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Month: September 2016

Stealing Trump’s thunder by @BloggersRUs

Stealing Trump’s thunder
by Tom Sullivan

An Allen Clifton post from a couple of weeks ago set in relief how nuts the anti-Clinton fever of the last quarter century has been. Problem is, the propaganda campaign has largely worked. Relentless repetition has a way of creating its own reality. It may not have worked for Bush II’s minions, but it has worked against the Clintons. After soaking in decades of propaganda, I don’t even trust what I think I think about them. Except to be convinced so much of it is bullshit.

Clifton writes at Forward Progressives:

To believe anti-Clinton critics, you would think Bill and Hillary Clinton were more powerful, evil and diabolical than even the most over-the-top villain in your stereotypical spy movie. The Clintons have been accused of:

  • Being serial killers. (No, seriously, there are individuals out there who think they’ve killed well over 90 people.)
  • Money laundering and racketeering.
  • Covering up multiple rapes.
  • Raising Chelsea Clinton as their daughter — when she’s not really their daughter.
  • Running a drug-smuggling ring while Bill was governor of Arkansas.
  • Ordering Chelsea to get pregnant before Hillary ran for president to make her seem more likable.
  • Fixing a primary election via voter fraud, and also forcing minority voters to overwhelmingly support Hillary Clinton.
  • Rigging an FBI investigation with a director of the FBI who’s not only a Republican, but worked for the Bush administration.

There are many more, of course, as Clifton notes. But as to the controversy du jour over their charity, the Clinton Foundation, Clifton marvels:

Then, even though the Clintons obviously knew that anyone who wanted to see the donation records of the foundation could do so, they went ahead and decided to use the foundation with their name on it to supposedly launder money from foreign countries and other shady characters who donated money expecting to “get something” from them in return.

Now, maybe I’m just a little “nuts,” but if I were someone capable of covering up multiple murders; rigging FBI investigations; fixing primary elections; and the whole host of other horrific things the Clintons have been accused of, I think I would find something a little more “subtle” to set up a “pay-for-play” scheme centered around international crime that could potentially be linked all the way to the White House. You know, at least slightly more subtle than a foundation with my last name on it!

But that’s just me.

Yet coverage of the Democratic candidate for president hovers — when it hovers at all — around these serial conspiracy theories and the distrust the public has been carefully taught. Meanwhile, the payaso running on the Republican ticket puts on such a colorful daily show for the press that he consumes all the press attention not devoted to whatever faux scandal GOP smear merchants are peddling about Clinton.

I know, it’s a helluva way to select a national leader, and not a situation Hillary Clinton should simply try to ride out because polls look so favorable.

David Horsey of the Los Angeles Times wonders the same thing:

Clinton needs something close to a landslide if she hopes to have any kind of mandate and if she hopes to bring a more friendly Congress into office with her. To get such a large margin of victory, she must do more than let Trump beat himself. She needs to steal the attention from him and get more people enthused about the idea of having her as president.

Right now, in his erratic way, Trump is doing a good job of reinforcing the pervasive right-wing caricature of Hillary as dishonest, corrupt and even criminal. As preposterous as his rhetoric may be, it is being heard day after day while Clinton’s voice is largely absent. The upcoming presidential debates offer a vitally important opportunity to project an appealing image of competence and command of issues, but, given that Clinton will face a very unpredictable opponent on the debate stage, she cannot be certain those three battles of wits will work in her favor.

If Clinton wants to grab the spotlight, she must confront very directly and very effectively the bad image that so many people have lodged in their brains — a tough task that carries with it plenty of risk. The temptation will be to play it safe and coast on current momentum to a slim victory. But barely beating the most absurd candidate Republicans have ever nominated will not give Clinton the clout she will need in the toxic political battles certain to come once the votes are counted and the hard work of governing begins.

A frightening article on coastal flooding in this morning’s New York Times makes clear just how much political capital will be needed for any progress to take place during the next administration. Robert Frank makes a plea at the New York Times for Clinton to work harder and to spend more money to take back the U.S. House from the T-party climate denialists now in charge and more vulnerable than ever:

But because a campaign’s budget is not a fixed sum, the trade-off may be more apparent than real. As economists have long stressed, the amount that people are willing to pay for something depends on what they expect to get in return. Democratic donors understand that their biggest concerns can’t be addressed until Republicans lose their congressional majorities. They also understand that if the House doesn’t flip this year, there will be virtually no chance of it flipping in the 2018 midterm elections. And until Democrats win enough seats in state legislatures to undo Republican gerrymandering — which could take decades — a wave election is the only near-term hope.

