Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member Latest Breaking News General Discussion The DU Lounge All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

Tom of Temecula

Tom of Temecula's Journal
Tom of Temecula's Journal
May 13, 2024

It was Melania's idea to spin 'Access Hollywood' tape as 'locker room talk': Michael Cohen

Former Trump "fixer" Michael Cohen made a surprising claim on Monday during his testimony during former President Donald Trump's hush-money trial.

As reported by CNN's Kaitlan Collins, Cohen claimed that it was Melania Trump who came up with the idea to spin Trump's infamous "Access Hollywood" video -- in which he boasted about being able to grab women by their genitals without any repercussions -- as "locker room talk."

Cohen testified that the video in question, which released in the closing days of the 2016 presidential campaign, was what prompted him to come up with a scheme to make hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels to guarantee her silence about her past sexual encounter with Trump.

Cohen's testimony is the first time someone has claimed that Melania Trump helped her husband to spin his own boasts about being able to get away with sexually assaulting women. Melania has been notably absent from Trump's hush-money trial, as so far son Eric Trump has been the only member of Trump's family to appear at his side in court.



https://www.rawstory.com/access-hollywood-melania-trump/

May 13, 2024

Trump prosecutors may bring 'new documentary evidence' never before seen: CNN's Gangel

CNN's Jamie Gangel said on Monday that prosecutors in former President Donald Trump's hush-money trial are bringing in fresh material to show jurors during Trump "fixer" Michael Cohen's testimony on Monday.

During a panel discussion on Cohen's upcoming testimony, Gangel spilled details about what she's heard about the prosecution's planned presentation on Monday. "So according to sources familiar, in addition to Michael Cohen's first-hand testimony, prosecutors may bring in new documentary evidence that we have never seen before," she said.

"We do not know what it is. We do not know if it is a game changer. But I'm told it's an example of the paper trail that goes beyond Michael Cohen's testimony."

Gangel also said she recently spoke to Cohen and reported that he was "anxious" and wants to get the trial over with. He also said that his tone during his testimony will be "remorseful" when it comes to his past actions to help the former president cover up a sexual encounter with an adult-film star ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-hush-money-trial-2668246656/

May 13, 2024

Trump branded 'moron' by Bruce Springsteen fans as he taunts star about crowd size at New Jersey rally

Bruce Springsteen fans have denounced Donald Trump as a “moron” after he claimed that his Jersey Shore rally garnered a larger crowd than the singer could pull. The 77-year-old former president arrived at his Wildwood, New Jersey rally on Saturday evening which was swamped with approximately 80,000 Maga supporters, according to his campaign officials.

Alongside a flurry of expletives and praising fictional flesh-eating serial killer Hannibal Lecter before pivoting to talk about illegal migration, Mr Trump also took a jibe at a New Jersey icon: Bruce Spingsteen. “I love these Saturday evenings. Is there anything better than a Trump rally? If some of these wackos came along, you know, these liberal singers, they’d actually vote for me,” he gloated to the crowd. “You know, like Bruce Springsteen. We have a much bigger crowd than Bruce Springsteen. Right?,” Mr Trump added.

The Trump campaign has previously been criticized for inflating crowd sizes, and Mr Spingsteen’s fans were quick to poke holes in the Republican’s latest figures. Between 30 August and 3 September last year, the rock singer and his E Street Band sold out three performances at the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford. Its seating capacity alone is 82,500 according to its website. “Trump really said his Wildwood rally had a bigger crowd than Bruce Springsteen… someone tell this moron that The Boss sold out MetLife for 3 nights at 82,500 a night,” one X, formerly Twitter, user said.

“If this was a real crowd of my fellow New Jerseyans, and not a bunch of brainwashed posers, there is no chance they would have allowed this Bruce [Springsteen] slander to stand,” another wrote. While Mr Springsteen, who is public in his support for president Joe Biden and called Mr Trump’s 2020 first term in the White House a “f****** nightmare”, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said that the singer would “actually vote” for him if he attended the rally.

https://twitter.com/nuosce/status/1789804643372916949

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-branded-moron-bruce-springsteen-112036575.html

May 13, 2024

Union rallies before Alabama Mercedes UAW vote: 'Wages, working conditions and benefits improve'

Union members Saturday afternoon turned out at Hoover’s Brock’s Gap Brewing Co. to show support for the United Auto Workers ahead of next week’s election at Mercedes-Benz U.S. International in Vance. More Perfect Union Solidarity, an organization supporting labor, staged the gathering, where people enjoyed live music, barbecue and the afternoon air as they shouted union slogans.

