Republican nominee Donald Trump has been under fire since the Washington Post released audio in which he is bragging about sexually assaulting women.
As various women have come forward with accusations of their own, Trump's wife Melania came to his defense during a Monday interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper. She echoed her husband's statements that all of the allegations are lies, and said "I believe my husband. I believe my husband."
She added that Trump was reportedly "egged on" into engaging in "boy talk" with Billy Bush in 2005. One of Trump's accusers, Jessica Leeds wasn't having it.
Leeds, who claims Trump groped her 35 years ago while on a plane, told TMZ that Melania's defense of her husband is akin to Hillary Clinton's defense of Bill in the 90s.
She said, "The wives are in a difficult position if they want to save their marriage. They'll make compromises and accept the good with the bad."
She added, "I feel it's terrible Melania is being viewed as sympathetic when Donald is beating up on Hillary for doing the same with Bill."
Trump has used the narrative that Bill Clinton is an alleged sexual abuser time and time again, seemingly to suggest that he himself is not also a perpetrator of sexual violence.
Trump has also claimed on various occasions that Hillary either defended Bill, or threatened his accusers. However, Melania's defense of her husband is playing the exact same hand, according to Leeds.
Leeds isn't the only one who noticed the similarities between the Melania and Hillary. Check out the clip below from NBC Nightly News senior editor and writer Bradd Jaffy.
Hillary Clinton's campaign is going on the air in solid-red Texas, a remarkable move by a Democratic presidential nominee as her Republican rival, Donald Trump, struggles across the country.
Clinton is launching a one-week ad buy in the Lone Star State that highlights the Dallas Morning News' recent endorsement of the former U.S. secretary of state, according to a campaign aide. The 30-second commercial will air on TV in Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio, as well as online. Clinton's campaign did not detail the size of the buy.
When the Dallas Morning News editorial board endorsed Clinton earlier this year, it was the board's first endorsement of a Democratic presidential hopeful since before World War II. The Clinton spot notes the historical significance of the endorsement, going on to quote its criticism of Trump's judgment and praise of Clinton's bipartisan credentials.
"At this moment in time, for Texas and for America, Hillary for president," a narrator concludes.
The ad buy comes as polls continue to show the presidential race in Texas closer than usual. A WFAA/SurveyUSA poll released Thursday found Trump leading by only 4 points, much less than Mitt Romney’s 16-point margin in 2012 and John McCain’s 12-point margin in 2008.
"The Dallas Morning News points out Trump's values are out of step with Texas," Garry Mauro, who chairs Clinton's efforts in Texas, said in a statement on the ad buy. "As more and more Texans realize this — and turn to Hillary — the polls will get better and better."
Texas Republicans have previously dismissed Clinton's forays into the state as publicity stunts not supported by meaningful money. The state GOP declined to comment Monday on the ad buy.
While the campaign's heightened focus on Texas has excited the state's Democrats and aided down-ballot candidates, it still appears the campaign is far off from making a serious play for the state's 38 electoral college votes. A Democratic presidential nominee has not carried Texas since Jimmy Carter in 1976.
On a conference call Monday morning, Texas was not mentioned as Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook detailed so-called “expansion states” where the campaign is making additional substantial investments in the home stretch of the race. The states included Arizona, Indiana and Missouri.
"We will continue to monitor other states across the country to look for opportunities for Democrats to work together,” Mook told reporters.
The Texas ad is nonetheless a rare development in a state that typically receives minimal attention from presidential campaigns during the general election. This cycle the Clinton campaign has opened half a dozen offices in the state and sent vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine and other surrogates for not just fundraisers but also public events.
Most presidential candidates would prefer to not talk about sexual assault allegations leveled against them -- but as we've seen time and again, Donald Trump isn't like most presidential candidates.
In a video that was secretly recorded last weekend, Trump tells supporters in Maine that he relishes the opportunity to talk about accusations made by multiple women against him. Why? Because he believes they're so obviously false that they'll only help his presidential campaign.
As the Bangor Daily News reports, Trump started off by noting that many of his advisers had warned against him talking in depth about the allegations because they don't matter as much as the issues he's running on.
"To me, it matters," Trump said. "I don’t want to mention it for a whole speech, but I want to mention it for a paragraph. These are liars. This stuff never happened and people are finding out that it didn’t happen and I think it could actually inure to our benefit."
Trump then said that it's "disgraceful" that his accusers are allowed to make allegations against him, and that he believed the charges would create "a backlash against the media and against Clinton."
