FBI investigating Russian hack of New York Times reporters, others
By Evan Perez and Shimon Prokupecz 2:53 PM ET, Tue August 23, 2016
(CNN)Hackers thought to be working for Russian intelligence have carried out a series of cyber breaches targeting reporters at the New York Times and other US news organizations, according to US officials briefed on the matter.
The intrusions, detected in recent months, are under investigation by the FBI and other US security agencies. Investigators so far believe that Russian intelligence is likely behind the attacks and that Russian hackers are targeting news organizations as part of a broader series of hacks that also have focused on Democratic Party organizations, the officials said.
The FBI declined to comment and a spokesperson for The New York Times would not confirm the attacks or the investigation. "Like most news organizations we are vigilant about guarding against attempts to hack into our systems," said New York Times Co. spokeswoman Eileen Murphy. "There are a variety of approaches we take up to and including working with outside investigators and law enforcement. We won't comment on any specific attempt to gain unauthorized access to The Times."
The breaches targeting reporters and news organizations are part of an apparent surge in cyber attacks in the past year against entities beyond US government agencies.
US intelligence officials believe the picture emerging from the series of recent intrusions is that Russian spy agencies are using a wave of cyber attacks, including against think-tanks in Washington, to gather intelligence from a broad array of non-governmental organizations with windows into the US political system.
News organizations are considered top targets because they can yield valuable intelligence on reporter contacts in the government, as well as communications and unpublished works with sensitive information, US government officials believe.
The Times has brought in private sector security investigators who are working with US national security officials to assess the damage and determine how the hackers got in, according to the US officials.
Attention has grown on the hacks thought to be carried out by Russians since Wikileaks released a trove of emails stolen from the DNC in the weekend before the Democratic Party's convention to nominate Hillary Clinton for president. US intelligence officials say there is strong evidence showing Russian intelligence behind the DNC hack. The Clinton campaign has claimed the hack as proof that the Russians are trying to aid the election of Donald Trump.
All the talk of a Trump pivot i think may be missing the point. It's the word. What is happening is not people warming to any phony Trump pivot effect, but people waking up to the reality of the Trump privet effect. This
Prosecutors say Dylann Roof ‘self-radicalized’ online, wrote another manifesto in jail
The Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, after the shooting last year. (Stephen B. Morton/Associated Press)
Dylann Roof, right, during a court hearing last year. (Randall Hill/Reuters)
By Mark Berman August 22, 2016
The man accused of killing nine black parishioners in a historic Charleston, S.C., church last year “self-radicalized” online, absorbing violent white supremacist beliefs from the Internet, according to federal prosecutors.
Rather than adopting such convictions “through his personal associations or experiences with white supremacist groups or individuals or others,” prosecutors said these viewpoints were self-taught from material found online and elsewhere.
In a court document filed Monday, authorities said they intended to call experts to outline how Roof’s comments, writing and the media he consumed “are consistent with the adoption of a white supremacy extremist ideology, including a belief in the need to use violence to achieve white supremacy.”
Prosecutors said Roof’s “self-learning process” led him to adopt the thinking “that violent action is necessary to fight for white people and achieve white supremacy … and that the choice of targets and execution of violent action should be conducted in a manner that promotes these objectives, to include publicizing the reasons for those actions to inspire others to engage in violent action to further white supremacy.”
In addition, federal authorities said they had found two handwritten manifestos and a list of churches — and that one of these manifestos was found in Roof’s jail cell.
Attorneys for Roof declined to comment on the new filing.
The Southern Poverty Law Center said in a report [ https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2016/year-hate-and-extremism ] earlier this year that the Internet is an ideal venue for “lone wolves” like Roof. “White supremacists are increasingly opting to operate mainly online, where the danger of public exposure and embarrassment is far lower, where younger people tend to gather, and where it requires virtually no effort or cost to join in the conversation,” the report stated.
One of the new manifestos was found in Roof’s jail cell, while the other was found in his car, authorities said.
In the filing, prosecutors also said that evidence suggests that Roof’s sentiments grew in the months before the attacks. During this period, Roof traveled to the Emanuel AME Church, as well as areas connected to the Confederacy, according to the filing, submitted by the office of Beth Drake, the acting U.S. attorney for the District of South Carolina.
Prosecutors seeking a federal death sentence have said that the shooting was carefully planned and racially motivated. They said that Roof targeted the church’s Bible study group to “magnify the societal impact” of the rampage and that “his animosity towards African Americans played a role in the murders.”
