Hawaii

It was only a matter of time:

Trump releases statement on Hawaii disaster: “It is a disgraceful thing that Joe Biden refuses to help or comment on the tragedy in Maui, just as he refused to help or comment on the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.” pic.twitter.com/IPBOiMecPt

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) August 14, 2023

I believe it was political malpractice for President Joe Biden not have visited East Palestine. And "visit" is the operative term; the physical presence of the President "on the ground" would have been of limited value to the people of East Palestine. Infinitely more important is the prompt, efficient coordination of federal resources and effective coordination with other government agencies- and possibly other actors- in addressing the catastrophic train wreck in the northeastern Ohio town.

Still, it would have been wise for the President to be seen in East Palestine, especially if he could have been photographed walking around, surveying the area in what, with the recent GOP abortion shenanigans, could again become a swing state. A similar, albeit far more worse, situation faced New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani on September 11, 2001.  Against expert advice, the mayor had successfully promoted an emergency command center at the World Trade Center and thus was left with little alternative to walking around Manhattan- and consequently was bizarrely perceived as fully in charge.

In 2007, presidential candidate Joe Biden , to widespread acclaim,  ridiculed Rudy Giuliani as forming sentences only with "a noun, a verb, and 9/11."  Nonetheless, Giuliani, promoted by Saturday Night Live and others, was crowned "America's Mayor" by the media and remained the favorite for the Republican nomination for President until his campaign imploded. And President George W Bush was fatally wounded by his decision to arrange a photo-op on Air Force One rather than on Bourbon Street to highlight the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

Yet, a trip to Hawaii probably isn't in the same category as Katrina or an unprecedented terrorist attack carried out by murderous Islamic fundamentalists. Though considerable, the death toll hasn't been as large in Hawaii as in New Orleans.

And it is one more thing: it is Hawaii. It is not Louisiana, Ohio, Kansas, or even California. It is Hawaii, like Alaska not a part of the continental USA- and unlike Alaska, not Republican, red or even "purple."

Hawaii is not a part of the continental USA. Though that doesn't make Hawaiians any less American, it appears to do so to a fair number of Americans, the vast majority of them conservative. The extraordinary diversity of the state, sometimes referred to as the Hawaiian Islands, exacerbates this unfortunate perception.

Notwithstanding the saying "perception is reality," perception is not reality. Otherwise, reality would no longer be reality.  However, perception is important. One of the reasons, completely unappreciated, that Donald Trump and his band of merry bigots were able to convince some conservative individuals that Barack Obama was born abroad is because Obama was not born in the continental USA, but rather in Hawaii.

Of course, in 2023 nearly everyone realizes Hawaii is a legitimate part of the country and perhaps most believe even that it is as American as, well, a cheeseburger with fries or silly emulation of cultural appropriation. And so, the President of the USA probably should drop in on Maui, demonstrate the proper affect, and explain the impact of the aggressive federal response to the fires there.  But the Administration should keep in mind that political implications of direct presidential involvement in other tragedies.

 

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He Always Had It In Him

What happened to Rudy Giuliani is that (nearly) nothing happened to Rudy Giuliani.

Every time I see ads for CNN's "Giuliani: What Happened to America's Mayor," I think "He was never America's mayor and what happened is a whole lot of people only just realized it."

— Renée Graham 🏳️‍🌈 (@reneeygraham) January 2, 2023

In a 2006 review in The Los Angeles Times of "Grand Illusion: the untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11" by Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins, Kit R. Roane writes of a New York mayor whose "political statute was in a tailspin and whose private life was being rocked by illness and scandal."  Then on a beautiful Tuesday morning in early (meteorological) autumn, two planes were flown into the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan by Islamic fundamentalists of Al Qaeda and, as understood by Barrett/Collins,  the myth of "America's Mayor" was born. 

Roane explains

Police officers and firefighters hardly communicated. With radios that didn’t operate between departments or work at all in steel high-rises, many firefighters didn’t get the final mayday call to evacuate the North Tower before it fell. Cut off from relevant information, emergency operators continued to tell victims in the tower to stay put even though top fire chiefs had called for a complete evacuation almost immediately after arriving on the scene.

Although terrorists eight years earlier had exploded a bomb beneath one of the towers

Barrett and Collins’ detailed research shows a mayor who utterly failed to grasp the importance of readying the city for another terrorist attack. Lou Anemone, the police department’s chief operating officer during much of Giuliani’s tenure, recalls trying to brief the mayor on a citywide terrorism security plan in 1998. “Rudy glazed over,” he said, adding: “We never had any discussion about security at the World Trade Center. We never even had a drill or exercise there.... There was just a lack of recognition of the problem at City Hall.”

The city's Director of Emergency Management promoted placing the city's command center in the World Trade Center complex, a recommendation implemented by Mayor Giuliani.

That decision ill-served the people of the City of New York, but was a political boon for Giuliani.  The command center collapsed in the attack and viewers nationwide (probably, worldwide) were treated to repeated video of the Mayor walking around the city and- owing to the impressive visuals- seemingly calm, confident, and  in charge.

Giuliani's lack of concern for security in his city contributed to the disastrous impact of the attack. However, the impression television, whose coverage of news understandably was consumed by  "9/11" for months, was of a mayor responding decisively, forcefully, and effectively to an unprecedented crisis which hit an American city and terrified the nation at-large.

The myth gradually gathered strength, as of a snowball rolling slowly down a mountain, for many years as the legend of "America's Mayor" was born, reinforced by the media, and rarely challenged.  If "Giuliani: What Happened to America's Mayor" is true to the title, Rudy Giuliani again will be portrayed as what he never was. A better show would be "CNN: What Happened to 'The Most Trusted Name in News'?"

 

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It's the FBI, Not the Congressional Progressive Caucus

Deceitful! Duplicitous! Underhanded! (Also, standard operating procedure.)

Chatting with writer Julie Kelly, who identifies as "Ultra MAGA," Laura Ingraham refers to a New York Times article headlined  "FBI Had Informants in Proud Boys, Court Papers Suggest."

Ingraham shows a clip from a hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee in which Louisiana Republican Clay Higgins asks FBI Director Christopher Wray "Did you have confidential human sources dressed as Trump supporters inside the Capitol on January 6 prior to the doors being open?"

