Month: November 2017

Duterte says Obama is “so black and arrogant”by digby

Trump made a point of staying an extra day on his trip so he could meet up with his bff, the sociopath president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte. He had warned Trump ahead of time not to lecture him about human rights but he didn’t need to. That’s the last thing Trump cares about. He thinks Duterte is on the right track. He told him so.

Anyway, Duterte gave a speech. And considering that Trump has been telling all of Asia what horrible fuck-ups every president before him has been, I’m sure he’ll be happy to back up Duterte on this too:

In a defiant speech hitting back at critics of his deadly drug crackdown, Duterte said he would go into jails and have “rumbles here, rumbles there.”

“At the age of 16, I already killed someone. A real person, a rumble, a stabbing,” Duterte said during a summit in the Vietnamese city of Danang, according to the BBC. “I was just 16 years old. It was just over a look. How much more now that I am president.”

A spokesman for Duterte said the remarks had been made “in jest.”

Duterte also hit Obama, slamming his former U.S. counterpart for criticizing the Philippines drug war.

“These white people, those from [the European Union], the ignorant Americans, pretending to be, this Obama,” Duterte said, according to The Philippine Star. “You are so black and arrogant. [He] reprimanded me. Why you reprimand me? I’m the president of a country.”

Duterte, 72, is known for his often incendiary and obscene language during speeches promoting the country’s crackdown on rampant drug use and trafficking.

Since Duterte took office 16 months ago, police said more than 3,960 people have been killed in the war on drugs. Another 2,290 people have been murdered in drug-related crimes, the government said.

Last year, Duterte said he would be “happy to slaughter” millions of drug addicts and that he even fatally shot criminals while he was mayor of the southern city of Davao to set an example for police.

That’s a Fox News story. You’ll enjoy some of the comments. Here’s a taste:

They’re talking about Barack Obama.

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Vote for Moore because of the sad bakers and the chainsaws on machine guns. Or something.by digby

Some Republicans are desperate to excuse their voters’ total hypocrisy.Here’s Erick Erickson’s rationale for excusing people voting for Roy Moore, the man who tried to get 14 year old girls to touch his dick through tighty whiteys:

I really don’t blame Roy Moore’s voters for sticking with him and I know they are going to come under withering attacks for standing by their man. They don’t deserve it. Clearly a lot of people would prefer to avoid dealing with how we got to this point of moral decay among conservatives who used to really believe character counted.

Well, just this past Sunday a militant atheist shot up a church in Texas, killing about half the congregation. One of those killed was still in the womb, but the baby gets counted as a person to boost the arguments for gun control, otherwise the baby would just be a fetus.

And many on the left on social media attacked the congregants of the church. Some said they got what they deserved. Meanwhile, the media ran with stories of chainsaws attached to machine guns distorting all the basic facts out of willful ignorance.

A week before, a Muslim ran over a bunch of people in New York while Democrats were patting themselves on the back for showing Trump voters running over muslim kids on television.

A few weeks before that, a CBS lawyer lost her job for mocking the dead in Las Vegas that they deserved what they got after a mass shooting, the motive behind which is still unknown.

While all of this is going on, a cake baker is headed to the Supreme Court because he had the audacity to bake a cake for a gay wedding, but he would not do all the decorations the gay couple wanted. So the baker got compared to a Nazi. He will join a florist at the Court who is being put out of business because despite having gay clients, she won’t provide flowers for gay weddings.

People are being harassed for refusing to cheer on men with mental illness who think they are women and the left thinks people in Alabama should have to let men use the ladies’ bathroom. The left is openly counting the days before churches can have their tax exempt status revoked for not embracing gay marriage. Christian private schools will be the first targets. The media on a near weekly basis runs stories that paint culturally conservative voters in a negative light, often distorting basic facts for the sake of narrative.

So you’ll have to excuse Trump voters and Moore voters for thinking the left in this country with a complicit media is out to get them.

What in the hell is he talking about? Chainsaws on machine guns? Who attacked the congregants of the church? All of this is just obsessive picking of grievances and outright lurid fantasies. I’m sure there are people saying stupid things on twitter. These wingnuts have turned that into this full blown sense of social victimization. I guess there’s nothing new in that. They rose to power claiming to be a persecuted minority and still believe it even though they have everything.