About 250 people came, and they briefly heard Austin Brooks of Centreville’s first performance. Brooks, 20, has worked for two years at Mercedes’ electric battery plant in Bibb County, and he sang “Folsom Prison Blues” with the band. “The only one who’ll look after you in a boardroom is you,” Brooks said. “At least with a union, we have someone else looking after us. Workers at the Vance factory are scheduled to begin voting next week on whether they will be represented by the UAW. Vote totals are expected Friday.

Union supporters are pointing to the election as a possible turning point for organized labor, not only in Alabama but the Deep South. Approximately 70 percent of the plant’s 6,000 workers have signed union cards, though some Mercedes employees say they do not trust the UAW to improve conditions on their jobs.

Joe Cleveland, with the International Association of Machinists Local 291 in Anniston, told the crowd a vote to join the UAW would improve the lot of workers across Alabama. “When there’s more union workers, wages, working conditions and benefits improve across the board for everybody,” he said. “It improves for future generations of workers. It’s a hard fight to win the organizing drive, and it’s a hard fight to get the first contract, but it’s going to make it better for future workers and for your kids.”

https://www.al.com/news/tuscaloosa/2024/05/union-members-rally-to-show-support-for-auto-workers-before-uaw-vote.html

May 13, 2024

Can the 2024 DNC Thwart Chicago Protests By Going Virtual?

The recent wave of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses has conjured up many nostalgic images of anti-Vietnam-War activism, some (as at Columbia University) self-consciously promoted by protesters whose parents weren’t yet born when those antiwar rallies convulsed the country. The legendary size and influence of the venerable Vietnam War protests is both an aspiration and an inspiration for today’s activists. So it’s not in the least bit surprising that plans are underway for large protests at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago as a sort of homage to the huge and violently suppressed demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and as the climax of months of protests principally aimed at Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

Such protests, of course, are extremely unwelcome to the Democratic pols planning the August convention. Aside from disturbing the desired harmony of the quadrennial gathering, which will be counted upon by Team Biden to generate a crucial burst of momentum heading towards November, signs of disorder will play into Republican law-and-order rhetoric, just as they did in 1968. One strategem convention planners reportedly may use is to reduce the number of targets for demonstrators by holding certain key events virtually, as Democrats did in 2020, Politico reports:

Trumpeting the success of their Covid-era convention four years ago, some in Biden’s orbit are aggressively pushing to make the 2024 conclave a hybrid production. That would mean in-person speeches from the president, party luminaries and rising stars to draw television attention alongside a mix of pre-recorded testimonials and videos from other parts of the country. The goal: drive maximum viewership on television and the internet while minimizing live programming and openings for protest in Chicago’s United Center. This would mean moving party business, such as rules and platform votes, off the floor and denying would-be demonstrators a chance to seize on contentious debates.

,Decentralizing convention events or even moving them out of Chicago would frustrate the hopes of protesters for a dramatic 1968-style confrontation in close proximity to delegates, party officials, and Joe Biden himself. As protest planners have made clear, they want to be within “sight and sound of the DNC,” and share in its media coverage. Dispersed and recorded convention events will make that more difficult.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/ar-BB1mdCwp

May 12, 2024

War game simulation shows Trump leaving NATO in 'ruin'

A group of foreign policy experts recently ran a war game to simulate a potential second Trump presidency, and Business Insider reports that the result was a "collapse" in the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO).

Finley Grimble, a British foreign policy expert who designed and ran the game, said the results show how Trump could gradually wreck NATO without formally abandoning the alliance. "What Donald Trump can do is just really hollow out what NATO does," Grimble told Business Insider. "He doesn't need to leave NATO to ruin it. He can ruin it from within."

The game started with Trump abandoning Ukraine after failing to negotiate a settlement with Russia to end the war. After this, Trump would massively reduce American participation in NATO and would remove U.S. troops out of Europe en masse.

From there, the game projected that "the Trump administration also institutes a new policy called 'dormancy'" that "includes a variety of go-slow tactics, such as less US participation in NATO exercises" and also "a particularly damaging move... to bar the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) — the second-highest military position in NATO, and always a US officer — from acting without prior consultation with Washington."



https://www.rawstory.com/trump-nato-2668239804/

May 12, 2024

'His cult followers are nuts': Eruption after fact-check confirms Trump rally diaper story

A recent viral story about Donald Trump's supporters wearing diapers to rallies was confirmed by a fact-checker, prompting social media to explode. Earlier this month, photos of purported Trump fans wearing "real men wear diapers" merchandise spread online. But many wrote the phenomenon off as staged, or even a result of an artificial intelligence program. According to Snopes, however, that really happened.