Once Wray replied "again, I have to....," Higgins interjected "should be a 'no'."

Grateful to Laura Ingraham for covering these mind blowing developments related to Jan 6: https://t.co/Y9sF6d8Sax

— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) November 16, 2022

Well, of course he did. In the article cited by Ingraham, we learn

The F.B.I. had as many as eight informants inside the far-right Proud Boys in the months surrounding the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, recent court papers indicate, raising questions about how much federal investigators were able to learn from them about the violent mob attack both before and after it took place.

The existence of the informants came to light over the past few days in a flurry of veiled court filings by defense lawyers for five members of the Proud Boys who are set to go on trial next month on seditious conspiracy charges connected to the Capitol attack....

In a sealed filing quoted by the defense, prosecutors argued that hundreds of pages of documents related to the F.B.I. informants were neither “suppressed” by the government nor directly relevant to the case of the Proud Boys facing sedition charges: Enrique Tarrio, the group’s former leader; Joseph Biggs; Ethan Nordean; Zachary Rehl; and Dominic Pezzola.

If the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not use these methods, it might as well shut down. As one of hundreds? (thousands?) of examples, consider that sometime before his death, FBI Special Agent James Ingram recounted the success of the agency in undermining the Ku Klux Klan in the 1960s. He stated

[W]e infiltrated the Klan in many ways. We had female informants. … And we had police officers that were informants for us...

When you look back, the FBI can be proud that they stopped the violence [of the KKK]. We had the convictions. We did what we had to do from Selma, Alabama to Jackson, Mississippi to Atlanta, Georgia....

In the words of Special Agent Rollins, “…the FBI broke the back of the Klan in Mississippi. And eradicated it…

Although that was before Ingraham's time, she should know that the FBI is not in the habit of conspiring against the right-wing and its causes. To the contrary, in the runup to the 2016 election

On October 24,  a smiling Rudy Giuliani told Fox News “We got a couple of surprises left... I call them early surprises in the way we're going to campaign to get our message out, maybe in a little bit of a different way. You'll see. And I think it'll be enormously effective."

There was no discernible change in campaign message or tactics but The New York Times on November 3, 2016 recounted that

Since August of 2016, Rudy Giuliani has publicly claimed that F.B.I. agents were telling him that Mrs. Clinton should have been criminally charged for the email server.

“It perplexes numerous F.B.I. agents who talk to me all the time,” Mr. Giuliani said during an August interview with Chris Cuomo on CNN. “And it embarrasses some F.B.I. agents.”

Two days later, CNN revealed

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani now denies that he was told by FBI agents that the bureau was reviewing newly discovered emails potentially related to Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server before the review was publicly revealed.

Earlier, he had suggested that he was told by FBI agents about the review before it became public.

Giuliani, a top Donald Trump surrogate and adviser, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room” Friday that the FBI’s announcement “came as a complete surprise, except to the extent that maybe it wasn’t as much of a surprise.”

“I got it all from former FBI agents. Tremendous anger within the FBI about the way, number one, Jim Comey’s conclusion (to not recommend criminal charges in July) and, number two, the way they believed they were being obstructed by what they regard as a pretty corrupt Obama Justice Department,” Giuliani said. “Cutting off a grand jury investigation, cutting off subpoenas.”

But earlier Friday, Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor, said he had “heard about” a forthcoming FBI announcement before it became public.

“This has been boiling up in the FBI. I did nothing to get it out. I had no role in it. Did I hear about it? Darn right I heard about it,” Giuliani said on “Fox and Friends.” He continued, “I can’t even repeat the language I heard from the former FBI agents.”

A week earlier – before Comey’s disclosure to Congress – he told Fox News there was a “pretty big surprise” coming, though he did not provide further details. He told Blitzer the surprise was an upcoming advertising campaign: “I knew that was going to come as a big surprise.”

I don't, and didn't, buy it. (A DOJ investigation was inconclusive.) No dramatic "upcoming advertising campaign" materialized. However, as a former US Attorney for the Southern District, Giuliani had a lot of friends in the FBI's New York field office and three days after he tipped off Fox News, Comey said that emails relevant to the investigation of Clinton's private email server were discovered on the computer of the estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin. 

A few days later, the FBI director explained that he met with agency investigators (who) "said we found a lot of new stuff," but that most of the emails were ones previously seen. Clinton was cleared. Nonetheless, by then the inaccurate announcement that new, relevant emails had been found already had been "enormously effective."

With Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives beginning in January, there will be investigations, including of the FBI and probably of its role in the insurrection, to feed the GOP rage machine, undermine President Biden, and pave the way for a new Trump presidency.  There is much to question of the agency's operations, including in the 2016 election and its willing failure, and subsequent coverup, to investigate credible allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.  

If Republicans want to investigate the FBI, Democrats should insist that there be a real, comprehensive inquiry. Hoist the GOP by their own petard.

 

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Disappeared History

All you need to know are two things. The first is that The Washington Post's Robin Givhan realizes

To be clear, Rudy Giuliani was never America’s mayor. That nickname was a bit of media gloss that was spread so thickly and indiscriminately that Giuliani had no trouble dining out on it for years. Many Americans lapped it up, too.

The second is that, despite condemning Giuliani's antics of the past four years, criticizing his overall performance as mayor, and recognizing the "America's Mayor" thing was "more marketing than fact," she believes

....for months after 9/11, he kept firm, reassuring and empathetic control of a city that was in an unimaginable crisis — and his sure hand helped to contain the rippling circles of fear and uncertainty that were spreading across the country. Giuliani was tested in ways that few mayors have ever been. He rose to the challenge, and for that he was rightfully admired.

Unless "rose" is synonym for "plummeted," that would be grievously inaccurate. The late, great investigative reporter Wayne Barrett in 2007 laid out "Rudy Giuliani's Five Big Lies About 9/11."  Though Rudolph claimed New York City was better prepared for a terrorist attack than was the federal government or any other jurisdiction in the country

New York’s lack of unified command, as well as the breakdown of communications between the police and fire departments, fell far short of the efforts at the Pentagon that day, as later established by the 9/11 Commission and NIST reports. When the 280,000-member International Association of Fire Fighters recently released a powerful video assailing Giuliani for sticking firefighters with the same radios that “we knew didn’t work” in the 1993 attack, the presidential campaign attacked the union.....