But this is a real Fox News fever dream and Erickson really, really needs to stay off of right wing media for a while. Because a baker who doesn’t want to bake cakes for gay people is going through a court case it’s ok to vote for a man who attempts statutory rape — a man, I might add, whose entire career has been defined by his proclaimed conservative Christianity.

Whatever gets you through the dayI guess.

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A little ray of sunshineby digby

We all know that the election on Tuesday was good news. But this post at the Monkey Cage makes a case that it was really good news.

In 1897, an earthquake that hit 5.8 on the Richter scale shook Virginia and was felt across 12 other states. Six months later, William McKinley’s Republican Party experienced its own disaster in Virginia, losing 15 seats in the state House of Delegates.

Not until Tuesday night did another such earthquake strike a president’s party in Virginia elections. The figure below puts the Republican Party’s losses in historical perspective. What happened Tuesday was worse than normal.

Now the question is whether the GOP’s losses in the Virginia legislature should be a warning sign for Republicans next year. If past elections are any indication, the answer is yes.

All politics is not local

National politics has long dominated state legislative elections. That’s true in Virginia, too. The left panel in the graph below shows that presidential approval, as measured by the last national Gallup poll before an election, is strongly associated with seat changes for the president’s party in the House of Delegates. The right panel shows that this is true in state elections nationwide.

What is particularly worrisome for Republicans is that their Virginia losses were worse than what is predicted by presidential approval alone. In the left-hand graph above, the 2017 point is well below the line that captures this relationship. With Trump’s approval rating at 38 percent, Republicans should have lost two to four seats, not 15.

This simple analysis suggests that a 38 percent approval rating could translate in 2018 into Republicans losing about 300 state House seats. This is why the GOP’s losses in Virginia may hint at a larger earthquake.

Indeed, the fortunes of the president’s party in Virginia House elections are related to how the president’s party fared in midterm elections the next year. The graph below shows a clear correlation emerges in U.S. House and state House elections.

A 10-point change in seats in the House of Delegates is associated with a 4-5% seat change in midterm state House and U.S. House elections. The points labeled “2018” indicate the predicted loss in Republican seats, which would be almost as large as Democratic losses in 2010 and exceed Republicans losses after Watergate in 1974.

It goes on the talk about what needs to be done to make this actually happen and it’s not easy. It won’t just happen on its own. But we now have some proof that it’s possible. And that’s good news.

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QOTD: Our 13 year old presidentby digby

Michael Bender Wall Street Journal reported this exchange on CNN

On the way out from DC the president came back on Air Force One and I mentioned, as your viewers know well, [Chinese president] Xi has a accumulated more power than any modern Chinese leader.

And as I was going through the list of accomplishments for Xi, Trump interrupted and said, “excuse me, so do I. I have successes too.”

Kelly’s latest hateful pushby digby

I wrote about the latest atrocity from our alleged savior Chief of Staff John Kelly for Salon today:

Donald Trump is finally going to meet Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, the murderous despot with whom he has, according to the White House, a “warm rapport.” It should be a true meeting of the minds (and also another chance to promote Trump Tower Manila). Trump is just coming off his glorious triumph in China which resulted in nothing of substance but succeeded in showing the world that all you have to do to make him gush like a schoolboy and give away the store is shower him in pomp and flattery. You can be sure that his staff will have this article by “the failing New York Times” framed for him upon his return:

They refer to him as “Uncle Trump,” “Grand Commander” and “Donald the Strong.” After Mr. Trump’s visit to the Forbidden City on Wednesday with President Xi Jinping, one fan wrote on social media, “Long live Emperor Trump!”

The fact that the Chinese media is tightly controlled and encourages such fawning praise will undoubtedly be cut from the clipping, although if Trump knew about it he would surely wish he could command the American media to do the same.

Trump will be meeting with his role model, Russian President Vladimir Putin, in Vietnam for some “informal” boys talk but will not connect with the admitted murderer Duterte until he goes to Manila for the last leg of the trip. Recall that Trump was very impressed with Duterte’s extrajudicial approach to dealing with drug use which has resulted in thousands of people being gunned down in the streets by vigilantes or held in grotesquely inhumane conditions. After all, Trump told Duterte so in a phone call:

I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that.

Trump is accompanied on this trip by White House chief of staff John Kelly who is a hardcore drug warrior himself, going back before his time at the Department of Homeland Security to his Marine Corps days as the head of the Southern Command, which oversees U.S. forces in Central and South America. He’s probably as impressed with Duterte’s efficiency in dealing with the problem as Trump is. He’s certainly not one to be overcome with sympathy or compassion for his fellow man.

