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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/melania-trump-first-cyberbullying-public-event

Melania Trump To Host Her First Ever Public Event On Cyberbullying

WASHINGTON (AP) — Melania Trump is hosting executives from major online and social media companies to discuss cyberbullying and internet safety, more than a year after saying that would be her issue as first lady.

The meeting Tuesday marks her first public event on the topic, a choice some observers have questioned given that her husband often berates people on Twitter.

Amazon, Snap, Facebook, Google and Twitter are among the companies that are expected to attend the meeting. The Internet Association said it will also be represented.

All the major technology companies have strict policies prohibiting harassment and other bullying behavior on their services, but primarily rely on users to report abuses and weed them out. They try to clearly spell out the kinds of remarks and other posts that won’t be tolerated in special sections such as one Facebook, the largest online social network, has set up. Instagram, a popular service among kids and young adults for sharing photos and videos, provides links to the U.S. government’s anti-bullying site and tips from a cyberbullying research center on one of its help pages.

But the efforts so far have fallen short, leading to rampant abuses that even some of the companies acknowledge have driven away or tormented portions of their audience.

It got so bad on Twitter, which has 68 million U.S. users, that the San Francisco company vowed last fall to crack down on hateful tweets. Among other things, Twitter adopted new policies aimed at protecting women who unknowingly or unwillingly had nude pictures of themselves distributed online — a common bullying tactic.

Yik Yak, another messaging app once popular among high school and college students, shut down last year partly because schools banned it following complaints about bullying and harassment.

Online bullying takes many shapes, but some of the most common tactics include posting embarrassing or salacious photos, making demeaning or cruel remarks under a photo or in a general post about someone, and sharing screenshots of what at least one person thought was a private text.

Harassment is widespread and extends beyond teenagers. A Pew Research Center poll last year found 41 percent of U.S. adults believed they had been harassed online.

The popularity of and volume of content on major social media sites presents a huge challenge in policing what is being shared. Facebook, for instance, has 2.1 billion worldwide users who collectively share billions of posts on their pages daily. More than 300 hours of video is uploaded to Google’s YouTube site every minute.

The companies are also constantly struggling to balance the desire to prevent harassment and other abuses and maintain a commitment to freedom of expression.

In some cases, they see harassment and still look the other way. For instance, some of President Trump’s more vitriolic tweets have openly mocked and denigrated people, prompting calls for Twitter to shut down his account and ban him from its service. But Twitter has declined, maintaining the news value of the president’s tweets eclipse complaints about him being a bully.

There is no federal law that applies to bullying. State laws vary, ranging from requiring public schools to have a bullying policy to requiring anonymous reporting systems, said Sameer Hinduja, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center and professor of criminology at Florida Atlantic University. The federal government can best help by giving schools more tools and money to provide programs, Hinduja said.

Mrs. Trump announced in a speech near the end of the 2016 presidential campaign that her priority as first lady would be to fight cyberbullying. A native of Slovenia, she at the time lamented a U.S. culture that she said had grown “too mean and too rough.” It was a curious speech for a woman whose husband uses Twitter to dismiss people as losers and taunt them with unflattering nicknames.

The mother of a 12-year-old son, the first lady has made child well-being her focus in the White House, including an unexpected interest in how the opioid crisis is affecting youngsters.

She has visited hospitals and care centers to see the effects first hand, and has embraced parents whose children died from drug overdoses. She accompanied the president to New Hampshire on Monday as he discussed a three-pronged effort to combat drug addiction, including applying the death penalty against those caught trafficking highly addictive substances.

Mrs. Trump recently asked the spouses of U.S. governors to help promote values such as encouragement, kindness, compassion and respect in children. She has also spoken about limiting the amount of time children spend online, and helping them understand the content they are exposed to.
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SMH & LMAO...
 
Wait.. hold up did this idiot think that his team meeting the mueller team was some sort of pow wow where we can all agree this has all gone on too long.. and snapped because it wasnt that..

it sure seems like that .. His stupid levels are off the charts
 


https://www.mediaite.com/tv/stormy-...f-trump-affair-and-it-found-she-was-truthful/

Stormy Daniels Took a Lie Detector Test on Details of Trump Affair — And It Found She Was Truthful

Stormy Daniels took a lie detector test in 2011, at the request of a magazine that interviewed her about her affair with President Donald Trump. And the polygraph examiner determined she was being truthful when she claimed she had unprotected sex with Trump in 2006.

That’s according to a copy of a report on her polygraph test obtained by NBC News (read the report here), which was conducted by InTouch magazine. The mag never ended up running a story on Stormy’s allegations.

Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, posted a photo of his client taking the lie detector test on Twitter (see above).

Per NBC News, “the report is accompanied by a sworn declaration from the examiner, signed on Monday, March 19, 2018, attesting to the polygraph report’s authenticity.”

The report reveals the three questions that the examiner asked Daniels, real name Stephanie Clifford, about her alleged affair with Trump:

“Around July 2006, did you have vaginal intercourse with Donald Trump?”

“Around July 2006, did you have unprotected sex with Donald Trump?”

“Did Trump say he would get you on ‘The Apprentice’?”

The porn star answered “yes” to all three questions, and the examiner determined there was a 99 percent chance she was telling the truth.

Stormy claims that she had an affair with Trump in 2006, when he was married to third wife Melania. She is suing now-President Trump to get out of a nondisclosure agreement she signed weeks before the 2016 election to keep quiet about the affair, claiming it’s invalid because Trump never signed it.
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livew...lashing-out-at-mueller-because-hes-frustrated

White House: Trump Is Lashing Out At Mueller Because He’s Frustrated

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Tuesday defended the President’s weekend attacks against special counsel Robert Mueller.

