Trump is the most public figure in America, possibly the world. And he’s suing to keep a film about him from being released. Defamation law isn’t supposed to protect someone like him but he’s found a way to make it work — for the moment. Threats:
Attorneys for Donald Trump have sent a cease and desist letter to the filmmakers behind “The Apprentice” in an effort to block its U.S. sale and release. It warns the team behind the film not to pursue a distribution deal, according to two people who have read the letter. “The Apprentice,” which looks at Trump’s early years as a real estate developer and his relationship with Roy Cohn, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this week.
“The film is a fair and balanced portrait of the former president,” the producers of the film said in a statement regarding the cease-and-desist letter. “We want everyone to see it and then decide.”
The movie, which was independently produced, stars Sebastian Stan as Trump and Jeremy Strong as Cohn. It presents a damning portrait of the former president as an ethically compromised, philanderer who stiffs contractors and cuts deals with the mob to get his buildings completed. It includes other controversial details, including a scene where Trump rapes his first wife, Ivana, and depicts him abusing amphetamines to lose weight, as well as undergoing liposuction and plastic surgery.
Trump’s camp responded with a blistering note, threatening legal action. “This ‘film’ is pure malicious defamation, should not see the light of day, and doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store, it belongs in a dumpster fire,” Steven Cheung, Trump campaign communications director, said in a statement.
This might work. I would imagine that the distributors will all be leery of getting into this mess until they see if Trump wins in a few months. If he doesn’t the price will go way down. If he does, it’s not worth the headache from the president who says he wants to be a dictator.
He should understand, however, that the internet exists and this thing is going to get out to the public whether he likes it or not. But he may very well be able to keep it from them long enough to be elected president. His patented legal intimidation is quite effective as we’ve seen with his treatment of former employees — and anyone else who crosses him.
“The polls have shown Donald Trump with an edge for eight straight months, but there’s a sign his advantage might not be quite as stable as it looks: His lead is built on gains among voters who aren’t paying close attention to politics, who don’t follow traditional news and who don’t regularly vote.”
Read that again. Now read this:
“Importantly, these low-turnout voters are often from Democratic constituencies. Many back Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate. But in our polling, Biden wins just three-quarters of Democratic-leaning voters who didn’t vote in the last cycle, even as almost all high-turnout Democratic-leaners continue to support him.”This trend illustrates the disconnect between Trump’s lead in the polls and Democratic victories in lower-turnout special elections. And it helps explain Trump’s gains among young and nonwhite voters, who tend to be among the least engaged. Trump’s dependence on these voters could make the race more volatile soon.”As voters tune in over the next six months, there’s a chance that disengaged but traditionally Democratic voters could revert to their usual partisan leanings. Alternately, they might stay home, which could also help Biden.”
Good to know.
This has actually been known by many of the more optimistic analysts. The model includes all adults or registered voters, many of whom haven’t voted in the last three elections. As we get closer to the election they’ll start focusing on likely voters and that will give us a clearer picture.
By that time half the country will believe that Biden is buried in the polls so far that it’s impossible that Trump could lose. You know what that means …
Kennedy has already addressed the body. Punish yourselves, if so inclined.
Trump speaks today. Some Libertarians it seems are down on authoritarians.
Leaving this right here.
Holy shit. A guy just made a motion at the Libertarian National Convention for “Donald Trump to go f*ck himself” and the crowd all applauded. Trump is scheduled to speak tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/GVbDndN6HZ
After comemmorating Memorial Day with a rally in Greensboro, N.C., Common Defense and Veterans for Responsible Leadership attempted to deliver a letter to the NC GOP state convention “calling on the GOP and on Donald Trump to reject calls for violence inflammatory rhetoric,” per Cardinal & Pine. Listen to the speeches below.
Veterans commemorate Memorial Day: Urge Trump and Republicans to Denounce Political Violence with Common Defense + @VetsForRLhttps://t.co/KrYfJ14iEV
We are demanding that Republican leaders now in Greensboro use all their influence to force Donald Trump to renounce these awful and dangerous threats of violence, which have no place in a democracy. Trump must commit to a peaceful and non-violent election season.
We have a duty to our fallen brothers and sisters, whom we honor this weekend. They fought battles abroad so we can live in a country free of such threats. Who among us will not honor their sacrifice?
We were on the scene in Greensboro today, where a group of veterans & military families from a broad coalition, including @VetsForRL & @commondefense, walked into the NC Republican convention to deliver a letter calling on the GOP and on Donald Trump to reject calls for violence. pic.twitter.com/JJ5GBhkG6O
A group of veterans and military families including members of @VetsForRL & @commondefense, were escorted out of the NC GOP’s convention in Greensboro on Friday after delivering a letter calling on the GOP and Donald Trump to reject calls for violence and inflammatory rhetoric. pic.twitter.com/JNAgQr04g7
I have little to add except that, from the video, the NC GOP chose Greensboro’s Koury Convention Center for its convention. It is a venue state Democrats stopped using some years ago, preferring to rent more cost- and donor-conscious space at public schools.
