;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0px;">(By Margaret Sullivan,
Washington Post, 14 June 2016)</span></span></div>
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; margin: 0px;">Does Donald Trump believe in the well-established role of the
press in American democracy? It certainly doesn’t look that way. In recent
months, his staff has roughed up a reporter and thrown another one out of a
press event, and he has insulted journalists and blasted unfavorable news
coverage.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Yet he has benefited from
oodles (that’s the technical term) of free exposure in the media. And he
obviously craves media attention — in much the same way an addict craves his
fix.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; margin: 0px;">Now, the latest chapter: Calling The Washington Post phony and
dishonest, Trump has revoked the press credentials that allow Post reporters
access to his campaign rallies.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>This
gives The Post unwanted membership in a growing club of banned news
organizations, including Politico, BuzzFeed, the Des Moines Register and the
Huffington Post.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The Post’s executive
editor, Martin Baron, called Trump’s action “nothing less than a repudiation of
the role of a free and independent press” and pledged that his paper would keep
reporting vigorously about the presumptive Republican nominee.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; margin: 0px;">Trump’s immediate complaint was with a Post </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/06/13/donald-trump-suggests-president-obama-was-involved-with-orlando-shooting/"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">article</span></span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; margin: 0px;"> written off a Fox News interview, in which the candidate
criticized President Obama after the Orlando massacre: “Look, we’re led by a
man that either is not tough, not smart or he’s got something else in mind.
. . . It’s inconceivable. There’s something going on.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The Post reported that Trump was suggesting
some tie between the president and the shooting; the article was a reasonable
interpretation of what he said. An early headline was rewritten and made more
restrained, not after a complaint, but at the editors’ behest.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
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</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; margin: 0px;">On Tuesday, I tried to ask Trump to further
explain his action against The Post, to see how broadly he intended to define
the ban and to ask him how he sees the role of America’s free press. His
communications director, Hope Hicks, didn’t shut down the idea of such an
interview, but she said she would get back to me.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>As of deadline, I hadn’t heard from her, but
I’ll keep trying to get Trump to answer these questions, sooner or later.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It’s worth noting that Hillary Clinton —
although she hasn’t revoked any credentials or made bombastic speeches about
phony coverage — has been far less accessible than Trump, giving no press
conferences and very few serious interviews. None of this bodes well for press
access in 2017 and beyond. I’ll be trying to ask Clinton, too, how she intends
to handle journalists if elected.</span></div>
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; margin: 0px;">That’s something that ought to matter deeply to American citizens.
After all, journalists represent the public when they attend events, ask
questions and dig for information. Trump, like Sarah Palin before him, may be
trying to score points with his base, which considers the media infected with
liberal bias.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Beyond the troubling
big-picture questions, how much does it really hurt The Post not to have the
credentials?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>National political
correspondent Karen Tumulty told me that’s still unclear: “The value of that
little piece of paper on a string around your neck is actually pretty limited.
Often, it is most useful for the opportunity to talk to people in the crowd and
hear what is on their minds.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It becomes
crucial, though, she said, when a candidate takes a trip overseas, as Trump is
going to do soon. And “my real question here is whether a credential is the
same as access.” Will The Post be able to get its questions answered by
campaign officials and Trump himself, or will it be entirely cut off? </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; margin: 0px;">At BuzzFeed, politics editor Katherine Miller told me that her
organization’s best reporting work to date has had nothing to do with access,
or lack of access, to Trump rallies, but much more with the time-consuming
tasks of </span><a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/trump-says-removing-gaddafi-was-mistake-but-pushed-for-libya?utm_term=.bgX1jqrO4#.fxQYQX5Ox"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">digging</span></span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; margin: 0px;"> through audio recordings and following up on tips that reporter
Andrew Kaczynski has been doing, far removed from public events.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>A lack of credentials has never “impeded our
coverage or what we’re trying to do,” Miller said. “The most interesting stuff
isn’t happening inside the arenas.”<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>She’s right. And that’s always been the case. Bob Woodward recalled the
early retaliation by the Nixon administration in 1972 to The Post’s Watergate
reporting: A society reporter, Dorothy McCardle, was banned from White House
dinners and parties. “It was absurd,” he said. But it became far less so when
The Post’s broadcast licenses were challenged, which in turn caused the
company’s stock price to plummet.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“They
hit Katharine Graham where it could hurt,” Woodward told me. “And she didn’t
flinch.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>That’s a solid tradition at The
Post, where Baron said Monday that Trump coverage would plow forward,
“honorably, honestly, accurately, energetically, and unflinchingly.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>That matters more — a lot more — than a
little piece of paper on a string.</span><br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/does-it-matter-that-donald-trump-has-banned-us-not-in-the-way-youd-think/2016/06/14/e11aa0c2-324f-11e6-95c0-2a6873031302_story.html?wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0563c1;">https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/does-it-matter-that-donald-trump-has-banned-us-not-in-the-way-youd-think/2016/06/14/e11aa0c2-324f-11e6-95c0-2a6873031302_story.html?wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1</span></a><span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"> </span><br />
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<b><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">As Its
Stock Collapsed, Trump’s Firm Gave Him Huge Bonuses</span></u></b></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By Drew Harwell, The Washington Post, 12 June 2016)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">It was promoted as the chance of a
lifetime: Mom-and-pop investors could buy shares in celebrity businessman
Donald Trump’s first public company, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Their investments were quickly depleted. The
company known by Trump’s initials, DJT, crumbled into a penny stock and filed
for bankruptcy after less than a decade, costing shareholders millions of
dollars, even as other casino companies soared.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>In its short life, Trump the company greatly enriched Trump the
businessman, paying to have his personal jet piloted and buying heaps of
Trump-brand merchandise. Despite losing money every year under Trump’s
leadership, the company paid Trump handsomely, including a $5 million bonus in
the year the company’s stock plummeted 70 percent.</span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Many of
those who lost money were Main Street shareholders who believed in the Trump
brand, such as Sebastian Pignatello, a retired private investor in Queens. By
the time of the 2004 bankruptcy, Pignatello’s 150,000 shares were worth pennies
on the dollar.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“He had been pillaging
the company all along,” said Pignatello, who joined shareholders in a lawsuit
against Trump that has since been settled. “Even his business allies, they were
all fair game. He has no qualms about screwing anybody. That’s what he
does.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump’s bid
for the White House relies heavily on his ability to sell himself as a master
businessman, a standout performer in real estate and reality TV.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But interviews with former shareholders and
analysts as well as years of financial filings reveal a striking characteristic
of his business record: Even when his endeavors failed and other people lost
money, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee found a way to make
money for himself, to market his Trump-branded products and to pay for his
expensive lifestyle.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Trump was the
chairman of Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts in Atlantic City from 1995 to 2009,
his only outing as the head of a major public company. During that time, the
company lost more than $1 billion, financial records show. He also was chief
executive from 2000 to 2005, during which time share prices plunged from a high
of $35 to as low as 17 cents.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump
received more than $44 million in salary, bonuses and other compensation during
his time at the company, filings show. He also benefited from tens of millions
of dollars more in special deals, advisory fees and “service agreements” he
negotiated with his company.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Trump’s
campaign did not make him available to respond to specific questions about the
company, but in a recent Washington Post interview, Trump said he “made a lot
of money in Atlantic City,” adding, “I make great deals for myself.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>He expounded: “They say, ‘Why don’t you take
the casinos public or something?’ You know, if you take them public, you make
money on that. All I can say is I wasn’t representing the country. I wasn’t
representing the banks. I wasn’t representing anybody but myself.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Corporate
governance experts say it’s rare for executives of public companies to suggest
that they haven’t been looking out for the shareholders who financed them.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“When companies go public, when they first
invite investors in . . . they say: ‘I promise you, you will come first. We are
here to create shareholder value, and that’s why you should trust us,’ ” said
Nell Minow, the vice chair of ValueEdge Advisors, which advises shareholders on
corporate governance issues. “For them to say, ‘I don’t really care about you,’
it’s basically your [sell] signal. Who’s going to make sure my interests as a
shareholder are going to be protected?”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump Hotels
and Casino Resorts started out as a holding company that owned the Trump Plaza
Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City, and then it steadily added other Trump
properties.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Because it was publicly
traded, Trump could sell shares and quickly raise money while other corners of
his empire were in distress. Virtually all of Trump’s other businesses are
privately held, so key information about their performance is hidden from
view.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The company began advertising its
public offering of stock in 1995, </span><a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/943320/0000950130-96-000349.txt" target="_blank" title="www.sec.gov"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">saying</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">
shareholders would benefit from “the widespread recognition of the ‘Trump’ name
and its association with high quality amenities and first class service.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>When it debuted that year on the New York
Stock Exchange, Trump’s company raised $140 million from investors, at $14 a
share, and said the money would go toward expanding the Plaza and developing a
riverboat casino in Indiana.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But much of
that money went to pay off tens of millions of dollars in loans Trump had
personally guaranteed, filings show. Those loans were taken out before the
company went public, but Trump’s private fortune could have been at risk if
they went unpaid.</span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">The company
got off to an encouraging start. An improving national economy and an upturn in
Atlantic City gambling helped shares soar to a peak of $35 in 1996. That
boosted the value of Trump’s stake in the company and helped him return to the
Forbes 400 list — the magazine’s ranking of America’s wealthiest people — for
the first time since 1989.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The early
success didn’t last long. In less than a year, the company paid premium prices
for two of Trump’s deeply indebted, privately-held casinos, the Trump Taj Mahal
and the Trump Castle. In essence, he was both buyer and seller, able to set
whatever price he wanted. The company bought his Castle for $100 million more
than analysts </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/09/business/long-odds-for-the-shares-of-trump-s-casino-company.html" target="_blank" title="www.nytimes.com"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">said</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> it was
worth. Trump pocketed $880,000 in cash after arranging the deal, financial
filings </span><a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/943320/0000940180-97-000299.txt" target="_blank" title="www.sec.gov"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">show</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">.</span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">By the end
of 1996, shareholders who had bet on a rosy Trump future were now investors in
a company with $1.7 billion of Trump’s old debt. The company was forced to
spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on interest payments, more than
the casinos brought in, securities filings show. The unprofitable company
couldn’t afford the upgrades it needed to compete with newer gambling
rivals.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Spooked investors fled the
company in 1996, sending its share price down to $12. As millions of dollars in
shareholder value evaporated, the company gave Trump a $7 million pay package,
including a 71 percent raise to his salary, financial filings show. Trump
defended his compensation by </span><a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB860714452669000" target="_blank" title="www.wsj.com"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">telling</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> the Wall Street Journal, “Other than
the stock price, we’re doing great.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“He
ran these companies into the ground,” said Graef Crystal, an executive-pay
consultant who watched the company at the time, in an interview.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">As the
company spiraled downward, it continued to pay for Trump’s luxuries. Between
1998 and 2005, it spent more than $6 million to “entertain high-end customers”
on Trump’s plane and golf courses and about $2 million to maintain his personal
jet and have it piloted, a Post analysis of company filings shows.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Trump also steered the company toward deals
with the rest of the Trump-brand empire. Between 2006 and 2009, the company
bought $1.7 million of Trump-brand merchandise, including $1.2 million of Trump
Ice bottled water, the analysis shows.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>“If you’re chairman of the company, there have to be safeguards to avoid
that kind of blatant self-dealing,” said Pignatello, who said he lost tens of
thousands of dollars in the investment. “He was milking the company.”</span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">The grand
promises and boasting Trump had become famous for as a private businessman
became a source of tension with public investors. Wall Street traders spoke of
the “Donald discount” to highlight the gap between what Trump promised and what
they believed his stock was actually worth.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>Trump </span><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1997/05/19/trump-solo" target="_blank" title="www.newyorker.com"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">said</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> in 1997 that he was “the biggest
there is in the casino business.” But that March, when the stock was trading at
a quarter of its price 10 months before, Chase bond analyst Steve Ruggiero </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/09/business/long-odds-for-the-shares-of-trump-s-casino-company.html" target="_blank" title="www.nytimes.com"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">said</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> the
company wasn’t “forthcoming” about its financial performance with analysts,
which he said “raises suspicions.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The
company at times ran into trouble. In 1998, the U.S. Treasury fined one of the
Trump casinos $477,000 for failing to file reports designed to help guard
against money laundering. Trump did not comment then on the action. The company
agreed last year to pay a $10 million civil penalty after regulators found that
it had continued to violate the reporting and record-keeping requirements of
the Bank Secrecy Act.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In 2000, Trump and
his partners paid $250,000 to settle a case brought by New York state alleging
that they had secretly funded an ad blitz opposing the opening of competing
casinos in the Catskill Mountains. “It’s been settled. We’re happy it all
worked out nicely,” Trump </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/06/nyregion/trump-and-others-accept-fines-for-ads-in-opposition-to-casinos.html" target="_blank" title="www.nytimes.com"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">said</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> then.</span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">And in 2002,
federal securities regulators issued a cease-and-desist order against the
company, saying it had misled shareholders by publishing a news release with
numbers “deceptively” skewed to appear more upbeat. The company said it quickly
corrected the error and was not fined. Trump defended the release by </span><a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB101119802590296360" target="_blank" title="www.wsj.com"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">saying</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> that it “was just a statement that
was too verbose.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The company lost money
every year of Trump’s leadership, and its share price suffered. A shareholder
who bought $100 of DJT shares in 1995 could sell them for about $4 in 2005. The
same investment in MGM Resorts would have increased in value to about
$600.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In 2004, the year Trump took home
a $1.5 million salary, stock-exchange officials froze trading in the company —
and, later, delisted it entirely — as word spread that it was filing for
bankruptcy because of about $1.8 billion in debt.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Under the
company’s Chapter 11 reorganization plan, shareholders’ stake in the company
shrunk from roughly 40 percent to about 5 percent. Trump, meanwhile, would
remain chairman – and receive a $2 million annual salary, a $7.5 million
beachfront tract in Atlantic City and a personal stake in the company’s Miss
Universe pageant.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“I don’t think it’s a
failure. It’s a success,” Trump </span><a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6556470/ns/business-us_business/t/trump-casinos-file-bankruptcy/" target="_blank" title="www.nbcnews.com"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">said</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> in 2004
about the bankruptcy. “The future looks very good.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Shareholders sued, saying in court filings
that the “sweetheart deal” amounted to a “basket of goodies” for Trump.
“Chairmen of public companies usually don’t celebrate when millions of dollars
of shareholder equity are being wiped out,” attorneys wrote in a court filing
that year. “Donald Trump apparently does.”<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span></span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump
settled, agreeing to give creditors $17.5 million in cash and the proceeds from
an auction of the Atlantic City land.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>Trump has said he had no regrets about the company’s performance.
“Entrepreneurially speaking, not necessarily from the standpoint of running a
company but from an entrepreneur’s standpoint, [the stock offering] was one of
the great deals,” he </span><a href="http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/04/19/367357/index.htm" target="_blank" title="archive.fortune.com"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">told Fortune</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> in 2004.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Company
decisions were, as in most public companies, approved by a board of directors.
None of the original directors responded to requests for comment. Trump wrote
in his book “Surviving at the Top” that he “personally didn’t like answering to
a board of directors.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Charles Elson,
director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the
University of Delaware, said Trump exemplified the corporate-American role once
known as the “imperial CEO”: an unchallenged, dominant leader who
singlehandedly steered the company.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“The
CEO ran the show ... and the board was the creature of the CEO,” Elson said.
“These days, it’s very different,” he added, because of a shift toward greater
oversight from company directors and the increasing presence of activist
shareholders. </span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">One later
director was close to Trump: his daughter. Ivanka Trump was named to the board
of directors in 2007, when she was 26 and had been working for two years at her
father’s private company, the Trump Organization. The public company paid her
$188,861 in cash and stock awards that year, filings show. Representatives for
Ivanka Trump declined to comment.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Ivanka
and Donald Trump both resigned from the company in 2009, after Trump declared
in a statement that he strongly disagreed with bondholders who had been pushing
the company to file again for bankruptcy.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>“The company has represented for quite some time substantially less than
1 percent of my net worth, and my investment in it is worthless to me now,”
Trump said at the time.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">The company,
now called Trump Entertainment Resorts, never escaped its crippling debt and
filed for bankruptcy twice more, in 2009 and 2014. Carl Icahn, the billionaire
investor Trump has called a friend, took control of the public company this
year.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Trump’s corporate reign was
disruptive enough to give even his biggest supporters pause. Jimmy Mullins, a
Trump superfan who once paid for specialty “TRMP 1” license plates, said he
bought some of the company’s first publicly traded shares believing that Trump
would lead the casinos to glory. “How could you lose money at a casino?”
Mullins said in a recent interview.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But
in 2009, after losing money, Mullins told the Press of Atlantic City newspaper:
“He let us down. . . . I could have bought another [car]. That’s how much money
I lost in this company.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Mullins, now
64 and working part time at a catering hall in New York, said Trump called him
after the story appeared and offered him complimentary hotel stays at the
casino. Mullins said he was upset when interviewed in 2009 but no longer feels
that way. He said he intends to vote for Trump for president.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Other people did lose money,” Mullins said.
“But he took care of me.”</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/as-its-stock-collapsed-trump%e2%80%99s-firm-gave-him-huge-bonuses-and-paid-for-his-jet/ar-AAgWORF?ocid=spartanntp"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/as-its-stock-collapsed-trump%e2%80%99s-firm-gave-him-huge-bonuses-and-paid-for-his-jet/ar-AAgWORF?ocid=spartanntp</span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Hundreds Allege Donald Trump Doesn’t
Pay His Bills</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">(By Steve
Reilly, USA Today, 09 June 2016)</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">During
the Atlantic City casino boom in the 1980s, Philadelphia cabinet-builder Edward
Friel Jr. landed a $400,000 contract to build the bases for slot machines,
registration desks, bars and other cabinets at Harrah's at Trump Plaza.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The family cabinetry business, founded in the
1940s by Edward’s father, finished its work in 1984 and submitted its final
bill to the general contractor for the Trump Organization, the resort’s
builder.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Edward’s son, Paul, who was the
firm’s accountant, still remembers the amount of that bill more than 30 years
later: $83,600. The reason: the money never came. “That began the demise
of the Edward J. Friel Company… which has been around since my grandfather,” he
said.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Donald
Trump often portrays himself as a savior of the working class who will
"protect your job." But a USA TODAY NETWORK analysis found he
has been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits over the past three decades —
and a large number of those involve ordinary Americans, like the
Friels, who say Trump or his companies have refused to pay them.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of
liens, judgments, and other government filings reviewed by the USA TODAY
NETWORK, document people who have accused Trump and his businesses of failing
to pay them for their work. Among them: a dishwasher in Florida. A glass
company in New Jersey. A carpet company. A plumber. Painters. Forty-eight
waiters. Dozens of bartenders and other hourly workers at his resorts and
clubs, coast to coast. Real estate brokers who sold his properties. And,
ironically, several law firms that once represented him in these suits and others.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump’s
companies have also been cited for 24 violations of the Fair Labor Standards
Act since 2005 for failing to pay overtime or minimum wage, according to U.S.
Department of Labor data. That includes 21 citations against the defunct Trump
Plaza in Atlantic City and three against the also out-of-business Trump
Mortgage LLC in New York. Both cases were resolved by the companies
agreeing to pay back wages.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In addition
to the lawsuits, the review found more than 200 mechanic’s liens — filed by
contractors and employees against Trump, his companies or his properties
claiming they were owed money for their work — since the 1980s. The liens
range from a $75,000 claim by a Plainview, N.Y., air conditioning and heating
company to a $1 million claim from the president of a New York City real estate
banking firm. On just one project, Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City,
records released by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission in 1990 show that
at least 253 subcontractors weren’t paid in full or on time, including workers
who installed walls, chandeliers and plumbing.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>“Let’s say that they do a job that’s not good, or a job that they didn’t
finish, or a job that was way late. I’ll deduct from their contract,
absolutely. That’s what the country should be doing.”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">The
actions in total paint a portrait of Trump’s sprawling organization frequently
failing to pay small businesses and individuals, then sometimes tying them up
in court and other negotiations for years. In some cases, the Trump teams
financially overpower and outlast much smaller opponents, draining their
resources. Some just give up the fight, or settle for less; some have ended up
in bankruptcy or out of business altogether.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>Trump and his daughter Ivanka, in an interview with USA TODAY, shrugged
off the lawsuits and other claims of non-payment. If a company or worker he
hires isn’t paid fully, the Trumps said, it’s because The Trump Organization
was unhappy with the work.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">“Let’s
say that they do a job that’s not good, or a job that they didn’t finish, or a
job that was way late. I’ll deduct from their contract, absolutely,” Trump
said. “That’s what the country should be doing.”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">To be
sure, Trump and his companies have prevailed in many legal disputes over
missing payments, or reached settlements that cloud the terms reached by the
parties.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>However, the consistent
circumstances laid out in those lawsuits and other non-payment claims raise
questions about Trump’s judgment as a businessman, and as a potential commander
in chief. The number of companies and others alleging he hasn’t paid suggests
that either his companies have a poor track record hiring workers and assessing
contractors, or that Trump businesses renege on contracts, refuse to pay, or
consistently attempt to change payment terms after work is complete as is
alleged in dozens of court cases.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">In the
interview, Trump repeatedly said the cases were “a long time ago.”
However, even as he campaigns for the presidency, new cases are continuing.
Just last month, Trump Miami Resort Management LLC settled with 48 servers at
his Miami golf resort over failing to pay overtime for a special event. The
settlements averaged about $800 for each worker and as high as $3,000 for one,
according to court records. Some workers put in 20-hour days over the 10-day
Passover event at Trump National Doral Miami, the lawsuit contends. Trump’s
team initially argued a contractor hired the workers, and he wasn’t
responsible, and counter-sued the contractor demanding payment.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">“Trump
could have settled it right off the bat, but they wanted to fight it out,
that’s their M.O.” said Rod Hannah, of Plantation, Fla., the lawyer who
represented the workers, who he said are forbidden from talking about the
case in public. “They’re known for their aggressiveness, and if you have the
money, why not?”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Similar
cases have cropped up with Trump’s facilities in California and New York,
where hourly workers, bartenders and wait staff have sued with a range of
allegations from not letting workers take breaks to not passing along
tips to servers. Trump's company settled the California case, and the
New York case is pending.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Trump's Doral
golf resort also has been embroiled in recent non-payment claims
by two different paint firms, with one case settled and the other pending.
Last month, his company’s refusal to pay one Florida painter more than
$30,000 for work at Doral led the judge in the case to order foreclosure
of the resort if the contractor isn’t paid.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>Juan Carlos Enriquez, owner of The Paint Spot, in South Florida, has
been waiting more than two years to get paid for his work at the Doral. The
Paint Spot first filed a lien against Trump’s course, then filed a lawsuit
asking a Florida judge to intervene.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">In
courtroom testimony, the manager of the general contractor for the Doral renovation
admitted that a decision was made not to pay The Paint Spot because Trump
“already paid enough.” As the construction manager spoke, “Trump’s trial
attorneys visibly winced, began breathing heavily, and attempted to make eye
contact” with the witness, the judge noted in his ruling.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>That, and other evidence, convinced the judge
The Paint Spot’s claim was credible. He ordered last month that the Doral
resort be foreclosed on, sold, and the proceeds used to pay Enriquez the money
he was owed. Trump’s attorneys have since filed a motion to delay the sale, and
the contest continues.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Enriquez still
hasn’t been paid.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump
frequently boasts that he will bring jobs back to America, including Tuesday in
a primary-election night victory speech at his golf club in suburban New York
City. “No matter who you are, we're going to protect your job,” Trump said
Tuesday. “Because let me tell you, our jobs are being stripped from our country
like we're babies.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But
the lawsuits show Trump’s organization wages Goliath vs David legal
battles over small amounts of money that are negligible to the billionaire and
his executives — but devastating to his much-smaller foes.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In 2007, for instance, dishwasher Guy
Dorcinvil filed a federal lawsuit against Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club resort in
Palm Beach, Fla., alleging the club failed to pay time-and-a-half for overtime
he worked over three years and the company failed to keep proper time records
for employees.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Mar-a-Lago
LLC agreed to pay Dorcinvil $7,500 to settle the case in 2008. The terms of the
settlement agreement includes a standard statement that Mar-a-Lago does not
admit fault and forbids Dorcinvil or his lawyers from talking about the case,
according to court records.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Developers
with histories of not paying contractors are a very small minority of the
industry, said Colette Nelson, chief advocacy officer of the American
Subcontractors Association. But late or missing payments can be devastating for
small businesses and their employees.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Real
estate is a tough and aggressive business, but most business people don’t set
out to make their money by breaking the companies that they do business with,”
she said, stressing she couldn’t speak directly to the specifics of cases in
Trump’s record. “But there are a few.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In
the interview, Trump said that complaints represent a tiny fraction of his
business empire and dealings with contractors and employees, insisting all are
paid fairly. “We pay everybody what they’re supposed to be paid, and we
pay everybody on time,” he said. “And we employ thousands and thousands of
people. OK?”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Despite
the Trumps’ assertion that their companies only refuse payment to
contractors “when somebody does a bad job,” he has sometimes offered to hire
those same contractors again. It’s a puzzling turn of events, since most people
who have a poor experience with a contractor, and who refuse to pay and even
fight the contractor in court, aren’t likely to offer to rehire them.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Nevertheless, such was the case for the
Friels. After submitting the final bill for the Plaza casino cabinet-building
in 1984, Paul Friel said he got a call asking that his father, Edward, come to
the Trump family’s offices at the casino for a meeting. There Edward, and some
other contractors, were called in one by one to meet with Donald Trump and his
brother, Robert Trump.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“He sat in a room
with nine guys,” Paul Friel said. “We found out some of them were carpet guys.
Some of them were glass guys. Plumbers. You name it.”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">In the
meeting, Donald Trump told his father that the company’s work was inferior,
Friel said, even though the general contractor on the casino had approved it.
The bottom line, Trump told Edward Friel, was the company wouldn't get the
final payment. Then, Friel said Trump added something that struck the family as
bizarre. Trump told his dad that he could work on other Trump projects in the
future.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Wait a minute,” Paul Friel
said, recalling his family's reaction to his dad’s account of the meeting. “Why
would the Trump family want a company who they say their work is inferior to
work for them in the future?”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Asked
about the meeting this week, Trump said, “Was the work bad? Was it bad work?”
And, then, after being told that the general contractor had approved it, Trump
added, “Well, see here’s the thing. You’re talking about, what, 30 years ago?”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Ivanka
Trump added that any number of disputes over late or deficient payments that
were found over the past few decades pale in comparison to the thousands of
checks Trump companies cut each month.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“We
have hundreds of millions of dollars of construction projects underway. And we
have, for the most part, exceptional contractors on them who get paid, and get
paid quickly,” she said, adding that she doubted any contractor complaining in
court or in the press would admit they delivered substandard work. “But it would
be irresponsible if my father paid contractors who did lousy work. And he
doesn’t do that.”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">But, the
Friels’ story is similar to experiences of hundreds of other contractors over
the casino-boom decade in Atlantic City. Legal records, New Jersey Casino
Control Commission records and contemporaneous local newspaper stories
recounted time and again tales about the Trumps paying late or renegotiating
deals for dimes on the dollar.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">A
half-decade after the Friels’ encounter, in 1990, as Trump neared the opening
of his third Atlantic City casino, he was once again attempting to pay
contractors less than he owed. In casino commission records of an audit,
it was revealed that Trump’s companies owed a total of $69.5 million to 253
subcontractors on the Taj Mahal project. Some already had sued Trump, the state
audit said; others were negotiating with Trump to try to recover what they
could. The companies and their hundreds of workers had installed walls,
chandeliers, plumbing, lighting and even the casino’s trademark minarets.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>One of the builders was Marty Rosenberg, vice
president of Atlantic Plate Glass Co., who said he was owed about $1.5 million
for work at the Taj Mahal. When it became clear Trump was not going to pay in
full, Rosenberg took on an informal leadership role, representing about 100 to
150 contractors in negotiations with Trump.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Rosenberg’s
mission: with Trump offering as little as 30 cents on the dollar to some of the
contractors, Rosenberg wanted to get as much as he could for the small
businesses, most staffed by younger tradesmen with modest incomes and often
families to support.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Yes, there were a
lot of other companies," he said of those Trump left waiting to get paid.
"Yes, some did not survive."<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Rosenberg
said his company was among the lucky ones. He had to delay paying his own
suppliers to the project. The negotiations led to him eventually getting about
70 cents on the dollar for his work, and he was able to pay all of his
suppliers in full.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">The
analysis of Trump lawsuits also found that professionals, such as real
estate agents and lawyers, say he's refused to pay them sizable sums of
money. Those cases show that even some loyal employees, those selling
his properties and fighting for him in court, are only with him until
they’re not.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Real estate broker Rana
Williams, who said she had sold hundreds of millions of dollars in Manhattan
property for Trump International Realty over more than two decades with the
company, sued in 2013 alleging Trump shorted her $735,212 in commissions on
deals she brokered from 2009 to 2012. Williams, who managed as many as 16 other
sales agents for Trump, said the tycoon and his senior deputies decided to pay
her less than her contracted commission rate “based on nothing more than
whimsy.”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump
and Williams settled their case in 2015, and the terms of the deal are
confidential, as is the case in dozens of other settlements between plaintiffs
and Trump companies.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>However, Williams'
2014 deposition in the case is not sealed. In her sworn testimony, Williams
said the 2013 commission shortage wasn't the only one, and neither was she the
only person who didn't get fully paid. “There were instances where a sizable
commission would come in and we would be waiting for payment and it wouldn’t
come,” she testified. “That was both for myself and for some of the agents.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Another broker, Jennifer McGovern, filed a
similar lawsuit against the now-defunct Trump Mortgage LLC in 2007, citing a
six-figure commission on real-estate sales that she said went unpaid. A judge
issued a judgment ordering Trump Mortgage to pay McGovern $298,274.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Even
Trump’s own attorneys, on several occasions, sued him over claims of unpaid
bills.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>One law firm that fought
contractors over payments and other issues for Trump — New York City’s Morrison
Cohen LLP — ended up on the other side of a similar battle with the mogul in
2008. Trump didn’t like that its lawyers were using his name in press releases
touting its representation of Trump in a lawsuit against a construction
contractor that Trump claimed overcharged him for work on a luxury golf club.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">As Trump
now turned his ire on his former lawyers, however, Morrison Cohen counter-sued.
In court records, the law firm alleged Trump didn’t pay nearly a half million
dollars in legal fees. Trump and his ex-lawyers settled their disputes out of
court, confidentially, in 2009.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In 2012,
Virginia-based law firm Cook, Heyward, Lee, Hopper & Feehan filed a lawsuit
against the Trump Organization for $94,511 for legal fees and costs. The case
was eventually settled out of court. But as the case unfolded, court records
detail how Trump's senior deputies attacked the attorneys' quality of work in
the local and trade press, leading the firm to make claims of defamation that a
judge ultimately rejected on free speech grounds.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump
claims in his presidential personal financial disclosure to be worth $10
billion as a result of his business acumen. Many of the small contractors
and individuals who weren’t paid by him haven’t been as fortunate.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Edward Friel, of the Philadelphia cabinetry
company allegedly shortchanged for the casino work, hired a lawyer to sue for
the money, said his son, Paul Friel. But the attorney advised him that the
Trumps would drag the case out in court and legal fees would exceed what they’d
recover.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The unpaid bill took a huge
chunk out of the bottom line of the company that Edward ran to take care of his
wife and five kids. “The worst part wasn’t dealing with the Trumps,” Paul Friel
said. After standing up to Trump, Friel said the family struggled to get other
casino work in Atlantic City. “There’s tons of these stories out there,”
he said.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The Edward J. Friel Co. filed
for bankruptcy on Oct. 5, 1989.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Says the
founder's grandson: “Trump hits everybody.”</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/06/09/donald-trump-unpaid-bills-republican-president-laswuits/85297274/?campaign_id=A100&campaign_type=Email"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/06/09/donald-trump-unpaid-bills-republican-president-laswuits/85297274/?campaign_id=A100&campaign_type=Email</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump Said ‘University’ Was About Education. Actually, Its
Goal Was: ‘Sell, Sell, Sell!’</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">(By Tom Hamburger, Rosalind Helderman
and Dalton Bennett, Washington Post, 04 June 2016)</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">When
Donald Trump introduced his new university from the lobby of his famous tower,
he declared that it would be unlike any of his other ventures. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Trump University would be a noble endeavor, he
said, with an emphasis on education over profits. It was a way for him to give
back, to share his expertise with the masses, to build a “legacy as an
educator.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>He wouldn’t even keep all the
money — if he happened to make a profit, he would turn the funds over to
charity.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“If I had a choice of making
lots of money or imparting lots of knowledge, I think I’d be as happy to impart
knowledge as to make money,” Trump said at the inaugural news conference in the
spring of 2005.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">The
launch of Trump University coincided with two auspicious developments for the
real estate mogul: Through his then-year-old hit TV show “The Apprentice,” the
billionaire was developing an image as America’s savviest boss, while the
nation’s booming real estate market was giving hope to many who dreamed of
striking it rich.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Ads touted Trump University
as “the next best thing to being Trump’s apprentice.” Trump, who every week on
TV singled out someone to be fired, pledged in a promotional video to
“hand-pick” instructors. “Priceless information” would help attendees build
wealth in the same real estate game that made Trump rich.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In the end, few if any of these statements
would prove to be true.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump
University was not a university. It was not even a school. Rather, it was a
series of seminars held in hotel ballrooms across the country that promised
attendees they could get rich quick but were mostly devoted to enriching the
people who ran them.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Participants were
enticed with local newspaper ads featuring images of Trump, then encouraged to
write checks or charge tens of thousands of dollars on credit cards for
multi-day learning sessions. Participants were considered “buyers,” as one
internal document put it. According to the company’s former president, Trump
did not personally pick the instructors. Many attendees were trained by people
with little or no real estate expertise, customers and former employees have
alleged in lawsuits against the company. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">“I was
told to do one thing,” said James Harris, a Trump University instructor whose
sessions have been repeatedly cited in the litigation, in an interview with The
Washington Post. “And that one thing was: . . . to show up to teach, train and
motivate people to purchase the Trump University products and services and make
sure everybody bought. That is it.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>A
Trump spokesman said Harris’s comments “have no merit” and accused Harris of
“looking for media attention to further his own agenda.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>All told, Trump University received about
$40 million in revenue from more than 5,000 participants before it halted
operations in 2010 amid lawsuits in New York and California alleging widespread
fraud. The New York attorney general estimated Trump netted more than
$5 million during the five years it was active. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>He has since acknowledged that he gave none of
the profits to charity.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">This
account is based on a review of hundreds of pages of internal company records
that have become public as a result of the lawsuits, as well as new interviews
with former Trump University employees and customers.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Many of the company’s internal records,
including several “playbooks” that advised employees on strategies for
pressuring customers, were unsealed in court over the past week in response to
a request by The Post.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump
and his lawyers have vigorously disputed the allegations, predicting that they
will win in court and reopen the business. They point to positive
customer-satisfaction surveys that have been submitted in the lawsuits and
suggest they have been unfairly targeted by trial lawyers and a politically
motivated attorney general in New York.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“We
continue to believe that people got substantial value and that people were
overwhelmingly satisfied,” said Trump’s general counsel, Alan Garten. “We are
not going to be stopping what we are doing. We are going to continue to
zealously defend this case because, at the end of the day, we know we are not
being tried by The Washington Post or by CNN — but in a courtroom by a jury.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Garten acknowledged that Trump never gave
away the profits to charity. He said it was always Trump’s intention but that
the lawyers leading the class-action suits against the company “got a hold of
this and . . . whatever profits existed sort of evaporated.” The unfulfilled
promise was first reported last year by </span><a href="http://time.com/4101290/what-the-legal-battle-over-trump-university-reveals-about-its-founder/" title="time.com"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Time magazine</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">In his
defense, Trump has often cited the many positive reviews by former customers. A
number of them submitted sworn statements in court explaining their positive
experiences at Trump University.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Kissy
and Mark Gordon, who own a residential development company in Virginia and
jointly signed up for the most expensive program in 2008, said in an interview
that they still use techniques they learned from the course today.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Did we have an expectation that Trump was
going to teach us? No,” Kissy Gordon said. “We have a building background and
the economy changed, and we were looking for something in the same field to do
something with it. So we were there to learn.”<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>Gregory Leishman, another former customer, recalled speaking to his
assigned Trump University mentor on the phone weekly and touring potential
properties for purchase with him in New Haven, Conn. “They gave me information
I didn’t have otherwise,” he said. “You can probably get all that information
from reading books. But Trump University was a crash course. You pay more, you
get more.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Nonetheless,
the company has emerged as one of the most potent lines of attack against
Trump’s campaign for president.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In the
Republican primary, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) cited it as a “fake university” and
sought to use it to help build a case that Trump was a “con artist.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In recent days, Democratic presidential
front-runner Hillary Clinton and her campaign have picked up on that theme.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">“Trump U
is devastating because its a metaphor for his whole campaign: promising
hardworking Americans a way to get ahead, but all based on lies,” tweeted press
secretary Brian Fallon.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Trump also last
week invited a torrent of criticism, including from legal scholars on the left
and right, for accusing the judge presiding over the California suits, U.S.
District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, of being biased because he is of Mexican
descent. Trump has said that Curiel is “Mexican,” although the 62-year-old was
born in Indiana, and that because Trump wants to build a wall on the
U.S.-Mexico border the judge cannot properly do his job.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">The
focus on Trump University also reignited a controversy in Texas over the
decision there by the state attorney general not to file a fraud case against
the business. Newly disclosed documents reported by Texas media show that investigators
had probed the company for seven months and recommended a lawsuit. The inquiry
was shut down when Trump University closed up shop in the state.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Trump later gave $35,000 to the gubernatorial
campaign of then-Attorney General Greg Abbott. A spokesman for Abbott, now the
Republican governor of Texas, has said it’s “absurd” to suggest a connection
between the case and the donation that came several years later and that Trump
University was “forced out of Texas and consumers were protected.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Garten also dismissed any connection between
the Texas decision and Trump’s donation, saying investigators reviewed “a few
complaints . . . and decided not to proceed.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">The
Trump University sales pitch began at free seminars, such as one hosted at a
Holiday Inn just outside of Washington in 2009.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>A placard outside the ballroom read, “Trump, think BIG.” Inside,
aspiring real estate investors heard the theme song from “The Apprentice,” the
O’Jays classic, “For the Love of Money.”<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>Then, a Trump University instructor took the microphone. “All right, you
guys ready to be the next Trump real estate millionaire? Yes or No!?” he
yelled, according to a Post account at the time.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The purpose of these free 90-minute
introductions was not to turn attendees into millionaires, but rather to “set
the hook” for future sales, according to employee playbooks.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">The
playbooks directed leaders of the free seminars to conclude introductory events
by getting “in the sales mindset,” “ready to sell, sell, sell!”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Three-day
courses typically cost $1,495, the records show. But people who paid to attend
them were then urged to sign up for even pricier “elite” programs.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>A “workshop enrollment form” distributed to
participants laid out the options in categories, starting with the “Trump Gold
Elite” program. At $34,995, it was the most expensive option — providing three
days of personal, in-the-field mentorship as well as special programs on real
estate investment, “wealth preservation” and “creative financing.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The “Trump Silver Elite” package, priced at
$19,495, offered real estate and finance training. The “Trump Bronze Elite,”
priced at $9,995, offered similar, but fewer, courses. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Employees
distributed “profile” surveys on the first day of the seminars, in which
participants would outline their financial goals, as well as current assets and
liabilities. Attendees were told that the information would help them figure
out how much they had to invest in real estate, according to customer
complaints.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">But in
the evenings, after seminars had concluded for the first day, staff members
were instructed to use the information to rank each participant according to
assets they had available to spend on more Trump University programs.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“If they can afford the gold elite,” the
playbook advised, “don’t allow them to think about doing anything besides the
gold elite.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>A 43-page “sales playbook”
offered guidance on using psychological tools to convince students that they
needed to sign up for the classes to fulfill their own goals — overcoming their
worries that they might not need or be able to afford the classes.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Customers don’t have needs — they have
problems,” the book advised. “Problems are like health. The more a problem
hurts now, the more the need for a solution now. And the more it hurts, the
more they’ll be prepared to pay for a speedy solution.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">In a
section devoted to “negotiating student resistance,” sales people were offered
sample responses to common objections from potential students. If a potential
customer said he was concerned about going into debt to pay for the classes,
staff were advised to needle them: “I see, do you like living paycheck to
paycheck?”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>If doubts persisted, staffers
were advised to invoke the big boss himself.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">“Mr.
Trump won’t listen to excuses and neither will we,” the instructors were told
to say. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Former students have said they
were instructed to call their credit card companies on the spot and raise their
borrowing limit to pay for the program.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Harris,
the former instructor, recalled one of his typical pitches to urge customers to
find money for programs: “Do you have any equity on your home? Do you have a
401(k) or IRA?”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Harris, 47, said he was
one of Trump University’s biggest sellers. Garten, Trump’s lawyer, said Harris
was one of the most highly rated instructors.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>Instructors had to sell hard to turn participants at free seminars into
paying customers.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>For the four years
Trump University operated, more than 80,300 people attended the free
introductory sessions. Those previews were offered 2,000 times in nearly 700
locations around the country.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But only
around 6,000 people paid between $995 and $1,995 to attend three-day seminars,
director of operations Mark Covais said in a 2012 affidavit. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>According to Covais, 572 people paid the full
$34,995 for the top-level Trump University mentorship.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">The
entire program was built around Trump — his picture, his quotes and the promise
of obtaining access to his special formula for prosperity.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>One ad for the free Trump University seminars
that appeared in a Corpus Christi, Tex., newspaper in 2009 promised attendees
that they would “Learn from the Master,” below a picture of Trump.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“I can turn anyone into a successful real
estate investor,” read a quote on the ad, attributed to Trump.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The California class-action lawsuit contains
49 separate instances of Trump University attendees being told their instructor
or future mentor was personally chosen by Trump in 2009 alone.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Donald Trump personally picked me,” one
instructor told a group at a free seminar in May 2009, according to a
transcript of the session filed as part of the New York case. “He could have
picked anybody in this world but he picked me and the reason he picked me is
because I’ve been very, very successful helping average people make a lot of
money.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Harris,
the former instructor, told an introductory meeting of potential customers in
2009 that Trump’s personal generosity was a core element of the program.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“He did not have to start this university,”
Harris told the group, according to a transcript in the New York case. “He does
not need the money. . . . He does not get a dime of it. Does everyone
understand this? Please say ‘yes.’ He does not need the money.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In one presentation cited in the New York
lawsuit, Harris described Trump as instrumental to his own efforts to turn his
life around just after high school.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“I
lived on the streets of New York, mostly down in the subways for the first nine
months, and I did a lot of things to make some money,” he told a group
attending a 2008 event. “And then I met a gentleman and he took me in, and I
lived with him for a year and he taught me how to do real estate. He is still
my mentor today. So the reason I am here is because Donald Trump picked me.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">In an
interview, Harris said he met Trump once in the early 1990s, backstage at an
event at the Taj Mahal casino. “Here is the truth,” he said. “When I was at
Trump University, I had not one interaction with him ever. Not one.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In reality, the instructors were not close to
Trump, and many were not experts in real estate, according to several
ex-staffers who have testified in the lawsuits.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>“The Trump University instructors and mentors were a joke,” said Jason
Nicholas, who worked for the company for seven months in 2007 and submitted a
statement in the lawsuit. “In my opinion, it was just selling false hopes and
lies.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Michael Sexton, who was president
of Trump University, acknowledged in sworn testimony in the New York case that
none of the event instructors were hand-picked by Trump. Trump told lawyers in
California that he would not dispute Sexton’s statement — nor could he remember
a series of instructors, including Harris, by name or face.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Trump also did not review course curriculum,
Sexton said.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“He would never do that,”
Sexton said. “Mr. Trump is not going to go through a 300-page, you know, binder
of content.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Only
when it came to marketing material was Trump deeply involved, reviewing every
piece of advertisement, Sexton testified.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>“Mr. Trump understandably is protective of his brand and very protective
of his image and how he’s portrayed,” Sexton said. “And he wanted to see how
his brand and image were portrayed in Trump University marketing materials. And
he had very good and substantive input as well.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Garten, the Trump attorney, said Trump was
engaged as any CEO would be in the operations. Outside experts designed the
curriculum, Garten said, but Trump was “intimately involved” in the process.