The candidacy of Donald Trump offers a unique opportunity. If Mrs. Clinton made the case clearly in these terms, many donors would step up. Democrats could compete for every vulnerable Republican seat without diverting a single dollar from the Electoral College battle.

But first she has to get their attention. That will be a tall order and take Hillary Clinton well out of her comfort zone. For all our sakes, let’s hope she is up to it.

The Lone Wolf Pack

The Lone Wolf Pack



by digby

America’s own homegrown terrorists have a very popular leader:

White nationalist social media users referenced GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump almost more than any other topic, and hashtags involving Trump and his presidential campaign dominated among white nationalist and Nazi-associated Twitter accounts, according to a new study comparing social media networks of white supremacists and Islamic State sympathizers.

Followers of white nationalists on Twitter are also “heavily invested” in the New York real estate’s presidential campaign and his candidacy has “energized” white nationalists, the study finds.

But while Trump and Trump-related hashtags dominated the study from George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, they were not at the top of the list for either white supremacists or Nazis. (The study made no distinction between accounts supporting the historical Nazi Party and the neo-Nazi movement.) That distinction went to the hashtag #WhiteGenocide, which topped both the list of top 10 hashtags for both groups studied, with 9,284 references among white nationalists and 6,589 among Nazis.

Study author J.M. Berger found a significant shift in the way traditional political hashtags were used in the white nationalist and Nazi networks since the 2012 election, noting that in a similar analysis in August 2012, the name of GOP nominee Mitt Romney did have “any significant mention.”

“New developments and new propaganda items are a constant part of the ISIS landscape, whereas content in white nationalist networks tends to be repetitive, with few meaningful changes to the movement’s message, landscape, or political prospects,” Berger wrote in the study. “A notable exception to this is Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy, which has energized white nationalists and provided new talking points and opportunities for engagement. Trump’s candidacy is likely driving some portion of movement’s recent gains on Twitter.”

So great.

And the polls are going the wrong way folks.

“The big bully that keeps getting beat up”

“The big bully that keeps getting beat up”

by digby

That’s what Trump think’s America is. And anyone who thinks he believes the answer to that “problem” is to withdraw from the world isn’t hearing him. Here’s Stephen Colbert on his “immigration: speech:

This too:

And just because it’s fun:

You’ve got to laugh or you’ll lose your mind.

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About those emails

About those emails

by digby

Despite the overheated lunacy emanating from the fever swamp, the FBI notes on the investigation actually exonerate Clinton. I know some of you don’t want to believe it because she’s a secretive, calculating, corrupt harpy, but it’s actually the truth.

I read through them and made notes all the way along, but I saw this piece by Kevin Drum and decided to just post it here (please click over for more context) because he’s already gone to the trouble and I’m feeling lazy.

The report starts off with a whole bunch of technical detail about how the Clinton email server was set up and managed, and is basically uninteresting except to nerds. As everyone knows, Hillary’s email was originally hosted on a personal server in her home (referred to as the “Pagliano Server”) and was later transferred to a commercial hosting service, Platte River Networks (the “PRN Server”). We’ll pick up the action on page 7:

Page 7: At the time of the FBI’s acquisition of the Pagliano Server, Williams & Connolly did not advise the US Government […] that Clinton’s clintonemail.com e-mails had been migrated to the successor PRN Server remaining at Equinix. The FBI’s subsequent investigation identified this additional equipment and revealed the e-mail migration.

This strikes me as bad. Hillary’s lawyers gave the FBI the old Pagliano Server when they asked for it, but didn’t tell them that everything had been migrated to PRN. Why not?

Page 8: [Huma] Abedin recalled that at the start of Clinton’s tenure, State advised personal e-mail accounts could not be linked to State mobile devices and, as a result, Clinton decided to use a personal device in order to avoid carrying multiple devices.

In other words, Hillary could get a State-approved device, but couldn’t receive her personal email on it. Likewise, she could use a personal device, but couldn’t get State email on it. The only way to get both was to carry two physical devices. She considered this inconvenient, and decided to keep on using her personal BlackBerry for everything. This is exactly what she’s been saying all along.