Earlier this month, attorneys for Roof filed a motion to challenge the death penalty, arguing that capital punishment “constitutes an unconstitutional punishment.” In this motion, Roof’s attorneys said that if the Justice Department changed its mind about seeking a death sentence, their client would plead guilty to the federal charges and agree to be sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Also on Monday, Drake’s office filed a response to this challenge, asking a judge to reject that motion questioning the death penalty itself.
Rachel Maddow looks at cancelled campaign stops, contradictory messaging on immigration policy, and genuinely peculiar spending by the Trump campaign and wonders if the campaign is suffering from some internal confusion.
New Campaign Hire Puts Donald Trump At Odds With RNC | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC
Published on Aug 23, 2016 by MSNBC
Joshua Green, national correspondent for Bloomberg Businessweek, talks with Rachel Maddow about the awkward situation of Donald Trump having to work with the RNC while hiring Steve Bannon, who has worked in opposition to GOP establishment leaders, to head his campaign.
Racist Advisers Trip Up Donald Trump's Acceptability | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC
Published on Aug 23, 2016 by MSNBC
Rachel Maddow looks at the racist roots of some of the people guiding Donald Trump's immigration policy and how that contrasts with Trump's desire to woo Latino voters, resulting in a confusing mess.
Donald Trump Puts Key District In 12-Year-Old Hands | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC
Published on Aug 23, 2016 by MSNBC
Rachel Maddow notes that among the peculiar decisions made by the Donald Trump campaign is the decision to leave a 12-year-old as the campaign co-chair of an important county in Colorado.
Though Not Low Enough, Child Poverty Has Fallen 5% Since Welfare Reform
By Scott Winship August 22, 2016
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the landmark welfare reform that transformed antipoverty policy. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act—known by the clumsy acronym PRWORA—was signed by President Bill Clinton on August 22, 1996, a couple of months before the presidential election.
Clinton’s decision to sign welfare reform into law divided the Democratic party. Two prominent members of his welfare policy team resigned in protest, and Democrats opposed to the Republican-written legislation issued apocalyptic predictions. The late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously surmised that the new five-year time limit on eligibility for federal cash benefits “might put half a million children on the streets of New York in 10 years’ time.” Moynihan went on to lament: “We will wonder where they came from. We will say, ‘Why are these children sleeping on grates? Why are they being picked up in the morning frozen?’”
The reality of poverty after welfare reform is not that portrayed by critics, according to a new report [ http://www.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/R-SW-0816.pdf , via/abstract at http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/poverty-after-welfare-reform.html ]. Children—in particular, those in single-mother families—are significantly less likely to be poor today than they were before welfare reform. This is because income and poverty trends are poorly conveyed by official statistics and by most analyses of poverty data. Household surveys underestimate the cash income of these families and do not count as income a variety of valuable noncash benefits, including food stamps, housing subsidies, and Medicaid (the receipt and value of which are also underestimated). Meanwhile, the rise in the cost of living tends to be overestimated, pulling up poverty trends over time.
Reliable indicators do show increasing hardship in some years, but they mostly reflect the business cycle rather than a steady rise. To the extent that some less reliable measures of hardship appear to have worsened after 1996, they generally did so among groups of Americans (such as childless households, the elderly, children of married couples, and even married college graduates) who never received cash welfare under the AFDC program.
Child poverty overall fell between 1996 and 2014, after taking into account refundable tax credits and noncash benefits other than health coverage. After including household heads’ live-in romantic partners in the family (i.e., cohabitation) as well, child poverty was lower in 2014 than at any point since at least 1979. After also using the best available cost-of-living adjustment to update the poverty line and including health benefits as income, child poverty overall was lower by 5 percentage points in 2014 than in 1996 and is now at an all-time low. And after partially adjusting these estimates for the tendency of families to underreport government benefits, the child poverty rate in 2012 was just over 5 percent, compared with nearly 20 percent as indicated by the official poverty measure.
What about “extreme” child poverty, defined as living on $2 or less per day? Extreme child poverty overall was the same in 2014 as in 1996—about one-half of one percent of children—once noncash government benefits and refundable tax credits are factored in. After correcting for underreporting of government benefits, in no year did the number of children in extreme poverty exceed one in 400. After correcting for underreporting, practically no children of single mothers were in extreme poverty in either 1996 or 2012. Fewer than one in 1,500 children of single mothers were in a household getting by on $2 a day per person for the whole year in 2012.
The question is not whether PRWORA was the single best welfare-reform policy that could have been imagined; policymaking never produces that result. The question is what would have happened in the absence of the welfare reform that we actually implemented.