While Trump may not have selected every instructor, Garten said he was “very
much involved in the process and the discussion of what type of instructor was
desired.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">At the
courses, students were supposed to learn Trump’s secrets of real estate
success.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But in sworn testimony in New
York, Sexton could recall only one Trump practice that was incorporated into
the courses: Invest in foreclosed properties.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>The lesson underscored how Trump University, which was formed to teach
aspiring business people to profit from the fast-expanding housing market,
tailored itself after the 2008 economic crash to offer guidance on profiting
from the aftermath.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>One ad placed in the
San Antonio Express-News in October 2009 promised that seminars would allow
participants to “learn from Donald Trump’s handpicked experts how you can
profit from the largest real estate liquidation in history.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">At a
seminar called “Fast Track to Foreclosure,” students were instructed to find
OPM, “other people’s money,” to buy homes out of foreclosure at depressed
prices, dress them up with new paint and attractive landscaping — then flip
them for profit.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Attendees were advised
to use credit cards to invest in real estate, and they were told how to
persuade credit card companies to raise their credit limits. If a credit card
company representative asked for their income, they were advised to add $75,000
in anticipated earnings from their real estate venture before providing a
figure for their expected earnings for the year.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Some
customers have also alleged they were told there would be a personal appearance
at the session by Trump. Instead, they received the opportunity to get their
photograph taken with a life-size cardboard cutout of the mogul.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>John Brown, a customer who provided a sworn
statement in the New York case, described how he “came to realize that I was
not adequately trained, which caused me to feel that Trump University had taken
advantage of me.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Brown said he paid
$1,495 for a three-day seminar in 2009 and then used multiple credit cards to
charge a $24,995 Trump mentorship program. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Because of the Trump name,” he said, “I felt
these classes would be the best.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Three
years later, he said he had made no real estate investments using Trump
knowledge — but was still paying off $20,000 from the courses.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/donald-trump-said-university-was-all-about-education-actually-its-goal-was-sell-sell-sell/2016/06/04/5b6545d0-2819-11e6-ae4a-3cdd5fe74204_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/donald-trump-said-university-was-all-about-education-actually-its-goal-was-sell-sell-sell/2016/06/04/5b6545d0-2819-11e6-ae4a-3cdd5fe74204_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">If The GOP Had
Superdelegates, We Might Not Be In This Trump Mess</span></u></b></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">(By Charles Lane, Washington Post, 08 June 2016)</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Though
often fiercely partisan, Americans have no great love for political parties as
such. Ever since James Madison wrote his mistrust of “</span><a href="http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa10.htm" title="www.constitution.org"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">factions</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">” into
the Constitution, parties and their “bosses” have been repeatedly attacked as
privileged insiders bent on thwarting or twisting democratic processes.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Madison’s
plan worked, partially. With 50 state governments and with a federal government
divided between a bicameral legislative branch and a president, the United
States produces parties that are relatively unstructured and ideologically
amorphous — and generally only two of them. Parliamentary systems encourage
multiple disciplined parties, representing more, and more distinct, interests
and sentiments.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">The
other side of the story is that American parties still provided valuable public
services, including the facilitation of collective action by like-minded, or at
least compatible, citizens; continuity and responsibility in ideology; and,
last but not least, the vetting of aspirants for public office.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Well-functioning
parties are political gatekeepers, necessary to representative democracy but
antithetical to the utopian alternative, direct democracy. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>A belief in direct democracy, apparently, is
behind the attack by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and other Democratic
“progressives” on the institution of “superdelegates” — elected officials and
other insiders who get automatic votes at the Democratic Party’s convention,
much to their fellow insider Hillary Clinton’s advantage, the critics allege. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">“Rigged
system!” Sanders </span><a href="http://www.reuters.com/video/2016/05/02/sanders-takes-aim-at-rigged-system-of-su?videoId=368334396"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">cries</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">. It’s
hard to separate Sanders’s proclaimed principles from self-interest and sour
grapes, especially because when he’s not denouncing the existence of
superdelegates, </span><a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/bernie-sanders-campaign-history-224028"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">he’s
desperately trying to get their votes</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">. Until last year, Sanders
thought himself too pure a progressive to actually join the party he now
presumes to lead and to lecture. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But to
the extent he is making a good-faith claim — that it’s undemocratic to allocate
a critical mass of convention votes to 700-plus elected officials and other
party “regulars,” rather than let primary voters, non-Democrats included, pick
new delegates every four years — it’s a simplistic one.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Parties
are entitled to think about continuity and electability, without which,
obviously, they can never achieve their policy goals. Hence, they’re entitled
to favor loyalists, like the superdelegates, and known quantities, like Clinton
— for all her flaws — over interlopers, like Sanders.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The tension between the internal discipline
necessary to the efficient functioning of left-wing political parties, on the
one hand, and these parties’ egalitarian principles, on the other, is a
commonplace of political analysis: German sociologist </span><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20130829041118/http:/etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=MicPoli.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=25&division=div2"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Robert
Michels</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> called it the “iron law of oligarchy” way back in 1911,
after making a careful study of Germany’s Social Democratic Party — the
original democratic socialists.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">If
Sandersistas ever took over the Democratic Party, as they might yet do, they
too would eventually mutate from dewy-eyed outsiders to system-rigging
insiders. Heck, Clinton got her start organizing Texas’s African Americans and
Latinos for the left-wing insurgent Democratic presidential nominee George
McGovern in 1972.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The McGovern campaign
grew out of the mother of all Democratic internal-democracy psychodramas. After
a convention dominated by party regulars picked Vice President Hubert Humphrey
for president in 1968, Democrats promised the next nomination race would be
open to ’68’s outsiders. McGovern — who helped draft the new procedures — went
on to capture the nomination, then lead Democrats to a landslide defeat.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Jimmy Carter, another rules-enabled outsider,
eked out a win in 1976, but his reelection failure in 1980 convinced Democrats
to reempower moderate party veterans, </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/02/26/will-superdelegates-pick-the-democratic-nominee-heres-everything-you-need-to-know/"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">resulting</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">,
ultimately, in the superdelegate rule. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Nevertheless,
</span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/democratic-superdelegates-the-villains-of-a-rigged-system-according-to-sanders/2016/06/07/634f6df2-2cba-11e6-9b37-42985f6a265c_story.html"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">some</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> on the
Democratic left appear bent on abolishing the superdelegate rule to appease the
Sandersistas and make a statement about democracy. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>As Sanders himself </span><a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/bernie-sanders-campaign-history-224028" title="www.politico.com"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">said</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> with unintended irony Tuesday, “Defying
history is what this campaign has been about.” <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Clinton got more primary votes and
non-superdelegates than Sanders did anyway; thus, as many election analysts
have noted, </span><a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/hillary-clinton-clinches-democratic-nomination-according-to-ap/"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">she
probably would have won sans superdelegates</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Still, the latter served as a fail-safe,
protecting the party against a hostile outside takeover in the event that
Sanders denied Clinton a majority of pledged delegates.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">If only
the Republicans had such a circuit breaker! </span><a href="http://www.bustle.com/articles/141611-does-the-gop-have-superdelegates-the-republican-partys-nomination-rules-are-different-this-year"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Instead</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">, they
were left at the mercy of an untameable intruder, Donald Trump, and the large
but motivated minority of primary voters he inflamed by attacking the GOP and
its leaders — as well as by vilifying various minority groups and repeatedly
violating basic behavioral norms.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Laugh at
the Republicans’ comeuppance if you want; Heaven knows it’s richly deserved.
But now the entire country is at risk of a Trump inauguration in 2017. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Decry, if you must, the party “duopoly” that
has presided over, not resolved, the country’s recent troubles — but also kept
us on an even keel in now-forgotten better times. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>When Democrats and Republicans have passed
through this crucible of disruption and realignment, we will still need them,
or some new, improved version, to frame issues, channel political
participation, select candidates and, one hopes, forge consensus. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>No party can perform any of those functions
without the power to differentiate between “one of us” and everyone else.</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-praise-of-superdelegates/2016/06/08/530234f0-2d8e-11e6-9b37-42985f6a265c_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-praise-of-superdelegates/2016/06/08/530234f0-2d8e-11e6-9b37-42985f6a265c_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Even In Victory, Donald Trump Can’t Stop Airing His
Grievances</span></u></b></div>
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<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">(By Jenna Johnson, Washington Post, 29 May 2016)</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Donald
Trump could have taken a victory lap last week. Instead, he went on a grudge
tour.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>During his first big campaign
swing since locking up the Republican presidential nomination, Trump went after
an odd and seemingly random group of people — Democrats and Republicans, famous
and obscure. There seemed little to gain politically from the attacks, and his
targets were linked by just one thing: Trump felt they had all done him wrong.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">So he
blasted Republicans who have yet to endorse him, including Jeb Bush, New Mexico
Gov. Susana Martinez and Mitt Romney, who Trump said “walks like a penguin.” He
declared that Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton doesn’t look
presidential, and he went after her allies, especially Sen. Elizabeth Warren
(D-Mass.), whom Trump continues to call “Pocahontas” even after being told the
nickname is offensive. He mocked those protesting him and slammed reporters
covering his candidacy.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>During the
four-day, four-state tour, Trump also went after people who were probably
unknown to his supporters until he brought them up: Barbara Res, a former
employee quoted in an article about his treatment of women, and U.S. District
Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is assigned to hear a fraud case against now-defunct
Trump University.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump’s
cutting insults and simplistic attacks have been a hallmark of his candidacy,
viewed by supporters as proof that he is fearless and willing to attack
institutions from the Republican Party to the Vatican. During Trump’s
fight for the Republican nomination, his calculated shots at rivals helped
take them out, one by one.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But with the
nomination apparently secured, last week’s fusillade of digs seemed counterproductive.
Why go after the GOP’s only two female minority governors — Martinez and South
Carolina’s Nikki Haley — when there are many other elected Republicans who have
not endorsed him? What does he gain from smearing a former employee and a
federal judge whom most of his supporters have never heard of? Why comment on
Clinton’s voice and appearance instead of her record?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">“I have real
issues with the way that he conducted himself at certain aspects of this
campaign, throughout the campaign. That remains,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)
said in a CNN interview Sunday even as he announced his endorsement of Trump.
“He’s now the Republican nominee, or presumptive nominee, and will be the
nominee. And I think he has an opportunity now to enter a second phase in this
campaign.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="display: none; margin: 0px;">Content from JPMorgan Chase & CO. In Context quotes are
content from JPMorgan Chase & CO. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<a href="https://adclick.g.doubleclick.net/pcs/click?xai=AKAOjstist02QQk-Q0HPOt1Dk9lumjwWNZx4fvWDCUFS0hNE0p_2ac9lqJ6guaFIIbDwnADHwrC8Z_pv3ffSpCtrHID1sw6uc33bgDovdRmID0baEDNJRkishOKewYpe2SEundSNgfNRO7HUlA4y_jOCRHqpu_JIEduGBk-g7fCKU0-Xw7dpObQrEJXH_cnro43JfyDYg3NxlWUIl8taKA&sai=AMfl-YTRIPOOKVZ1ZabQG3L9kBkqaWqOzoJv8smAcoEGIpHPX0UES-bGYp8C6lBQDa3DPM6NFdBqTYuSNw&sig=Cg0ArKJSzMwIZpdKyVKuEAE&urlfix=1&adurl=http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/brand-connect/jpmc/detroit-matters/" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="display: none; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">“What’s happening in Detroit is
instructive for policymakers, business leaders and nonprofits everywhere.” —
Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO, JPMorgan Chase & Co. </span><span style="display: none; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><img alt="https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-stat/incontext/assets/7e6989f5-cd95-407e-a442-73d4f1885849.png&h=40&_=1464290408553" border="0" height="40" src="file:///C:/Users/Richard/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image014.png" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_2" width="603" /></span><span lang="EN" style="display: none; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">
More </span></a><span lang="EN" style="display: none; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump’s
journey of grievances began Tuesday night with a rally in Albuquerque. The
score-settling started right away: As he listed troubling statistics about the
local economy — something he usually does at rallies — Trump told the crowd of
several thousand that their two-term Republican governor was to blame.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Your governor has got to do a better job,”
Trump said to boisterous cheers. “She’s not doing the job.”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Martinez,
who chairs the Republican Governors Association, has been critical of Trump and
did not attend the rally, telling the local media she was “really busy” running
the state.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The attack on her stunned
many Republicans, who are not accustomed to a nominee who will throw one of
their own to an angry mob. Rubio and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, both former
2016 candidates, and others came to Martinez’s defense. A Martinez spokesman
also fired back, saying she “will not be bullied into supporting a candidate
until she is convinced that candidate will fight for New Mexicans.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager,
defended the attacks on “Fox News Sunday.” “There’s no attack on a Latino or a
woman governor,” he said. “What this was was laying out the economic
perspective of what the state of New Mexico was doing, and he’s saying we need
to do a better job.”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump
brought up additional grudges Wednesday at a rally in Anaheim, Calif. He hit
Romney for refusing his help in 2012 and then losing the general election. And
Haley for refusing to endorse him ahead of the South Carolina primary. And Bill
Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, for refusing to
acknowledge Trump’s success. And Bush for refusing to get over losing and
endorse him.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">A brief
respite came Thursday — the day he cleared the number of delegates needed to be
the nominee — when Trump gave his only scripted speech of the week at an energy
conference in Bismarck, N.D. Standing between two teleprompters, Trump seemed
to find his confidence not only as a winner but as the Republican nominee that
many want him to be. Trump argued that returning to more use of coal and
lifting environmental regulations are keys to making the nation wealthy again.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Politicians have used you and stolen your
votes. They have given you nothing,” Trump said. “I will give you everything. I
will give you what you’ve been looking for for 50 years. I’m the only one.”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Still,
Trump continued to carry that chip on his shoulder. At a rally hours later in
Billings, Mont., he listed people who said he would never be his party’s
nominee.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Ten months ago they’d say:
‘Oh, he’s not going to run. Nah, he’s just having a good time.’ I am having a
good time — but, you know, I could be doing other things right now,” Trump
said, putting extra emphasis on “having a good time,” as if trying to make it
true.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>On Friday, his final day on the
trail, Trump continued to hit Republicans — but he also went after Res, whom he
hired more than three decades ago to oversee the construction of Trump Tower in
Manhattan. Res told the New York Times that Trump used to comment on her weight
and often paraded around his most attractive female employees.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“My father’s from the old school — it’s okay,
it’s okay to say this, right, women? — and he said: ‘Don’t put her in there,
Don’t put her in,’ ” Trump said Friday morning in Fresno, Calif. “I said: ‘Dad,
I’m telling you, she’s going to be fine.’ ‘Don’t put her in!’ I said: ‘Pop,
she’s going to be fine. Besides that, it’s my building, I can do what I want,
okay?’ Trump Tower.” He paused so the crowd could cheer his landmark
skyscraper. “Nah, I had the greatest father. He’s the greatest teacher you
could ever have. He was a great guy. He said: ‘All right, look, if you want to
do it.’ And now I think he was right because of this.”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">He also
went after Clinton.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Do you think —
honestly, honestly, honestly — do you think Hillary looks presidential?” The
crowd answered in unison as Trump smirked: “Noooo!”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“I don’t think so,” Trump continued, shaking
his head. “And I’m not going to say it because I’m not allowed to say it
because I want to be politically correct, so I refuse to say that I cannot
stand her screaming into the microphone all of the time.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Trump covered his ears as the crowd laughed
and applauded.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>A few hours later, Trump
was at his last rally of the week, in San Diego, where thousands showed up to
see him and hundreds more showed up to curse his name at a protest that became
violent at times.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump
basked in the glow of being the presumptive nominee — and then launched into a
11-minute monologue about the federal judge assigned to handle a civil case
against Trump University, which is accused of defrauding students.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Everybody says it, but I have a judge who is
a hater of Donald Trump, a hater,” Trump said. “He’s a hater. His name is
Gonzalo Curiel.” <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Curiel sits on the
federal bench in San Diego. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">As Trump
angrily rambled on and on — at one point, explaining why a law firm involved
with the case has the name it does — the crowd grew quiet. Some turned their
attention to their cellphones, while others looked around the room for
something more interesting.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“The judge,
who happens to be, we believe, Mexican, which is great, I think that’s fine,”
Trump said of Curiel, who was born in Indiana. “You know what? I think the
Mexicans are going to end up loving Donald Trump when I give all these jobs,
okay?”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Trump tried to tie the case back
to his run for the White House, noting that it has been used in attack ads
against him and comparing the legal system to the “rigged” nomination system.
Trump said that he could easily settle the case but refuses to give in to
litigious former students. A trial has been set for November.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“We’ll come back in November,” Trump said,
finally wrapping up, to the delight of his crowd. “Wouldn’t that be wild if I’m
president, and I come back to do a civil case?”</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/even-in-victory-donald-trump-cant-stop-airing-his-grievances/2016/05/29/a5f7a566-2526-11e6-8690-f14ca9de2972_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/even-in-victory-donald-trump-cant-stop-airing-his-grievances/2016/05/29/a5f7a566-2526-11e6-8690-f14ca9de2972_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Donald Trump Calls Global Warming A
Hoax, Until It Threatens His Golf Course</span></u></b></div>
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<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">(By Ben
Guarino, Washington Post, 24 May 2016)</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Donald
Trump has mixed feelings about climate change.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>In January 2014, he publicly wondered how the United States could be
spending money to combat what, in his words, was a “</span><a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/427226424987385856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">GLOBAL
WARMING HOAX</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">.” In October, when Trump was bitten by the autumnal
chill, the Republican presidential candidate snarked on </span><a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/656100109386674176?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Twitter</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> that
he could use “a big fat dose of global warming.” He </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/03/21/a-transcript-of-donald-trumps-meeting-with-the-washington-post-editorial-board/"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">told</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> The
Washington Post editorial board in March that he is “not a great believer in
man-made climate change.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But when it
came to protecting his own investments from global warming’s effects,
Trump canned the screaming capital letters and jokes. Instead, Trump wants
to curtail climate change with a wall.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">The
Trump International Golf Links Ireland, a golf course by the sea in Ireland’s
County Clare, faces the Atlantic’s pounding waves and coastal erosion. As
Politico </span><a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-acknowledges-climate-change-at-his-irish-golf-course/"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">reported</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> Monday,
the Trump Organization has submitted a permit to build a sea wall, which
cites rising sea levels from climate change as a threat. Not just any wall will
do — one plan called for a limestone barricade 20 meters wide, what
Friends of the Irish Environment’s Tony Lowes </span><a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/02/trump-wants-to-build-another-wallin-ireland.html"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">described
</span></span></a><a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/02/trump-wants-to-build-another-wallin-ireland.html"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">to</span></span></a><a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/02/trump-wants-to-build-another-wallin-ireland.html"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";"> CNBC</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> as a
“monster sea wall” in March.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">As part
of the approval process to build the sea wall, Trump International Golf
Links filed an environmental-impact statement. It includes
specific concern for erosion, beyond one governmental study that did
not take into account sea-level rise from climate change, </span><a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-acknowledges-climate-change-at-his-irish-golf-course/"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">according</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> to
Politico.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“If the predictions of an
increase in sea level rise as a result of global warming prove correct,
however, it is likely that there will be a corresponding increase in coastal
erosion rates not just in Doughmore Bay but around much of the coastline of
Ireland,” the application notes. “In our view, it could reasonably be expected
that the rate of sea level rise might become twice of that presently
occurring.”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Environmentalists pounced
on the apparent self-contradiction. Former congressman Bob
Inglis, a Republican from South Carolina who supports </span><a href="http://e360.yale.edu/feature/interview_bob_inglis_conservative_who_believes_climate_change_is_real/2615/"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">conservative
efforts</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> to mitigate global warming, told Politico that the
dissonance between Trump’s public stance and his business practice is
“diabolical.”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">“Donald
Trump clearly cares more about the fate of his golf courses than the health of
the millions of families already affected by the climate crisis,” </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-proposes-wall-to-protect-golf-resort-from-rising-seas/2016/05/23/a0fcf30c-2109-11e6-b944-52f7b1793dae_story.html"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">said</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> Adam
Beitman of the Sierra Club to the Associated Press.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Republicans,
according to a recent New York Times report, may be concerned about
Trump’s lack of a clear stance regarding climate change, at least beyond the
denials or jokes in his Twitter feed. “I think there is concern about where he
stands because he hasn’t come out strongly one way or another,” one anonymous
aide </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/21/science/donald-trump-global-warming-energy-policy-kevin-cramer.html?_r=0"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">told</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> the
Times.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>There is a scientific </span><a href="http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">consensus</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> that
humans are causing the planet to warm. A 2009 review of more than </span><a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-determine-the-scientific-consensus-on-global-warming/"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">4,000
climate-science papers</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> found that scientists faulted humans
for global warming in 97 out of every 100 studies.</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/05/24/donald-trump-calls-global-warming-a-hoax-until-it-threatens-his-golf-course/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_evening"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/05/24/donald-trump-calls-global-warming-a-hoax-until-it-threatens-his-golf-course/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_evening</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">What We Know (And What We Don’t)
About Money Trump Raised For Veterans</span></u></b></div>
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<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">(By David A.
Fahrenthold, Washington Post, 24 May 2016)</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Since
late Monday, Donald Trump has been using social media to denounce
reporting about a fundraiser he held in Iowa on Jan. 28, to
benefit veterans' groups.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>"Bad
publicity from the dishonest and disgusting media," Trump </span><a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/734939680278519809"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">said on
Twitter</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> last night. "Absolutely disgraceful" Trump </span><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BFy12zpmhc9/"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">said in a video</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> posted
on Instagram today.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Some of that
reporting has been done by The Washington Post, including a </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-said-he-raised-6-million-for-vets-now-his-campaign-says-it-was-less/2016/05/20/871127a8-1d1f-11e6-b6e0-c53b7ef63b45_story.html"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">story</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> posted
Friday, in which Trump's campaign manager said that the actual total raised was
less than the $6 million Trump claimed at the time.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>As of now, here's what we know -- and what we
don't -- about the money Trump raised.</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">How much
money did Trump actually bring in?</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">We don't
know.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Trump on the night of the
fundraiser said he'd raised $6 million. But last week, campaign manager Corey
Lewandowski </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-said-he-raised-6-million-for-vets-now-his-campaign-says-it-was-less/2016/05/20/871127a8-1d1f-11e6-b6e0-c53b7ef63b45_story.html"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">told The
Post</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> that the real figure was about $4.5 million. On
Monday night, Trump </span><a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/734936659851128832"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">tweeted </span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">that the
figure was "between 5 & 6 million." Then, on Tuesday, Trump said
on Instagram that it was "almost $6 million." But Trump's general
counsel, Michael Cohen, </span><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/24/politics/michael-cohen-defends-trump-veterans-fundraiser/index.html"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">told CNN</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">
that "Right now it is 4 or 5 million." The Post has asked
repeatedly -- including again on Tuesday -- for an exact figure.</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Why did
the total fall short of the $6 million that Trump claimed?</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">We don't
know.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Lewandowski blamed Trump's wealthy
acquaintances. He said some donors had pledged to give, but then backed
out. He did not say who.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>At the
fundraiser itself, Trump identified nine big donors, including himself. For at
least seven of them, The Post has found some confirmation -- from the donor
himself, from a veterans' group or from the Trump campaign -- that the donor
made good on his pledge. Those donations add up to $3.78 million. If you add to
that the $670,000 that Trump says he raised from small-dollar donors online,
you get $4.45 million.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The remaining two
donors that Trump named include the presumptive Republican presidential
nominee himself and a shopping-mall magnate from Ohio, J.J. Cafaro, who
Trump said would give $50,000. The Post has sought to contact Cafaro repeatedly
to verify his donation, with no success.</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Did Trump
give any money out of his own pocket?</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump
says he gave $1 million of his own money to veterans' groups. But he has
not named any of the groups he donated it to or provided any evidence that his
donations were made. On Tuesday morning, </span><a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trumps-campaign-manager-sticks-by-vets-donations-says-remainder-will-be-distributed-by-monday/"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Lewandowski
told CBS News</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> that he would inquire about making the donations
public: "I mean, I'll ask him to do that."<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The Post has made inquiries at a number of
veterans' groups and associations, and so far found no evidence of a personal
gift from Trump.</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">How much
money has actually been given away to veterans' groups, so far?</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">At
least $3.1 million, by The Post's most recent accounting.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The Post's accounting has relied on reports
from the veterans' groups themselves, and from information provided in early
March by the Trump campaign. When The Post showed this accounting to
Lewandowski last week, he said, "You’ve got a pretty good handle on a lot
of the money that’s been pretty distributed."<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Some of this $3.1 million was given directly
to veterans' charities by other donors who were inspired by Trump. In some
cases, big donors sent their money to the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which
passed the money on. In all, 28 charities received money.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The bulk of the giving seems to have happened
in February and early March. The most recent check that The Post could find was
dated March 25.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The Post has asked the
Trump campaign repeatedly for the amount of money still remaining to be given
away. That number has not been provided.</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Are
these charities chosen by Trump legitimate?</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">By all
appearances, yes. The recipients included large, well-known organizations such
as the Disabled American Veterans charity and the Marine Corps-Law
Enforcement Foundation, as well as small charities that do things such
as train service dogs to help disabled veterans. One group identified as a
recipient of the money -- Projects for Patriots, an Iowa-based group that
refits houses for disabled vets -- said it has not received its money yet,
because it still needs to be officially certified as a charity by the Internal
Revenue Service.</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">What
will happen to the rest of the money?</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">It will
be given away by Monday -- Memorial Day -- Lewandowski </span><a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trumps-campaign-manager-sticks-by-vets-donations-says-remainder-will-be-distributed-by-monday/"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">told CBS</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Lewandowski
earlier told The Post that the Trump campaign identified "probably two
dozen or more" charities that would get the money, in amounts ranging from
$20,000 to $100,000. He said that the groups were selected through word of
mouth and connections with Trump associates and that all had been screened to
be sure they were legitimate charities.</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/05/24/what-we-know-and-what-we-dont-about-the-money-donald-trump-raised-for-veterans/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_evening"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/05/24/what-we-know-and-what-we-dont-about-the-money-donald-trump-raised-for-veterans/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_evening</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><br />
</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Donald Trump, The Welfare King</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">(By Dana
Milbank, Washington Post, 23 May 2016)</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">A
generation after Ronald Reagan denounced the “welfare queen,” the Grand Old
Party is evidently on the verge of nominating its first welfare king.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Four years ago last week, the party’s 2012
presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, famously wrote off the 47 percent of
Americans who don’t pay federal income taxes. Romney, secretly recorded at a
fundraiser, said the 47 percent “who are dependent upon government” won’t
vote for him because “I’ll never convince them that they should take personal
responsibility and care for their lives.”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Now,
just one presidential cycle later, Republicans have settled on a presumptive
nominee who is himself among the 47 percent of non-taxpayers. Trump has
been refusing to release his tax returns, and now we have a pretty good idea
why: He has been feeding at the public trough. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The Post’s Drew Harwell reported over the
weekend that, for at least two years in the late 1970s (the last time Trump’s
tax information was made public), Trump paid no federal income taxes. Several
tax experts I spoke with said it’s entirely possible that Trump has continued
to report negative income — and therefore not pay taxes — because of loopholes
and dubious deductions that benefit powerful real estate interests. They say
it’s likely that whatever taxes he does pay would be at a rate lower than the
average worker pays. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>That’s typical for
Trump’s line of work. Because of depreciation, the deductibility of interest
and other tax breaks, the effective tax rate on the real estate sector is lower
than most industries, and in some cases negative. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">There is
no shame in being on public assistance. The earned-income tax credit, which
subsidizes low-income workers and has helped millions out of poverty, is the
main reason for the 47 percent (though they still have state, payroll and
other taxes). But the corporate welfare Trump receives is nothing to be proud
of — not least because Trump has claimed to represent the American worker and
has condemned corporate executives who “make a fortune” but “pay no tax.” <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Investors
such as Trump can write off depreciation of investment properties even if those
properties actually increase in value, and because most real estate development
is financed with debt, they can deduct the interest. Instead of selling
buildings, they can incorporate them and make “like kind” exchanges that defer
capital gains taxes indefinitely. Trump, depending on how he structures his
taxes, may also be avoiding taxes by amortizing his name as an intangible
asset. And, because his brand is his main asset and his business interests are
far flung, he could argue that virtually all of his expenses are business
related, and therefore deductible. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“I’d
be shocked if he isn’t pretty much writing off his whole life,” says Bob
McIntyre, head of Citizens for Tax Justice. “When you can write off your income
and write off your consumption, you’re in a Leona Helmsley situation.” The late
Helmsley, who also had a real estate fortune, is remembered for observing that
“only the little people pay taxes.”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Trump,
who would be the first presidential nominee in 40 years not to release his
returns, says he’s refusing because he’s being audited. But an audit doesn’t
prevent him from releasing returns, and he won’t release returns from years not
under audit, either. “It’s not because he’s being audited,” said Roberton
Williams of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. “My sense is he’s got
something in those tax returns that doesn’t look good.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>He may have less income than believed,
potentially undermining his standing as a good businessman. He may be avoiding
taxes by shifting profits overseas — a practice he denounces. But whatever
other reasons he has, there’s a good chance that his returns would show that he
pays a lower tax rate than the typical working American. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">The
middle 20 percent of Americans pay about 14 percent of their income
in all federal taxes. To them, Trump’s zero-percent rate could be a cause of
some resentment — particularly because his peers in the top percentile
typically pay 34 percent. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The
typical wage slave can’t donate his golf course for a conservation easement, or
take a low salary so that his income is taxed at the capital-gains rate of
15 percent rather than the regular rate of 39 percent. The average
worker can’t skirt rules on loss limitation by arguing that he’s a material
participant and not a passive investor, or use “flow-throughs” to convert
ordinary income into capital gains. “Real estate is notorious for having a lot
of different deductions,” said Steven Rosenthal, a longtime tax lawyer now with
Urban-Brookings. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">The only
limitation Trump has faced is how creative and aggressive he wants to be — a
likely explanation for his wish to keep his returns hidden.</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trump-the-welfare-king/2016/05/23/154310f4-2121-11e6-aa84-42391ba52c91_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trump-the-welfare-king/2016/05/23/154310f4-2121-11e6-aa84-42391ba52c91_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Donald Trump Masqueraded As Publicist
To Brag About Himself</span></u></b></div>
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<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">(By Marc
Fisher and Will Hobson, Washington Post, 13 May 2016)</span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The voice is instantly familiar; the tone, confident, even
cocky; the cadence, distinctly Trumpian. The man on the phone vigorously
defending Donald Trump says he’s a media spokesman named John Miller, but then
he says, “I’m sort of new here,” and “I’m somebody that he knows and I think
somebody that he trusts and likes” and even “I’m going to do this a little,
part time, and then, yeah, go on with my life.” </span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">A recording obtained by The Washington Post captures what
New York reporters and editors who covered Trump’s early career experienced in
the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s: calls from Trump’s Manhattan office that resulted in
conversations with “John Miller” or “John Barron” — public-relations men who
sound precisely like Trump himself — who indeed are Trump, masquerading as an
unusually helpful and boastful advocate for himself, according to the
journalists and several of Trump’s top aides.</span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In 1991, Sue Carswell, a reporter at People magazine, called
Trump’s office seeking an interview with the developer. She had just been
assigned to cover the soap opera surrounding the end of Trump’s 12-year
marriage to Ivana, his budding relationship with the model Marla Maples and his
rumored affairs with any number of celebrities who regularly appeared on the
gossip pages of the New York newspapers.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Within five minutes, Carswell got a return call from Trump’s publicist, a
man named John Miller, who immediately jumped into a startlingly frank and
detailed explanation of why Trump dumped Maples for the Italian model Carla
Bruni. “He really didn’t want to make a commitment,” Miller said. “He’s coming
out of a marriage, and he’s starting to do tremendously well financially.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Miller turned out to be a remarkably forthcoming source — a
spokesman with rare insight into the private thoughts and feelings of his
client. “Have you met him?” Miller asked the reporter. “He’s a good guy, and
he’s not going to hurt anybody. . . . He treated his wife well and . . . he
will treat Marla well.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Some reporters
found the calls from Miller or Barron disturbing or even creepy; others thought
they were just examples of Trump being playful. Today, as the presumptive
Republican nominee for president faces questions about his attitudes toward
women, what stands out to some who received those calls is Trump’s
characterization of women whom he portrayed as drawn to him sexually.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Actresses,” Miller said in the call to Carswell, “just call
to see if they can go out with him and things.” Madonna “wanted to go out with
him.” And Trump’s alter ego boasted that in addition to living with Maples,
Trump had “three other girlfriends.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Miller was consistent about referring to Trump as “he,” but at one
point, when asked how important Bruni was in Trump’s busy love life, the
spokesman said, “I think it’s somebody that — you know, she’s beautiful. I saw
her once, quickly, and beautiful . . . ” and then he quickly pivoted back into
talking about Trump — then a 44-year-old father of three — in the third person.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In 1990, Trump testified in a court case that “I believe on
occasion I used that name.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In a phone
call to NBC’s “Today” program Friday morning after this article appeared
online, Trump denied that he was John Miller. “No, I don’t think it — I don’t
know anything about it. You’re telling me about it for the first time and it
doesn’t sound like my voice at all,” he said. “I have many, many people that
are trying to imitate my voice and then you can imagine that, and this sounds
like one of the scams, one of the many scams — doesn’t sound like me.” Later,
he was more definitive: “It was not me on the phone. And it doesn’t sound like
me on the phone, I will tell you that, and it was not me on the phone. And when
was this? Twenty-five years ago?”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Then, Friday afternoon, Washington Post reporters who were
44 minutes into a phone interview with Trump about his finances asked him a
question about Miller: “Did you ever employ someone named John Miller as a
spokesperson?”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The phone went silent,
then dead. When the reporters called back and reached Trump’s secretary, she
said, “I heard you got disconnected. He can’t take the call now. I don’t know
what happened.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump has never been
terribly adamant about denying that he often made calls to reporters posing as
someone else. From his earliest years in business, he occasionally called
reporters using the name “John Barron.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">A “John Baron,” described as a “vice-president of the Trump
organization,” appeared in a front-page New York Times article as early as
1980, defending Trump’s decision to destroy sculptures on the facade of the
Bonwit Teller department store building, the Fifth Avenue landmark he was
demolishing to make way for his Trump Tower. Barron was quoted variously as a
“Trump spokesman,” “Trump executive” or “Trump representative” in New York
magazine, The Washington Post and other publications.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump’s fascination with the name “Barron” persisted for
decades. When he was seeing Maples while still married to Ivana, he sometimes
used the code name “the Baron” when he left messages for her. In 2004, when
Trump commissioned a dramatic TV series based on the life of a New York real
estate mogul like him, his only request to the writer was to name the main
character “Barron.” And when Trump and his third wife, Melania, had a son, they
named him Barron.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In the 1991 recording, Miller sounded quite at ease regaling
the reporter with tales of Trump hanging out with Madonna at a ball at the
Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. Asked about the rumored Madonna-Trump
friendship, Miller, unlike every other PR man on the planet, neither batted the
question away nor gave it short shrift. Rather, he said, “Do you have a second?”
</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Carswell, the reporter, sounded a bit
startled: “Yeah, obviously,” she replied.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Whereupon Miller offered a detailed account of the Trump encounter with
Madonna, who “came in a beautiful evening gown and combat boots.” The PR man
assured the reporter that nothing untoward occurred: “He’s got zero interest
that night.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Miller also revealed to Carswell why Trump seemed to relish
any and all media coverage, even the most critical. “I can tell you that he
didn’t care if he got bad PR until he got his divorce finished,” Miller said.
The more the press wrote about Trump’s money troubles, the greater advantage he
would have in negotiations toward a financial settlement with his
then-estranged wife, Ivana. Then, “once his divorce is finished,” Miller said,
you would see stories about how Trump was “doing well financially and he’s
doing well in every other way.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Carswell this week recalled that she immediately recognized
something familiar in the Queens accent of Trump’s new publicist. She thought,
“It’s so weird that Donald hired someone who sounds just like him.” After the
20-minute interview, she walked down the hall to play the tape to co-workers,
who identified Trump’s voice. Carswell then called Cindy Adams, the longtime
New York Post gossip columnist who had been close to Trump since the early
1970s. Adams immediately identified the voice as Trump’s.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Oh, that’s Donald,” Carswell recalled Adams
saying. “What is he doing?”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Then Carswell played the tape for Maples, who confirmed it
was Trump and burst into tears as she heard Miller deny that a ring Trump gave
her implied any intent to marry her.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Carswell, now a reporter-researcher at Vanity Fair, said the tape cuts
off mid-interview, leaving out the part in which Miller said that actress Kim
Basinger had been trying to date Trump. Hearing the tape for the first time in
decades, Carswell said, “This was so farcical, that he pretended to be his own
publicist. Here was this so-called billion-dollar real estate mogul, and he
can’t hire his own publicist. It also said something about the control he
wanted to keep of the news cycle flowing with this story, and I can’t believe
he thought he’d get away with it.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The
Post obtained the recording from a source who provided it on the condition of
anonymity. Carswell shared the microcassette of the call with the source
shortly after the interview.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">From the start of his career as a builder in New York, Trump
worked the press. He believed in carrots and sticks, showering reporters with
praise, then pivoting to a threat to sue them if they wrote something he
considered inaccurate. He often said that all publicity, good or bad, was good
for his business.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">He made himself
available to reporters at nearly any time, for hours on end. And he called
them, too, to promote his own projects, but also with juicy bits of
gossip.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“One thing I’ve learned about
the press is that they’re always hungry for a good story, and the more
sensational the better,” Trump wrote in “The Art of the Deal,” his bestseller.
“The point is that if you are a little different, or a little outrageous, or if
you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about
you.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump did not describe using false identities to promote his
brand, but he did write about why he strays from the strict truth: “I play to
people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can
still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never
hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest
and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form
of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Carswell was far from the only reporter who received calls
from suspiciously Trumpian characters. Linda Stasi, then a New York Daily News
gossip columnist, said Trump once left her a voice mail from an “anonymous
tipster” who wanted it known that Trump had been spotted going out with models.