Trump attacked Mueller by name for the first time over the weekend on his Twitter account, part of a string of tweets that lasted several days.

At a White House press briefing, one reporter asked about Rep. Trey Gowdy’s (R-SC) comment over the weekend, addressed to Trump’s lawyer (though the reporter incorrectly said it was addressed to Trump): “If you have an innocent client, Mr. Dowd, act like it.”

“Look, the President has been very clear about the fact that there was no collusion between his campaign and any other entity,” Sanders responded. “However, to pretend like going through this absurd process for over a year would not bring frustration seems a little bit ridiculous.”

She added that members of Congress wouldn’t like it “if they had been accused of taking their seat in Congress by doing something nefarious when they hadn’t, particularly if it had went on for more than a year into their time in office.”

“My guess is they would be more than anxious to push back and certainly would defend themselves as the president has clearly done in this situation and has since day one,” Sanders said.

Later, a reporter asked what was “behind” Trump’s tweets attacking Mueller.

“Clearly, we have not been shy about the fact that there is frustration of this process,” Sanders said. “We would like it to end quickly and soon and the President has contended since day one and will continue to do so, that there was absolutely no collusion between his campaign and any outside force or country and so I don’t understand why it’s hard for anyone to process.”

“If you had been attacked mercilessly and continuously day in, day out, every single second while you’re trying to work hard to do good things for this country,” she continued, “and literally every day you wake up to an onslaught of people saying that you’re there because of reasons that are completely false, that’s frustrating and certainly I think fair for him to be frustrated.”
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So the Man Baby has trouble controlling his emotions.. That’s very unsurprising...
 
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/pruitt-120k-taxpayer-funds-italy-trip

Pruitt Spent $120K In Public Funds For Meeting In Italy, Private Vatican Tour


WASHINGTON (AP) — Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt spent more than $120,000 in public funds last summer for a trip to Italy that included a meeting of G-7 ministers and a private tour of the Vatican.

The known cost of Pruitt’s previously reported trip grew this week after the agency disclosed a heavily censored document showing expenses for Pruitt’s security detail cost more than $30,500. That’s on top of nearly $90,000 spend for food, hotels, commercial airfare and a military jet used by Pruitt and nine EPA staff.

Last June, Pruitt flew to Bologna, Italy, for a meeting of environmental ministers from the world’s top seven economies. The trip came a week after the Trump administration announced its plans to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. He also went to Rome for a briefing at the U.S. embassy, a meeting with business leaders and private tours of the Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica.

The latest records were released following a lawsuit filed by the Environmental Integrity Project, an advocacy group.

Pruitt is the first EPA administrator to require a full-time security detail that guards him day and night, the total cost of which has not been disclosed. He has also taken other security precautions, including the addition of a $43,000 soundproof “privacy booth” inside his office to prevent eavesdropping on his phone calls and spending $3,000 to have his office swept for hidden listening devices.

EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said Tuesday the security precautions taken during the Italy trip were no different than that for prior EPA chiefs during international travel.

Pruitt has defended his frequent travel, the full cost of which has not yet been publicly released. That includes flying in first-class seats, which Pruitt described as a security precaution taken after unpleasant interactions with other passengers in coach.

For the Italy trip, Pruitt’s commercial airfare alone cost more than $7,000 — four times what was spent for other EPA staffers on the trip. Another $36,000 was spent for a flight on a U.S. military jet for Pruitt and two aides from Ohio to New York, which the agency said was necessary because no commercial flights were available for them to make it to JFK airport in time to catch their connecting flight.

EPA’s Office of Inspector General is currently investigating Pruitt’s 2017 travel costs.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy last month also issued a letter demanding copies of Pruitt’s travel full records, due by March 6.

Two weeks after the deadline, Wilcox would not answer Tuesday when asked when those records would be turned over to the oversight committee.

“We are working with Chairman Gowdy to accommodate his request,” he said.
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https://www.mediaite.com/uncategori...da-and-tell-her-story-on-alleged-trump-tryst/

Ex-Playboy Model Karen McDougal Sues to Break Free of NDA and Tell Her Story on Alleged Trump Tryst


Ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal is suing to get out of a legal deal silencing her on her alleged affair with President Donald Trump.

Karen McDougal launched the suit Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court against American Media Inc., owner of The National Enquirer, saying A.M.I. shelled out $150,000 to keep her quiet, The New York Times reported.

McDougal says Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, played a role in discussions between her and A.M.I. and that she was misled about the legal agreement she signed, according to the outlet. She also claims A.M.I. threatened her with “considerable monetary damages” following her communication with The New Yorker a month ago, saying “any further disclosures would breach Karen’s contract.”

In a statement sent to The Times, McDougal’s lawyer, Peter Stirs, said A.M.I. engaged in “a multifaceted effort to silence Karen McDougal.”

“The lawsuit filed today aims to restore her right to her own voice,” it read. “We intend to invalidate the so-called contract that American Media Inc. imposed on Karen so she can move forward with the private life she deserves.”

Because McDougal argues the contract was confusing, it remains to be seen whether it will withstand a legal challenge. To further complicate matters, McDougal is now the second woman to file a lawsuit to exit her legal agreement regarding her relationship with the president. Adult film star Stormy Daniels also began her legal battle this month. She was previously given a $130,000 payout for her silence on her interactions with Trump.

A.M.I. Chief Executive David Pecker is a friend of Trump’s, and The Enquirer would often ensure no negative stories about Trump were sent to the presses, according to a New Yorker report.
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