Wednesday, August 31, 2016 12:47:02 PM
Asymmetrical warfare, campaign style
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump
(Getty Images, left, and Reuters)
Editorial
August 27, 2016
WE COULD write that both presidential candidates talked about race [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ahead-of-speech-targeting-trump-clinton-accuses-him-of-peddling-hate/2016/08/25/fc3f1ade-6a78-11e6-8225-fbb8a6fc65bc_story.html ] last Thursday, and we wouldn’t be wrong — but it wouldn’t really be an accurate portrayal, either. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton delivered [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/25/hillary-clintons-alt-right-speech-annotated/ ] a thoughtful and well-documented indictment of her opponent’s embrace of racist themes and his legitimization of previously fringe racist groups. Republican nominee Donald Trump, like a middle-schooler crying “I know what you are, but what am I,” retorted, without evidence or argumentation, that Ms. Clinton is a “bigot [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/08/24/donald-trump-shouts-hillary-clinton-is-a-bigot/ ].”
The contrast points to a wider challenge of this presidential campaign, for journalists and voters alike. It’s important to hold both candidates to high standards, and in a number of areas we believe Ms. Clinton is falling short [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/even-supporters-agree-clinton-has-weaknesses-as-a-candidate-what-can-she-do/2016/05/15/132f4d7e-1874-11e6-924d-838753295f9a_story.html ]. Yet in most of those areas Mr. Trump is so far from even minimal compliance [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trump-is-a-unique-threat-to-american-democracy/2016/07/22/a6d823cc-4f4f-11e6-aa14-e0c1087f7583_story.html ] with the expectations people have set for political leaders over the years that it is hard to put them in the same conversation.
Take the potential for conflicts of interest, for example. It is maddening that Chelsea Clinton continues to insist that she would serve on the board of the family foundation even if her mother is elected. Given the potential for conflicts [ http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/clinton-foundation-transition-plan-227386 ], and the emerging evidence [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/emails-reveal-how-foundation-donors-got-access-to-clinton-and-her-close-aides-at-state-dept/2016/08/22/345b5200-6882-11e6-8225-fbb8a6fc65bc_story.html ] that as secretary of state Hillary Clinton did not fulfill her pledge to avoid even the appearance of conflicts, it should not be seen as that much of a sacrifice simply to sever ties for four years.
But the potential conflicts with a non-profit foundation pale next to the challenge Mr. Trump would face in walling off his business interests from the national interest. The conventional solution — putting assets in a blind trust — would be laughable in his case. Putting his adult children in charge is no firewall. And given his total refusal to release relevant information about his personal or business taxes [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/voters-are-still-waiting-on-your-tax-returns-mr-trump/2016/07/19/c87c4054-4de1-11e6-a7d8-13d06b37f256_story.html ], how would Americans know when a decision was taken to benefit them, and when to benefit a Trump hotel in Baku or Moscow?
That speaks to a second asymmetry. We think Ms. Clinton should make herself more available to questioning, in news conferences [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/24/hillary-clinton-still-has-no-good-answer-on-why-she-hasnt-held-a-press-conference-in-263-days/ ] especially. But Mr. Trump’s contempt for transparency is on an entirely different level. Tax returns are the gold standard, because a candidate has had to swear to their accuracy when submitting them. Ms. Clinton has released decades’ worth; Mr. Trump, alone among modern presidential candidates, refuses.
In candor, in consistency, in releasing policy proposals, the picture is similar. Ms. Clinton has, over the years, spoken untruths — about coming under fire at an airport [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/05/23/recalling-hillary-clintons-claim-of-landing-under-sniper-fire-in-bosnia/ ] in Bosnia, for example. Mr. Trump regularly lies and, when confronted with contrary evidence, just lies louder. Ms. Clinton has not had enough to say, in our view, about issues such as how she would manage the growing federal debt, but she has published a raft of specific plans [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/29/hillary-clinton-has-a-very-detailed-plan-for-the-economy-that-may-be-a-problem/ ]. Mr. Trump’s proposals are so outlandish, so half-baked and so changeable — mass deportation, no mass deportation [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/08/26/trumps-position-on-deportations-is-perfectly-clear-let-us-decode-it-for-you/ ]; higher taxes for the rich [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/20/donald-trump-is-cutting-down-his-tax-breaks-for-the-rich/ ], lower taxes for the rich — that they are impossible to evaluate.
We think it is important not to grade Ms. Clinton on a Mr. Trump curve; to do so would, ironically, give him one more victory in the debasing of our political culture. But it’s also important not to fall for false equivalencies. As we’ve mentioned before, he represents a danger [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trump-is-a-unique-threat-to-american-democracy/2016/07/22/a6d823cc-4f4f-11e6-aa14-e0c1087f7583_story.html ] unlike anything the republic has faced in recent times.
Read more:
Donald Trump’s understanding of the historical nature of crime is upside down
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/29/donald-trumps-understanding-of-the-historic-nature-of-crime-is-upside-down/
Chicago police to Donald Trump: ‘If you have a magic bullet to stop the violence,’ let us know
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/08/29/chicago-police-to-trump-if-you-have-a-magic-bullet-to-stop-the-violence-let-us-know/
One of Trump’s biggest lies is falling apart. So naturally, he’s blaming the media for it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/08/29/one-of-trumps-biggest-lies-is-falling-apart-so-naturally-hes-blaming-the-media-for-it/
This one quote says it all about Trump’s ‘minority outreach’
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/08/30/this-one-quote-says-it-all-about-trumps-minority-outreach/
© 2016 The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/asymmetrical-warfare-campaign-style/2016/08/27/30832620-6ba3-11e6-8225-fbb8a6fc65bc_story.html [with comments]
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Hillary Clinton is a bigot? The art of the reverse attack
By Cody Cain
Updated 3:23 PM ET, Sun August 28, 2016
Editor's Note: Cody Cain is a writer and commentator in New York City. Follow him on Twitter @codycainland [ http://twitter.com/codycainland ]. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.
(CNN) "Hillary Clinton is a bigot [ http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/25/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-bigot/ ]!" thundered Donald Trump.
Huh?
Hillary Clinton? A bigot? That makes no sense. It's absurd. Hillary Clinton has spent much of her career working to improve race relations. She is the furthest thing imaginable from a bigot. So what in the world is Trump doing here?
Trump is employing the technique of the reverse attack. When he is faced with a legitimate criticism of himself, he attempts to deflect away the criticism by attacking Clinton for the exact same shortcoming that plagues Trump, regardless of whether it actually applies to Clinton.
Trump faced serious and legitimate criticism for his own appalling racism, so he responded by making the false accusation that Clinton is racist.
Trump uses the reverse attack all the time. He did it on the issue of his lack of qualification to be president. This is a legitimate problem facing Trump because he has no experience whatsoever in government or politics. So how did he respond to this criticism? He attacked Clinton by alleging that she is not qualified to be president.
This, of course, is absurd. Clinton is perhaps the most qualified [ http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/videos/2016-07-28/obama-clinton-most-qualified-ever-to-be-president ] person to be president in history. She served as secretary of state, a United States senator, and she lived in the White House for eight years as first lady.
Trump also pulled the reverse attack on the issue of being mentally unfit to be president. Questions about temperament are a legitimate criticism of Trump due to all his outrageous behavior and statements.
So how did Trump address this criticism? He tried to turn the tables by alleging Clinton is mentally unfit [ http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/trump-clinton-is-a-totally-unhinged-person-226761 ]. To be sure, Clinton has many shortcomings, but being mentally unstable is not one of them. Yet that does not matter to Trump.
Trump has accused Clinton of being a "bully" when obviously it is Trump who is the bully. The examples go on and on. So does it work? Is the reverse attack effective?
Well, it certainly is not the best way to overcome a criticism. An ideal response would be to clearly show that the criticism is inaccurate, say, by listing specific qualifications to be president. But when there are no good responses to a criticism, the reverse attack comes into play.
The objective is to create confusion. The bigger the mess, the better. This way, the focus of attention shifts away from the devastating criticism because everyone becomes caught up in the food-fight. This is Trump's playbook. He is the circus ringmaster who creates all sorts of spectacles to divert attention away from his own disqualifying inadequacies.
While the reverse attack is devious indeed, it ultimately falls short. Once the technique is understood, the reverse attack is easy to identify and the truth becomes clear. After all, the reverse attack is rooted in lies because the target of the attack simply does not possess the same flaws that plague the attacker. It is a flat-out lie to say that Clinton is a bigot.
Trump's attacks create a spectacle but after a while all the fighting becomes tedious and we recognize its futility. After we sober up, we see very clearly that Trump is not offering any solutions whatsoever. He has no policies. He has no good ideas. He has no strategy.
Shockingly, Trump's circus act has carried him to the top of the Republican ticket for president. The polls indicate that Trump is running behind Clinton but within striking distance, so from this perspective, Trump's underhanded reverse attacks may work. The question is whether the voters will begin to see through Trump's circus act before it is too late.
© 2016 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/28/opinions/trumps-reverse-attack-on-clinton-cain/ [with embedded video, and comments]
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White Lives Matter To Be Listed As Hate Group By Southern Poverty Law Center
“We are listing them because they are clearly white supremacists.”
08/29/2016 Updated August 29, 2016
White Lives Matter will soon be listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center [ https://www.splcenter.org/ ] (SPLC).
SPLC said the status will be reflected in the next update of its “Hate Map [ https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map ],” which tracks the activities of hate groups around the country.
“I can’t speak to how many chapters will be listed, but it’s clear that the leadership of the group, the ends of the group ? it’s just a flat-out white supremacist group [ http://www.chron.com/national/article/Southern-Poverty-Law-Center-to-list-White-Lives-9186288.php ],” Heidi Beirich, director of the center’s Intelligence Report, told the Houston Chronicle. “The ideology behind it, the racist leaders, everything about it is racist.”
White Lives Matter made headlines earlier this month when the group sent armed protesters to an NAACP office in Houston, where they waved Confederate flags [ http://www.chron.com/houston/article/White-Lives-Matter-group-protests-outside-NAACP-9176142.php#photo-10809650 ( http://www.chron.com/houston/article/White-Lives-Matter-group-protests-outside-NAACP-9176142.php )].
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/white-lives-matter-hate-group-splc_us_57c3c23ee4b085c1ff2a05d3 [with embedded videos, and comments]
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Meet White Lives Matter: The Racist Response to the Black Lives Matter Movement
March 18, 2016
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/03/18/meet-white-lives-matter-racist-response-black-lives-matter-movement [with comments]
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Trump’s new aim: Poison a Clinton presidency
But instead of engaging his conspiracy theories, Democrats respond by attacking his character.
By Edward-Isaac Dovere
08/29/16 05:27 AM EDT
The trick out of Brooklyn isn't just to make Hillary Clinton win but to make her win as something other than a brain-damaged crook who stole the election and will spend the next four years selling out the government from her deathbed.