The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Kelly took time out of his busy schedule in Japan to pressure Elaine Duke, the acting director of Homeland Security, to expel tens of thousands of Hondurans living in the United States. She had decided to extend the residency permits for these people for six months; many of them have been in the country for decades under the temporary protected status program (TPS). The Post article reports that Duke refused and told Kelly she is resigning, although she was only confirmed last April.

There are 50,000 Haitians and 200,000 Salvadorans still awaiting decisions on their TPS status as well. The Trump administration wants these people out, on the premise that no “temporary” program should be permanent and they should all go back to their countries of origin no matter how long they’ve been here. To be clear, these are not “illegal immigrants.” These people have lived here legally, working and contributing to the nation for years. Anti-immigration zealots want to force them to upend their lives all over again simply so to make a political point.

Kelly has been particularly hard on refugees from Central America. Like Trump, he apparently believes they are a bad element bringing in crime, drugs and even terrorism. He has often spoken about the region’s broken societies but seems entirely unsympathetic to people who try to leave in order to make better lives for their families.

Kelly has been adamantly opposed to allowing refugee status for any Central American migrants, even forcing women with children, with no criminal records, to return to their home countries to face persecution and violence. He has said that such immigrants “parrot well-worn phrases to get a shot at staying in the United States.”

So it is anything but surprising that Kelly wants to see tens of thousands of legal Central Americans rounded up and deported. He believes they do not belong in the United States at all, even though they are fleeing countries that have been radically destabilized and turned violent by the deportation of criminals who were hardened in American prisons.

Of course, when it comes to prisons Kelly knows his stuff. He’s also a former commandant of the Guantánamo Bay detention facility. When he was nominated to head the Department of Homeland Security, the Center for Constitutional Rights stated, “General Kelly’s aggressive oversight of the illegal military prison at Guantánamo Bay disqualifies him to head the Department of Homeland Security. Presiding over a population of detainees not charged or convicted of crimes, over whom he had maximum custodial control, Kelly treated them with brutality.”

In 2013, Kelly dealt with a hunger strike at Gitmo by ordering his troops to fire rubber bullets at protesting prisoners, and then to leave them face down, soaked in pepper spray, with their hands tied behind their backs for six hours. No wonder Trump loves the guy so much.

When he was nominated for the DHS position, Kelly said, “the American people voted in this election to stop terrorism, take back sovereignty at our borders, and put a stop to political correctness that for too long has dictated our approach to national security.” He is living up to that promise.

As DHS director Kelly told his agencies to take the gloves off and they began deporting any and all undocumented immigrants they could get their hands on, regardless of whether they had committed any crimes. He backed Trump’s original Muslim ban warning that “terrorist foot soldiers” were pouring into the country. He has consistently said that the drug problem must be dealt with inside the United States by clamping down on demand. Duterte certainly agrees, with him and has developed an impressive program to do just that. (Let’s hope Trump sticks with Nancy Reagan’s “Just say no” instead.)

Considering all that, it’s no surprise that Kelly would seek to interfere with what is supposed to be an independent DHS decision on temporary protection status for tens of thousands of people. Treating vulnerable populations with unnecessary cruelty is right in John Kelly’s wheelhouse. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what President Trump likes about him.

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How would Rove/Hughes Cover Up A Trump Pee Tape?
by Spocko
Earlier today Digby posted about the report that in preparation for the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow, a Russian told Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller, he could “send five women” to Trump’s hotel room. Schiller said he told the Russian, “We don’t do that type of stuff,” sources told NBC.

The story of Trump and the 5 women in Moscow got me thinking. What if you worked for Trump and knew the real story about this entire incident, as well as the rumors. How would you clean this story, or knock it down? I asked myself, What Would Karl Rove and Karen Hughes Do? WWKRKHD?

War criminal, his wife, Karl Rove

War criminal, Karen Hughes, some guy, war criminal

There are multiple ways to discredit this story, and the media covering it.  You are already seeing some of them in the story from NBC,

In a statement, Schiller’s lawyer said “the versions of Mr. Schiller’s testimony being leaked to the press are blatantly false and misleading. “

“We are appalled by the leaks that are coming from partisan insiders from the House Intelligence Committee,” said Stuart Sears. “It is outrageous that the very Committee that is conducting an investigation into leaks — purportedly in the public interest — is itself leaking information and defaming cooperative witnesses like Mr. Schiller. The Chairman and Ranking Member should investigate and hold accountable whoever is responsible for leaking false and misleading versions of Mr. Schiller’s testimony. This conduct is indefensible and calls into question the credibility and motives of the Committee’s investigation.”