And editors at New York tabloids said calls from Barron were at points so
common that they became a recurring joke on the city desk.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">After Carswell’s story appeared — headlined “Trump Says
Goodbye Marla, Hello Carla . . . And a Mysterious PR Man Who Sounds Just Like
Donald Calls to Spread the Story” — Trump invited the reporter out for a night
on the town with him and Maples. Carswell said Maples persuaded Trump to issue
the invitation as an apology for tricking her. A few weeks later, when People
ran a story about Trump and Maples getting engaged, Trump was quoted saying
that the John Miller call was a “joke gone awry.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Carswell had been skeptical all along. On the recording, she
challenged Miller: “Where did you come from?”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I basically worked for different firms,” he replied cryptically. And
then he marveled at his boss’s ability to withstand critical news coverage:
“I’ve never seen somebody so immune to . . . bad press.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Miller was also impressed by his client’s
social life: “I mean, he’s living with Marla and he’s got three other
girlfriends. ” But the PR man wanted the reporter to know that Trump believed
in “the marriage concept” and planned to settle down, on his own terms: “He
does things for himself. When he makes a decision, that will be a very lucky
woman.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/donald-trump-alter-ego-barron/2016/05/12/02ac99ec-16fe-11e6-aa55-670cabef46e0_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/donald-trump-alter-ego-barron/2016/05/12/02ac99ec-16fe-11e6-aa55-670cabef46e0_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Few Stand In Trump’s Way As He Piles
Up The Four-Pinocchio Whoppers</span></u></b></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, 07 May 2016)</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">At the Fact
Checker, we have often said we do not write fact checks to change the behavior
of politicians. Fact checks are intended to inform voters and explain
complicated issues.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Still, most
politicians will drop a talking point if it gets labeled with Four Pinocchios
by The Fact Checker or “Pants on Fire” by PolitiFact. No one wants to be tagged
as a liar or misinformed, and we have found most politicians are interested in
getting the facts straight. So the claim might be uttered once or twice, but
then it gets quietly dropped or altered.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But the news
media now faces the challenge of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican
nominee for president. Trump makes Four-Pinocchio statements over and over
again, even though fact checkers have demonstrated them to be false. He appears
to care little about the facts; his staff does not even bother to respond to
fact-checking inquiries.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But, astonishingly,
television hosts rarely challenge Trump when he makes a claim that already has
been found to be false. For instance, Trump says he was against the 2003
invasion of Iraq, but research by BuzzFeed found that he did express support
for an attack. He said the White House even sent a delegation to tell him to
tone down his statements —and we found that also to be false.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Yet at least </span></span><a href="http://www.cjr.org/criticism/trumps_long_running_lies.php"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">a dozen television hosts</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> in the past two months allowed Trump to make this
claim and failed to challenge him. There is no excuse for this. TV hosts should
have a list of Trump’s repeated misstatements so that if he repeats them, as he
often does, he can be challenged on his claims.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(On Thursday, Bret Baier of Fox News finally pressed Trump on his
support for the Iraq War. “I said very weakly, well, blah, blah, blah, yes, I
guess,” Trump responded.)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The online
version of the Fact Checker keeps </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/03/22/all-of-donald-trumps-four-pinocchio-ratings-in-one-place/"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">a running list</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> of Trump’s Four-Pinocchio statements. He now has
26, which accounts for nearly 70 percent of Trump’s statements that have been
fact checked.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Since many of these fact
checks, done with my colleague Michelle Ye Hee Lee, have appeared only online,
here is a summary of recent Four-Pinocchio statements made by Trump.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<b><i><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“</span></span></i></b><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/04/25/trumps-false-claim-that-isis-is-making-a-fortune-on-libyan-oil/"><i><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">ISIS has the oil [in Libya]. ISIS is
making a fortune now in Libya.</span></span></i></a><b><i><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">”</span></span></i></b><b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump often
falsely suggests he opposed the intervention in Libya when he was actually an
advocate for toppling Libya’s then-dictator, Moammar Gaddafi. He also has
repeatedly made the bizarre claim that the terror group known as the Islamic
State has control of oil fields and is making a fortune there.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Claudia Gazzini, a Tripoli-based senior
analyst at the International Crisis Group, said it is simply not true that the
Islamic State has control of any Libyan oil.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“While it is true
that ISIS has attacked oil fields in the Sirte basin area and destroyed key
equipment there, they have not sought to keep control of the oil fields,”
Gazzini said. “At the moment, they appear to have adopted a hit-and-run
strategy. There is no evidence that they are pumping out the crude oil and
certainly no evidence that they are trading it.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">A review of recent news articles confirms
that while some fields have been temporarily closed in response to Islamic
State attacks, not a single field has been taken by the terrorist group.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<b><i><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“</span></span></i></b><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/05/02/donald-trumps-false-claim-that-scores-of-recent-migrants-in-the-u-s-are-charged-with-terrorism/"><i><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">There are scores of recent migrants inside
our borders charged with terrorism</span></span></i></a><b><i><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">”</span></span></i></b><b><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">It took some time
but we finally determined that this appears to be a bungled reference to a list
from the office of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) of 30 foreign-born individuals
who were arrested on charges relating to terrorism in recent years. This list
is quoted in several articles and described as a “partial inventory of recently
implicated terrorist migrants.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">We checked
indictment records and looked for citizenship or immigration information, where
available. The majority of the 30 cases involved naturalized U.S. citizens —
people who came to the U.S. as children or had arrived before 2011.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">We reviewed similar lists of cases from 2014
and 2015, involving 76 people charged with activities relating to foreign
terrorist organizations. Of them, 57 were U.S. citizens, seven were lawful
permanent residents, and two were refugees. The rest were visa overstays or
unknown. There were both naturalized and natural-born U.S. citizens (including
those of Caucasian, African American or Hispanic descent), and many of the
naturalized citizens had arrived in the country as children.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In general,
individuals must live in America at least five years with a green card to
qualify for U.S. citizenship. The actual citizenship process can take up to a
year or more. So even if Trump is counting naturalized citizens as “migrants,”
the ones listed in these cases would not qualify as “recent.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/05/06/donald-trumps-ridiculous-claim-that-hillary-clinton-started-the-birther-movement/"><i><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">“You know who started the birther
movement? Hillary Clinton. She’s the one that started it. She brought it up
years before it was brought up by me.”</span></span></i></a><b><i><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></i></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">This zombie claim
repeatedly has been debunked by fact checkers.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The allegation that Clinton herself was the first, or even one of the
first, to question President Obama’s birth certificate is simply false. Trump
might have been on safer ground if he blamed her supporters for stoking the
birther rumors, which do have some Democratic roots.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In spring 2008, some of Clinton’s supporters
began circulating anonymous emails questioning Obama’s citizenship.
FactCheck.org and Politico cited these emails as the first time his citizenship
was called into question, by a small group of “diehard” Clinton supporters
during the Democratic primary as her path toward the nomination began to fade.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Chain emails
surfaced claiming Obama was ineligible to become president because he was born
in Kenya, as his mom was too young to travel by plane back to America to give
birth. Others claimed Obama was refusing to release his full birth certificate
because it likely contained information that he had dual Kenyan and U.S.
citizenship at birth. But we found no evidence that Clinton or her campaign
coordinated any of these email chains questioning Obama’s citizenship.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">While some have pointed to a 2008 interview
on “60 Minutes” in which Clinton said Obama was not a Muslim “as far as I
know,” that quote has been taken out of context. She actually said that it was
a “ridiculous” rumor and that there “isn’t any reason to doubt” Obama.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/05/03/no-putin-did-not-call-donald-trump-a-genius/"><i><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Russian President Vladimir Putin “called
me a genius”</span></span></i></a><b><i><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></i></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">This is an
exaggeration of a mistranslation.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">After
Putin’s annual news conference in December, he was cornered by a reporter for
ABC News and asked what he thought of Trump.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Here’s how ABC News translated Putin’s remarks: “He’s a very colorful
person. Talented, without any doubt, but it’s not our affair to determine his
worthiness — that’s up to the United States voters.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Russian is notoriously complex to translate
into English, so various news organizations rendered the key quote in slightly
different ways. Instead of “colorful,” The Washington Post said “lively.” The
New York Times used “flamboyant.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">None of that
sounds anything like “genius.” Some news organizations, such as the Guardian
newspaper, used “bright.” The Guardian issued a correction a day later: “The
word he used was ‘yarkii,’ which can mean bright or brilliant, but not in the
sense of intelligent; it can also be translated as colorful, vivid or
flamboyant.”</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">In other words, the Russian
president said he regarded Trump as a “colorful” figure, which is not the same
thing as someone with a 140 IQ.</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">No doubt
about that. A colorful person may earn lots of Pinocchios; a genius does not.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/few-stand-in-trumps-way-as-he-piles-up-the-four-pinocchio-whoppers/2016/05/07/8cf5e16a-12ff-11e6-8967-7ac733c56f12_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/few-stand-in-trumps-way-as-he-piles-up-the-four-pinocchio-whoppers/2016/05/07/8cf5e16a-12ff-11e6-8967-7ac733c56f12_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines</span></span></a></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<div align="center" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Recidivism Watch: Trump’s Eight
Repeated Falsehoods In 16 Hours</span></u></b></div>
<div align="center" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By Michelle Ye Hee Lee, Washington Post, 28 April 2015)</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Donald Trump is now closer than ever to
clinching the Republican nomination on the first ballot. But what hasn’t
changed since he entered the presidential race is his propensity for Pinocchios
and Pinocchio recidivism. We know
politicians repeat falsehoods — on purpose or by mistake. So last year,
we launched a feature to track politicians who repeat claims that we
previously found to be incorrect. The Fact Checker Recidivism Watch columns are
usually short summaries of previous findings, with links to original
fact-checks. (Suggestions are always welcome.)</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Tracking every
repeated falsehood by Trump would be a full-time job. But we couldn’t help
but notice that in a roughly 16-hour period after his sweeping victories in the
I-95 primaries, Trump repeated numerous untruths, like a “Best of”
citation of his Pinocchio ratings. (Our running list of Trump’s Four-Pinocchio
ratings can be found at: </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/03/22/all-of-donald-trumps-four-pinocchio-ratings-in-one-place/"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">wapo.st/Trumps4Ps</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">) For the
first time, we have compiled a mega-roundup Recidivism Watch of eight claims
Trump repeated on April 26 and April 27, 2016. Each summary includes links to
the full fact-check.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“As soon as
Kasich gets hit with the first negative ad — he’s had none — bing, that’s the
end of that</span></span></i></b><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">.”</span></span></i></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">— primary
night speech, April 26, 2016</span></span></b></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">It’s fine to say
far more ads have aired attacking Trump than Ohio Gov. John Kasich, but Trump
goes further to say that no ads have attacked Kasich. That’s just not true. In
fact, his own campaign has run a </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/03/15/donald-trumps-false-claim-that-john-kasich-helped-lehman-brothers-destroy-the-world-economy/?tid=a_inl" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Four-Pinocchio</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> ad attacking Kasich. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Outside groups
have spent nearly $5 million opposing Kasich in direct mail pieces, digital ads
and TV ads, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of filings with
the Federal Election Commission. Attack
ads sponsored by candidate committees and outside groups were fairly consistent
earlier in the primary cycle, especially ones contrasting Kasich’s record with
those of other governors in the race. We fact-checked some of them — </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/02/19/the-false-claim-that-john-kasich-supported-severe-defense-spending-cuts/"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">here</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/02/01/attack-ad-misrepresents-john-kasichs-record-on-taxes-in-ohio/"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">here</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/01/05/right-to-rise-super-pacs-series-of-misleading-claims-about-jeb-bushs-record/"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">here</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">. We awarded this claim </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/04/22/donald-trumps-false-claim-that-there-have-been-no-negative-ads-against-kasich/" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Four Pinocchios</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I was
asked a question recently by Wolf Blitzer on CNN, and he talked about NATO. I
gave a great answer. I gave an answer that at first people didn’t like, and
then they said, ‘You know what, Trump is right,’ experts said. I said it’s
obsolete and too many people are getting a free ride because we’re funding 72,
73 percent of NATO.” </span></span></i></b><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">— primary night speech, April 26, 2016</span></span></b></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Actually, the
United States pays just 22 percent of the cost of NATO in direct funding. He
begins to have a point when talking about indirect spending on NATO: The U.S.
defense expenditure represents about 72 percent of the spending on defense by
all countries that are NATO members. U.S. defense spending far exceeds the
spending of other NATO members, and that imbalance is driven by America’s role
as a world power. It makes little sense to count defense spending in Asia as
part of “NATO funding.” We awarded this claim </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/03/30/trumps-claim-that-the-u-s-pays-the-lions-share-for-nato/" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Three Pinocchios</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">To his credit,
Trump more precisely described NATO spending in his prepared foreign
policy speech the next day: “In NATO, for instance, only four of 28 other
member countries besides America are spending the minimum required 2 percent of
GDP [gross domestic product] on defense.” </span></span><a href="http://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/pdf_2016_01/20160129_160128-pr-2016-11-eng.pdf#page=3" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">NATO documents</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> show that the majority of members fail to
meet the guideline. The United States and four other countries currently exceed
the guideline, established in 2006. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I’ll stick
with my feelings on immigration. If you look at what’s going on with
immigration, and just look at the record numbers of people right now that are
pouring across the borders of this country.”</span></span></i></b></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">— primary
night speech, April 26, 2016</span></span></b></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">He can stick with
his feelings all he wants. But the illegal immigration flow across the
U.S.-Mexico border has been declining for years, as we’ve </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/02/26/fact-checking-the-tenth-gop-debate/" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">repeatedly</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/02/15/donald-trump-attacks-ted-cruz-by-repeating-false-claims-about-illegal-immigration/" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">noted</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">. The
flood of undocumented immigrants from Mexico peaked in 2000, when more than 1.6
million people were apprehended, according to </span></span><a href="http://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/documents/BP%20Total%20Apps%2C%20Mexico%2C%20OTM%20FY2000-FY2015.pdf" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Department of
Homeland Security data</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">.
Those numbers have steadily decreased since then. In fiscal 2015, there were
337,117 apprehensions — the lowest since fiscal 2000. Apprehensions of people
from Mexico have decreased to 188,122 in fiscal 2015, from 1.6 million in
fiscal 2000. Apprehensions in fiscal
2015 were the </span></span><a href="https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/documents/BP%20Southwest%20Border%20Sector%20Apps%20FY1960%20-%20FY2015.pdf" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">lowest since 1972</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> (321,326), with the exception of fiscal
2011, when the number of undocumented immigrant apprehensions along the
southern border dipped to 327,577. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">George
Stephanopoulos</span></span></i></b><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">: </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“You
were for it [the Iraq War], though, before you were against it.”</span></b></span></i></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump: “No,
I wasn’t. I was never for it. I was against it — before it ever started, I was
against it. And I was against it from before 2004. I was against the war in
Iraq, and I was against it for years. And [President George W.] Bush used to
hate me for being so against it, and they sent people from the White House to
try and convince me. All I’d say is, ‘It will destabilize the Middle East, and
Iran will take over the Middle East.’ And that’s exactly what happened.” </span></span></i></b><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">— </span></span></b><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LD8oNq9wgE" target="_blank"><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">exchange</span></span></b></a><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> on “Good Morning America,” April 27, 2016 </span></span></b></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">This is blatantly
false. Trump did not oppose the Iraq War
before 2004, as we and countless other media outlets have found. We compiled a </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/02/25/timeline-of-trumps-comments-on-iraq-invasion-not-loud-not-strong-and-no-headlines/?tid=a_inl" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">complete timeline</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> of all his public statements in 2002 and
2003 relating to the Iraq invasion and found no evidence to support this. In
fact, in a September 2002 interview, Trump gave lukewarm support for the
war. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump has said
since October 2015 that the White House tried to hush his (nonexistent)
opposition ahead of the invasion. Trump never answered our request for the
names of White House officials he supposedly met with. We checked with a dozen
former Bush White House officials, and none could recall a meeting with Trump,
concerns about his opposition, or even Trump’s views being on their radar prior
to 2004. We awarded this claim </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/10/21/donald-trumps-baseless-claim-that-the-bush-white-house-tried-to-silence-his-iraq-war-opposition-in-2003/" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Four Pinocchios</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“I don’t
play by the traditional rules. I’m self-funding my campaign, which maybe has an
impact on them [the media].” </span></span></i></b><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">— MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” April 27, 2016</span></span></b></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">While Trump has
provided the majority of funds raised by the campaign committee so far, he has
raised money from individual donations, </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/03/11/fact-checking-the-12th-gop-debate/" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">as we’ve written</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">. Of the $48.4 million raised as of April
16, 2016, 75 percent ($36 million) was money from Trump. The rest came
from mostly individual donations, according to FEC </span></span><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/candidate.php?cycle=2016&id=N00023864&type=f" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">data maintained</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> by the Center for Responsive Politics. As
of April 16, 2016, outside groups contributed $2.8 million to the Trump
campaign. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Clinton
blames it all on a video, an excuse that was a total lie, proven to be
absolutely a total lie. Our ambassador was murdered, and our secretary of state
misled the nation.” </span></span></i></b><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">— foreign policy speech, April 27, 2016</span></span></b></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Fact Checker
has written </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/10/21/fact-checking-the-benghazi-attacks-2/" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">20 fact-checks</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> about the 2012 attacks in Benghazi,
Libya, in which four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador, were
killed. We looked into allegations that
Hillary Clinton had told two stories after the attacks — a private one that it
was a terrorist attack and the public one that blamed Muslim outrage over a
YouTube video. The </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/10/30/is-hillary-clinton-a-liar-on-benghazi/" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">evidence was mixed</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, open to interpretation, but we concluded
that there was not enough for GOP rivals to make definitive judgments that she
lied.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">We
also reached out to family members to </span></span><a href="http://link.washingtonpost.com/click/5876379.9264/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cud2FzaGluZ3RvbnBvc3QuY29tL25ld3MvZmFjdC1jaGVja2VyL3dwLzIwMTUvMDEvMDQvd2hhdC1iZW5naGF6aS1mYW1pbHktbWVtYmVycy1zYXktaGlsbGFyeS1jbGludG9uLXNhaWQtYWJvdXQtdGhlLXZpZGVvLz93cG1tPTEmd3Bpc3JjPW5sX2ZhY3Q/544d17ef3b35d04a528e6363B1433d131" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">get their side</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> of the story. Their recollections
fell into three camps: Clinton talked about the video; Clinton said something
odd; Clinton never mentioned the video. This is difficult to fact-check, since
the conversations weren’t recorded and memories can evolve over time. Most
family members interviewed said she did not mention a video — but we’ll leave
it up to readers to draw their own conclusions.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“And now
ISIS is making millions and millions of dollars a week selling Libya oil.” </span></span></i></b><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">— foreign policy speech, April 27, 2016</span></span></b></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The terror group
known as the Islamic State has, at times, disrupted the flow of oil. But the
Islamic State does not control any oil fields and is not “making millions” from
Libyan oil. Not a single expert or news article we consulted said that the
Islamic State has grabbed an oil field in Libya. A review of recent </span></span><a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/fear-isis-attacks-libya-shuts-down-major-oil-fields-2353898" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">news</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span><a href="http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/ISIS-Tries-To-Sow-Chaos-In-Libya-To-Scare-Oil-Workers-Away.html" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">articles</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> confirms that while some fields have been
temporarily closed in response to Islamic State attacks, not a single field has
been taken by the terrorist group. We awarded this claim </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/04/25/trumps-false-claim-that-isis-is-making-a-fortune-on-libyan-oil/" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Four Pinocchios</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“NAFTA, as
an example, has been a total disaster for the United States and has emptied our
states — literally emptied our states of our manufacturing and our jobs.” — foreign policy speech, April 27, 2016</span></span></i></b></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trump was not </span></span><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/03/14/donald-trump-tpp-trade-american-manufacturing-jobs-workers-column/81728584/" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">as specific as usual</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> in terms of claiming that 900,000 jobs
have been lost to Mexico because of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
But in some ways, he was more sweeping, claiming states have been “literally
emptied” because of the 1993 trade pact.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/03/18/trumps-trade-rhetoric-stuck-in-a-time-warp/" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">As we have noted
before</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, economists
generally have been skeptical of such claims, as it is difficult to separate
out the impact of trade agreements on jobs, compared with other, broader
economic trends. The Congressional Research Service in 2015 </span></span><a href="https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R42965.pdf"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">concluded</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> that the “net overall effect of NAFTA on the
U.S. economy appears to have been relatively modest, primarily because trade
with Canada and Mexico accounts for a small percentage of U.S. GDP.” The
report, however, noted that there were “worker and adjustment costs” as the
three countries established a single market. That means there were some losers
— but also winners.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Nearly a
quarter-century later, as a result of NAFTA, the United States, Canada and
Mexico constitute an economically integrated market, especially for the auto
industry. Auto parts and vehicles produced in each country freely flow over the
borders, without tariffs or other restrictions, as thousands of part suppliers
serve the automakers that build the vehicles. This is known as the “motor
vehicle supply chain.” In fact, a prospective Ford plant in Mexico that Trump
often complains about appears to be intended to produce cars for export from
Mexico — and thus would free up production to produce more trucks in the United
States.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/04/28/recidivism-watch-trumps-eight-repeated-falsehoods-in-16-hours/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/04/28/recidivism-watch-trumps-eight-repeated-falsehoods-in-16-hours/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines</span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Play The ‘Woman Card’ And Reap These
‘Rewards’!</span></u></b></div>
<div align="center" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By Alexandra Petri , Washington Post, 27 April 2016)</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“Frankly, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">if Hillary Clinton were a man</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">,
I don’t think she’d get </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">5 percent</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> of the vote. The only thing she’s got
going is the </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">woman’s card</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">,” </span></span><a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwirveyEl6_MAhVBuoMKHQc3BkEQqQIIHjAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fnews%2Fpost-politics%2Fwp%2F2016%2F04%2F27%2Ftrump-if-clinton-were-a-man-i-dont-think-shed-get-5-percent-of-the-vote%2F&usg=AFQjCNHrmiQdJ7yBat3HlScw0oFw1Fdd9Q&sig2=sJH9RpaU0OlXUkLzko_sMg"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Trump said Tuesday night</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, after winning 5 primaries. Ah yes, the woman’s card.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I have been
carrying one of these for years, proudly.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">It is great. It
entitles you to a sizable discount on your earnings everywhere you go
(average 21 percent, but can be anywhere from 9 percent to 37 percent,
depending on </span></span><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/08/gender_pay_gap_the_familiar_line_that_women_make_77_cents_to_every_man_s.html"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">what study you’re reading</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and what edition of the Woman
Card you have.) If you shop with the Woman Card at the grocery, you
will get to pay 11 percent more for all the same products as men, but now
they are </span></span><a href="http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/03/news/female-male-products-pricing-boots/"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">pink</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Hook up the Woman
Card to your TV and you will get a barrage of commercials telling you that
you did something wrong with your face and must buy ointment immediately
so as not to become a Hideous Crone. Also, you are now expected to
spend your whole life removing hair from your body, except for the
areas of your body where your hair must be long and luxurious. (Do not get
these two areas confused!)</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Unlike Man Cards,
Woman Cards do not increase in value as they age. In fact, they depreciate. Do
not collect Woman Cards. Even in mint condition, they are worthless. The great news is that if you use your Woman
Card to hurt other women, you get access to a </span></span><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2016/02/19/journey-through-the-nine-levels-of-feminist-hell-using-this-handy-map/"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">special place in hell.</span></span></a></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">It’s about more
than discounts, though.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Take the Woman
Card on the subway with you, put your headphones in, and you are
guaranteed a free, lengthy, one-on-one conversation or lecture
from a man who will not leave you alone unless you also remembered to
bring your I Have A Boyfriend Card (they accept no substitutes).</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Show the Woman
Card to your health-care provider and you will enjoy new limits on your
reproductive rights, depending on what the legislators of your state have
decided is wise. Get ready to have a lot of things about your body explained to
you!</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Woman Card is
not, itself, a form of birth control (no matter what Todd Akin suggests) but it
can prevent you from getting coverage for yours.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Use the Woman
Card at the library to get a book with squiggly pastel handwriting on the
cover that Gay Talese will not take seriously.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Present the Woman
Card to a man you have just met at a party and it is good for one detailed,
patronizing explanation of the subject you literally got your PhD in.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Offer it to
someone on the red carpet and, instead of any substantive questions about your
work, you will get a barrage of inquiries EXCLUSIVELY about what you are
wearing.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">On the bright
side, running for office as a Woman Card-holder is a blast, because it allows
people to accuse your female supporters of only liking you because of your
gender. Don’t try suggesting the opposite! That doesn’t work.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Show off the
Woman Card on your way to work and you will get free comments from total
strangers, telling you to smile. Play it in the sciences and you will get
to </span></span><a href="http://www.nature.com/news/speak-up-about-subtle-sexism-in-science-1.19829"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">leave the sciences</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Take the Woman
Card anywhere and you will instantly be surrounded by men who
feel entitled to your time. Also, to your space. Do not take up too
much space; the Woman Card does not cover that. It also does not cover female
protagonists or not being harassed online. You are on your own for
those. The Woman Card doesn’t even entitle you to shorter lines in
the restroom. Frankly, as fun as it is to be a member of the
exclusive club, and as much as I enjoy the occasional door-holding, I’m
not even sure I want to re-up this year.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But it’s not all
fun discounts and free experiences!</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Woman Card
entitles you to constant scrutiny and judgment from all corners at all times,
whether you asked for it or not. Try talking! Or rather, don’t.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">You can also use
it in fun card games, including but not limited to “Go Fish” (what your boss
says when you ask for a raise), “Can You Have It All” (fundamentally identical
to “War” but you can’t win), “Sorry!” (compete to see who can say this the
most in the course of a single meeting), “Don’t Wake Daddy” (mom has to do
all the child-rearing by default), and “Five Card Slut Poker” (for men, this is
called Five-Card Stud, but this is the double-standard edition).</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Literally in the
course of writing this piece a man came up and asked if I could explain
how it was that I came to type so fast, then continued with
several follow-ups, and did not seem to notice that I was busy. I am
not joking.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The amazing thing
about this card is that men seem to think it is a trump card (or a Trump Card,
as the case may be). It’s many things. But that’s the one thing it’s not.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2016/04/27/how-to-play-the-woman-card/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2016/04/27/how-to-play-the-woman-card/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Oh, Thank Heaven! We Now Know How Trump Will Make
America Great Again.</span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By Dana Milbank,
Washington Post, 19 April 2016)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">During a campaign
rally in Buffalo, N.Y., Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump
accidentally referred to 9/11 as "7-Eleven" while talking about what
he considers to be "New York values." (Reuters) </span></span></div>
<i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">“It’s very
close to my heart because I was down there, and I watched our police and our
firemen down at 7-Eleven, down at the World Trade Center right after it came
down, and I saw the greatest people I’ve ever seen in action.” </span></span></i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">— Donald Trump, April 18, 2016</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Presumed Remarks
by President Trump, The White Hous</span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">e, </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">May 1, 2017</span></b></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I want to welcome
all of my Cabinet secretaries here for this meeting. We have completed our
first 100 days in office and already we have made America Great Again. Amazing!
The best! </span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I know everybody
took a Big Gulp when I changed 9/11 to </span></span><a href="http://fortune.com/2016/04/19/donald-trump-911-711/" title="fortune.com"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">7-Eleven</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> last year. They thought I was a stupid person. A
loser! </span></span><a href="https://twitter.com/morninggloria/status/722437076013162496"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Erin Gloria Ryan</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> of Vocativ said I would start talking about the
Japanese bombing of Pearl Jam and the Native Americans’ Trail of Sears. Other
terrible people — the worst! — thought I would refer to the eBay of Pigs, the
Normandy landing on DQ Day, the Dodge Challenger disaster, Black & Decker
Tuesday of 1929, the 1906 San FranCisco Systems Fire and the 1814 burning of
the White Castle by the British. </span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Wrong! Turning
9/11 into 7-Eleven was the beginning of something huge. Phenomenal! The people
at 7-Eleven — great retailer, decent coffee, convenient! — loved it. Loved it!
They said to me: Mr. Trump, if you could mention us and other corporations more
often at unexpected moments, we think it would really help to Make America
Great Again. And I said: We will do even better. We will Make America Great
Again by selling some of our greatest assets to you and to America’s other
great corporations. </span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">We are meeting
here in the MapQuest Room of the Trump National White House because our new
Crate & Barrel Cabinet Room is being refurnished. Next we’ll have a drink
in the Johnnie Walker Blue Room, and we’ll eat in the Allstate Dining Room.
Look out the window there and you’ll see amazing billboards going up on the
Washington Mutual Monument, across the reflecting pool from the Lincoln
Financial Group Memorial. In the distance you’ll see the white dome of Capital
One, the Tide Basin and Boeing National Airport. Huge! </span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Jeff Sessions,
our phenomenal secretary of Homeland Depot Security — great guy! — tells me
Mexico has already paid for the wall. It’s now the Aeromexico Wall — “because
the only way around it is over it!” Great slogan! We are making only the best
deals, throughout the Federal Express government and across the entire United
States of American Eagle Outfitters. </span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">They said I
couldn’t unify the Republican Party. But then I renamed the Navy the Ted Cruz
Line. They said I couldn’t hold on to the evangelical Christians. But then I
renamed the Liberty University Bell and Niagara Falwells. </span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Most of all, they said I couldn’t get rid
of the entire federal debt — $19 trillion! — in one year. They said I was
stupid — a loser! But I traveled this land, from the Redwood Inn forest to the </span></span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/tour-the-65-million-gulfstream-g650-2014-10" title="www.businessinsider.com"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Gulfstream
G-650</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, and knew that
everybody wanted to buy American! So I sold the Treasury Department to
Citigroup, the Pentagon to Lockheed Martin, the Food and Drug Administration to
Pfizer, HHS to CVS, the EPA to Waste Management, the FBI to Apple, the NSA to
Google and the Grand Canyon to GMC. Great deals! China gave up all $1.3
trillion of our debt — and all I had to give them was the Walt Disney Company.
Phenomenal deal! </span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Now we are
placing corporations’ names in amazing places — the greatest — and we are
winning, winning, winning, and we are making a lot of money. A lot. We are
bringing out the best in America, the fast and convenient spirit of 7-Eleven,
and I say: Oh, thank heaven. We are Making America Great Again. </span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">[APPLAUSE]</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/oh-thank-heaven-we-now-know-how-trump-will-make-america-great-again/2016/04/19/94e546c6-066c-11e6-a12f-ea5aed7958dc_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/oh-thank-heaven-we-now-know-how-trump-will-make-america-great-again/2016/04/19/94e546c6-066c-11e6-a12f-ea5aed7958dc_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Donald Trump’s Interview With The Washington
Post Is Totally Bananas</span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By Chris Cillizza, Washington Post, 22 March 2016)</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Donald Trump sat down with the Washington
Post's editorial board on Monday. The </span></span></i><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/03/21/a-transcript-of-donald-trumps-meeting-with-the-washington-post-editorial-board/?tid=ss_tw"><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">interview</span></span></i></a><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> was, well, amazing. Using </span></span></i><a href="http://www.genius.com/"><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Genius</span></span></i></a><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, I annotated it. You can too! Sign up for
</span></span></i><a href="http://www.genius.com/"><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Genius</span></span></i></a><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and
annotate alongside me! To see an annotation, click or tap the highlighted
part of the transcript.</span></span></i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"></span><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">FREDERICK RYAN
JR., WASHINGTON POST PUBLISHER: Mr. Trump, welcome to the Washington Post.
Thank you for making time to meet with our editorial board.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">DONALD TRUMP: New
building. Yes this is very nice. Good luck with it.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">RYAN: Thank you…
We’ve heard you’re going to be announcing your foreign policy team shortly… Any
you can share with us?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Well, I
hadn’t thought of doing it, but if you want I can give you some of the names…
Walid Phares, who you probably know, PhD, adviser to the House of
Representatives caucus, and counter-terrorism expert; Carter Page, PhD; George
Papadopoulos, he’s an energy and oil consultant, excellent guy; the Honorable
Joe Schmitz, [former] inspector general at the Department of Defense; [retired]
Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg; and I have quite a few more. But that’s a group of some
of the people that we are dealing with. We have many other people in different
aspects of what we do, but that’s a representative group.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">FRED HIATT,
WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR: Do you want to start out?</span></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: No, other
than to say, we’re working hard, I think we’re all in the same business of
trying to make our country better, a better place, so we have something in
common. I’ve been treated very, very badly by The Washington Post, but, you
know, I guess — and I’m your neighbor, I’m your neighbor right down the road,
in fact we’re actually giving a press conference there in a little while, I think
your people are going to be there. And by the way, Bob Costa is an excellent
reporter, I’ve found him to be just an excellent reporter. I should tell you,
because I have to give you the good and the bad. Not that he does me any
favors, because he doesn’t, but he’s a real professional.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">So we’re having a
news conference today in the new building that’s going up, and the building is
very much ahead of schedule, because it was supposed to open two years from
September, and we’re going to open it in September. We could open it actually
sooner but we’re going to break it in a little bit, so we’re going to open it
in September, and it’s under budget, even though we’ve increased the quality of
the finishes substantially, marble finishes, very high quality of marble, so
we’re under budget and ahead of schedule. And I’m, you know, I am that way when
I build, I know how to build, I know how to get things done.<br />
The GSA [General Services Administration], I will say, GSA has been very
professional, they’ve been very, very professional. They chose us over—I think
they had more than 100 people who bid, you can imagine, because of the
location, but they had over 100 people that bid, and it was broken down into
ten finalists, and I got it. We got it because of the strength of my financial
statement and also because of the strength of what we were proposing. So we’re
having a news conference there today. What time is that, Hope?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HOPE HICKS, TRUMP
CAMPAIGN SPOKESPERSON: It’s at 2:15.</span></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: 2:15. I
hear a lot of the press is going to be there, we’re going to give them a tour
of the building. It’s still a little bit rough — as an example, a lot of the
marble surfaces all have sheetrock covering, and plywood covering on them, so a
lot of people won’t see as much as they think. It’ll be like a miracle, you
take it off and it explodes, like it’s finished, right? But that’ll be a fun
news conference.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: If I
could, I’d start by asking is there a secretary of state and a secretary of
defense in the modern era who you think have done a good job? Who do you think
were the best?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Well,
because I know so many of them, and because in many cases I like them, I hate
to get totally involved. I think George Shultz was very good, I thought he was
excellent. I can tell you, I think your last secretary of state and your
current secretary of state have not done much. I think John Kerry’s deal with
Iran is one of the worst things that I’ve ever seen negotiated of any kind.
It’s just a horrible giveaway.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: What in
particular?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Well, I
think, number one, we shouldn’t have given the money back. I think, number two,
we should have had our prisoners before the negotiations started. We should
have doubled up the sanctions. We should have gone in and said, ‘release our
prisoners,’ they would have said ‘no,’ and we would have said, ‘double up the
sanctions,’ and within a short period of time we would have had our prisoners
back. And I think that was a terrible mistake. I think giving the money back
was a terrible mistake. And by the way they are not using the money on us, they
are not buying anything from us, they’re buying, you noticed, they didn’t buy
Boeing, they bought Airbus, 118 planes from what I understand, but they bought
them all from Airbus, they go out of their way not to spend any money in our
country. So I wouldn’t have done that. And I think it’s going to just lead,
actually, to nuclear problems. I also think it’s going to be bad for Israel.
It’s a very bad deal for Israel.<br />
HIATT: George Shultz, it’s interesting, was associated with a foreign policy of
Reagan that was very much devoted to promoting democracy and freedom overseas.
Is that something you think in today’s world the United States should be doing?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I do think
it’s a different world today and I don’t think we should be nation building
anymore. I think it’s proven not to work. And we have a different country than
we did then. You know we have 19 trillion dollars in debt. We’re sitting
probably on a bubble and, you know, it’s a bubble that if it breaks is going to
be very nasty. And I just think we have to rebuild our country. If you look at
the infrastructure — I just landed at an airport where, not in good shape, not
in good shape. If you go to Qatar and if you go to (inaudible) you see airports
the likes of which you have never seen before. Dubai, different places in
China. You see infrastructure, you see airports, other things, the likes of
which you have never seen here.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: Short of
nation building, is there any role in promoting values or democracy? Or that’s
not something…</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Well,
there is, I just think that we have values in our country that we have to
promote. We have a country that is in bad shape, it’s in bad condition. You
look at our inner cities, our inner cities are a horrible mess. I watched Baltimore,
I have many, many friends in Baltimore, we watched what happened. St. Louis,
Ferguson, Oakland, it could have been much worse over the summer. And it will
probably be worse this summer. But you look at some of our inner cities. And
yet you know I watched as we built schools in Iraq and they’d be blown up. And
we’d build another one and it would get blown up. And we would rebuild it three
times. And yet we can’t build a school in Brooklyn. We have no money for
education, because we can’t build in our own country. And at what point do you
say hey, we have to take care of ourselves. So, you know, I know the outer
world exists and I’ll be very cognizant of that but at the same time, our
country is disintegrating, large sections of it, especially in the inner
cities.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: So what
would you do for Baltimore, let’s say.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Well,
number one, I’d create economic zones. I’d create incentives for companies to
move in. I’d work on spirit because the spirit is so low, it’s incredible, the
unemployment, you look at unemployment for black youth in this country, African
American youth, is 58-59 percent. It’s unthinkable. Unemployment for African
Americans – not youth, but African Americans – is very high. And I would create
in the inner cities, which is what I really do best, that’s why when I open a
building and I show you it’s way ahead of schedule, under budget and everything
else—I think it was the Rite Aid store, the store in Baltimore it took them 20
years to get it built, one store, and then it burned down in one night—we have
to create incentives for people to love what they are doing, and to make money.
And to create, you know, to really create a better life for themselves. And you
can’t – it doesn’t seem right that you will have a situation like Baltimore,
and many other places, let’s use Baltimore as an example, there are many
Baltimores in this country. Detroit is maybe even a better example than
Baltimore. But that you’ll have a situation like that, and then we’re over
nation building with other, with countries that in many cases don’t want us
there. They want our money, but they don’t want us.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: The root
of many people’s unhappiness in Baltimore was the perception that blacks are
treated differently by law enforcement. And the disproportionate – do you think
it’s a problem that the percentage of blacks in prison is higher than whites,
and what do you think is the root of that situation?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Well I’ve
never really see anything that – you know, I feel very strongly about law
enforcement. And, you know, if you look at the riot that took place over the
summer, if that were stopped – it all, it mostly took place on the first
evening, and if that were stopped on the first evening, you know, you’d have a
much nicer city right now, because much of that damage and much of the
destruction was done on Evening One. So I feel that law enforcement, it’s got
to play a big role. It’s got to play a big role. But that’s a pretty good
example, because tremendous amounts of damage was done that first evening – first
two evenings, but the first evening in particular. And so I’m a very strong
believer in law enforcement, but I’m also a very strong believer that the inner
cities can come back.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: Do you see
any racial disparities in law enforcement – I mean, what set it off was the
Freddie Gray killing, as you know. Is that an issue that concerns you?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Well,
look, I mean, I have to see what happens with the trial. I—<br />
HIATT: Well, forget Freddie Gray, but in general, do you believe there are
disparities in law enforcement?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I’ve read
where there are and I’ve read where there aren’t. I mean, I’ve read both. And,
you know, I have no opinion on that. Because frankly, what I’m saying is you
know we have to create incentives for people to go back and to reinvigorate the
areas and to put people to work. And you know we have lost million and millions
of jobs to China and other countries. And they’ve been taken out of this
country, and when I say millions, you know it’s, it’s tremendous. I’ve seen 5
million jobs, I’ve seen numbers that range from 6 million to, to smaller
numbers. But it’s many millions of jobs, and it’s to countries all over. Mexico
is really becoming the new China. And I have great issue with that. Because you
know I use in speeches sometimes Ford or sometimes I use Carrier – it’s all the
same: Ford, Carrier, Nabisco, so many of the companies — they’re moving to
Mexico now. And you know we shouldn’t be allowing that to happen. And
tremendous unemployment, tremendous. They’re allowing tremendous people that
have worked for the companies for a long time, they’re allowing, if they want
to move around and they want to work on incentives within the United States,
that’s one thing, but when they take these companies out of the United States.
Other countries are outsmarting us by giving them advantages, you know, like in
the case of Mexico. In the case of many other countries. Like Ireland is,
you’re losing Pfizer to Ireland, a great pharmaceutical company that with many,
many jobs and it’s going to move to Ireland.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">RUTH MARCUS,
COLUMNIST: But Mr. Trump, if I could just follow up on Fred’s question. I think
that what he was trying to get at was the anger in the African American
community that held some of the riots and disturbances this summer about
disparate treatment and about … clearly you say you’ve read where there is
disparate treatment. But it is pretty undeniable that there is disproportionate
incarceration of African Americans vs. whites. What would you – is that
something that concerns you?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: That would
concern me, Ruth. It would concern me. But at the same time it can be solved to
a large extant with jobs. You know, if we can rebuild those communities and
create incentives for companies to move in and create jobs. Jobs are so
important. There are no jobs. There are none. You go to those communities and
you can’t – there is nothing there. There is no incentive for people. It is a
very sad situation. And what makes it even sadder is that we are spending so
much money in other countries and our own country has vast pockets of poverty
and a lot of this is caused by the fact that there are no jobs. So we can
create jobs in places like Baltimore and Detroit. You know, Detroit made a
move, but I don’t know but it just seems to be fizzling. I don’t know what is
going on. I watched Detroit four, five years ago and it looked like they were
really putting a full-court press on and it doesn’t seem to be, from what I’ve
been told, friends of mine that are very much involved in that whole process
that it doesn’t seem to be, doesn’t seem to be something that is being pursued
like it should be pursued. But if we can create jobs, it will solve so many
problems.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CHARLES LANE,
EDITORIAL WRITER/COLUMNIST: Can I follow up on that? I mean, to take the case
of Baltimore, I mean one of the things that’s so remarkable about Baltimore and
Detroit is that both of these cities, like many others have been – it’s not as
if no one has ever said before we should have economic zones, it’s not as if no
one has ever said before we need incentives and taxes etc., etc. And Baltimore
received a lot of federal aid over the years. So I guess the question, then, is
what’s different specifically about your approach to these issues from what’s
been tried in the past, because a lot of effort has been put in just the
direction you just described.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I think
what’s different is we have a very divided country. And whether we like it or
not, it’s divided as bad as I’ve ever seen it. I‘ve been, you know, I’ve been
doing things for a long time. I see it all the time. I mean I see it so often.
I see it when we go out and we have 21,000 people in Phoenix, Arizona, the
other day, the division – not so much Phoenix, because that was actually very
smooth, there wasn’t even a minor, they did block a road, but after that, that
was Sheriff Joe Arpaio, when the road was unblocked everyone left and it was
fine. But in Tucson, you can see the division. You can see the division.
There’s a racial division that’s incredible actually in the country. I think
it’s as bad, I mean you have to say it’s as bad or almost as bad as it’s ever
been. And there’s a lack of spirit. And one thing I thought that would happen,
and it hasn’t happened, unfortunately, I thought that President Obama would be
a great cheerleader for the country. And it just hasn’t happened. I mean we can
say it has. But it hasn’t happened. When you look at the Ferguson problems and
the Baltimore problems and the Detroit problems. And you know there’s a lack of
spirit. I actually think I’d be a great cheerleader – beyond other things, the
other things that I’d do – I actually think I’d be a great cheerleader for the
country. Because a lot of people feel it’s a hopeless situation. A lot of
people in the inner cities they feel that way. And you have to start by giving
them hope and giving them spirit and that has not taken place. Just has not
taken place.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">RYAN: Mr. Trump,
you’ve mentioned many times during the campaign, in fact including this
morning, instances you feel where the press has been biased or unfair or
outright false in their reporting, and you’ve mentioned that you want to “open
up” the libel laws. You’ve said that several times.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I might
not have to, based on Gawker. Right?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">[CROSSTALK]</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: That was
an amazing—</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">RYAN: My question
is not so much why you feel they should be open but how. What presidential
powers and executive actions would you take to open up the libel laws?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Okay,
look, I’ve had stories written about me – by your newspaper and by others –
that are so false, that are written with such hatred – I’m not a bad person.