The IAFF video reports that 121 firefighters in the north tower didn’t get out because they didn’t hear evacuation orders, rejecting Giuliani’s claim before the 9/11 Commission that the firefighters heard the orders and heroically decided to “stand their ground” and rescue civilians.

Even the 9/11 commission

concluded that the “technical failure of FDNY radios” was “a contributing factor,” though “not the primary cause,” of the “many firefighter fatalities in the North Tower.” The commission compared “the strength” of the NYPD and FDNY radios and said that the weaknesses of the FDNY radios “worked against successful communication”...

In addition, the commission concluded that fire chiefs failed to turn on the repeater correctly that morning—another indication of the lack of training and drills at the WTC between the attacks. In the end, firefighters had to rely exclusively on their radios, and the inability of the Giuliani administration to find a replacement for the radios that malfunctioned in 1993 left them unable to talk to each other, even about getting out of a tower on the verge of collapse.

The mayor had also done nothing to make the radios interoperable—which would have enabled the police and firefighters to communicate across departmental lines—despite having received a 1995 federal waiver granting the city the additional radio frequencies to make that possible. That meant the fire chiefs had no idea that police helicopters had anticipated the partial collapse of both towers long before they fell.

It’s not just the radios and the OEM: Giuliani never forced the police and fire departments to abide by clear command-and-control protocols that squarely put one service in charge of the other during specified emergencies. Though he collected $250 million in tax surcharges on phone use to improve the 911 system, he diverted this emergency funding for other uses, and the 911 dispatchers were an utter disaster that day, telling victims to stay where they were long after the fire chiefs had ordered an evacuation, which potentially sealed the fates of hundreds. And, despite the transparent lessons of 1993, Giuliani never established any protocols for rooftop or elevator rescues in high-rises, or even a strategy for bringing the impaired and injured out—all costly failings on 9/11.

Moreover, against expert advice Mayor Giuliani decided

to put his prized, $61 million emergency-command center in the World Trade Center, an obvious terrorist target. The 1997 decision had dire consequences on 9/11, when the city had to mobilize a response without any operational center.

No fooling- he decided to put the command center at ground zero for a likely terrorist attack because he could walk there. Ironically, that self-interested, tragic and deadly choice elevated Giuliani to the myth of "America's Mayor" because he was viewed across the country boldly walking through Manhattan and appearing to be in charge of a situation made dramatically worse because of his disastrous policy choices.

Rudy Giuliani is the Republican Party. His mayoralty was marked by racial insensitivity and an image elevated preposterously by smoke and mirrors. Now he is a buffoonish character, evidently a pathetic, lying thug.  The media response, predictably, is... how Rudy has changed! How sad that America's mayor has now become Donald Trump's henchman!

Similarly, we have to get ready for a resurrected image of the Republican Party. The mainstream media will promote the Joe Biden view of the GOP- fine men and women who, almost mesmerized, momentarily lost their head over Donald Trump.  It may forget that the Republican Party long ago adopted the values of Dixiecrats, plutocrats, and (more recently) theocrats.  We must remember that the GOP was fertile ground for Donald Trump, just as today's Rudy Giuliani is yesterday's Rudy Giuliani.

Noel has the most mellow rants I've ever heard 😊 https://t.co/w6cDUGGo65

— cosmic clau (@CosmicClau) November 25, 2020

 

                                              HAPPY THANKSGIVING 

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Funny Man

When Vice evaluated whether Donald J. Trump really acts like a mob boss

"I see many more differences than similarities," Diego Gambetta, a professor of social theory and an expert on mafias at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, told me of the Trump–mob boss comparison. "[Mob bosses] do not talk much at all. They measure their words with great care. They do not gesticulate or pull faces. They do not boast. They do not, except in the most exceptional circumstances, display their visceral feelings. The little information they pass to one another tends to be accurate, and they certainly do not cheaply resort to insulting and offending people, or issuing crass threats. They are professional in intimidation. They are not cardboard gangsters."

That's one man's opinion. And while the President's antics may not mimic those of an organized crime capo, an associate of his knows even better than Trump how it's done. In 2000, before New York mayor Rudy Giuliani would acquire his completely undeserved reputation for the (inept) handling of the terrorist attacks of September 2001, the Los Angeles Times observed

Before he was elected mayor in 1993, Giuliani earned a reputation as a no-nonsense federal prosecutor bent on breaking the mob.

As U.S. attorney in 1986, he successfully prosecuted the heads of three organized crime groups--Genovese crime family boss Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, Colombo boss Carmine “Junior” Persico and Lucchese boss Anthony “Tony Ducks” Corallo. Each received sentences of 100 years in prison.

Then as mayor, Giuliani spearheaded the effort to free the Fulton Fish Market of mob influence.

As head of the office which prosecuted several mobsters, Guiliani learned a thing or two, including how to threaten subtly.  He also worked and played in New York City, as Trump famously and corruptly did.  And so on November 23 the President's personal attorney commented

that he has “insurance” if the president tries to turn on him while defending their relationship amid the ongoing House impeachment inquiry.

Giuliani in a wide-ranging interview on Fox News declined to say if he has spoken with Trump in recent days, saying, "You can assume that I talk to him early and often."

He then touted what he called a "very, very good relationship" with Trump before knocking unspecified comments about him in the press, calling them "totally insulting."

I’ve seen things written like he’s going to throw me under the bus. When they say that, I say he isn’t, but I have insurance," Giuliani told Fox News's Ed Henry.

"This is ridiculous," Giuliani continued. "We are very good friends. He knows what I did was in order to defend him, not to dig up dirt on [former Vice President Joe] Biden."

Giuliani has made similar comments in the past, including during an interview with The Guardian earlier this month. Asked in that interview if he was nervous Trump might try to throw him under the bus, he reportedly laughed and said he was not concerned.

"I do have very, very good insurance, so if he does, all my hospital bills will be paid," Giuliani said in the phone interview, according to The Guardian. Giuliani's lawyer, who was also on the call, reportedly interjected to say that he was "joking."