"We noticed that the photographs that circulated all came from Dispatches from Trumpland, so we contacted the writers of the blog to ask for more details about the rallies. The writer replied that the photographs posted on April 11 had been taken at rallies in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Detroit. He added that he took the photographs in the April 24 post himself, in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania," the report states.

"He also shared an article from the Greensboro News & Record, published March 2, 2024, that included a photograph of a man it identified as Alfredo Alcala, who wore a red T-shirt that said 'Real Men Wear Diapers.'"

The article concludes, "Because this trend was documented in coverage by reputable news outlets in addition to the reports by Dispatches from Trumpland, we have rated this claim as 'True.'"


https://www.rawstory.com/trump-cult-wearing-diapers/

For those Raw Story averse amongst us:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-diapers-over-dems/

May 12, 2024

Trump says he is not considering Nikki Haley as running mate

Donald Trump said on Saturday that former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was not being considered to be his running mate in the November election, dismissing a report by news site Axios.

"Nikki Haley is not under consideration for the V.P. slot, but I wish her well!" Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. Citing people familiar with the situation, Axios had reported that Trump could pick Haley if he were convinced she could help him win the presidency, avoid a potential prison sentence and cover tens of millions in legal bills if he loses.

Haley, the former South Carolina governor and a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, ended her long-shot challenge to Republican presidential frontrunner Trump in March. Comment was not immediately available from Haley. While she has acknowledged that Trump, who repeatedly belittled her candidacy, would be the Republican nominee, Haley has not endorsed him.

There was already a long list of potential candidates for the vice president position that includes North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, U.S. Senators Marco Rubio, Tim Scott and J.D. Vance, and U.S. Representative Elise Stefanik.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/nikki-haley-under-active-consideration-by-trump-campaign-be-running-mate-axios-2024-05-11/

May 12, 2024

'Crowd has been thinning': Trump supporters reportedly 'walking out' of N.J. rally

Donald Trump loves to brag about the "huge" size of his political rallies, but on Saturday a reporter spotted the ex-president's supporters leaving the event while he was still speaking.

Trump over the weekend spoke in New Jersey, which most polls show is solidly behind the current president, Joe Biden. After the event, the former president was criticized for making a mistake about China and for apparently slurring his speech. Trump spent a good portion of his speech bragging about the size of the crowd, even insisting news cameras turn to face the crowd to show how many people attended the event.

But a reporter from The Philadelphia Inquirer noticed that, prior to Trump being finished with his speech, his own fans started departing. "Trump is still speaking, but the crowd has been thinning. People have been walking out back to the boardwalk," wrote Aliya Schneider on Saturday. "The back section of the crowd is noticeably smaller as people continue to leave while Trump is still speaking."

Schneider, who provided video evidence of her observations, also included the ex-president's response. "Trump just said he hasn’t noticed anybody leaving," she wrote during the speech. She added, "People have also left the front seating section. Trump is speaking again after bringing others on stage with him and the back section has largely emptied out," the reporter noted. "It’s gotten cold with the sun down and the beach breeze."

https://twitter.com/aliyareports/status/1789435508822561181
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-nj-rally-crowd-walking-out/

May 12, 2024

Senile Donald Trump admits he's "screaming like a lunatic"

Donald Trump’s babysitters finally ran out of excuses today to keep him from holding a rally. So he’s now on the stage humiliating himself in New Jersey, a state that won’t be a factor in the 2024 presidential election, but is close enough for Trump to travel to from his criminal trial without too much strain on his failing mind.

Or maybe not. During his rally today, Trump decided to confess that he was simply “screaming like a lunatic” during his speech:

It now appears that Trump’s behavior has become so compromised by dementia, even he’s concerned about how little sense he’s making. We’ve seen past instances where he’s let out a frustrated sigh after he realized his brain was only able to spew nonsense words.

But now Trump seems to be openly acknowledging that he knows there’s something wrong with him. How much longer before he admits he has dementia?

https://twitter.com/BidenHQ/status/1789438884893380899
https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/senile-donald-trump-admits-hes-screaming-like-a-lunatic/56037/

Profile Information

Member since: Tue Oct 31, 2023, 11:15 AM
Number of posts: 1,304
Latest Discussions»Tom of Temecula's Journal