I’m just doing my thing – I’m, you know, running, I want to do something that’s
good. It’s not an easy thing to do. I had a nice life until I did this, you
know. This is a very difficult thing to do. In fact I’ve always heard that if
you’re a very successful person you can’t run for office. And I can understand
that. You’ll do a hundred deals, and you’ll do one bad one or two bad ones —
that’s all they read about are the bad ones. They don’t read about the one hundred
and fifty great ones that you had. And even some of the ones they write that
are good, they make them sound bad. You know, so I’ve always heard that. I’ve
heard that if you’re successful – very successful – you just can’t run for—</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">RYAN: But how would
you fix that? You’ve said that you would open up the libel laws.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: What I
would do, what I would do is I’d – well right now the libel laws, I mean I must
tell you that the Hulk Hogan thing was a tremendous shock to me because – not
only the amount and the fact that he had the victory — because for the most
part I think libel laws almost don’t exist in this country, you know, based on,
based on everything I’ve seen and watched and everything else, and I just think
that if a paper writes something wrong — media, when I say paper I’m talking
about media. I think that they can do a retraction if they’re wrong. They
should at least try to get it right. And if they don’t do a retraction, they
should, they should you know have a form of a trial. I don’t want to impede
free press, by the way. The last thing I would want to do is that. But I mean I
can only speak for – I probably get more – do I, I mean, you would know, do I
get more publicity than any human being on the earth? Okay? I mean, [Editor’s
note: Trump points at Ruth Marcus] she kills me, this one – that’s okay, nice
woman.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">RYAN: Would you
expand, for example, prior restraints against publications?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: No, I
would just say this. All I want is fairness. So unfair. I have stories and you
have no recourse, you have no recourse whatsoever because the laws are really
impotent.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MARCUS: So in a
better world would you be able to sue me?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: In a
better world — no — in a better world I would be able to get a retraction or a
correction. Not even a retraction, a correction.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">RYAN: Well, now,
you’ve been a plaintiff in libel suits so you know a little bit of the elements
…</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I had one
basic big libel suit, it was a very bad system, it was New Jersey. I had a
great judge, the first one, and I was going to win it. And then I had another
good judge, the second one, and then they kept switching judges. And the third
one was a bad judge. That’s what happened. But, uh…</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">RYAN: But there’s
standards like malice is required. Would you weaken that? Would you require
less than malice for news organizations?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I would
make it so that when someone writes incorrectly, yeah, I think I would get a
little bit away from malice without having to get too totally away. Look, I
think many of the stories about me are written badly. I don’t know if it’s
malice because the people don’t know me. When Charles writes about me or when
Ruth writes about me, you know, we’ve never really met. And I get these stories
and they’re so angry and I actually say, I actually say, “How could they
write?” – and many stories I must tell you, many stories are written that with
a brief phone call could be corrected before they’re written. Nobody calls me.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">STEPHEN
STROMBERG, EDITORIAL WRITER: How are you defining “incorrect?” It seems like
you’re defining it as fairness or your view of fairness rather than accuracy.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Fairness,
fairness is, you know, part of the word. But you know, I’ve had stories that
are written that are absolutely incorrect. I’ll tell you now and the word
“intent”, as you know, is an important word, as you know, in libel. I’ll give
you an example. Some of the media, not all of it, but some of it, is very, very
strong on – you know I get these massive crowds of people, and we’ll get
protesters. And these protesters are honestly, they’re very bad people. In many
cases, they’re professionals. Highly trained professionals. And I will rent an
arena for 20,000 seats and they will come in – because there’s really no way –
how you going to be able to tell – somebody said “oh you shouldn’t let ‘em in”
– how you gonna know, you know? They walk in. [Inaudible] So we had an incident
this weekend, which was amazing in Tucson, Arizona where a man, a protestor,
wearing a Ku Klux Klan outfit, another one dragging an American flag, was
walking out of the arena, and an African American man who was a supporter was
sitting there listening to the speech and we had to stop because they were so
loud – they’re so loud, these people, I don’t know what they do, they’re
trained voices or something. And they’re walking up and you saw it, because it
was all over television, and the African American man became incensed I think
the guy said something to him like you know what, like “screw you,” okay? Or
worse. I think, because he looked over to him and said something to him and the
guy just had it. Now, they were together, these two. The one wearing a Ku Klux
Klan, the other dragging a flag or something, but the African American man, who
I think was an Air Force person, I just read he had a pretty stellar life so
far. And he just became incensed. So when I saw the television yesterday early
in the morning I saw the Ku Klux Klan, I saw exactly what happened. By the time
it got on to the national shows that was for the most part taken out. They just
had this African American smacking, you know, fighting. And it didn’t make
sense, you know, why, why. But if you saw it in the morning it made a lot more
sense. We don’t condone violence at all but it’s very, very unfair reporting
and we, you know…</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: Sorry,
when you say we don’t condone violence —</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I say
that.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: You say
that. But you’ve also said, “In the good old days, he would have been ripped
out of his seat so fast, you wouldn’t believe it.” Isn’t that condoning
violence?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: No,
because what I am referring to is, we’ve had some very bad people come in. We
had one guy — and I said it — he had the voice — and this was what I was
referring to — and I said, “Boy, I’d like to smash him.” You know, I said that.
I’d like to punch him. This guy was unbelievably loud. He had a voice like
Pavarotti. I said if I was his manager I would have made a lot of money for
him, because he had the best voice. I mean, the guy was unbelievable, how loud
he was. And he was a swinger. He was hitting people. He was punching and
swinging and screaming — you couldn’t make — so you have to stop. You know,
there is also something about the First Amendment, but you had to stop. And,
so, this one man was very violent and very loud. And when he was being taken
out, he walked out like this, with his finger way up, like, “screw everybody.”
And that’s when I made that statement. He was absolutely out — I mean, he hit
people and he screamed and then he was walking out and he’s giving everybody
the finger. And they don’t talk about that. See, they don’t talk about that.
They say, “Donald, wait a second, Donald, don’t” —</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: But your
answer is you condone violence when the guy is really egregious and terrible?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: No, I
condone strong law and order. I’ll tell you what they —</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: Rip him
out of his seat, punch him in the face, isn’t that violent?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Well he
punched other people.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: No, I
understand that.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Fred, he
punched other people. He was punching people. He was — one guy was, you know,
I’d like to say —</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">JO-ANN ARMAO,
ASSOCIATE EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR: The Fayetteville protester who was sucker
punched — he didn’t punch anyone —</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: No.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">ARMAO: He was
being escorted from police, and he was sucker punched.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: No. When
are you talking about? When?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">ARMAO: In Fayetteville.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">COREY
LEWANDOWSKI, TRUMP 2016 CAMPAIGN MANAGER [to Trump]: North Carolina.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I don’t
know. I don’t know which one.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">ARMAO: Yes you
do.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I don’t
know. Because we’ve had so many —</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">ARMAO: That’s the
gentleman you said you were going to look into to see whether or not to pay his
legal fees.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Oh well
that’s a different — that’s different from the one I’m talking about. This one
was about a month ago. This one was before Fayetteville.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">ARMAO: Well,
okay, Fayetteville, do you condone violence in that case —</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: No I
don’t, no I don’t, that’s different —</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">ARMAO: Where the
protester is being walked out —</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: By the
way, that’s different —</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">ARMAO: But, yet,
you explained it that he was giving the finger and so he provoked it, so he got
sucker punched. And you are going to possibly pay for his legal expenses.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: He did
give the finger, and —</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">ARMAO: So that’s
okay?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Well, a
lot of people don’t — you know, the finger means, “F you.” A lot of people
think — and you have children there, you have a lot of children that go, you
know, they go with their parents — a lot of people think that’s very
inappropriate. I mean, you know —</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">ARMAO: It’s
certainly inappropriate.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Well, I
think it is.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">ARMAO: But does
it — is it — does it qualify to —</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: So do you
let him —</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">ARMAO: — to punch
him in the face?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Again I
don’t condone it. So do you let him walk out, he’s holding up his finger,
telling everybody. Same thing happened, you know, the last one in —</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: I guess
the question is, when you then offer to pay the guy’s legal fees, isn’t that —</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I didn’t
offer —</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: Isn’t that
condoning?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: No, I
didn’t offer, Fred —</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: You said
you would consider it —</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I said I
want to look into it. I said I want to look into it. I didn’t say that.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: Isn’t that
condoning?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: No, I
don’t think so.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: Doesn’t
that convey a message of approval?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Don’t
think so.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">LEWANDOWSKI: To
be fair, before every event, there is a public service announcement made about
-</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: It’s true.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">LEWANDOWSKI: —
any potential protesters. That is made to everybody that says —</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Strong.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">LEWANDOWSKI: —
please do not engage these protesters. You know, they may cause a disturbance.
Please do your best, let local law enforcement handle this or security at that
venue. The problem becomes, with a massive crowd of twenty or thirty or forty
thousand people, the resources that are there don’t have the ability to get to
all these people in a manner before the crowd reacts, because the agitators are
inciting those people. So we are very clear at the onset, that there is a loud
public notice that says, “please do not engage these people, please let them do
their job, and let the local law enforcement deal with that.” That’s said at
the very front end at every event.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Very loud,
and it’s repeated over and over. Actually, I guess it’s on tape, but they
repeat it over and over. One thing that was interesting this weekend. We had in
Phoenix, Arizona, we had an interesting incident. We had people, we had a major
highway coming into the arena. It’s not an arena, it’s a huge open space, 60
acres, and it was packed. And we had a major highway coming in, and people —
protesters — stopped their car in the middle of the highway, chained themselves
to their cars, and the cars — blocked. They were there for a while. A car was
not able to move. They were backed up for 20 — I mean, like, just forever. And,
it was terrible. And they were very abusive, screaming, you know, “screw you,
screw you, pigs, pigs” — meaning to the cops. Sheriff Joe Arpaio — now that was
his territory. Okay, he’s a tough cookie. Sheriff Joe saw this, he gave them a
couple of minutes to move their car — they didn’t move them — cut the chains,
arrested the people and just moved the cars over. I don’t know how they did it
— just, they were gone in minutes after he came there. Minutes. It was amazing
how quick. They actually had chains around their necks. They didn’t even know
why they were there. People – somebody was interviewed, “Why are you here?”
“Well, I don’t know, I’m not sure.” They didn’t even know.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Nobody ever talks
about these people. They say, “Oh, Trump had a bad rally,” or something. You
know there are two sides to it, and honestly, there is really one side of it –
because you see how bad this was. So what happened is they arrested three
people. There were probably a hundred or a hundred-fifty protesters, there were
21,000 people there, there were 150 protesters that were creating havoc. As
soon as the three people were arrested, everybody else ran. That was the last
we heard, and I made a speech for, you know, a half hour, 45 minutes – not one
person stood up and started screaming at this speech. It was sort of an amazing
thing.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Now Tucson was
different. Different police force, different level of, you know, whatever, and
we had numerous interruptions during the speech. You know, I’ll be speaking,
I’ll be ready to make a point, and a guy will stand up and start, just
screaming. Out of — from nowhere, for, like, no reason. Not even screaming
things that make sense, and often screaming tremendous obscenities.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I know
[Lewandowski] went in – he took a lot of heat a couple of days ago in that same
rally because he went in to get – to quiet people down, and they had a couple
of signs “F-you” – it just said “F-you,” meaning the word spelled out, and you
have cameras there, you know, it’s on live television, and you have guys
holding signs saying “F-you Trump” or just “F-you,” and they had numerous of
those – there were, you know, probably ten of those signs throughout the arena.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And he went in to
say, please would you move the sign, and the woman in front – and I saw it –
this guy grabbed the woman in front, okay, he [Lewandowski] hardly touched him
– he took him – If he touched him at all it was just grabbing the shirt a
little bit. But the guy was a real wiseguy. And he was screaming obscenities.
He did grab the woman in front and ultimately he was led out by the security
guy, who was right behind him.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But the reason is
that the police were slow to get there. And the point is this: You’re making a
speech and you have guys getting up saying, [Editor’s note: Trump says the next
few words in a hushed voice] “fuck you,” and the whole place goes, “Whoa,” and
it incites the place. They incite the place, because then everyone goes, “USA,
USA.” That’s why they’re all screaming “USA, USA,” or “Trump, Trump, Trump.”</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">You can have
20,000 people and you can have like two people. Usually – it’s amazing –
usually it’s one person. I mean, it’s like they stage it. It’s very
professional. They have like one person here, one person here, one person.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Okay, we’re
talking about the media. So, I’ve never seen the media cover it from that
angle. It’s always, “Trump had a” — and here’s the big thing, I mean, honestly,
essentially nobody has heard</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: But just –
given the Supreme Court rulings on libel — Sullivan v. New York Times — how
would you change the law?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I would
just loosen them up.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">RUTH MARCUS: What
does that mean?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">[Crosstalk]</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I’d have
to get my lawyers in to tell you, but I would loosen them up. I would loosen
them up. If The Washington Post writes badly about me – and they do, they don’t
write good – I mean, I don’t think I get – I read some of the stories coming up
here, and I said to my staff, I said, “Why are we even wasting our time? The
hatred is so enormous.” I don’t know why. I mean, I do a good job. I have
thousands of employees. I work hard.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I’m not looking
for bad for our country. I’m a very rational person, I’m a very sane person.
I’m not looking for bad. But I read articles by you, and others. And, you know,
we’ve never – we don’t know each other, and the level of hatred is so
incredible, I actually said, “Why am I – why am I doing this? Why am I even
here?” And I don’t expect anything to happen–</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">RYAN: Would that
be the standard then? If there is an article that you feel has hatred, or is
bad, would that be the basis for libel?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: No, if
it’s wrong. If it’s wrong.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">RYAN: Wrong
whether there’s malice or not?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I mean,
The Washington Post never calls me. I never had a call, “Why – why did you do
this?” or “Why did you do that?” It’s just, you know, like I’m this horrible
human being. And I’m not. You know, the one thing we have in common I think we
all love the country. Now, maybe we come at it from different sides, but nobody
ever calls me. I mean, Bob Costa calls about a political story – he called
because we’re meeting senators in a little while and congressmen, supporters –
but nobody ever calls.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">RYAN: The reason
I keep asking this is because you’ve said three times you’ve said we are going
to open up the libel laws and when you ask you what you mean you say hatred, or
bad–</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I want to
make it more fair from the side where I am, because things are said that are
libelous, things are said about me that are so egregious and so wrong, and
right now according to the libel laws I can do almost nothing about it because
I’m a well-known person you know, etc., etc.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">JACKSON DIEHL,
DEPUTY EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR: Back to foreign policy a little bit, can you talk
a little bit about what you see as the future of NATO? Should it expand in any
way?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Look, I
see NATO as a good thing to have – I look at the Ukraine situation and I say,
so Ukraine is a country that affects us far less than it affects other
countries in NATO, and yet we are doing all of the lifting, they’re not doing
anything. And I say, why is it that Germany is not dealing with NATO on
Ukraine? Why is it that other countries that are in the vicinity of the Ukraine
not dealing with — why are we always the one that’s leading, potentially the
third world war, okay, with Russia? Why are we always the ones that are doing
it? And I think the concept of NATO is good, but I do think the United States
has to have some help. We are not helped. I’ll give you a better example than
that. I mean, we pay billions– hundreds of billions of dollars to supporting
other countries that are in theory wealthier than we are.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">DIEHL: Hundreds
of billions?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Billions.
Well if you look at Germany, if you look at Saudi Arabia, if you look at Japan,
if you look at South Korea — I mean we spend billions of dollars on Saudi
Arabia, and they have nothing but money. And I say, why? Now I would go in and
I would structure a much different deal with them, and it would be a much
better deal. When you look at the kind of money that our country is losing, we
can’t afford to do this. Certainly we can’t afford to do it anymore.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">DIEHL: About
Ukraine, was it right for the United States to impose sanctions on Russia when
they invaded Crimea and would you keep those sanctions on them?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I think
the answer is yes, it was, but I don’t see other people doing much about it. I
see us doing things about it, but I don’t see other people doing much about it.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">DIEHL: And could
I ask you about ISIS, speaking of making commitments, because you talked
recently about possibly sending 20 or 30,000 troops and—</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: No I
didn’t, oh no no no, okay, I know what you’re saying. There was a question
asked to me. I said that the military, the generals have said that 20- to
30,000. They said, would you send troops? I didn’t say send 20,000. I said,
well the generals are saying you’d need because they , what would it take to
wipe out ISIS, I said pretty much exactly this, I said the generals, the
military is saying you would need 20- to 30,000 troops, but I didn’t say that I
would send them.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">DIEHL: If they
said that, would you go along with that and send the troops?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I find it
hard to go along with—I mention that as an example because it’s so much. That’s
why I brought that up. But a couple of people have said the same thing as you,
where they said did I say that and I said that that’s a number that I heard
would be needed. I would find it very, very hard to send that many troops to
take care of it. I would say this, I would put tremendous pressure on other
countries that are over there to use their troops and I’d give them tremendous
air supporters and support , because we have to get rid of ISIS, okay, just so
— we have to get rid of ISIS. I would get other countries to become very much
involved.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">DIEHL: What about
China and the South China Sea. What do you think they’re up to and—</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I think
it’s a terrible situation, I think it’s terrible they have no respect for–</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">DIEHL: –and what
should we do about it?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Well look,
we have power over China and people don’t realize it. We have trade power over
China. I don’t think we are going to start World War III over what they did, it
affects other countries certainly a lot more than it affects us. But—and
honestly, you know part of—I always say we have to be unpredictable. We’re
totally predictable. And predictable is bad. Sitting at a meeting like this and
explaining my views and if I do become president, I have these views that are
down for the other side to look at, you know. I hate being so open. I hate when
they say — like I said get rid of the oil, keep the oil, different things over
the years, when people are saying what would you do with regard to the Middle
East, when we left — We should have never been in Iraq. It was a horr- it was
one of the worst decisions ever made in the history of our country. We then got
out badly, then after we got out, I said, “Keep the oil. If we don’t keep it
Iran’s going to get it.” And it turns out Iran and ISIS basically—</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: How do you
keep it without troops, how do you defend the oil?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: You would…
You would, well for that– for that, I would circle it. I would defend those
areas.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: With U.S.
troops?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Yeah, I
would defend the areas with the oil. And I would have taken out a lot of oil.
And, uh, I would have kept it. I mean, I would have kept it, because, look:
Iran has the oil, and they’re going to have the oil, well, the stuff they don’t
have, because Iran is taking over Iraq as sure as you’re sitting there. And
I’ve been very good on this stuff. My prognostications, my predictions have
become, have been very accurate, if you look.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: So what do
you think China’s aims are in the South China Sea?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Well I
know China very well, because I deal with China all the time. I’ve done very
well. China’s unbelievably ambitious. China is, uh… I mean, when I deal with
China, you know, I have the Bank of America building, I’ve done some great
deals with China. I do deals with them all the time on, you know, selling
apartments, and, you know, people say ‘oh that’s not the same thing.’ The level
of… uh, the largest bank in the world, 400 million customers, is a tenant of
mine in New York, in Manhattan. The biggest bank in China. The biggest bank in
the world.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">China has got
unbelievable ambitions. China feels very invincible. We have rebuilt China.
They have drained so much money out of our country that they’ve rebuilt China.
Without us, you wouldn’t see the airports and the roadways and the bridges; I
mean, the George Washington Bridge is like, that’s like a trinket compared to
the bridges that they’ve built in China. We don’t build anymore, and it, you
know, we had our day. But China, if you look at what’s going on in China, you
know, they go down to seven percent or eight percent and it’s like a national
catastrophe. Our GDP is right now zero. Essentially zero.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">DIEHL: Could you
use trade to cause them to retreat in the South China Sea?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I think
so, yeah. I think so</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">DIEHL: What would
you do?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: We, well,
you start making it tougher. They’re selling their products to us for… you
know, with no tax, no nothing. By the way, we can’t deal with them, but they
can deal with us. See, we are free trade. The story is, and I have so many
people that deal with China –they can easily sell their product here. No tax,
no nothing, just ‘come on, bring it all in, you know, bring in your apples,
bring in everything you make’ and no taxes whatsoever, right? If you want to
deal with China, it’s just the opposite. You can’t do that. In other words, if
you want to, if you’re a manufacturer, you want to go into China? It’s very
hard to get your product in, and if you get it in you have to pay a very big
tax.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: So, if
they occupied what the Japanese call the Senkaku Islands, is that something the
United States…</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Well, I,
you know, again, I don’t like to tell you what I’d do, because I don’t want to…
You understand what I’m saying, Fred? If I… Okay, if I say ‘Well, we should go
in and do this or that or that,’ I don’t want to, I don’t want to sort of… red
flag all over it. I do think this: It’s an unbelievable thing that they’ve
done, it’s unbelievable aggression, it’s unbelievable lack of respect for this
country.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: This
theory of unpredictability, I want to push a little bit, I mean – there are
many people who think that North Korea invaded South Korea precisely because
Acheson wasn’t clear that we would defend South Korea. So I’m curious, does
ambiguity sometimes have dangers?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Well I’ll
give you, I’ll give you an example. President Obama, when he left Iraq, gave a
specific date – we’re going to be out. I thought that was a terrible thing to
do. And the enemy pulled back, because they don’t want die. Despite what you
read, you know, they don’t want to die — and they just pulled back, and after
we left, all hell broke out, right? And I’ll give you another example that I
think was terrible: when they sent, a few months ago, they sent fifty troops
in. You know, fifty elite troops. Now, why do we have to have a news conference
to announce that we’re sending fifty troops? So those troops now have targets
on their back. And…you shouldn’t do it. We’re so predictable: “Ladies and
gentlemen, we’re sending fifty troops into Iraq or Syria. And these are our
elite troops. And they’re going to do this and that and that and this.” And
those troops now are being hunted. If you didn’t send them, they wouldn’t – if
you didn’t say that, they wouldn’t know. I mean, there are times when you just
can’t be… You talk too much. We talk too much. I guess they thought that was
good politically, to say we’re sending fifty troops? I don’t think it was good.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">LANE: Can I ask
you…Just going back to NATO, because…</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Yes.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">LANE: As you
know, the whole theory of NATO from the beginning was to keep the United States
involved in the long term in Europe to balance, to promote a balance of power
in that region so we wouldn’t have a repeat of World War I and World War 2. And
it seems to be like what you’re saying is very similar to what President Obama
said to Jeffrey Goldberg, in that we have allies that become free riders. So it
seems like there’s some convergence with the president there. What concerns me
about both is that to some extent it was always thought to be in our interest
that we, yes, we would take some of the burden on, yes, even if the net-net was
not 100 percent, even steven, with the Germans. So I’d like to hear you say
very specifically, you know, with respect to NATO, what is your ask of these
other countries? Right, you’ve painted it in very broad terms, but do you have
a percent of GDP that they should be spending on defense? Tell me more. Because
it’s not that you want to pull the U.S. out.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: No, I
don’t want to pull it out. NATO was set up at a different time. NATO was set up
when we were a richer country. We’re not a rich country. We’re borrowing, we’re
borrowing all of this money. We’re borrowing money from China, which is a sort
of an amazing situation. But things are a much different thing. NATO is costing
us a fortune and yes, we’re protecting Europe but we’re spending a lot of
money. Number 1, I think the distribution of costs has to be changed. I think
NATO as a concept is good, but it is not as good as it was when it first
evolved. And I think we bear the, you know, not only financially, we bear the
biggest brunt of it. Obama has been stronger on the Ukraine than all the other
countries put together, and those other countries right next door to the Ukraine.
And I just say we have, I’m not even knocking it, I’m just saying I don’t think
it’s fair, we’re not treated fair. I don’t think we’re treated fair, Charles,
anywhere. If you look everything we have. You know, South Korea is very rich.
Great industrial country. And yet we’re not reimbursed fairly for what we do.
We’re constantly, you know, sending our ships, sending our planes, doing our
war games, doing other. We’re reimbursed a fraction of what this is all
costing.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">LANE: You know,
well, they say and I think this is on public record, it’s basically 50 percent
of the non-personnel cost is paid by South Korea and Japan.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: 50
percent?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">LANE: Yeah.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Why isn’t
it 100 percent?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: Well I
guess the question is, does the United States gain anything by having bases?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Personally
I don’t think so. I personally don’t think so. Look. I have great relationships
with South Korea. I have buildings in South Korea. But that’s a wealthy
country. They make the ships, they make the televisions, they make the air
conditioning. They make tremendous amounts of products. It’s a huge, it’s a
massive industrial complex country. And —</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: So you
don’t think the US gains from being the force that sort of that helps keep the
peace in the Pacific?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I think
that we are not in the position that we used to be. I think we were a very
powerful, very wealthy country. And we’re a poor country now. We’re a debtor
nation. How you going to get rid – let me ask you – how are you going get rid
of $21 trillion in debt? You’re going to be at 21 trillion in a matter of
minutes because of that new omnibus budget. So they passed that ridiculous
omnibus budget. How you going to get rid of that debt. We’re spending that to
protect other countries. We’re not spending it on ourselves. Because we have,
we have armor-plated vehicles that are obsolete. The best ones are given to the
enemy. We give them to our allies over in the Middle East. A bullet shot in the
air and they immediately run and the enemy takes over. I have a friend whose
son is in his third, his third tour over in Iraq. He’s over in, I mean he’s a
very special kid, he’s a great kid. But he’s over in the Middle East, and, uh,
Afghanistan, different parts of the Middle East, actually. And he said to me, I
said to him what do you think. And he said, it’s so sad. He said the enemy has
our equipment – the new version — and we have all the old version, and the
enemy has our equipment, because they get into a fight with the so-called
people like the Freedom Fighters, you know the whole Syrian deal, where we’re
sending billions and billions of dollars worth, and they capture the equipment.
In most cases the shots are fired and everybody leaves. And these are the
people we’re backing. And we don’t know if it’s going to be another Saddam
Hussein deal, in other words, let’s get rid of Assad with these people and
these people end up being worse. Okay? But he said, they have better equipment.
It’s our equipment. They have, I guess we send 2,300 Humvees over, all
armor-plated. So we have wounded warriors, with no legs, with no arms, because
they were driving in stuff without the armor. And the enemy has most of the new
ones we sent over that they captured. And he said, it’s so discouraging when
they see that the enemy has better equipment than we have – and it’s our
equipment.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: I’d like
to come back to the campaign. You said a few weeks ago after a family in
Chicago gave some money to a PAC opposing you, you said, “They better watch
out. They have a lot to hide.” What should they watch out for?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Look, they
are spending vicious … I don’t even know these people. Those Ricketts. I
actually said they ought to focus on the Chicago Cubs and, you know, stop
playing around. They spent millions of dollars fighting me in Florida. And out
of 68 counties, I won 66. I won by 20 points, almost 20 points. Against,
everybody thought he was a popular sitting senator. I had $38 million dollars
spent on me in Florida over a short period of time. $38 million. And, you know,
the Ricketts, I don’t even know these people.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: So, what
does it mean, “They better watch out”?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Well, it
means that I’ll start spending on them. I’ll start taking ads telling them all
what a rotten job they’re doing with the Chicago Cubs. I mean, they are
spending on me. I mean, so am I allowed to say that? I’ll start doing ads about
their baseball team. That it’s not properly run or that they haven’t done a
good job in the brokerage business lately.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">RYAN: Would you
do that while you are president?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: No, not while
I am president. No, not while I’m president. That is two phases. Right now,
look, you know, I went to a great school, I was a good student and all. I am an
intelligent person. My uncle, I would say my uncle was one of the brilliant
people. He was at MIT for 35 years. As a great scientist and engineer, actually
more than anything else. Dr. John Trump, a great guy. I’m an intelligent
person. I understand what is going on. Right now, I had 17 people who started
out. They are almost all gone. If I were going to do that in a different
fashion I think I probably wouldn’t be sitting here. You would be interviewing
somebody else. But it is hard to act presidential when you are being … I mean,
actually I think it is presidential because it is winning. And winning is a
pretty good thing for this country because we don’t win any more. And I say it
all the time. We do not win any more. This country doesn’t win. We don’t win
with trade. We don’t win with … We can’t even beat ISIS. And by the way, just
to answer the rest of that question, I would knock the hell out of ISIS in some
form. I would rather not do it with our troops, you understand that. Very
important. Because I think saying that is very important because I was against
the war in Iraq, although they found a clip talking to Howard Stern, I said,
“Well…” It was very unenthusiastic. Before they want in, I was totally against
the war. I was against it for years. I actually had a delegation sent from the
White House to talk to me because I guess I get a disproportionate amount of
publicity. I was just against the war. I thought it would destabilize the
Middle East, and it did. But we have to knock out ISIS. We are living like in
medieval times. Who ever heard of the heads chopped off?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: Just back
to the campaign. You are smart and you went to a good school. Yet you are up
there and talking about your hands and the size of private …</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: No …</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: … your
private parts.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: No, no.
No, no. I am not doing that.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: Do you
regret having engaged in that?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: No, I had
to do it. Look, this guy. Here’s my hands. Now I have my hands, I hear, on the
New Yorker, a picture of my hands.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MARCUS: You’re on
the cover.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: A hand
with little fingers coming out of a stem. Like, little. Look at my hands.
They’re fine. Nobody other than Graydon Carter years ago used to use that. My
hands are normal hands. During a debate, he was losing, and he said, “Oh, he
has small hands and therefore, you know what that means.” This was not me. This
was Rubio that said, “He has small hands and you know what that means.” Okay?
So, he started it. So, what I said a couple of days later … and what happened
is I was on line shaking hands with supporters, and one of supporters got up
and he said, “Mr. Trump, you have strong hands. You have good-sized hands.” And
then another one would say, “You have great hands, Mr. Trump, I had no idea.” I
said, “What do you mean?” He said, “I thought you were like deformed, and I
thought you had small hands.” I had fifty people … Is that a correct statement?
I mean people were writing, “How are Mr. Trump’s hands?” My hands are fine. You
know, my hands are normal. Slightly large, actually. In fact, I buy a slightly
smaller than large glove, okay? No, but I did this because everybody was saying
to me, “Oh, your hands are very nice. They are normal.” So Rubio, in a debate,
said, because he had nothing else to say … now I was hitting him pretty hard.
He wanted to do his Don Rickles stuff and it didn’t work out. Obviously, it
didn’t work too well. But one of the things he said was “He has small hands and
therefore, you know what that means, he has small something else.” You can look
it up. I didn’t say it.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MARCUS: You chose
to raise it …</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: No, I
chose to respond.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MARUS: You chose
to respond.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I had no
choice.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MARCUS: You chose
to raise it during a debate. Can you explain why you had no choice?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I don’t
want people to go around thinking that I have a problem. I’m telling you, Ruth,
I had so many people. I would say 25, 30 people would tell me … every time I’d
shake people’s hand, “Oh, you have nice hands.” Why shouldn’t I? And, by the
way, by saying that I solved the problem. Nobody questions … I even held up my
hands, and said, “Look, take a look at that hand.”</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MARCUS: You told
us in the debate ….</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: And by
saying that, I solved the problem. Nobody questions. Everyone held my hand. I
said look. Take a look at that hand.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MARCUS: You told
us in the debate that you guaranteed there was not another problem. Was that
presidential? And why did you decide to do that?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I don’t
know if it was presidential, honestly, whether it is or not. He said, ‘Donald
Trump has small hands and therefore he has small something else.’ I didn’t say
that. And all I did is when he failed, when he was failing, when he was, when
Christie made him look bad, I gave him the– a little recap and I said, and I
said, and I had this big strong powerful hand ready to grab him, because I
thought he was going to faint. And everybody took it fine. Whether it was
presidential or not I can’t tell you. I can just say that what he said was a
lie. And everybody, they wanted to do stories on my hands; after I said that,
they never did. And then I held up the hand, I showed people the hand. You
know, when I’ve got a big audience. So yeah, I think it’s not a question of
presidential …</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MARCUS: He said
he regrets …</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: Okay,
let’s move on here. Let’s move on.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I did feel
I should respond. Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know. But I felt I should respond
because everybody was talking about it.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">RYAN: You
[MUFFLED] mentioned a few minutes earlier here that you would knock ISIS.
You’ve mentioned it many times. You’ve also mentioned the risk of putting
American troop in a danger area. If you could substantially reduce the risk of
harm to ground troops, would you use a battlefield nuclear weapon to take out
ISIS?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I don’t
want to use, I don’t want to start the process of nuclear. Remember the one
thing that everybody has said, I’m a counterpuncher. Rubio hit me. Bush hit me.
When I said low energy, he’s a low-energy individual, he hit me first. I spent,
by the way he spent 18 million dollars’ worth of negative ads on me. That’s
putting [MUFFLED]…</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">RYAN: This is
about ISIS. You would not use a tactical nuclear weapon against ISIS?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">[CROSSTALK]</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I’ll tell
you one thing, this is a very good looking group of people here. Could I just
go around so I know who the hell I’m talking to?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: Sure, then
I’d like to let a couple of them get in questions.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">LEWANDOWSKI: We
have got five minutes, hard out.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: Okay.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Oh is it?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CORY: Yeah. You
have a meeting you have to get to.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Okay we
do.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">ARMAO: I’m Jo-Ann
Armao. I cover D.C. events. I want to ask you a question about what you think
about D.C. voting rights or statehood.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Okay. I’ll
talk about that.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TOM TOLES,
EDITORIAL CARTOONIST: Tom Toles.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Hi, Tom.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">LANE: I’m Charles
…</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Yes, I
know Charles.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">STROMBERG: Steve
Stromberg, editorial writer.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Right.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MARCUS: Ruth
Marcus.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Right.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">RYAN: Fred Ryan.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Right, right.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">DIEHL: Jackson
Diehl.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Good.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">JAMES DOWNIE:
James Downie, digital opinions editor.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Hi, James.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MICHAEL LARABEE:
Mike Larabee, I’m the op-ed editor.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Yes.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">CHRISTINE EMBA:
Christine Emba.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Hi,
Christine.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">JAMIE RILEY:
Jamie Riley, letters and local opinions.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Good, yes,
yes.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">KAREN ATTIAH:
Karen Attiah, deputy digital editor.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: Karen, you
want to get a question in?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">ATTIAH: Uh, yeah,
I mean speaking again of the system of what a lot of people would say are some
of the uglier components of your campaign; a lot of people have said you’ve
been running a very divisive campaign as far as racial divides, you’ve noted
you know your comments about Muslims, about Mexicans, immigrants and such. You
have information that the country is becoming browner, is becoming younger, is
becoming blacker. What in your vision of president, in your presidency, how
would you bridge these divides and how will you address a– how are you going to
run on a message of inclusion of all Americans?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Well,
first of all, if you look at some polls that have come out, I’m doing very well
with African Americans. I’m doing, actually if you look at the polls, a lot of
the polls that came out, in the, um, what do they call it? Exit polls, like
from Nevada and other places, I’m doing very well with Hispanics.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">ATTIAH: I think
some of the polls are saying you’re doing [in the] negatives.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: We do, if
it’s illegals, in other words, if it’s everybody, but people that are legally
living here, I’m doing very well. In other words, people that are here, like
Hispanics that are in the country, I’m doing very well. People that vote. Like
people leaving voting booths and all, I’m doing very well with them. I want to
be inclusive, but at the same time, people should come here legally. They
should be here legally. And I think the reason I’m doing, that I will do well,
especially once I get started, don’t forget I haven’t even focused on Hillary
yet. And, and as you know, you know I’ve had polls that are against me, but
I’ve had many polls that say I’d beat Hillary, but they’re not that, that, they
don’t mean anything now because it’s too early. Because I haven’t hit her. I’ve
only hit her once, and that was eight weeks ago, but, I haven’t started on
Hillary yet, and when I do I think I’ll be able to make my points. I mean, you
know, but, but I think that just to try and answer your question: Uh, I am the
least racist person that you will ever meet. Okay. That I can tell you.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">ATTIAH: But do
you feel that your messages, your rhetoric, are dangerous and divisive for this
country? How do you feel they’re ….</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I don’t
think so. No, I don’t think so. With the Muslim thing I think it’s a serious
problem. I’ve had Muslims call and tell me you’re right with the Muslim thing,
I think it’s a serious problem. And it’s a problem that has to be addressed. I
mean, there’s tremendous hatred. Even the, even the guy they caught in Paris.
He was being hid out by other Muslims, and everybody is after him, and he’s
living right next to where he grew up. There’s a serious, serious problem with
the Muslims and it’s got to be addressed. It’s temporary, and it’s got to be
addressed. And you know you may think of it as negative. Many people think it’s
very positive.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: How would
you identify people to keep them out of this country?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Well look,
there’s many exceptions. There’s many – everything, you’re going to go through
a process. But we have to be very careful. And I was really referring in
particular, you know, to migrations – Syrians, the whole migration, where we’re
going to take in thousands. And I heard in the Democrat debate, I heard 55,000,
okay. 55,000. Now they say it’s really ten [thousand], but it’s already 10, and
I just don’t think we can take people into this country. You saw what two
people did – the woman and the man, whether she radicalized him or [inaudible]
– but you saw what two people did, and I just don’t think we can take people in
when we have no idea who they are, where they come from. There’s no documents,
there’s no paper, and we have ISIS looming over our head, and we have
tremendous destruction. We lost the World Trade Center, we lost the Pentag –
you know, we had a plane go into the Pentagon, etc.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">ARMAO: D.C.: You
told Chuck Todd last year on “Meet the Press” that you love D.C., you love the
people, that you want to do what’s best for them. They think what’s best for
them is statehood or at the very least voting rights. What is your position on
those two things?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I think
statehood is a tough thing for D.C. I think it’s a tough thing. I don’t have a
position on it yet. I would form a position. But I think statehood is a tough
thing for D.C.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">ARMAO: Tough
politically?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I think
it’s just something that I don’t think I’d be inclined to do. I’d like to study
it. It’s not a question really – maybe Chuck didn’t ask me like you’re asking
me – I don’t see statehood for D.C.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">ARMAO: What about
having a vote in the House of Representatives?</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I think
that’s something that would be okay. Having representation would be okay.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">HIATT: Last one:
You think climate change is a real thing? Is there human-caused climate change?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: I think
there’s a change in weather. I am not a great believer in man-made climate
change. I’m not a great believer. There is certainly a change in weather that
goes – if you look, they had global cooling in the 1920s and now they have
global warming, although now they don’t know if they have global warming. They
call it all sorts of different things; now they’re using “extreme weather” I
guess more than any other phrase. I am not – I know it hurts me with this room,
and I know it’s probably a killer with this room – but I am not a believer.
Perhaps there’s a minor effect, but I’m not a big believer in man-made climate
change.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">STROMBERG: Don’t
good businessmen hedge against risks, not ignore them?</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">TRUMP: Well I
just think we have much bigger risks. I mean I think we have militarily tremendous
risks. I think we’re in tremendous peril. I think our biggest form of climate
change we should worry about is nuclear weapons. The biggest risk to the world,
to me – I know President Obama thought it was climate change – to me the
biggest risk is nuclear weapons. That’s – that is climate change. That is a
disaster, and we don’t even know where the nuclear weapons are right now. We
don’t know who has them. We don’t know who’s trying to get them. The biggest
risk for this world and this country is nuclear weapons, the power of nuclear
weapons.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">RYAN: Thank you
for joining us.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/22/donald-trumps-interview-with-the-washington-post-is-totally-bananas/?tid=hybrid_experimentrandom_2_na"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/22/donald-trumps-interview-with-the-washington-post-is-totally-bananas/?tid=hybrid_experimentrandom_2_na</span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-45903208262556676472016-02-28T15:37:00.000-08:002016-02-28T15:41:57.685-08:00Academy Awards 2016<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Oscar Nominations 2016: Complete List Of Nominees</span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By Stephanie
Merry, The Hollywood Reporter, 14 January 2016)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Oscars ceremony will take place on
Feb. 28 and will be broadcast live at 7 p.m. on ABC.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Nominations (by movie):<br />
The Revenant – 12<br />
Mad Max: Fury Road – 10<br />
The Martian – 7<br />
Spotlight – 6<br />
Bridge of Spies – 6<br />
Carol – 6<br />
The Big Short – 5<br />
Star Wars: The Force Awakens – 5</span></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<b><i><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The List Of Nominations For The 88th Academy Awards</span></u></i></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Best Picture<br />
</span></u></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="background: yellow; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-highlight: yellow;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Spotlight</span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br />
</span></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Big Short<br />
Bridge of Spies<br />
Brooklyn<br />
Mad Max: Fury Road<br />
The Martian<br />
The Revenant<br />
Room</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">
<b><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Immediate reaction:</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Academy can nominate up to 10 contenders,
which leaves space for some less typical entries. This year, it went with eight
options, which means we have the movies we knew we’d see — “The Revenant,” “The
Martian,” “Spotlight” — but also some less weighty entries, such as “The Big
Short” and “Mad Max: Fury Road.” The one glaring omission (sorry, “Star Wars”
fans, it’s not “The Force Awakens”) is “Carol,” which seemed custom-made for
awards glory.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span lang="EN" style="display: none; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-hide: all;">Content from
JPMorgan Chase & Co. In Context quotes are content from JPMorgan Chase
& Co. </span></u></b><a href="https://adclick.g.doubleclick.net/aclk?sa=L&ai=Bb6sIlcSZVqe1AcSI3AGFtofYArLHusEIAAAAEAEgADgAWKK6yKvkAmDJ3qWH2KPkD4IBF2NhLXB1Yi0zNjcxMzQ2NTUxMjIxNTA5sgEWd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbboBCWdmcF9pbWFnZcgBCdoBcmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9uZXdzL2FydHMtYW5kLWVudGVydGFpbm1lbnQvd3AvMjAxNi8wMS8xNC9vc2Nhci1ub21pbmF0aW9ucy0yMDE2LWNvbXBsZXRlLWNvdmVyYWdlL8ACAuACAOoCIy83MDEvd3BuaS5saWZlc3R5bGUvYmxvZy9zdHlsZS1ibG9n-AKE0h6AAwGQA6QDmAOkA6gDAeAEAZAGAaAGINgHAA&num=0&cid=5GjSGaCYqmQSdpM8ZgpkPBUN&sig=AOD64_0YqihoLiBJt05z9cR-kz8XY0K9tg&client=ca-pub-3671346551221509&adurl=http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/brand-connect/wp/enterprise/growing-small-businesses-in-detroit-and-beyond/" target="_blank"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="display: none; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-hide: all;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">They all share a common goal of creating their own success, while making
their communities better places to live and work. </span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="display: none; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-hide: all; mso-no-proof: yes;"><img alt="https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://s3.amazonaws.com/wp-stat/incontext/82777-2b480e3d-74f3-40e2-8b27-817b9801cda6.png&h=40&_=1452892361139" border="0" height="40" src="file:///C:/Users/Richard/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image001.png" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_1" width="603" /></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="display: none; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-hide: all;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";"> More </span></span></b></a><b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Actor In
A Leading Role</span></u></b><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br />
</span></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Bryan Cranston, Trumbo<br />
Matt Damon, The Martian</span>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant</span></span><br />
</b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs<br />
Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">
<b><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Immediate reaction:</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The only name on this list that really
matters is Leonardo DiCaprio. Barring some unthinkable fraud (What if he
secretly shot the whole movie on a soundstage? Maybe that bison liver was a
strawberry jam-covered mushroom?), he has this category locked down.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Actress In
A Leading Role<br />
</span></u></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Cate Blanchett, Carol</span>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Brie Larson, Room</span>
</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Jennifer Lawrence, Joy<br />
Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years<br />
Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn</span>
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Immediate reaction:</span></span></i></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> This shakes out a lot like we would have
guessed. Golden Globe winner Larson, arguably the front-runner, is on the list,
alongside other sure bets, such as Blanchett and Lawrence. The one mild
surprise is Rampling, who was phenomenal in “45 Years” but didn’t get a Golden
Globe nomination.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Best Director<br />
</span></u></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Lenny Abrahamson,
Room</span><b><br />
</b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Alejandro Iñárritu, The Revenant</span>
</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road<br />
Tom McCarthy, Spotlight<br />
Adam McKay, The Big Short</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br />
<b><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Immediate reaction:</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">These directors really run the gamut, from
Iñárritu and his extreme sport of directing to the staid yet thrilling approach
that McCarthy took to “Spotlight.” The most surprising omission is Ridley
Scott. The “Martian” director has been nominated multiple times but never won,
so this year seemed like the time for the Academy to honor him with a
body-of-work Oscar. Instead, Abrahamson and McKay landed on the list, leaving
less serious competition for Iñárritu, who has a good shot at winning his
second consecutive trophy after last year’s “Birdman.”</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Actor In
A Supporting Role<br />
</span></u></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Christian Bale, The
Big Short</span><b><br />
</b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Tom Hardy, The Revenant<br />
Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight<br />
Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies</span>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Sylvester Stallone, Creed</span></span></b></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">
<i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Immediate reaction:</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">This is a strong category with a lot of worthy
contenders. Globe winner Stallone has been gaining steam coming into awards
season with his emotional return to the character of Rocky Balboa. The biggest
surprise of the lot is Tom Hardy; apparently the Academy really liked “The
Revenant.” He took the place of some other strong candidates, including Idris
Elba from “Beasts of No Nation,” Paul Dano in “Love & Mercy” and Michael
Shannon for “99 Homes.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Actress In
A Supporting Role</span></u></b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br />
</span></u><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Rooney Mara, Carol<br />
Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br />
<span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Alicia Vikander, The
Danish Girl</span></span></b><br /><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs<br />
Rachel McAdams, Spotlight</span>
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Immediate reaction:</span></span></i></b><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Vikander burst onto the scene this year with a
handful of brilliant performances in buzzy movies, and it’s paying off with a
nomination here. It wasn’t clear whether she would land on the list for
“Ex-Machina” or “The Danish Girl.” It ended up being the latter, which is
interesting considering that the role could have easily been seen as a leading
performance. The same goes for Rooney Mara, who probably had more screentime
than her co-star Cate Blanchett in “Carol” but ended up in the supporting
category. But two skilled vets who seemed to be likely nominees — Oscar winners
Helen Mirren and Jane Fonda — didn’t make the cut.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Best Animated
Feature Film</span></u></b><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br />
</span></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Anomalisa</span><b><br />
</b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Boy and the World</span>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Inside Out</span></span><br />
</b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Shaun the Sheep Movie<br />
When Marnie Was There</span>
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Immediate reaction: </span></span></i></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Pixar had two feature films this year, so
the assumption was that the studio would end up with two Oscar nominations.