Funny as a crutch, Rudy.  The former prosecutor and mayor may be ready for a career in stand-up with that kind of humor. Were he actually joking, there would be no need to point it out. Therefore, Giuliani's attorney, being the legitimate lawyer his client once was, could not allow himself to be associated with a threat and had to pretend it was a joke.

Later that day, Giuliani claimed that he had been "sarcastic"and that his remark "relates to the files in my safe" on Joe Biden. There has been no word whether anyone believed him.

It's the most effective way of sending a message. Announce that you have a shield ("insurance") against retaliation by Trump, but if the latter goes with the program, Rudy can make it worthwhile for him because he has the goods against the President's enemy. It's an easy call for Donald Trump. Play ball, and kill two birds with one stone.

Squeal and I'll break your legs. Just joking.

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When "Will" Becomes "Should"

On their crossover Thursday night, Lawrence O'Donnell explained to Rachel Maddow

Let me try a theory about the President's lawyers and when this is going to end.- that all of their communication- whether it is on television or privately to the President.

But all of it is really for the evidence of one whenever they're speaking. So when they're saying these things on television, when John Dowd was giving the information that it was going to be over in a certain period of time, when Ty Cobb was saying, arguing the President to- you know- let's comply with these requests for documents because it will be over faster, that they all knew that these things don't even end in the kinds of timetable that they were talking about. 

But they knew if they ever told the President a realistic estimate of how long it might go that he might just fire everybody insight and get himself impeached on a much faster schedule.

Maddow understood. However, she then responded

I mean, but Chicken Little, all right? How many times can you do it before he starts to know that you're doing it?   It may placate him momentarily. You can persuade him to not do things he might otherwise do because you're telling him it's about to be over. For a while he kept proclaiming it's about to be over, remember? But when you tell him it's going to be Thanksgiving and then December and then January and then May and then September- I mean, presumably he remembers these things. He's going to stop being susceptible to this kind of suggestion, won't he?

.@Lawrence and @Maddow discuss Donald Trump, the Mueller timeline, and long car rides with toddlers. #lastword #msnbc pic.twitter.com/om1whVAmv9

— The Last Word (@TheLastWord) August 31, 2018

Why should he stop being susceptible?

A CNN poll conducted August 9- August 12, 2018, revealed that most respondents believe the President should testify for the Special Counsel and that they disapprove of Trump’s handling of the investigation with and a plurality approving of Mueller’s handling of the matter. Moreover, most agreed the probe is a “serious matter that should be fully investigated.”

Yet,  66%- nearly two-thirds- believed “Mueller should try to complete his investigation before this November’s congressional elections.”

When Trump and Giuliani pretend that the investigation will end soon, it builds an expectation that it will end soon and with it, the belief that it should end soon. People are impatient; it’s a common human trait and when something is unpleasant and difficult to comprehend without a scorecard, voters become impatient. When the President suggests an investigation will end soon, they are more inclined to believe it will. When it does not, they will not blame the individual who sold them on the idea- he is on their side in hoping it will end soon.

And so it is with another tactic of Donald J. Trump to de-legitimize a legitimate and justified probe, one tactic in a strategy which only appears reckless.

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The Apparent Prescience of Rudolph L. Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani has little compunction about lying, and he has demonstrated over the last couple of weeks that he is ignorant about campaign finance law. As a lawyer, he has lost a great deal off his fastball.

But there is something about Rudy. He seems to know.

Early Tuesday, CNN reported

"The agreement with Michael Cohen, as far as I know, is a longstanding agreement that Michael Cohen takes care of situations like this then gets paid for them sometimes," Giuliani said.

"So did Michael Cohen make payments to other women for the President?" Stephanopoulos asked.

"I have no knowledge of that, but I would think if it was necessary, yes," Giuliani replied. "He made payments for the President or he's conducted business for the President, which means he had legal fees, monies laid out and expenditures."

Late Tuesday, Stormy Daniels attorney Michael Avenatti  maintained that $500,000 from eight transactions had been paid to Michael Cohen from 1/17 through 8/17 by a Russian company controlled by Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg. It is likely that $130,000 of this money became hush money paid to Daniels, and the remainder may have been used to pay off other women.

Few details are certain as of now, but Giuliani's remarks on Sunday appear to be connected to the revelation from Avenatti.

Similarly, on May 3 Giuliani contended “The president of the United States is getting ready to negotiate probably one of our most historic agreements…and we got Kim Jong-un impressed enough to be releasing three prisoners today."  Presidential Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stated that the ex-mayor does not speak for the Administration and the State Department spokesperson remarked "He (Giuliani) speaks for himself and not on behalf of the administration on foreign policy."





This morning, six days later, President Trump tweeted "I am pleased to inform you that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in the air and on his way back from North Korea with the 3 wonderful gentlemen that everyone is looking so forward to meeting."

More mysteriously, in an event given insufficient emphasis, Giuliani appeared on Fox and Friends two weeks before the presidential election. According to The New York Times 

“Does Donald Trump plan anything except a series of inspiring rallies?” Mr. Kilmeade asked.

“Yes,” Mr. Giuliani replied.

Another host, Ainsley Earhardt, jumped in.

“What?” she asked.

“Ha-ha-ha,” Mr. Giuliani laughed. “You’ll see.”

Appearing to enjoy his own coy reply, Mr. Giuliani resumed chuckling: “Ha-ha-ha.”

“When will this happen?” Ms. Earhardt asked.

“We got a couple of surprises left,” Mr. Giuliani said, smiling.

This enigmatic reply roused the show’s third host, Steve Doocy.

“October surprises?” he asked.

Mr. Giuliani expanded a bit.

“Well,” he said, “I call them early surprises in the way we’re going to campaign to get our message out, maybe in a little bit of a different way. You’ll see. And I think it’ll be enormously effective. And I do think that all of these revelations about Hillary Clinton finally are beginning to have an impact.”

The Times noted

Three days later, James B. Comey, the director of the F.B.I., said agents were reviewing emails “that appear to be pertinent” to a closed investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s use of a personal email server while secretary of state.