I just hiked to the top of the hill and what a view of the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing with all of the girders installed. It’s now truly a bridge!!! pic.twitter.com/sgMi4BnzbW
The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing is a public-private partnership of monumental scope that has leveraged the expertise and leadership of dozens of organizations and institutions to protect and restore wildlife habitats in Southern California. The crossing is currently in construction and is expected to be finished in 2026.
In 2015, the National Wildlife Foundation (NWF) and Caltrans proposed a massive corridor across the 101 freeway in Agoura Hills to provide wildlife with a safe place to cross into other habitats. At the time, the proposed plan was expected to take years to fund and even longer to build. Due to the bridge’s size and cost, its completion would be reliant on donations from the public.
In 2016, Wallis Annenberg and the Annenberg Foundation took up the call for funds and made a $1 million challenge grant to spur the community and local leaders to donate. The grant provided the necessary test assessments by Caltrans to ensure that the bridge would not cause any environmental impact to the surrounding area.
Thanks to the Annenberg Foundation’s challenge grant, the project received donations from more than 3,000 private, philanthropic, and corporate institutions around the world and helped NWF raise enough money to begin construction – initially in the year 2025.
In 2021, Wallis Annenberg and The Annenberg Foundation accelerated donations with a record breaking $25 million challenge grant to the NWF. The ‘Conservation Challenge Grant’ – currently the largest of its kind – serves as a call to philanthropists to help protect a threatened global biodiversity hotspot in Los Angeles. The funds raised were not only enough to fund construction, but moved up the construction timeline to April 22, 2022 – three years earlier than planned.
Construction is now on its way and when built, the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing will be the largest wildlife corridor in the world and will restore habitats and an ecosystem that over time has been degraded by human development. The bridge will allow for wildlife to cross freely over the 101 freeway without the threat of death or accidents, and will ensure the survival of many isolated species.
In honor of LA’s beautiful mountain lions like the late Hollywood star, P-22:
FILE – This Nov. 2014, file photo provided by the U.S. National Park Service shows a mountain lion known as P-22, photographed in the Griffith Park area near downtown Los Angeles. P-22, the celebrated mountain lion that took up residence in the middle of Los Angeles and became a symbol of urban pressures on wildlife, was euthanized after dangerous changes in his behavior led to examinations that revealed poor health and an injury likely caused by a car. (U.S. National Park Service, via AP, File)
Nearly eight years ago, convinced that she’d been treated unfairly, Jessica Denson sued Donald Trump’s campaign for workplace harassment.
Then she discovered the lengths Trump’s attorneys would go to hit back — and their unwillingness to stop.
Immediately, the campaign filed a counterclaim for $1.5 million. It won a $52,229 judgment, and the campaign froze her bank account and almost forced her into bankruptcy.
She found it humiliating when the campaign lawyers branded her a “judgment debtor” in a subpoena. They monitored her Twitter account, which had 32 followers, and submitted hundreds of pages of printouts to a judge. They even deposed her mother, grilling her about the family’s religious practices.
The judgment was ultimately thrown out by a judge, but her legal fight continues.
The process has been “unbearable,” Denson said, describing the unrelenting pressure she felt from Trump campaign attorneys. “This had become my life. I had no income and had this lien against me. It crippled my ability to work.”
The legal resources deployed to try to crush Denson’s case are not unusual. At least four women of color involved in the 2016 operation have been embroiled in legal fights with the campaign over workplace harassment, discrimination or violations of nondisclosure agreements. They have been subjected to scorched-earth tactics. For years, the Trump campaign has persisted, despite losing consistently, in at least some cases after it was clear that its efforts had damaged the women.
Trump was regularly updated on the women’s cases, according to two people familiar with the matters. In one, he wanted to escalate the dispute by filing a federal defamation lawsuit against the former employee, but his lawyers persuaded him it was best handled through confidential arbitration. Campaign lawyers urged him to settle the ongoing “legacy lawsuits” from 2016 before the 2020 election, but he declined.
Now as Trump engages in another presidential run, a judge’s order in one of those cases may force into public view the new details about staffers who lodged similar accusations. A federal magistrate judge has ordered the campaign to produce by May 31 a list of all discrimination and harassment complaints made during Trump’s 2016 and 2020 presidential runs, allegations that the campaign initially tried to keep confidential through rigorously enforced NDAs. Last year, a federal judge freed 422 employees of the 2016 campaign from confidentiality agreements in a class-action lawsuit brought by Denson, a major crack in the campaign’s strategy.