Page 8: FBI investigation identified 13 total mobile devices […] which potentially were used to send e-mails […] eight of which she used during her tenure as Secretary of State.

This has become a big talking point on the right for some reason. Hillary didn’t have one device for convenience, she had 13! This is ridiculous. Over time, she had 13 devices, but the report makes it clear that she always had just one device at a time.

Page 9: According to Abedin, it was not uncommon for Clinton to use a new BlackBerry for a few days and then immediately switch it out for an older version with which she was more familiar. Clinton states that when her BlackBerry device malfunctioned, her aides would assist her in obtaining a new BlackBerry, and, after moving to a new device, her old SIM cards were disposed of by her aides.

I’m only including this because, WTF? How often did Hillary’s BlackBerries malfunction? If she had eight in four years, it means they each lasted about six months. Why were they so fragile? Did they just buy a new BlackBerry every time there was some kind of bug they couldn’t figure out how to resolve?

Page 11: On January 23, 2009, Clinton contacted former Secretary of State Colin Powell via e-mail to inquire about his use of a BlackBerry while he was Secretary of State (January 2001 to January 2005). In his e-mail reply, Powell warned Clinton that if it became “public” that Clinton had a BlackBerry, and she used it to “do business,” her e-mails could become “official record[s] and subject to the law.” Powell further advised Clinton, “Be very careful. I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data.”

This is important. First, it makes clear that Hillary conversed with Colin Powell two days after becoming Secretary of State, not “a year later,” as Powell has claimed. Second, Powell essentially told her that he had just gone ahead and broken the law by “not using systems that captured the data.” Hillary, by contrast, chose instead to retain everything as the law required.

Page 11: While State policy during Clinton’s tenure required that “day-to-day operations [at State] be conducted on [an authorized information system],” according to the REDACTED the Bureau of Information Security Management, REDACTED there was no restriction on the use of personal e-mail accounts for official business. […] In 2011, a notice to all State employees was sent on Clinton’s behalf, which recommended employees avoid conducting State business from personal e-mail accounts due to information security concerns.

This makes it clear that although State “recommended” that employees not use personal accounts, there was no rule prohibiting it. And apparently personal accounts were very widely used.

Page 12: State Diplomatic Security Service (DS) instructed Clinton that because her office was in a SCIF, the use of mobile devices in her office was prohibited. Interviews of three former DS agents revealed Clinton stored her personal BlackBerry in a desk drawer in DS “Post 1,” which was located within the SCIF on Mahogany Row. State personnel were not authorized to bring their mobile devices into Post 1, as it was located within the SCIF.

I’m only including this because it’s gotten some attention on the right. This paragraph says that Hillary always checked in her BlackBerry when she came into the office, as she was required to do, but checked it into Post 1. Apparently this was the wrong thing to do. But if it was, surely this is the fault of DS, not Hillary, who plainly had no incentive to store her BlackBerry in the wrong place.

Page 13: Thirteen individuals, consisting of State senior-level employees, work-related advisors, and State executive administrative staff, maintained direct e-mail contact with Clinton.

That’s not very many. It’s not as if potentially sensitive information was flying around to hundreds of people.

Page 14: Heather Samuelson, an attorney working with [Cheryl] Mills, undertook a review to identify work-related e-mails, while Kendall and Mills oversaw the process. […] Clinton was not consulted on specific e-mails in order to determine if they were work-related.

This is how Hillary’s work-related emails were separated from her personal emails after State asked for them. It’s only relevant because it makes clear that Hillary herself had no input into the selection process. She just gave the order to produce the emails requested by State. Apparently she wasn’t very concerned that there would be anything embarrassing in there.

This is nothing new. FBI director James Comey said as much months ago about emails the FBI had recovered: “We found no evidence that any of the additional work-related e-mails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them. Our assessment is that, like many e-mail users, Secretary Clinton periodically deleted e-mails or e-mails were purged from the system when devices were changed. Because she was not using a government account—or even a commercial account like Gmail—there was no archiving at all of her e-mails, so it is not surprising that we discovered e-mails that were not on Secretary Clinton’s system in 2014, when she produced the 30,000 e-mails to the State Department.”