Two days later, Giuliani added

I got it all from former FBI agents. Tremendous anger within the FBI about the way, number one, Jim Comey's conclusion (to not recommend criminal charges in July) and, number two, the way they believed they were being obstructed by what they regard as a pretty corrupt Obama Justice Department. Cutting off a grand jury investigation, cutting off subpoenas.





We still do not know whether, and to what extent, the then-FBI director was intimidated by anti-Clinton agents in its New York office.   However, it's likely that had Comey not announced that many more emails belonging to H. Clinton aide Huma Abedin had been found on the laptop of her then-husband, Anthony Weiner, Donald J. Trump would not have been elected. And it is extremely likely that Rudolph Giuliani knew what was coming.

So we can laugh all we want at Rudolph Giuliani as he flails about defending Donald Trump and attacking the President's critics.  Nonetheless, he's a guy who, though a failure in all matters surrounding the 9/11 terroristic attacks, masterfully exploited the tragedy for all it was worth.  For that, and knowledge of events yet to occur, he is a character worth taking seriously.







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Not About Crowd Size

If it weren't so serious, it would be funny to read from Politico

Shown a clip of counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway’s confrontational appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” over the weekend, Giuliani suggested that the anchor of that show, Chuck Todd, was biased against the new administration. His terse back-and-forth with Conway over the weekend, Giuliani said, is only the most recent example.

“I’d feel a lot better if Chuck and the others would just admit they don't like Trump, they’re against Trump and they're going to view facts in the light most unfavorable to him,” Giuliani said on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” Monday morning. “Look, I was on that show during the campaign under difficult circumstances any number of times, including all of the others. And my God, the venom is enormous. They just don't like him. And they're looking for things to pick on. You know, the size of the crowd.”

Gosh, how could they possibly question Sean Spicer for "the size of the crowd?" Perhaps because in the space of five minutes, Trump's press spokesperson made five brazenly inaccurate claims, which, in the order presented by Politico's Kyle Cheney and Dan Diamond, were:

- This was the first time in our nation's history that floor coverings have been used to protect the grass on the Mall. That had the effect of highlighting any areas where people were not standing, while in years past the grass eliminated this visual.

- All of this space (from Trump's platform to the Washington Monument) was full when the President took the oath of office.

- We know that 420,000 people used the D.C. Metro public transit yesterday, which actually compares to 317,000 who used it for President Obama's last inaugural.

-This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration- period- both in person and around the globe.

- This was also the first time that fencing and magnetometers went as far back on the Mall, preventing hundreds of thousands of people from being able to access the Mall as quickly as they had in inaugurations past."

"Congress shall make no law (abridging)... the freedom of the press" reads to Spicer as "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press unless it offends the President," He charged also
"there has been a lot of talks in the media about how to hold Donald Trump accountable and I’m here to tell you that it goes two ways. We are here to hold the press accountable as well."

If this Republican administration believed in the free market, it would recognize the press already is held accountable- by the public.  However, the free market is of little use to this gang unless it can be used to enrich the already quite rich.

Giuliani, though, may have reason to be bitter about the traditional media. It was, in fact, TIME magazine that unfairly bypassed him when, in light of the 2016 presidential election, it failed to recognize his contribution to defeating Hillary Clinton and make the former New York mayor its Person of the Year.   Otherwise, Mr. Madison shudders.

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Not Often True At All

Responding to President Obama's announcement of sanctions against Russia, Kellyanne Fitzpatrick Conway, counselor to incoming president Donald Trump, stated

“I will tell you that even those who are sympathetic to President Obama on most issues are saying that part of the reason he did this today was to quote ‘box in’ President-elect Trump,That would be very unfortunate if politics were the motivating factor here. We can’t help but think that’s often true.”

Evidently, she is referring to the likes of Rudy Giuliani, who when asked if Obama was attempting to “box in” Trump, replied "of course he is.” That would be the Rudy Giuliani who once remarked "I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America." Otherwise, Conway might argue, Giuliani is just fine with Obama.

Or she may be referring to John Bolton, US amabassador to the United Nations under Bush 43. He did maintain on Fox and Friends "what this last burst of activity has to do is hard to say. I do think it's intended to try and box the Trump administration in. I think it will fail." At the same time the Obama-sympathetic Bolton contended "The Russians have walked all over the Obama administration for eight years. It's really been a pathetic performance."

Three days earlier, before the President's announcement but after the U.N. vote,  he had charged "Obama dislikes American exceptionalism; he dislikes Israeli exceptionalism." Seven months earlier, Bolton had written "Obama’s narcissism, his zeal for photo opportunities with him at the center, whether in Havana or Hiroshima, too often overcomes lesser concerns—like the best interests of the country. He puts his vanity before our nation’s pride,”  Big fan.

Giuliani and Bolton, unlike Conway, stressed that Obama's actions have come late and may be insufficient.   There was no such principled (if misguided) argument from Conway, who would  be loathe to admit that the Administration didn't release much information about the Russians in October when it

was probably afraid of looking like it was tipping the scale in Hillary Clinton’s favor, especially in an election that her opponent repeatedly described as rigged. Though Obama stumped for Clinton around the country, the administration didn’t want to open him up to attacks that he unfairly used intelligence to undermine Trump’s campaign, the Post reported.

Instead, top White House officials gathered key lawmakers—leadership from the House and Senate, plus the top Democrats and Republicans from both houses’ intelligence and homeland security committees—to ask for a bipartisan condemnation of Russia’s meddling. The effort was stymied by several Republicans who weren’t willing to cooperate, including, reportedly, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

President Obama hesitated in order not to swing the election on the basis of a finding by a consensus of intelligence officials that Putin's allies were trying to move American public opinion toward Trump. Yet, Conway remarks "we can't help think that's often true" that the "motivating factor" is "politics."

As a master propagandist, Kellyanne Conway may currently have no equal.  As a truly loathsome individual, she has a few- and  oops- here she is (was) with one:












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Rigging

Volunteer to be a Trump Election Observer. Help Me Stop Crooked Hillary From Rigging This Election! 

So reads the Donald J. Trump for President website. On October 1 in Manheim, Pennsylvania he put meat on those bones when he told an adoring crowd in Manheim, Pennsylvania

You’ve got to go out. You’ve got to go out. And you’ve got to get your friends. And you’ve got to get everyone you know. And you got to watch your polling booths, because I hear too many stories about Pennsylvania. Certain areas. I hear too many bad stories, and we can’t lose an election because of you know what I’m talking about.

