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In hindsight it's clear that they didn't take him seriously enough at the beginning -- but IMO it's kind of hard to blame them for that. It's still hard to believe that he actually won the nomination. They should have told him to eff off and run as an independent from the start, but yeah, they wanted to milk him for ratings early on, and it obviously backfired. I mean really -- a bigoted reality TV idiot, who also happens to be a complete slimy POS, winning the Republican Presidential nomination?
I think this was a great use of the information as the timing made for maximum damage to a candidate that all the way through the Republican primary seemed teflon. Save the ammo to hurt the chances of the sob even sniffing the presidency.
Interestingtonydead said:
IMO you're misreading the motives here. It's all about ratings and $$$ and has been since day one. They cozied up to Trump during the primary because access to him was based on playing nice, and his presence drove ratings. Now, it's almost over and he's turned to lashing out at the media, so there is no point to playing nice, and they are lobbing molotov cocktails to drive ratings. They're not in the bag for Clinton, even though most sane people of course prefer her to a dope like Trump; they are just chasing the money as always.
It's the old "she said, he said the exact same thing" dilemma. Who are we to believe?Coeur de Lion said:
An actual video of Bill Clinton raping an underage girl? That stayed hidden until now? No. I wouldn't believe that about Trump, either, FWIW. The psychological pathology of a rapist is very different from that of a sexual harasser. Most sexual harassers need at least the superficial ability to view their own actions as harmless or even wanted. Rapists not so much.
Funny? How about they are sexual abuse victims that wouldn't have been taken seriously even two weeks ago. Hell, you still don't take them seriously.
Thanks for your enlightened and valuable contributions to the discussion, as always.
I don't, because it's such an unnecessarily complicated conspiracy, with a ham-handed attempt to include Trump. I suppose I might be willing to believe that there is an Israeli intelligence video of Clinton with a 13 year old, but why would the discovery of that video be the impetus for Hillary hatching a plot to have Trump be the nominee? And I might believe that the Clintons have paid off Clinton rape victims to stay quiet, but it seems a stretch that they would pay those same victims to accuse Trump instead.
The number of GOP defections from endorsing Trump is unprecedented. Also, losing a few percentage points is a pretty big deal when you've struggled to get over 40% for the entire general election and time is running out. Even if all these allegations do is dominate the airwaves and prevent Trump from being able to make inroads into Hillary's lead, they will have had a devastating effect.
Both statements might be true. Logic being, if the press paints the picture that Trump is done in polls, Republican voters who might not like that Trump got to this point and we're just going to pull the R lever for the party's sake in November start to think to themselves, "I don't even like this guy, and he's going to get killed anyways, so I might as well just stay home." His campaign is and has been completely off the rails, but this is just a ploy to keep disenfranchised Republican voters on their couches and lock things up for the other side.
And you think this was enlightened and valuable?
This is gross. You're better than this conspiratorial nonsense, which dismisses the actual victims and their feelings and intentions.
These stories just don't come from nowhere, journalists need to investigate them. They failed to do so during Trump rise.
These particular stories came out because the women chose to tell them in response to Trump's denial on Sunday that he ever did the things be bragged about doing on the Access Hollywood tape. If you read the accounts you'll see that almost all of them say that. Their stories belong to them, not to you and not to the media, who has NOT been "holding them the whole time." They can share or not share them whenever they want.
And by the way, the media did plenty of warn us about Trump's treatment of women dating back many months. There was the huge NY Times story on Trump's treatment of women in May- that story included Temple Taggart's allegations. Jill Harth's story was published by the Guardian in July. The problem was that that public mostly ignored the stories, in part because one of the women in the NY Times story came out and said she disagreed with the tone. That's our problem, not the media's.
Head back to Breitbart and Infowars to peddle your conspiracy nonsense. Members of the media do what they do professionally to drive ratings, clicks, and money; their motive is profit, just like any other business, regardless of where their personal beliefs lie. For example, if you don't think that every single personality on Fox News is praying for a Clinton win so that they can spend the next four years stoking the fires of outrage, and making a ton more money than if their guy was in office, then you're an utter fool.And you think this was enlightened and valuable?