Perhaps looser welfare policy would lower poverty in any given year but reduce upward mobility out of poverty—either over the course of childhood or once children become adults. More generally, to the extent that we reduce the cost of making poor decisions, more people will tend to make poor decisions. One does not have to believe that this logic demands that we eliminate all safety nets to acknowledge that these sorts of trade-offs are inevitable in designing welfare policy.
None of this is to say that TANF or other aspects of welfare policy cannot be improved or that our levels of deep poverty are sufficiently low. But policymakers should reject the increasingly conventional view that extreme poverty has dramatically increased and the view that welfare reform did more harm than good. Improving policy and reducing hardship require that we have a clearheaded view of our challenges.
Clovis: Trump Appealing to 'Real People' in Minority Outreach
MTP Daily 8/23/16
Co-chair Sam Clovis says Donald Trump's minority outreach is appealing to "the average voter" who "lives under the oppression of, in many of these cities, under Democrat administrations" instead of "groups that are typically hostile to Republicans." Duration: 11:59
Ann Coulter Makes The Case For Trump | Hardball | MSNBC
Published on Aug 23, 2016 by MSNBC
The conservative author is out with a new book, making the case for the billionaire businessman. Ann Coulter tells Chris Matthews why skeptical voters should reconsider voting for Donald Trump.
A lot of people who do not like Hillary Clinton are saying she’s too sick to be President. To address this when she was on our show, we challenged her to open a jar of pickles. She was able to open them. Based on the response we got online, you would think we faked the moon landing.
Full Show - Hillary's Latest Pathetic Attempt To Fool The Public Exposed - 08/23/2016
Published on Aug 23, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel
On this Tuesday, August 23 edition of the Alex Jones Show, we examine the desperation of the Hillary Clinton campaign after Infowars, Breitbart, Drudge and others unleash viral news revealing Hillary’s very poor health. Hillary was even forced to go on the Jimmy Kimmel Show to push back against the truth about her condition. Roger Stone joins us in studio to reveal the real state of the election and what the mainstream media won’t tell you. We also discuss Trump’s visit to Austin today.
Trump manager says 'undercover voters' will deliver win in US election Donald Trump with some not-so-undercover supporters on Monday in Akron, Ohio. Kellyanne Conway says Trump’s popularity is not reflected in his polls because of the perceived social stigma of supporting the Republican nominee 23 August 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/23/donald-trump-campaign-news-polls-kellyanne-conway [with comments]
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FULL EXCLUSIVE DONALD TRUMP TOWN HALL EVENT WITH SEAN HANNITY IN AUSTIN, TEXAS DAY 1 (8/23/2016)
Tuesday, August 23, 2016: Live stream coverage of the Donald J. Trump for President rally in Austin, TX at Luedecke Arena. Live coverage begins at 7:30 PM CT.
Rachel Maddow reports on the billionaire, Robert Mercer, who supported the unseating of Republican establishment figures, finances Breitbart News, and is the link between the Donald Trump campaign and its new CEO, Breitbart's Steve Bannon.
New Poll Shows Clinton, Trump Tied In Red SC | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC
Published on Aug 23, 2016 by MSNBC
Rachel Maddow reports exclusive new poll results from The Feldman Group showing the presidential race tied 39-39 in South Carolina, a typically securely Republican state. Jaime Harrison, chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, joins to discuss.
Ben Carson Weighs In On Donald Trump's Minority Appeal | Morning Joe | MSNBC
Published on Aug 24, 2016 by MSNBC
Donald Trump has been addressing minority voters with the message of what do they have to lose by voting for him. Dr. Ben Carson joins Morning Joe to discuss Trump's approach. Carson also discusses undocumented immigrants, and he says both 2016 candidates should reveal their medical histories.
Leslie Jones faces constant abuse – because that's how racism works ‘This all didn’t happen just because she did a movie. It was because she is a statuesque dark-skinned black woman, sister in spirit and posture to Nina Simone.’ The hacking of the actor’s website is symptomatic of the culture we’ve built. If you want to take a stand, more than a tweet of sympathy is required. 24 August 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/24/leslie-jones-abuse-racism-hacking-website
By George Lakoff Author of Don’t Think of an Elephant! | UC Berkeley Professor of Linguistics | Founder of Reframe America 08/24/2016 08:45 am ET Updated August 24, 2016
Responsible reporters in the media normally transcribe political speeches so that they can accurately report them. But Donald Trump’s discourse style has stumped a number of reporters. Dan Libit, CNBC’s excellent analyst is one of them. Libit writes:
His unscripted speaking style, with its spasmodic, self-interrupting sentence structure, has increasingly come to overwhelm the human brains and tape recorders attempting to quote him.