Out of Context and Hair Splitting
Any versions of the testimony leaked can correctly be labeled “false and misleading”  because anything that it isn’t the word for word transcript, in complete context, can be categorized as misleading. If anyone gets a single word wrong, it can be called false.

(By the way, this was a technique of Rumsfeld, if someone paraphrased a comment he made he could say, “That’s not what I said.” the reporter often didn’t have the text in front of him. Rumsfeld could also say, “That’s out of context.” which gave him room to push a different interpretation.)

One Bad Detail Spoils the Whole Bunch
Another method to scuttle this story is to find and discredit one detail of the story which will be used to discredit the rest of the story. Remember how Dan Rather and 60 Minutes got busted  over a type font?

True Details in a Faked Document
The other method is to fabricate a piece of evidence then get it to the “liberal media.”  If the media outlet is cautious, they won’t run it until it’s vetted. They might see that it’s too good to be true and hold back, but not all media will wait.  After one runs it, the others will need to acknowledge it.  This plays into the media’s desire for a scoop and gives them an opportunity to comment without taking sides for a “both sides do it” story.

The key to this method is to make the fake evidence and sources look really good.   So for example, they could have real information, like the names of the women who were offered by Putin to go to Trump’s Room. But the document it is on is forged     Then someone tips off a blogger named Buckhead who just happens to know what to look for to prove that the email was forged . Third party experts will be brought in to confirm that document is false.

This tactic is a twofer.  It gives right wing media an opportunity to attack “the liberal media” for promoting “fake news” during their witch hunt against Trump and if more evidence shows up later, it can be dismissed as another fake.

True Details, Real Evidence from a Compromised Source

What if you know that evidence with real details will eventually be dug up?  Get it to someone who is already compromised or seen as crazy. Expose the problems with the source. Get others to disavow the source, which taints the story.

Is there anyone in the Trump White House who can plan three steps ahead, understand what the media wants and how to manipulate them,  use cut outs so their fingerprints aren’t on the fake evidence  and then implement it without being caught?   I don’t know. I do know that these kind of people exist. They work for law firms, PR firms, and intelligence agencies –both foreign and domestic.

You don’t have to be playing 11 dimensional chess to use some of these tactics, smearing sources and crying “fake news” is easy.  But when dumb, inexperienced people try to pull off these tactics they can be busted by people who are paying attention and know what to look for.  And there are a lot of dumb inexperience people in the Trump White House.

So long, it’s been #MAGA to know ya
by Tom Sullivan

U.S. Department of State, Washington, D.C. Photo by AgnosticPreachersKid via Creative Commons.

Their first posting was Botswana. Field work for the State Department is not unlike the military. You go where they send you. Annette and her husband had jobs at the embassy and now had to get used to life in the Foreign Service.

Leaving their house one morning, they noticed a man hanging around the gate at the end of their drive. When they returned in the evening, he was still standing there. He smiled, opened the gate, and closed it behind the car. The next morning he was there again to open the gate. They put him on their “payroll.” Soon they would have a maid, too. As middle class Americans, this was not the way they were accustomed to living, but as representatives of the United States of America in an impoverished nation, they were expected to contribute to the local economy.

I lost track of them after Costa Rica.

Cindy and Robert let me crash on their couch outside Brussels when I was touring Europe after college. A few decades later, I read Robert was doing dangerous work for the department in Afghanistan.

The picture of the president hanging on embassy walls changes every four or eight years, but the people who dedicate their lives to public service as the faces, eyes and ears of the United States don’t serve because of whose photo is hanging there. They certainly don’t do it for the money. They do it because it matters, and because they get to represent their country’s interests around the planet and do a little good in this troubled world.

So long to all that.

In a rare statement from a top U.S. diplomat, Barbara Stephenson raised the alarm this week about the decimation in the department’s ranks under the president whose picture is supposed to be hanging on office walls around the world.