The Clinton delegitimization project is now central to Donald Trump’s campaign and such a prime component of right-wing media that it’s already seeped beyond extremist chat rooms into “lock her up” chants on the convention floor, national news stories debating whether polls actually can be rigged, and voters puzzling over that photo they think they saw of her needing to be carried up the stairs.
The Clinton campaign has deliberately positioned its response as an offensive boomerang rather than a rebuttal: Don’t defend against the attacks, just redirect fire at the messenger. “It holds up a mirror to Donald Trump and what his campaign is about, and says everything you need to know about Donald Trump and where these kinds of crazy conspiracy theories are coming from,” as one campaign aide put it.
But the Democrat’s team is aware of how this might factor in beyond November.
“Some of the campaign and allies' conspiracies are designed to delegitimize her personally. Most are simply designed to spread fear and mistrust. And I am sure if she wins, the right wing will continue to spread these theories,” said Clinton senior adviser Jennifer Palmieri. Palmieri is in favor of ignoring most of the wackiness but warned: “Just because they may have zero basis in truth doesn't mean they can't be corrosive. So in this cycle I believe you have to call out the truly destructive theories calmly, but aggressively, and in real time.”
Leading Democrats in Washington and beyond recognize Trump’s tactic because they’ve seen it before. President Barack Obama and his allies spent eight years sandbagged by the birth certificate/Bill Ayers/his-middle-name’s-Hussein attacks that all boil down to the same thinking now threatening Clinton: He’s a fake; his presidency either doesn’t count or is a Moorish-style Trojan horse.
“We are already seeing an effort by the Trumpsters to undermine Hillary's presidency before it has even begun,” said longtime Clinton confidant Paul Begala.
Obama defenders argue that the GOP embrace of all the suggestions about him didn’t stop the president from getting a lot done and in the meantime helped foster the very elements that propelled Trump to the nomination at the expense of traditional Republicans. But many are full of anxiety about going down this road again, and what it might mean both for sidetracking anything Clinton would want to get done in office and seeding a toxicity that would mean big problems for Democrats in the 2018 midterms and any other race they’ll have to run attached to her.
“It’s a longer strategy. It’s not that people believe that he wasn’t born in the United States,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), recalling how this played out for Obama and sketching the parallels she sees facing Clinton now. “It was the relentless negative attacks on him that really created a backdrop to pressure Republicans and hold them accountable not to work with him.”
So the pushback is emerging as a critical element of a campaign that polls show is looking less like a horse race at this stage and more like the laying of a foundation for a first term and immediate uphill battle to get her reelected. But the politics are made harder amid the drip-drip revelations from the newly released emails demonstrating the messy overlap between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department, which leave even many Clinton-inclined voters wondering what she was really up to and why it’s so hard for her to explain it.
Unlike birtherism or even switftboating in 2004, Clinton campaign officials anticipated much earlier that right-wing chatter would eventually break through into the mainstream, and that they could more easily attack it because they were taking on her opponent himself, rather than fake-name trolls.
For days, Clinton campaign officials purposefully ignored questions coming at them from the Trump-intertwined Breitbart News about her health, according to an aide. But after Fox News host Sean Hannity devoted an episode of his show to a Clinton rumor medical panel, complete with an eager-to-please urologist in a white coat, they shifted gears: a long release emailed to reporters two weeks ago with sourced debunkings of all the rumors and a statement from her doctor attesting that supposedly leaked medical records were forged.
Clinton’s speech in Reno, Nevada, last Thursday was the strategic continuation, according to the aide, with the candidate going deep into Trump’s claims that he saw people celebrating on Sept. 11 and nursing connections to a Sandy Hook truther before folding in a “Donald, dream on,” as she disgustedly laughed that “his latest paranoid fever dream is about my health.”
“This is a much more concerted and explicit effort than what we saw in ’08,” said Dan Pfeiffer, one of Obama’s top campaign aides and later a senior adviser in the White House. “There are real limits to what Clinton can do, because this is a message that will only be believed by the Republican base, and she has little to no capacity to influence them. What she can do is delegitimize the messenger and try to decouple Trumpism from Republicanism.”
If that works, and Clinton instead couples Trump in most voters’ minds with only craziness, “the attackers will be left with a small group of conspiracy theorists chanting around the campfire in the woods in the middle of nowhere and cheering them on,” said Guy Cecil, head of the pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA.
Mo Elleithee, who did tours separately as a top aide to Clinton and Tim Kaine and is now executive director of the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service, is nervous that the impact will be much deeper and long lasting.
“When you see Trump and his forces at best trying to delegitimize her, at worst trying to delegitimize the entire democratic process, we’re heading down a very dangerous path,” Elleithee said.
In addition to the health questions and rigged election talk, Elleithee cited Trump’s encouragement of Second Amendment voters to do something about a Clinton presidency’s court appointments and Trump adviser Roger Stone’s suggestion of bloodshed if Trump loses.
“I worry sometimes we just may not be able to pull back from this. Who can control that kind of raw energy and emotion? You’re irresponsibly unleashing it without having any ability to pull it back.”
Spokespeople for both House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters after Clinton’s speech last week that they hadn’t seen what she said, so couldn’t comment on it.
That, Pfeiffer said, is part of the problem — though in his opinion more of a problem for them than for Clinton, long term.
“There is a cancer at the core of the Republican base that is exacerbated by its leadership being not-so-silent enablers of this stuff, so it has done more damage to them than to Obama,” Pfeiffer said.
Pfeiffer’s is the more optimistic, partisan take.
Stabenow, while confident that Clinton will win and be a good president, is also confident that Trump isn’t going away. Clinton’s been fighting crazed attacks for 25 years and knows what she’s up against, Stabenow said, but Trump’s a “hustler,” she said, and will be pushing divisions long past Election Day that will cut at any hopes of unity or reality for Clinton’s “Stronger Together” slogan.
That’s what happened with Obama eight years ago, to the detriment of Obama and Democrats along the way, she said.
“He ran on the message of hope and change,” Stabenow said. “Mitch McConnell and Republicans knew that if nothing changes for working people, they would lose hope. It’s as simple as that. They wanted to create a scenario where people would lose hope. And they’ve done a pretty good job of it.”
© 2016 POLITICO LLC
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/trump-clinton-poison-conspiracy-227485 [with embedded video, and comments]
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Obama Administration Hits Goal Of Welcoming 10,000 Syrian Refugees
Syrian refugee children play as they wait with their families to register their information at the U.S. processing center for Syrian refugees in Amman, Jordan, April 6.
They hit the target for resettlement one month early.
08/29/2016 Updated August 29, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/syrian-refugee-resettlement_us_57c471b6e4b0664f13c9b54c [with comments]
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Obama Administration Considers Ending For-Profit Immigrant Detention
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson testifies before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. On Aug. 29, 2016, he ordered a review of whether Immigration and Customs Enforcement should continue allowing private companies to run immigrant detention centers as for-profit businesses.
Detained immigrant children line up in the cafeteria at the Karnes County Residential Center, a detention center for migrant families run for profit by the GEO Group.
The Department of Homeland Security is reviewing the policy after the landmark decision to phase out privatized federal prisons.
08/29/2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-immigrant-detention_us_57c474fee4b0cdfc5ac87b51 [with comments]
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Fired Manager Corey Lewandowski Still Involved in Donald Trump Campaign
Corey Lewandowski, former campaign manager for Donald Trump, surveys the floor of the Republican National Convention on July 18, 2016 at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio.
Aug 29, 2016
As Donald Trump [ http://abcnews.go.com/topics/news/donald-trump.htm ] arrived in Manchester, New Hampshire, for a rally a week ago, he stepped out of his motorcade and was greeted by a familiar face: Corey Lewandowski [ http://abcnews.go.com/topics/news/us/corey-lewandowski.htm ]’s.
Lewandowski was fired as Trump’s first campaign manager on June 20. Faced with internal fighting, Trump’s losing ground in the polls and the candidate’s and his family’s alleged lack of confidence in Lewandowski, the campaign cut him loose.
He was escorted that day from Trump Tower in New York by the very security detail that had helped him check for hidden listening devices in the campaign office weeks earlier.
Now, a few weeks and a lucrative cable network contract later, he is back in the fold, according to multiple campaign sources. They describe his relationship with the candidate as stronger than ever.
Each day, Trump wakes up, usually in his Fifth Avenue penthouse, and has a routine round of phone calls, sources say, including calls with his campaign leadership (which has changed in recent weeks), his children, some close allies and, quite frequently, Lewandowski.
“They talk almost every day,” one senior level campaign staffer said, requesting anonymity.
[...]
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fired-manager-corey-lewandowski-involved-donald-trump-campaign/story?id=41723861 [with comments]
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Hillary Clinton Piles Up Research in Bid to Needle Donald Trump at First Debate
Donald J. Trump at a Republican presiential debate in March in Detroit. Mr. Trump spent hours with his debate team the past two Sundays, but he said, “I believe you can prep too much for those things.”
Richard Perry/The New York Times
Hillary Clinton during a Democratic debate in March in Miami. Mrs. Clinton’s allies have floated several options for a Trump stand-in during mock debates: Representative Joseph Crowley of New York, James Carville, Mark Cuban, and even entertainers like Jon Stewart and Alec Baldwin.
Todd Heisler/The New York Times
By PATRICK HEALY and MATT FLEGENHEIMER
AUG. 29, 2016
Hillary Clinton [ http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/hillary-clinton-on-the-issues.html ]’s advisers are talking to Donald J. Trump [ http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/donald-trump-on-the-issues.html ]’s ghostwriter of “The Art of the Deal,” seeking insights about Mr. Trump’s deepest insecurities as they devise strategies to needle and undermine him in four weeks at the first presidential debate, the most anticipated in a generation.
Her team is also getting advice from psychology experts to help create a personality profile of Mr. Trump to gauge how he may respond to attacks and deal with a woman as his sole adversary on the debate stage.
They are undertaking a forensic-style analysis of Mr. Trump’s performances in the Republican primary debates, cataloging strengths and weaknesses as well as trigger points that caused him to lash out in less-than-presidential ways.
As Mrs. Clinton pores over this voluminous research with her debate team, most recently for several hours on Friday, and her aides continue searching for someone who can rattle her as a Trump stand-in during mock debates, Mr. Trump is taking the opposite tack. Though he spent hours with his debate team the last two Sundays, the sessions were more freewheeling than focused, and he can barely conceal his disdain for laborious and theatrical practice sessions.
“I believe you can prep too much for those things,” Mr. Trump said in an interview last week. “It can be dangerous. You can sound scripted or phony — like you’re trying to be someone you’re not.”
