At least they (eventually) got paid. Wonder how much he's gonna have to pay out during his time as POTUS to make it seem like people actually like him.
Quote:
On the morning of his inauguration, a remarkable coda to Donald Trump's presidential campaign.
Carrie Levine of the Center for Public Integrity found a report from the Federal Election Commission examining an under-reported aspect of Trump's campaign launch. Trump's announcement, held on the lower level of the Trump Tower lobby, was framed by cheering crowds watching from the floors above. Some of the members of that crowd, it was soon reported, were apparently paid to be there.
The Hollywood Reporter sussed out the evidence. An email from a firm called Extra Mile, soliciting people to be paid $50 to attend "an event in support of Donald Trump and an upcoming exciting announcement he will be making." Instagram photos of an actor in attendance that day. A reference in that email to Gotham Government Relations, the firm that hired Extra Mile and which Trump had used in the past.
Gotham, which put the event together, produced a video of the Trump announcement that it posted on YouTube.
At the time, the revelation didn't make much of a splash. The aftermath of Trump's announcement focused mostly on his comments about immigration. In June 2015, it also didn't seem like it was worth spending a lot of energy on evaluating the then-very-unlikely chance that Trump would go very far in the campaign. This was just a bit of icing on the weird Trump-announcement cake.
What Levine found, though, was that there was another level of detail to those actors showing up. In short: The Trump campaign failed to pay the $12,000 bill from Gotham until about a month after a complaint had been filed with the FEC. The delay between the time Gotham was hired -- June -- and when it was paid -- October -- essentially means that Gotham floated credit to the campaign for those four months, potentially making it a campaign contribution.
Meanwhile, Trump has a woman heading the Department of Education a person who believes we have no responsibility to ensure that citizens are even literate, let alone properly educated. DeVos might actually be the most terrifying of all of Trump's appointments, and he has a lot of awful ones. I have quite a few friends from Michigan, where the DeVos family is a big deal, and every single one of them has been ranting against her since the initial announcement was made. She is an absolutely atrocious pick for education; I'm really desperately hoping that she doesn't get confirmed. I can handle the other picks, but she's just a disaster waiting to happen.
Agreed. And not to make light of the appointment, because at this stage especially Education is critical, but honestly, this just underscores it:
Last edited by ae118; 01-22-2017 at 05:21 PM.
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Talk of a second major day of protest has begun. Looks like there may be demonstrations on Tax Day in front of IRS locations to demand that Trump release his tax returns.
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Talk of a second major day of protest has begun. Looks like there may be demonstrations on Tax Day in front of IRS locations to demand that Trump release his tax returns.
Ah well it doesn't look like that will happen anytime soon.... From Kellyanne earlier:
Seth RogenVerified account @Sethrogen 3h3 hours ago
"Seth Rogen has the biggest penis and most naturally hairless testicles I've ever seen in my life." - @seanspicer
It's shocking to me when I see Canadians falling in line with the Trump garbage. I mean, by god, I thought we were all better than that. But then, I'm often pretty naive with optimism.
The (sad) reality is that Canadians aren't above it. Trump finally gave a large segment in the US a voice with their racist / sexist / discriminatory views, which was always there, just simply muted. Canada has a similar segment if you listen carefully in my opinion.
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The (sad) reality is that Canadians aren't above it. Trump finally gave a large segment in the US a voice with their racist / sexist / discriminatory views, which was always there, just simply muted. Canada has a similar segment if you listen carefully in my opinion.
Your wrong. You are simplifying something that is much more complex. Many people didn't vote for anyone. They voted for who they disliked the least.
All the Canadian media did is focus on trump, he makes for a great story but the dems put out an unlikable candidate who at best fumbles around with her email and is the status quo for the systemic bribery that has run rampant.
That and he had a message for blue collar in the swing states. Hillary was an elitist who called many swing voters deplorable.
If I had a vote I wouldn't have voted for trump but for a large segment of the us I know a vote for him wasn't a vote for sexism. Just as a vote for Hillary wasn't necessarily a vote for corruption.
If I had a vote I wouldn't have voted for trump but for a large segment of the us I know a vote for him wasn't a vote for sexism. Just as a vote for Hillary wasn't necessarily a vote for corruption.
Agreed. Racism and xenophobia were definitively bigger factors than sexism.
Here's an interesting documentary by CBC's The Fifth Estate on Trump and his alleged ties to Russia. Pretty frightening stuff when you actually sit back and look at all the shady events and circumstances that led to the current s**t show we're all witnessing.
Last edited by direwolf; 01-22-2017 at 11:59 PM.
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Trump’s remarks caused astonishment and anger among current and former C.I.A. officials. The former C.I.A. director John Brennan, who retired on Friday, called it a “despicable display of self-aggrandizement in front of C.I.A.’s Memorial Wall of Agency heroes,” according to a statement released through a former aide. Brennan said he thought Trump “should be ashamed of himself.”
Crocker, who was among the last to see Ames and the local C.I.A. team alive in Beirut, was “appalled” by Trump’s comments. “Whatever his intentions, it was horrible,” Crocker, who went on to serve as the U.S. Ambassador in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, and Kuwait, told me. “As he stood there talking about how great Trump is, I kept looking at the wall behind him—as I’m sure everyone in the room was, too. He has no understanding of the world and what is going on. It was really ugly.”
“Why,” Crocker added, “did he even bother? I can’t imagine a worse Day One scenario. And what’s next?”
Quote:
John MacGaffin, another thirty-year veteran who rose to become the No. 2 in the C.I.A. directorate for clandestine espionage, said that Trump’s appearance should have been a “slam dunk,” calming deep unease within the intelligence community about the new President. According to MacGaffin, Trump should have talked about the mutual reliance between the White House and the C.I.A. in dealing with global crises and acknowledged those who had given their lives doing just that.
“What self-centered, irrational decision process got him to this travesty?” MacGaffin told me. “Most importantly, how will that process serve us when the issues he must address are dangerous and incredibly complex? This is scary stuff!”