Pages 18-19: According to Mills, in December 2014, Clinton decided she no longer needed access to any of her e-mails older than 60 days. […] On March 2, 2015, The New York Times (NYT) published an article titled “Hillary Clinton Used Personal Email Account at State Dept., Possibly Breaking Rules.” […] In his interviews with the FBI, REDACTED [a PRN techie] indicated that sometime between March 25-31, 2015, he realized he did not make the e-mail retention policy changes to Clinton’s clintonemail.com e-mail account that Mills had requested in December 2014. […] He believed he had an “oh shit” moment and sometime between March 25-31, 2015 deleted the Clinton archive mailbox from the PRN server and used BleachBit to delete the exported .PST files he had created on the server system containing Clinton’s e-mails.

This explains why data was removed from the PRN server after the NYT article and after the Benghazi committee had subpoenaed Hillary’s emails. It had nothing to do with anyone around Hillary Clinton. An IT guy at PRN realized one day that he’d forgotten about the retention order and went ahead and implemented it.

The report makes clear that Cheryl Mills sent an email, which the PRN techie received, telling PRN about the preservation request from the Benghazi committee. The techie said he knew it meant he shouldn’t disturb the Clinton server, but apparently got confused and didn’t realize this meant he shouldn’t touch the old archives or the backups.

Page 20: When asked of her knowledge regarding TOP SECRET, SECRET, and CONFIDENTIAL classification levels of USG information, Clinton responded that she did not pay attention to the “level” of classification and took all classified information seriously.

For some reason there are people guffawing at this, but I don’t know why. The plainest reading is not that Hillary had no idea what various classification levels meant, but that she treated all classified information seriously no matter what level it was at.

Page 22: The FBI interviewed multiple officials who authored and/or contributed to e-mails, the content of which has since been determined to contain classified information. USG employees responsible for initiating classified e-mail chains include State Civil Service employees, Foreign Service employees, Senior Executive Service employees, Presidential employees, and non-State elected officials.

I can’t quite tell if the report suggests that every classified email they recovered was initiated by someone else, but it seems like it. Basically, other people sent stuff to Hillary, and she trusted that these folks knew what they were doing. She didn’t initiate any email exchanges herself that included classified information.

Page 23: During FBI interviews, State employees explained the context for why classified material REDACTED was sent and provided reasons to explain why they did not believe information in the e-mails was classified. […] Authors of the e-mails stated that they used their best judgment in drafting the messages and that it was common practice at State to carefully word e-mails on UNCLASSIFIED networks so as to avoid sensitive details or “talk around” REDACTED classified information.

This whole section is a description of common practices at State. Basically, most people the FBI talked to used private email accounts all the time; did their best to keep classified information out of these channels; and didn’t believe that any of the emails they sent included classified information. Other classification authorities have disagreed, as we all know by now, and the entire discussion gives you a taste of how subjective the classification process is. Basically, we have lots of experienced people who disagree about whether various things really ought to be classified.

Page 25: On the morning of June 17, 2011, Clinton asked [Jake] Sullivan to check on the status of talking points she was supposed to have received. Sullivan responded that the secure fax was malfunctioning but was in the process of being fixed. Clinton instructed Sullivan that if the secure fax could not be fixed, he should “turn [the talking points] into nonpaper [with] no identifying heading and send nonsecure.” State uses the term “non-paper” to refer to a document which is authorized for distribution to a foreign government wihout explicit attribution to the U.S. government and without classified information.

This provides an explanation for the “nonpaper” thing that got so much attention on Fox News a while back. It’s nothing nefarious. It’s standard jargon at the State Department for turning a classified document into an unclassified document and removing all the headers. This incident shows not negligence, but a rather strict adherence to the rules.

Page 27: FBI investigation and forensic analysis did not find evidence confirming that Clinton e-mail server systems were compromised by cyber means.

This section goes on for pages and pages, but this is really the only sentence you need. It could be that Hillary’s email server was hacked. Anything is possible. But despite tons of forensic analysis, the FBI found no evidence of it. This doesn’t mean that Hillary should have used a private server, and it doesn’t mean her server used best security practices. She shouldn’t have, and it didn’t. Nonetheless, there’s no reason to think her server was ever hacked other than “don’t be an idiot, of course it was.”