Rarely are debate preparations as illuminating about the candidates as a debate itself, but Mrs. Clinton’s and Mr. Trump’s strikingly different approaches to the Sept. 26 face-off are more revealing about their egos and battlefield instincts than most other moments in the campaign.
Mrs. Clinton, a deeply competitive debater, wants to crush Mr. Trump on live television, but not with an avalanche of policy details; she is searching for ways to bait him into making blunders. Mr. Trump, a supremely confident communicator, wants viewers to see him as a truth-telling political outsider and trusts that he can box in Mrs. Clinton on her ethics and honesty.
He has been especially resistant to his advisers’ suggestions that he take part in mock debates with a Clinton stand-in. At their first session devoted to the debate, on Aug. 21 at Mr. Trump’s club in Bedminster, N.J., the conservative radio host Laura Ingraham was on hand to offer counsel and, if Mr. Trump was game, to play Mrs. Clinton, said Trump advisers who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the debate preparations were supposed to be kept private. He declined.
Instead, Mr. Trump asked a battery of questions about debate topics, Mrs. Clinton’s skills and possible moderators, but people close to him said relatively little had been accomplished.
At that gathering, and another in Bedminster on Sunday without Ms. Ingraham, Mr. Trump was joined by Roger Ailes, who was ousted as Fox News chairman last month over accusations of sexual harassment.
Mr. Trump, in the interview, said he saw little use in standing at lecterns and pretending to debate his opponent.
“I know who I am, and it got me here,” Mr. Trump said, boasting of success in his 11 primary debate appearances and in capturing the Republican nomination over veteran politicians and polished debaters. “I don’t want to present a false front. I mean, it’s possible we’ll do a mock debate, but I don’t see a real need.”
Mr. Trump’s certitude — “I know how to handle Hillary,” he said — reflects his belief that the debates will be won or lost not on policy points and mastery of details, which are Mrs. Clinton’s strengths, but on the authenticity, boldness and leadership that the nominees demonstrate onstage. Mr. Trump is certain that he holds advantages here, saying Mrs. Clinton is likely to come across as a typical politician spouting rehearsed lines.
For Mrs. Clinton, who can appear most at peace with a briefing book in her hand, there is no such thing as too much preparation. She met on Friday with key members of her debate team — the longtime Democratic operative Ron Klain, the Washington lawyer Karen Dunn and her senior strategist, Joel Benenson — and delved into the campaign’s extensive data on Mr. Trump and the likely questions and themes at the debate, according to two campaign advisers who requested anonymity to reveal internal campaign dynamics.
In compiling research to help Mrs. Clinton prepare, her advisers have cast a wide net. They contacted Tony Schwartz, the “Art of the Deal” co-author, to give them advice about Mr. Trump this summer — even though Mr. Schwartz’s 18-month immersion in Mr. Trump’s life and homes ended in the mid-1980s. But Clinton advisers said Mr. Schwartz and other writers who had observed Mr. Trump up close, as well as unnamed psychology experts they had spoken to, were critical to understanding how to get under Mr. Trump’s skin.
These Clinton advisers agree with Mr. Trump’s belief that the debate will not be remembered as pitting a policy expert against a Washington outsider. Instead, her campaign is preparing ways for her to unnerve Mr. Trump and provoke him to rant and rave.
The Clinton camp believes that Mr. Trump is most insecure about his intelligence, his net worth and his image as a successful businessman, and those are the areas they are working with Mrs. Clinton to target.
Mr. Schwartz, in an interview, declined to comment about any conversations with the Clinton campaign, but he said Mr. Trump would be vulnerable if Mrs. Clinton proved to be calm, deliberate and relentless in attacking Mr. Trump’s character, volatility and readiness to be commander in chief.
“Trump has severe attention problems and simply cannot take in complex information — he will be unable to practice for these debates,” said Mr. Schwartz, who was the subject of a New Yorker profile [ http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all ] last month that portrayed Mr. Trump as a charlatan. “Trump will bring nothing but his bluster to the debates. He’ll use sixth-grade language, he will repeat himself many times, he won’t complete sentences, and he won’t say anything of substance.”
“Even so,” Mr. Schwartz said, “Clinton has to be careful — she could get everything right and still potentially lose the debates if she comes off as too condescending, too much of a know-it-all.”
Mrs. Clinton’s advisers plan to have one person prepare extensively to play Mr. Trump in a series of mock face-offs in the days before the first debate, which will be held at Hofstra University on Long Island.
Mrs. Clinton’s team is also taking a hard look at her vulnerabilities. Even supporters have often questioned the clarity and wisdom of the campaign’s responses to uproars over Mrs. Clinton’s private email server and donations to the Clinton Foundation. There is hope that the debate stage will allow her a chance to at last address such questions with more brevity and less equivocation.
The least comfortable task, though, will most likely be girding for personal attacks from Mr. Trump, who has shown an eagerness to resuscitate Clinton scandals — real and imagined — at virtually every opportunity.
Allies have insisted that Mrs. Clinton will not shy away from preparing for the most painful insults, including a possible focus on her husband’s infidelities.
“She knows that it’s coming,” said Jennifer Granholm, a former Michigan governor and a member of Mrs. Clinton’s transition planning team.
Mr. Trump said in the interview that he would “rather not” attack Mrs. Clinton on personal grounds, including Bill Clinton’s extramarital affairs.
“If she hits me, though — you have to see what happens,” Mr. Trump said.
It was this unpredictability that often made Mr. Trump an elusive target for fellow Republicans in the primary debates, and some close to Mrs. Clinton expressed concern that any false charges from Mr. Trump could rankle her.
“This is a special challenge for Hillary, who is deeply rooted in the fact-based world,” said Paul Begala, who helped prepare Mr. Clinton for debates in 1992 and 1996. “She is more wonk than pol, so she might be especially frustrated by a steady stream of invective, conspiracy theories and lies.”
Around the Clinton campaign, the question of whom to cast as Mr. Trump has become something of a running parlor game. Mrs. Clinton’s allies have floated several options: Representative Joseph Crowley of New York, who is from Queens, where Mr. Trump grew up; James Carville, Mr. Clinton’s chief strategist in 1992, who has a gift for lacerating banter; or Mark Cuban, another billionaire businessman. All three are viewed as unafraid to say some humiliating things to Mrs. Clinton’s face, as Mr. Trump may.
At least a few old Clinton hands have suggested enlisting professional entertainers, like Jon Stewart or Alec Baldwin.
Mr. Trump’s search so far seems to be less exhaustive: He said his daughter Ivanka could end up playing Mrs. Clinton.
“Wouldn’t she be great at that?” Mr. Trump asked. “Maybe.”
© 2016 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/30/us/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-debate.html [with comments]
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David Duke Continues Bromance With Donald Trump
David Duke leaves the Louisiana secretary of state’s office after filing to run as a Republican for United States Senate in Baton Rouge on July 22.
In a robocall, the former KKK grand wizard said he and Trump come as a pair in the 2016 elections.
08/29/2016 Updated August 30, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/david-duke-donald-trump_us_57c47270e4b0664f13c9b78b [with comments]
*
David Duke Robocall
“Hi, this is David Duke. I’m sorry I missed you. I’m running for U.S. Senate. I’ll tell the truth that no other candidate will dare say. Unless massive immigration is stopped now, we’ll be out numbered and outvoted in our own nation. It’s happening. We’re losing our gun rights, our free speech. We’re taxed to death. We’re losing our jobs and businesses to unfair trade. We’re losing our country. Look at the Super Bowl salute to the Black Panther cop killers. It’s time to stand up and vote for Donald Trump for president and vote for me David Duke for the U.S. Senate. I’d love to hear from you. To find out more contribute or volunteer for the DavidDuke.com. Go to Davidduke.com. Together, we’ll save America and save Louisiana. Paid for by the Duke campaign.”
https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F280451983 [via/embedded at https://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/david-duke-robocall-urges-voters-to-vote-for-him-and-donald (with comments)]
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Would The Military Obey Commander In Chief Trump? Probably.
GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has insisted that the U.S. military will follow his orders, even if they’re illegal.
Even if some officers thought his orders were illegal or unethical.
08/29/2016 Updated August 30, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-military-commander-in-chief_us_57c480e7e4b0cdfc5ac89475 [with comments]
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Wolf Blitzer on #PickleGate
Published on Aug 30, 2016 by Jimmy Kimmel Live [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa6vGFO9ty8v5KZJXQxdhaw / http://www.youtube.com/user/JimmyKimmelLive , http://www.youtube.com/user/JimmyKimmelLive/videos ]
[aired August 29, 2016]
Wolf shares his thoughts on our Hillary Clinton pickle jar controversy and he attempts to open a pickle jar himself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xncw-x6sXEA [with comments]
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Full Show - SJW Attacks Everywhere/Nigel Farage’s Rally Cry Against Tyranny - 08/30/2016
Published on Aug 30, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvsye7V9psc-APX6wV1twLg / http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel , http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel/videos ]
On this Tuesday, August 30 transmission of the Alex Jones Show, we break down the latest in the Trump - Clinton matchup, with Hillary's aide Huma Abedin and her separation from longtime pervert Anthony Weiner taking center stage. On today's show, climate activist Lord Christopher Monckton breaks down moves to impose a global carbon tax and more. Also, UKIP's Nigel Farage discusses the Trump movement sweeping the nation and its similarities to the Brexit nationalist movement. We'll also cover Pickle-gate 2.0.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4QbPChvRpU [with comments]
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Key Islamic State leader killed in apparent U.S. strike in Syria
Abu Muhammad al-Adnani
Aug 30, 2016 Updated Aug 31, 2016
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-islamic-state-spokesma-idUSKCN1152GG [with embedded video report]
*
Senior ISIS Strategist and Spokesman Is Reported Killed in Syria
Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, a founding member of the Islamic State, oversaw the group’s external terrorist operations.
AUG. 30, 2016
WASHINGTON — The senior Islamic State strategist Abu Muhammad al-Adnani was killed in northern Syria [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/syria/index.html ], the group announced on Tuesday, signaling the death of one of the world’s most-wanted terrorists.
In Washington, the Pentagon spokesman, Peter Cook, confirmed that an American “precision strike” near Al Bab, Syria, on Tuesday night had targeted Mr. Adnani, but could not confirm his death. “We are still assessing the results of the strike,” he said in a statement.
Two American officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence, said a United States military drone had hit a vehicle Mr. Adnani was thought to be traveling in, following a close collaboration between the Central Intelligence Agency and Special Operations forces to track him.
A founding member of the Islamic State, Mr. Adnani, a 39-year-old Syrian, was the group’s chief spokesman and propagandist, running an operation that put out slickly produced videos of beheadings and massacres that shocked the world and sent a rush of recruits running to join the group in Syria.
