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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/ahead-midterms-turmp-aides-urge-nominate-woman

Ahead Of Midterms, Trump Aides Urge Him To Nominate Woman To Replace Haley

To make up for the dip in female support President Trump has seen following the tumultuous confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh after he was accused of sexual assault, Trump’s aides are urging him to nominate a woman to replace Nikki Haley as ambassador to the United Nations, Politico reported.


Since White House favorite Dina Powell — former deputy national security adviser and current Goldman Sachs executive — pulled herself out of the running, the White House is expanding its list of candidates to include Nancy Brinker, founder of the Susan Koman Breast Cancer Foundation and ex-New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R).

Trump is also considering Kelly Craft, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, and advisers have recommended that he add Kay Hutchison, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, to the shortlist.
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https://www.mediaite.com/online/fir...melania-of-being-a-trump-mistress-disgusting/

First Lady Spokesperson Fires Back at View Co-Host For Accusing Melania of Being a Trump Mistress: ‘Disgusting’


Stephanie Grisham, press secretary for First Lady Melania Trump, bashed a co-host of The View for accusing Mrs. Trump of being a mistress of the president’s prior to being his wife.

In a statement to Twitter, Grisham slammed Yvette Nicole Brown — who has been filling-in for Joy Behar throughout the week on the ABC daytime show — for her remark.

“[C]heck your facts before you accuse someone of being a mistress,” Grisham wrote. “She’s your @ FLOTUS – she deserves your respect & certainly not your lies. Disgusting. #disrespectful #accusation #LiberalMedia ”

Brown made the charge during an interview with ABC correspondent Tom Llamas — who interviewed the First Lady last week for a special set to air Friday evening. She asked Llamas, “Is it possible that she’s not concerned with his mistresses because she was one of them?”

Later, after Llamas called for the First Lady to be respected, Brown added, “I don’t respect her.”
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/world-news/bannon-technical-assistance-european-nationalist-parties

PA GOP Guv Candidate Threatens To ‘Stomp’ On Wolf’s Face With ‘Golf Spikes’

In a disjointed Facebook address, Scott Wagner, the Republican challenging Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D), warned the governor to put on a “catcher’s mask” because he is going to “stop all over” Wolf’s face with “golf spikes.”

Wagner was primarily taking issue with Wolf’s negative ads, wielding stacks of paychecks as he criticized Wolf’s treatment of small businesses.

“I wanna puke when I see those ads,” he said.

Wagner went on to critique a specific commercial, adding: “I thought you were actually smarter, you’re actually not very smart.”

Toward the end of the speech, he built up to the graphic crescendo.

“Well, Gov. Wolf, let me tell you what, between now and Nov. 6, you better put a catcher’s mask on your face, because I’m going to stomp all over your face with golf spikes,” Wagner said. “Because I’m going to win this for the state of Pennsylvania. And we’re throwing you out of office. Because I’m sick and tired of your negative ads. Gov. Wolf, I am bound and determined, I am going to vote you out of office.”

Andrew Romeo, Wagner’s communications director, told Penn Live that the comments were not to be “taken literally.”

“He wanted them to be a metaphor for how he will approach the final stretch of the campaign,” Romeo said. “Tom Wolf has spent the entire race hiding behind false and negative attack ads like a coward instead of debating in front of the people of Pennsylvania and Scott will spend the last month of the race making it clear to voters why they should not give him a second term.”

Wolf’s campaign spokesperson, Beth Melena said that Wagner’s “latest rant” made him “unhinged and unfit for office.”

“Threats of violence have no place in society, especially from someone running for public office,” she continued. “This is part of an unfortunate pattern with Scott Wagner.”

Real Clear Politics currently shows Wolf up just over 16 points in the gubernatorial race.
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I’m sure the unshelled tortoise Mitch McConnell and other republican leaders will condemn this threat of violence some time soon.. Since there now supposedly against political threats of violence and “mob rule”...
 
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/world-news/bannon-technical-assistance-european-nationalist-parties

Bannon Offers ‘Technical Assistance’ To European Nationalist Parties


PARIS (AP) — Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader, has met with former White House strategist Steve Bannon and signaled her interest in his project to help European populist parties.

Louis Aliot, a vice president of Le Pen’s National Rally party who is also her companion, said Friday on BFMTV station that she met with Bannon a day earlier in Paris.

According to Aliot, Bannon wants to provide “technical assistance” for nationalist parties ahead of next year’s European elections but that he “doesn’t want to play a (political) role.”

Two years on from helping to mastermind Donald Trump’s successful campaign to become U.S. president, Bannon has his sights set on Europe and he is planning a foundation, called The Movement, to boost far-right parties.