Why haven’t we known about this before? It seems like a pretty big deal to me. Do other presidential campaigns get dozens of harassment and discrimination lawsuits filed against them? I don’t think so.
Trump and his surrogates have appeared to relish hounding or humiliating women who have verbally crossed him, including media and Hollywood stars and a long list of accusers who have complained over the years about sexual harassment or inappropriate conduct. (He has denied all of the allegations.)
But ProPublica found that Trump’s campaign used similar bullying tactics against its own workers. These fights have been waged out of the public eye against women with few resources to stand up against the campaign’s battery of lawyers, paid from a seemingly bottomless trove of campaign money.
Chalk this up to yet more evidence of Trump’s monstrousness. He is an abusive cult leader as most cult leaders are. And he’s particularly abusive toward women. Apparently, tens of millions of people love him anyway.
New York’s ABC7 Reporter @jimdolan7 was on the ground and they had a helicopter in the air to tell the real story of Trump’s “big” rally in the south Bronx for the 11:00 news. The zoom out of Trump speaking and the real crowd size says it all. All they do is lie. pic.twitter.com/JDMVlupjz8
And yet I heard the CNN reporter on the ground talk about how big and diverse the crowd was and how the Biden campaign must be nervous about his appeal in this blue city. They interviewed the rallygoers (aka Trump fans) and earnestly listened as they complained about the economy without pushing back on their erroneous alternative facts. If you were just a casual viewer you would come away with the idea that Biden is in trouble in New York because tens of thousands of Democrats are abandoning Biden.
Donald Trump appears to have a few requirements for his running mate, including that whoever it is does what they are told and does not steal the spotlight. He would also prefer an Ivy League pedigree, according to The New York Times, which reported that Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., a Harvard graduate, is now a “top contender.”
According to three anonymous sources who have met with Trump, Cotton is a favorite, alongside North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and three of Cotton’s Senate colleagues: Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Tim Scott, R-S.C., and J.D. Vance, R-Ohio. According to the Times, Trump is also considering the five men for posts in his administration, should he win in November.
Where Cotton is concerned, there are some issues to consider. Trump has privately expressed his admiration for Cotton’s reliability and abilities as an effective communicator, as well as praising the senator’s Army service and his elite education.
But Cotton voted to certify the 2020 presidential election, which could be a dealbreaker for a man who refuses to acknowledge his defeat. Still, Trump has slim pickings, as both Rubio and Scott also voted to certify the results, while Burgum verbally supported former Vice President Mike Pence’s choice to resist Trump’s pressure to overturn the election.
Elise Stefanik went to Harvard and she’s not on the list for some reason. I wonder why?
I had assumed he would want to pick a woman because his biggest problem is with suburban soccer moms. Or I think we all know that he could reach out to Black and Hispanic people with a pick and it might do some good. But when you think about it, isn’t the most likely choice a white guy? This is Trump we’re talking about. He’s a racist who believes in eugenics. He repeated his “racehorse theory” just this week on the stump. And he thinks the best way to hire people is the :central casting” method — does this person look like a Vice President? In his mind, the only people who look like leaders are white men.
I’m thinking it’s going to be Burgum. He got his MBA from Stanford (but who knows if Trump thinks that’s impressive enough.) He’s an energetic brown noser and really does look like he’s out of central casting. Unfortunately, he has more money than Trump which may be a deal breaker. But then, Trump lies about his fortune anyway and would just say he’s richer and Burgum is so desperate to be VP that he’ll probably go along with it.
But maybe Trump wants a Maga-jungen in which case Cotton or Vance are the picks. They are the future of the unending Reich.
If you want to know what’s causing all the pessimism look no further than him
I am loathe to discuss the polls right now because they’re all over the place and mostly within the margin of error which means the snapshot of the electorate we are seeing may be a mirage either way. There are arguments going on throughout the commentariat over whether the polling methodology is accurate and whether they are modeling the electorate correctly. I have no idea about that and frankly I don’t really care. It’s enough to know that the election remains close which I suspect is intensely frustrating to everyone in both parties at this point. It seems as though we are destined to re-enact this polarized groundhog day election every four years and it’s tiresome.
It’s especially difficult for Democrats to deal with this considering that the Republican opponent is once again the most odious candidate in American history, a crude brute currently facing 88 felony counts and a record that includes two impeachments and an attempted coup. It’s as if the world has suddenly tilted off of its axis and nothing makes sense anymore.