Accounts from arrested members of the Islamic State confirmed Mr. Adnani’s role as an operational leader [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/04/world/middleeast/isis-german-recruit-interview.html ] as well. He oversaw the group’s external operations division, responsible for recruiting operatives around the world and instigating or organizing them to carry out attacks that have included Paris, Brussels and Dhaka, Bangladesh.
[...]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/31/world/middleeast/al-adnani-islamic-state-isis-syria.html
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ISIS Says No. 2 Leader Abu Muhammad al-Adnani Is Dead in Syria
Al-Adnani was ISIS' charismatic director of external operations and its main propagandist. He served as its No. 2 leader but was at the top of the U.S.'s ISIS kill list, with a $5 million bounty on his head.
Aug 30 2016 Updated Aug 31 2016
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/isis-says-no-2-leader-mohammad-al-adnani-dead-n640171 [with comments]
*
In potential blow to propaganda power, Islamic State reports death of senior leader in Syria
August 30, 2016
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/08/30/islamic-state-reports-death-of-spokesman-and-senior-leader-in-aleppo/ [with embedded video, and comments]
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Trump Campaign Manager On Candidate’s Immigration Policy | MSNBC
Published on Aug 30, 2016 by MSNBC [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaXkIU1QidjPwiAYu6GcHjg / http://www.youtube.com/user/msnbcleanforward , http://www.youtube.com/user/msnbcleanforward/videos ]
Donald Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway joins Steve Kornacki to discuss Trump's immigration policies, which Conway says will be the toughest of any recent candidate.
This Happened: Trump Campaign Manager Derided Hillary For Literally Being Too Substantive
August 31st, 2016
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/this-happened-trump-campaign-manager-derided-hillary-for-literally-being-too-substantive/ [with embedded video, and comments]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHzjJrSJHW8 [with comments] [original at http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-news/watch/trump-campaign-manager-on-amnesty-754694211839 ]
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Watch Trump's Campaign Manager Repeatedly Dodge Questions About Whether Trump Will Call For Deporting 11 Million Undocumented Immigrants
August 31, 2016
http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/08/31/watch-trumps-campaign-manager-repeatedly-dodge-questions-about-whether-trump-will-call-deporting-11/212765 [with embedded video, and comments]
*
Trump’s Campaign Manager Said ‘Rape Would Not Exist’ If Women Were Stronger
Aug. 31, 2016
http://motto.time.com/4473683/kellyanne-conway-trump-rape/ , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlSidY-0LMw [via http://www.ajc.com/news/news/national/trump-campaign-manager-if-women-were-stronger-rape/nsPRw/ (with comments); with comments] [the complete PBS episode at http://www.pbs.org/to-the-contrary/watch/366/-women-in-combat;-hillary-testifies;-women-in-hollywood- ]
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Abortion Restrictions in Ohio Hurt Women’s Health, Study Finds
Restrictions on the abortion pill led to more follow-up visits and side effects
Aug. 30, 2016
http://time.com/4472497/abortion-restrictions-in-ohio-hurt-womens-health-study-finds/
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Comparison of Outcomes before and after Ohio's Law Mandating Use of the FDA-Approved Protocol for Medication Abortion: A Retrospective Cohort Study
August 30, 2016
[...]
Conclusions
Ohio law required use of a medication abortion protocol that is associated with a greater need for additional intervention, more visits, more side effects, and higher costs for women relative to the evidence-based protocol. There is no evidence that the change in law led to improved abortion outcomes. Indeed, our findings suggest the opposite. In March 2016, the FDA-protocol was updated, so Ohio providers may now legally provide current evidence-based protocols. However, this law is still in place and bans physicians from using mifepristone based on any new developments in clinical research as best practices continue to be updated.
[...]
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002110
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How Abortion Pill Laws Hurt Women
AUG. 30, 2016
Sixteen years ago next month, the Food and Drug Administration [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/f/food_and_drug_administration/index.html ] approved the first “abortion [ http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/surgery/abortion/overview.html ] pill,” and today medication abortion accounts for about a quarter of all nonhospital abortions in the United States. Not only is it safe and effective, but for women who live in the 89 percent of American counties that lack even a single abortion provider, it is often the only feasible option.
Not surprisingly, state legislatures bent on eliminating abortion access have targeted medication abortion, passing several new laws with the stated intention of safeguarding women’s health and safety. But in a research paper [ http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002110 ] I co-wrote on Tuesday in the online journal PLOS Medicine, my colleagues and I found that such laws are not just covers for restricting abortion access — they can actually harm women’s health.
These laws include limitations on the types of health care providers who can give women the pills, prohibitions on prescribing the pill remotely (through telemedicine) and bans on home self-administration. And we can expect even more such laws aimed at medication abortion, now that the Supreme Court has effectively blocked states from using women’s health as a basis for restricting access to abortion clinics.
[...]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/31/opinion/how-abortion-pill-laws-hurt-women.html
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There's No One Abortion Story
Four very different experiences show exactly why you can't legislate women's health care choices.
http://testkitchen.huffingtonpost.com/abortion/
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Trump Hits Clinton For Not Doing News Conferences While Banning Reporters From His Pressers
Donald Trump and the Republican Party have attacked Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for not holding news conferences, even though he has banned dozens of reporters from attending his own.
The GOP nominee’s media blacklist has excluded a big chunk of the press corps.
08/30/2016
WASHINGTON – Republicans have ramped up their hammering of Hillary Clinton for not holding a news conference this year – even as their own presidential nominee has been banning dozens of journalists from participating in his.
Trump has banned Univision, Buzzfeed, The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, The Des Moines Register, Politico and The Washington Post from receiving credentials to his campaign events, including news conferences. The ban prevents reporters who have produced some of the most critical coverage of Trump from even attending, let alone asking questions.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-news-conference-media_us_57c5f496e4b0a22de092e8f4 [with comments]
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Christie Vetoes Minimum Wage Bill, Calling Raise to $15 ‘Really Radical’
AUG. 30, 2016
When it comes to the subject of raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, the gulf between the governors of New Jersey and New York is much wider than the Hudson River.
On Tuesday, Gov. Chris Christie [ https://www.nytimes.com/topic/person/chris-christie ] of New Jersey reminded low-wage workers of the breadth of that divide when he vetoed a bill that would have raised his state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour over five years. Had Mr. Christie signed the legislation, New Jersey would have joined New York and California as the only states with plans to lift lowest wages so high.
Instead, he appeared at a grocery store in Pennington, N.J., and explained his opposition to the measure, which he called a “really radical increase” that “would trigger an escalation of wages that will make doing business in New Jersey unaffordable.”
Statements like those place Mr. Christie, a Republican, near the conservative end of the political spectrum on the subject. Even the main voice of big business in the state, the New Jersey Business & Industry Association, said its opposition was to the pace of the increases, which it called “too much, too fast.”
Still, that schedule would have left New Jersey well behind New York, where the minimum wages for employees of most companies in New York City will rise to $15 an hour by 2018 [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/01/nyregion/new-york-budget-deal-with-higher-minimum-wage-is-reached.html ] under a state law enacted by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, in April.
Mr. Christie’s veto means that Democratic leaders in Trenton will again turn to the ballot to try to circumvent Mr. Christie’s opposition. Stephen M. Sweeney, the State Senate president, and Vincent Prieto, the State Assembly speaker, said the Democrats would introduce an amendment to the State Constitution to gradually raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2021.
[...]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/31/nyregion/christie-vetoes-minimum-wage-increase-for-new-jersey.html
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FULL EVENT: MASSIVE Donald Trump Rally in Everett, Washington 8/30/16 MUST SHARE VOTE TRUMP!
Streamed live on Aug 30, 2016 by DONALD TRUMP LIVE SPEECH & RALLY 2016 [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzsV1Z3HsBOPYPtkw0Uw0Ug , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzsV1Z3HsBOPYPtkw0Uw0Ug/videos ]
Tuesday, August 30, 2016: Live stream coverage of the Donald J. Trump for President rally in Everett, WA at Xfinity Arena of Everett. Coverage begins at 7:00 PM PT.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFX_eWzR4rM [the festivities commence at c. the 1:36:30 mark; Reince Priebus's borderline frantic remarks begin at c. the 1:42:30 mark; Giuliani's frothing fulminations begin at c. the 1:48:00 mark; Jeff Sessions's introduction begins at c. the 1:59:10 mark; Trump's performance begins at c. the 2:03:00 mark; with comments] [also at e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWRrmAmi5AM (with comments), and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPfautohnMw (with comments), and, Trump's performance only, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH2jgE0Uj-0 (with comments)]
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Michele Bachmann: God 'Raised Up' Donald Trump
Former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) says God 'raised up' Donald Trump to win the Republican presidential nomination.
"Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know."
08/31/2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/michele-bachmann-donald-trump-god_us_57c63d13e4b078581f100ef0 [with comments]
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Former Bush defense official to endorse Clinton: 'There is no choice'
Getty
By Nick Gass
08/31/16 06:16 AM EDT
Hillary Clinton will get the endorsement of another official from a Republican presidential administration on Wednesday, her campaign said, as the Democratic nominee delivers a speech on American exceptionalism at the American Legion's national convention in Cincinnati.
“Secretary Clinton has demonstrated her skills as Secretary of State, especially but by no means exclusively in helping other Asian countries counter Chinese bullying in the western Pacific," James Clad, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense under President George W. Bush, said in a statement released through the campaign. "For Republicans and Democrats alike, everything in national security requires clarity and steadiness, whether managing nuclear weapons or balancing great power rivalries. Never losing sight of the national interest is key – a discipline which Secretary Clinton possesses in full measure."
The United States' adversaries, Clad continued, "must never hear flippancy or ignorance in America’s voice." While Clad did not mention Donald Trump by name, he characterized the Republican nominee as "incompetent" and an "incoherent amateur" whose presidency "will doom us to second or third class status."
"In my career, I’ve seen close-up what happens when American reliability falters. It’s not pretty, for us or for the world," Clad said in the statement. "There is no choice: In razor sharp contrast to her opponent, Secretary Clinton is ready, steady and prepared. With a proven preference for bipartisanship, she must win this election.”
Clad is the latest former Republican administration official to endorse Clinton over Trump, following the likes of Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state under George W. Bush, and Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser under Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush.
