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2016 Election Tag

During the past week-and-a-half, the elite media has been on a mission to obliterate Donald Trump's candidacy with late-coming charges by women whose stories are being challenged by people in positions to know the truth. On the other hand, the coverage of the WikiLeaks information related to Hillary Clinton, her Goldman Sachs speeches, the Clinton Foundation's corruption, the war on Bill Clinton's accusers, the war on Catholics, collusion with the Department of Justice, and the media collusion with her campaign has been dripping out slowly. Fortunately for the Republican candidate, the American people's trust in the American press is such that Google searches for the term "Wikileaks" has dwarfed the searches related to the Trump scandal. How is the ginned-up Trump scandal actually impacting women voters? While my vote has remained unchanged, I was interested in what other female supporters were saying.

A GOP office in North Carolina was firebombed. ABC News reports: A local Republican Party office in North Carolina was damaged by fire and someone spray-painted an anti-GOP slogan referring to "Nazi Republicans" on a nearby wall, authorities said Sunday. A news release from the town of Hillsborough said someone threw a bottle filled with flammable liquid through the window of the Orange County Republican Party headquarters overnight. The substance ignited and damaged furniture and the interior before burning out.

Donna Brazile, a CNN contributor and at the time DNC Vice Chair (now Chair), was caught through the Wikileaks Podesta email dump feeding to Hillary's campaign a question to be used at a CNN presidential town hall. We covered the story previously, Brazile Gave Hillary Campaign Town Hall Question in Advance:
The Wikileaks dump of Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta emails shows that then-CNN contributor, now DNC interim chair, Donna Brazile gave Hillary a question ahead of a CNN town hall. Brazile sent this email to Podesta and a few aides, with the subject “From time to time I get the questions in advance.”

I mostly missed the Ken Bone phenomenon. I either wasn't watching or wasn't listening when he asked a question at the last presidential debate. He then became a media darling, though I'm not really sure why. Something to do with his red sweater, apparently. And the fact that after the debate he said he started off leaning towards Trump, but was impressed with and considering Hillary. It was a perfect pro-Clinton media meme, common guy journalists otherwise would mock becomes cool because he moves from Trump to Hillary; a good example for the common folk to hear about. Bone then sought to cash in, selling a version of his red sweater and doing other stuff to make a buck and promote himself.

There are varying levels of horrible results for conservatives in the upcoming election. Based on current polling, it certainly looks like Hillary will be the next president. You can argue whether that is better or worse than the alternative for conservatives, but there is no serious argument that losing either the House or the Senate is horrible. In the case of the Senate, it will pave the way for Hillary to push through disastrous judicial nominations. And yes, expect Majority Leader Schumer to raise the nuclear option to the Supreme Court level if Democrats control the Senate by even a single (tie-breaking) vote. The Senate could go either way at present polling. But the House is what stands between conservatives and the political abyss. Think of where we would be if in the first two years of his presidency, when Obama controlled both houses of Congress, he had focused on passing a wide-ranging legislative agenda rather than focusing on Obamacare. All of the executive orders and actions that have been questioned by the courts and can be reversed by the next president would have the force of legislation. Assuming Hillary is the next president and wins in a landslide, Republican control of the House may be the last line of defense.

Was it a mistake for Donald Trump's opponents in the Republican primary not to have done oppo research on Trump and uncovered the stories about his personal behavior that have recently emerged? On today's With All Due Respect, Mark Halperin posed the question to GOP consultant Susan Del Percio [who had earlier indicated she wasn't voting for Trump or Hillary]. Del Percio said that, indeed, it was "political malpractice" for Trump's primary opponents not to have done such digging on him. She surmised that the candidates didn't want to spend the money, and were worried that in retaliation Trump would have "chop[ped] them off at the knees." Del Percio suggested that the smarter way to go would have been for an anti-Trump super PAC to have done the research.

As LI readers are well-aware, we value and seek to protect the Second Amendment.  A stance, it would seem, Team Hillary rejects.  A Project Veritas release shows Russ Feingold stating that Hillary "might" issue executive orders on guns should she be elected next month. The Washington Free Beacon reports:
Russ Feingold, the former Democratic senator from Wisconsin who is running again in an attempt to win back his old Senate seat, was recorded at a fundraiser saying that Hillary Clinton might issue an executive order on guns. The video was captured by James O’ Keefe’s Project Veritas at an Aug. 17, $2,700 per-head fundraiser held at the Palo-Alto, Calif., home of Democratic donors Amy Rao and Harry Plant. Palo-Alto is located 10 minutes away from Stanford University, where Feingold taught after leaving his position as a special envoy at the U.S. State Department. Feingold can be heard in the video discussing what Hillary Clinton could do in relation to guns if she were to be elected president. “If there’s still Republican control in Congress, and if Hillary is elected, is there anything she can do to uhh…,” a person asks Feingold within the video. “Well, there might be an executive order,” Feingold responds.