U.S. President Barack Obama urged Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to "stop whining" about the Nov. 8 election being rigged, saying no serious person could suggest U.S. elections could be manipulated because of their decentralized nature.
"I have never seen in my lifetime, or in modern political history, any presidential candidate trying to discredit the elections and the election process before votes have even taken place. It's unprecedented," the Democratic president said.
"I'd invite Mr. Trump to stop whining, and go try to make his case to get votes," Obama said at a joint White House news conference with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.
(Reporting by Ayesha Rascoe, Jeff Mason, Roberta Rampton; Writing by Mohammad Zargham; Editing by Doina Chiacu)
On Tuesday afternoon, People magazine published a story that corroborates former reporter Natasha Stoynoff’s sexual assault allegations against Donald Trump.
Stoynoff spoke out about her assault after Trump denied that he had ever groped or kissed women without consent. She recounted that during an interview with Trump at his Florida Mar-a-Lago estate, he "shut the door behind us. I turned around, and within seconds he was pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat." Trump reportedly told her, "We’re going to have an affair, I’m telling you.”
People magazine revealed 6 witnesses who confirm Stoynoff's account of what happened during her 2005 interview with Trump. Witnesses included colleagues and close friends of Stoynoff, including her friend Liza Herz, who was with Stoynoff the day she ran into Melania Trump on 5th Avenue.
The Trump campaign has denied all allegations that have been made against the Republican nominee. His wife Melania also released a statement last week, which she spoke about in a Monday interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper and denied Stoynoff's story.
She said, "The story that came out in People magazine, the writer she said my husband took her to the room and started kissing her, she wrote in the same story about me that she saw me on 5th Avenue, and I said to her ‘Natasha, how come we don’t see you anymore?’ I was never friends with her, I would not recognize her."
However, Herz remembered the two running into each other, noting "They chatted in a friendly way. And what struck me most was that Melania was carrying a child and wearing heels."
Herz is not the only witness to come forward. The five other witnesses include Marina Grasic, who told People that Stoynoff called her the day after the assault and detailed what happened to her.
Her former journalism professor Paul McLaughlin also spoke with People about Stoynoff's story and said that she called him that same night seeking advice.
The other witnesses include People's East Coast Editor Liz McNeil, their Deputy East Coast News Editor Mary Green, and a coworker named Liza Hamm. Each witness spoke to Stoynoff's character — both personal and professional and detailed how the reporter shared her story.
McNeil told People, "She was very upset and told me how he shoved her against a wall." She continued, "The thing I remember most was how scared she was. I felt I had to protect her."
Hamm, a coworker and friend shared, "Natasha has always been a vivacious person who wants to believe in the best of people, and this experience definitely messed with that outlook. But she is also a consummate professional. She told me that she asked to be taken off the Trump beat, but she tried her best to move past the experience and continue to do her job well."
Last week, Jerry Falwell Jr. told CNN that Trump reportedly has "email evidence proving sexual harassment accusations against him are false." However, the Trump campaign has yet to release any such evidence.
Stoynoff's story is one among at least 17 other stories of sexual harassment or assault involving the Republican nominee, including 10 women alleging that he had groped them.
The Trump campaign continues to deny these accusations, and have pushed forth the narrative that these women are coming forward now as part of a smear campaign just weeks ahead of the election.
However, this abusive narrative doesn't quite hold. During campaign rallies last week, Trump called his accusers liars. He said of Stoynoff at a Florida rally on Friday, "Look at her, I don’t think so."
(Note: This article was updated after People magazine published an article on Tuesday afternoon about the sexual assault accusations.)
Filmmaker Michael Moore announced this week that he has completed a new film about Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
In recent weeks, Moore has been hinting on Twitter that he has been working on an "October Surprise" for the election.
On Monday, Moore announced that the film, titled Michael Moore in Trumpland, would be screened at the IFC Center in New York City on Oct. 18.
According to the IFC website, Moore is expected to attend the screening.
"See the film Ohio Republicans tried to shut down," the website explains. "Oscar-winner Michael Moore dives right into hostile territory with his daring and hilarious one-man show, deep in the heart of TrumpLand in the weeks before the 2016 election."
Stein certainly has worked to differentiate herself from the two major party candidates. In July she asserted that electing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton – probably the choice of most pro-environment voters – would “fan the flames of … right-wing extremism,” and be as bad as electing Donald Trump.