Trump is, simply put, a transcriptionist’s worst nightmare: severely unintelligible, and yet, incredibly important to understand.
Given how dramatically recent polls [ http://time.com/4442887/trump-clinton-poll-abc-washington-post-khans/ ] have turned on his controversial public utterances, it is not hyperbolic to say that the very fate of the nation, indeed human civilization, appears destined to come down to one man’s application of the English language — and the public’s comprehension of it. It has turned the rote job of transcribing into a high-stakes calling.
...
Trump’s crimes against clarity are multifarious: He often speaks in long, run-on sentences, with frequent asides. He pauses after subordinate clauses. He frequently quotes people saying things that aren’t actual quotes. And he repeats words and phrases, sometimes with slight variations, in the same sentence.
Some in the media (Washington Post, Salon, Slate, Think Progress, etc.) have called Trump’s speeches “word salad.” Some commentators have even attributed his language use to “early Alzheimer’s,” citing “erratic behavior” and “little regards for social conventions.” I don’t believe it.
I have been repeatedly asked in media interviews about such use of language by Trump. So far as I can tell, he is simply using effective discourse mechanisms to communicate what his wants to communicate to his audience. I have found that he is very careful and very strategic in his use of language. The only way I know to show this is to function as a linguist and cognitive scientist and go through details.
Let’s start with sentence fragments. It is common and natural in New York discourse for friends to finish one another’s sentences. And throughout the country, if you don’t actually say the rest of a friend’s sentence out loud, there is nevertheless a point at which you can finish it in your head. When this happens in cooperative discourse, it can show empathy and intimacy with a friend, that you know the context of the narrative, and that you understand and accept your friend’s framing of the situation so well that you can even finish what they have started to say. Of course, you can be bored with, or antagonistic to, someone and be able to finish their sentences with anything but a feeling of empathy and intimacy. But Trump prefers to talk to a friendly crowd.
Trump often starts a sentence and leaves off where his followers can finish in their minds what he has started to say. That is, they commonly feel empathy and intimacy, an acceptance of what is being said, and good feeling toward the speaker. This is an unconscious, automatic reaction, especially when words are flying by quickly. It is a means for Trump to connect with his audience.
The Second Amendment Incident
Here is the classic case, the Second Amendment Incident. The thing to be aware of is that his words are carefully chosen. They go by quickly when people hear them. But they are processed unconsciously first by neural circuitry — and neurons operate on a thousandth-of-a-second time scale. Your neural circuitry has plenty of time to engage in complex forms of understanding, based on what you already know.
Trump begins by saying, “Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the Second Amendment.” He first just says “abolish,” and then hedges by adding “essentially abolish.” But having said “abolish” twice, he has gotten across the message that she wants to, and is able to, change the Constitution in that way.
Now, at the time the Second Amendment was written, the “arms” in “bear arms” were long rifles that fired one bullet at a time. The “well-regulated militia” was a local group, like a contemporary National Guard unit, regulated by a local government with military command structure. They were protecting American freedoms against the British.
The Second Amendment has been reinterpreted by contemporary ultra-conservatives as the right of individual citizens to bear contemporary arms (e.g., AK-47’s), either to protect their families against invaders or to change a government by armed rebellion if that government threatens what they see as their freedoms. The term “Second Amendment” activates the contemporary usage by ultra-conservatives. It is a dog-whistle term, understood in that way by many conservatives.
Now, no president or Supreme Court could literally abolish any constitutional amendment alone. But a Supreme Court could judge that that certain laws concerning gun ownership could be unconstitutional. That is what Trump meant by “essentially abolish.”
Thus, the election of Hillary Clinton threatens the contemporary advocates of the ‘Second Amendment.’
Trump goes on:
“By the way, and if she gets to pick [loud boos] — if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
Here are the details.
“By the way,” marks a parallel utterance, one that does not linearly follow from what was just said, but that has information relevant to what was just said.
“And” here marks information that follows from what was just said.
“If she gets to pick ...” When said the first time, it was followed immediately by loud boos. The audience could finish the if-clause for themselves, since the word “pick” in context could only be about Hillary picking liberal judges. Trump goes on making this explicit, “if she gets to pick her judges...”
“Gets to” is important. The metaphor here with “to” is that Achieving a Purpose Is Reaching a Destination” with the object of “to” marking the pick. The “get” in “get to” is from a related metaphor, namely, that Achieving a Purpose Is Getting a Desired Object. In both Purpose metaphors, the Achievement of the Purpose can be stopped by an opponent. The “if,” indicates that the achievement of the purpose is still uncertain, which raises the question of whether it can be stopped.