© 2016 POLITICO LLC
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/james-clad-endorses-clinton-227574 [with comments]
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Sean Hannity Completely Flips Out Over Republicans Who Won’t Support Donald Trump
08/31/2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sean-hannity-never-trump_us_57c65be3e4b078581f1018b4 [with comments], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5iJXtmVGe8 [embedded; with comments]
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in addition to (linked in) the post to which this is a reply and preceding and (any future other) following, see also (linked in):
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124867036 and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124867552 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124869860 and preceding (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124870232 and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124870495 and preceding (and any future following),
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124875322 and preceding (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124870756 (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124871030 and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124871073 and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124871161 (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124871943 and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124872330 and preceding (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124872620 and preceding (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124872858 and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124886001 and preceding (and any future following),
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124886815 and preceding (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124873073 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124874063 (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124874737 and preceding (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124875428 (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124875466 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124888180 and preceding (and any future following)
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump
(Getty Images, left, and Reuters)
Editorial
August 27, 2016
WE COULD write that both presidential candidates talked about race [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ahead-of-speech-targeting-trump-clinton-accuses-him-of-peddling-hate/2016/08/25/fc3f1ade-6a78-11e6-8225-fbb8a6fc65bc_story.html ] last Thursday, and we wouldn’t be wrong — but it wouldn’t really be an accurate portrayal, either. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton delivered [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/25/hillary-clintons-alt-right-speech-annotated/ ] a thoughtful and well-documented indictment of her opponent’s embrace of racist themes and his legitimization of previously fringe racist groups. Republican nominee Donald Trump, like a middle-schooler crying “I know what you are, but what am I,” retorted, without evidence or argumentation, that Ms. Clinton is a “bigot [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/08/24/donald-trump-shouts-hillary-clinton-is-a-bigot/ ].”
The contrast points to a wider challenge of this presidential campaign, for journalists and voters alike. It’s important to hold both candidates to high standards, and in a number of areas we believe Ms. Clinton is falling short [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/even-supporters-agree-clinton-has-weaknesses-as-a-candidate-what-can-she-do/2016/05/15/132f4d7e-1874-11e6-924d-838753295f9a_story.html ]. Yet in most of those areas Mr. Trump is so far from even minimal compliance [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trump-is-a-unique-threat-to-american-democracy/2016/07/22/a6d823cc-4f4f-11e6-aa14-e0c1087f7583_story.html ] with the expectations people have set for political leaders over the years that it is hard to put them in the same conversation.
Take the potential for conflicts of interest, for example. It is maddening that Chelsea Clinton continues to insist that she would serve on the board of the family foundation even if her mother is elected. Given the potential for conflicts [ http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/clinton-foundation-transition-plan-227386 ], and the emerging evidence [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/emails-reveal-how-foundation-donors-got-access-to-clinton-and-her-close-aides-at-state-dept/2016/08/22/345b5200-6882-11e6-8225-fbb8a6fc65bc_story.html ] that as secretary of state Hillary Clinton did not fulfill her pledge to avoid even the appearance of conflicts, it should not be seen as that much of a sacrifice simply to sever ties for four years.
But the potential conflicts with a non-profit foundation pale next to the challenge Mr. Trump would face in walling off his business interests from the national interest. The conventional solution — putting assets in a blind trust — would be laughable in his case. Putting his adult children in charge is no firewall. And given his total refusal to release relevant information about his personal or business taxes [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/voters-are-still-waiting-on-your-tax-returns-mr-trump/2016/07/19/c87c4054-4de1-11e6-a7d8-13d06b37f256_story.html ], how would Americans know when a decision was taken to benefit them, and when to benefit a Trump hotel in Baku or Moscow?
That speaks to a second asymmetry. We think Ms. Clinton should make herself more available to questioning, in news conferences [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/24/hillary-clinton-still-has-no-good-answer-on-why-she-hasnt-held-a-press-conference-in-263-days/ ] especially. But Mr. Trump’s contempt for transparency is on an entirely different level. Tax returns are the gold standard, because a candidate has had to swear to their accuracy when submitting them. Ms. Clinton has released decades’ worth; Mr. Trump, alone among modern presidential candidates, refuses.
In candor, in consistency, in releasing policy proposals, the picture is similar. Ms. Clinton has, over the years, spoken untruths — about coming under fire at an airport [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/05/23/recalling-hillary-clintons-claim-of-landing-under-sniper-fire-in-bosnia/ ] in Bosnia, for example. Mr. Trump regularly lies and, when confronted with contrary evidence, just lies louder. Ms. Clinton has not had enough to say, in our view, about issues such as how she would manage the growing federal debt, but she has published a raft of specific plans [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/29/hillary-clinton-has-a-very-detailed-plan-for-the-economy-that-may-be-a-problem/ ]. Mr. Trump’s proposals are so outlandish, so half-baked and so changeable — mass deportation, no mass deportation [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/08/26/trumps-position-on-deportations-is-perfectly-clear-let-us-decode-it-for-you/ ]; higher taxes for the rich [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/20/donald-trump-is-cutting-down-his-tax-breaks-for-the-rich/ ], lower taxes for the rich — that they are impossible to evaluate.
We think it is important not to grade Ms. Clinton on a Mr. Trump curve; to do so would, ironically, give him one more victory in the debasing of our political culture. But it’s also important not to fall for false equivalencies. As we’ve mentioned before, he represents a danger [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trump-is-a-unique-threat-to-american-democracy/2016/07/22/a6d823cc-4f4f-11e6-aa14-e0c1087f7583_story.html ] unlike anything the republic has faced in recent times.
Read more:
Donald Trump’s understanding of the historical nature of crime is upside down
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/29/donald-trumps-understanding-of-the-historic-nature-of-crime-is-upside-down/
Chicago police to Donald Trump: ‘If you have a magic bullet to stop the violence,’ let us know
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/08/29/chicago-police-to-trump-if-you-have-a-magic-bullet-to-stop-the-violence-let-us-know/
One of Trump’s biggest lies is falling apart. So naturally, he’s blaming the media for it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/08/29/one-of-trumps-biggest-lies-is-falling-apart-so-naturally-hes-blaming-the-media-for-it/
This one quote says it all about Trump’s ‘minority outreach’
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/08/30/this-one-quote-says-it-all-about-trumps-minority-outreach/
© 2016 The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/asymmetrical-warfare-campaign-style/2016/08/27/30832620-6ba3-11e6-8225-fbb8a6fc65bc_story.html [with comments]
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Hillary Clinton is a bigot? The art of the reverse attack
By Cody Cain
Updated 3:23 PM ET, Sun August 28, 2016
Editor's Note: Cody Cain is a writer and commentator in New York City. Follow him on Twitter @codycainland [ http://twitter.com/codycainland ]. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.
(CNN) "Hillary Clinton is a bigot [ http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/25/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-bigot/ ]!" thundered Donald Trump.
Huh?
Hillary Clinton? A bigot? That makes no sense. It's absurd. Hillary Clinton has spent much of her career working to improve race relations. She is the furthest thing imaginable from a bigot. So what in the world is Trump doing here?
Trump is employing the technique of the reverse attack. When he is faced with a legitimate criticism of himself, he attempts to deflect away the criticism by attacking Clinton for the exact same shortcoming that plagues Trump, regardless of whether it actually applies to Clinton.
Trump faced serious and legitimate criticism for his own appalling racism, so he responded by making the false accusation that Clinton is racist.
Trump uses the reverse attack all the time. He did it on the issue of his lack of qualification to be president. This is a legitimate problem facing Trump because he has no experience whatsoever in government or politics. So how did he respond to this criticism? He attacked Clinton by alleging that she is not qualified to be president.
This, of course, is absurd. Clinton is perhaps the most qualified [ http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/videos/2016-07-28/obama-clinton-most-qualified-ever-to-be-president ] person to be president in history. She served as secretary of state, a United States senator, and she lived in the White House for eight years as first lady.
Trump also pulled the reverse attack on the issue of being mentally unfit to be president. Questions about temperament are a legitimate criticism of Trump due to all his outrageous behavior and statements.
So how did Trump address this criticism? He tried to turn the tables by alleging Clinton is mentally unfit [ http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/trump-clinton-is-a-totally-unhinged-person-226761 ]. To be sure, Clinton has many shortcomings, but being mentally unstable is not one of them. Yet that does not matter to Trump.
Trump has accused Clinton of being a "bully" when obviously it is Trump who is the bully. The examples go on and on. So does it work? Is the reverse attack effective?
Well, it certainly is not the best way to overcome a criticism. An ideal response would be to clearly show that the criticism is inaccurate, say, by listing specific qualifications to be president. But when there are no good responses to a criticism, the reverse attack comes into play.
The objective is to create confusion. The bigger the mess, the better. This way, the focus of attention shifts away from the devastating criticism because everyone becomes caught up in the food-fight. This is Trump's playbook. He is the circus ringmaster who creates all sorts of spectacles to divert attention away from his own disqualifying inadequacies.
While the reverse attack is devious indeed, it ultimately falls short. Once the technique is understood, the reverse attack is easy to identify and the truth becomes clear. After all, the reverse attack is rooted in lies because the target of the attack simply does not possess the same flaws that plague the attacker. It is a flat-out lie to say that Clinton is a bigot.
Trump's attacks create a spectacle but after a while all the fighting becomes tedious and we recognize its futility. After we sober up, we see very clearly that Trump is not offering any solutions whatsoever. He has no policies. He has no good ideas. He has no strategy.
Shockingly, Trump's circus act has carried him to the top of the Republican ticket for president. The polls indicate that Trump is running behind Clinton but within striking distance, so from this perspective, Trump's underhanded reverse attacks may work. The question is whether the voters will begin to see through Trump's circus act before it is too late.
© 2016 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/28/opinions/trumps-reverse-attack-on-clinton-cain/ [with embedded video, and comments]
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White Lives Matter To Be Listed As Hate Group By Southern Poverty Law Center
“We are listing them because they are clearly white supremacists.”
08/29/2016 Updated August 29, 2016
White Lives Matter will soon be listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center [ https://www.splcenter.org/ ] (SPLC).
SPLC said the status will be reflected in the next update of its “Hate Map [ https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map ],” which tracks the activities of hate groups around the country.
“I can’t speak to how many chapters will be listed, but it’s clear that the leadership of the group, the ends of the group ? it’s just a flat-out white supremacist group [ http://www.chron.com/national/article/Southern-Poverty-Law-Center-to-list-White-Lives-9186288.php ],” Heidi Beirich, director of the center’s Intelligence Report, told the Houston Chronicle. “The ideology behind it, the racist leaders, everything about it is racist.”
White Lives Matter made headlines earlier this month when the group sent armed protesters to an NAACP office in Houston, where they waved Confederate flags [ http://www.chron.com/houston/article/White-Lives-Matter-group-protests-outside-NAACP-9176142.php#photo-10809650 ( http://www.chron.com/houston/article/White-Lives-Matter-group-protests-outside-NAACP-9176142.php )].
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/white-lives-matter-hate-group-splc_us_57c3c23ee4b085c1ff2a05d3 [with embedded videos, and comments]
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Meet White Lives Matter: The Racist Response to the Black Lives Matter Movement
March 18, 2016
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/03/18/meet-white-lives-matter-racist-response-black-lives-matter-movement [with comments]
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Trump’s new aim: Poison a Clinton presidency
But instead of engaging his conspiracy theories, Democrats respond by attacking his character.
