Trustee reports show Medicare, Social Security must be defended from Trump

Advocacy groups, congressional Democrats, and U.S. President Joe Biden's reelection campaign on Monday pointed to new government reports on Medicare and Social Security as proof that the key programs must be protected from Republican attacks.

The annual trustee reports show that Social Security is projected to be fully funded until 2035, a year later than previously thought, while Medicare is expected to be fully funded until 2036, five years beyond the earlier projection.

Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee to face Biden in November, "proposed cutting Social Security and Medicare every year he was in office, he's said repeatedly he would cut them, his allies openly plan to target them, and just this weekend he dismissed them as bribes," noted James Singer, a spokesperson for the Democrat's campaign.

"Let's be clear, Donald Trump will steal the hard-earned Social Security and Medicare benefits Americans have been paying into their entire lives and he'll use it to fund tax cuts for rich people like him," Singer warned. "President Biden keeps his promises. He has and will continue to protect Social Security and Medicare from MAGA Republican efforts to cut them—Donald Trump won't."

https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1787594617665241297
https://www.rawstory.com/trustee-reports-show-medicare-social-security-must-be-defended-from-trump/

Trump's proposals could 'send inflation skyrocketing': economists

Presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and his allies have been hammering incumbent President Joe Biden relentlessly on inflation, claiming that Biden's economic policies are to blame. Trump, according to Axios reporter Zachary Basu, "is betting that high gas and grocery prices will fuel his return to the White House" — while pushing "second-term plans" that, economists say, "could make inflation worse."

"President Biden's approval rating has suffered under the crushing weight of inflation, which voters consistently rank as their top issue for the 2024 election," Basu explains in a report published on May 8. "Trump, meanwhile, is taking advantage of his non-incumbent status, lobbing grenades from the sidelines as Biden has struggled to bring inflation back to pre-pandemic levels." Basu adds, "Simmering frustration with high prices has allowed Trump to build a decisive polling advantage on the economy — while some of his own plans have largely escaped scrutiny."

Basu reports that according to economists and Wall Street analysts, at least four of Trump's economic proposals "carry significant inflationary risks." Those proposals are: (1) "universal tariffs," (2) "lower interest rates," (3) "lower taxes," and (4) "limits on immigration." According to Basu, "Trump's former trade chief Robert Lighthizer, who is likely to serve in a future administration, wants to devalue the U.S. dollar, Politico has reported. That would be a major shift in currency policy that could send prices of imported goods soaring."

Columbia University's Adam Tooze is warning that Trump's economic proposals are a "recipe" for inflation. And James Singer, a spokesman for Biden's campaign, told Axios, "What Trump and his allies are proposing will bring chaos to economic markets, raise costs on working families, and send inflation skyrocketing."

https://www.alternet.org/trump-biden-inflation/

Disaster For Trump As Nikki Haley Gets Over 20% Of The GOP Primary Vote In Indiana

Trump had another massive underperformance to a candidate who dropped out months ago. This time Nikki Haley got over 20% of the vote in deep red Indiana. With more than 90% of the votes counted, Trump leads Haley 78.2% t0 21.8%.

Nikki Haley got more than 20% of the vote against Donald Trump after quitting the Republican primary and not spending one single second in the state. Indiana is one of the most Republican friendly states in the nation. There is no way that under normal circumstances a candidate like Haley who dropped out of the race, after Trump clinched the nomination should be getting anything close to 20% of the vote.

There is a segment of the Republican Party that keeps sending the message over and over again in these primaries that they do not want Donald Trump to be their party’s nominee. The polling says that the hush money trial and all of his legal problems don’t hurt Trump with Republicans, but the primary results tell a different story.

Something is harming Trump and causing nearly a quarter of his party to turn against him.There are warning signs flashing all around the Trump campaign that aren’t there for Democrats and Joe Biden. Very simply stated, if Trump loses 20% of Republicans in November to either Biden or Kennedy, he will lose the 2024 presidential election.

https://www.politicususa.com/2024/05/07/disaster-for-trump-as-nikki-haley-gets-over-20-of-the-gop-primary-vote-in-indiana.html

'Honeybunch': Mary Trump reveals disturbing origin of uncle's pet name for Stormy Daniels

Mary Trump shared with her readers Tuesday night the disturbing origin of a pet name adult film star Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday she was given by former President Donald Trump after the pair had sex. “It was really hard to get my shoes because my hands were shaking so hard,” Daniels said on the witness stand in Manhattan criminal court.

“He said: ‘Oh, it was great. Let’s get together again, honeybunch.'” That specific word was especially jarring for psychologist Mary Trump, niece of the former president accused of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Trump denies the affair with Daniels and has pleaded not guilty to charges brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Hours after Daniels shared this detail of her alleged sexual encounter with the former president, Mary Trump responded in a lengthy issue of her Substack newsletter, "The Good In Us."

Hours after Daniels shared this detail of her alleged sexual encounter with the former president, Mary Trump responded in a lengthy issue of her Substack newsletter, "The Good In Us." "I can reveal this to you now," Mary Trump wrote. "'Honeybunch' is my family’s preferred term of endearment."



https://www.rawstory.com/trump-stormy-daniels-2668190940/

Nikki Haley Pulling 22% of the vote in GOP Indiana primary / Over 100k votes

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan says he's not voting for Trump : 'Character is too important'

Paul Ryan has no interest in giving Donald Trump another chance come November. The former House speaker told Yahoo Finance on Tuesday that he doesn't plan to vote for the former president, adding he would be writing in a Republican candidate instead.

