Trump inmany ways built his career by suggestingthat the life story of his politicalnemesis Barack Obama was a fraud it wasthe birther stuff it was Trumpsuggesting Obama had gotten affirmativeaction to get into Harvard I mean thereis a parallel here to Trump’s life storyis now thanks to your colleagues greatreporting known to have been a fraud andI think that this is one thing that youhear from people talking about the Trumpcampaign and what it will look like theysay a lot of stuff with Donald Trump isbaked in his view the way he speaksabout women this it’s not gonna changevoters they know who he is and theyaccept who his supporters accept it theylike what he’s done in the economy andand they they’ll overlook it but storieslike this that delve deep into hisbackground mean that you know you thinkyou know who Donald Trump is and itturns out that you don’t exactly knowwho Donald Trump is that it’s differentand the question is will this actuallychange that baked-in stuff so they saymaybe I don’t know who this isin terms of not paying taxes for a outof those ten years I don’t know I meanI’ve heard in the past when we heard hedidn’t pay taxes there was supported hissaid it makes him look smart that he gotto beat the systemanother another version of this thoughas a candidate is now he is the systemhe is the establishment so that’sanother problem for him running as theestablishment candidate not the guy whorails against the establishment that hewas able to beat as aa businessman but we’ll see how itaffects how it affects voters views ofhim of who they think they know andinteresting last one here I mean DonaldTrump’s force we can always tell whenhe’s been caught doing something andeven he knows this true he’s pushed backto your colleagues reporting wasn’t thatit was inaccurate it was I’m so smartI’m so smart I wrote these off so you’reright the story goes on
Donald Trump’s Phony America
There are several kinds of success stories. We emphasize the ones starring brilliant inventors and earnest toilers. We celebrate sweat and stamina. We downplay the schemers, the short cuts and the subterfuge. But for every ambitious person who has the goods and is prepared to pay his or her dues, there’s another who doesn’t and is content to play the con. In the Trump era and the Trump orbit, these ambassadors of a darker side of the American dream have come to the fore.
.. What a con Holmes played with Theranos. For those unfamiliar with the tale, which the journalist John Carreyrou told brilliantly in “Bad Blood,” she dropped out of Stanford at 19 to pursue her Silicon Valley dream, intent on becoming a billionaire and on claiming the same perch in our culture and popular imagination that Steve Jobs did. She modeled her work habits and management style after his. She dressed as he did, in black turtlenecks. She honed a phony voice, deeper than her real one.
She spoke, with immaculate assurance, of a day when it might be on everyone’s bathroom counter: a time saver, a money saver and quite possibly a lifesaver. She sent early, imperfect versions of it to Walgreens pharmacies, which used it and thus doled out erroneous diagnoses to patients. She blocked peer reviews of it and buried evidence of its failures.
This went on not for months but for years, as Holmes attracted more than $900 million of investment money and lured a breathtakingly distinguished board of directors including two former secretaries of state, George Shultz and Henry Kissinger; a former secretary of defense, William Perry; and a future secretary of defense, James Mattis. What they had before them wasn’t proof or even the sturdy promise of revolutionary technology. It was a self-appointed wunderkind who struck a persuasive pose and talked an amazing game.
She was eventually found out, and faces criminal charges that could put her in prison. But there’s no guarantee of that. Meantime she lives in luxury. God bless America.
Theranos was perhaps an outlier in the scope of its deceptions, but not in the deceptions themselves. In an article titled “The Ugly Unethical Underside of Silicon Valley” in Fortune magazine in December 2016, Erin Griffith tallied a list of aborted ventures with more shimmer and swagger than substance, asserting: “As the list of start-up scandals grows, it’s time to ask whether entrepreneurs are taking ‘fake it till you make it’ too far.”
Donald Trump’s band of losers: Getting desperate as Mueller closes in
Rudy Giuliani has confirmed that Manafort’s team has been feeding information about the Mueller investigation to Trump’s team.
.. Corsi — who has spent the past few weeks in a panic, clearly calling reporters repeatedly in an effort to spin his legal situation — looks an awful lot like he’s squealing on his buddy Stone to the press.
.. obtained court documents that appear to show Corsi communicating with Stone about working with WikiLeaks to publish stolen Democratic Party emails online during the 2016 campaign, in a deliberate effort to hijack the news scandal and create a fake air of scandal around Hillary Clinton. These hacked emails, as earlier reporting has demonstrated, were stolen by Russian intelligence services.