“Her judges” indicates that the judges are not your judges, from which it follows that they will not rule the way you want them to, namely, for keeping your guns. The if-clause thus has a consequence: unless Hillary is prevented from becoming president, “her judges” will change the laws to take away your guns and your Constitutional right to bear arms. This would be a governmental infringement on your freedom, which would justify the armed intervention of ultra-conservatives, what Sharon Angle in Nevada has called the “Second Amendment solution.” In short, a lot is entailed — in little time on a human timescale, but with lots of time on a neural timescale.
Having set this up, Trump follows the if-clause with “Nothing you can do, folks.” This is a shortened version in everyday colloquial English of “There will be nothing you can do, folks.” That is, if you let Hillary take office, you will be so weak that you will be unable to stop her. The “folks,” suggests that he and the audience members are socially part of the same social group — as opposed to a distant billionaire with his own agenda.
Immediately after “nothing you can do,” Trump goes on: “Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is.
“Although” is a word used to contrast one possible course of events with an opposite possibility. Trump has just presented a possible course of events that is threatening to ultra-conservative Second Amendment advocates. “Although the Second Amendment people” calls up the alternative for those who would act violently to protect their Second Amendment right.
“Maybe” brings up a suggestion. “Maybe there is” suggests that there is something the “Second Amendment People” can do to prevent Hillary from taking office and appointing liberal judges who would take away what they see as their Constitutional rights.
“I don’t know” is intended to remove Trump from any blame. But it acts unconsciously in the opposite way. It is like the title of the book I wrote, “Don’t Think of an Elephant.” The way the brain works is that negating a frame activates the frame. The relevant frame for “Second Amendment people” is use of arms to protect their rights against a government threatening to take away their rights. This is about the right to shoot, not about the right to vote. Second Amendment conservative discourse is about shooting, not about voting.
The point here is that Trump’s use of language is anything but “word salad.” His words and his use of grammar are carefully chosen, and put together artfully, automatically, and quickly.
Trump never overtly used the word “assassinate.” He says he was just suggesting that advocates of the Second Amendment vote, and was being sarcastic. A sarcastic invocation to vote would sound very different. A sarcastic invocation to vote might be, “The American way to change things is to vote. But maybe you care so much about shooting, you won’t be able to organize to vote.”
He didn’t say anything like that. And he chose his words very, very carefully.
Believe Me! Some People Say...
People in the media have asked me about Trump’s use of “Believe me!” and “Many people say” followed by a statement that is not true, but that he wants he audience to believe. Why does he use such expressions and how do they work in discourse? To understand this, one needs to look at the concept of lying. Most people will say that a lie is a false statement. But a study by linguists Linda Coleman and Paul Kay pointed out more than 30 years ago that the situation is more complex.
If a statement happens to be false, but you sincerely believe that it is true, you are not lying in stating it. Lying involves a hierarchy of conditions defining worse and worse lies. Here is the hierarchy:
1. You don’t believe it.
2. You are trying to deceive.
3. You are trying to gain advantage for yourself.
4.You are trying to harm.
As you add conditions in the hierarchy, the lies get worse and worse.
Though this is the usual hierarchy for lies, there are variations: A white lie is one that is harmless. A social lie is one where deceit is general helpful, as in, “Aunt Susie, that was such a delicious Jello mold that you made.” Other variations include exaggeration, flattery, kidding, joking, etc.
Lying is a form of uncooperative discourse. But most discourse is cooperative, and there are rules governing it that the philosopher Paul Grice called “maxims” in his Harvard Lectures in 1967. Grice observed that uncooperative discourse is created when the maxims are violated. Grice’s maxims were extended in the 1970’s by Eve Sweetser in a paper on lying.
Sweetser postulated a Maxim of Helpfulness:
In Cooperative Discourse, people intend to help one another.
She then observed that there were two models used in helpful communication.
1. Ordinary Communication: If people say something, they are intending to help if and only if they believe it. People intend to deceive, if and only if they don’t intend to help.
2.Justified Belief: People have adequate reasons for their beliefs. What people have adequate reason to believe is true.
Though this model does not hold for all situations (e.g., kidding), they are models that are used by virtually everyone unconsciously all day every day. If I tell my wife that I saw my cousin this morning, there is no reason to deceive, so I believe it (Ordinary Communication). And since I know my cousin well, if I believe I saw him, then I did see him (Justified Belief). Such principles are part of our unconsciously functioning neural systems. They work automatically, unless they become conscious and we can attend to them and control them.