“We’re not going to say ‘no’,” Aliot said with regard to getting help.

Le Pen’s apparent interest in working with Bannon stands in marked contrast to comments earlier this week when she said that only European voices should “shape the political forces … to save Europe.”

Meanwhile, Le Pen’s legal situation grew murkier on Friday as investigative judges upped preliminary charges against her over the alleged misuse of European Union funds by her and her party.

She is a suspect in a case over payments to parliamentary assistants in the EU parliament who reportedly worked elsewhere, including at her party headquarters.

Le Pen stepped down from her post as a European parliamentary deputy to become a French lawmaker after last year’s legislative elections, but remains shadowed by the case in which some 15 people have been placed under investigation, including Aliot.

On Friday, a judicial official said Le Pen was now being charged with misappropriation of public funds rather than breach of trust. The official wasn’t authorized to speak publicly and asked for anonymity.

Le Pen has other legal issues to contend with, one notable one with regard to her posting of photos on Twitter in December 2015 that showed executions by IS extremists. She was handed preliminary charges in March for distribution of violent images. Le Pen posted the images after the November 2015 Paris attacks by IS that killed 130 people.

Le Pen said Friday that an investigation has also been opened over her September Twitter post of a court document ordering she submit to a psychiatric exam in the case.

“This judicial harassment is becoming terrifying!” she tweeted Friday.
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/brian-kemp-outside-agitators-voter-registration

Kemp Blasts ‘Outside Agitators’ After Scrutiny Of Policy Blocking 53K From Voting

Following intense scrutiny over his policy that blocked 53,000 Georgia residents from registering to vote, Georgia secretary of state and GOP candidate for governor Brian Kemp went after “outside agitators” in a Wednesday statement.


As Yahoo News’ Jon Ward points out, the term “outside agitators” has a racially tinged history and was used by segregationists in the South.

Though Kemp was perhaps referring to the national media and his gubernatorial opponent’s out-of-state supporters, he used a racially charged term to defend a policy viewed as an attempt to keep low-income and minority residents from voting.

“Despite what you hear or read, the numbers are clear. While outside agitators disparage this office and falsely attack us, we have kept our heads down and remained focused on ensuring secure, accessible, and fair elections for all voters,” Kemp said in the statement. “The fact is that it has never been easier to register to vote and get engaged in the electoral process in Georgia, and we are incredibly proud to report this new record.”

The statement touting the voter registration statistics came after records obtained by the Associated Press earlier this week revealed that a secretary of state’s office policy kept 53,000 people from registering to vote. The policy allows the state to delay or block the registrations of residents when information on their voter registration form does not match exactly with existing state records.

After this data point became public, civil rights groups filed a lawsuit against Kemp Thursday, arguing that the strict policy discriminates against minority residents.
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/saudi-record-trump-biz-bail-outs

Saudi Record Of Trump Biz Bail Outs Under Scrutiny As US Responds To Missing Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — He’s booked hotel rooms and meeting spaces to them, sold an entire floor in one of his buildings to them and, in desperate moments in his career, gotten a billionaire from the country to buy his yacht and New York’s Plaza Hotel overlooking Central Park.


President Donald Trump’s ties to Saudi Arabia run long and deep, and he’s often boasted about his business ties with the kingdom.

“I love the Saudis,” Trump said when announcing his presidential run at Trump Tower in 2015. “Many are in this building.”

Now those ties are under scrutiny as the president faces calls for a tougher response to the kingdom’s government following the disappearance, and possible killing, of one of its biggest critics, journalist and activist Jamal Khashoggi.

“The Saudis are funneling money to him,” said former federal ethics chief Walter Shaub, who is advising a watchdog group suing Trump for foreign government ties to his business. That undermines “confidence that he’s going to do the right thing when it comes to Khashoggi.”

Trump paid his first foreign visit as president to Saudi Arabia last year, praised its new young ruler and boasted of striking a deal to sell $110 billion of U.S. weapons to the kingdom.

But those close ties are in peril as pressure mounts from Congress for the president to find out whether Khashoggi was killed and dismembered after entering a Saudi consulate in Turkey, as Turkish officials have said without proof.

Trump said Friday that he will soon speak with Saudi Arabia’s king about Khashoggi’s disappearance. But he also has said he doesn’t want to scuttle a lucrative arms deal with the kingdom and noted that Khashoggi, a U.S. resident, is not a citizen. For its part, Saudi Arabia has called allegations it killed Khashoggi “baseless.”

The president’s links to Saudi billionaires and princes go back years, and appear to have only deepened.