That didn’t happen. Awards front-runner “Inside Out” nabbed a nod, but the
studio’s slightly less fawned-over “The Good Dinosaur” did not. Instead, the
little known “Boy & the World” snuck in. Meanwhile, Charlie Kaufman’s
existential puppet show, “Anomalisa,” also got some love.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Best Foreign
Language Film<br />
</span></u></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Embrace of the
Serpent</span><b><br />
</b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Mustang</span>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Son of Saul</span></span></b><br /><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
Theeb<br />
A War</span>
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Immediate reaction:</span></span></i></b><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Hungarian film “Son of Saul” is the picture to
beat here. The gut punch of a movie also won the Golden Globe for its depiction
of a Sonderkommando at Auschwitz — a Jewish man who was both a prisoner and a
worker, tasked with burning the dead.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Best Adapted
Screenplay<br />
</span></u></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="background: yellow; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-highlight: yellow;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Big
Short, Charles Randolph and Adam McKay</span></span></b><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br />
</span></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Brooklyn, Nick Hornby<br />
Carol, Phyllis Nagy<br />
The Martian, Drew Goddard<br />
Room, Emma Donoghue</span>
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Immediate reaction:</span></span></i></b><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Aaron Sorkin took home the Golden Globe for “Steve
Jobs” on Sunday, but apparently the Academy wasn’t digging his
“impressionistic” take on the Apple founder’s life. Instead, we have a couple
of movies that managed to make very complicated subjects palatable for a broad
audience: Charles Randolph and Adam McKay used a bathing Margot Robbie to
explain the financial crisis in “The Big Short” and Drew Goddard made science a
lot less confusing in “The Martian.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Best Original
Screenplay<br />
</span></u></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="background: yellow; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-highlight: yellow;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Spotlight,
written by Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy</span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br />
</span></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Bridge of Spies, written
by Matt Charman and Ethan Coen and Joel Coen<br />
Ex Machina, written by Alex Garland<br />
Inside Out, screenplay by Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley; original story
by Pete Docter, Ronnie del Carmen<br />
Straight Outta Compton, screenplay by Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff; story
by S. Leigh Savidge and Alan Wenkus and Andrea Berloff</span>
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Immediate reaction:</span></span></i></b><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">This is an eclectic category. We get one animated
entry alongside the science fiction of “Ex Machina” and the true story of
“Spotlight.” Meanwhile, this is the only nomination for the thrilling N.W.A
biopic “Straight Outta Compton.”</span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></b></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Best Original
Score<br />
</span></u></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Bridge of
Spies, Thomas Newman<br />
Carol, Carter Burwell</span>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Hateful Eight, Ennio Morricone</span></span></b><br /><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
Sicario, Jóhann Jóhannsson<br />
Star Wars: The Force Awakens, John Williams</span>
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Immediate reaction: </span></span></i></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">If legendary composer Ennio Morricone wins
the Oscar for “The Hateful Eight” like he won the Golden Globe, he may want to
find someone else to accept the award on his behalf, because </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/01/11/what-did-quentin-tarantino-mean-when-he-said-ghetto-in-his-golden-globes-speech/"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Quentin Tarantino can’t seem to escape
controversy</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> even when
it’s in the service of a friend. Meanwhile, Jóhann Jóhannsson gets his second
nomination in as many years and — hey look! — “Star Wars” got some love.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Best Cinematography<br />
</span></u></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Carol, Ed
Lachman<br />
The Hateful Eight, Robert Richardson<br />
Mad Max: Fury Road, John Seale</span>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Revenant, Emmanuel Lubezki</span></span><br />
</b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Sicario, Roger Deakins</span>
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Immediate reaction:</span></span></i></b><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki gets his eighth
nomination since 1996 for his work on “The Revenant,” a difficult movie to
shoot even before you take into account that Lubezki used only natural light.
He’s also won the last two consecutive years, for “Gravity” and “Birdman.” You
know who else has been nominated a lot? “Sicario” cinematographer Roger
Deakins. This is his 13th nomination and, get this: He’s never won. We’d like
to believe that the 13th time is the charm since Deakins’s work on “Sicario” is
breath-taking. If only Lubezki’s superhuman undertaking on “The Revenant”
weren’t so hard to beat…</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Best Production
Design<br />
</span></u></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Bridge of
Spies, Production Design: Adam Stockhausen; Set Decoration: Rena DeAngelo
and Bernhard Henrich<br />
The Danish Girl, Production Design: Eve Stewart ; Set Decoration: Michael
Standish</span>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Mad Max: Fury Road, Production Design: Colin Gibson;
Set Decoration: Lisa Thompson</span></span><br />
</b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Martian, Production Design: Arthur Max ;Set Decoration: Celia
Bobak<br />
The Revenant, Production Design: Jack Fisk; Set Decoration: Hamish Purdy</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">
<b><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Immediate reaction:</span></i></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> A lot of worthy candidates here. “Mad Max”
and “The Martian” certainly utilize some flashy design to create memorable
cinematic worlds, but there are also some designers who did more with less, as
with “Bridge of Spies.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Best Visual
Effects<br />
</span></u></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Ex
Machina, Andrew Whitehurst, Paul Norris, Mark Ardington and Sara Bennett<br />
Mad Max: Fury Road, Andrew Jackson, Tom Wood, Dan Oliver and Andy Williams<br />
The Martian, Richard Stammers, Anders Langlands, Chris Lawrence and Steven
Warner<br />
The Revenant, Rich McBride, Matthew Shumway, Jason Smith and Cameron
Waldbauer</span>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Roger Guyett, Patrick
Tubach, Neal Scanlan and Chris Corbould</span></span><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"></span><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</b></span></div>
<b><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Immediate reaction:</span></span></i></b><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">This is the category that allows massive
blockbusters to get some Academy love, and this year that meant “Star Wars: The
Force Awakens” made the cut. Interestingly, the bear attack in “The Revenant”
was given precedence over Indominus Rex’s fight to the death with a
shark-eating dino in “Jurassic World.”</span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></b></span><br />
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br /></span></span></u></b>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Best Original
Song<br />
</span></u></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Earned It, Fifty
Shades of Grey, Music & Lyric by Abel Tesfaye, Ahmad Balshe, Jason
Quenneville & S. Moccio<br />
Manta Ray, Racing Extinction, Music by J. Ralph; Lyric by Antony Hegarty<br />
Simple Song 3, Youth, Music and Lyric by David Lang</span>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Til it Happens to You, The Hunting Ground, Music and
Lyric by Diane Warren and Lady Gaga</span></span><br />
</b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Writing’s on the Wall, Spectre, Music and Lyric by Jimmy Napes and Sam
Smith</span>
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Immediate reaction:</span></span></i></b><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">This is an eclectic year, with a couple Top 40
contenders — “Writing’s On the Wall” and “Earned It” — going up against the
classical “Simple Song 3” and the virtually unknown “Manta Ray” (which, as it
turns out, is quite beautiful). Speaking of popular songs, there was no room
for “See You Again,” the track that really got the waterworks flowing at the
end of “Furious 7.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Best Documentary
Feature</span></u></b><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br />
</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="background: yellow; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-highlight: yellow;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Amy</span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br />
</span></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Cartel Land<br />
The Look of Silence<br />
What Happened, Miss Simone?<br />
Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom</span>
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Immediate reaction:</span></span></i></b><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">British director Asif Kapadia gets his first
nomination for his stirring look at the life and death of singer Amy Winehouse.
That movie will duke it out with “The Look of Silence,” Joshua Oppenheimer’s
gorgeous, heart-breaking companion piece to “The Act of Killing,” another
documentary about Indonesian death squads that was Oscar nominated in 2014.
Meanwhile, prolific documentarian Alex Gibney didn’t make the cut for his
Scientology expose “Going Clear.”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br /></span></span></u></b></div>
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Best Costume
Design<br />
</span></u></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="background: yellow; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-highlight: yellow;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Carol, Sandy
Powell</span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br />
</span></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Cinderella, Sandy
Powell<br />
The Danish Girl, Paco Delgado<br />
Mad Max: Fury Road, Jenny Beavan<br />
The Revenant, Jacqueline West</span>
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Immediate reaction:</span></span></i></b><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Three-time Oscar winner Sandy Powell is cleaning
up this year with two nominations: one for her sumptuous 1950s suits and dresses
for “Carol” and the other for her fantastical designs for “Cinderella.” On the
other end of the spectrum, the Academy gave some love to “The Revenant”
(moccasins, bearskin capes) and the dusty, post-apocalyptic leisurewear of “Mad
Max: Fury Road.”</span></span></div>
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br /></span></span></u></b>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Best Makeup
And Hairstyling</span></u></b><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br />
</span></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Mad Max: Fury
Road, Lesley Vanderwalt, Elka Wardega and Damian Martin<br />
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared, Love Larson
and Eva von Bahr</span>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Revenant, Siân Grigg, Duncan Jarman and Robert
Pandini</span></span><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"></span><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</b></span></div>
<b><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Immediate reaction:</span></span></i></b><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">It’s going to be hard to compete with the makeup
that made Leonardo DiCaprio look like the victim of a gruesome bear attack.
It’s interesting that the bombastically titled foreign film “The 100-Year-Old
Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared” made the cut above “Black Mass.”
Apparently we weren’t the only ones who found the </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2015/09/21/black-mass-is-a-gritty-realistic-drama-why-is-johnny-depps-makeup-so-embarrassingly-fake/"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">prosthetics in that movie distracting</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">.</span></span><br />
<br />
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Best Live Action Short Film</span></u></b><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br />
</span></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Ave Maria</span>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Day One</span></span><br />
</b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Everything Will Be Okay<br />
Shok<br />
Stutterer</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Best Animated Short Film<br />
</span></u></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Bear Story<br />
Prologue<br />
Sanjay’s Super Team<br />
We Can’t Live Without Cosmos</span>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">World of Tomorrow</span></span></b></span></div>
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Best Documentary Short Subject<br />
</span></u></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Body Team 12<br />
Chau, beyond the Lines</span>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah</span></span><br />
</b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness<br />
Lasy Day of Freedom</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Best Film Editing<br />
</span></u></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Big
Short, Hank Corwin</span>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Mad Max: Fury Road, Margaret Sixel</span></span><br />
</b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Revenant, Stephen Mirrione<br />
Spotlight, Tom McArdle<br />
Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Maryann Brandon and Mary Jo Markey</span></span></div>
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Best Sound Mixing<br />
</span></u></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Bridge of
Spies, Andy Nelson, Gary Rydstrom and Drew Kunin<br />
Mad Max: Fury Road, Chris Jenkins, Gregg Rudloff and Ben Osmo</span>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Martian, Paul Massey, Mark Taylor and Mac Ruth</span></span><br />
</b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Revenant, Jon Taylor, Frank A. Montaño, Randy Thom and Chris
Duesterdiek<br />
Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Andy Nelson, Christopher Scarabosio and
Stuart Wilson</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Best Sound Editing</span></u></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Mad Max: Fury Road, Mark Mangini and David White</span></span><br />
</b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Martian, Oliver Tarney<br />
The Revenant, Martin Hernandez and Lon Bender<br />
Sicario, Alan Robert Murray<br />
Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Matthew Wood and David Acord</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/01/14/oscar-nominations-2016-complete-coverage/"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/01/14/oscar-nominations-2016-complete-coverage/</span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<br /></div>
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<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Oscar Nominations: Shocking Stats And Fun Facts (Analysis)</span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By Scott
Feinberg, Hollywood Reporter, 14 January 2016)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">What a morning. </span></span><a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/oscar-nominations-complete-list-855398" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">The 88th Oscar
nominations were announced</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> on Thursday at the Beverly Hills headquarters of the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences. </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Revenant</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> landed a field-leading 12 noms,
followed close behind by </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Mad Max: Fury Road</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, with 10. The other
headlines? In: </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Big Short</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s director
</span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Adam McKay</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">; </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Room</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s director </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Lenny Abrahamson</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">; </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Joy</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s
lead actress </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Jennifer Lawrence</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">; </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Revenant</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Tom Hardy</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">; </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The
Hateful Eight</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s supporting actress </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Jennifer Jason Leigh</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">; both
Netflix doc features, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">What Happened, Miss Simone?</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Winter on Fire:
Ukraine's Fight for Freedom</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">; and "Til It Happens to You," the
original song by </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Lady Gaga</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and seven-time Oscar bridesmaid </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Diane
Warren</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Out: </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The
Martian</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s director </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Ridley Scott</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">; </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Bridge of Spies</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">' director </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Steven
Spielberg</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">; </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Straight Outta Compton</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> for best picture; every actor of
color, including </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Hateful Eight</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Samuel L. Jackson</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Concussion</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s
</span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Will Smith</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Creed</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Michael B. Jordan</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Beasts of No
Nation</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Idris Elba</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">; </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Carol</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Hateful Eight</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> for
best picture, meaning no Weinstein Co. film in the best picture category,
something almost unheard of in recent decades; </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Steve Jobs</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">' </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Aaron
Sorkin</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Hateful Eight</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Quentin Tarantino</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> in the
screenplay categories; and "See You Again," the </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Paul Walker</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
tribute song from </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Furious 7</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Today brought the
first-ever noms for, among others: </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Room</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s Abrahamson, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Big Short</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s
director and co-screenwriter McKay, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trumbo</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s lead actor </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Bryan
Cranston</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Room</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s lead actress </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Brie Larson</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">45 Years</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'
lead actress </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Charlotte Rampling</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Revenant</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s supporting actor
Hardy, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Bridge of Spies</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">' supporting actor </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Mark Rylance</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The
Hateful Eight</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s supporting actress Leigh, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Spotlight</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s supporting
actress </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Rachel McAdams</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Danish Girl</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s supporting actress </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Alicia
Vikander</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Carol</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s composer </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Carter Burwell</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Hunting
Ground</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s Gaga.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">If any film other
than </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Big Short</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> or </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Spotlight</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> wins best picture, it will be the
first time in 20 years — since 1995's </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Braveheart</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> — that the prize went
to a film that wasn't nominated for the best ensemble SAG Award.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">While the film
with the most Oscar noms often wins best picture, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Revenant</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, which
leads the field with 12, will need to defy a lot of history to be this year's
winner, as only seven films ever have won without a screenplay nom, including
only one in the last 50 years, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Titanic</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> (1997). The others: </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Wings</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
(1927/1928), </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Broadway Melody</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> (1928/1929), </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Grand Hotel</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
(1931/1932), </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Cavalcade</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> (1932/1933), </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Hamlet</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> (1948) and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The
Sound of Music</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> (1965).</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Sylvester
Stallone</span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s supporting
actor nom for his portrayal of Rocky Balboa in </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Creed</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, 39 years after his
lead actor nom for his portrayal of the same character in </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Rocky</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, sets a
record for most years between nominations for portrayals of the same character;
the record previously belonged to </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Paul Newman</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, who received a best actor
nom for his portrayal of "Fast Eddie" Felson in </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Hustler </span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(1961)
and won for his portrayal of the same character 25 years later in </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Color
of Money</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> (1986). Only four others received multiple noms for playing the
same character: </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Bing Crosby</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> for Father O'Malley, </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Peter O'Toole</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
for King Henry II, </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Al Pacino</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> for Michael Corleone and </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Cate Blanchett</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
for Queen Elizabeth II. The only
characters that have been recognized with more noms than the two now accorded
to Rocky Balboa are Queen Elizabeth I and King Henry VIII, each three times.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Mad Max: Fury
Road</span></span></i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Revenant</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
become only the fourth and fifth films ever to receive noms in all seven
technical categories (cinematography, costume design, film editing, production
design/art direction, sound editing, sound mixing and visual effects), joining
1997's </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Titanic</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, 2003's </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Master and Commander: The Far Side of the
World</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and 2011's </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Hugo</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">. The
best picture nom for </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Revenant</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> marks the third year in a row that a
film from </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Arnon Milchan</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s New Regency, which is run by </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Brad Weston</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">,
is in the running; its </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">12 Years a Slave</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Birdman</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> both won best
picture, and a win for </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Revenant</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> would mark an unprecedented
three-peat. </span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">With his ninth
nom for producing a best picture nominee, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Bridge of Spies</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">' Spielberg
moves into sole possession of the record for most all-time, passing former
collaborator </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Kathleen Kennedy</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> (</span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Star Wars: The Force Awakens</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">). This marks the second consecutive nom for </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The
Revenant</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s director and co-screenwriter </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Alejandro G. Inarritu</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The
Danish Girl</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s lead actor </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Eddie Redmayne</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Spotlight</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s supporting
actor </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Mark Ruffalo</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Hunting Ground</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s Warren. (With a win
for directing, Inarritu would tie a record currently held by </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">John Ford</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
and </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Joseph L. Mankiewicz</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> for most consecutive wins in that category,
two. Redmayne, with a win for best actor, would tie the record currently held
by </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Spencer Tracy</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Tom Hanks</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> for most consecutive best actor
wins, two.) </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Joy</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s lead actress </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Jennifer
Lawrence</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, 25, sets a new record as the youngest person ever to land four
acting nominations.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">This marks the
third consecutive nom for </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Revenant</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s cinematographer </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Emmanuel
Lubezki</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">. (With a win for cinematography, he would establish a new record
for most consecutive wins in that category, three, breaking the record he
currently shares with </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Leon Shamroy</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Winton Hoch</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">John Toll</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">,
who all won two.) Several perennial
bridesmaids — </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Hunting Ground</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s Warren (this is her eighth
nomination), </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Sicario</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s cinematographer </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Roger Deakins</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> (his 13th,
extending his record for most among living lensers) and</span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> Bridge of Spies</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'
composer </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Thomas Newman</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> (his 13th) — have another shot at gold.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Several people
received multiple noms today: </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Big Short</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s McKay, for best director
and best adapted screenplay; </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Spotlight</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s McCarthy, for best director and
best original screenplay; </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Sandy Powell</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, nominated for best costume
design for both </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Carol</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Cinderella</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">; and </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Andy Nelson</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">,
nominated for best sound editing for both </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Bridge of Spies</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Star
Wars: The Force Awakens</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">. </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Star
Wars: The Force Awakens</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">' composer</span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></i><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">John Williams</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> extends his
record for most Oscar noms for a living person from 49 to 50.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Racing
Extinction</span></span></i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s original
song "Manta Ray" becomes only the 22nd nomination for a documentary
outside of the documentary categories, and only the sixth for a song. (It's </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">J.
Ralph</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s second, after "Before My Time" from 2012's </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Chasing Ice</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">.) </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Hateful Eight</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Ennio Morricone</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">,
87, sets a new record for oldest nominee for the best original score award. With its best foreign-language film nom for </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Mustang</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">,
France extends its record for most noms in that category from 39 to 40; it has
won the category 12 times, second only to Italy (14).</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/oscar-nominations-shocking-stats-fun-855671?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Awards%20Brief_now_2016-01-14%2008:50:50_ehayden&utm_term=hollywoodreporter_therace"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/oscar-nominations-shocking-stats-fun-855671?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Awards%20Brief_now_2016-01-14%2008:50:50_ehayden&utm_term=hollywoodreporter_therace</span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
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<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Oscar Nominations: Now It's a Whole New Race
(Analysis)</span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By Scott
Feinberg, The Hollywood Reporter, January 14, 2016)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">It's fun to try to find clues about </span></span><a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/oscar-nominations-complete-list-855398" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">the Academy Awards
race</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> in the SAG and
Critics' Choice noms or the results of the AFI and </span></span><a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/golden-globes-winners-2016-list-853010" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Golden Globe awards</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> or all of the other tea leaves throughout
the season, but nothing offers a better indication of how the Academy feels
about a crop of movies than the Oscar noms themselves. So what do this year's
reveal?</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The best picture
race is likely between </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Spotlight</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Big Short</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, with </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The
Revenant</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> as possible spoiler. True, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Revenant</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> leads the field
with 12 noms, and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Mad Max: Fury Road</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> is close behind with 10. But the
former films — which have six and five noms, respectively — showed up in
important categories in which the latter films didn't.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">All four are
represented in the best director and best film editing races, without which
films</span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> rarely</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> win best picture. However, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Mad Max</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> is not nominated
for an acting award, while </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Spotlight</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Revenant</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> each are up for
two and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Big Short</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> is up for one (the actors branch is by far the
Academy's largest branch); moreover, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Big Short</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Spotlight</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">,
but not the other two, are nominated for the best ensemble SAG Award, which has
proven to be a key indicator for how the Academy behaves — indeed, if any other
best pic nominee wins, it will be the first time in 20 years, since 1995's </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Braveheart</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">,
that the prize went to a film that wasn't even nominated for the best ensemble
SAG Award. Additionally, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Revenant</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Mad Max</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> did not receive
screenplay noms, without which only seven films in 87 years, and only one in
the last 50, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Titanic</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, has prevailed in the top category. What chance do any of the other best picture
nominees stand? Slim to none.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Room</span></span></i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, which has campaigned aggressively thus
far, could prove a wild card: It landed only three other noms, but they came in
the directing, acting and screenwriting categories, which are obviously major
ones.</span></span></div>
<i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Martian</span></span></i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, which was snubbed by SAG, probably was
critically wounded today by the shocking omission of its director, </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Ridley
Scott</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">. While it still bagged lead actor, adapted screenplay and four
below-the-line noms, only four films without a director nom have won best picture. Similarly, one would have had to regard </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Bridge
of Spies</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, with its six noms — including acting and screenwriting noms,
plus three others in below-the-line categories — as a more serious threat if
its director, </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Steven Spielberg</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, had landed a nom.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">And then there's </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Brooklyn</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">,
which has only two other noms — for acting and screenwriting — but which has,
in Fox Searchlight, a distributor that has effectively navigated the Academy
before (the last two best picture winners were handled by the company), and which
can be expected to play up the timeliness of the film's central subject matter,
immigration to America.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">As for the other
major categories? Strong sentiment, on
top of strong performances, probably will be enough to carry </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Revenant</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s
lead actor </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Leonardo DiCaprio</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Creed</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Sylvester Stallone</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
to wins in their respective categories. DiCaprio
is up against </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Martian</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Matt Damon</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Danish Girl</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s
</span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Eddie Redmayne</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, who already have statues on their mantelpieces, and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Trumbo</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s
</span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Bryan Cranston</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Steve Jobs</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">' </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Michael Fassbender</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, who
probably have to pay their dues a bit more and won't be helped by the otherwise
lackluster showing for their films. If Leo starts doing a bit more gabbing and
glad-handing — not his favorite things to do — this is his to lose; if he
instead opts to sit back and cross his fingers, then the ground could shift
beneath him, probably to the benefit of Cranston, an extremely popular guy who
is up for his portrayal of a Hollywood hero.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Stallone, though,
is less of a sure thing. He's done a lot of schlock over the 39 years since he
was last nominated (for the original </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Rocky</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">), and he's not known as the
warmest guy in the world (although he's turned on the charm in recent weeks). </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Spotlight</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s
</span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Mark Ruffalo</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> is beloved and greatly helped by the absence from this
category of any of his other many co-stars who were vying for spots. </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Big
Short</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Christian Bale</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> recently won; </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Bridge of Spies</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">' </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Mark
Rylance</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, while a legend in theater circles, still is largely unknown in
Hollywood; and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Revenant</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Tom Hardy</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> wasn't even expected to
be nominated — so they seem like longer shots.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The best actress
race just got a lot more interesting. </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Room</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Brie Larson</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, 26, and
</span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Brooklyn</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Saoirse Ronan</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, 21, were expected to duke it out for
the win, but the far-from-assured nomination of </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Joy</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Jennifer
Lawrence</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, 25, might further split the support of people who want to
champion a young up-and-comer, to the benefit of the revered veteran </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Charlotte
Rampling</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, 69, a first-time nominee, for </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">45 Years</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">. It's hard to
imagine </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Carol</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Cate Blanchett</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> returning to the podium for a
third time so soon after her second, just two years ago.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Perhaps the
toughest-to-predict category is best supporting actress. The edge probably goes
to </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Danish Girl</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Alicia Vikander</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, in part because she's the
talented and gorgeous "It" girl of the season (they tend to do well
in this category), and in part because she — like </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Rooney Mara</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, nominated
for </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Carol</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> — got away with category fraud (the supporting nominee with
the most substantial part usually wins). There's a chance that </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Rachel
McAdams</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, who is very popular, could prevail on the coattails of </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Spotlight</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">,
as no other nominee in this category hails from a best pic contender. </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The
Hateful Eight</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Jennifer Jason Leigh</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> is a widely respected and
never-before-nominated vet, but she may be hurt by the divisive nature of her
film and the fact that The Weinstein Co. also is pushing Mara in this category.
And then there's </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Steve Jobs</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">' </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Kate Winslet</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, a past Oscar winner
who won the corresponding Golden Globe less than a week ago, but who didn't
have to compete at the Globes against Mara or Vikander (at least for </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The
Danish Girl</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">), who were elevated to the lead actress category there.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The screenplay
races seem to favor </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Spotlight</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> (original) and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Big Short</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
(adapted), not least because both are best picture nominees (also the case for
adapted nominees </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Brooklyn</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Martian</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Room</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and
original nominee </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Bridge of Spies</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">) </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">and</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> their directors — </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Tom
McCarthy</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Adam McKay</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, respectively — are among their nominated
screenwriters (also the case for </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Ex Machina</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Inside Out</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">,
though those registered far fewer noms).</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Animated feature
will almost certainly go to </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Inside Out</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, which would be the 10th Disney
and/or Pixar winner in the 15-year history of the category. Its competition
includes two stop-motion animated movies — </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Anomalisa</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, which has the
muscle of Paramount behind it, and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Shaun the Sheep</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, another well-liked
film — but only one film animated in that way ever has won: 2005's </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Wallace
& Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">. Forget about the two GKIDS
nominees, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Boy and the World</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">When Marnie Was There</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, if only
because the fanfare around them isn't remotely comparable to their
competitors'.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The doc and
foreign races will again be significantly impacted by the decisions, made in
recent years, to open up voting for their winners to the entire Academy, rather
than just to those who could prove they had actually watched all of the
nominees. The result is that many vote without having seen all of the nominees
— or sometimes more than just one or two, which inevitably are those about the
most widely appealing or controversial topics. That is a major reason why I
think the doc </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Amy</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, a doc about the life and music of the famous singer </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Amy
Winehouse</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, and the Hungarian film </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Son of Saul</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, a film about the
Holocaust, will prevail; </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Liz Garbus</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">' music doc </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">What Happened, Miss
Simone?</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> (one of two Netflix docs to make the final five) and </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Deniz Gamze
Erguven</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s feminist </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Mustang</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, from France — each of those categories'
only female-directed nominees — probably are the biggest threats to
the frontrunners.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Best original
song will almost certainly go to </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Hunting Ground</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s "Til It
Happens to You," which has a much higher profile than any of its
competitors thanks to the involvement of </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Lady Gaga</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, who made a lot of
new friends in the Academy with her magnificent tribute to </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Julie Andrews</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
on last year's Oscars telecast, and </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Diane Warren</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, the legendary
songwriter who famously has lost on all seven prior occasions on which she was
nominated in the category. (The fact that the doc itself was </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">not</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
nominated only further helps the prospects of its song, which, like the doc,
deals with sexual assault, a subject that has touched both of its nominees.)</span></span></div>
<i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Star Wars: The
Force Awakens</span></span></i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, which did
not land any </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">major</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> noms, could still do well in the below-the-line
categories. It's the favorite for best visual effects, where its competition
includes </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Mad Max: Fury Road</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Revenant</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">; it's also up
against — and might well hold off — those two films for best film editing, best
sound editing and best sound mixing; and I wouldn't be at all surprised if </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">John
Williams</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, on his 50th nom, beats </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Hateful Eight</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Ennio
Morricone</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> for best original score.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Revenant</span></span></i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> seems like a sure bet for best
cinematography, which would mark the third consecutive win for </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Emmanuel
Lubezki</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> (after </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Gravity</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Birdman</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">), which would establish a
new record. And </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Mad Max</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Revenant</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> will duke it out for
best makeup and hairstyling, best production design and, perhaps, best costume
design — although it's always dangerous to bet against </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Sandy Powell</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, who
is up for both </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Carol</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Cinderella</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">.</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/oscar-nominations-a-new-race-855839?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Awards%20Brief_now_2016-01-14%2008:50:50_ehayden&utm_term=hollywoodreporter_therace"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/oscar-nominations-a-new-race-855839?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Awards%20Brief_now_2016-01-14%2008:50:50_ehayden&utm_term=hollywoodreporter_therace</span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
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<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Omission Of Black Actors Upsetting, But Not
Inexplicable Or Proof Of Racism</span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">(By Scott
Feinberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 19 January 2016)</span></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Nobody was more
disappointed than I was last Thursday morning when the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences revealed its 88th Oscar nominations and we learned
that </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Straight Outta Compton</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> had not been nominated for best picture, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The
Hateful Eight</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">’s </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Samuel L. Jackson</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Creed</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Michael B.
Jordan</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Concussion</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">’s </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Will Smith</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> had not been nominated for
best actor and </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Beasts of No Nation</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Idris Elba</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> had not been
nominated for best supporting actor. Each was worthy of recognition. </span></span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Many reflexively
reacted to the news by accusing the Academy of being a racist organization, and
I "get" why: this is the second year in a row in which not one of the
five directing nominees or the 20 acting nominees were black (last year's big
omissions were </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Selma</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s director </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Ava DuVernay</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and lead actor </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">David
Oyelowo</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">), hence the popular Twitter hashtag #OscarsSoWhite.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But I feel
compelled to speak up in defense of the Academy — a stance that Academy
president </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Cheryl Boone Isaacs</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> (a black woman) will tell you I don't
always take — because I believe the root of the problem is less with the
Academy than with the film industry as a whole.
Even in 2016, very few people of color direct or star in major American
movies. That is the result of decisions made not by the Academy, but by the
studios that finance and produce movies — for reasons of commerce and/or
bigotry and/or cowardice. This leaves the Academy with a pool of options lacking
in diversity, in terms of eligible films and individuals, and in terms of who
the Academy can invite to become members (since one must have a considerable
body of work to be considered). Over the
last few years, particularly during the administration of Ms. Boone Isaacs, the
Academy has made great efforts to address these problems, leaning on studios to
be more open-minded in their hiring practices, and leaning on its own branches
to make diversity of all sorts — race, gender, age and nationality — a higher
priority.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">There is always
more that the Academy can do. I, for one, think Ms. Boone Isaacs should follow
the lead of the late </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Gregory Peck</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, the actor who served as the Academy’s
president from 1967 through 1970, another period in which the organization was
widely criticized for out-of-touch voting. In response, Peck pored over the
membership rolls and reclassified people who had not worked for many years as
"associate members." Those individuals, most of whom were older and
retired and not especially in-tune with the cutting-edge of cinematic or social
ideas, retained all of the privileges of membership (free screenings, etc.) </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">except</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
for the right to vote, which he felt — as do I — should be limited to people
who are actually involved in the industry. It's time for another round of
respectful house-cleaning.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Baseball
Writers' Association of America, the group that votes to determine inductions
into the Baseball Hall of Fame, implemented a similar rule in 2015, restricting
voting to journalists who had been active in the last 10 years, and they wound
up with results that are much more aligned with the way today's baseball lovers
feel than the results they had gotten before. Nobody is suggesting that Academy
should turn the Oscars into the People's Choice Awards — just that it cannot
act as if the status-quo is acceptable.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But back to this
year's Oscar noms. The reason this year's #OscarsSoWhite outrage was a bit more
muted than last year's is because one can understand better how it happened.
None of this year's excluded films about people of color or people of color
themselves were thought to be slam-dunks going into the nominations; they were
competing in very competitive categories.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Compton</span></span></i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> is an amazing movie — I included it on </span></span><a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/scott-feinbergs-top-10-films-845732" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">my personal year-end
top 10 list</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> — but the
Academy guarantees only five slots, and can go only as high as 10, and few
would argue that any of the eight films that </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">were</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> nominated were less
deserving of a nom than </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Compton</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> was. If the Academy still guaranteed 10
nominees for best pic, as it did back when </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Casablanca</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> won and briefly
again just a few years ago, then </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Compton</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> would have been nominated. I
have no doubt about that.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Jackson, Jordan,
Smith and Elba gave incredible performances — </span></span><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/awards-chatter/id1039032256?mt=2" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">all were guests on
my 'Awards Chatter' podcast before voting closed</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> — but again, none of the people who were
nominated instead of them were indefensible selections. It's a tough pill to
swallow, but it was just a terrific year for actors, lead and supporting.
Additionally, the </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">distributor</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> of Jordan's film didn't realize it was an
awards contender until it was already very late in the game (perhaps </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">too</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
late to mobilize a fully-effective campaign); the distributor of Elba's film
released it through a model never before tested with the Academy (in just a few
theaters simultaneous to its debut on Netflix, which a lot of fogies still
don't have); and the Academy wasn’t crazy about </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">anything</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> to do with
Jackson’s or Smith’s films, including the contributions of the white people who
wrote and directed them.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The bottom line?
I understand being pissed off that one's favorites were not Oscar-nominated —
but I genuinely don't believe that racism was the driving reason for any of
this year’s exclusions. And, if it's any consolation, Jordan, Smith, Elba and
the folks from </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Compton</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> are in pretty good company: also denied noms that
many expected them to get were Sir </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Ridley Scott</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> (who got bounced by </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Room</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">'s
</span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Lenny Abrahamson</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, a guy most Academy members </span><i><span style="font-family: "calibri";">still</span></i><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> haven't heard
of), </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Helen Mirren</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Johnny Depp</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Quentin Tarantino</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Benicio
Del Toro</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Michael Keaton</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">, </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Aaron Sorkin</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> and </span><b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Kristen Stewart</span></b><span style="font-family: "calibri";">.</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/oscars-omission-black-actors-upsetting-856743?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=THR%20Awards%20Alerts_now_2016-01-19%2009:34:43_ehayden&utm_term=hollywoodreporter_therace_alerts"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/oscars-omission-black-actors-upsetting-856743?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=THR%20Awards%20Alerts_now_2016-01-19%2009:34:43_ehayden&utm_term=hollywoodreporter_therace_alerts</span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
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<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-1408442346137166162016-01-11T17:23:00.000-08:002016-01-11T17:39:58.164-08:00David Bowie<br />
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<div align="center" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">David Bowie Dies At 69; Mesmerizing
Performer And Restless Innovator</span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">(By Tara
Bahrampour, Washington Post, 11 January 2016)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">David Bowie, the self-described “tasteful
thief” who appropriated from and influenced glam rock, soul, disco, new wave,
punk rock and haute couture, and whose edgy, androgynous alter egos invited
fans to explore their own dark places, died Jan. 10, two days after his 69th
birthday. The cause was cancer, his
family said on official Bowie social media accounts. Relatives also confirmed
the news but did not disclose where he died. He had recently been collaborating
on an Off Broadway musical, “Lazarus,” a sequel to his starring role in the
1976 film “The Man Who Fell to Earth.” And days earlier, he had released his
25th studio album, </span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kszLwBaC4Sw" title="www.youtube.com"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">“Blackstar,”</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> backed by a small jazz group and featuring
songs as boldly experimental as anything else in his long career.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">With his
sylphlike body, chalk-white skin, jagged teeth and eyes that appeared to be two
different colors, Mr. Bowie combined sexual energy with fluid dance moves and a
theatrical charisma that mesmerized male and female admirers alike. Citing influences from Elvis Presley to Andy
Warhol — not to mention the singer Edith Piaf and writers William S. Burroughs
and Jean Genet — Mr. Bowie was trained in mime and fine arts, and played saxophone,
guitar, harmonica and piano. A scavenger of musical and visual styles, he
repackaged them in striking new formats that were all his own, in turn lending
his dramatic, gender-bending aesthetic to later performers such as Prince and
Lady Gaga. </span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">With “a melodic
sense that’s just well above anyone else in rock & roll,” the singer Lou
Reed once </span></span><a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/100-greatest-artists-of-all-time-19691231/david-bowie-20110420" title="www.rollingstone.com"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">wrote</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, “David Bowie’s contribution to rock
& roll has been wit and sophistication.” His output between 1969 and 1983
made up “one of the longest creative streaks in rock history,” </span></span><a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/pictures/readers-poll-the-10-best-david-bowie-songs-20130515" title="www.rollingstone.com"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">according
to Rolling Stone</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
magazine. By the height of his fame in
the early 1980s, Mr. Bowie had enacted his own death repeatedly, in the form of
characters and ensembles he would create, inhabit and then discard. “My policy
has been that as soon as a system or process works, it’s out of date,” he said
in a 1977 interview. “I move on to another area.” The practice, which extended to friendships
and professional partnerships, could be jarring. The Spiders From Mars, his
band during his glitter-rock Ziggy Stardust years, learned that they were being
fired when Mr. Bowie announced it onstage at the end of a 1973 tour.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">To fans as well,
Mr. Bowie’s rapid transitions could feel like whiplash. In the space of half a
decade he was a curly-haired folk singer; a Lauren Bacall look-alike in an
evening gown; a vampiric creature with a red mullet, shaved eyebrows and a
skintight, multicolored bodysuit; and a coked-up dandy in a tailored suit,
suspenders, fedora and cane. Some of
these looks had alter egos associated with them, such as Ziggy Stardust, a
fictional rock star who is ultimately ripped to pieces by his fans, or the Thin
White Duke, a spectral, disaffected figure dressed impeccably in cabaret-style
evening wear who throws “darts in lovers’ eyes.”</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">As much curator
as inventor, Mr. Bowie lifted melodic motifs from blues, funk and standards and
presented them in such a way that many fans had no idea that the catchy </span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRcPA7Fzebw" title="www.youtube.com"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">“Starman”</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> was a version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” or
that the melancholy “Life on Mars” was “My Way” in disguise. Other musical
borrowings were more obvious, such as the opening bass line of </span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGQo6zpVzt8" title="www.youtube.com"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">“The Jean Genie,”</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> taken from “I’m a Man,” or the “On Broadway”
reference at the end of the title track of the album “Aladdin Sane.”</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Stardom gave Mr.
Bowie his pick of talent. He hand-selected virtuoso session players to help
define each musical phase: Mick Ronson’s guitar solos, Mike Garson’s dissonant
piano improv, Carlos Alomar’s funky rhythms, and the techno sounds of
guitarists Adrian Belew and Robert Fripp that permeated his work in the late
’70s and set the stage for the European electronica of the 1980s. Mr. Bowie’s voice was similarly labile —
gliding between ragged cackle and haunting croon as he sang about decaying
cities and alienated rock stars. Fellow musicians marveled at his ability to
seduce a crowd with a look or a gesture.
“He’s the total artist,” said Nicholas Godin of the duo Air. “The look,
the voice, the talent to compose, the stage presence. The beauty. Nobody is
like that anymore. Everybody is reachable; he was unreachable.”</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">David Robert
Jones was born on Jan. 8, 1947, in Brixton, a working-class south London
neighborhood scarred by World War II bomb blasts. His father, a publicist for a children’s
charity, was a failed music hall impresario; his mother was a former waitress.
An older half-brother, Terry, was diagnosed with schizophrenia and
institutionalized when Mr. Bowie was a young man. For many years the rock star
worried about his own mental health, and the theme of insanity runs through his
early songs. “I used to wonder about my
eccentricities, my wanting to explore and put myself in dangerous situations,
psychically,” he told Esquire magazine in 1993. “I was scared stiff that I was
mad, that the reason I was getting away with it was that I was an artist, so
people never knew I was totally bonkers.”</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">His family moved
to the middle-class suburb of Bromley, where young David attended Bromley
Technical High School and found a mentor in art teacher Owen Frampton, father
of the future pop star Peter. At 14, in a fight with a friend over a girl,
David was punched in the eye, resulting in a permanently dilated left pupil
that would add to the otherworldly appearance he would later cultivate. After a few lessons on a plastic saxophone
purchased on a payment plan, he began playing in local bands, finding that he
liked singing and the female adulation that came with it. To avoid confusion
with Davy Jones of the Monkees, he renamed himself after the 19th-century
American frontiersman and the hunting knife associated with him.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Fascinated by
musical theater, Mr. Bowie joined a mime troupe led by the dancer (and,
briefly, his lover) Lindsay Kemp, who taught him the extravagant, stylized
movements he would later bring into his own stage performances. Although his first two albums received little
notice, in 1969 Mr. Bowie had his first hit single with “Space Oddity,” a song
about a disaffected astronaut who decides to remain “sitting in my tin can, far
above the world,” rather than return to life on Earth. Released five days
before the Apollo 11 launch, it reached No. 5 in Britain. That year he also met Angela Barnett, with
whom he would enter into a 10-year marriage and have a son, Duncan Zowie
Haywood Jones, born in 1971. A shrewd manager of her husband’s early career,
Barnett tolerated his blatant philandering and gave him the spiky-on-top,
long-in-the-back haircut that would become his signature look through the early
1970s.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The hairdo — and
the accompanying glittery bodysuits, platform boots and face paint — was
intended as a statement against the peace-and-love, denim-clad hippie imagery
dominating rock culture at the time. Mr. Bowie instead presented fans with
cut-and-paste lyrics about the end of the world, and shocked them by dropping
to his knees to perform mock fellatio on Ronson’s electric guitar or telling an
interviewer he was bisexual (though he would later say that was just an
experimental phase). “We wanted to
manufacture a new kind of vocabulary,” Mr. Bowie told NPR’s Terry Gross in
2003. “And so the so-called gender-bending, the picking up of maybe aspects of
the avant garde and aspects of, for me personally, of things like the Kabuki
theater in Japan and German expressionist movies, and poetry by Baudelaire
. . . it was a pudding of new ideas, and we were terribly excited, and I think
we took it on our shoulders the idea that we were creating the 21st century in
1971.”</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">His
ever-changing, outrageous personae also served to mask the painful shyness and
insecurity of his younger years. “I
didn’t really have the nerve to sing my songs onstage,” </span></span><a href="http://exploringdavidbowie.com/2013/02/05/david-bowie-interview-2/" title="exploringdavidbowie.com"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">he
told Musician magazine</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> in
1983. Referring to the various personae, he said: “I decided to do them in
disguise so that I didn’t have to actually go through the humiliation of going
onstage and being myself. I continued designing characters with their own
complete personalities and environments. I put them into interviews with me!