Trump uses these communication models that are in your brain. When he says “Believe me!” he is using the principle of Justified Belief, suggesting that he has the requisite experience for his belief to be true. When those in Trump’s audience hear “Believe me!”, they will mostly understand it automatically and, unconsciously and via Justified Belief, will take it to be true.
When Trump says, “Many people say that ...” both principles are unconsciously activated. If many people say it, they are unlikely to all or mostly be deceiving, which means they believe it, and by Justified Belief, it is taken to be true.
You have to be on your toes, listening carefully and ready to disbelieve Trump, to avoid the use of these ordinary cognitive mechanisms in your brain that Trump uses for his purposes.
Is He “On Topic?”
Political reporters are used to hearing speeches with significant sections on a single policy issue. Trump often goes from policy to policy to policy in a single sentence. Is he going off topic?
So far as I can discern, he always on topic, but you have to understand what his topic is. As I observed in my Understanding Trump paper, Trump is deeply, personally committed to his version of Strict Father Morality. He wants it to dominate the country and the world, and he wants to be the ultimate authority in this authoritarian model of the family that is applied in conservative politics in virtually every issue area.
Every particular issue, from building the wall, to using our nukes, to getting rid of inheritance taxes (on those making $10.9 million or more), to eliminating the minimum wage — every issue is an instance of his version of Strict Father Morality over all areas of life, with him as ultimately in charge.
As he shifts from particular issue to particular issue, each of them activates his version of Strict Father Morality and strengthens it in the brains of his audience. So far as I can tell, he is always on topic — where this is the topic.
Always Selling
For five decades, Trump has been using all these techniques of selling and trying to make deals to his advantage. It seems to have become second nature for him to use these devices. And he uses them carefully and well. He is a talented charlatan. Keeping you off balance is part of his game. As is appealing to ordinary thought mechanisms in the people he is addressing.
It is vital that the media, and ordinary voters, learn to recognize his techniques. When the media fails to grasp what he is doing, it gives him an advantage. Every time someone in the media claims his discourse is “word salad, “ it helps Trump by hiding what he is really doing.
“Regret” or Excuse
One day after the above was written, Trump made a well-publicized statement of “regret.”
“Sometimes, in the heat of debate and speaking on a multitude of issues, you don’t choose the right words or you say the wrong thing.
I have done that.
And believe it or not, I regret it.
And I do regret it, particularly where it may have caused personal pain.
Too much is at stake for us to be consumed with these issues. ...”
He did not give any specifics.
What we have just seen is that he chooses his words VERY carefully. And he has done that here.
He starts out with “sometimes,” which suggests that it is a rare occurrence on no particular occasions — a relatively rare accident. He continues with a general, inescapable fact about being a presidential candidate, namely, that he is always “in the heat of debate and speaking on a multitude of issues.” The words “heat” and “multitude” suggest that normal attention to details like word choice cannot operate in presidential campaign. In short, it is nothing that he could possibly be responsible for, and is a rare occurrence anyway.
Then he uses the word “you.” This shifts perspective from him to “you,” a member of the audience. You too, if you were running for president, would naturally be in such uncontrollable situations all the time, when “you don’t choose the right words or you say the wrong thing.” It’s just a matter of choosing “the right words.” This means that he had the right ideas, but under natural, and inevitable attentional stress, an unavoidable mistake happens and could happen to you: “you” have the right ideas, but mess up on the “right words.”
He then admits to “sometimes” making an unavoidable, natural mistake, not in choosing the right ideas, but in word choice and, putting yourself in his shoes, “you say the wrong thing” — that is, you are thinking the right thing, but you just say it wrong — “sometimes.”
His admission is straightforward — “I have done that” — as if he had just admitted to something immoral, but which he has carefully described as anything but immoral.
“And believe it or not, I regret it.” What he is communicating with “believe it or not,” is that you, in the audience, may not believe that I am a sensitive soul, but I really am, as shown by my statement of regret. He then emphasizes his statement of personal sensitivity: “And I do regret it, particularly where it may have caused personal pain.” Note the “may have caused.” No admission that he definitely DID “cause personal pain.” And no specifics given. After all, they don’t have to be given, because it is natural, unavoidable, accidental, and so rare as to not matter. He states this: “Too much is at stake for us to be consumed with these issues.” In short, it’s a trivial matter to be ignored — because it is a natural, unavoidable, accidental mistake, only in the words not the thoughts, and is so rare as to be unimportant. All that in five well-crafted sentences!
Note how carefully he has chosen his words. And what is the intended effect? He should be excused because inaccurate word choice is so natural that it will inevitably occur again, and he should not be criticized when the stress of the campaign leads inevitably to mistakes in trivial word choice.
