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2016 Election Tag

Posted by New Neo on October 11, 2016 62 Comments
In last night's debate, Donald Trump stated that if he were president Hillary Clinton would be in jail. If you look at the entire transcript, that was the last (and most extreme) statement of a much lengthier exchange that went like this:
TRUMP: When I speak, I go out and speak, the people of this country are furious. In my opinion, the people that have been long-term workers at the FBI are furious. There has never been anything like this, where e-mails — and you get a subpoena, you get a subpoena, and after getting the subpoena, you delete 33,000 e-mails, and then you acid wash them or bleach them, as you would say, very expensive process. So we’re going to get a special prosecutor, and we’re going to look into it, because you know what? People have been — their lives have been destroyed for doing one-fifth of what you’ve done. And it’s a disgrace. And honestly, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. RADDATZ: Secretary Clinton, I want to follow up on that.

Posted by Mary Chastain on October 10, 2016 10 Comments
Technology giants in Silicon Valley have donated money to Democrat Deborah Ross against Sen. Richard Burr (R), which has become one of the tightest races in the country. The Hill reported:
Laurene Powell-Jobs, the widow of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, tech venture capitalist Brook Byers and tech executive Amy Rao have all donated $2,700 to Ross, the maximum allowed. Paul Haahr, a top engineer at Google, has also donated $2,000 to Ross via the Bay Area based PAC, WomenCount.

Posted by Mary Chastain on October 10, 2016 6 Comments
Wikileaks released another batch of emails belonging to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, some of which tells about drama within the Clinton Foundation and limiting the usage of Bill due to his sexual history. In one disturbing chain, Doug Band, a lawyer who helped form the Clinton Foundation and former aide to President Bill Clinton, wrote to Podesta, Hillary aide Cheryl Mills, and aide Justin Cooper about how Bill and Chelsea's "office crap" almost caused the foundation's COO to commit suicide: Clinton Foundation COO Suicidal He also told the group Bruce, another employee, claimed this same crap caused his serious health problems.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 10, 2016 58 Comments
Hillary Clinton plays the part of the tough fighter, but in fact her campaign and supporters have a history accusing male candidate opponents of menacing her on the debate stage. Most famously, that card was played against Rick Lazio from the 2000 New York Senate debate between Hillary Clinton and Rick Lazio? Lazio’s campaign all but collapsed after he approached Clinton at the podium with a copy of a “soft money” pledge and demanded she sign it. Of course, Lazio paid the price. Watch: The 2000 Clinton Senate campaign—and the media—acted apalled:
Stung by apparent charges that he was too aggressive during last week’s New York Senate debate against Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rep. Rick Lazio said Tuesday such criticism of his behavior was “sexist.”

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on October 10, 2016 42 Comments
The headline's not a typo: avowed Hillary supporter Mika Brzezinski has torn into Republicans who withdrew their support for Donald Trump over his hot mic comments, calling them "pathetic, weak and spineless." On today's Morning Joe, Mika's point was that for anyone who had bothered to look, there was, long before Friday, tons of negative material out there about Trump. So anyone pretending to be shocked by the most recent disclosure must have been willfully blind. And based on his strong debate performance last night, Mika predicted that they might now "have to come back." Joe Scarborough graphically made the same point, saying that "halfway through the debate, they [the dump-Trumpers] were looking at their TV saying oh . . . shoot."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 09, 2016 116 Comments
This is my quick reaction to tonight's debate. I think it went as well as could have been expected by Trump. He dealt with the 2005 tape by apologizing, and it came across well. And he didn't immediately counterattack on Bill Clinton's sexual abuse and harassment and Hillary's complicity. He waited, whether deliberately or not, until Hillary repeatedly attacked him on the tape and the moderators seemed to have to pull it out of him.