In 1991, as Trump was teetering on personal bankruptcy and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million, a third less than what he reportedly paid for it.

Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel.

In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the United Nations in New York for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Shortly after he announced his run for president, Trump began laying the groundwork for possible new business in the kingdom. He registered eight companies with names tied to the country, such as “THC Jeddah Hotel Advisor LLC” and “DT Jeddah Technical Services,” according to a 2016 financial disclosure report to the federal government. Jeddah is a major city in the country.

“Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015, the same day he created four of the entities. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”

The president’s company, the Trump Organization, said shortly after his 2016 election that it had shut down those Saudi companies. The president later pledged to pursue no new foreign deals while in office.

In a statement this week, the company said it has explored business opportunities in many countries but that it does “not have any plans for expansion into Saudi Arabia.”

Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.

A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging and catering at his Washington hotel near the Oval Office through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to the president that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.

The Saudi government was also a prime customer at the Trump International Hotel in New York early this year, according to a Washington Post report.

The newspaper cited an internal letter from the hotel’s general manager, who wrote that a “last-minute” visit in March by a group from Saudi Arabia accompanying Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had boosted room rentals at the hotel by 13 percent for the first three months of the year, after two years of decline.

Saudi Arabia has also helped on one of Trump’s key policy promises, and helped the president’s friends along the way.

Last year, the kingdom announced plans to invest $20 billion in a private U.S.-focused infrastructure fund managed by Blackstone Group, an investment firm led by CEO Stephen Schwarzman. Blackstone stock rose on the news. Earlier this year, Trump unveiled a $200 billion federal plan to fix the nation’s airports, roads, highways and ports, tapping private companies for help and selling off some government owned infrastructure.

Schwarzman, who celebrated his 70th birthday at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, accompanied Trump on his visit to Saudi Arabia.
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/melania-jacket-send-message-left-wing-media

Melania: ‘I Really Don’t Care’ Jacket Meant To Send Message To ‘Left-Wing Media’


WASHINGTON (AP) — Melania Trump says she loves President Donald Trump and has “much more important things to think about” than allegations he cheated on her with a porn star, a Playboy Playmate or anyone else.


Mrs. Trump, who was interviewed by ABC while touring Africa last week, said people are just spreading rumors about her marriage.

“I know people like to speculate and media like to speculate about our marriage and circulate the gossip,” she said. “But I understand the gossip sells newspapers, magazines … and, unfortunately, we live in this kind of world today.”

She insisted allegations of her husband’s infidelities are not a concern.

Trump, who during the 2016 presidential campaign was heard on an old “Access Hollywood” tape talking about groping and trying to have sex with women, has been accused of having multiple affairs. Porn star Stormy Daniels and ex-Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal have said they had sex with him years ago.

Trump has denied the trysts with Daniels and McDougal but has acknowledged reimbursing his lawyer for a $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels. Mrs. Trump has generally kept quiet on the subject.

Asked in the ABC interview if she loves her husband, Mrs. Trump said, “Yes, we are fine. Yes.”

She played down a suggestion the repeated rumors of his philandering had put a strain on their marriage.

“It is not concern and focus of mine,” she said. “I’m a mother and a first lady, and I have much more important things to think about and to do.”

But when asked if the repeated rumors had hurt her, she paused. Then she reiterated the “media world is speculating.”

“Yeah, it’s not always pleasant, of course,” she said. “But I know what is right and what is wrong and what is true and not true.”

Portions of Mrs. Trump’s interview aired Friday on “Good Morning America.” ABC News aired more from the interview during an hourlong special broadcast Friday night, during which she explained why she wore a jacket that said “I really don’t care, do u?” on a trip to the border to visit migrant children who had been separated from their parents.

She noted that she wore the jacket getting on and off the plane, but not during her visits with children, and said it was a message to “people and the left-wing media who are criticizing me.”

Mrs. Trump said the jacket was a statement that the criticism will not stop her from doing “what I feel is right.”

She said she purposely wore the jacket on the flight back to Washington after seeing “how the media was obsessed about it.”

“It was kind of a message, yes,” the first lady said.

In another portion of the interview, which aired earlier this week, Mrs. Trump says she could be “the most bullied person” in the world and women who make accusations of sexual assault need to “show the evidence.”

Donald Trump, on the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape that became public late in the 2016 campaign, says when he’s attracted to beautiful women, “I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet.” He said when you’re a star, women let you.

“Grab them by the p—-,” Trump adds. “You can do anything.”

Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in August to campaign finance violations alleging he, Trump and the National Enquirer tabloid were involved in buying the silence of Daniels and McDougal after they alleged affairs with Trump.
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