But there is a larger effect. Words have meanings. The words he carefully uses, often over and over, get across his values and ideas, which are all too often lies or promotions of racist, sexist, and other un-American invocations. When these backfire mightily, as with the Khans, there can be no hiding behind a nonspecific “regret” that they were just rare, accidental word choice mistakes too trivial for the public to be “consumed with.”
Donald Trump Rally in Tampa, Florida FULL [ Jeff Sessions / Rudy Giuliani ]
Streamed live on Aug 24, 2016 by Entertainment News Gaming
Wednesday, August 24, 2016: LIVE streaming coverage of the Donald J. Trump for President rally in Tampa, FL at Florida State Fairgrounds- Entertainment Hall. The event is scheduled to begin at 1:00 PM EDT.
Donald Trump offers misleading statistics about Hispanic poverty "Since President Obama came into office, another 2 million Hispanics have joined the ranks of those in poverty. … The number of Hispanic children living in poverty increased by 15 percent in that short period of time." - Donald Trump on Wednesday, August 24th, 2016 in a speech in Tampa August 25th, 2016 http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/aug/25/donald-trump/donald-trump-offers-misleading-statistics-about-hi/ [with embedded video]
How The RNC Is Reaching Out To Black Voters | MSNBC Live
Published on Aug 24, 2016 by MSNBC
RNC Communications Director Sean Spicer discusses changes the Donald Trump campaign is making, as well as recent criticisms levied against The Clinton Foundation.
The GOP's Stealth War Against Voters The Crosscheck program is a response to the imaginary menace of mass voter fraud. The Crosscheck program, started by Kris Kobach, has spread to over two dozen states, tagging more than 7 million voters as possibly suspect. Will an anti-voter-fraud program designed by one of Trump's advisers deny tens of thousands their right to vote in November? August 24, 2016 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/the-gops-stealth-war-against-voters-w435890
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Donald Trump Is A War Machine Against Tyranny
Published on Aug 24, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel
On this Wednesday, August 24 transmission of the Alex Jones Show, new reports show Hillary demanded donations to the Clinton Foundation in exchange for special favors from the state department during her tenure as secretary of state. We'll also break down Donald Trump's epic rally in Austin with Infowars reporter Owen Shroyer, who documented several protests taking place outside the event. And Dr. Edward Group joins the show for breaking news regarding Hillary's health and the Zika virus. Journalist Jon Ronson, who helped infiltrate the Bohemian Grove with Alex Jones, also joins the program in the third hour. We'll also take your calls during this worldwide broadcast.
Donald Trump Introduces Nigel Farage in Rally in Jackson, Mississippi FULL EVENT AMAZING
Streamed live on Aug 24, 2016 by Entertainment News Gaming
Wednesday, August 24, 2016: Live stream coverage of the Donald Trump for President rally in Jackson, MS at the Mississippi Coliseum. Live coverage begins at 7:00 PM CT.
At last Nigel Farage has emerged to defend the ordinary billionaires of the world, like Donald Trump The ex-Ukip leader joined the presidential contender at a rally in Jackson, Mississippi. Farage ended his speech with a cry to defeat the establishment. This was the most heartfelt moment of all, because no one has had to fight harder against the establishment than Trump 25 August 2016 If Nigel Farage and Donald Trump continue this new alliance, it could be a thrilling contest as they fight to outdo each other. Trump will open a rally with “Let me tell you, Muslims frighten potatoes, their beards make them go mouldy – and that’s a fact. So if you want to stop a famine, you better vote for Donald Trump.” Then Farage will respond: “That’s right Donald, and they go every year to Mecca to squirt Domestos at pandas. That’s what they’re doing out there and it has to stop.” Trump will storm into the lead with “Hey, you know it’s interesting, there are some scientists, and they’ve found that Mexicans are a species of greenfly,” and Nigel will retort, “Yes, and foreigners are up to 80 per cent more combustible than people who live in the country they were born in.” The crowd will be screaming, as Trump booms, “hijabs set volcanoes off”, and Farage yells, “when Barack Obama came to England he made all the fish die. But THEY don’t want you to know, so they replaced them all from the Queen’s aquarium and hid the truth as usual.” Then the two of them will collapse, exhausted, like athletes at the end of the 10,000 metres. We’ll have witnessed one of the great political battles of history. Trump claims to be a champion of Brexit, but a few weeks ago he made it clear he had no idea what the Brexit vote was about. But that doesn’t matter. He can tell his supporters: “The great news is Britain voted to no longer be in France, as it wasn’t allowed to have its own sunlight and had to buy warmness off of Mexico – which runs the European Union.” Because one rule they’ve both discovered is not only do you not have to bother checking if something is true before you say it, you don’t even have to pretend it’s true when you do. The pair make a virtue out of things not being true. [...] http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/at-last-nigel-farage-has-emerged-to-defend-the-ordinary-billionaires-of-the-world-like-donald-trump-a7209926.html [with embedded video, and comments]
Glenn Beck On Donald Trump's 'Dog Whistle' | The Last Word | MSNBC
Published on Aug 25, 2016 by MSNBC
Glenn Beck talks to Lawrence about his exchange with a Donald Trump supporter who threatened to “come after” Trump if Trump doesn’t keep his promises on immigration, and what he sees as Donald Trump's 'dog whistle' to supporters.