Certain areas?  Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani made clear on CNN's "State of the Union" that he wasn't talking about Fulton County, Pennsylvania. Rather

There are -- there are -- there are a few places, and not many in the swing states, there are a few places where they have been notorious for stealing votes, Pennsylvania, Chicago. There have been places where a lot of cheating has gone on over the years.

I know that from my own knowledge of bussing people in from Camden. When I ran for mayor of New York City the first time, some people voted eight and 10 times. And the second time, I had -- I had firefighters and police officers outside checking on the buses, so we take down the number of the bus. The bus had voted 10 times. And then we wouldn't let the bus vote again. 





Sure he did. If any of this resulted in charges, let alone convictions, Giuliani didn't mention it, and soemone would have noticed. Of course, if they're allowing buses to vote in New York City- let alone 10 times- the city has far greater problems than Giuliani's voter fraud hallucinations. But maybe the media wouldn't report the prosecution of such culprits because, as Giuliani remarked

You can find just as many wacko nuts on her side that write us horrible and awful things. So, when he talks about a rigged election, he's not talking about the fact that it's going to be rigged at the polls. What he's talking about is that 80 percent to 85 percent of the media is against him, that when you look at "The New York Times," when you pick it up every morning, on the top of the paper, there are three stories that are anti-Trump, some of them totally baseless, some of some silly.

The fact that it's going to be rigged at the polls. It seems that Giuliani is all in with the Trump theory of rigged eleections, rigged debates, rigged media, and rigged voting, with vigilante poll watchers the remedy.  "It's pitchforks and  torches time," warns another of Trump's surrogates, Sheriff David Clarke of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin.  Just don't call the likes of Clarke and Giuliani "deplorable."

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Male Supremacy

The right-wing media, and Hot Air's Larry O'Connor specifically, should learn something from Rush Limbaugh. When you're told that someone saw you with your pants down, simply claim the charge came from a lying hack because you did not have your pants down.  O'Connor would say "the complainant was looking at me sideways and din't realize that the pants were only partially down, and that was only because I was sold the wrong size."

On ABC's This Week, Rudy Giuliani said Donald Trump is

a genius at how to take advantage of legal remedies that can help your company survive and grow. I want a man who’s a genius at figuring out how to take this country, that’s -- moving in the wrong direction, where we’ve had a basically jobless recovery, where we’ve had growth of less than 2 percent for two years. That’s pathetic! Don’t you think a man who has this kind of economic genius is a lot better for the United States than a woman, and the only thing she’s ever produced is a lot of work for the FBI checking out her e-mails.







Limbaugh knew to defend Giuliani, attack the messenger, and get out. After claiming "It's not what Rudy Giuiani said. It's not what Rudy Giuliani meant," he slammed the media by adding

They know it. They just don't care. They think they can pull all these tricks and most people will never spot it; most people, if they do spot it, won't care.

The media thinks most people agree with them anyway. The media thinks that most people hate Rudy and hate Trump just like they do, and so they don't care. They don't care if you see them lying through their teeth, misrepresenting, out of context, whatever. They get away with it far more than they're ever held accountable, so why should they stop? "Did Rudy Giuliani really mean to say Donald Trump would make a better president than Hillary Clinton because he's a man? ...

Wisely, he never answered the question, and should have advised O'Connor, who remarked

Gee, that’s kind of an important modifier at the end of the “woman” reference, isn’t it?...

Giuliani was clearly contrasting Trump’s business acumen with Clinton’s sordid track record in public service which continues to languish under the cloud of suspicion and multiple FBI investigations. He referred to her as “a woman” while conducting the comparison because, well, she’s a woman.

 O'Connor proceeded to replace "woman" with "man" in the quote, arguing that it would not have been strange if "reoriented to male-specific pronouns."

He was wrong, confused, and confusing. and Amanda Marcotte ate him up and spit him out as she explained

Oh dear, someone was out sick the week their English teacher taught sentence diagramming, or they would know that the “and” in Giuliani’s sentence separated two independent clauses. In fact, Giuliani’s statement might have read better as two separate sentences, since the first clause really needs a question mark at the end of it:

“Don’t you think a man who has this kind of economic genius is a lot better for the United States than a woman?”

“And the only thing she’s ever produced is a lot of work for the FBI checking out her emails.”

The “and” is just an artifact of the spoken language, which tends to be littered with more conjunctions that more formal writing.

Whether it takes a genius to avoid paying federal income taxes as long as Donald Trump probably did, it does not take one to figure out why Rudy Giuliani is one of the GOP presidential nominee's most enthisiastic advocates







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Same Old Contempt For Americans

Introducing his guest, former New York City mayor and Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani, CNN's Jake Tapper observed "The New York Times published a story revealing that the paper had seen pages from Donald Trump's 1995 tax returns, which suggested a near-billion-dollar loss, a deduction so huge, it could have allowed Trump to not pay any federal income taxes for as long as 18 years."

Giuliani's defense of his candidate fell along three lines: 1) he has a "fiduciary responsibility" to "run his business at his lowest possible expense;" 2) he would be foolish not to take advantage of "every deduction and legal opportunity;" 3) if he paid more taxes, banks would sue him for "mismanaging" his businesss;" 4) the man is a "genius."

Although there are better terms to describe his fleecing of Americans, Trump may in fact be a genius (sort of). But he certainly is a hypocrite.... and something more significant.

Judd Legum has the lowdown on Trump's tweets (hashtags and recipients omitted below) over the past few years about federal income taxes:

- Barack Obama who wants to raise all our taxes, only pays 20.5% on $790k salary.
- Facebook billionaire gives up his U.S. citizenship inorder to save taxes. I guess 3.8 billion isn't     -   - enough for The Ral Saverin. He's taking off to Singapore but will continue to enjoy the fruits of the U.S.
 - Trump is an American that will pay many more taxes in one year than you pay in your entire life.
- Successful people work their asses off to make it, only to be punished by heavy taxes which are then squandered recklessly."
   - If amazon ever had to pay fair taxes, its stock would crash and it would crumble like a paper bag. The washington post scam is saving it!
   - You know what is the worst part of Barack Obama's Tuesday speech playing class warfare- we paid for it with our tax dollars.
   