Jill Stein crashes the Democratic National Convention, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 26, 2016.
While Stein makes anti-establishment statements like this, her German counterparts have been advancing a green agenda in local, regional and national government for the past 30 years. Most recently, Winfried Kretschmann was reelected this year as head of government in Baden-Württemberg, one of Europe’s technologically and industrially most advanced regions.
I grew up in Germany and have taught about Germany and Europe in the United States for the past 15 years, so I have seen Green Party politicians at work in both countries. In my view, there are two reasons why the U.S. Green Party remains so marginal. Structurally, the American electoral system is heavily weighted against small political parties. But U.S. Greens also harm themselves by taking extreme positions and failing to understand that governing requires compromise – a lesson their German counterparts learned several decades ago.
One movement, two electoral systems
Both European and North American Green Parties evolved from activist movements in the 1960s that focused on causes including environmentalism, disarmament, nuclear power, nonviolence, reproductive rights and gender equality. West German Greens formed a national political party in 1980 and gained support in local, state and federal competitions. Joschka Fischer, one of the first Greens elected to Germany’s Bundestag (parliament), served as the nation’s foreign minister and vice chancellor from 1998-2005.
The German Green Party’s rise owed much to the country’s electoral system. As in many continental European democracies, political parties win seats in German elections based on the percentage of voters that support them. For example, a party winning a third of the popular vote will hold roughly a third of the seats in the parliament after the election. Proportional representation makes it possible for small parties to gain a toehold and build a presence in government over time.
In contrast, U.S. elections award seats on a winner-takes-all basis. The candidate with the most votes wins, while votes cast for candidates representing other parties are ignored. As a result, American voters choose their leaders within a de facto two-party system in which other parties often have trouble even getting their candidates’ names onto ballots.
U.S. Greens have won only a handful of state-level races, and have never won a congressional seat. Their greatest success came in 2000, when Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke won 2.7 percent of the popular vote in the presidential election.
Many observers argued that Nader’s only real impact was to throw the election to conservative Republican George W. Bush, but Nader and many of his supporters strongly disagreed, and the question of whether challengers can act as more than spoilers in U.S. elections remains controversial today.
Purity or compromise?
As green politicians have helped to shape political priorities in Berlin, Brussels and other European capitals and regions, many observers have debated whether these former activists are selling out by participating in the political process – and whether joining that process helps or hurts the green movement.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, Green Party conventions in Germany were dominated by fierce infighting between moderate “Realos” (realists) and radical “Fundis” (fundamentalists). The Realos, who prioritized electability over ideology, eventually prevailed.
In order to graduate from an opposition party to a ruling party that controlled cabinet posts, German Greens had to develop a capacity for compromise. To gain power, they had to form coalitions with center-left Social Democrats. But coalitions require consensus – especially in parliaments with proportional representation.
Interacting with centrist politicians, unionists, church representatives and the media taught Realos to act less like activists and more like politicians. In 1998 the Green Party formed a so-called red-green coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), a party that has traditionally championed the working class, and won a large majority in the Bundestag.
Working through this alliance, former activists initiated reform of an antiquated immigration and citizenship law and worked toward recognition of same-sex unions. They implemented an environmentally driven tax code and brokered a deal with the nuclear energy industry to cancel projects for new plants and phase out nuclear power by 2022.
Many Green Party supporters thought Realos were too eager to compromise. Some even physically attacked their party leaders when the coalition government supported use of military force in a NATO-led campaign against Serbia in 1999. Many critics viewed this decision as the remilitarization of German foreign policy under the leadership of Joschka Fischer of the Green Party, then serving as Foreign Minister.
However, these compromises did not erode broad public support for the Greens. On the contrary, in 2002 the red-green coalition was reelected and the Green Party received more votes than it had in 1998. When the coalition government broke down in 2005, it was due to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s lack of leadership within his own SPD.
Although the Green Party has not regained control of Germany’s federal government since 2005, its positions have become part of the nation’s mainstream political culture. Notably, after the 2011 nuclear plant meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, a center-right German government decided to accelerate the phaseout of nuclear power in response to rising public concern. To reach this goal, Angela Merkel’s centrist government has implemented an ambitious policy bundle known as the Energiewende that seeks to transition Germany to a nonnuclear, low-carbon energy future.