Economists Who’ve Advised Presidents Are No Fans of Donald Trump Of 17 Republican-appointed former members of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, none said they supported Donald Trump. In a WSJ survey, no former members of the White House Council of Economic Advisers—spanning eight presidents—openly support Mr. Trump Aug 25, 2016 http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/08/25/economists-whove-advised-presidents-are-no-fans-of-donald-trump/ [with comments]
‘Alt-Right’ Movement Sends Threats To Anti-Donald Trump Republicans | Andrea Mitchell | MSNBC
Published on Aug 25, 2016 by MSNBC
Former Director of Media Relations for the Bob Dole campaign, Andrew Weinstein, faced a barrage of hateful anti-Semitic attacks from the “alt-right” movement after organizing an anti-Trump petition. He joins NBC’s Andrea Mitchell to share some of the threats he received.
Being The Target Of Trump's Alt-right Supporters | All In | MSNBC
Published on Aug 25, 2016 by MSNBC
Reporter Julia Ioffe recounts the experience of receiving anti-Semitic messages on Twitter, and later phone calls and death threats, after writing a magazine profile of Melania Trump.
Full Show - ALEX JONES TRIGGERS HILLARY CLINTON - 08/25/2016
Published on Aug 25, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel
On this Thursday, August 25 edition of the Alex Jones Show, we analyze the greatest fight ever: Nigel Farage and Donald Trump are igniting a nationalist movement to defeat the globalists. We also analyze corruption in the Clinton campaign as leaked emails reveal State Dept. workers also working with the Clinton Foundation at the same time. Modern-day historian and event forecaster Jon Rappoport analyzes what the ongoing downfall of the mainstream media means and more.
At a speech in Reno, Nevada, Hillary Clinton argued that Donald Trump's campaign was based on prejudice and paranoia as it has stoked far-right beliefs that white identity is under threat. See her full remarks here.
Published on Aug 25, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel
Hillary Clinton claimed that Donald Trump was embracing “dark conspiracy theories” before going on a conspiracy theory-obsessed rant in which she attacked Alex Jones.
Coburn: 'Alt-Right' is 'Total Fringe' | MTP Daily | MSNBC
Published on Aug 25, 2016 by MSNBC
Former Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) says Donald Trump "may enliven" some of the "total fringe" conversation of the “alt-right” movement, but "he doesn't embrace it." Coburn joins Chuck Todd on MTP Daily.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump spoke with CNN's Anderson Cooper about undocumented immigrants and his stance on deportation in this first part of their interview.
Trump dance card empty among former White House economic advisers
The Rachel Maddow Show 8/25/16
Rachel Maddow reports on the history of the White House Council of Economic Advisers and points out a report by the Wall Street Journal that asked everyone who has ever served on the council, 45 of them, going back to Nixon, and found none who support Donald Trump. Duration: 5:07
Trump mainstreaming fringe right with Breitbart hire
The Rachel Maddow Show 8/25/16
Rachel Maddow shows how billionaire Robert Mercer is the link that connects the Donald Trump campaign and Steve Bannon's fringe-right news outlet Breitbart News, and how that is leading to the mainstreaming of previously obscure ideas. Duration: 9:54
Rachel Maddow describes how the Trump campaign, influenced by fringe-right media like his campaign CEO's Breitbart News, tried to rally supporters in Mississippi around European nationalist politics by introducing British "Brexit" leader Nigel Farage as a guest speaker. Duration: 8:59
Racist-right finds new prominence via Trump campaign
The Rachel Maddow Show 8/25/16
Daryle Lamont Jenkins, founder of One People's Project, talks with Rachel Maddow about exposing leaders of the racist-right, and the new prominence of fringe racist elements in the Republican Party via the Donald Trump campaign. Duration: 7:49