Foreign Policy reports:

“Our leadership ranks are being depleted at a dizzying speed,” Barbara Stephenson, a former U.S. ambassador to Panama and current president of the American Foreign Service Association, the union for foreign service officers, wrote in a letter for the December 2017 issue of the Foreign Service Journal.

Scores of senior diplomats, including 60 percent of career ambassadors, have left the department since the beginning of the year, when President Donald Trump took office, according to the letter. There are 74 top posts at State that remain vacant with no announced nominee.

“Were the U.S. military to face such a decapitation of its leadership ranks, I would expect a public outcry,” Stephenson wrote.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin celebrated the president’s choice of Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State last December, only to sour on him recently, so one wonders whether or not Putin got the outcome he desired. But a weakened Unted States can’t be keeping him up at night.

Stephenson goes on in her letter titled “Time to Ask Why“:

Meanwhile, the self-imposed hiring freeze is taking its toll at the entry level. Intake into the Foreign Service at State will drop from 366 in 2016 to around 100 new entry-level officers joining A100 in 2018 (including 60 Pickering and Rangel Fellows).

Not surprisingly, given the blocked entry path, interest in joining the Foreign Service is plummeting. I wrote with pride in my March 2016 column that “more than 17,000 people applied to take the Foreign Service Officer Test last year,” citing interest in joining the Foreign Service as a key indicator of the health of the institution. What does it tell us, then, that we are on track to have fewer than half as many people take the Foreign Service Officer Test this year?

As the shape and extent of the staffing cuts to the Foreign Service at State become clearer, I believe we must shine a light on these disturbing trends and ask “why?” and “to what end?”

The Senate called proposed cuts a “doctrine of retreat,” she writes, and ordered funding at 2016 levels. So, she asks:

Why such a focus on slashing staffing at State? Why such a focus on decapitating leadership? How do these actions serve the stated agenda of making the State Department stronger?

“Quite frankly, this administration is categorically destroying the Department of State and devaluing diplomacy as something important in this world,” Wendy Sherman told Foreign Policy‘s Diplomat of the Year event in Washington. Sherman is former undersecretary of state for political affairs under President Barack Obama.

The State Department denies this, even as morale collapses. Tillerson has placed a hiring freeze until the end of the year, yet plans to “double or perhaps triple” the size of his personal staff, Foreign Policy reported in July. Staffers believe Tillerson is constructing a “parallel department.” that shuts out veteran foreign policy hands.

If the sitting president’s interview last week with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham is any indication, this new direction comes from the top:

Trump: Let me tell you, the one that matters is me. I’m the only one that matters, because when it comes to it, that’s what the policy is going to be. You’ve seen that, you’ve seen it strongly.

Stephenson asks, “Where then, does the impetus come from to weaken the American Foreign Service? Where is the mandate to pull the Foreign Service team from the field and forfeit the game to our adversaries?”

How many guesses do we get? If the face in the pictures were a Democrat’s, how many would Alex Jones need?

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Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

Yes, they’re going after Mueller
by digby

So far it’s just a couple of gadflies. But it’s now in the record:

"I'm calling for Mr. Mueller's resignation or his firing" pic.twitter.com/rEpobJCn8V— RepMattGaetz (@RepMattGaetz) November 8, 2017

In a speech on the House floor Wednesday, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) called for special counsel Robert Mueller to resign or be fired over his “indisputable conflicts of interest.”

“We are at risk of a coup d’état in this country if we allow an unaccountable person with no oversight to undermine the duly-elected President of the United States,” Gaetz said. “That is precisely what is happening right now with the indisputable conflicts of interest that are present with Mr. Mueller and others at the Department of Justice.”

“I join … in calling for Mr. Mueller’s resignation or his firing,” Gaetz continued.

Last week, Gaetz introduced a resolution that argues Mueller is compromised because he served as FBI director when the Obama administration signed off on a deal allowing a Russian company to purchase a Canadian energy company with uranium operations in the U.S. in 2010.
“These deeply troubling events took place when Mr. Mueller was the Director of the FBI. As such, his impartiality is hopelessly compromised. He must step down immediately,” Gaetz said in a statement Friday.

Gaetz’s resolution currently has two co-sponsors, both of whom are members of the House Freedom Caucus: Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas).

In his Wednesday speech, Gaetz also called on the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to “investigate the Clinton Foundation, the Uranium One deal and the Fusion GPS dossier.”