Nonetheless, probably the most revealing, tweeted, on February 23, 2012. was (emphasis his) "HALF of American's don't pay income tax despite crippling govt debt."

Obviously faux populist Trump, who has bragged "I love debt" and "I am the king of debt," cares no more about the accumulation of debt than he does about the outcome of the Romania v. Portugal womens' playoff soccer game in October.    However, it is telling that the GOP meme of lazy Americans not paying taxes lives on in his perspective

"In fact, 44 percent, 45 percent of America doesn't pay income tax,"  Giuliani told Tapper, mimicking Trump's tweet of a few years earlier.  We recall GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney four years ago caught on video maintaining

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what.   All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what.

And I mean the president starts out with 48, 49 percent … he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax.

These statements by the likes of Romney, Giuliani, and Trump ignore

the reality of federal excise taxes, state income taxes, and variety of other taxes that are often less avoidable than the federal income tax. Indeed, as the Brookings Institution found, "When looking more specifically at middle-aged workers with jobs, 96 percent paid federal income or payroll taxes" (emphasis in original)." 

As one Forbes columnist explained in the wake of Romney's remarks (graph via McClatchy)

The vast majority of non-income taxpayers fall into three categories:

17 percent includes students, people with disabilities or illnesses, the long-term unemployed, and other people with very low taxable incomes. Also included would be people like our soldiers in foreign wars who are exempted from paying income taxes while they are on active duty in a war zone.

22 percent of people who did not pay federal income taxes in 2009 are people aged 65 or older who have modest incomes (and do not have earnings).

61 percent are working people who pay payroll taxes but are not paying income taxes.

Donald Trump probably has been skirting income taxes for years and should be pummeled for it. The greater problem, though, is that he is the newest incarnation- albeit a particularly crude, uninformed spokesman- of standard GOP elitism.








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Giuliani Lies, Bringing Obama Birth Issue Back

"I come not to bury Caesar, not to praise him," Shakespeare's Marc Antony famously proclaimed. However, I come to praise Donald Trump, not to bury him. Steve M. acknowledges

I could be wrong, but I don't think Trump could bring himself to walk back birtherism, not even if Kellyanne and Ivanka and Jared got on their knees and begged him to. It's what made him as a political figure. And most of the voters in his base are birthers.

That is the nub of it. Trump never would have become a political figure were it not for doubting that President Obama was born in the USA. Hence, he pushed the idea, popular on the right, that Barack Obama was not a legitimate President.  He should stand by it, even unto (political) death. To reverse himself now would- or at least should- strike neutral poltical observers as crass opportunism. He deserves credit for not walking back a claim which forms the very basis of his candidacy.

But as I type this, the Trump camp probably is formulating a statement on the subject, occasioned by the skewering of surrogate Rudy Giuliani by Hardball's Chris Matthews during the 7:00 p.m. Eastern hour on MSNBC. The New York mayor, under intense questioning by Matthews, both stated and restated that Trump now has said that Obama was born in the USA and insisted that Trump now believes the occcupant of the White House was born in the country.

Expect that the Trump campaign will go back and forth on this, much as it has on deportation of illegal immigrants. Steve M., noting that vice-presidential nominee Pence now has acknowledged that Obama was born in the USA, laments that the campaign is having it both ways. In fact, not only is that true of the campaign; it is true of Pence, who has said Obama was born in Hawaii, but not explicitly stating "this country." And make no mistake about it: to much of the far right, Hawaii- the most ethnically and culturally diverse in this country- is not Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, or Idaho. Or even Massachusetts.

But don't expect much questioning of Trump about his remarks in April, 2011 when

Possibly-serious Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is giving few details about the investigation he claims to have launched in Hawaii to get to the bottom of where President Obama was born, but the business mogul told CNN Thursday Americans will be "very surprised" by what he has found.

"We're looking into it very, very strongly. At a certain point in time I'll be revealing some interesting things," Trump said on CNN's American Morning.

Trump first claimed earlier this month he had sent investigators to Obama's home state in an effort to find out if the president was indeed born there, as he says he was and several media organization's independent investigations have confirmed.

"I have people that have been studying it and they cannot believe what they're finding," Trump told NBC then.

The President later released his long-form birth certificate, for which Trump took credit in his characteristically humble manner (below).  However, we're still waiting for results of that investigation. Regrettably, the media isn't, and is unlikely to press Trump about it even now that former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani,  presumably speaking for the candidate, has brought the issue back into the limelight.

















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A Nearly Good Idea From Ben Carson

"This was the moment," Senator Barack Obama declared in June, 2008 upon clinching the Democratic presidential nomination, for which we will be able to look back and recognize "the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

Skeptics might note that with the rate of rise of sea levels growing and the spread of terrorism worldwide, Obama was only slightly more prescient than he was humble. Yet, perhaps the planet has begun to heal, we are leaving our "children a world that's better, kindler, and more just," and we are overcoming egomaniacal politicians and creating nirvana.  It could be- Ben Carson is making sense.

Asked on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" about Hillary Clinton's health, Dr. Carson replied

Well, you know, as a physician, physicians and scientists generally will not make a diagnosis based on something that they see from a long distance.  My diagnosis would be that anybody who is elderly should expose their records. And we the people should know what they are. Because it's a very stressful job.  It's not an eight hour-a day job, it's 24/7 and we need to make sure that is taken care of.

I know, I know. Any nominee for President of either major party should release his or her full medical records. It should not be done based on age, not only to avoid age discrimination but because some people are healthy at 80 years of age and others unhealthy at 40.  Still, Carson wisely suggested both Clinton and Trump should release their medical records.

That should be considered a mild rebuke to  Rudy Giuliani, M.D.  The former New York City mayor, who received his medical degree from The University of Nowhere, had argued on GOP TV that he had witnessed "several signs of illness" in the Democratic nominee and added "go online and put down 'Hillary Clinton illness,' take a look at the videos for yourself."







While you are on online, do a Google search for "Rudy Giuliani gay" and gaze upon "field negro: RUDY GIULIANI'S GAY LOVER COMES OUT AND SAYS....."  It may give your computer a virus, but it's "online" and thus must be true. Rudy says so.