The Wikileaks email dump from campaign chair John Podesta will not help Hillary Clinton put to bed her email scandal. In one chain, campaign members discussed ways to frame her statement about her use of a private email server to evade responsibility and keep the press in the shadows: Hillary Email Statement However, not everyone within the campaign eagerly jumped on the bus to make excuses.

At the presidential debate on Sunday night, Anderson Cooper pressed Donald Trump into committing as to whether Trump had done any of the things (groping, etc.) Trump bragged about on the now infamous Access Hollywood tape. Trump said he never did those things, it was just locker room talk. Ben Shapiro saw what was about to happen -- that the following week Trump's statement would be put to the test: https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/785324451592142848 Well, on Wednesday night, within an hour or so of each other, multiple media outlets published separate stories of women accusing Trump of doing the things he bragged about on the tape.

Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta has told the media he blames Russia for the hack into his emails, which Wikileaks has been releasing in troves for the last few days. He even said that GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump knew about the hack and the leaks:
“I’ve been involved in politics for nearly five decades,” Mr. Podesta told reporters aboard the Clinton campaign plane. “This definitely is the first campaign that I’ve been involved with in which I’ve had to tangle with Russian intelligence agencies,” he added, “who seem to be doing everything that they can on behalf of our opponent.”
The FBI confirmed its agents have started an investigation into the hack.

Amidst the multitudes of reports on the scores of Republicans abandoning Trump, there doesn't seem to be much coverage of those who have decided to stick with Trump.  Ben Carson, of course, is also still supporting Trump, and  Mike Pence has been quite strong in support of his running mate.  Quite a few other prominent Republicans are also not jumping off the Trump train. Ted Cruz has stated that he is sticking with his recent decision to support Trump and that he's doing so for the same reasons he made the decision in the first place. Politico reports:
The Texas senator told a local TV station in Muleshoe, Texas, on Monday that despite lewd video showing Trump joking of unwanted sexual advances on women he would still back Trump over Hillary Clinton. "I am supporting the Republican nominee because I think Hillary Clinton is an absolute disaster. Now my differences with Donald, I have articulated at great length during the campaign. And I tried all my might," Cruz told Maggan Rennels of Channel 6. "It was an amazing journey."

Emails in the Wikileaks John Podesta hack has revealed details into the relationship between Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and the Hillary Clinton campaign. One email shows that Warren supplied the campaign with a list of possible nominees for personnel in a Hillary administration. Other emails showed concern in the campaign about how Warren would react if Hillary didn't support a revival of the Glass-Steagall Act. Clinton speechwriter director Dan Schwerin sent an email to the campaign after he had a long discussion with Warren aide Dan Geldon:
He was intently focused on personnel issues, laid out a detailed case against the Bob Rubin school of Democratic policy makers, was very critical of the Obama administration's choices, and explained at length the opposition to Antonio Weiss. We then carefully went through a list of people they do like, which EW sent over to HRC earlier.

The Wikileaks dump of Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta emails shows that then-CNN contributor, now DNC interim chair, Donna Brazile gave Hillary a question ahead of a CNN town hall. Brazile sent this email to Podesta and a few aides, with the subject "From time to time I get the questions in advance." Hillary Podesta Brazile Townhall

During the opening 6AM segment of today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough accused NBC of having "cooked" its current poll to favor Hillary Clinton. But at 8AM when Morning Joe replayed that opening segment, Scarborough's criticism of the NBC poll . . . had disappeared. Instead, the video jumped ahead to Mika Brzezinski's reading of the poll results themselves, which showed Hillary Clinton with an 11-14% lead. Scarborough's point was that NBC sampled only during the height of the hot mic hysteria, but didn't include sampling from after the debate, widely viewed as having been won by Trump. Joe obviously knew he was skating on thin network ice, prefacing his criticism by saying "we work here. We really love working here. We love this place."