The Florida Republican’s speech and resolution follow the first indictments handed down in Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

A funny way of “sowing discord”by digby

I am often told that the idea Russia was actively trying to help Donald Trump is really beyond the pale. It’s much more likely that Russia was just “sowing discord” and it just happened to have helped Trump. I’m really skeptical about that at this point:

Disguised Russian agents on Twitter rushed to deflect scandalous news about Donald Trump just before last year’s presidential election while straining to refocus criticism on the mainstream media and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, according to an Associated Press analysis of since-deleted accounts.

Tweets by Russia-backed accounts such as “America_1st_” and “BatonRougeVoice” on Oct. 7, 2016, actively pivoted away from news of an audio recording in which Trump made crude comments about groping women, and instead touted damaging emails hacked from Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta.

Since early this year, the extent of Russian intrusion to help Trump and hurt Clinton in the election has been the subject of both congressional scrutiny and a criminal investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller. In particular, those investigations are looking into the possibility of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.

AP’s analysis illuminates the obvious strategy behind the Russian cyber meddling: swiftly react, distort and distract attention from any negative Trump news.

That story didn’t need any help to “sow discord.” It sowed plenty all by itself. The idea that they were just “meddling” without any care about the outcome is just not credible. They were helping him specifically. And it’s important to understand if they thought they were going to get paid back.

Trump certainly behaves as if he has something to hide. You cannot blame people for their suspicions. Not anymore.

Here’s Donald Trump desperately trying to get Vlad’s attention at the G20 dinner. pic.twitter.com/5sIKuJvtu8

— Jennifer Hayden (@Scout_Finch) July 19, 2017

Trump’s best pal and bodyguard says they turned down hookers in Moscowby digby

I’m sure the man would never lie:

After a business meeting in preparation for the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow, a Russian who attended the meeting told Donald Trump’s personal bodyguard Keith Schiller he could “send five women” to Trump’s hotel room, according to an NBC report on the congressional testimony Schiller gave behind closed doors Wednesday.

Schiller said he told the Russian, “We don’t do that type of stuff,” sources told NBC.

On their way back to the hotel Schiller said he and Trump laughed about the offer, and that he personally stood by Trump’s door after he went to bed. Multiple sources told NBC Schiller was confident that no one sent Trump any women that evening, and that he and Trump were aware of the possibility of wiretapping or hidden cameras in the hotel room.

Uh huh. They don’t do that type of stuff:

A Hungarian beauty queen said that a married Donald Trump invited her to his hotel room after the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013, according to an Internet video that surfaced recently.

Kata Sarka, a 30-year-old model who was once crowned Miss Hungary, said that she was approached by Trump and a phalanx of his bodyguards during a pageant after-party in the Russian capital, Perez Hilton reported.

‘He grabbed my hand like this,’ Sarka told a Hungarian-language program called Kasza Taxi.

‘He was standing in the middle of a group of bodyguards, he grabbed my hand, he pulled me towards himself, and he asked, “Who are you?”’

‘He asked in English. Then, I was so surprised, I’ll tell you who it was in a moment, I was so surprised that I couldn’t say anything except ‘Hungary.'”

‘And then he said “and why are you here?'” Sarka said.

‘By the way, I still have the business card,’ she said.

Sarka showed the business card to Blikk, a Hungarian tabloid.

She told the newspaper about the encounter with Trump, saying that ‘he’s not my type.’

At the time of the alleged encounter, Trump had been married to Melania Trump for eight years.

Donald Trump was a judge at the Miss Universe pageant that was held on November 9, 2013, in Moscow, according to Mother Jones.

This was the visit during which it has been alleged in a bombshell dossier compiled by a former British intelligence agent that Trump stayed at the Ritz Carlton Hotel.

According to the dossier, the contents of which have been vehemently denied by Trump and the Russian government, Trump arranged to stay at the presidential suite where President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, had stayed on a prior visit.

During Trump’s stay, it is alleged that he watched as prostitutes urinated on one another while on the bed in a ‘golden showers’ routine.

The dossier alleged that Trump’s lewd sexual behaviour in Russia was recorded by the Kremlin’s intelligence agencies and held as ‘kompromat’, or damaging information which it has used to blackmail Trump.

It could be all lies, of course. Who knows? It could also be that Trump made “his own arrangements” or thought he did. Whatever the case, Keith Schiller’s testimony is hardly dispositive. He is Trump’s closest friend.

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