By Edward-Isaac Dovere
08/29/16 05:27 AM EDT
The trick out of Brooklyn isn't just to make Hillary Clinton win but to make her win as something other than a brain-damaged crook who stole the election and will spend the next four years selling out the government from her deathbed.
The Clinton delegitimization project is now central to Donald Trump’s campaign and such a prime component of right-wing media that it’s already seeped beyond extremist chat rooms into “lock her up” chants on the convention floor, national news stories debating whether polls actually can be rigged, and voters puzzling over that photo they think they saw of her needing to be carried up the stairs.
The Clinton campaign has deliberately positioned its response as an offensive boomerang rather than a rebuttal: Don’t defend against the attacks, just redirect fire at the messenger. “It holds up a mirror to Donald Trump and what his campaign is about, and says everything you need to know about Donald Trump and where these kinds of crazy conspiracy theories are coming from,” as one campaign aide put it.
But the Democrat’s team is aware of how this might factor in beyond November.
“Some of the campaign and allies' conspiracies are designed to delegitimize her personally. Most are simply designed to spread fear and mistrust. And I am sure if she wins, the right wing will continue to spread these theories,” said Clinton senior adviser Jennifer Palmieri. Palmieri is in favor of ignoring most of the wackiness but warned: “Just because they may have zero basis in truth doesn't mean they can't be corrosive. So in this cycle I believe you have to call out the truly destructive theories calmly, but aggressively, and in real time.”
Leading Democrats in Washington and beyond recognize Trump’s tactic because they’ve seen it before. President Barack Obama and his allies spent eight years sandbagged by the birth certificate/Bill Ayers/his-middle-name’s-Hussein attacks that all boil down to the same thinking now threatening Clinton: He’s a fake; his presidency either doesn’t count or is a Moorish-style Trojan horse.
“We are already seeing an effort by the Trumpsters to undermine Hillary's presidency before it has even begun,” said longtime Clinton confidant Paul Begala.
Obama defenders argue that the GOP embrace of all the suggestions about him didn’t stop the president from getting a lot done and in the meantime helped foster the very elements that propelled Trump to the nomination at the expense of traditional Republicans. But many are full of anxiety about going down this road again, and what it might mean both for sidetracking anything Clinton would want to get done in office and seeding a toxicity that would mean big problems for Democrats in the 2018 midterms and any other race they’ll have to run attached to her.
“It’s a longer strategy. It’s not that people believe that he wasn’t born in the United States,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), recalling how this played out for Obama and sketching the parallels she sees facing Clinton now. “It was the relentless negative attacks on him that really created a backdrop to pressure Republicans and hold them accountable not to work with him.”
So the pushback is emerging as a critical element of a campaign that polls show is looking less like a horse race at this stage and more like the laying of a foundation for a first term and immediate uphill battle to get her reelected. But the politics are made harder amid the drip-drip revelations from the newly released emails demonstrating the messy overlap between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department, which leave even many Clinton-inclined voters wondering what she was really up to and why it’s so hard for her to explain it.
Unlike birtherism or even switftboating in 2004, Clinton campaign officials anticipated much earlier that right-wing chatter would eventually break through into the mainstream, and that they could more easily attack it because they were taking on her opponent himself, rather than fake-name trolls.
For days, Clinton campaign officials purposefully ignored questions coming at them from the Trump-intertwined Breitbart News about her health, according to an aide. But after Fox News host Sean Hannity devoted an episode of his show to a Clinton rumor medical panel, complete with an eager-to-please urologist in a white coat, they shifted gears: a long release emailed to reporters two weeks ago with sourced debunkings of all the rumors and a statement from her doctor attesting that supposedly leaked medical records were forged.
Clinton’s speech in Reno, Nevada, last Thursday was the strategic continuation, according to the aide, with the candidate going deep into Trump’s claims that he saw people celebrating on Sept. 11 and nursing connections to a Sandy Hook truther before folding in a “Donald, dream on,” as she disgustedly laughed that “his latest paranoid fever dream is about my health.”
“This is a much more concerted and explicit effort than what we saw in ’08,” said Dan Pfeiffer, one of Obama’s top campaign aides and later a senior adviser in the White House. “There are real limits to what Clinton can do, because this is a message that will only be believed by the Republican base, and she has little to no capacity to influence them. What she can do is delegitimize the messenger and try to decouple Trumpism from Republicanism.”
If that works, and Clinton instead couples Trump in most voters’ minds with only craziness, “the attackers will be left with a small group of conspiracy theorists chanting around the campfire in the woods in the middle of nowhere and cheering them on,” said Guy Cecil, head of the pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA.
Mo Elleithee, who did tours separately as a top aide to Clinton and Tim Kaine and is now executive director of the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service, is nervous that the impact will be much deeper and long lasting.
“When you see Trump and his forces at best trying to delegitimize her, at worst trying to delegitimize the entire democratic process, we’re heading down a very dangerous path,” Elleithee said.
In addition to the health questions and rigged election talk, Elleithee cited Trump’s encouragement of Second Amendment voters to do something about a Clinton presidency’s court appointments and Trump adviser Roger Stone’s suggestion of bloodshed if Trump loses.
“I worry sometimes we just may not be able to pull back from this. Who can control that kind of raw energy and emotion? You’re irresponsibly unleashing it without having any ability to pull it back.”
Spokespeople for both House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters after Clinton’s speech last week that they hadn’t seen what she said, so couldn’t comment on it.
That, Pfeiffer said, is part of the problem — though in his opinion more of a problem for them than for Clinton, long term.
“There is a cancer at the core of the Republican base that is exacerbated by its leadership being not-so-silent enablers of this stuff, so it has done more damage to them than to Obama,” Pfeiffer said.
Pfeiffer’s is the more optimistic, partisan take.
Stabenow, while confident that Clinton will win and be a good president, is also confident that Trump isn’t going away. Clinton’s been fighting crazed attacks for 25 years and knows what she’s up against, Stabenow said, but Trump’s a “hustler,” she said, and will be pushing divisions long past Election Day that will cut at any hopes of unity or reality for Clinton’s “Stronger Together” slogan.
That’s what happened with Obama eight years ago, to the detriment of Obama and Democrats along the way, she said.
“He ran on the message of hope and change,” Stabenow said. “Mitch McConnell and Republicans knew that if nothing changes for working people, they would lose hope. It’s as simple as that. They wanted to create a scenario where people would lose hope. And they’ve done a pretty good job of it.”
© 2016 POLITICO LLC
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/trump-clinton-poison-conspiracy-227485 [with embedded video, and comments]
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Obama Administration Hits Goal Of Welcoming 10,000 Syrian Refugees
Syrian refugee children play as they wait with their families to register their information at the U.S. processing center for Syrian refugees in Amman, Jordan, April 6.
They hit the target for resettlement one month early.
08/29/2016 Updated August 29, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/syrian-refugee-resettlement_us_57c471b6e4b0664f13c9b54c [with comments]
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Obama Administration Considers Ending For-Profit Immigrant Detention
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson testifies before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. On Aug. 29, 2016, he ordered a review of whether Immigration and Customs Enforcement should continue allowing private companies to run immigrant detention centers as for-profit businesses.
Detained immigrant children line up in the cafeteria at the Karnes County Residential Center, a detention center for migrant families run for profit by the GEO Group.
The Department of Homeland Security is reviewing the policy after the landmark decision to phase out privatized federal prisons.
08/29/2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-immigrant-detention_us_57c474fee4b0cdfc5ac87b51 [with comments]
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Fired Manager Corey Lewandowski Still Involved in Donald Trump Campaign
Corey Lewandowski, former campaign manager for Donald Trump, surveys the floor of the Republican National Convention on July 18, 2016 at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio.
Aug 29, 2016
As Donald Trump [ http://abcnews.go.com/topics/news/donald-trump.htm ] arrived in Manchester, New Hampshire, for a rally a week ago, he stepped out of his motorcade and was greeted by a familiar face: Corey Lewandowski [ http://abcnews.go.com/topics/news/us/corey-lewandowski.htm ]’s.
Lewandowski was fired as Trump’s first campaign manager on June 20. Faced with internal fighting, Trump’s losing ground in the polls and the candidate’s and his family’s alleged lack of confidence in Lewandowski, the campaign cut him loose.
He was escorted that day from Trump Tower in New York by the very security detail that had helped him check for hidden listening devices in the campaign office weeks earlier.
Now, a few weeks and a lucrative cable network contract later, he is back in the fold, according to multiple campaign sources. They describe his relationship with the candidate as stronger than ever.
Each day, Trump wakes up, usually in his Fifth Avenue penthouse, and has a routine round of phone calls, sources say, including calls with his campaign leadership (which has changed in recent weeks), his children, some close allies and, quite frequently, Lewandowski.
“They talk almost every day,” one senior level campaign staffer said, requesting anonymity.
[...]
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fired-manager-corey-lewandowski-involved-donald-trump-campaign/story?id=41723861 [with comments]
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Hillary Clinton Piles Up Research in Bid to Needle Donald Trump at First Debate
Donald J. Trump at a Republican presiential debate in March in Detroit. Mr. Trump spent hours with his debate team the past two Sundays, but he said, “I believe you can prep too much for those things.”
Richard Perry/The New York Times
Hillary Clinton during a Democratic debate in March in Miami. Mrs. Clinton’s allies have floated several options for a Trump stand-in during mock debates: Representative Joseph Crowley of New York, James Carville, Mark Cuban, and even entertainers like Jon Stewart and Alec Baldwin.
Todd Heisler/The New York Times
By PATRICK HEALY and MATT FLEGENHEIMER
AUG. 29, 2016
Hillary Clinton [ http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/hillary-clinton-on-the-issues.html ]’s advisers are talking to Donald J. Trump [ http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/donald-trump-on-the-issues.html ]’s ghostwriter of “The Art of the Deal,” seeking insights about Mr. Trump’s deepest insecurities as they devise strategies to needle and undermine him in four weeks at the first presidential debate, the most anticipated in a generation.
Her team is also getting advice from psychology experts to help create a personality profile of Mr. Trump to gauge how he may respond to attacks and deal with a woman as his sole adversary on the debate stage.
They are undertaking a forensic-style analysis of Mr. Trump’s performances in the Republican primary debates, cataloging strengths and weaknesses as well as trigger points that caused him to lash out in less-than-presidential ways.
As Mrs. Clinton pores over this voluminous research with her debate team, most recently for several hours on Friday, and her aides continue searching for someone who can rattle her as a Trump stand-in during mock debates, Mr. Trump is taking the opposite tack. Though he spent hours with his debate team the last two Sundays, the sessions were more freewheeling than focused, and he can barely conceal his disdain for laborious and theatrical practice sessions.
“I believe you can prep too much for those things,” Mr. Trump said in an interview last week. “It can be dangerous. You can sound scripted or phony — like you’re trying to be someone you’re not.”