Massive governmental support for alternative energy sources has encouraged Germans, especially in rural areas, to invest in solar power, wind turbines and biomass plants. These green policies did not harm, and may have buoyed, Merkel’s status as one of the most popular German chancellors prior to this year’s controversies over immigration. Germany reformed its renewable energy law this year in response to new European Union rules governing electricity markets, and will shift from subsidies to market-based mechanisms, but the Energiewende remains highly popular.
No third lane
There is no easy way for the U.S. Green Party to emulate its German counterparts. Because the American political system makes it difficult for third parties to participate, Green Party candidates do not have opportunities to learn the trade of politics. They have remained activists who are true to their base instead of developing policy positions that would appeal to a broader audience. By doing so, they weaken their chances of winning major races even in liberal strongholds.
As a result, green ideas enter American political debates only when Democrats and Republicans take up these issues. It is telling that major U.S. environmental groups started endorsing Clinton even before she had clinched the Democratic presidential nomination over Bernie Sanders, who took more aggressive positions on some environmental and energy issues during their primary contest. And although Sanders identifies as an environmentalist, he sought the Democratic Party nomination instead of running as the Green Party candidate.
This suggests that running on a third-party ticket in the United States is still not a winning route to shaping a message aimed at a broad electorate. Instead, climate change, dwindling energy resources and growing human and economic costs from natural disasters will do more to promote ecological consciousness and political change in mainstream America than the radical rhetoric of the U.S. Green Party.
Whoopi Goldberg, co-host of "The View," had a good chuckle when talking about the Melania Trump interview done with CNN's Anderson Cooper Monday night.
“What I was surprised by is that Trump’s campaign let her speak to the same media that’s rigging the election," Goldberg joked. While her co-hosts laughed and the audience applauded, Goldberg was also being serious. "Because, Anderson Cooper had this interview. So, it's like, but you weren't you pissed that ... okay, nevermind."
Co-Host Jedediah Bila noted that she wished they would leave the spouses out of the ordeal and a more important issue to her was that Trump's character was revealed in this instance.
"People's character is revealed when they think people aren't watching," Bila said. "So, I would just remind everyone of that. If he didn't know he was mic'd, that's still who he is. You can egg me on all you want, there's things I'm not going to say. So, it does speak to his character. And, I think, the investigations need to play out and you need to let people -- if people are going to make accusations, let them make them and let's figure out what's going here."
Candace Cameron-Bure said that she appreciated what Melania said, but took issue with on the bus in 2005. "I did not feel that way because I feel like when you accept something or take responsibility, you can't, in the same breath, throw it to someone else or put blame on someone else."
A top aide to Hillary Clinton allegedly praised the idea that the Democratic candidate would abruptly end an interview on Meet the Press if host Chuck Todd refused to ask substantive questions.
In a leaked 2015 email published by WikiLeaks, journalist Brent Budowsky purportedly shares his fantasy with Clinton aide Roy Spence.
"Hillary did fine on MTP, but I have a dream," Budowsky writes in the email. "That next time Hillary [says] she has answered all those trivial email questions a hundred times, that it would be swell if Chuck would ask her what she would do for the country if elected."
"And since that was not in the cards she gently take off her mic," he continues, "note that this is why television news runs close to Congress as the least trusted institution in America, wink at the camera, say 'fuck you, Chuck' and walk off the set halfway through the 'interview.'"
The email suggests Spence was fond of the idea.
"Son that is a dream worth dreaming about," he replies to Budowsky.
Read the email below.
[caption id="attachment_908390" align="alignnone" width="600"] Leaked Roy Spence email (Wikileaks)[/caption]
PHILADELPHIA — Donald Trump continued to declare Monday — without evidence and as fellow Republicans distance themselves from the claim — that "large-scale voter fraud" is happening in the Nov. 8 general election for president. A group of elected officials from Philadelphia gathered in City Hall on Monday to rebut the Republican presidential nominee's claim, made…
We've seen several stories about Trump supporters attacking Sikhs this year after mistaking them for Muslims.
So you can only imagine the horror that Indiana man Gurinder Singh Khalsa felt when he discovered that a Trump campaign flier intended to showcase the diversity of the candidate's support used his picture and misidentified him as both a Muslim and a Trump supporter.
"I am not Muslim and I am not supporting Trump," Singh Khalsa, who is actually a Sikh, tells local news station WTHR. "He is putting my picture, saying Muslims support him and I have nothing to do with it. I don't support Trump. Nobody even asked me to put that picture there. It was shocking, disturbing and this will create more confusion among people because they are sending it nationwide."