Rather than be me — which must be incredibly boring to anyone — I’d take Ziggy
in, or Aladdin Sane or the Thin White Duke. It was a very strange thing to do.”</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Along with his
own music, he promoted the careers of lesser-known musicians such as Iggy Pop,
Lou Reed and Mott the Hoople, whose signature hit, “All the Young Dudes,” was
written by Mr. Bowie. In 1974 he moved to Los Angeles, whose hyped-up,
drugged-out music scene — the </span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-_30HA7rec" title="www.youtube.com"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">“Fame”</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> and </span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9QR5p7uok0" title="www.youtube.com"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">“Fascination”</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> immortalized on his album “Young Americans” —
took a toll. Extensive cocaine use made him jittery and paranoid, even as it
enabled him to be creatively prolific. Seeking
calm and anonymity, Mr. Bowie spent much of the late 1970s in West Berlin,
where in collaboration with Brian Eno he produced three albums that
experimented with ambient sound and presaged the synthesizer-heavy music of the
1980s.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Returning to live
in New York City, he began expanding his range as an actor. Having starred in
the Nicholas Roeg film “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” in 1980 he played the lead
in a stage production of “The Elephant Man,” for which Variety praised his
“charismatic personality . . . suggesting springs of passion beneath the severe
physical handicaps of the character.” In
both roles he played sensitive freaks misunderstood by the society around them,
a theme that had also permeated much of his music. He also starred in “Just a
Gigolo” with Marlene Dietrich (1978), in the Tony Scott vampire film “The
Hunger” with Catherine Deneuve (1983) and as a rebellious prisoner of war in
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” (also 1983).</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Mr. Bowie’s
commercial musical pinnacle also came in 1983, with the blockbuster album </span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4d7Wp9kKjA" title="www.youtube.com"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">“Let’s Dance.”</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> It blasted him into international superstardom,
though critics complained that it lacked the depth of his earlier work. Its
unexpected success threw Mr. Bowie into a creative tailspin. Having planned to
follow it with more esoteric material, he instead tried to duplicate the “Let’s
Dance” success with albums that were critical flops. “I suddenly felt very apart from my
audience,” he told Live magazine in 1997. “And it was depressing, because I
didn’t know what they wanted.” </span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Mr. Bowie
regularly released albums through the 1980s and 1990s, although none approached
the success of his previous output. But he continued to innovate, in 1996
becoming the first musician of his stature to release a song, “Telling Lies,”
exclusively via the Internet. He caused a sensation when he was the first to
sell asset-backed bonds, known in his case as “Bowie bonds” and acquired by
Prudential, tied to the royalties on his back catalogue. </span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">By the eve of the
century he had once aspired to create, Mr. Bowie seemed to be finally settling
down. He fell in love — a condition his younger self had pooh-poohed — with the
model Iman Abdulmaijd, whom he married in 1992 and with whom he had a daughter,
Alexandria Zahra Jones, in 2000. After
suffering a heart attack backstage during a tour in 2004, he stopped producing
albums or touring for nearly a decade, devoting himself to family life. He even
got his vulpine teeth capped, to the disappointment of some fans. But in 2013, the same year an elaborate
retrospective of his visual legacy began touring the world, the 66-year-old Mr.
Bowie released a new album, recorded in secret, called “The Next Day.” His
first album in a decade, it was praised by critics, who called it innovative
even as it hearkened back to his early music. </span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">That Mr. Bowie
was still reinventing himself in his seventh decade could not have surprised those
who knew him. “David’s a real living Renaissance figure,” Roeg told Time
magazine in 1983. “That’s what makes him spectacular. He goes away and
re-emerges bigger than before. He doesn’t have a fashion, he’s just constantly
expanding. It’s the world that has to stop occasionally and say, ‘My God, he’s
still going on.’ ” </span></span><br />
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<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/singer-david-bowie-dies-at-69-mesmerizing-performer-of-many-alter-egos/2016/01/11/e133f63c-b859-11e5-99f3-184bc379b12d_story.html"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/singer-david-bowie-dies-at-69-mesmerizing-performer-of-many-alter-egos/2016/01/11/e133f63c-b859-11e5-99f3-184bc379b12d_story.html</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
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<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">David Bowie Dies of Cancer at 69; He Transcended
Music, Art and Fashion</span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">(By Jon Pareles,
New York Times, 11 January 2016)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">David Bowie, the infinitely changeable,
fiercely forward-looking songwriter who taught generations of musicians about
the power of drama, images and personas, died on Sunday, two days after his
69th birthday. </span></span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Bowie’s death
was confirmed by his publicist, Steve Martin, on Monday morning. He died after having cancer for 18 months,
according to a statement on Mr. Bowie’s social-media accounts. “David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded
by his family,” a post on his Facebook page read.</span></span></div>
<div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">His last album, “</span></span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/arts/music/review-blackstar-david-bowies-emotive-and-cryptic-new-album.html"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">Blackstar</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">,” a collaboration with a jazz quartet that was
typically enigmatic and exploratory, was released on Friday — his birthday. He
was to be honored with a concert at Carnegie Hall on March 31 featuring the
Roots, Cyndi Lauper and the Mountain Goats.
He had also collaborated on an Off Broadway musical, “</span></span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/theater/review-david-bowie-songs-and-a-familiar-alien-in-lazarus.html"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">Lazarus</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">,” that was a surreal sequel to his definitive
1976 film role, “The Man Who Fell to Earth.”</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Mr. Bowie wrote
songs, above all, about being an outsider: an alien, a misfit, a sexual
adventurer, a faraway astronaut. His music was always a mutable blend: rock,
cabaret, jazz and what he called “plastic soul,” but it was suffused with
genuine soul. He also captured the drama and longing of everyday life, enough
to give him No. 1 pop hits like “Let’s Dance.”
In concerts and videos, Mr. Bowie’s costumes and imagery traversed
styles, eras and continents, from German Expressionism to commedia dell’arte to
Japanese kimonos to space suits. He set an example, and a challenge, for every
arena spectacle in his wake. If he had
an anthem, it was “Changes,” from his 1971 album “Hunky Dory,” which
proclaimed: “Turn and face the strange / Ch-ch-changes / Oh look out now you
rock and rollers / Pretty soon now you’re gonna get older.”</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Mr. Bowie earned
admiration and emulation across the musical spectrum — from rockers,
balladeers, punks, hip-hop acts, creators of pop spectacles and even classical
composers like Philip Glass, who based two symphonies on Mr. Bowie’s albums
“Low” and “ ‘</span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tgcc5V9Hu3g" title="The YouTube video."><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">Heroes</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">.’ ”
Mr. Bowie’s constantly morphing persona was a touchstone for performers
like Madonna and Lady Gaga; his determination to stay contemporary introduced
his fans to Philadelphia funk, Japanese fashion, German electronica and
drum-and-bass dance music. Nirvana chose
to sing “</span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fregObNcHC8"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">The Man Who Sold the World</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">,” the title song of Mr. Bowie’s 1970
album, in its brief set for the 1993 “MTV Unplugged in New York.” “Under
Pressure,” a collaboration with the glam-rock group Queen, supplied a bass line
for the 1990 Vanilla Ice hit “</span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rog8ou-ZepE" title="The YouTube video."><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">Ice Ice Baby</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">.” Yet
throughout Mr. Bowie’s metamorphoses, he was always recognizable. His voice was
widely imitated but always his own; his message was that there was always
empathy beyond difference. </span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Angst and
apocalypse, media and paranoia, distance and yearning were among Mr. Bowie’s
lifelong themes. So was a penchant for transgression coupled with a
determination to push cult tastes toward the mainstream. Mr. Bowie produced
albums and wrote songs for some of his idols — Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Mott the
Hoople — that gave them pop hits without causing them to abandon their
individuality. And he collaborated with musicians like Brian Eno in the Berlin
years and, in his final recordings, with the jazz musicians Maria Schneider and
Donny McCaslin, introducing them to many new listeners. </span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">(MESSAGE FROM
IGGY: "David’s friendship was the light of my life. I never met such a
brilliant person. He was the best there is. - Iggy Pop (@IggyPop)” </span></span><a href="https://twitter.com/IggyPop/statuses/686487748149121024"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">Jan. 11, 2016</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> )</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Mr. Bowie was a
person of relentless reinvention. He emerged in the late 1960s with the voice
of a rock belter but with the sensibility of a cabaret singer, steeped in the
dynamics of stage musicals. He was Major Tom, the lost astronaut in his
career-making 1969 hit “Space Oddity.” </span></span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">He was Ziggy
Stardust, the otherworldly pop star at the center of his 1972 album “The Rise
and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.” He was the self-destructive Thin White Duke
and the minimalist but heartfelt voice of the three albums he recorded in
Berlin in the ’70s. The arrival of MTV
in the 1980s was the perfect complement to Mr. Bowie’s sense of theatricality
and fashion. “</span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMThz7eQ6K0"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">Ashes to Ashes</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">,” the “Space Oddity” sequel that revealed, “We
know Major Tom’s a junkie,” and “</span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4d7Wp9kKjA"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">Let’s Dance</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">,” which offered, “Put on your red shoes and dance
the blues,” gave him worldwide popularity.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Mr. Bowie was his
generation’s standard-bearer for rock as theater: something constructed and
inflated yet sincere in its artifice, saying more than naturalism could. With a
voice that dipped down to baritone and leapt into falsetto, he was complexly
androgynous, an explorer of human impulses that could not be quantified. He also pushed the limits of “Fashion” and
“Fame,” writing songs with those titles and also thinking deeply about the
possibilities and strictures of pop renown.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Mr. Bowie was
married for more than 20 years to the international model Iman, with whom he
had a daughter, Alexandria Zahra Jones. In
a </span></span><a href="https://twitter.com/ManMadeMoon/status/686441083648212992"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">post</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> on Twitter, Duncan Jones, the musician’s son from
an earlier marriage, with Angela Bowie, said: “Very sorry and sad to say it’s
true. I’ll be offline for a while. Love to all.”</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">David Robert
Jones was born in London on Jan. 8, 1947, where as a youth he soaked up rock
’n’ roll. He took up the saxophone in the 1960s and started leading bands as a
teenager, singing the blues in a succession of unsuccessful groups and singles.
He suffered a blow in a teenage brawl that caused his left pupil to be
permanently dilated.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the late
1960s, Lindsay Kemp, a dancer, actor and mime, became a lasting influence on
Mr. Bowie, focusing his interest in movement and artifice. Mr. Bowie’s music
turned toward folk-rock and psychedelia. The release of “Space Oddity,” shortly
before the Apollo 11 mission, gained him a British pop audience and, when it
was rereleased in 1973 in the United States, an American one. By then, with the albums “Hunky Dory,” “The
Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars” and “Aladdin Sane,”
Mr. Bowie had become a pioneer of glam rock and a major star in Britain,
playing up an androgynous image. But he also had difficulties separating his
onstage personas from real life and succumbed to drug problems, particularly
cocaine use. In 1973, he abruptly announced his retirement — though it was the
retirement of Ziggy Stardust, not of Mr. Bowie.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">He moved to the
United States in 1974 and made “Diamond Dogs,” which included the hit “Rebel
Rebel.” In 1975, he turned toward funk with the album “Young Americans,”
recorded primarily in Philadelphia with collaborators including a young Luther
Vandross; John Lennon joined Mr. Bowie in writing and singing the hit “Fame.”
Mr. Bowie’s 1976 album “Station to Station” yielded more hits, but drug
problems were making Mr. Bowie increasingly unstable; in interviews, he made
pro-fascist pronouncements he would soon disown.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">For a
far-reaching change of environment, and to get away from drugs, Mr. Bowie moved
in 1976 to Switzerland and then to West Berlin, part of a divided city with a
sound that fascinated him: the Krautrock of Kraftwerk, Can, Neu! and other
groups. Mr. Bowie shared a Berlin apartment with Iggy Pop, and he helped
produce and write songs for two Iggy Pop albums, “The Idiot” and “Lust for
Life.” He also made what is usually called his Berlin trilogy — “Low,” “
‘Heroes’ ” and “Lodger” — working with Mr. Eno and Mr. Bowie’s collaborator
over decades, the producer Tony Visconti. They used electronics and
experimental methods, like having musicians play unfamiliar instruments, yet
songs like “ ‘Heroes’ ” conveyed romance against the bleakest odds.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">As the 1980s
began, Mr. Bowie turned to live theater, performing in multiple cities
(including a Broadway run) in the demanding title role of “The Elephant Man.”
Yet in that decade, he would also reach his peak as a mainstream pop musician —
particularly with his 1983 album “Let’s Dance,” which he produced with Nile
Rodgers of Chic; the Texas blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan also performed on
the album. But by 1989, Mr. Bowie was determined to change again; he recorded,
without top billing, as a member of the rock band Tin Machine.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">His experiments
continued in the 1990s. In 1995, he reconnected with Mr. Eno on an album, “1.
Outside,” — influenced by science fiction and film noir — that was intended to
be the start of a trilogy. Mr. Bowie toured with Nine Inch Nails in an
innovative concert that had his band and Nine Inch Nails merging partway
through. Mr. Bowie’s 1997 album, “Earthling,” turned toward the era’s
electronic dance music.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">By the 21st century,
Mr. Bowie was an elder statesman. He had been inducted into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame in 1996. In 2001, he sang “ ‘Heroes’ ” at the Concert for New York
City after the Sept. 11 attacks. His last tour, after the release of his album
“Reality,” ended when he had heart problems in 2004. But he continued to lend
his imprimatur to newer bands like Arcade Fire, joining them onstage, and TV on
the Radio, adding backup vocals in the studio. </span></span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In 2006, he
performed three songs in public for what would be </span></span><a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/videos/flashback-david-bowie-sings-changes-at-his-final-public-performance-20140826"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">the final time</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, at the Keep a Child Alive Black Ball fund-raiser
at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">His final albums
were a glance back and a new excursion. “The Next Day,” released in 2013,
returned to something like the glam-rock sound of his 1970s guitar bands, for
new songs suffused with bitter thoughts of mortality. And “Blackstar,” released
two days before his death, had him backed by a volatile jazz-based quartet, in
songs that contemplated fame, spirituality, lust, death and, as always,
startling transformations.</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/12/arts/music/david-bowie-dies-at-69.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/12/arts/music/david-bowie-dies-at-69.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
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<b><u><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Review: ‘Blackstar,’ David Bowie’s Emotive And
Cryptic New Album</span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">(By Jon Pareles,
New York Times, 6 January 2016)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Instability and ambiguity are the only
constants on </span></span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/12/arts/music/david-bowie-dies-at-69.html"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">David Bowie</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">’s “Blackstar” (ISO/Columbia), the strange,
daring, ultimately rewarding album he releases this week on his 69th birthday.
It’s at once emotive and cryptic, structured and spontaneous and, above all,
willful, refusing to cater to the expectations of radio stations or fans. The
closest thing it offers as an explanation of its message is the title of its
finale: “I Can’t Give Everything Away.”</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/arts/music/the-singer-who-fell-to-earth.html"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">Mr. Bowie’s 2013 album, “The Next Day,”</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> ended a silence of 10 years between
studio albums; it revisited his chunky 1970s guitar-band rock with a mood
darkened by bitter awareness of mortality. “Blackstar,” stylized as </span></span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Symbol","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Symbol";">★</span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, veers elsewhere. Mr. Bowie</span></span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">’</span></span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">s 2014 anthology </span></span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">“</span></span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Nothing Has Changed</span></span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">”</span></span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> included a new song, </span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFX1y62l9C4"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">“Sue (Or in a Season of Crime),”</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> recorded with the Maria Schneider
Orchestra, a modern-jazz big band. The quartet led by the saxophonist Donny
McCaslin, a mainstay of Ms. Schneider’s orchestra, </span></span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/05/arts/music/on-david-bowies-blackstar-turning-to-jazz-for-inspiration.html"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">is Mr. Bowie’s studio band on “Blackstar,”</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> and it jams its way into rock, funk and
electronics from a jazz perspective. The group complicates the harmonies and
fills the interstices of the songs with improvisation, often with Mr.
McCaslin’s saxophone chasing Mr. Bowie’s voice. The closest thing to
“Blackstar” among Mr. Bowie’s two dozen studio albums is “1. Outside,” from
1995, which featured the jazz pianist Mick Garson and also presented more
enigmas than answers.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Each song on
“Blackstar” is restless and mercurial. The </span></span><a href="http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/19/david-bowie-blackstar-video/"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">10-minute title track</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> opens the album with wavering guitar and
flute tones that refuse to settle on a single key. Mark Guiliana’s drumbeat,
when it arrives, is a matter of sputtering off-beats and silences, while Mr.
Bowie intones lyrics about “the day of execution.” Midway through, the song
moves through an improvised limbo and coalesces into a different tune: a march
with lyrics about a messianic “blackstar” who also declares “I’m not a
popstar.” Eventually the two halves of the song merge, with the opening verses
over the march beat, darkening the tone even further. The video clip shows
candlelit rituals and, near the end, bloody crucifixions. (Mr. McCaslin told
Rolling Stone that Mr. Bowie said the song is </span></span><a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/the-inside-story-of-david-bowies-stunning-new-album-blackstar-20151123"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">“about ISIS,”</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> a disputed contention.)</span></span><br />
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<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Thoughts of death
hover throughout “Blackstar.” In </span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-JqH1M4Ya8"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">“Lazarus,”</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> a slowly gathering dirge with jolts from Mr.
Bowie on electric guitar, the narrator is “in heaven” with “scars that can’t be
seen,” looking back on a profligate life. A remake of “Sue (Or in a Season of
Crime),” with a hurtling rock beat and Ben Monder’s keening guitar replacing
Ms. Schneider’s impressionistic big-band horn arrangement, leaves unclear
whether it is a farewell or a murder confession.</span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Throughout
“Blackstar,” Mr. Bowie stays more cantankerous than contemplative. “Tis a Pity
She Was a Whore” slams out a boom-bap hip-hop beat while Mr. Bowie’s voice
leaps through an odd-angled melody amid a swarm of overdubbed saxophones. Mr.
Bowie delivers </span></span><a href="http://soomka.com/nadsat.html"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">“Girl Loves Me”</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> in an odd, yodeling cackle, with lyrics that, for
reasons unknown, often slip into the Russian-rooted slang </span></span><a href="http://soomka.com/nadsat.html"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">Nadsat</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, from “A
Clockwork Orange.”</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This album’s last
two songs, “Dollar Days” and “I Can’t Give Everything Away,” circle back toward
a familiar Bowie approach: the richly melodic, slow-building mid-tempo rocker.
“Dollar Days” even allows itself some lush strings. But Mr. Bowie isn’t suddenly
going cozy. In “Dollar Days,” he croons, “I’m dying to/Push their backs against
the grain/And fool them all again and again.” He may be briefly dropping his
mask; he may be trying on a new one. Either way, he’s not letting himself or
his listeners take things easy.</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/arts/music/review-blackstar-david-bowies-emotive-and-cryptic-new-album.html"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/arts/music/review-blackstar-david-bowies-emotive-and-cryptic-new-album.html</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
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<b><u><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Postscript:
David Bowie, 1947-2016</span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">(By Hilton Als, The
New Yorker, 11 January 2016)</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This was not supposed to happen. Ever. Because he had been
so many people over the course of his grand and immense career, it was
inconceivable that he wouldn’t continue to be many people—a myriad of folks in
a beautiful body who would reflect times to come, times none of us could
imagine but that he could. He always got to the unknown first.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">David Robert Jones was born, in Brixton, to working-class
parents, on January 8, 1947, and the Brixton of his day was a changing
place—home to members of the “Windrush generation,” West Indians who, like
immigrants everywhere, had come to England looking for a better way. And the
music those islanders bought to their new island no doubt influenced the artist
who always wanted to be an artist; indeed, Bowie’s need to perform—to be
recognized as different—made itself known when he was a child. In movement
class, he claimed center stage, striking attitudes that his instructors found
unusual, original. He was always an original, not least because he defied
“Englishness”—not making a fuss, not standing out—by making theatre out of his
body and that incredible face.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Everyone knows the story. Jones—who did not shrink from a fight—was
arguing with a friend over a girl when his friend punched him in one of his
blue eyes; somehow, his fingernail got caught in Bowie’s left eye. The result
was a permanently dilated pupil. Just as Marlon Brando broke his nose while
horsing around backstage during the Broadway run of “A Streetcar Named Desire”
and the accident added to, rather than detracted from, his beauty, Bowie’s
infirmity only added to his allure, an “oddity” whose romanticism imagined other
places in addition to this world—places he invented and filled with longing.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">A natural collaborator, Bowie used his considerable fame to
help popularize artists who would have had less of a chance without him.
Nothing’s better than </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7hzBEBXEC0"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">watching
Bowie play keyboards</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> for Dinah Shore on her TV show in 1977. He was there
to support an artist he loved—Iggy Pop, whose seminal, first solo album, “The
Idiot,” had come out that year. In an interview on MTV, recorded in 1990, Pop
talked about how Bowie had rescued him, basically, from being a street person,
and helped him to become an artist. On the Shore show, Pop’s outrageous body
gyrates, twists, and turns as he sings “Sister Midnight”; at one point you can
hear Bowie laughing at all the antics. Bowie then sits down with Shore, she of
genteel nineteen-forties movie musicals, and attempts to explain, with great
seriousness and in depth, why Pop was important, and why their collaboration
worked.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Rock stars are not generally known for their generosity to
other artists; it takes a lot to get up there and be such a huge presence.
Early on, Bowie realized he was more himself—had more of himself—when he built
bridges between different worlds. I wonder how much of that he owed to what he
saw in Brixton. Two years before he worked with Pop, Bowie made his first
masterpiece—1975’s “Young Americans.” Bowie called it “plastic soul,” which was
an honest thought. Bowie was not a soul man; he was borrowing from soul
artists—the guys who made the sound of Philadelphia just that—in order to make
his new self, backed by incredible black artists like Ava Cherry and Luther
Vandross. Dressed in high-waisted pants and carrying a cane, Bowie’s </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8TnXRBkYt8"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">elegance and showmanship on
“The Dick Cavett Show,”</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> in 1974, while he was getting his plastic-soul
thing together, didn’t so much diminish the rather square-looking Cavett as
inject a powerful social formula: what blackness looked like on a white artist.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Bowie was a miscegenationist at a time when it wasn’t
necessarily cool, or tolerated. Bowie was “queer” in that way, and things only
got queerer on the Cavett show when Bowie introduced Cherry, his lover at the
time, to the audience. There, again, he was framing a performer he liked by
conferring some of his star power on her. (Bowie worked on Cherry’s album
“People from Bad Homes.” Check it out. Her sound is not as big as Betty
Davis’s, but there are loads of wonderful moments on it, including the lead
track, written by Bowie.) Halfway through “Foot Stompin’,” on the Cavett show,
Bowie points to Cherry, the blond-haired black woman to his left, and says,
“Cherry!” She dances a bit, and the moment is gone, but not the memory of Bowie
watching his friend perform in the aura of his generosity.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Indeed, Bowie’s rendition of “Foot Stompin’ ” was the
artist’s tribute to the Flares, a doo-wop group that recorded in the
nineteen-fifties and early sixties. Back then, a young David Robert Jones
thrilled to the records his father brought home, including those made by that
outrageous, vulnerable showman Little Richard. When he heard “Tutti Frutti,”
Bowie said once, he knew he’d heard God. Little Richard’s uncommon look and
feeling were part of what he meant to project in this common world. Bowie, too.
He was an Englishman who was sometimes afraid of Americans and fame but, on </span><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/%E2%80%AAthe-beautiful-meaninglessness-of-david-bowie"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">his
final record</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, could sing “Look at me / I’m in heaven” as a way of
describing where he wanted to end up, maybe, but definitely where Bowie—that
outsider who made different kids feel like dancing in that difference, and who
had a genius for friendship, too—had lived since we knew him.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/postscript-david-bowie-1947-2016?mbid=nl_160111_Daily&CNDID=31031903&spMailingID=8420420&spUserID=MTAzNjIxMDAzNzQ2S0&spJobID=841224512&spReportId=ODQxMjI0NTEyS0"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/postscript-david-bowie-1947-2016?mbid=nl_160111_Daily&CNDID=31031903&spMailingID=8420420&spUserID=MTAzNjIxMDAzNzQ2S0&spJobID=841224512&spReportId=ODQxMjI0NTEyS0</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><b><u><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The
Beautiful Meaninglessness of David Bowie</span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">(By Ben Greenman,
The New Yorker, 09 January 2016)</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">David Bowie’s “Blackstar,” recently released, is his second
album since he resurfaced from what seemed like semi-retirement. As it turned
out, it was a period of rejuvenation. “The Next Day,” released at the beginning
of 2013, was a muscular rock record filled with snarling anthems and reflective
ballads, and it acknowledged its connection to (or hostility toward) the past
with its cover art, which featured an obscured image of the cover art of
Bowie’s 1977 album “Heroes.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Blackstar” is a different creature entirely. Where “The
Next Day” was, in keeping with contemporary trends in album creation, long and
somewhat exhausting (it clocked in at fourteen tracks and fifty-three minutes,
a full quarter hour longer than most of Bowie’s seventies albums, and deluxe
editions were even more bloated), “Blackstar” goes by fast, seven tracks in
forty minutes or so—and a full quarter of that running time is devoted to the
opener, the spooky, multipart title track. It’s also musically distinct. Rather
than assembling a crack team of rock vets (and Bowie vets) like Tony Visconti,
Earl Slick, and Gail Ann Dorsey, “Blackstar” employs a new band anchored by New
York jazz players like the pianist Jason Lindner and the saxophonist Donny
McCaslin. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The presence of jazz players has led to a mistaken characterization
of “Blackstar” as a jazz record, which it isn’t. It’s a singer-songwriter
record that is willing to stretch its compositions around instrumentation
that’s not typically associated with rock and roll. If the sonic palette of
“Blackstar” carves out a space around the record, the imagery for the album,
which so far includes the iconic cover design and two excellent videos (the
film accompanying the title song features a terrifying version of a Bowie whose
eyes are buttons glued to the outside of a head bandage), has been equally
powerful and provocative. But the main way in which “Blackstar” is prime Bowie
is in its willingness to embrace nonsense.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">From the beginning, Bowie showed an interest in exploring
the fragmentation of identity and meaning. His career depended heavily on
performance, which allowed him to actively deploy various signifiers inside and
alongside his music—signifiers of gender, of sexual orientation, even of
humanity itself. (The question of radical others, up to and including aliens,
surface frequently in his early work.) At some point, he began to look more
rigorously into the idea of meaninglessness, and to write songs that were
willful participants in their own fragmentation. The most famous early example
of this, of course, is the “Diamond Dogs” album, in which Bowie employed the
cut-up method developed by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin. Scissors were
taken to a text. Slips of paper were drawn at random. The results, subject to
chance, were then fashioned into lyrics like these:</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Meet his little hussy with his ghost-town
approach</span></i></div>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Her face is sans feature, but she wears a
Dali brooch</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Sweetly reminiscent, something mother used
to bake</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Wrecked up and paralyzed, Diamond Dogs are
stabilized</span></i><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">It was rare for Bowie to embrace clear meaning. The title of
one of his most plainspoken songs, “ ‘Heroes,’ ” is suspended in a second set
of quotation marks, largely to disrupt any straightforward interpretation.
“Where Are We Now?,” Bowie’s beautifully fragile comeback ballad and the first
single from “The Next Day,” was a conspicuous exception—it was a snapshot,
relatively easy to parse, of an older man revisiting Berlin and wondering about
the city’s ch-ch-changes. But on much of the rest of the album he was as
slippery as ever, and the same is true of “Blackstar.” The new album’s title
track and lead single opens with a ghostly, vaguely Middle Eastern chant.</span></div>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the villa of Ormen, in the villa of Ormen</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Stands a solitary candle, ah-ah, ah-ah</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the center of it all, in the center of it
all</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Your eyes</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">On the day of execution, on the day of
execution</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Only women kneel and smile, ah-ah, ah-ah</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">At the center of it all, at the center of it
all</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Your eyes, your eyes</span></i><br />
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<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">People said it was about ISIS, and then Bowie denied it.
It’s good that he denied it, because his songs should be about nothing, which
in turn allows them to be about everything. In another song, “Girl Loves Me,”
Bowie latches onto a rubbery melody and the echoed, repeated refrain: “Where
the fuck did Monday go?” It’s evocative, but unexplained. Adding to the song’s
sense of obfuscation and evasion is the fact that many of the lyrics are in
Nadsat, the language Anthony Burgess invented for his teen hooligans in “A
Clockwork Orange.” There’s also some </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polari"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">Polari</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> thrown in for good
measure.</span></div>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Cheena so sound, so titty up this Malchick,
say</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Party up moodge, ninety vellocet round on
Tuesday</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Real bad dizzy snatch making all the homies
mad, Thursday</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Popo blind to the polly in the hole by
Friday</span></i><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The lyrics don’t need to be straightforwardly interpreted
for them to communicate a compelling sense of erotic menace. More to the point:
it’s the way in which they thwart straightforward interpretation that grants
them their power. The British writer and intellectual historian Peter Watson
has made a career of publishing books that set out to comprehensively summarize
the field of human thought: most notably with “Ideas,” in 2009. His books are
filled with reductions and lacunae, as any book purporting to summarize human
thought must be. But they are also immensely useful for picking out kernels. In
“The Modern Mind,” in 2001, Watson gives an account of the growth of Surrealism
in art, identifying the movement not only as a form of exploration but as a
site of resistance:</span></div>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">But above all, taking
their lead from dreams and the unconscious, their work showed a deliberate
rejection of reason. Their art sought to show that progress, if it were
possible, was never a straight line, that nothing was predictable, and that the
alternative to the banalities of the acquisitive society, now that religion was
failing, was a new form of enchantment.</span></i><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Rock and roll started as a form of enchantment and has
become, in large part, another symptom of the banality of our acquisitive
society. By persisting in deliberately rejecting reason, Bowie reminds us that
there are plenty of reasons to do so. The most naked moment on the new record
is its final song, “I Can’t Give Everything Away,” which almost reads like a
defense of a career of obscurantism.</span></div>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I know something is very wrong</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The post returns for prodigal songs</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">With blackout harks with flowered muse</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">With skull designs upon my shoes</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I can’t give everything</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I can’t give everything</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Away</span></i><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Seeing more and feeling less</span></i></div>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Saying no but meaning yes</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This is all I ever meant</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">That’s the message that I sent</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I can’t give everything</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I can’t give everything</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Away</span></i><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Unless, of
course, that isn’t what it means at all.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Postscript: </span></i><span style="font-family: Calibri;">David Bowie’s death is sad and
surprising, though maybe just partly surprising. There were many rumors of
illness even before the release of his 2013 album “The Next Day,” but the
vitality of that record beat them back a bit. In the videos for “Blackstar,”
Bowie looks frail, but he often looked frail. The news of his cancer and its
advance seems to have been kept close, limited to family, physicians, and a few
friends. People will now look for hints in his recent music, and they’ll find them.
“The Next Day” is filled with a sense of loneliness and the struggle to
connect, and “Blackstar” has several songs that seem to bridge life and death.
“Lazarus,” the song that everyone wants to see as a literal handling of the
matter, was written for an Off Broadway play that updates the character of
Thomas Jerome Newton, the man who fell to Earth. That doesn’t mean that the
song is not a way of facing into death, but it also doesn’t mean that it is.
For me the album’s contribution to the vexing question of human existence lies
in the way in Bowie struggles to articulate the human struggle to articulate.
That seemed true even before Bowie’s death, and it seems truer now. It brings
to mind Samuel Beckett’s last poem, “</span><a href="http://www.samuel-beckett.net/whatistheword.html"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">What Is the Word</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">,”
which Beckett wrote in bed in a nursing home, in Paris, the year before his
death. Except that he didn’t really write it at all: it’s a translation of an
earlier work, “Comment Dire,” that he wrote in French in 1982. The
inexpressible is expressed twice, one the echo of the other, emptiness
mirroring emptiness.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/%e2%80%aathe-beautiful-meaninglessness-of-david-bowie"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/%e2%80%aathe-beautiful-meaninglessness-of-david-bowie</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Credit Illustration by Jim Blanchard</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<b><u><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Labyrinth:
The Path That Leads From David Bowie To Us.</span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">(By Sasha
Frere-Jones, The New Yorker, 18 March 2013)</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“The Next Day,” David Bowie’s twenty-sixth studio album, has
been awaited with such anticipation that “anticipation” feels like too weak a
word, better suited to the release of a sneaker. In 2004, Bowie had a heart
attack, and he was recently rumored to be in poor health. Leading up to the
release of “The Next Day,” a jittery cathexis formed. Do we judge Bowie as we
always have, by his own standards? Would a new album be received reverentially,
like those of the post-motorcycle-crash Bob Dylan? The sense of both expectation and need in the
press—the phrase “greatest comeback in rock-and-roll history” has been cited
repeatedly—speaks to the energy invested in a sixty-six-year-old pop star.
People care, and remain curious, but only rarely do they hope for so much.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Fascination with the album has been compounded by a rare
coup. “The Next Day” was made in secrecy during the past two years, largely in
lower Manhattan, with the producer Tony Visconti, Bowie’s frequent
collaborator, and veteran musicians with whom he’s worked before. One track,
“Where Are We Now?,” was released in early January, without warning, an act
that served as the album’s announcement. Such a display of privacy is almost
performance art these days, though Bowie seems motivated not by paranoid
seclusion but simply by the desire to work without unwanted feedback. He has
made it clear that he won’t tour for “The Next Day,” beyond perhaps a single
show, and he also won’t be attending the opening of the retrospective of his
career at the Victoria and Albert Museum, in London. But he has demurred
before, after “Lodger” (1979) and “Scary Monsters” (1980), and eventually,
after a few years, he got back to working much as he had previously.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The current level of interest in Bowie reflects a larger
theme in pop-music culture. While the long view of musical history suggests the
obvious—that the greats remain great while a few fade out—in the near term,
some acts seize the imagination of the moment. The Beatles have a flawless
catalogue, but their aesthetic has left them on the outside for now: cartoons,
granny glasses, and French horns don’t fit into 2013. Conversely, the ennui of
present versions of punk and disco and rap—rooted in a young adult’s curt
dismissal rather than a child’s open acceptance—has reinforced a common taste
for darker acts such as Bowie. We no longer believe that all you need is love
(or embroidered bell-bottoms), but we do believe in androgyny and world-weary dance
parties buoyed by cocaine and artificially sour exchanges that mask a deep
romantic streak. Aladdin Sane and Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke of
“Station to Station,” one of Bowie’s best albums, were always coming on aloof
and imperious, then begging you to stay. His catalogue, though not as
fault-free as that of the Beatles, or even that of Led Zeppelin, provides grist
for today’s music-making cohort. Bowie has lasted, and he has found a place in
the twenty-first century as an idea and a musician and a series of haircuts.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But does “The Next Day,” which revolves around references to
death and to Bowie’s own work, complete that transition? It succeeds because
none of the self-reflection results in pastiche or sentimentality; the problem
is that the production that Bowie and Visconti chose for the songs puts this
record, sonically, closer to the blocky drums and sports-bar guitars of
eighties albums like “Let’s Dance” and “Tonight” than to some of his slightly
hidden gems from the past two decades. The magnificent “Heathen,” from 2002, an
album with fewer good songs than “The Next Day,” was a more cohesive marriage
of electronic textures and traditional guitar work, and Bowie was in robust
voice. Bowie and Visconti worked on that together, and it’s difficult to
understand how they could have been so in synch with the moment then but not
now.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“The Next Day” uses sounds that are several decades old,
particularly reverb settings and synthesizers that even a musical illiterate
will identify as sounding “eighties.” Regardless of whether these markers are
intentional, it’s clear that Bowie </span><i><span style="font-family: Calibri;">does</span></i><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> want you to think about time:
specifically, the time that David Jones (his birth name) has spent being David
Bowie. The art work for “The Next Day” is a replica of the cover of “Heroes,”
from 1977, tweaked so that a white square obscures Bowie’s face and the title
of the old album is crossed out. Other references snake through songs. The
peppy Motown beat of “Dancing in Outer Space” is more or less that of “Modern
Love,” from “Let’s Dance”; “You Feel So Lonely You Could Die” fades out with
the drumbeat of “Five Years,” from “Ziggy Stardust.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The single “Where Are We Now?” is one of the album’s most
emotionally direct songs, and it carefully melts down elements from “Heroes”
without being too obvious. It is slow and elegiac but doesn’t drag—a few
arpeggiated guitar chords ring for the length of entire measures, along with
sustained piano chords and an understated drumbeat. Bowie’s voice, which is
placed high in the mix, is only slightly diminished by age. There is a
striation in his mighty sound, the streaks of time passing, hardly disabling
but impossible to miss.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The song’s lyrics start with a plaint that could also be a
joke: “Had to get the train from Potsdamer Platz. You never knew that, that I
could do that. Just walking the dead.” Does this refer to his own frailty—that
one might not think he could travel alone—or is it a reference to the divided
Berlin of “Heroes,” a suggestion that he can go back to that time without
harming himself emotionally or artistically? The chorus is simply the title of
the song, repeated, pained but not pathetic. This all sets up a final build, a
devastating, slow, and deliberate accretion. The drums switch to a heavy tattoo
without speeding up. Some phrases repeat twice, some come only once: “As long
as there’s sun, as long as there’s rain, as long as there’s fire, as long as
there’s me, as long as there’s you.” Maybe we can be heroes, it seems to say,
if only for five minutes.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Where Are We Now?” is not only the album’s gentlest song;
it is one of the few that push Bowie’s voice to the front and let us luxuriate
in it. For much of the album, which tends toward a middling rock feel, his
voice is buried in the center of the music. But one of the best songs, the trim
and taut “I’d Rather Be High,” details a soldier’s troubles without the
finger-wagging that can turn topical songs into lectures. The music is perky, a
shuffling beat anchoring a twinkly, high guitar figure by Gerry Leonard. The opening
lyrics could be about anybody “upon the beach,” gossiping till their “lips are
bleeding,” though the chorus makes clear who is watching whom: “I’d rather be
high, I’d rather be flying, I’d rather be dead or out of my head than training
these guns on those men in the sand, I’d rather be high.” But the mood of the
song isn’t especially dark, because Bowie and Visconti are able to couch the
fear of a confused soldier inside an equally believable state of mind, one in
which he’s thinking about “teen-age sex” and getting high, as well as not
shooting at people he doesn’t know.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Production aside, these songs are strong enough that there
hasn’t been a Bowie album this good in—well, the bar rats can fight it out.
It’s not “Station to Station,” but it’s a fine rock record that is a few hairs
away from being among his best. Even the obsessives should be able to accept
that.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/03/18/labyrinth-3"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/03/18/labyrinth-3</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
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<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-61323648570305432072015-10-18T12:48:00.000-07:002015-10-18T12:48:35.480-07:00‘Steve Jobs’ And The Secular Ritual Of Going To The Movies<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">(By Ann Hornaday, Washington Post, 15 October 2015)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Please
remember to turn off your electronic devices.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That’s a familiar refrain before movie screenings these days, but it had
particular piquancy at the Monday night preview of “Steve Jobs,” the highly
anticipated drama about the Apple co-founder, and the guy who made those
electronic devices so hard to turn off in the first place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jobs, played in the film by Michael
Fassbender as a gifted but haunted Shakespearean figure, never set out to
destroy the movie business; indeed his purchase of George Lucas’s computer
animation company — a little outfit known as Pixar — helped usher in a
mini-Golden Age of storytelling and audacious creativity to the medium. But
there’s no doubt that, in designing devices so intuitive and beautiful that
they became extensions of the user’s psychic and physical self, Jobs also
helped create a generation of second-screeners, happy to consume sound, images
and stories on their TVs, laptops, phones and, heaven forfend, wristwatches.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Which makes it doubly piquant — deliciously ironic, even —
that, when Washington’s newest Landmark Theatres location, Atlantic Plumbing
Cinema, </span><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/going-out-guide/wp/2015/10/12/atlanticplumbing/" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">opens this weekend</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, it will be showing “Steve
Jobs” in all six of its small, plushly appointed auditoriums.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It is a fun irony,” said Landmark’s
president and chief executive, Ted Mundorff, who noted that Apple didn’t impact
the film industry directly, but it greatly influenced consumers’ expectations
regarding how and when they see movies. Just as symbolically zeitgeisty as the
all-Jobs program at Atlantic Plumbing is the fact that Landmark’s Bethesda Row
Cinema is opening “</span><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/gog/movies/beasts-of-no-nation,1296860.html" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">Beasts of No Nation</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">” the very same day it’s
being made available on Netflix.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But amid all these technological death knells for the
theatrical experience, it’s possible to glimpse a startling degree of saving
grace — at least for Landmark, which specializes in films that appeal to people
who consume movies the way they consume cuisine: not concession-counter junk
food and Big Gulps, but artisanal fare and small-batch cocktails. (Which, not
coincidentally, are being served at the theaters’ cafes).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s a critical mass of those audiences in
Washington, which is why Landmark is doubling down here, opening Atlantic
Plumbing this weekend, renovating the newly acquired West End Cinema and
preparing to open a theater in NoMa. The company is part of a theater-building </span><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/coming-attractions-the-rise-of-luxury-movie-theaters/2014/12/18/98021b3e-7f29-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">boom</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
in the area that includes the Angelika, ArcLight and iPic theater chains, all
of which are responding to the fact that — Netflix, peak TV and Jobs’s
seductive devices be damned — we’re still going to the movies.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">That fact isn’t lost on “Steve Jobs” screenwriter Aaron
Sorkin, who started as a playwright and became famous for such TV shows as “</span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005JLF3/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00005JLF3&linkCode=as2&tag=thewaspos09-20&linkId=VV4G77KME2SWEWU3" target="_blank" title="www.amazon.com"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">The West Wing</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">” and HBO’s “</span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0092QH902/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0092QH902&linkCode=as2&tag=thewaspos09-20&linkId=E6B5C7QR4YQTIRFW" target="_blank" title="www.amazon.com"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">The Newsroom</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">,” and who is dedicated to
making the kind of smart, sophisticated, mid-budget dramas for grown-ups that
are increasingly rare in Hollywood — which, partly in response to the siren
call of shrinking home screens, has been striving to make movies bigger, louder
and more infantilized.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sorkin was caught
up in a tech-centric maelstrom of his own last year when hackers — believed by
the U.S. government to be based in North Korea — tapped into the computer
system at Sony Pictures Entertainment; executives’ contentious e-mail
negotiations regarding his “Steve Jobs” script were among the most publicized
outtakes from the episode (the film wound up going to Universal Pictures). One
of the hack’s most poignant revelations was how precarious films such as “Steve
Jobs” are within a blockbuster-driven business model.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“They <i>are</i> precarious,” Sorkin told me in a phone
conversation. “Ironically, this movie had a relatively smooth path to the
screen. I’m not exactly sure why, but this kind of movie is a bigger gamble for
a studio. The studio would feel more comfortable spending $150 million
than spending $30 million. With $150 million, they know exactly how
to market it and who to market it to. With this, there are some questions about
who exactly is the audience for this movie.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>With “Steve Jobs” and others like it, Sorkin said, “the job of the movie
isn’t to make a ton of money for the studio, the job of the movie is to not <i>lose</i>
money.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Which brings us to yet another delicious irony: “Steve Jobs”
is making money. It earned more than half a million dollars when it opened in
limited release last weekend, making it the 15th-highest earner pre-theater in
history. After opening in Washington and 24 other markets, it will arrive on
more than 2,000 screens next week, garnering earned awareness in word of
mouth, strong reviews and Oscar buzz along the way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the same strategy that made “</span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00RO49JC0/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00RO49JC0&linkCode=as2&tag=thewaspos09-20&linkId=UFGPE4YD5XOCTG4O" target="_blank" title="www.amazon.com"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">Birdman</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">,” “</span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00RY85CQI/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00RY85CQI&linkCode=as2&tag=thewaspos09-20&linkId=4T2QBW4URQCEOGMG" target="_blank" title="www.amazon.com"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">The Imitation Game</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">” and “</span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00QFSHCR0/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00QFSHCR0&linkCode=as2&tag=thewaspos09-20&linkId=PNEUGVSNGMRD6YK3" target="_blank" title="www.amazon.com"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">The Theory of Everything</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">” local hits
last year and that Mundorff, for one, is counting on again as awards season
gets underway in earnest. “Our box office goes up every year,” he said, noting
that overall industry earnings increased by 4 percent in 2015. “And I’m not
seeing any trend going the other way.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This is usually the moment when a frequent advocate for
big-C cinema makes an impassioned case for the technical and aesthetic
superiority of the theatrical experience. There’s no doubt that “Steve Jobs,”
directed by Danny Boyle with an ingenious visual design using old-fashioned
film stock and digital photography, benefits from the scale, detail and
immersion that theaters provide. Almost word for word, Mundorff and Sorkin
expressed an identical, shared belief in the transportive powers of sitting
with a group of strangers, waiting for the lights to go down and for the screen
to flicker to life.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But that experience isn’t — or at least isn’t only — an
aesthetic one. It’s an emotional one. It’s not only the sounds and images that
come to overwhelming life on the big screen that people crave. It’s the strong
feelings — empathy, disdain, pity, longing — that envelop them as a result.