.. A betting woman would say that this is Corsi’s attempt to get the heat off him by throwing Stone under the bus. If so, it’s a poor attempt: The emails make them both look guilty and Mueller’s office appears confident that Corsi’s cries of innocence are so many lies.
.. there’s an upside to the fact that Trump has attracted a bunch of sleazes with no loyalty to anyone but themselves. Once things start really going south for such folks, they tend to turn on each other. Hell, Corsi appears to be turning on Stone for no discernible reason, beyond a general feeling that throwing bodies under the bus will slow it down long enough for him to escape
.. Trump, on the other hand, has been close to Roger Stone for years, and the latter had encouraged Trump to run for president as far back as the late ’90s.
.. It seems likely that Stone, his old lobbying partner Manafort and Corsi saw Trump as their ticket out of the sidelines and back into the mainstream of Republican politics. After all, Trump was not only mainstreaming the filthy, conspiracy theory-laden side of Republican politics, he was rapidly displacing what little was left of respectable Republican politics with circus antics. It’s hard to imagine that men so eager to ingratiate themselves would be anything less than eager to impress their boss and benefactor with news of their corrupt shenanigans involving stolen emails.
.. That Manafort and Corsi both appear to be leaking information about the investigation to Trump is just another reminder that conspiracy is second nature to these folks. Trump may act like a doddering old fool in public, but as the recordings of his discussions about paying off women to cover up affairs make clear, in private he likes to conduct himself like a high-level mafioso. No wonder Trump’s starting to panic, spraying more defensive nonsense about the “Angry Mueller Gang” on Twitter. Because the people he’s surrounded himself with, who are all amoral and self-serving, realize that they’re no longer outrunning the law.
Expert: Acosta video distributed by White House was doctored
a frame-by-frame comparison with an Associated Press video of the same incident shows that the one tweeted by Sanders appears to have been altered to speed up Acosta’s arm movement as he touches the intern’s arm, according to Abba Shapiro, an independent video producer who examined the footage at AP’s request.
.. Earlier, Shapiro noticed that frames in the tweeted video were frozen to slow down the action, allowing it to run the same length as the AP one.
The tweeted video also does not have any audio, which Shapiro said would make it easier to alter. It’s also unlikely the differences could be explained by technical glitches or by video compression — a reduction in a video’s size to enable it to play more smoothly on some sites — because the slowing of the video and the acceleration that followed are “too precise to be an accident,” said Shapiro, who trains instructors to use video editing software.
.. Sanders, who hasn’t said where the tweeted video came from, noted that it clearly shows Acosta made contact with the intern. In her statement announcing Acosta’s suspension, she said the White House won’t tolerate “a reporter placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job.”While the origin of the manipulated video is unclear, its distribution marked a new low for an administration that has been criticized for its willingness to mislead... “As visual journalists, we know that manipulating images is manipulating truth,” said Whitney Shefte, the association’s president. “It’s deceptive, dangerous and unethical. Knowingly sharing manipulated images is equally problematic, particularly when the person sharing them is a representative of our country’s highest office with vast influence over public opinion.”
.. CNN has labeled Sanders’ characterization of Acosta’s exchange with the intern as a lie. Its position has been supported by witnesses including Reuters White House correspondent Jeff Mason, who was next to Acosta during the news conference and tweeted that he did not see Acosta place his hands on the White House employee. Rather, he said he saw him holding on to the microphone as she reached for it.
“The irony of this White House video involving Jim Acosta is that if it is found to be doctored, it will show the administration to be doing what it accuses the news media of doing — engaging in fake information,” said Aly Colon, a professor in journalism ethics at Washington & Lee University.
.. The New York Times editorialized in favor of restoring Acosta’s pass, saying it signaled Trump’s view that asking hard questions disqualifies reporters from attending briefings. The newspaper said that if Sanders was so offended by physical contact, “what did she have to say when her boss praised as ‘my kind of guy’ Rep. Greg Gianforte of Montana, who was sentenced to anger management classes and community service for body-slamming a Guardian reporter last spring?”
.. During Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, the Secret Service denied clearance to Robert Sherrill, a reporter for The Nation who had gotten into physical fights with government officials. During the George W. Bush presidency, Trude Feldman, who worked for various news outlets, was suspended for 90 days after security cameras recorded her looking through a press aide’s desk late one night. In the 1970s, President Nixon tried to get Washington Post reporters banned from the White House.
Despite losing his White House pass, Acosta is expected to travel to Paris this weekend to cover Trump’s trip to meet with world leaders.