Ironically, Singh Khalsa is actually politically active, and he's even founded his own group called Sikhs PAC, whose goal is to help Americans understand the differences between Sikhs and other religions around the world.
It seems that this lesson has been completely lost on the Trump campaign, which has apologized to Singh Khalsa for any confusion it caused and has vowed to change the flier.
White House hopeful Donald Trump branded Hillary Clinton's operations a "criminal enterprise" as he assailed her for creating conditions for a rigged election, and accused US media of wanting to "poison" voters' minds.
Trailing in national polls and in key battleground states just three weeks before Election Day November 8, Trump came out swinging on the campaign trail, accusing Clinton of colluding with US authorities to cover up misconduct regarding her private email system and denouncing it as "one of the great miscarriages of justice" in US history.
Trump, whose campaign has been reeling in the face of lewd comments about women and accusations of sexual assault, has doubled down on claims of massive voter fraud in 2016, despite denials from within his own party.
And his team has deployed his wife Melania in a media blitz to try to tamp down the furor over the allegations, with interviews airing late Monday on CNN and early Tuesday on Fox News.
"Those words, they were offensive to me and they were inappropriate. And he apologized to me. And I accept his apology. And we are moving on," Trump told Fox, in an excerpt released by the network.
A firestorm erupted earlier this month when a 2005 video was made public and caught Trump saying lewd things about women, in a mostly off-camera conversation with host Billy Bush of the show "Access Hollywood."
Melania Trump told CNN that she felt her husband had been "egged on by the host to say dirty and bad stuff."
The Republican nominee takes the stage Wednesday with his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in their final debate before voters make their choice.
Trump unleashed a litany of complaints recently about the nation's election system, and also blamed the media for his woes, raising concerns about possible unrest should he lose.
- 'Tell the truth!' -
He let loose again Monday at a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
"Voter fraud is very, very common," he told a fired up crowd, who at various times broke into chants of "Lock her up!" "Tell the truth!" and "CNN sucks!"
"This is a rigged election folks," he said. "And the media's trying to rig the election by giving credence... to false stories that have no validity," he added.
"They want to poison the minds of the voters."
Trump also accused Clinton of colluding with US authorities by seeking to pressure the FBI to alter its findings in a probe of Clinton's use of private servers while she was secretary of state.
Federal Bureau of Investigation documents released Monday showed a senior State Department official, undersecretary of state Patrick Kennedy, had asked the FBI to declassify or lower the classification of one Clinton email that had been rated secret."
Trump said the State Department official made the request for altering classification "as part of a 'quid pro quo.'"
"We're witnessing a criminal enterprise" at work, he said of the Clinton campaign.
"This is felony corruption by any standard."
Clinton leads Trump by 12 points, 50 percent to 38 percent, among likely voters nationwide in a four-way contest with third-party candidates, a Monmouth University poll showed.
Meanwhile, a survey from Quinnipiac University had Clinton leading in several key swing states -- Colorado, Florida and Pennsylvania -- and tied with Trump in Ohio.
A CNN poll puts Trump ahead by four points in Ohio, but gives Clinton a slight lead in battlegrounds North Carolina and Nevada.
Her leads in key states correspond to her advantage of 6.4 percentage points in an average of recent national polls given by RealClearPolitics.
- 'Irresponsible' -
The polls indicate that the allegations swirling around Trump have taken their toll. Monmouth found that six in 10 voters believe he made unwanted sexual advances towards women -- claims he vehemently denies.
Trump's running mate Mike Pence sought to ease tensions, insisting his camp would accept defeat if voters reject the Republican ticket at the polls.
"We will absolutely accept the results of the election," he told CBS Sunday.
Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican who oversees election operations in his state, insisted that Trump was being "irresponsible," after the nominee tweeted a warning Monday about "large scale voter fraud" in the US election.
"If there is a systemic problem, please identify it. Don't just make an allegation on Twitter. Tell me," Husted said on CNN.
For Clinton's campaign manager Robby Mook, Trump is "desperately trying to shift attention from his own disastrous campaign."
"He knows he's losing and he's trying to blame that on the system. This is what losers do," Mook said during a press call on Monday.
Clinton was lying low Monday, prepping for the final debate.
"She is trying to avoid issues for the next 22 days in the hopes that this will just end up being about Mr. Trump," his campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told CNN Monday outside of Trump Tower in New York.