Rarely are debate preparations as illuminating about the candidates as a debate itself, but Mrs. Clinton’s and Mr. Trump’s strikingly different approaches to the Sept. 26 face-off are more revealing about their egos and battlefield instincts than most other moments in the campaign.
Mrs. Clinton, a deeply competitive debater, wants to crush Mr. Trump on live television, but not with an avalanche of policy details; she is searching for ways to bait him into making blunders. Mr. Trump, a supremely confident communicator, wants viewers to see him as a truth-telling political outsider and trusts that he can box in Mrs. Clinton on her ethics and honesty.
He has been especially resistant to his advisers’ suggestions that he take part in mock debates with a Clinton stand-in. At their first session devoted to the debate, on Aug. 21 at Mr. Trump’s club in Bedminster, N.J., the conservative radio host Laura Ingraham was on hand to offer counsel and, if Mr. Trump was game, to play Mrs. Clinton, said Trump advisers who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the debate preparations were supposed to be kept private. He declined.
Instead, Mr. Trump asked a battery of questions about debate topics, Mrs. Clinton’s skills and possible moderators, but people close to him said relatively little had been accomplished.
At that gathering, and another in Bedminster on Sunday without Ms. Ingraham, Mr. Trump was joined by Roger Ailes, who was ousted as Fox News chairman last month over accusations of sexual harassment.
Mr. Trump, in the interview, said he saw little use in standing at lecterns and pretending to debate his opponent.
“I know who I am, and it got me here,” Mr. Trump said, boasting of success in his 11 primary debate appearances and in capturing the Republican nomination over veteran politicians and polished debaters. “I don’t want to present a false front. I mean, it’s possible we’ll do a mock debate, but I don’t see a real need.”
Mr. Trump’s certitude — “I know how to handle Hillary,” he said — reflects his belief that the debates will be won or lost not on policy points and mastery of details, which are Mrs. Clinton’s strengths, but on the authenticity, boldness and leadership that the nominees demonstrate onstage. Mr. Trump is certain that he holds advantages here, saying Mrs. Clinton is likely to come across as a typical politician spouting rehearsed lines.
For Mrs. Clinton, who can appear most at peace with a briefing book in her hand, there is no such thing as too much preparation. She met on Friday with key members of her debate team — the longtime Democratic operative Ron Klain, the Washington lawyer Karen Dunn and her senior strategist, Joel Benenson — and delved into the campaign’s extensive data on Mr. Trump and the likely questions and themes at the debate, according to two campaign advisers who requested anonymity to reveal internal campaign dynamics.
In compiling research to help Mrs. Clinton prepare, her advisers have cast a wide net. They contacted Tony Schwartz, the “Art of the Deal” co-author, to give them advice about Mr. Trump this summer — even though Mr. Schwartz’s 18-month immersion in Mr. Trump’s life and homes ended in the mid-1980s. But Clinton advisers said Mr. Schwartz and other writers who had observed Mr. Trump up close, as well as unnamed psychology experts they had spoken to, were critical to understanding how to get under Mr. Trump’s skin.
These Clinton advisers agree with Mr. Trump’s belief that the debate will not be remembered as pitting a policy expert against a Washington outsider. Instead, her campaign is preparing ways for her to unnerve Mr. Trump and provoke him to rant and rave.
The Clinton camp believes that Mr. Trump is most insecure about his intelligence, his net worth and his image as a successful businessman, and those are the areas they are working with Mrs. Clinton to target.
Mr. Schwartz, in an interview, declined to comment about any conversations with the Clinton campaign, but he said Mr. Trump would be vulnerable if Mrs. Clinton proved to be calm, deliberate and relentless in attacking Mr. Trump’s character, volatility and readiness to be commander in chief.
“Trump has severe attention problems and simply cannot take in complex information — he will be unable to practice for these debates,” said Mr. Schwartz, who was the subject of a New Yorker profile [ http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all ] last month that portrayed Mr. Trump as a charlatan. “Trump will bring nothing but his bluster to the debates. He’ll use sixth-grade language, he will repeat himself many times, he won’t complete sentences, and he won’t say anything of substance.”
“Even so,” Mr. Schwartz said, “Clinton has to be careful — she could get everything right and still potentially lose the debates if she comes off as too condescending, too much of a know-it-all.”
Mrs. Clinton’s advisers plan to have one person prepare extensively to play Mr. Trump in a series of mock face-offs in the days before the first debate, which will be held at Hofstra University on Long Island.
Mrs. Clinton’s team is also taking a hard look at her vulnerabilities. Even supporters have often questioned the clarity and wisdom of the campaign’s responses to uproars over Mrs. Clinton’s private email server and donations to the Clinton Foundation. There is hope that the debate stage will allow her a chance to at last address such questions with more brevity and less equivocation.
The least comfortable task, though, will most likely be girding for personal attacks from Mr. Trump, who has shown an eagerness to resuscitate Clinton scandals — real and imagined — at virtually every opportunity.
Allies have insisted that Mrs. Clinton will not shy away from preparing for the most painful insults, including a possible focus on her husband’s infidelities.
“She knows that it’s coming,” said Jennifer Granholm, a former Michigan governor and a member of Mrs. Clinton’s transition planning team.
Mr. Trump said in the interview that he would “rather not” attack Mrs. Clinton on personal grounds, including Bill Clinton’s extramarital affairs.
“If she hits me, though — you have to see what happens,” Mr. Trump said.
It was this unpredictability that often made Mr. Trump an elusive target for fellow Republicans in the primary debates, and some close to Mrs. Clinton expressed concern that any false charges from Mr. Trump could rankle her.
“This is a special challenge for Hillary, who is deeply rooted in the fact-based world,” said Paul Begala, who helped prepare Mr. Clinton for debates in 1992 and 1996. “She is more wonk than pol, so she might be especially frustrated by a steady stream of invective, conspiracy theories and lies.”
Around the Clinton campaign, the question of whom to cast as Mr. Trump has become something of a running parlor game. Mrs. Clinton’s allies have floated several options: Representative Joseph Crowley of New York, who is from Queens, where Mr. Trump grew up; James Carville, Mr. Clinton’s chief strategist in 1992, who has a gift for lacerating banter; or Mark Cuban, another billionaire businessman. All three are viewed as unafraid to say some humiliating things to Mrs. Clinton’s face, as Mr. Trump may.
At least a few old Clinton hands have suggested enlisting professional entertainers, like Jon Stewart or Alec Baldwin.
Mr. Trump’s search so far seems to be less exhaustive: He said his daughter Ivanka could end up playing Mrs. Clinton.
“Wouldn’t she be great at that?” Mr. Trump asked. “Maybe.”
© 2016 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/30/us/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-debate.html [with comments]
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David Duke Continues Bromance With Donald Trump
David Duke leaves the Louisiana secretary of state’s office after filing to run as a Republican for United States Senate in Baton Rouge on July 22.
In a robocall, the former KKK grand wizard said he and Trump come as a pair in the 2016 elections.
08/29/2016 Updated August 30, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/david-duke-donald-trump_us_57c47270e4b0664f13c9b78b [with comments]
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David Duke Robocall
“Hi, this is David Duke. I’m sorry I missed you. I’m running for U.S. Senate. I’ll tell the truth that no other candidate will dare say. Unless massive immigration is stopped now, we’ll be out numbered and outvoted in our own nation. It’s happening. We’re losing our gun rights, our free speech. We’re taxed to death. We’re losing our jobs and businesses to unfair trade. We’re losing our country. Look at the Super Bowl salute to the Black Panther cop killers. It’s time to stand up and vote for Donald Trump for president and vote for me David Duke for the U.S. Senate. I’d love to hear from you. To find out more contribute or volunteer for the DavidDuke.com. Go to Davidduke.com. Together, we’ll save America and save Louisiana. Paid for by the Duke campaign.”
https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F280451983 [via/embedded at https://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/david-duke-robocall-urges-voters-to-vote-for-him-and-donald (with comments)]
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Would The Military Obey Commander In Chief Trump? Probably.
GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has insisted that the U.S. military will follow his orders, even if they’re illegal.
Even if some officers thought his orders were illegal or unethical.
08/29/2016 Updated August 30, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-military-commander-in-chief_us_57c480e7e4b0cdfc5ac89475 [with comments]
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Wolf Blitzer on #PickleGate
Published on Aug 30, 2016 by Jimmy Kimmel Live [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa6vGFO9ty8v5KZJXQxdhaw / http://www.youtube.com/user/JimmyKimmelLive , http://www.youtube.com/user/JimmyKimmelLive/videos ]
[aired August 29, 2016]
Wolf shares his thoughts on our Hillary Clinton pickle jar controversy and he attempts to open a pickle jar himself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xncw-x6sXEA [with comments]
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Full Show - SJW Attacks Everywhere/Nigel Farage’s Rally Cry Against Tyranny - 08/30/2016
Published on Aug 30, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvsye7V9psc-APX6wV1twLg / http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel , http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel/videos ]
On this Tuesday, August 30 transmission of the Alex Jones Show, we break down the latest in the Trump - Clinton matchup, with Hillary's aide Huma Abedin and her separation from longtime pervert Anthony Weiner taking center stage. On today's show, climate activist Lord Christopher Monckton breaks down moves to impose a global carbon tax and more. Also, UKIP's Nigel Farage discusses the Trump movement sweeping the nation and its similarities to the Brexit nationalist movement. We'll also cover Pickle-gate 2.0.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4QbPChvRpU [with comments]
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Key Islamic State leader killed in apparent U.S. strike in Syria
Abu Muhammad al-Adnani
Aug 30, 2016 Updated Aug 31, 2016
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-islamic-state-spokesma-idUSKCN1152GG [with embedded video report]
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Senior ISIS Strategist and Spokesman Is Reported Killed in Syria
Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, a founding member of the Islamic State, oversaw the group’s external terrorist operations.
AUG. 30, 2016
WASHINGTON — The senior Islamic State strategist Abu Muhammad al-Adnani was killed in northern Syria [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/syria/index.html ], the group announced on Tuesday, signaling the death of one of the world’s most-wanted terrorists.
In Washington, the Pentagon spokesman, Peter Cook, confirmed that an American “precision strike” near Al Bab, Syria, on Tuesday night had targeted Mr. Adnani, but could not confirm his death. “We are still assessing the results of the strike,” he said in a statement.
Two American officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence, said a United States military drone had hit a vehicle Mr. Adnani was thought to be traveling in, following a close collaboration between the Central Intelligence Agency and Special Operations forces to track him.
A founding member of the Islamic State, Mr. Adnani, a 39-year-old Syrian, was the group’s chief spokesman and propagandist, running an operation that put out slickly produced videos of beheadings and massacres that shocked the world and sent a rush of recruits running to join the group in Syria.