That same need for sentient connection, not just information or cool graphics,
is something Jobs understood better than anyone, as he endlessly fussed over
round-cornered rectangles and fonts, in search of a machine people would not
only utilize but love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">He succeeded brilliantly, of course, which is one of the
reasons he’s worthy of a movie. But “Steve Jobs” leaves viewers with the
lingering question: At what cost? One casualty of the wired-in, zoned-out
culture Jobs was part of creating is precisely what the movie about him is
helping to preserve: an occasion to make ourselves vulnerable. The secular
ritual of going to the movies is one of the rare times when we can be alone,
together, entering the same collective trance. Whether we emerge delighted,
unsettled, astonished, we can’t go under fully until we’re bereft of our own
devices.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331613703699568761.post-27413905839198968592015-06-28T14:39:00.000-07:002015-07-11T12:19:43.366-07:00Soccer 2015<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">U.S. Crushes Japan In World Cup Final,
Ending Drought In Fairy-Tale Rematch<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">(By Steven Goff, Washington Post, 05 July 2015)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">When the
final whistle sounded on the Women’s World Cup final Sunday, Carli Lloyd
dropped to her knees near the sideline and looked to the open roof at BC Place,
pumping her arms before teammate Heather O’Reilly embraced her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Players and coaches penned in the bench area
flooded the field like water released from a dam. Tears flowed. Flags snapped
throughout stands filled with American supporters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The 16-year wait was over: By virtue of a 5-2
victory over Japan, the U.S. women's national soccer team was world champion
for a record third time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I envisioned winning the trophy,” said </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/dcunited/jill-ellis-played-soccer-with-boys-now-she-leads-us-in-womens-world-cup/2015/06/11/610cefc8-103d-11e5-a0fe-dccfea4653ee_story.html"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">Coach
Jill Ellis</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, a graduate of Robinson Secondary School and William and Mary in
Virginia, “but five is a dream come true.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">With Vice President Biden among 53,341 in attendance, Lloyd
gave one of the great performances in men’s or women’s tournament history,
scoring three goals in the first 16 minutes, including a shot from the
midfield line some 55 yards away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lloyd, </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/us-womens-soccer-olympic-gold-medal-reflects-teams-unselfishness-and-spirit/2012/08/09/37cefa4a-e267-11e1-ae7f-d2a13e249eb2_story.html" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">who had beaten Japan for the 2012 Olympic gold
medal with two goals</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, set championship marks for the fastest goal (three
minutes) and first hat trick. She became the first American to score three
times in a World Cup game since the inaugural event in 1991.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“She always does this to us,” Japan Coach
Norio Sasaki said. “We are a bit embarrassed, but she is an excellent player
and I admire her.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">After underperforming in the three-game group stage, the
32-year-old midfielder from Delran, N.J., and Rutgers University scored in four
consecutive knockout rounds to claim a share of the scoring title with
Germany's Celia Sasic (six goals).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lloyd
won the Golden Ball award as the tournament's most outstanding player. </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/dcunited/us-goalkeeper-hope-solo-has-kept-a-low-profile-in-womens-world-cup/2015/06/28/7ee44d94-1d39-11e5-ab92-c75ae6ab94b5_story.html" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">Hope Solo</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> earned the Golden Glove as the
best goalkeeper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During a break a few
weeks before the tournament began, Lloyd was home in New Jersey, training on
her own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Just my headphones, myself and
I,” she said. “I just completely zoned out and dreamed of playing in a World
Cup final and visualized scoring four goals. It sounds pretty funny, but you
can be physically strong, but if your mental state isn’t good enough, you can’t
bring yourself to bigger and better things.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The outcome was sweet redemption for Lloyd and 13 other
holdovers who not only had lost to Japan in the 2011 final, but, for four
years, carried the burden of unfulfilled expectations dating back to the Rose
Bowl party in 1999.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reminders of the last
championship tailed this squad for years. The narrative was inescapable and,
with the title in reach, it crested ahead of the final. Several members of the
last trophy-winning team were in the audience: Mia Hamm, Briana Scurry, Julie
Foudy and Michelle Akers, among others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Beyond
the team feat, individuals embraced the moment. In her fourth and final
tournament, </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/dcunited/abby-wambachs-world-cup-finale-comes-with-coveted-trophy/2015/07/05/4bc174da-238a-11e5-b621-b55e495e9b78_story.html" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">Abby Wambach</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, the sport's highest
international scorer regardless of gender, added a World Cup title to her
substantial portfolio. As she entered in the 79th minute, Lloyd handed her
the captain’s armband.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"I felt like
I was in a dream sitting there on the bench watching Carli Lloyd go off,"
Wambach said of the early stages.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The triumph brought joy to </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/dcunited/jill-ellis-played-soccer-with-boys-now-she-leads-us-in-womens-world-cup/2015/06/11/610cefc8-103d-11e5-a0fe-dccfea4653ee_story.html" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">Ellis</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, who has been on the job only since
spring 2014. As the Americans stumbled through the early matches, Ellis was
criticized by fans, media and former players, most notably Akers, for lineup
choices and tactical decisions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It’s
not vindication,” she said. “It just feels really good. I knew they had it in
them. They knew they had it in them.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She
remained steadfast in her long-term approach to the month-long tournament,
committed to the defensive plan and alternating attackers until ultimately
reinforcing central midfield to free up Lloyd.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There was no reason for Ellis to alter the lineup Sunday.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Despite meeting in a final for the third straight major
competition, there were no hints of animosity between the teams.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Americans’ deference morphed into
cold-hearted dominance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the third
minute, as Megan Rapinoe served a low corner kick, Lloyd made a sharp run from
outside the penalty area. She met the ball in stride and, using the outside of
her left foot, stabbed a nine-yard shot into the lower left corner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Two minutes passed. Another Lloyd goal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From inside the penalty area, Julie Johnston
flicked Lauren Holiday’s free kick. The ball caromed off the arm of a Japanese
player and bounded into the six-yard box. Lloyd beat two defenders and poked it
between defender Saki Kumugai’s legs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lloyd
embarked on another celebratory sprint. From field level to the upper reaches
of the Olympic arena, bedlam reigned.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">There was more. In the 14th minute, Holiday rushed at Azusa
Iwashimizu’s poorly headed clearance and volleyed a 12-yarder over goalkeeper
Ayumi Kaihori.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then came one of the most
implausible goals in men’s or women’s World Cup history, a shot that defied
soccer convention in both audacity and execution. With the Americans breaking
out of their own, Lloyd dodged a challenge in the center circle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At this point, a player will accelerate into
space or spray the ball wide to launch a counterattack. Lloyd looked up and saw
Kaihori at the top of the penalty area.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why
not? The ball sailed. Kaihori backpedaled, stumbled and got a hand on it before
watching the amazing strike touch the post and roll into the net.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“When you are feeling good, those plays are
just instincts,” she said. “I feel like I blacked out for the first
30 minutes. It was crazy.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Japan was deflated but not defeated. Yuki Ogimi fired past
Solo in the 27th minute, ending the U.S. shutout streak at 540 minutes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Seven minutes into the second half, Johnston
contested a long free kick in the penalty area and headed the ball past Solo
for an own goal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Two minutes later,
Tobin Heath restored order, smashing in </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/soccer-insider/wp/2015/05/31/morgan-brian-is-young-but-shes-plenty-ready-for-the-womens-world-cup-stage/" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">Morgan Brian</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">’s cross.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All that remained was the entrance of Wambach
and Christie Rampone, a 40-year-old defender at her fifth World Cup.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the first time since 1999, a trophy
awaited.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Those were the pioneers,”
Lloyd said of the ’99 squad, “and now it’s our turn to keep the tradition
going.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/dcunited/with-historic-outburst-us-beats-japan-for-womens-world-cup-title/2015/07/05/1ed04790-2352-11e5-b77f-eb13a215f593_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/dcunited/with-historic-outburst-us-beats-japan-for-womens-world-cup-title/2015/07/05/1ed04790-2352-11e5-b77f-eb13a215f593_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">For United States, A Display Of
Dominance At Women’s World Cup<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">(By Jerry Brewer, Washington Post, 05 July 2015)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The patrons at
Summers Restaurant in Arlington hadn’t even settled. They had barely sipped
their beers, and they had yet to decide on food. They were pacing themselves to
watch at least a 90-minute Women’s World Cup final.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After 16 exhilarating minutes, however, the
game was over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After a fourth “U-S-A!”
celebratory chant in that time span, the patrons were delightfully stunned. And
out of breath.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I’m exhausted,” one fan
said, laughing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The rest of the match
became an exhibition to determine just how impressive the United States wanted
to be. It settled for one of the most dominant title-game performances in
sports history: an early onslaught, a midgame cruise and a strong finish in
a </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/dcunited/with-historic-outburst-us-beats-japan-for-womens-world-cup-title/2015/07/05/1ed04790-2352-11e5-b77f-eb13a215f593_story.html"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">5-2
throttling of rival Japan</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">For the first time in 16 years, the U.S. women’s national
team captured the World Cup, defeating its own vulnerability along the way.
There was no way to see this coming, especially after the Americans began this
tournament in lackluster form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
reasons to doubt kept multiplying. Germany was supposedly the world’s best
team. Abby Wambach couldn’t carry the U.S. squad anymore. Hope Solo had
disturbing off-field issues. Coach Jill Ellis was too green. And what about the
pressure mounting after it failed to win the past three World Cups, including a
devastating loss to Japan in the 2011 final?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The U.S. women, who won the first Women’s World Cup in 1991
and lifted the sport to new heights with their second title eight years later,
had never seemed this vulnerable. Then on Sunday, in less than the time it
takes for a power nap, they looked their most overpowering at BC Place in Vancouver.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this old Arlington soccer bar, which has
been showing matches from around the world for 31 years, experienced another
significant moment. This World Cup didn’t match the drama of 1999, when the
U.S. and China fought until Brandi Chastain’s penalty kick and jersey-removing
glee at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That U.S. team, playing on its home soil and featuring Mia Hamm in her
prime, had to win to lift the entire sport. This team had to win to prove it
has maintained international supremacy.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">At Summers, they celebrated the evolution of women’s soccer.
Jorge Parrado was a customer during the World Cup 16 years ago. Now Parrado,
44, works at the restaurant and assists with social-media promotion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While this title game had its drama end early,
Parrado was still able to recognize the meaning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It was much more intense 16 years ago,” he
said. “The expectation was there. There was no excuse. They had to win it. This
was more determination to walk in and take back what they lost four years ago —
which they did in 15 minutes. This team didn’t really play that well at the
beginning of the World Cup. In 1999, they were a machine. Nothing could really
stop them. But look at how far this team came.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The fan base has evolved, from my perspective,” Parrado said. “In 1999,
you had more kids around, and now those kids are young adults. I see more men
and women coming here to watch the matches, a more diverse crowd. Men have,
compared to back then, a greater respect for the female athlete, the female
soccer player.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The men are actually
paying attention and reading the game instead of coming in because, wow, she
was in Sports Illustrated. They’re not just here because their girlfriends
asked them to come. It’s an evolution.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Four hours before the final, three preteen boys walked
together on Lee Highway in Arlington, boasting their national pride. One boy
had a soccer ball tucked under his arm. They wore socks with stripes on their
left feet and with stars on their right feet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They were ready to root for the women, who represented the red, white,
blue (and yellowish green and black). They weren’t disappointed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Americans won their third Women’s World
Cup, the most of any nation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/dcunited/carli-lloyd-leads-us-soccer-into-womens-world-cup-final/2015/07/01/6d8448a0-201e-11e5-a135-935065bc30d0_story.html"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">Carli
Lloyd </span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">completed the tournament of her life by becoming the first U.S.
player to score in four straight World Cup matches. But that stat might get
lost in the celebration. This game will be remembered for the three goals Lloyd
scored in the first 16 minutes. She punctuated her instant hat trick with an
absurd goal from near midfield that resembled a basketball player attempting a
heat check.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thing is, most heat checks
don’t go in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And for her next trick,
Lloyd will boot disgraced FIFA President Sepp Blatter into oblivion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The World Cup is back in the United States, and soccer
legend Abby Wambach won the only major event that has eluded her. Before the
match, she expressed to reporters how badly she wanted this World Cup, saying
that if the United States won, “I might just give you all a kiss on the mouth.
Don’t tell my wife, though.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Surely,
after the Americans erased 16 years of disappointment in 16 minutes of
dominance, Wambach will be allowed as many victory smooches as she desires.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/dcunited/for-united-states-a-display-of-dominance-at-womens-world-cup/2015/07/05/61d29390-2352-11e5-b77f-eb13a215f593_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/dcunited/for-united-states-a-display-of-dominance-at-womens-world-cup/2015/07/05/61d29390-2352-11e5-b77f-eb13a215f593_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Soccer Outsider: Women’s World Cup
Review And Player Ratings<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">By Jeffrey Maurer July 6 at 3:39 AM<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">How do you prepare for a World Cup final? The players always
play it cool. “Oh, I just relax and listen to some cool music.” (Nobody preps
by listening to Phil Collins’ “No Jacket Required.”) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Given how big the game is, they are either
incredibly composed or completely lying. If I were days away from playing in a
World Cup final and someone asked, “How are you preparing?” I’d say: “Well, I’m
panic-vomiting a lot, and also vomiting as a result of the heavy drinking I’ve
been doing to calm myself down. In my more lucid moments, I think of excuses,
specifically who I could scapegoat — both on my team or in society at large —
in case it all goes wrong. In my spare time I rock back and forth and suck my
thumb. And I’ve been listening to Phil Collins’ ‘No Jacket Required.’ ”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">My take on the U.S. women’s team through the tournament so
far? The back five has been outstanding! All of them: calm, composed,
well-organized and alert. The fullbacks are providing offense, and the center
backs have been almost mistake-free. And my take on the attack, except for
Megan Rapinoe? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hey, how about that back
five, huh?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The U.S. starting lineup:
Solo, Krieger, Sauerbrunn, Johnston, Klingenberg, Heath, Brian, Holiday, Lloyd,
Rapinoe, Morgan. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Very happy to see Brian
in the lineup. The U.S. team had huge problems in the midfield in the first
half of the tournament; things seem to have settled down since Brian stepped
in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Here’s kickoff from Vancouver’s beautiful-but-turf-covered
BC Place. Does anyone think maybe this stadium deserves a more creative name
than “BC Place”? Maybe BC Park, BC Arena or even Stade de BC? One could argue
that<i>every</i> place in British Columbia is at least<i> a</i> BC
place. This stadium sounds like the diner where the kids hang out in a pre-teen
sitcom on CBC: “Hey, you hosers, want to go to BC Place and get some poutine?”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">3’ – GOAL USA! Lloyd off a set piece! Unbelievable – the
fastest goal in Women’s World Cup finals history, and the second in women’s or
men’s after</span><a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.youtube.com_watch-3Fv-3DqSznZ9spb6A&d=BQMFaQ&c=RAhzPLrCAq19eJdrcQiUVEwFYoMRqGDAXQ_puw5tYjg&r=_7IsPqzaq9Ud5RAy3YPB20YqjkkL77m69ctCNAHbFYI&m=PGXWqUERgfe_IsvjiXzn1mxz6Mh7MQ_SpwIEU4wEp2Y&s=zdzwdhsm_OB8_2C1dLtV23TBmjRecDzA5wEAnmmLc1E&e="><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">Neesken’s
penalty in ‘74</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">! What a sucker-punch start! Classy finish by Lloyd.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">5’ – ANOTHER GOAL – LLOYD AGAIN! I can’t remember a big
match ever starting like this, even </span><a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Brazil-5Fv-5FGermany-5F-282014-5FFIFA-5FWorld-5FCup-29&d=BQMFaQ&c=RAhzPLrCAq19eJdrcQiUVEwFYoMRqGDAXQ_puw5tYjg&r=_7IsPqzaq9Ud5RAy3YPB20YqjkkL77m69ctCNAHbFYI&m=PGXWqUERgfe_IsvjiXzn1mxz6Mh7MQ_SpwIEU4wEp2Y&s=IVQ3Ntt4DErq1wDLElIzOupT92gofCZ8C2phE-vWtec&e="><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">Germany
7, Brazil 1</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> didn’t really get rolling until the 23rd minute. This is
incredible — this is a bloody nose on the first punch of the fight. This match
might end up being like Donald Trump’s presidential campaign: effectively over
before it began and with a positive outcome for the USA.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">6’ – That second goal was scored so quickly that Fox didn’t
even have a chance to roll out the “Japan came back from a goal down twice in
2011” stat.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">7’ – Everyone thought the U.S. would be dangerous on set
pieces, but that was because of the height advantage. And now Japan has been
undone by two balls played in on the ground. No excuse for that; the Americans
were just first to the ball.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">8’ – Japan is huddling up after each goal. They’re probably
talking strategy, but I like to think it’s pure panic. “Girls, this is
baaaaaaad! I’m embarrassed — we’re gonna lose HARD!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">14’ – ANOTHER GOAL! A poor clearance, and Holiday punishes
the mistake with a well-taken volley! This is amazing but kind of lacking in
suspense, like if “The Sixth Sense” started with Bruce Willis saying, “Hi
there. I’m dead.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">15’ – Another Japanese huddle after the goal. That’s only
worth doing if the topic is, “Hey, there’s a trap door by the corner flag.
Let’s drop in one-by-one and get the heck out of here.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">15’ – Fox commentator Tony DiCicco: “Terrific start for the
USA.” Great insight, coach! That’s why you get paid the big bucks.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">16’ – It’s rare to see one team surge and another team
collapse in a huge match like this. This is shock, this is panic. It’s Brazil-Germany
in 2014, or the second quarter of </span><a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.nfl.com_superbowl_history_boxscore_sbxxii&d=BQMFaQ&c=RAhzPLrCAq19eJdrcQiUVEwFYoMRqGDAXQ_puw5tYjg&r=_7IsPqzaq9Ud5RAy3YPB20YqjkkL77m69ctCNAHbFYI&m=PGXWqUERgfe_IsvjiXzn1mxz6Mh7MQ_SpwIEU4wEp2Y&s=pWKZvkk08t4n0iGsbGE8nVuqIk0I7zYfWU4PzxZkOGw&e="><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">Super
Bowl XXII</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">16’ – GOAL Lloyd! And it’s the goal of the tournament, an
amazing hit from the midfield stripe! 4-0 — absolutely stunning. The only
danger for the U.S. now is that the second half might be so boring it’ll be
preempted by an “Alf” rerun.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">17’ – No Japanese huddle after this one. Yeah, forget it:
The huddles are useless. Maybe the huddles were the problem.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">20’ – Carli Lloyd has scored the fastest hat trick in World
Cup Finals history. Let’s all say it together: </span><a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.youtube.com_watch-3Fv-3DaySAU6ptK7E&d=BQMFaQ&c=RAhzPLrCAq19eJdrcQiUVEwFYoMRqGDAXQ_puw5tYjg&r=_7IsPqzaq9Ud5RAy3YPB20YqjkkL77m69ctCNAHbFYI&m=PGXWqUERgfe_IsvjiXzn1mxz6Mh7MQ_SpwIEU4wEp2Y&s=0hfxubzAS131fK-XwuV11bxlVogiJYM9dpg_XTm2-18&e="><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">Geoff
Hurst[youtube.com]</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> is a bum.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">22’ – We should acknowledge that the U.S. has a huge
home-field advantage, since these matches are being played in Michigan’s Upper
Upper Peninsula (Canada).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">27’ – Goal Japan! 4-1! Okay, that goal means we’re one goal
away from this being interesting.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">29’ – Actually, Japan, having hit rock bottom, has finally
settled in to this match. They’re possessing the ball and playing their game.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">39’ – Japan makes its second first-half non-injury
substitution, and never have early substitutions come so late. You’re down 4-1,
coach; when it was 3-0 after 14 minutes, did you maybe have an inkling that
your game plan had gone awry?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">39’ – A Japanese player commits one of the most obvious
handballs I’ve ever seen, but it’s not called. Pretty much everyone in the
stadium stopped; I actually thought for a moment that the player would call a
pickup-game foul on herself. Watching the replay, there are Harlem
Globetrotters routines in which they don’t handle the ball that much.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Halftime: 4-1 USA. Well, that could not really have gone
much better. If I’m the Japanese coach, here’s my halftime talk: “What is
soccer, really? Just a bunch of people kicking a ball. Kinda dumb if you think
about it. The important thing is: We all got free airfare to Canada.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">52’ – Goal Japan! An own goal by Julie Johnston. Luckily for
Johnston, this will not be remembered as the own goal of the tournament.
Sorry, </span><a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.youtube.com_watch-3Fv-3DmYiYLDurFfg&d=BQMFaQ&c=RAhzPLrCAq19eJdrcQiUVEwFYoMRqGDAXQ_puw5tYjg&r=_7IsPqzaq9Ud5RAy3YPB20YqjkkL77m69ctCNAHbFYI&m=PGXWqUERgfe_IsvjiXzn1mxz6Mh7MQ_SpwIEU4wEp2Y&s=83FACC3xbQq4yTQGN5OXOoESFSUZBA0R3wULQmDhKdk&e="><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">Laura
Bassett</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, it’s true.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">53’ – 4-2. Do we have a game on our han …<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">54’ – No! No we don’t have a game on our hands! Heath puts
home a cross from Brian and it’s 5-2! Much like HBO’s “The Leftovers,”<i> </i>this
game looked for a second like it might get exciting but then didn’t.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">60’ – With this game seemingly in hand, I feel comfortable
devoting my time to reviewing the FIFA vanity-project film “</span><a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.youtube.com_watch-3Fv-3DJCjeD-2DJqd2s&d=BQMFaQ&c=RAhzPLrCAq19eJdrcQiUVEwFYoMRqGDAXQ_puw5tYjg&r=_7IsPqzaq9Ud5RAy3YPB20YqjkkL77m69ctCNAHbFYI&m=PGXWqUERgfe_IsvjiXzn1mxz6Mh7MQ_SpwIEU4wEp2Y&s=DyWCeiqubQgv8IsNOpDmCyGvsfiXPxTeRFqMrAF7XCA&e="><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">United
Passions</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">.” I watched it in its entirety for </span><a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.youtube.com_watch-3Fv-3Dqr6ar3xJL-5FQ&d=BQMFaQ&c=RAhzPLrCAq19eJdrcQiUVEwFYoMRqGDAXQ_puw5tYjg&r=_7IsPqzaq9Ud5RAy3YPB20YqjkkL77m69ctCNAHbFYI&m=PGXWqUERgfe_IsvjiXzn1mxz6Mh7MQ_SpwIEU4wEp2Y&s=wNR31eetDNbRmi-Wlgfd1BRxiSS5Rw_qgfuK_QaIx5w&e="><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">this
piece</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, making me one of the very few Americans to have seen the film, which
was recently confirmed as the </span><a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.cbssports.com_general_eye-2Don-2Dsports_25218330_fifa-2Dfilm-2Dunited-2Dnations-2Dlowest-2Dgrossing-2Din-2Dus-2Dbox-2Doffice-2Dhistory&d=BQMFaQ&c=RAhzPLrCAq19eJdrcQiUVEwFYoMRqGDAXQ_puw5tYjg&r=_7IsPqzaq9Ud5RAy3YPB20YqjkkL77m69ctCNAHbFYI&m=PGXWqUERgfe_IsvjiXzn1mxz6Mh7MQ_SpwIEU4wEp2Y&s=A1yChSPiJe9LGIMWz2ojuq62fI-XN35L0Sg0o-KJ_VQ&e="><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">lowest-grossing
film in US box office history</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">. It made only $918 in its theatrical run,
displacing the previous record-holder, the
horrifying-teddy-bear-come-to-life-child’s-romp “</span><a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.youtube.com_watch-3Fv-3DErcxDqhq0aA&d=BQMFaQ&c=RAhzPLrCAq19eJdrcQiUVEwFYoMRqGDAXQ_puw5tYjg&r=_7IsPqzaq9Ud5RAy3YPB20YqjkkL77m69ctCNAHbFYI&m=PGXWqUERgfe_IsvjiXzn1mxz6Mh7MQ_SpwIEU4wEp2Y&s=dcRxkdHd5rlP7QQG7KA7AaidQZZEY8gk_LdjanNWKVY&e="><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">Gooby</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">For the record: I have also seen “Gooby” and it is an
infinitely better film than “United Passions.” “United Passions” is excrement,
and I’d like to draw attention to the “r” in “excrement,” as I wouldn’t want
Rotten Tomatoes to misread that as “excellent” and spoil the film’s perfect
0 </span><a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.rottentomatoes.com_m_united-5Fpassions_&d=BQMFaQ&c=RAhzPLrCAq19eJdrcQiUVEwFYoMRqGDAXQ_puw5tYjg&r=_7IsPqzaq9Ud5RAy3YPB20YqjkkL77m69ctCNAHbFYI&m=PGXWqUERgfe_IsvjiXzn1mxz6Mh7MQ_SpwIEU4wEp2Y&s=0hKoSvkRdGYJVzd0bd88cp9IfaGtU_eybDr_2rppV3w&e="><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">percent
rating</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">. “United Passions” is what you’d get if a dental convention had a
baby with a condo board election in Coral Gables. It’s just old men sitting in
meetings and talking. It has sub-George-Lucas-level dialogue (come at me,
nerds!). It has three — three! — extended sequences of people silently voting.
It has a montage of the ‘86 World Cup that involves lots of Sepp Blatter
looking out the window of an airplane and exactly zero seconds of the </span><a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.youtube.com_watch-3Fv-3D1wVho3I0NtU&d=BQMFaQ&c=RAhzPLrCAq19eJdrcQiUVEwFYoMRqGDAXQ_puw5tYjg&r=_7IsPqzaq9Ud5RAy3YPB20YqjkkL77m69ctCNAHbFYI&m=PGXWqUERgfe_IsvjiXzn1mxz6Mh7MQ_SpwIEU4wEp2Y&s=b7ib1dBh3i1eUj1L4LaPhBoc26T83jUyGTnsfKHX1nw&e="><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">greatest
goal ever scored</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">. It stars Tim Roth as Sepp Blatter, meaning the
psychotic monkey general Roth played in “The Planet of the Apes” is now his
second most villainous character. It is also, by itself, circumstantial
evidence of corruption in FIFA, as seemingly none of its $29 million budget is
on the screen. If you want to see a film about FIFA, don’t see “United
Passions”; see the one they’re going to make in five years about FIFA’s
downfall.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">80’ – Not much going on here except for the U.S. closing the
game out. The USA are absorbing the pressure and that’s all they have to do.
Now it’s just a matter of who gets the cameo substitutions; so far we’ve had
O’Hara and Wambach, looks like Rampone will be next. And after that: Mia Hamm,
Michelle Akers, and — what the heck — Billie Jean King. Take a bow, ladies.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">85’ – There will be plenty of debate about where this team
and these players belong in the pantheon of U.S. women’s soccer, but one thing
is beyond debate: Michelle Akers had </span><a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__a.espncdn.com_photo_2012_0514_espnw-5Fa-5Fakers-5F27-5F576.jpg&d=BQMFaQ&c=RAhzPLrCAq19eJdrcQiUVEwFYoMRqGDAXQ_puw5tYjg&r=_7IsPqzaq9Ud5RAy3YPB20YqjkkL77m69ctCNAHbFYI&m=PGXWqUERgfe_IsvjiXzn1mxz6Mh7MQ_SpwIEU4wEp2Y&s=DSVHM3lN1qJkANtQQ_pKH8S1R5m-F4QsHvjwIcyf6Sc&e="><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">the
best hair</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> in U.S. women’s soccer history. The golden mane of a lion,
that one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">90’ + 2’ – Just counting down the seconds to history now …
almost time to celebrate! Anyone who did not blow their hands off yesterday:
get ready to light your extra fireworks now!<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Full time: 5-2 USA! WORLD CUP CHAMPIONS! The U.S. will
receive their medals from beautiful women in cocktail dresses. (What? No! It
should be shirtless beefcakes in bow ties. Do they not have Chippendales in
Canada?) But no matter: It’s a third star for the U.S. women! Just 47 to go to
honor the whole nation, ladies!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Player
ratings</span></u></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u> (first
for the match, then for the whole tournament):<o:p></o:p></u></b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Solo: 6, 7. The rightful winner of the Golden Glove, though
she didn’t have much to do. In the last two matches she actually got in the
habit of “saving” shots that were several yards wide of the post, presumably
out of boredom.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Klingenberg: 8, 9. Not only made </span><a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.youtube.com_watch-3Fv-3DpT7b2KjLpI0&d=BQMFaQ&c=RAhzPLrCAq19eJdrcQiUVEwFYoMRqGDAXQ_puw5tYjg&r=_7IsPqzaq9Ud5RAy3YPB20YqjkkL77m69ctCNAHbFYI&m=PGXWqUERgfe_IsvjiXzn1mxz6Mh7MQ_SpwIEU4wEp2Y&s=pFo968J_HvmtQv5qMajD41DTkvbVIUCz1KJ8DkNt_pA&e="><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">full
use</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> of her towering 5-2 frame, she was arguably the team’s best
offensive player for the first half of the tournament. Fullbacks don’t get
enough credit; you can make a case that Klingenberg should be the team’s MVP.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Sauerbrunn: 9, 9. She basically didn’t put a foot wrong the
entire tournament; she’d get my vote for MVP. Why does she hunch over like that
when she’s off the ball? Whatever — it works.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Johnston: 5, 7.5. Some not-awesome moments in the last two
matches, but a very good tournament overall.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Krieger: 7, 8.5. Another neglected fullback! Look: I know
when you’re 7, you put the worst player at fullback. But that’s not the case at
the highest levels. Fullbacks should get more love.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Holiday: 7, 4. You have to say this about the midfield: They
showed up when it counted. Or at least when it counted most.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Brian: 9, 7. Had a slow start to the tournament, but came on
very strong and ended up looking like a future star. She also pronounces her
name “Brian,” like some dude you know instead of “Bree-on” like some French
dude you know, and I like that lack of pretension.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Heath: 8.5, 6: The offense sprang to life when they changed
the formation, and Heath was a big part of that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Lloyd: 10, 7: So, I’m an idiot: I would have benched her
after the Colombia match.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Morgan: 5, 4. She didn’t really ever seem to play her way
into form.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Wambach: NR, 5. Even more valuable than a World Cup medal:
not having to spend a lifetime dealing with those “but she never won a
championship!” idiots.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Rampone: NR, 6. “I won the World Cup twice” is in the Hall
Of Fame of Awesome Brags next to “I Walked on the Moon” and “I Killed Bin
Laden.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">O’Hara: 6, 7.5. Every tournament, there’s one player who
just plays much better than expected and ends up getting a lot of minutes
(think Mastroeni in ‘02, Jimmy Conrad in ‘06). That was Kelley O’Hara.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Sydney Leroux: NR, 3.5. Had the disadvantage of playing the
part of the tournament when our midfield was completely comatose. Best tattoos
on the team, though.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Amy Rodriguez: NR, 3.5. No matter what, she’ll always be the
more likable A-Rod by miles and miles.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Christen Press: NR, 5.5. She scored a nice goal in the first
game and I was a little surprised that she wasn’t used more. Also if we’re
scoring tans: 10.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Whitney Engen, Shannon Boxx and Lori Chalupny: NR, NR. Thank
you for your application but at the moment we do not have any vacancies.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Backup goalkeepers Alyssa Naeher and Ashlyn Harris: 10, 10.
I’ve never heard their names, so obviously they weren’t a distraction — that’s
exactly what you want in backup goalkeepers! Great job!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/soccer-insider/wp/2015/07/06/soccer-outsider-womens-world-cup-review-and-player-ratings/?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/soccer-insider/wp/2015/07/06/soccer-outsider-womens-world-cup-review-and-player-ratings/?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">‘Beast,’ ‘Weirdo,’ Choker, Winner:
Carli Lloyd Is Bundle Of Contradictions<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">(By Michael E. Miller, Washington Post, 06 July 2015)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Unstoppable
“beast” or erratic turnover machine? Eccentric “weirdo” or boring and
blithe? Last-second hero or season-ending liability?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Choker or champion?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As U.S. Women’s National Team midfielder
Carli Lloyd stepped onto the field for Sunday’s World Cup final in Vancouver,
she was all of the above: a player who could be inspiring one moment and
infuriating the next; a player who had sandwiched two outstanding Olympics
titles with a 2011 World Cup final to forget. A player, in other
words, of many contradictions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Lloyd did her absolute best to simplify her confusing
résumé with a clearly dominant display on Sunday, scoring three goals
in 16 minutes and powering her team to its first World Cup trophy in 16 years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the final whistle blew and gold confetti
fell on Lloyd, sportswriters and soccer fans lined up to
celebrate her — and rightly so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Carli
Lloyd has a performance for the ages,” ran the headline in her native New
Jersey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even the White House chimed in
with praise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">What a win for
Team USA! Great game </span></span></i><a href="https://twitter.com/CarliLloyd"><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">@CarliLloyd</span></span></i></a><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">! Your country is so proud of all of you.
Come visit the White House with the World Cup soon.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">— President
Obama (@POTUS) </span></span></i><a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/617860799953010688"><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">July 6, 2015</span></span></i></a><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The accolades were well earned, but they don’t erase Lloyd’s
complex and- <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>yes- contradictory career,
which has been a veritable roller coaster ride up and down over
the past six years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a sports world of
slogans and seconds-long Sports Center clips, Lloyd shows how
misleadingly simple labels — whether “beast” or “weirdo,” goat or great — can
be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She also shows how fine the line is
between winning and losing. Despite its emphatic 5-2 triumph over Japan on
Sunday, the U.S. Women’s National Team was — dare we say it? —
downright boring at times during this tournament. And Lloyd was not
without blame.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In many ways, the midfielder encapsulates American soccer:
athletic but sometimes artless, disciplined but also prone to breakdowns,
capable of greatness but often coming up short.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Perhaps it’s because sports demand simple story lines, or maybe it
has more to do with the fact that women’s soccer is televised roughly every
four years in this country, but Lloyd functioned like an ink blot for
writers tackling this year’s World Cup, allowing them to see almost anything
they wanted to in the attacking midfielder.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“The player at the heart of the U.S. offense is a stone-cold
weirdo,” </span><a href="https://sports.vice.com/en_us/article/stone-cold-weirdo-carli-lloyd-leads-us-into-world-cup-final"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">opined
Vice</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">. “Take a look through her Instagram or Twitter feed for a few minutes.
She is a walking motivational post. She loves ice baths. Sometimes, these two
interests collide.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Carli Lloyd is the weirdest world class professional
athlete ever,” </span><a href="http://www.sbnation.com/soccer/2015/7/2/8887283/carli-lloyd-usa-japan-2015-womens-world-cup-final"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">argued
SB Nation</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, a stretch considering the uneven play of so many professional
athletes. “Lloyd is often so poor that people who have watched nearly every
single one of those 201 games she’s played for the national team forget the
point of her. They get angry, they scream at their television screens, they Tweet
insults, they text their friends things like ‘why the f— won’t Jill f—ing drop
Carli already?’, even though they know the answer to that question. The answer
isn’t at the forefront of their brains when they ask, but if they took a step
back, calmed down and thought really hard, they’d find it. Carli Lloyd is
a big-time player who scores big-time goals in big-time games.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But as a profile in the Wall Street Journal also made clear,
Lloyd’s basic approach to soccer is actually pretty banal: She just works harder
than everyone else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Like an
eighth-grader at travel-soccer practice, Lloyd sprints up the gym floor
dribbling only with her right foot, first the outside, then the inside,” </span><a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/what-carli-lloyd-means-to-the-u-s-womens-world-cup-soccer-team-1433439553"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">Matthew
Futterman wrote</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> before the tournament began a month ago. “Then she
does the same with her left. On one series, she fakes a kick before each touch,
making sure to raise one arm in the exact motion. On another she dips her
inside shoulder each time to accent a feint.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“It’s all about repetition,” Lloyd told the newspaper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While some of her teammates made
headlines with scantily clad photos, Lloyd was either working out or
hanging out with her fiancé, golf pro Brian Hollins, whom she has dated
for 15 years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Hard work. Repetition. Consistency. Ice. Inspirational
messages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If her “weirdo” public image
doesn’t quite add up, neither does Lloyd’s career.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After a Hall of Fame career at Rutgers, Lloyd
launched herself onto the national team in 2005. Three years later, she was the
hero at the 2008 Olympics with an overtime goal against Brazil.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then came the 2011 World Cup. Lloyd
didn’t just sky her penalty during the decisive shootout loss to Japan. She was
woeful before that game as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The
U.S. played some of its best soccer of the tournament with Lloyd on the bench
late in the semifinal against France,” </span><a href="http://www.sportingnews.com/soccer/story/2011-07-17/womens-world-cup-heroes-and-goats-hope-solo-abby-wambach-japan-homare-sawa"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">wrote
Sporting News</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> in an article listing Lloyd as one of the cup’s “goats.”
“Perhaps she should have stayed there. She did little to help the Americans
keep the ball when trying to protect two leads Sunday, and her awful accuracy
when shooting was a prelude of shootout nightmares to come. Only a player
completely fatigued and/or overwhelmed by the moment hits a penalty kick as
high as Lloyd did.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Twelve months later, however, Lloyd was back to being the
hero. After starting the tournament on the bench, Lloyd scored both goals in a
narrow 2-1 final victory over Japan in the London Olympics. “When someone
tells me I can’t do something, I’m going to always prove them wrong,” </span><a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetorch/2012/08/10/158502155/womens-olympic-soccer-final-u-s-vs-japan-for-gold"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">she
said</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">. “That’s what champions do.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="aef844ea41"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="f09b74d647"></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">By this summer, Lloyd was supposed
to be a sure and steady-footed veteran. When Abby Wambach dropped to the bench,
Lloyd even acted as captain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But her play proved erratic once again. Lloyd failed to feed
the forwards the ball, spraying errant passes across the field, and the U.S.
struggled to score.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For many, it was a
familiar sight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“You’ve watched her turn
in terrible performances in countless friendlies, and in the group stage of the
World Cup,” </span><a href="http://www.sbnation.com/soccer/2015/7/2/8887283/carli-lloyd-usa-japan-2015-womens-world-cup-final"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">wrote
SB Nation</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">. “You think she should be dropped to the bench, even though you
know what’s coming. Part of you, even though you’re a fan of this team and want
them to win, hopes that she doesn’t score, just so the mystique of Carli Lloyd
can go away. If she goes an entire tournament without a game-winning goal or
assist, maybe then we can finally move on and replace her with someone who
doesn’t make a dozen turnovers per game, ones which AYSO coaches wouldn’t
tolerate.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Writer Kevin McCauley went so far as to call her “a
relic of a time gone by.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Her turnovers
weren’t punished as harshly when women’s soccer was a game that was mostly
about individual athleticism, and it’s not like there were considerably less
turnover-prone players behind her,” he said. “But as the years have gone by and
the game has shifted into something different, one now defined by midfield
positioning and possession, Lloyd’s deficiencies have gradually become more
obvious. Now that every top team has technically skilled, tactically drilled,
do-everything midfielders — including the United States —
Lloyd sticks out like a sore thumb. ‘Oh god,’ you realize, ‘that’s how
everyone used to play soccer. How did we watch that? We’ve come so far.'”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">It’s not just armchair coaches that scratch their heads
wondering how Lloyd can somehow be so fearsome at times and yet awful at
others. It’s real coaches, too. Lloyd’s own coaches.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Carli Lloyd was a challenge to coach,”
former coach Pia Sundhage </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/10/sports/soccer/for-pia-sundhage-swedens-itinerant-coach-its-old-home-week.html?_r=2"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">told
the New York Times</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">. “When she felt that we had faith in her, she could be
one of the best players. But if she began to question that faith, she could be
one of the worst.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Pia, you’ve
unleashed the beast,” warned Lloyd’s teammate turned broadcaster Heather Mitts
ahead of the U.S.’s group stage showdown with Sweden, Sundhage’s current team.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I plan to respond on the field,” Lloyd told
Sports Illustrated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The result? An
insipid, scoreless draw in which Lloyd and the rest of her team created little
excitement.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But then Lloyd buried a penalty against Colombia in the
round of 16 and the confidence that had flickered on and off insider her
seemed to burst into flame. She climbed over an opponent to bury a game-winning
header in the quarterfinal against China and then cooly slotted home another
penalty kick against No. 1 Germany in the semi-final.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="eb3641afef"></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">On Sunday evening,
Lloyd seemed to finally unleash the “beast” mode that Mitts had warned about.