Posted by Mary Chastain on October 09, 2016 43 Comments
This debate ought to be juicy due to the leaked Donald Trump recordings. Will he become humble? How will Hillary Clinton attack? Will it even come up at all? Watch with us here at Legal Insurrection! ABC's Martha Raddatz and CNN's Anderson Cooper will moderate the debate at Washington University in St. Louis, MO. It begins live at 9PM EST.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 09, 2016 16 Comments
I mentioned last night that Trump appeared to be approaching "ramming speed" in going after Bill and Hillary Clinton. It looks like that is on track. The Hill reports:
Donald Trump has brought to Sunday's presidential debate in St. Louis three women who have accused former President Bill Clinton of sexual assault or rape and a fourth who said Hillary Clinton defended the man who raped her as a child.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on October 09, 2016 10 Comments
In an exclusive report, the Intercept has published a series of documents that show how Hillary and her team worked closely with the media in order to coordinate messaging and showing Hillary in a positive light. The Intercept reports:
The emails were provided to The Intercept by the source identifying himself as Guccifer 2.0, who was reportedly responsible for prior significant hacks, including one that targeted the Democratic National Committee and resulted in the resignations of its top four officials. On Friday, Obama administration officials claimed that Russia’s “senior-most officials” were responsible for that hack and others, although they provided no evidence for that assertion. As these internal documents demonstrate, a central component of the Clinton campaign strategy is ensuring that journalists they believe favorable to Clinton are tasked to report the stories which the campaign wants circulated.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on October 09, 2016 116 Comments
Trump's now infamous "hot mic" comments while aboard an Access Hollywood tour bus have caused not only a flurry of GOP endorsement withdrawals and calls for his withdrawing from the race, but according to one poll released today, they've also prompted GOP voters to demand that the Republican party continue to support Trump. From a former RNC chair saying Trump's campaign "can't be salvaged" and Condoleezza Rice saying "Enough" and calling on Trump to resign to such disparate members of Congress as Jason Chaffetz, John Thune, Mike Lee, and John McCain withdrawing their endorsements, the political class on the Republican side has made its feelings about Trump in light of the most recent revelations quite clear. Equally clear, at this point, is that some Trump mega-donors and the majority of Trump voters want the GOP to stand by their man.

Posted by Mary Chastain on October 09, 2016 17 Comments
President Barack Obama's administration has officially blamed Russia for the recent hacks to influence the 2016 presidential election. Fingers have longed pointed fingers at Russia whenever hackers posted emails from the Democratic National Committee and phone calls with Democrats, but now U.S. intelligence agencies have enough confidence to put the blame on Russia:
“We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the statement said. The agencies said some state election systems have been recently scanned and probed and that this action originated from servers operated by a Russian company. But the statement stopped short of definitively blaming the Russian government for that activity.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 08, 2016 121 Comments
By any conventional wisdom, Donald Trump's polling numbers should crater as a result of the release of a 2005 video in which he disparages women and boasts of hitting on married and other women in a manner that suggests non-consensual sexual contact. But so much of what seems logical to me has been wrong when it comes to Trump's ability to weather political storms. Put aside the rank hypocrisy of the politicians and media who to this day defend Bill Clinton, who is alleged by numerous women to have done far worse. Precisely because the media would want any Republican to lose, no moral equivalence will be drawn much yet used as an excuse. After all, the media painted Mitt Romney as a virtual sexual deviant because of the "binders of women" comment during a debate, so yes, the mainstream media is disgusting and dishonest.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on October 08, 2016 178 Comments
Two days ago, we reported Donny Deutsch predicting that stories damaging to Donald Trump involving women would be emerging. We wondered out loud: "was this pure speculation on Donny’s part, or did a little birdie inside the Clinton campaign tell him something?" And sure enough—just one day later—broke the hot mic story of Trump making crude and lewd comments about one woman in particular and women in general. So sure looks like Donny did know something. In any case, appearing on today's With All Due Respect, Donny declared: "let the record show, at 4:01pm on October 7th, this election ended—when this Washington Post story broke."
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