Accounts from arrested members of the Islamic State confirmed Mr. Adnani’s role as an operational leader [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/04/world/middleeast/isis-german-recruit-interview.html ] as well. He oversaw the group’s external operations division, responsible for recruiting operatives around the world and instigating or organizing them to carry out attacks that have included Paris, Brussels and Dhaka, Bangladesh.
[...]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/31/world/middleeast/al-adnani-islamic-state-isis-syria.html
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ISIS Says No. 2 Leader Abu Muhammad al-Adnani Is Dead in Syria
Al-Adnani was ISIS' charismatic director of external operations and its main propagandist. He served as its No. 2 leader but was at the top of the U.S.'s ISIS kill list, with a $5 million bounty on his head.
Aug 30 2016 Updated Aug 31 2016
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/isis-says-no-2-leader-mohammad-al-adnani-dead-n640171 [with comments]
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In potential blow to propaganda power, Islamic State reports death of senior leader in Syria
August 30, 2016
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/08/30/islamic-state-reports-death-of-spokesman-and-senior-leader-in-aleppo/ [with embedded video, and comments]
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Trump Campaign Manager On Candidate’s Immigration Policy | MSNBC
Published on Aug 30, 2016 by MSNBC [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaXkIU1QidjPwiAYu6GcHjg / http://www.youtube.com/user/msnbcleanforward , http://www.youtube.com/user/msnbcleanforward/videos ]
Donald Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway joins Steve Kornacki to discuss Trump's immigration policies, which Conway says will be the toughest of any recent candidate.
This Happened: Trump Campaign Manager Derided Hillary For Literally Being Too Substantive
August 31st, 2016
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/this-happened-trump-campaign-manager-derided-hillary-for-literally-being-too-substantive/ [with embedded video, and comments]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHzjJrSJHW8 [with comments] [original at http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-news/watch/trump-campaign-manager-on-amnesty-754694211839 ]
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Watch Trump's Campaign Manager Repeatedly Dodge Questions About Whether Trump Will Call For Deporting 11 Million Undocumented Immigrants
August 31, 2016
http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/08/31/watch-trumps-campaign-manager-repeatedly-dodge-questions-about-whether-trump-will-call-deporting-11/212765 [with embedded video, and comments]
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Trump’s Campaign Manager Said ‘Rape Would Not Exist’ If Women Were Stronger
Kellyanne Conway made the comments on PBS in 2013
Aug. 31, 2016
http://motto.time.com/4473683/kellyanne-conway-trump-rape/ , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlSidY-0LMw [via http://www.ajc.com/news/news/national/trump-campaign-manager-if-women-were-stronger-rape/nsPRw/ (with comments); with comments] [the complete PBS episode at http://www.pbs.org/to-the-contrary/watch/366/-women-in-combat;-hillary-testifies;-women-in-hollywood- ]
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Abortion Restrictions in Ohio Hurt Women’s Health, Study Finds
Restrictions on the abortion pill led to more follow-up visits and side effects
Aug. 30, 2016
http://time.com/4472497/abortion-restrictions-in-ohio-hurt-womens-health-study-finds/
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Comparison of Outcomes before and after Ohio's Law Mandating Use of the FDA-Approved Protocol for Medication Abortion: A Retrospective Cohort Study
August 30, 2016
[...]
Conclusions
Ohio law required use of a medication abortion protocol that is associated with a greater need for additional intervention, more visits, more side effects, and higher costs for women relative to the evidence-based protocol. There is no evidence that the change in law led to improved abortion outcomes. Indeed, our findings suggest the opposite. In March 2016, the FDA-protocol was updated, so Ohio providers may now legally provide current evidence-based protocols. However, this law is still in place and bans physicians from using mifepristone based on any new developments in clinical research as best practices continue to be updated.
[...]
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002110
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How Abortion Pill Laws Hurt Women
AUG. 30, 2016
Sixteen years ago next month, the Food and Drug Administration [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/f/food_and_drug_administration/index.html ] approved the first “abortion [ http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/surgery/abortion/overview.html ] pill,” and today medication abortion accounts for about a quarter of all nonhospital abortions in the United States. Not only is it safe and effective, but for women who live in the 89 percent of American counties that lack even a single abortion provider, it is often the only feasible option.
Not surprisingly, state legislatures bent on eliminating abortion access have targeted medication abortion, passing several new laws with the stated intention of safeguarding women’s health and safety. But in a research paper [ http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002110 ] I co-wrote on Tuesday in the online journal PLOS Medicine, my colleagues and I found that such laws are not just covers for restricting abortion access — they can actually harm women’s health.
These laws include limitations on the types of health care providers who can give women the pills, prohibitions on prescribing the pill remotely (through telemedicine) and bans on home self-administration. And we can expect even more such laws aimed at medication abortion, now that the Supreme Court has effectively blocked states from using women’s health as a basis for restricting access to abortion clinics.
[...]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/31/opinion/how-abortion-pill-laws-hurt-women.html
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There's No One Abortion Story
Four very different experiences show exactly why you can't legislate women's health care choices.
http://testkitchen.huffingtonpost.com/abortion/
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Trump Hits Clinton For Not Doing News Conferences While Banning Reporters From His Pressers
Donald Trump and the Republican Party have attacked Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for not holding news conferences, even though he has banned dozens of reporters from attending his own.
The GOP nominee’s media blacklist has excluded a big chunk of the press corps.
08/30/2016
WASHINGTON – Republicans have ramped up their hammering of Hillary Clinton for not holding a news conference this year – even as their own presidential nominee has been banning dozens of journalists from participating in his.
Trump has banned Univision, Buzzfeed, The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, The Des Moines Register, Politico and The Washington Post from receiving credentials to his campaign events, including news conferences. The ban prevents reporters who have produced some of the most critical coverage of Trump from even attending, let alone asking questions.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-news-conference-media_us_57c5f496e4b0a22de092e8f4 [with comments]
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Christie Vetoes Minimum Wage Bill, Calling Raise to $15 ‘Really Radical’
AUG. 30, 2016
When it comes to the subject of raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, the gulf between the governors of New Jersey and New York is much wider than the Hudson River.
On Tuesday, Gov. Chris Christie [ https://www.nytimes.com/topic/person/chris-christie ] of New Jersey reminded low-wage workers of the breadth of that divide when he vetoed a bill that would have raised his state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour over five years. Had Mr. Christie signed the legislation, New Jersey would have joined New York and California as the only states with plans to lift lowest wages so high.
Instead, he appeared at a grocery store in Pennington, N.J., and explained his opposition to the measure, which he called a “really radical increase” that “would trigger an escalation of wages that will make doing business in New Jersey unaffordable.”
Statements like those place Mr. Christie, a Republican, near the conservative end of the political spectrum on the subject. Even the main voice of big business in the state, the New Jersey Business & Industry Association, said its opposition was to the pace of the increases, which it called “too much, too fast.”
Still, that schedule would have left New Jersey well behind New York, where the minimum wages for employees of most companies in New York City will rise to $15 an hour by 2018 [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/01/nyregion/new-york-budget-deal-with-higher-minimum-wage-is-reached.html ] under a state law enacted by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, in April.
Mr. Christie’s veto means that Democratic leaders in Trenton will again turn to the ballot to try to circumvent Mr. Christie’s opposition. Stephen M. Sweeney, the State Senate president, and Vincent Prieto, the State Assembly speaker, said the Democrats would introduce an amendment to the State Constitution to gradually raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2021.
[...]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/31/nyregion/christie-vetoes-minimum-wage-increase-for-new-jersey.html
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FULL EVENT: MASSIVE Donald Trump Rally in Everett, Washington 8/30/16 MUST SHARE VOTE TRUMP!
Streamed live on Aug 30, 2016 by DONALD TRUMP LIVE SPEECH & RALLY 2016 [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzsV1Z3HsBOPYPtkw0Uw0Ug , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzsV1Z3HsBOPYPtkw0Uw0Ug/videos ]
Tuesday, August 30, 2016: Live stream coverage of the Donald J. Trump for President rally in Everett, WA at Xfinity Arena of Everett. Coverage begins at 7:00 PM PT.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFX_eWzR4rM [the festivities commence at c. the 1:36:30 mark; Reince Priebus's borderline frantic remarks begin at c. the 1:42:30 mark; Giuliani's frothing fulminations begin at c. the 1:48:00 mark; Jeff Sessions's introduction begins at c. the 1:59:10 mark; Trump's performance begins at c. the 2:03:00 mark; with comments] [also at e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWRrmAmi5AM (with comments), and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPfautohnMw (with comments), and, Trump's performance only, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH2jgE0Uj-0 (with comments)]
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Michele Bachmann: God 'Raised Up' Donald Trump
Former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) says God 'raised up' Donald Trump to win the Republican presidential nomination.
"Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know."
08/31/2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/michele-bachmann-donald-trump-god_us_57c63d13e4b078581f100ef0 [with comments]
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Former Bush defense official to endorse Clinton: 'There is no choice'
Getty
By Nick Gass
08/31/16 06:16 AM EDT
Hillary Clinton will get the endorsement of another official from a Republican presidential administration on Wednesday, her campaign said, as the Democratic nominee delivers a speech on American exceptionalism at the American Legion's national convention in Cincinnati.
“Secretary Clinton has demonstrated her skills as Secretary of State, especially but by no means exclusively in helping other Asian countries counter Chinese bullying in the western Pacific," James Clad, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense under President George W. Bush, said in a statement released through the campaign. "For Republicans and Democrats alike, everything in national security requires clarity and steadiness, whether managing nuclear weapons or balancing great power rivalries. Never losing sight of the national interest is key – a discipline which Secretary Clinton possesses in full measure."
The United States' adversaries, Clad continued, "must never hear flippancy or ignorance in America’s voice." While Clad did not mention Donald Trump by name, he characterized the Republican nominee as "incompetent" and an "incoherent amateur" whose presidency "will doom us to second or third class status."
"In my career, I’ve seen close-up what happens when American reliability falters. It’s not pretty, for us or for the world," Clad said in the statement. "There is no choice: In razor sharp contrast to her opponent, Secretary Clinton is ready, steady and prepared. With a proven preference for bipartisanship, she must win this election.”
Clad is the latest former Republican administration official to endorse Clinton over Trump, following the likes of Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state under George W. Bush, and Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser under Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush.
© 2016 POLITICO LLC
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/james-clad-endorses-clinton-227574 [with comments]
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Sean Hannity Completely Flips Out Over Republicans Who Won’t Support Donald Trump
“You own it. You own her. You own every dumb thing she’s about to do.”
08/31/2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sean-hannity-never-trump_us_57c65be3e4b078581f1018b4 [with comments], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5iJXtmVGe8 [embedded; with comments]
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Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
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upon the Right of Election, 1790
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