Oddly, the FBI never really addresses the issue of whether Hillary violated federal record retention rules. They obviously believe that she should have used a State email account for work-related business, but that’s about it. I suppose they decided it was a non-issue because Hillary did, in fact, retain all her emails and did, in fact, turn them over quickly when State requested them.

There’s also virtually no discussion of FOIA. What little there is suggests that Hillary’s only concern was that her personal emails not be subjected to FOIA simply because they were held on the same server as her work emails.

If you read the entire report, you’ll find bits and pieces that might show poor judgment on Hillary’s part. The initial decision to use one email device is the obvious one, something that Hillary has acknowledged repeatedly. Another—maybe—is her staff’s view of what was safe to send over unclassified email. But this is very fuzzy. It could be that her staff knew exactly what it was doing, and it’s the subsequent classification authorities who are wrong. This is something that it’s impossible to judge since none of us will ever see the emails in question.

That said, this report is pretty much an almost complete exoneration of Hillary Clinton. She wasn’t prohibited from using a personal device or a personal email account, and others at state did it routinely. She’s told the truth all along about why she did it. Colin Powell did indeed advise her about using personal email shortly after she took office, but she chose to follow the rules rather than skirt them, as Powell did. She didn’t take her BlackBerry into her office. She communicated with only a very select group of 13 people. She took no part in deciding which emails were personal before handing them over to State. She had nothing to do with erasing information on the PRN server. That was a screw-up on PRN’s end. She and her staff all believed at the time that they were careful not to conduct sensitive conversations over unclassified email systems. And there’s no evidence that her server was ever hacked.There’s remarkably little here. If you nonetheless believe that it’s enough to disqualify Hillary from the presidency, that’s fine. I have no quarrel with you. But if the FBI is to be believed, it’s all pretty small beer.

Yes it is. But apparently either adds up to treason or a lack of judgment so severe that it makes the election of a fascist demagogue something worth considering. 


You’ll note, by the way,  that Colin Powell is a lying sack of shit. But then we should already have known that right? If you want to blame someone for the Iraq war and the carnage in the middle east, he’s way ahead of Clinton in that line. But there’s no need to probe his tenure or write any of the breathless headlines we see daily about Clinton’s much less significant time in office. Granted, he’s not running for president. But I’m going to take a wild guess that if he were, this issue would not be seen as evidence of his innate dishonesty and personal corruption.  

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QOTD: Jorge Ramos

QOTD: Jorge Ramos

by digby

The Univision anchor said this a while back:

“It doesn’t matter who you are — a journalist, a politician or a voter — we’ll all be judged by how we responded to Donald Trump…. And neutrality is not an option.”

This is not a normal election. And if it doesn’t disturb you that tens of millions of your fellow Americans are publicly cheering and supporting a fascist, you should stop and think about it. If Clinton pulls this off — something by no means assured, particularly with third party candidates now taking more from her than Trump — next time we may not be so lucky.  The fact that it will likely be fairly close and there is tremendous enthusiasm among the rank and file means he has proved there is a huge market for American fascism. Someone more skilled is likely to run on his platform in the future.

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“A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”

“A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”


by digby

Remember this?…

So just ask yourself: Do you really think Donald Trump have the temperament to be Commander-in-Chief? 

Donald Trump can’t even handle the rough-and-tumble of a presidential campaign. 

He loses his cool at the slightest provocation. When he’s gotten a tough question from a reporter. When he’s challenged in a debate. When he sees a protester at a rally. 

Imagine, if you dare, imagine — imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons. 

I can’t put it any better than Jackie Kennedy did after the Cuban Missile Crisis. She said that what worried President Kennedy during that very dangerous time was that a war might be started – not by big men with self-control and restraint, but by little men – the ones moved by fear and pride.

Well …

As Donald Trump arrived in Phoenix late Wednesday, fresh from a visit to Mexico City’s presidential palace, he had in his hands a big immigration speech that omitted the usual line that Mexico would have to pay for his proposed wall along the U.S. southern border.

Just after landing, though, Mr. Trump discovered that Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto had tweeted that he had told the Republican presidential nominee during their private meeting earlier that day that his country would refuse to pay for the wall.

Mr. Trump was peeved …

So Mr. Trump hurriedly inserted a new sentence in his immigration speech, and he soon boomed out from the podium his traditional declaration that the wall would be paid for by Mexico—adding, “They don’t know it yet but they’re going to pay for the wall.”