How is it possible that the Republican Party and its voters would support such a man running for president again, and how can we explain that he’s easily within striking distance of winning it? And how can it be possible that this would be happening in the face of what anyone in the past would have considered the successful presidency of Joe Biden, a man who brought us through the pandemic and the economic upheaval it caused without any of the scandal and drama of Trump’s chaotic four years?
So while I may not be reading the election polls closely right now, I am keenly interested in the surveys that may lead to an answer to those questions. Unfortunately, the data is downright disorienting.
This week The Guardian reported on a new Harris Poll survey of people’s attitudes about the economy which suggests that well over half the country is delusional. It showed that 55% of Americans believe the economy is shrinking, and 56% think we are in a recession. Neither of those things are remotely true. 49% believe the stock market is down for the year even though it’s at record high. Even more bizarre, 49% believe that unemployment is at a 50-year high, though the unemployment rate has been under 4%, a near 50-year low.
The people who believe this blame Joe Biden for the allegedly bad economy with 58% saying that his mismanagement will only make it worse in the coming year. They think Donald Trump the failed businessman who just got dinged for almost half a billion dollars in fines for his fraudulent business practices will be better. Sadly, these numbers include around 40% of Democrats, so this isn’t solely a partisan response.
That’s just crazy. The American economy is the envy of the world right now, the only industrialized country that’s actually doing well. But Americans are so mired in negativity that they believe it’s terrible. At least they think it’s terrible for people other than themselves. Survey after survey shows they actually feel pretty good about their own finances and when asked how they think their local economy is faring they say that it’s doing well. It’s the rest of the country that’s in a recession.
This phenomenon even has a name: vibecession which says people’s beliefs about the economy are based on vibes, not reality. And the vibe is that the economy is terrible, we have out of control inflation, job losses and a general economic crisis. This seems odd considering that we actually went through a real economic crisis that lasted for years just recently with the Great Recession of 2008 but people’s memories are short.
That’s not to say that there aren’t many people who are still living paycheck to paycheck — a perennial issue that isn’t caused by current circumstances but is a huge problem for those who experience it. And it’s certainly true that the economy was turned upside down during the pandemic with sharp increases in unemployment and inflation from all the supply chain disruption. But the government provided unprecedented support and the country came through it without the kind of massive economic suffering we normally would have had. And yet Joe Biden is widely considered a massive failure on economics.
Recall that in 1984, Ronald Reagan ran on a campaign of “morning in America” and he won a historic landslide victory. Here’s what the economy looked like at the time. There was 7% unemployment, 4% inflation, and the average 30-year mortgage had a 13% interest rate. Compare that to the numbers I cited above.
So why are Americans so negative about a much better economy 40 years later?
I think there are a number of possible reasons. The first, which is backed up by the fact that people say their own finances are fine, is the media coverage of the economy. It has been relentlessly negative far beyond the point where it was justified and now that it’s focused on the horse race it flogs polls like this one which creates a negative feedback loop wherein people think since everyone else believes the economy is bad so it must be. This is where much of the “vibes” are coming from.
There’s also the toxic social media which is being manipulated from many different directions and distorting reality across the board. Whether people participate in it directly is immaterial. It seeps out into the broader culture and makes everyone less informed (or, at least, confused) in the process.
But I think there’s more to it than just that. The whole culture is caught in a negativity spiral that isn’t really about the economy at all. It’s about impotence. The public sees a whole host of institutions, norms, rules and laws disintegrating before its eyes and the feeling that there are no mechanisms that work to hold people accountable or reform the system, is creating pessimism and apathy.
But mostly, it’s just Trump. His followers hear nothing but a non-stop litany of lies, angry grievances, denunciations and resentments so it’s no wonder they’re enraged about everything. And Democrats are simply worn out. The effort it takes to oppose him is overwhelming and watching the entire Republican establishment willfully deny reality and supplicate themselves to this con man in order to achieve power for themselves is profoundly dispiriting.
He was supposed to be vanquished three and half years ago. And yet, like a zombie, he simply won’t go down. For all of Biden’s successes, he couldn’t put an end to the single biggest problem we face and a lot of people hold him responsible for that failure however unrealistic it may have been. He’s in charge and this abominable presence just looms over American society spreading poison day in and day out.
I suspect that phenomenon is what’s expressing itself in these economic opinions. Polls can’t really capture the Trump “vibe” very well and I’m sure most people don’t consciously know why they are feeling what they feel. The vocabulary that’s offered to them from the media and the pollsters is the vocabulary of “issues”, particularly the economy which is the one that’s used most often to define Americans’ sense of well-being. It’s not “the economy, stupid.” It’s Trump. I don’t think this will turn around for most of us until he is out of politics. We have to make sure that happens sooner rather than later.