" They're not in the bag for Clinton"
They don't come from journalists, at least not primarily. They come from women.
Also, my guess is that they chose the Times because of the article in May that had a ton of stuff about Trump's treatment of women and mentioned Taggart's claims. So in a sense they did come from the work that those journalists have been doing for many months.
"It's the best bald eagle, because I only work with the very best minds in business. merica."
Don't equate Trump supporters with all conservatives or Republicans. And re: the people who actually believe that Donald Trump should be President of the United States, after everything, who really cares what they think at this point? They've proven that they aren't deserving of a place at the grown up table in any kind of discussion about the direction of the country.
Oh I'm not. But even most conservatives who can't stand Donald Trump firmly believe the media has a "liberal bias". They will be, IMO, all too willing to believe that the media helped Hillary get elected.
He's very good. His Sunday morning show is quite good. He could be on any network.
Great post tootskrista4 said:I don't know your posts much; we probably don't inhabit the same threads for whatever reason. I suspect from the few I've noticed tonight that we are diametrically opposed, politically, but this isn't about that. I don't care about Donald Trump. I'm not angry at him. And I don't "know" that the story is true anymore than you might suspect it's not. But I just want to ask you - human-to-human - to do your best to set aside those feelings of suspicion to the extent you possibly can and re-read that story, focus on the words closely and especially on those that express the feelings of shame, of powerlessness, of the aftermath rather than the (alleged) actions themselves.
You might not know me either, so I'll tell you just a little bit about me, if you would indulge me a minute. I went to a law school that was 65% male and chose to go into an area of law where I'm primarily dealing with men, and in many cases very powerful men - men such as one who was (might still be, don't know) #1 on the Forbes list. That's because, in my career, I became pretty powerful myself for a time, and while that seems like a brag, I'm not sure how to avoid its relevance to what I'm going to ask you to do. Anyway, couldn't tell you the number of times I've walked into a board room or a conference room of a couple dozen people and found I'm the only woman there. And while it's noticeable in the room, it never bothered me that I can recall - I get along well with men, in fact better than with women a lot of the time if I were being embarrassingly honest. It was just...a thing. That I dealt with and didn't really think much about.
As I read this article, taking out the specifics of Trump or exactly what happened, I recognized almost every word, every feeling of it.
This: "I was still in shock, and remained speechless."
This: "Did he think I’d be flattered?"
Particularly this: "I tried to act normal. I had a job to do, and I was determined to do it."
This: "My shock began to wear off, and was replaced by anger. I kept thinking ...Why couldn’t I say anything?"
Definitely this, oh definitely: "I’d been up all night worrying—had I done something to encourage his behavior?"
This: "But, like many women, I was ashamed and blamed myself for his transgression."
And oddly enough, most of all this: "I minimized it (“It’s not like he raped me…”)"
Because honestly, until I read this, I knew I'd experienced some of this but still didn't think it was that big of deal, for this very reason. I not only wasn't raped, but I've never experienced anything nearly as severe as this writer alleges or the others today have alleged - no tongues shoved down throats, no hands shoved up skirts, just the kind of entry-level groping that I think most any woman would understand - squeezes, pinches, hands where they shouldn't be. The most notable being the General Counsel of a Fortune 50 company who out of the blue started telling me he and his wife had split up, though we weren't talking about him or his wife or anything but the Board meeting we had the next day, and he then made a physical move that I rebuffed but mild enough that I didn't feel threatened or assaulted or any of that, but instead just felt disappointed that I must not be giving off a professional enough persona, because if I had, he'd respect me enough not to do that. To his credit, he was so horrified by his behavior - or maybe he was scared of me - that the next day he made up an excuse to fly back to our home office, and when I found out he was leaving I asked him if this was the real reason why, and when he admitted it was, I told him not to worry about it, no sweat, and I continued to work for him for a couple of years, because I was a professional and I thought that's what professionals did.