“I have to add back the line that Mexico will pay,” Mr. Trump said, according to the people with him, adding that he couldn’t let that tweet go unanswered.

Very presidential. One can only imagine his reaction if he was truly “disrespected.”

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Fear, Inc. by @BloggersRUs

Fear, Inc.
by Tom Sullivan

Yesterday, Digby directed readers to Gabriel Sherman’s New York magazine story on Roger Ailes’ decades of harassing female employees. It is a jaw-dropping study in the abuse of power and in how Ailes created a “culture of fear at Fox” — including surveillance of his employees — to hide it all until it finally unraveled this summer. At least for Ailes. Sherman’s sources don’t predict a full-blown executive bloodbath at Fox News until after the November election.

Now Roger Ailes advises Donald J. Trump. As does Breitbart News executive chairman, Stephen Bannon. As does professional political hitman David Bossie. Who needs friends in the Mafia when you’ve got kneecappers like that working for you? Just think how they could remake the culture of the country if voters are foolish or lazy enough to let Fear, Inc. anywhere near real power.

By now, everyone has seen the “taco trucks every corner” clip from All In with Chris Hayes on Thursday night when Trump surrogate Marco Gutierrez warned of the dire consequences of allowing the Red Salsa menace to swarm across the southern border:

Someone decided to illustrate the effect in a GIF:

Sigh. Gutierrez is not ready for that six-figure job with Fear, Inc. just yet.

QOTD: an honest Republican

QOTD: an honest Republican

by digby

I just …

Longtime Republican consultant Carter Wrenn, a fixture in North Carolina politics, said the GOP’s voter fraud argument is nothing more than an excuse.

“Of course it’s political. Why else would you do it?” he said, explaining that Republicans, like any political party, want to protect their majority. While GOP lawmakers might have passed the law to suppress some voters, Wrenn said, that does not mean it was racist.

“Look, if African Americans voted overwhelmingly Republican, they would have kept early voting right where it was,” Wrenn said. “It wasn’t about discriminating against African Americans. They just ended up in the middle of it because they vote Democrat.”

Hey, we’d allow ’em to vote if they did what we tell ’em to do!

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The Ailes chronicles. OMG.

The Ailes chronicles. OMG.


by digby

Pull up a chair and read the most amazing story you will read all year, and that’s including the story of the Trump campaign. This is the big one by Gabriel Sherman about the most influential right wing propagandist of the past half century Roger Ailes.

Here’s just a tiny excerpt and it isn’t even the worst of it:

After Luhn left Fox, Ailes took additional measures to conceal his harassment of employees. In 2011, he installed a floor-to-ceiling wooden door outside his executive suite. Only his assistants could see who entered his office. According to a former Fox producer, Laterza entered fake names into Ailes’s datebook when women went into his office: “If you got ahold of his ledger, you would not know who visited him.” 

Still, the whispers about Ailes and women were growing louder. Karem Alsina, a former Fox makeup artist, told me she grew suspicious when Fox anchors came to see her before private meetings with Ailes to have their makeup done. “They would say, ‘I’m going to see Roger, gotta look beautiful!’ ” she recalled. “One of them came back down after a meeting, and the makeup on her nose and chin was gone.” 

In 2012, after I had been reporting my Ailes biography for a year, Megyn Kelly became so concerned about the rumors that she went to Ailes’s then–PR chief, Brian Lewis, and attempted an intervention, according to a person close to Kelly. She told Lewis that Ailes was being reckless and that I might include his behavior in my book. (I did report the stories of two women who claimed Ailes had harassed them earlier in his career, and though I heard rumors of Ailes and Fox News women, I could not confirm them at the time.) Lewis, according to the source, asked Laterza to tell Ailes to stop because he thought Ailes might listen to his longtime assistant. Instead, according to the source, Laterza told Ailes that his PR chief was being disloyal. Less than a year later, Ailes fired Lewis.

Grab a drink or a cup of coffee and  read the whole thing.  Then ask yourself what it means that this man has been the single most influential right wing strategist and media figure of the past 40 years.

Oh, and yeah, it’s important to mention that he’s working closely with Donald Trump. Does anyone have a problem with that?

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