She scored a screamer off a set piece in the third minute, added a tap-in two
minutes later, and launched an audacious half-field lob over the
bewildered Japanese goalie’s head in minute 16.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The hat trick was the fastest in World Cup history for either sex,
and the first in a women’s World Cup final.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“‘Big Game Carli’ delivers” </span><a href="http://espn.go.com/espnw/news-commentary/2015worldcup/article/13201986/big-game-carli-delivers-world-cup-us"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">declared
ESPN</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The article ignored Lloyd’s 2011 final miss and glossed over
her other ups and downs. “Lloyd certainly had her struggles early on,” Jeff
Carlisle begrudgingly admitted, “but she stayed the course and benefited
immensely from a tactical switch by U.S. manager Jill Ellis that saw her pushed
closer to goal.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, Carlisle
couldn’t resist a dig at Lloyd’s former coach, writing “one is left to
wonder what former U.S. manager Pia Sundhage thinks about her former player
now.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there is no need to wonder, or
to pretend that Lloyd has always been “Big Game Carli.” Sundhage
herself explained how “challenging,” contradictory players
like Lloyd are ultimately worth the headache.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Those players who always do exactly what I
say, then that’s not (always) good,” </span><a href="http://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/06/pia-sundhage-calls-hope-solo-a-piece-of-work"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">Sundhage
said</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Some players are very
challenging and those players, they create gold.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/06/beast-weirdo-choker-winner-world-cup-star-carli-lloyd-is-bundle-of-contradictions/?wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/06/beast-weirdo-choker-winner-world-cup-star-carli-lloyd-is-bundle-of-contradictions/?wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
</span><o:p><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
</span></o:p><br />
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span></o:p> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Why Hardly Anyone Sponsored The
Most-Watched Soccer Match In U.S. History<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span>(By Drew Harwell, Washington Post, 06 July 2015)<br />
<o:p></o:p> </div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn-0-htCdr6lpPE1Sk5oMLkUfJhAUKe-2o9XYyt37Rc_allPUMFuQ05EBcTDEXhRbxiz86maxuko_sKjv-0KXrg0KnLOiqJn0820pVPmkQbK6e8sUwwtvzCQinyaCfrlX8tUmUJIJfPug/s1600/WomansWorldCupTrophyHoist2015.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn-0-htCdr6lpPE1Sk5oMLkUfJhAUKe-2o9XYyt37Rc_allPUMFuQ05EBcTDEXhRbxiz86maxuko_sKjv-0KXrg0KnLOiqJn0820pVPmkQbK6e8sUwwtvzCQinyaCfrlX8tUmUJIJfPug/s400/WomansWorldCupTrophyHoist2015.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="a11a69b31c"></a><o:p> </o:p>The U.S. national team celebrates its 5-2 victory over Japan
in the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup soccer final at BC Place Stadium in
Vancouver, B.C. (Frank Fife/AFP/Getty Images)<o:p></o:p></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
For the U.S.
national team's stunning 5-2 <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/dcunited/with-historic-outburst-us-beats-japan-for-womens-world-cup-title/2015/07/05/1ed04790-2352-11e5-b77f-eb13a215f593_story.html"><span style="color: blue;">win</span></a> over
Japan at the Women's World Cup on Sunday, a rout that made the Americans the
first team ever to win three world championships, soccer's global
governing body will award the team $2 million — about 5 percent of the $35
million FIFA gave to the German victors of last year's World Cup.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And while viewers made the Sunday match
by far the <a href="http://sportstvratings.com/womens-soccer-nation-usa-japan-world-cup-final-averages-25-4-million-viewers-on-fox/3031/"><span style="color: blue;">most-watched</span></a> soccer
game in American TV history, little of that excitement could be seen in
the tourney's marketing deals. Fox grabbed an estimated $17 million in ads
from corporate sponsors of the elite women's matches — a
tiny fraction compared to the $529 million ESPN pocketed in sponsorship
revenue from last year's tournament in Brazil.<br />
<o:p></o:p> </div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
The World
Cup matches over the last month proved to be a showcase of dominance
for international women's soccer, led by the powerhouse American team and
stars like Abby Wambach, the game's all-time leading scorer, regardless of
gender. Attendance for the games in Canada surpassed 1.2 million, a
Women's World Cup record, while U.S. ratings for the final game topped
even the viewership of this year's NBA Finals or Stanley Cup.<br />
<o:p></o:p> </div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
But the
financial details also showed how some of the ugliest imbalances
between the sexes still prevail, even in The Beautiful Game. The Women's
World Cup attracted far fewer of the marketing blitzes or mega-deals
seen in men's tournaments, and far less of the cash or corporate support,
a glaring loss for players and fans of the world's most popular
sport.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Critics have slammed the
tournament from the start for its strange disparity between men's and
women's play. While male World Cup players ran across fields of
grass, women's teams played on artificial turf, leaving them scarred
with nasty turf burns (and sparking an ongoing gender-discrimination
lawsuit from some of the top players last year).<br />
<o:p></o:p> </div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
But the
financial rewards for women's teams and their players at the end of
the tourney revealed a more subtle gulf. The $2 million prize,
though double the purse from the 2011 Women’s World Cup, is only
one-quarter the $8 million that men's teams earned from <i>losing</i> in
the first round of last year's World Cup.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Men's teams played for a total of $576 million in World Cup prizes last
year, compared to the $15 million up for grabs from women's teams
this year. For perspective, that's less than what FIFA paid to
make "United Passions," the league's $27 million history
film, which was almost universally panned and made only $918 (yes, less
than $1,000) at the American box office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>FIFA has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQI8Ca7aZ10"><span style="color: blue;">defended</span></a> its
bigger prize pool by pointing to the mens' tourney's size and age: The World
Cup brings in $4.5 billion in direct revenue and has been played 20 times,
compared to the seven Women's World Cups.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But the extra millions would have gone a long way for the National
Women's Soccer League, America's most elite professional soccer corps, which
set minimum salaries this season at $6,842 — about one-ninth what
male players in Major League Soccer make at the low end, about $60,000.<o:p></o:p><br />
</div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span>It's not for
lack of talent. The U.S. national team won the Women's World Cup two times
before, in 1991 and 1999, the latter of which was immortalized when
defender Brandi Chastain whipped her jersey off after a shootout
win. Wambach's 183 international goals dwarfs those of the top U.S. men's
player, Landon Donovan, who has scored 57.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Nor for a lack of name recognition: Popular players such as
Wambach, Mia Hamm and goalkeeper Hope Solo have laid the foundation
for rising stars like Carli Lloyd, who on Sunday netted the
first hat trick in a World Cup final, for men or women, since 1966.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><o:p></o:p> Yet even for
all of their success, the players have gotten next to none of the
backing or recognition of their male counterparts. Before winning the
Golden Ball, an award for the World Cup's best player, Lloyd's few
sponsorships included a deal last year with Usana Health
Sciences, a seller of dietary supplements, and an agreement last week
to represent Visa during the 2016 Olympics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(For comparison: Last year's Golden Ball
winner, Argentine star Lionel Messi, is one of the world's highest-paid
athletes, expected to take home $74 million in winnings and marketing
deals this year.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That odd
disparity has led some companies to change the way they roll out
offerings for a growing pool of fans. For the first time this year,
Nike <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-22/nike-is-finally-selling-u-s-women-s-soccer-team-jerseys-to-men"><span style="color: blue;">started</span></a>
selling jerseys for the Women's World Cup-winning team in men's sizes, quashing
a long-running double standard; men's team jerseys have sold in
women's sizes for years.<o:p></o:p><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
Meanwhile,
other changes have helped highlight just how far the sport still has to
go. Video-game giant EA Sports said it will, for the first time
ever, <a href="http://www.polygon.com/2015/5/28/8673851/finally-ea-sports-fifa-games-will-feature-women-players"><span style="color: blue;">include</span></a> women's
national teams in its latest edition of one of the world's
best-selling video-game franchises, FIFA 16.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The change was announced after years of petitions in which signers <a href="https://www.change.org/p/tell-ea-sports-to-include-female-characters-on-their-soccer-games"><span style="color: blue;">said</span></a> they
wanted young girls "to be able see themselves in the games they
love." Still, only a smattering will be included: 12 women's teams are
expected, compared to the more than 600 men's teams (and more than 16,000 male
players) in last year's <a href="https://www.easports.com/fifa/news/2014/fifa-15-leagues-and-clubs"><span style="color: blue;">edition</span></a>,
FIFA 15.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The business of this year's
Women's World Cup saw some big gains over the 2011 tourney. Fox aired
16 matches live with ads from more than 20 corporate sponsors, including
Fiat and Nationwide Insurance, and brought in sponsorship revenue
that was nearly three times as much as in 2011.<br />
<o:p></o:p> </div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
But
companies that invested exhaustively in ad blitzes and social media around last
year's tournament, like Adidas, proved staggeringly quiet
during the Women's World Cup. And some of the ones who took up the slack,
a FOX executive <a href="http://adage.com/article/media/fox/298798/"><span style="color: blue;">told</span></a> Ad
Age, were "non-traditional" advertisers relatively unseen in
sports broadcasts, including grooming and personal-care brands like Clorox
and Tampax.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many companies, analysts
said, remain skittish to spend money on a sport without the proven
returns of a bigger spectacle, like professional football, or the market
power other sports can command on shelves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>"The fan base is growing for the Women's World Cup, but it will
take some more time," Ellen Schmidt-Devlin, director of the University of
Oregon Sports Product Management Program, <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2015/04/womens_world_cup_should_have_i.html"><span style="color: blue;">told</span></a> the
Oregonian. "Translating watching sports into buying sports products is
more direct for men than women."<br />
<o:p></o:p> </div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
But others
argue that it's all part of a bitter cycle: Women's sports are seen
as lesser moneymakers, ignored in media and merchandising deals,
given less dramatic coverage, fewer cameras, less airtime - all of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>which might help explain why the sport is
overlooked in the first place. An <a href="http://com.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/06/05/2167479515588761.full.pdf+html"><span style="color: blue;">updated</span></a> 25-year
study in the journal Communication & Sport last month, titled "It’s
Dude Time!," found that women's sports were featured in about 2
to 5 percent of all sports coverage last year, less than even in 1989.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The women's tournament's strong
ratings and increased visibility, analysts said, could compel
more networks and sponsors to take notice. But for now, players and boosters
of the sport may have to continue to fight for cash and recognition off
the field.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"It’s like anything:
There is always an evolution, there’s always a process to go through before
equal footing is gained," U.S. coach Jill Ellis <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/jul/04/womens-world-cup-fifa-tournament-mens"><span style="color: blue;">told</span></a> the
Guardian earlier this month. "I hate to say money is the driving
factor in a lot of things, but this is a very popular sport. Sponsors
understand it, the general public understands it, so hopefully the
establishment takes note and understands that."<br />
<o:p></o:p> </div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span>
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<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/06/the-sad-gender-economics-of-the-womens-world-cup/?wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/06/the-sad-gender-economics-of-the-womens-world-cup/?wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1</span></a>
<o:p></o:p></div>
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</span></span><br />
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span></o:p> </div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Heartbreak Of 4 Years Ago Haunts Wambach,
But ‘That Fuels Our Fire’<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">(By Steven Goff, Washington Post, 04 July 2015)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The date is
seared in Abby Wambach’s mind, a daily cue reminding her and the rest of the
U.S. women’s national soccer team of what they missed out on four summers ago
in Frankfurt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“July 17, 2011,” she said
pointedly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wambach said she does not
remember the date of her U.S. debut or first goal, her pro championship with
the Washington Freedom a dozen years ago, the two Olympic gold medals or the
day she became the greatest international goal scorer. She does, however,
remember when the </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/womens-world-cup-japan-upsets-us-in-a-penalty-kick-shootout-to-win-the-championship/2011/07/17/gIQA9PFjKI_story.html" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">United States lost to Japan in the World Cup final</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">,
a match that was decided on penalty kicks after the Americans surrendered leads
late in both regulation and extra time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Four years
on, it still gnaws at her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It’s always
there, and that is what happens in heartbreak,” Wambach said ahead of Sunday’s
championship rematch at sold-out BC Place. “Heartbreak never goes away, but now
we have an opportunity.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s an
opportunity for the Americans to win their first cup title since 1999 and
become the first country to hoist the Women’s World Cup trophy three times.
It’s an opportunity to celebrate with thousands of traveling supporters who
have trekked across Canada for four weeks and flooded this waterfront city in a
swath of red, white and blue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s an
opportunity for the current generation of players to shake free of constant
comparisons to the 1999 squad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in
her fourth and final attempt, it’s an opportunity for Wambach to win the only
treasure that has evaded her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“That
fuels our fire. That motivates us,” she said of the 2011 setback. “We know what
that feels like from four years ago, and it’s not a good feeling.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Ten days
before the World Cup began, Wambach was asked whether she needed a world title
to complete her extraordinary portfolio.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“You’re damn right I need it,” she said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Wambach’s pursuit this year comes in a secondary role. At 35, she is no
longer the daily focal point of the U.S. attack. She did start three of the
first four matches, scoring the lone goal in the group finale against Nigeria,
but those assignments came in large part because Alex Morgan, returning from a
knee injury, was not ready to play 90 minutes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Wambach was
a late-game substitute in the round of 16 and quarterfinals. In all likelihood,
with Jill Ellis’s squad in rhythm after defeating Germany, Wambach will wait
her turn again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Wambach said
she is okay with her place in the squad and doing what best serves the team. It
does feel different, she admitted, after starting for a dozen years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It’s nerve-wracking. It’s brutal. I’m not
saying this because I’m sitting on the bench and not playing, but it’s taking
years off my life,” she said. “I now understand why parents say how stressful
it is because you don’t have any control about what is going on unless you are
on the pitch.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ellis met with Wambach
several times ahead of the World Cup to discuss the striker’s role. “She has
been exemplary,” Ellis said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">As Wambach
embraced the new role, her teammates embraced her, knowing it’s the final
go-round. Wambach has not announced her retirement from international soccer,
but following this tournament, Ellis is preparing to integrate more young
players ahead of next year’s Olympics in Brazil.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wambach’s bond with longtime teammates
continues to endure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I could play with
her with my eyes closed,” said </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/dcunited/lloyd-once-nearly-quit-the-us-team-is-sure-glad-she-didnt/2015/06/28/b50a4ed4-1dd2-11e5-a135-935065bc30d0_story.html" title="www.washingtonpost.com"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">midfielder Carli Lloyd</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, the team’s leading
scorer in this tournament with three goals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“I always know where she is going to be. I always know what she is
thinking. She has been a true leader. We wouldn’t be where we are without her.
And I want nothing more than to help her legacy by winning the World Cup. I
want to win it for myself and the team, but being her last one, I will do
whatever it takes.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Defeating
Japan in the 2012 Olympic final in London softened the World Cup blow a year
earlier, but a victory Sunday would turn the page on the 1999 spectacle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It’s been a lot of years between ’99 and
now, and it’s time,” said defender Christie Rampone, a member of the ’99 squad
who, at age 40, is also playing in her last World Cup. “After this game,
hopefully we end up on top and it grows the game of soccer. I hope it’s not
compared to ’99 anymore. I hope it’s leading on to the next team that wins the
World Cup.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This year,
while the Americans (5-0-1) have made continual improvement as the tournament
has transpired, Japan has won six consecutive one-goal matches. It secured
passage to the final Wednesday on an own goal by England’s Laura Bassett in the
dying moments in Edmonton.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Japanese
team will also say goodbye to a revered player, 36-year-old midfielder Homare
Sawa, who is in her record sixth World Cup. Like Wambach, she has made periodic
starts in this tournament.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“She has had
such a storied career. I was so happy she was able to win that 2011 World Cup
because she put the team on her back,” Wambach said. “That was their time.” </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Maybe, on
Sunday, it is the U.S. team’s time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p><br />
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/dcunited/despite-her-success-abby-wambach-remembers-the-one-that-got-away/2015/07/04/66dfc0fe-2264-11e5-aeb9-a411a84c9d55_story.html"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/dcunited/despite-her-success-abby-wambach-remembers-the-one-that-got-away/2015/07/04/66dfc0fe-2264-11e5-aeb9-a411a84c9d55_story.html</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Indictments Are Just The Start Of
FIFA Scrutiny<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">(By Sally Jenkins, Washington Post, 27 May 2015)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Attorney
General Loretta E. Lynch and other U.S. law enforcement officials launched a
sweeping effort to clean up corruption in world soccer that she termed “rampant,
systemic and deep-rooted” Wednesday, indicting 14 influential figures in the
globe’s most popular sport on racketeering and bribery charges. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In a series of remarkable scenes, FBI agents raided
international offices in Miami Beach, while Swiss authorities working with the
United States escorted some of the game’s highest dignitaries from a five-star
hotel in Zurich, where they were meeting, and detained them for extradition.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Officials from the Justice Department, FBI and IRS jointly
announced the indictments of nine officials from </span><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/dcunited/fifas-powerful-world-is-shaken-by-us-indictments-arrests/2015/05/27/f7c97680-048e-11e5-93f4-f24d4af7f97d_story.html?hpid=z1"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">soccer’s
world governing body, known as FIFA</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, and five sports executives at a news
conference at the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York.
The </span><a href="http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/sports/the-us-indictments-unsealed-may-27-2015-pertaining-to-corruption-within-fifa/1559/"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">47-count
indictment</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> spelled out how $150 million in bribes were allegedly
solicited by FIFA officials for vote-rigging to send events to certain
countries or steer business to various companies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Officials emphasized this is just the start
of their investigation. Among the subjects of ongoing scrutiny, the law
enforcement officials said, are banking institutions through which bribes
flowed and sponsors who may have participated in alleged kickback schemes. The
indictments contain 75 references to “co-conspirators.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The beautiful game
was hijacked,” FBI director James Comey said. “The defendants fostered a
culture of corruption and greed that created an uneven playing field for the
biggest sport in the world. Undisclosed and illegal payments, kickbacks and
bribes became a way of doing business at FIFA.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In colorful detail, the indictments described officials at the very top
of the game engaging in more than two decades of relentless corruption,
including an alleged $10 million bribe to award the 2010 World Cup to
South Africa with that government’s cooperation and a FIFA official passing out
envelopes stuffed with $40,000 in cash to buy votes in the 2011 FIFA
presidential election. It also outlined bribes for lucrative media and marketing
rights for World Cup qualifiers and other events. According to Lynch, one FIFA
official alone received $10 million in bribes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>U.S. officials said they are working in close
cooperation with the office of the Swiss attorney general, which announced its own
related though separate criminal investigation into suspicion of money
laundering, criminal mismanagement and “unjust enrichment” around </span><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/fifa-no-plans-to-revisit-world-cup-votes-in-wake-of-corruption-probes/2015/05/27/132c0eb6-045c-11e5-bc72-f3e16bf50bb6_story.html"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">FIFA’s
controversial awarding of the 2018 World Cup to Russia and the 2022 World Cup
to Qatar</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">. Swiss authorities seized electronic data and documents from FIFA
headquarters in Zurich.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Rumors of corruption have swirled around the awarding of the
World Cup to both countries; last year the Times of London reported to a
parliamentary committee that it had information that Russia won the bid partly
by giving away artwork from its state collection. A FIFA internal report on the
bid process written by former U.S. prosecutor Michael Garcia was suppressed,
and Garcia has disavowed FIFA’s summary of his work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander
Lukashevich expressed unhappiness with the investigation, calling it “another
case of illegal extraterritorial application of U.S. laws” in a statement on
the ministry Web site. “We hope this will in no way be used to tarnish the
international football organization in general and its decisions.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Officials from FIFA, the French abbreviation for Federation
Internationale de Football Association, were rousted from their rooms by Swiss
agents at the luxurious Baur Au Lac hotel on the banks of the Zurich canal,
where they had congregated for their annual meeting. They were taken away in
police cars while at least one hotel staffer tried to shield the proceedings by
holding up a white bed-linen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According
to U.S. law enforcement, among those in custody were FIFA vice president and
executive committee member Jeffrey Webb of the Cayman Islands, FIFA vice
president and executive committee member Eugenio Figueredo of Uruguay, FIFA
executive committee member-elect Eduardo Li of Costa Rica, and officials of the
Nicaraguan, Venezuelan and Brazilian football organizations. They face up to 20
years in prison if convicted of racketeering.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>IRS criminal investigation chief Richard Weber said at the news
conference, in which officials seem to vie for the best sound bite, “This is
really the World Cup of fraud.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The FIFA annual congress is expected to reelect its
79-year-old president, Joseph “Sepp” Blatter, to a fifth term Friday with
little opposition, though Blatter appeared Wednesday to lose the backing of
traditional football power</span><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/early-lead/wp/2015/05/27/fifas-house-of-cards-continues-to-tumble-as-uefa-and-brazil-deride-the-organization/"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">Brazil,
which called for the vote to be postponed</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The Swiss-born Blatter has been the head of FIFA since 1998 and wields
enormous international influence, given his control over the immensely popular
World Cup and its related revenues, which in 2014 amounted to $4 billion.
Blatter is not named in the indictments, and U.S. officials declined to comment
on whether he is a subject of their ongoing investigation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Blatter said in a statement that he and FIFA
are cooperating with authorities. “As unfortunate as these events are, it
should be clear that we welcome the actions and investigations by the U.S. and
Swiss authorities and believe that it will help to reinforce measures that FIFA
has already taken to root out any wrongdoing in football,” it read.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The U.S. indictments allege a pattern of chronic corruption
in FIFA that dates back 24 years. Among the charges are that an unnamed
FIFA official arranged to pay members $40,000 apiece simply to hear his pitch
to become FIFA president in 2011 at a meeting in a Hyatt Regency in Trinidad
and Tobago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The payments were allegedly
coordinated by former FIFA vice president Jack Warner, a member from Trinidad
and Tobago who resigned in 2011 and is among those indicted. Warner is quoted
telling the bribed FIFA members, “There are some people here who think they are
more pious than thou. If you’re pious, open a church, friends. Our business is
our business.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They also allege that
Warner collected a bribe for arranging a soccer event by sending a member of
his family to Paris to collect a briefcase packed with cash in $10,000 bundles.
Warner issued a statement Wednesday denying the charges.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">However, at the same time it unsealed the indictments, U.S.
law enforcement announced that four individuals and two corporate defendants
already have pleaded guilty to charges as part of the investigation. They
included Warner’s sons Daryll and Daryan Warner, as well as Brazilian sports
marketer Jose Hawilla and former FIFA official Chuck Blazer of the United
States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Blazer’s guilty plea and
apparent cooperation with U.S. law enforcement seem to have been the most
important building block in the investigation — and will have the largest
ramifications for other FIFA officials who have something to fear from the U.S.
and Swiss investigations. Blazer was for many years the most powerful American
in soccer, a member of the FIFA executive committee from 1996 to 2013 and the
former general secretary of CONCACAF, the regional federation of FIFA that
oversees soccer in North America, Central America and the Caribbean.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Blazer admitted to 10 counts of tax evasion, racketeering,
wire fraud and money laundering. Contained in the information documents against
him are descriptions of how bribes were solicited and distributed at the
highest committee-member levels of FIFA, including “bulk cash smuggling.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Blazer documents describe a
$1 million bribe paid by a Moroccan official to a FIFA executive committee
member in hopes of securing the 1998 World Cup and a series of bribes to steer
media and marketing rights to the CONCACAF Gold Cup. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Blazer was also involved in negotiations to
accept bribes from Morocco and South Africa over the 2010 World Cup site.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/us-indicts-world-soccer-officials-in-alleged-150-million-fifa-bribery-scandal/2015/05/27/4630ccaa-0477-11e5-bc72-f3e16bf50bb6_story.html?wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/us-indicts-world-soccer-officials-in-alleged-150-million-fifa-bribery-scandal/2015/05/27/4630ccaa-0477-11e5-bc72-f3e16bf50bb6_story.html?wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Abby Wambach: Her Aim Is True<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">(By Mia Hamm, Time, 16 April 2015)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i>Hamm, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, was twice named
FIFA world player of the year</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Abby Wambach
has always been fearless. Even as a rookie on the U.S. women’s national team,
she would score goals that made me say, “Gosh, if she doesn’t win the ball,
she’s probably going to get crushed.” She never blinked. If it is what her team
needed, it is what she was going to do. How can you not cheer for that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As Abby has developed into a star, scoring
more international goals than any other player in history, she has embraced
being a leader. There are times when Abby just throws the team on her back and
wills it to victory when that looks almost impossible. Abby is also a great
role model for young fans and recently led the charge to get FIFA to use grass
for this summer’s Women’s World Cup, as it does for men. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Though she
lost the battle, the fight sent a powerful message about equality in sports.
Whether inspiring her team on the field or taking on important issues off it,
Abby uses her passion and fearlessness to lead by example.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Team USA is poised to do amazing things at
the World Cup. While I can’t predict what will happen, I know that under Abby,
they will never quit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<a href="http://time.com/3823298/abby-wambach-2015-time-100/?xid=emailshare"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">http://time.com/3823298/abby-wambach-2015-time-100/?xid=emailshare</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Abby Wambach On Making Her Last
Chance Count<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">(By Francesca Trianni, Time, 16 April 2015)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“I have one
more opportunity to win a World Cup for my country, I’ve never won one,” says
Wambach, a champion American soccer player. “I want to make my country proud.
And I know that in 2011 we did but we fell short, we didn’t come home with the
World Cup. I know people think we won the World Cup because of that Brazil
goal, but didn’t win. And I feel that hurt and the heartbreak every single
day.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://time.com/3822904/abby-wambach/?xid=emailshare"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">http://time.com/3822904/abby-wambach/?xid=emailshare</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">U.S. Women Poised To Advance, But
Improvements Are Needed<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">(By Steven Goff, Washington Post, 13 June 2015)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">A soccer
team is at its best when partnerships are in prime working order.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Three combinations form the spine of the U.S.
women’s national team lineup. Through two World Cup matches, though, only the
center backs, Julie Johnston and Becky Sauerbrunn, are in peak form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Central midfielders Carli Lloyd and Lauren
Holiday have put in the work but haven’t passed well or broken down defenses
through individual effort. On the front line, Coach Jill Ellis changed starters
between games and adjusted personnel during them but is still trying to
identify the ideal duo.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The
shortfalls have not stricken the U.S. operation. </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/soccer-insider/wp/2015/06/13/u-s-ties-sweden-1-1-at-womens-world-cup-video-match-report/"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">Despite
a 0-0 draw</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> with Sweden on Friday, the Americans remain</span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/sports/wp/2015/06/05/womens-world-cup-group-standings-and-scores/"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;"> atop
Group D </span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">with four points heading into the first-round finale Tuesday
against Nigeria (one point) in Vancouver.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Only a heavy defeat mixed with the outcome in the other group match —
Australia (three points) against Sweden (two) in Edmonton at the same time —
could knock the United States out of a top-two position and force the two-time
champions to sweat out third-place scenarios.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Two teams in each of the six groups will secure passage to the round of
16 while the third-place finishers will vie for the last four slots.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In every
major tournament, the Americans carry the weight of great expectations. When
women’s soccer launched in earnest 25 years ago, they’ve never failed to reach
the semifinals of a World Cup or Olympics. And upon their arrival in this
24-team competition, they joined Germany, Japan and France as favorites.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ellis’s squad has conceded only one goal and
not lost. But it hasn’t performed to standard either, raising questions about
its capability to reach the July 5 final in Vancouver.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Counting a 0-0 draw with South Korea in the
final tune-up two weeks ago, the attack has come up empty in two of the past
three matches. The forwards have been blanked in all three; left wing Megan
Rapinoe (two goals) and right wing Christen Press furnished the scoring in the
3-1 victory over Australia on Monday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“In
the first half, it’s been hard for us to find our rhythm,” said forward Alex
Morgan, who has been used off the bench as she seeks to regain form after
recovering from a knee injury.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Once we
start to wear teams down in the second half, we become more in control and gain
more of a rhythm. It’s been tough in the first half of these first two games.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Ellis
started Abby Wambach and Sydney Leroux in the opener, then added Morgan late.
In the second outing, she began with Leroux and Press, then inserted Amy
Rodriguez, Wambach and Morgan in the second half.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I don’t think it was as efficient as we
needed it to be,” Ellis said of the Leroux-Press partnership. “In terms of
quality looks and quality chances, we could have been better and more
productive.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">What’s in
store for the Nigeria match? It’s hard to predict. Complicating matters is
Morgan’s push for optimum fitness and form. She played 12 minutes in each of
the first two matches, but those close to the team do not expect her at full
effectiveness anytime soon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When in top
form, Morgan offers a blend of speed, improvisation and finishing touch. She
also changes the dynamic of the frontline and offers a greater scoring threat
than Leroux, who assisted on Press’s go-ahead goal against Australia but has
been generally static.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Wambach
remains an aerial warrior. But her lack of pace and mobility holds back team
rhythm. And when she had the opportunity to score with her head, she did not
finish: Two attempts against Australia glanced wide and a courageous diving bid
against Sweden was touched away by the leaping goalkeeper. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Lloyd and
Holiday haven’t manufactured many chances, leaving Rapinoe as the primary
playmaker from a wide position.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">There has
been better news in the back. Johnston, 23, was the most polished player on the
field Friday, timing tackles, reading the game and imposing a physical
presence. Sauerbrunn, primarily a reserve at the previous World Cup and
Olympics, was cool under pressure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“A
lot of teams aren’t getting tested as much, and we’re getting tested,” Ellis
said. “It’s good for us, it’s good for our younger players. Those are things
you hope will pay off later on.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/dcunited/us-women-poised-to-advance-but-improvements-are-needed/2015/06/13/d8f337ba-1220-11e5-a0fe-dccfea4653ee_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/dcunited/us-women-poised-to-advance-but-improvements-are-needed/2015/06/13/d8f337ba-1220-11e5-a0fe-dccfea4653ee_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">U.S. Women’s Soccer Team Not At Its
Best Before Round-Of-16 Match<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">(By Steven Goff, Washington Post, 21 June 2015)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The summer
solstice drenched this far northern outpost in more than 17 hours of sunlight
this weekend, perhaps a symbolic forerunner to brighter days for the U.S.
women’s soccer team.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is not to say
the Americans have been swathed in darkness during the World Cup campaign. They
did, after all, finish atop a difficult group to remain embedded among the
favorites ahead of the knockout stage of this month-long tournament. The next
obstacle is upstart Colombia in the round of 16 Monday night at Commonwealth
Stadium.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But from the beginning of this
adventure, </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/dcunited/us-women-rally-past-australia-for-3-1-win-in-world-cup-opener/2015/06/08/5f156054-0e46-11e5-a0fe-dccfea4653ee_story.html"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">a
3-1 victory over Australia</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> that was more arduous than the final
scoreline suggested, the Americans have not looked comfortable with themselves.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">They have
enjoyed fine moments — a good half here, a scoring spell there, dense defense
throughout — but not the complete performance that punctuated much of their 25
years of excellence. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">They have
gotten by. If not careful, though, they could soon be saying goodbye.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything seemed in place for a run to the
July 5 final in Vancouver: an emotional wave supplied by thousands of traveling
fans, a mostly healthy roster, experience and positional depth. Through the
group stage, though, the Americans failed to exhibit special qualities that
portend a championship.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Acknowledging
their shortfalls, Coach Jill Ellis and the players have leaned on the old
cliché that it’s better to be playing best at the end, not the start. Fair
enough, but they have made only incremental strides. They’ve been good but not
great.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>True, their path here was more
problematic than Germany, France, Brazil or Japan’s. But they were also
outplayed in the first half against Australia before rallying in the second.
They sputtered through a scoreless affair with Sweden and cheated defeat thanks
to Meghan Klingenberg’s goal-line clearance. Abby Wambach’s volley subdued
Nigeria. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Based on
history, rankings and reputation, the Americans have the cleanest path among
the favorites to reach the semifinals. On paper, Group D, the so-called Group
of Death, posed greater threats than the first two rounds of the knockout
stage: By defeating Colombia, they would face an inexperienced Chinese side in
Friday’s quarterfinal in Ottawa.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
Colombians, who stunned France en route to their first advancement in a major
international tournament, are not the slightest bit in awe of their highly
decorated opponents. In recent days, they have spoken in bold, confident terms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>American swagger has been more intimidating
than their actual play. And because that play is not at full capacity, the U.S.
team is bracing for a determined insurgence. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Colombia is
a fantastic team,” Ellis said. “They’ve got a lot of technical players, a lot
of special players. It’s a thoughtful transition; they try to pull you apart.
It’s going to be a great challenge for us.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Ellis’s
comments reflect her respect for Colombia’s accomplishments and perhaps
restraint about her own underperforming team. She realizes that, despite the
massive disparity in program resources and tradition, this is not going to be
easy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Aside from an emboldened foe, the
Americans will again confront their own limitations. Through three matches,
they have been defined by Hope Solo’s exceptional goalkeeping and Julie
Johnston and Becky Sauerbrunn’s seamless partnership in central defense; by
Megan Rapinoe’s energy and ingenuity on the left wing; by a void of creativity
in central midfield; and by a rotating set of five forwards.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Without U.S.
nuance and surprise, new ideas and unpredictability, opponents are better
prepared, if not fully equipped, for the trial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The Americans have conceded just one goal but haven’t scored in the run
of play since Rapinoe’s late clincher against Australia. Since then, the lone
goal came off a set piece on the brink of halftime against Nigeria: Wambach’s
leaping one-timer off Rapinoe’s corner kick.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Goal
production has been a concern for months now: five scoreless performances in 14
matches since December, an alarming figure given the wealth of attacking
riches. The longer they go without scoring or maintaining the lead, the tighter
they become. And lesser opponents have seized upon those faults.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The U.S.
program has never failed to reach the semifinals of a major tournament: five
Olympics and six prior World Cups. And in all likelihood, the second-ranked
Americans will break from their shell, cast aside Colombia and China and forge
a showdown with the top-ranked Germans in the semis in Montreal next week. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Through hard
times, they have always found a way, whether with ruthless domination or
late-game persistence (i.e. Wambach’s unfathomable equalizer against Brazil in
the quarterfinals four years ago in Germany).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This American squad, though, remains functionally incomplete. And unless
Ellis uncovers the answers soon, the World Cup trophy is likely to remain
overseas for another four years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/dcunited/us-womens-soccer-team-not-at-its-best-before-round-of-16-match-against-colombia/2015/06/21/b16d16fe-17c8-11e5-89f3-61410da94eb1_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/dcunited/us-womens-soccer-team-not-at-its-best-before-round-of-16-match-against-colombia/2015/06/21/b16d16fe-17c8-11e5-89f3-61410da94eb1_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Living In The Shadow Of The 99ers: Why This USWNT Will Never
Measure Up<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">(By Clinton Yates, Washington Post,
25 June 2015) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The players and coaches for this incarnation of the U.S.
women’s national soccer team are facing an unfortunate reality: Damned if they
do, damned if they don’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ahead of
Friday’s match against China, the U.S. squad is under siege from all sides — a
far cry from the adoration the Americans received the last time these two teams
faced off in a World Cup match in 1999.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then,
of course, the trophy was on the line. That ’99 title-winning squad, led
by head coach Tony DiCicco, set the standard for what Americans thought success
should look like on the pitch. Now, heading into the quarterfinals, the
entire identity of the U.S. team is in question and the group has yet to
capture the hearts and minds of fans the way they have in the past — like, say,
in 2011, when the final against Japan </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/football/2011/jul/18/womens-world-cup-twitter-record"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">broke
records on Twitter</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> — and we’ve yet to see that memorable moment that
we typically associate with a team on a tournament tear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why is that, exactly?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">First and foremost, there are the ever-present ’99ers and
the impossibly high bar they set. On the way to a World Cup title, the casual
American soccer fan became accustomed to winning. Olympic Gold medals aside,
that hasn’t happened in the World Cup in the 16 years since. And there are
plenty of people hanging around from that iconic ’99 team to naysay and tell
the current squad exactly what they’re doing wrong.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Tony DiCicco is a television analyst, who has no
problem criticizing the current coach, Jill Ellis, during games. The ’99 team’s
co-captain Julie Foudy is a soccer analyst for ESPN, as is her teammate from
that squad, Kate Markgraf. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps most
notably, there’s Michelle Akers, the U.S. soccer legend who was not only a key
member of the ’99 team, but also scored both goals in the 1991 Women’s World
Cup final to lead the U.S. over Norway. Monday, she </span><a href="https://soundcloud.com/siriusxmfc/uswnt-great-michelle-akers-has-some-issues-with-the-way-the-team-is-being-managed"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">went
on SiriusXM FC and laid it all out there</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“What I was thinking about when Tony was talking about the team and how
he would play — and he’s frustrated — he invested a lot of his heart and soul,
blood sweat and tears, all of that, into that team. And so did I, so did lots
of other people,” Akers said after Monday’s U.S. win over Colombia. “So, it’s
not just about, hey, Jill said she’s going to do it this way and she’s not, or
our team isn’t playing well. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s about,
that’s me out there. That’s my team. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
so when we struggle, or when, in our opinion, the coach isn’t handling the
personnel right… The lineup sucks. The subs are sketchy, we’re not all on the
same page. That’s me out there. And I can feel it with Tony, too. He’s taking
it personal, you know? That’s our baby out there, too.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">When the best-ever-to-do-it are out there informing the
world that the current team simply isn’t doing it right, it’s hard to build
momentum with fans. Just as important, if experts don’t like what they’re
looking at, the next step is to question their overall strategy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The U.S. women’s national team heads into
Friday’s quarterfinal match against China down two key players.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Americans have long relied on a style
designed to outpace other teams physically, but the rest of the world has
caught up using other methods. Comparatively, the U.S. team isn’t that fun to
watch anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“But as the rest of the
world sheds antiquated notions about women playing soccer and invests more
resources into women’s programs, it has given rise to serious national teams in
countries with rich footballing cultures,” Caitlin Murray </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/jun/08/womens-world-cup-has-the-us-failed-to-evolve-with-the-times"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">wrote
for The Guardian</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> before the tournament started. “Opponents are
becoming more technical, more tactically adept and highly sophisticated. Amid a
quickly changing landscape, sometimes USA still look to be playing the same
game they always have.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Of course, Akers isn’t buying that as an excuse, and echoes
the sentiments of many fans when she says that it shouldn’t matter. “We expect
— we know — the U.S. can overpower and be more talented, more physical and be
the best team, hands down, on any given day,” she said in the SiriusXM FC
interview. “We know, that should be. So to see us struggle again is
frustrating. Because why aren’t we? We should be.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Women’s World Cup President and CEO of the
1999 tournament Marla Messing thinks all of the scrutiny is a good thing, in
many regards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I think because it was to
a large extent brand new [in 1999], to a great majority of the public, there
wasn’t a lot to criticize. They were obviously fantastic women, incredibly
talented soccer players, intelligent, educated. They were ideal role models,”
Messing said Thursday in an interview with The Post. “So as the program’s
evolved, I think that the players are the same, but like anything else, because
it’s evolved and because it’s become much more established, people feel much
more comfortable being critical. I really think that’s more a sign of
success than a sign that the current group of players can’t match the standards
that the players of ’99 set.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But this U.S. team is also being hurt by a decline in
television exposure. When Fox Sports won the bid to broadcast the World Cup
back in 2011, shelling out $425 million for the tournaments through 2022, most
of the discussion surrounded the men’s game. But the women’s tournament
benefits greatly from being on a family of networks that many people are
already watching — and struggles in the shadows. Cross-promotion over channels
and platforms is critical for an event that otherwise isn’t drawing a ton of
eyeballs. For most, ESPN and ESPN2 are already default sports channels. Nearing
two years old, Fox Sports 1 is still unheard of to many and Fox Sports 2 is
even farther on the fringe. Just look at the numbers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="934cc903ca"></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“As of February, according to Nielsen, Fox
Sports 1 (formerly the Speed Network) was in about 85 million homes (or 73% of
households). Fox Sports 2 (once known as Fuel), was in 45 million homes (39% of
all households). Compare that to ESPN and ESPN2, both of which are in 94.4
million homes and 81% of all U.S. households with television,”
Marketwatch’s </span><a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-the-womens-world-cup-isnt-getting-coverage-in-the-us-2015-06-22"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">Jason
Notte explained Tuesday</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">. “Meanwhile, Fox’s sports streaming app, Fox Sports
Go, was made available on Apple, Android, Amazon Fire and Windows devices, but
still lacks support on devices including Roku, Microsoft’s Xbox One and Blu-ray
players that have access to ESPN’s WatchESPN streaming app.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Pair that lowered visibility with the fact that this year
the games are broadcast in prime time, forced to compete with other sporting
events and marquee programs. In 2011, the games in Germany amounted to daytime
watching here in the United States, timeslots in which there were far fewer
top-shelf rivals battling for viewers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Given
the obstacles it has encountered, it’s not exactly the USWNT’s fault that the
interest level has been middling this far into the tournament — and the squad
likely deserves more. As it gets ready to take on an old rival Friday, there is
considerably less fanfare for this group, one of the </span><a href="http://www.foxsports.com/soccer/fifa-womens-world-cup/story/a-tale-of-two-realities-the-uswnt-and-everyone-else-062215?adbsc=social_20150623_48058256&adbid=613473268205424640&adbpl=tw&adbpr=119593082"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">more
maligned</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span><a href="http://screamer.deadspin.com/the-uswnt-must-evolve-or-die-1713413264"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">U.S
women’s teams,</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> than years past. The honeymoon period long ago ended
for women’s soccer in the U.S. — whether it returns or not is anyone’s guess. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Former co-captain Foudy actually wondered about that very
possibility in the 2013 film “The 99ers.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“It’s still the most watched soccer match in U.S. history: 40 million
[viewers],” she said, referring to the U.S.-China final at the Rose Bowl. “And
someone once asked me, ‘Were you pioneers, or was ’99 an anomaly?’ And that
question actually has haunted me for a long time. Because we so badly didn’t
want to be the only ones. This is going to be the standard that everyone else
would then follow with. You think that’s happened?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unfortunately, it hasn’t. Not yet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Richard Goodmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16685247716193667869noreply@blogger.com0