“Character is too important for me,” Ryan told us at the Milken Institute Global Conference. “[The presidency] is a job that requires the kind of character [Trump] doesn’t have.”

Ryan, who left the speakership in 2019, has been vocal in his opposition of Trump since. During a Monday panel, Ryan warned about the stakes in the upcoming election, saying Trump would be “bad on NATO, bad on alliances, bad on Europe, and bad on trade."

“Democracy is being tested in two very specific ways. One within, with our polarization eating each other alive,” said Ryan, who is now vice chairman and partner at private equity firm Solamere Capital. “The second one is from [the outside], from authoritarian regimes who are basically saying they got the mojo, they can make the decisions faster, they can beat democracy.”

https://www.aol.com/former-house-speaker-paul-ryan-210633680.html

New York Mayor Eric Adams says Rikers would be "ready" if Trump is sentenced

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday that the Department of Correction and Rikers Island would be "ready" if former President Trump is sentenced to jail for violating the gag order in his hush money trial. Judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing Trump's New York criminal trial, issued a dramatic warning to Trump on Monday that further violations of his gag order could land him behind bars.

Jail time for Trump, of any length, would throw the New York corrections system into unprecedented territory.
Driving the news: "Our amazing commissioner, she is prepared for whatever comes on Rikers Island," Adams said during an unrelated media availability on Tuesday.

"I'm pretty sure she would be prepared to manage and deal with the situation," Adams said. "In this business, particularly around law enforcement, we have to adjust to whatever comes our way, but we don't want to deal with a hypothetical. But they're professionals, they'll be ready."

Adams also said he has had conversations with the corrections department about the possibility of jail time for Trump.

https://www.axios.com/2024/05/07/trump-new-york-city-rikers-jail-hush-money

Stormy Daniels 'spanked' pajama-clad Donald Trump with Forbes magazine in secret hotel rendezvous

In her bombshell testimony at Donald Trump's criminal fraud NYC trial, Stormy Daniels revealed the salacious first meeting with Donald Trump involved silk pajamas and some light spanking.

Daniel recounted for the court that, after coming out in silk pajamas, Trump pulled out a magazine with himself on the cover. Daniels said that at that point, she wanted to eat the dinner she was promised, rather than sit in the hotel and listen to Donald, so she went off.

Daniels asked Trump if he was always "this rude." She told the jury she snapped at the millionaire real-estate heir. "Are you always this arrogant and pompous? You don’t even know how to have a conversation," she recalled telling Trump.

"Someone should spank you with that," Daniels remembered telling Trump about the magazine. Daniels narrated that Trump rolled up the magazine and "gave me a look" as kind of a dare. "So I took it from him and I said turn around, and I swatted him" right on the butt, she testified. "And he was much more polite."

https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/stormy-daniels-spanked-pajama-clad-474609

Stormy Daniels Used This Classic Excuse to Get Out of Sex With Trump: "I told him I was on my period"

Stormy Daniels used an all-too-familiar line to get out of having sex with Donald Trump. Recounting one instance in 2007 when the pair met at a bungalow in Los Angeles, Daniels testified Tuesday that Trump had once again tried to pressure her into sex, including putting his hand on her leg. But she knew how to shake him off. “I told him I was on my period,” Daniels told the court.

Daniels also recalled several other sexual encounters with Trump, at times diving into great detail, which appeared to bother even Judge Juan Merchan. Those moments included their infamous initial 2006 encounter at a hotel suite, in which Daniels claimed Trump goaded her into having sex under the guise that he would advance her film career by landing her a spot on his hit reality TV show, The Apprentice. Daniels described the tryst as brief and condomless.

“I thought you were serious about what you wanted,” she recalled Trump telling her at the time, before reportedly climbing on top of her. After rejecting Trump a year later at the bungalow, she recalled Trump calling her to reveal that he wasn’t able to get her on The Apprentice as he had promised.

Daniels’s get-out-of-jail-free card is a lighthearted anecdote in an otherwise heavy description of a relationship that stemmed from what she described as an “imbalance of power.” Daniels has previously said she was mad at herself for not seeing right away that Trump didn’t want to help her career and just wanted to have sex with her, and told the court Tuesday that she hates Trump.

https://newrepublic.com/post/181373/stormy-daniels-excuse-trump-hush-money

Damning evidence in Trump trial could be gleaned from previous Stormy Daniels lawsuit

Former top prosecutor and law school professor Andrew Weissmann pointed to another case in which Donald Trump gave a deposition confessing to reimbursing hush money payments paid to cover up an affair — and argued it could be damning evidence in his latest trial Trump sat in a New York courtroom for the 13th day of trial Tuesday, accused of creating false business records to hide the payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. He has pleaded not guilty to 34 charges.

Among the things that the prosecutors have "hinted at," said Weissmann, is a previous case in California in which Daniels successfully sued to be released from her non-disclosure agreement with Trump. Daniels testified that there was no interest in her story before the "Access Hollywood" tape was released, and then everyone was interested, Weissmann pointed out.

"All the efforts to dirty it up, saying she's a liar, and the story changed, is belied to where she enters an NDA and lives by it," Weissmann explained. "What's fascinating, and I'll be interested to see if it comes out on redirect, she lives by it, and ultimately, when this story is released and says this is what happens, she doesn't just go out and talk about it."

He recalls that Daniels brought a lawsuit in California, saying that she shouldn't have to abide by the NDA anymore, and she won the case. "And you know what happens in that lawsuit that is relevant to this case?" Weissmann continues. "Donald Trump submits a brief where he says over and over again, I reimbursed Michael Cohen for the hush money payments."

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-stormy-daniels-da/