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Rudy Still Rudy

Slate's Jeremy Stahl believes Rudy Giuliani is getting a bad rap from "some hyperventilating on Twitter from outlets saying that Giuliani was ignoring 9/11."    Stating "his phrasing was misleading," the ex-mayor  "did not rewrite history to delete the worst foreign attack on U.S. soil since the War of 1812."

Stahl argues Giuliani

credited (vice-presidential nominee and former U.S. Representative) Pence’s work on the Patriot Act with preventing more attacks before pivoting to his remarks about eight years without another attack. Giuliani clearly meant there wasn't an attack during the 2001–2009 period after 9/11 and not the entirety of the eight years before Obama took office. Again, this was a poorly worded, misleading statement, but Giuliani clearly did not literally mean that 9/11 didn’t happen.

For whatever reason, media outlets reporting the remark as a gaffe have avoided replaying the remark in its context. So, too, has Stahl avoided that context, although it's easier to understand why he has done so. But as sportscaster Werner Wolf often put it, "let's go to the videotape," in this case the YouTube video below in which the ex-mayor is seen remarking

Mike Pence understands this from his time both as the Foreign Affairs Committee, both on the Foreign Affairs Committee, from his very timely visit which I remember to Ground Zero when we were in desperate need of help he was there  and from his work on the Judiciary Committee where he helped fashion the Patriot Act.  By the way, under those eight years, before Obama came along, we didn’t have a successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the United States. They all started when [Hillary] Clinton and Obama got into office.







If Giuliani had been crediting primarily Representative Mike Pence rather than President George W. Bush with preventing a terrorist attack, he wouldn't have said "by the way" and "before Obama came along." Giuliani was clearly attributing the absence of in an eight year (not "seven-and-a-half years" or "7+ years") to the Oval Office.

No one believes that the mayor of New York City on 9/11/01 (who did a lousy job both preparing the city for the possibility of a dramatic terrorist attack and managing the aftermath) forgot the events of 9/11; any such reference obviously is meant to be ironic.   There is a reason Senator Biden once quipped "I mean, think about it! Rudy Giuliani. There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence — a noun, a verb, and 9/11. There’s nothing else! There’s nothing else!”








For most, failure is nothing to brag about; Hillary Clinton does not go on about her e-mail savvy.  But similar discretion never stopped Rudy Giuliani from working tirelessly to capitalize on the worst attack in United States history for his own political gain.  He never forgot the events of 15 years ago but is only doing what he does best:  manipulating pain for gain. It's the same old Rudy.

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Skillful, Measured Propaganda

Give Rudy Giuliani credit. In contrast to other speakers at the first night of the Republican National Convention, he did not say Hillary Clinton belonged in prison or in stripes, nor did he shout "Hillary for Prison."

The former New York mayor spent his moments "huffing and puffing with such fire and brimstone," Fred Kaplan observes, "spewing such rank nonsense." Giuliani demanded "unconditional victory against them," which apparently referred to "radical Islamic terrorism," notwithstanding terrorism being a movement or ideology rather than a group of people. "We know who you are and we're coming to get you," boasted Rudy, speaking from the comfort of a podium in Cleveland, Ohio, USA.

Vagueness was a shrewd, if obvious, maneuver, given that there are at least six active terrorist organizations in the Middle East/North Africa and admitting complexity would lay bare the absence of any actual Republican plan (other than USA! USA!).

Kaplan noted Giuliani stated (at approximately 10:00 in)

“This includes undoing one of the worst deals America ever made”—the nuclear deal with Iran. Giuliani claimed that this deal “will eventually let them become a nuclear power.” Meanwhile, it’s having us pour billions of dollars into a country “that is the world’s largest supporter of terrorism,” adding, “We are actually giving them the money to fund the terrorists who are killing us and our allies. Are we crazy?” (The crowd yelled, “Yes!”)

However, Yahoo financial analyst Rick Newman, responding last year to claims by Trump and Ted Cruz, explained

The sanctions enacted by the United States and Europe in 2011 and 2012 included the freezing of Iranian assets in many international banks. Nobody knows the total amount of frozen assets, but it’s probably about $100 billion. Estimates go as high as $150 billion, the number some critics of the nuclear deal use to make the “windfall” coming to Iran seem larger than it probably is.

The deal would release those assets, allowing Iran full access to them. But the money belongs to Iran in the first place; it’s not coming from some other country. Iran owes some major debts to countries such as China, and it would use perhaps $50 billion to pay those, according to an analysis by the Brookings Institution. The big question is what it will do with the rest of the money.

If Iran pumped $50 billion into terrorist networks such as Hezbollah, or shared it with unsavory dictators such as Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, it would undoubtedly be destabilizing and lead to the kind of bloodshed Cruz warns about. But many analysts think Iran won’t use the money to fund terrorism and will instead pump it into the Iranian economy, which needs some help.

Republican god Ronald (6) Wilson (6) Reagan (6) once "slipped" and admitted "facts are stupid things," so adherence to reality understandably was not on display in Cleveland last night.  Thus Giuliani, in a dishonest and shamless bid to tie terrorism abroad to violence at home, remarked at 3:35 into his speech

It's time to make America safe again. It's time to make America one again. One America! What happened to there's no black America, there's no white America America, there is just America? What happened to it? Where did it go? How was it thrown away?

One America, demands the guy who on Face The Nation on July 10 commented

So -- so if you want to deal -- if you want to deal with this on the black side, you've got to teach your children to be respectful to the police and you've got to teach your children that the real danger to them is not the police, the real danger to them 99 out of 100 times, 9,900 out of 1,000 times are other black kids who are going to kill them. That's the way they're going to die.

He did not lecture parents. He lectured black parents, evidently in the spirit of "just America."

Neither Giuliani's assertion on the Sunday talk show or at the GOP convention is a matter of objective fact or falsehood and so will not be reviewed by Politifact, FactCheck.org, the Washington Post's Fact Checker.  It goes less to the character of the man than to the Party he represents that one of the speakers who did not advocate hauling Hillary Clinton off to jail still contributed to the hysteria of opening night.

















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