Plus on a "lesser" scale (words only): the partner at my firm who, when I stood up after a meeting with him, asked me if I'd left a wet spot on the chair.
The 65-year-old married CEO of a client, whose IPO I had just completed and, after our closing dinner in NY, called me in the middle of the night in my hotel room to invite me over for some bellinis in his room (what an odd drink choice, by the way). And told me what he was wearing. Or more accurately, not wearing.
The CFO of a different company with whom I had to share an office for a period of months because we were working so closely on his company's IPO, and he simply moved into my office and we worked pretty well together for a while though I had some hesitation - just little things like touching me too much or too intimately, which now I realize no touching should have been OK, or making some weird statements that I just laughed off because what else was I going to do - I was a professional and we needed to get the IPO done and I was the person who could best do it and that was my job, you know - and I continued to ignore until one day I accidentally exclaimed "####!" (f word) because of some obstacle we'd come to unexpectedly, and then immediately apologized to the CFO, because I'm a professional and that's not professional and this is an important client, and he said, in a soothing voice, something along the lines of "Don't worry. It's not a bad word. You know that can really be a beautiful word." and then proceeded to start telling me in detail about how and why it was beautiful and that was it. Cut him off - politely, gently, laughing it off as if I just thought it was a joke so that I could give him an out because I was a professional and this was an important client - and shortly after I made an excuse to leave my office and went to the senior partner's office and asked, without telling him what had happened - because I'm a professional - but just vaguely mentioning that CFO were having some trouble working together due to the proximity and that we might have a more productive relationship and get the IPO done better if we had some more space, and the partner told me that it would be great if I could just hang in there instead because we were only a few months from launching the IPO and surely I could just deal with it until then.
And I did. You know why.
I've never considered myself a "victim" of anything - which would likely be much to the consternation of many feminists, with whom I might be very aligned on most things but not on this. Nothing I just typed felt cathartic or "necessary"; I'm not traumatized nor am I "triggered" by any of these stories coming out. Never felt angry at any of these guys - including the partner who blew me off, because I blamed myself for not being assertive enough - or the "wet spot" guy, who is actually a Facebook friend of mine though as you might imagine not quite a friend, and maybe I should let him know that's not OK but I likely never will - and I never asked for or needed an apology but only wanted to figure out how to make it stop without making waves, because I'm a professional and...you get it. Not for a second considered any "big" action, though I shared some of these experiences - and others - with friends whom I could trust, oddly enough all of them being guy friends.
None of it makes me special or unusual or having particularly bad luck or anything. Believe me that I'm not enticing to men in any special way such that they just can't help themselves. I've just assumed all women experienced this (an assumption that is sadly seeming more and more true) and it was just some of the price we pay. After all, assuming I could get over the belief that it was my fault, I had to believe that if it was happening so much to me - relatively successful, perceived correctly or incorrectly as very strong, in a position to mess with careers of some fairly "important" people - I am alarmed to think how much it happens to those who are not in positions of any power, who are more vulnerable.
In other words, if you think I'm posting something highly personal, my point in this regard is that it's not personal to me. Not at all.
Again, I can't claim this particular woman's story is true. I don't think whether it is true is what's important, in the big scheme of things setting Presidential elections aside. What seems important to me is that we understand these things do happen, and the reasons why, and don't immediately start telling ourselves why they couldn't possibly have happened though it would be comforting to believe it, and we try to find common ground as to how to address it, outside the current politically charged atmosphere. Doesn't matter if you're D or R or liberal or conservative or even if you're a parent - I'm not - but this just seems so vitally important to me. And so I'm just hoping when you re-read this story (if you do) and later when you talk with your daughters about it - and I'm sure you're a good dad who will be doing that - you won't focus on its truth or falsity but will keep as much of the rest of this is mind as you can in framing your teaching to your children. Or if you can't maybe someone else can.
Believe it or not, I haven't even had a single glass of wine tonight, so I can't blame drunkenness for posting this.Thanks for indulging me.
I know this guy knows nothing about everything, but if you want Exhibit 1 on how US influence/intervention can and should work it's in this region.
