Month: August 2023

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Melania Trump Polls

Melania Trump Is One Of The Most Disliked First Ladies In History: Poll

Much like her husband, former first lady Melania Trump is a divisive figure, claiming to care about the issue of online bullying yet never calling out the failed former president for his countless attacks on others via social media.

Just how unpopular is Melania? According to a poll from Zogby Analytics, she’s near the bottom when it comes to favorite first ladies in modern history, The Daily Mail reports:

Jacqueline Kennedy tops a new poll of America’s favorite first ladies while current occupant Jill Biden comes in near the middle and Melania Trump was second from the bottom. 

Zogby Analytics polled a sampling of Americans for their thoughts on the past 12 women who have served as first lady. 

The results were based on how many of the 5,437 likely voters said each of the First Ladies was great. 

Be sure and note that Michelle Obama is second only to the late Jackie Kennedy in the poll, which is certain to enrage Donald Trump and his supporters, who have long tried to denigrate Mrs. Obama and her husband.

The fact that current First Lady Jill Biden is ranked so high though her husband has been in the White House for less than a year is also notable.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Melania is near the bottom of the poll. Keep in mind a few of the more controversial things she did and said while her husband was in office:

  • During a visit to see detained children at the US border, she wore a Zara jacket with “I don’t really care, do u?” emblazoned across the back. It left a bad taste in the mouths of many after her husband appeared seemingly apathetic to having separated children from their parents.
  • Melania hasn’t given many speeches, but when she did, they never went without controversy – whether she was accused of plagiarising Michelle Obama’s 2008 Democratic National Convention speech or labelled a hypocrite for celebrating diversity at the 2020 Republican National Convention (RNC) years after questioning Barack Obama’s nationality.

Though we can’t yet know if Melania’s ranking among former first ladies will improve, when you consider that her husband continues to say and do incredibly disgusting things, it seems unlikely that Mrs. #BeBest will ever be anything more than a footnote in American history that most of us would rather forget.

 

Categories
Congress GOP Social Media

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s ‘Disrespectful’ US Flag Tweet Gets Her Shredded On Social Media

While she claims to be a loyal and patriotic American who is dedicated to the MAGA (Make America Great Again) political ethos espoused by disgraced former president Donald Trump, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) posted a tweet this morning that suggests she’s only onboard with being a patriot when everything goes her way.

As Newsweek notes, Greene was clearly distressed by the far-reaching racketeering indictment handed down Monday evening by a Fulton County, Georgia grand jury and announced by the county district attorney Fani Willis.

The indictment hit the former president with 13 felony charges, including violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer, filing false documents, and multiple conspiracy counts.

Eighteen of his allies were also indicted, including Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and John Eastman. Trump has until Friday to surrender himself to authorities in Georgia for arraignment. He has long maintained his innocence against all of the legal cases mounting against him and dismissed them as politically motivated, as have many of his supporters.

Greene posted this in response to the indictment:

Flying the American flag upside down is a signal of distress, and it’s illegal under federal law.

Also, given that Greene has viciously attacked anyone who refuses to stand for the flag or National Anthem, it’s more than a tad hypocritical of her to use the flag in such a manner, as many reminded her on Twitter.

 

Categories
Crime Donald Trump

Jack Smith Has The Perfect Way To ‘Sidestep’ Judge Aileen Cannon If She Rules Against Him

With some legal experts already worried that the appointment of U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon for the federal trial of former president Donald Trump could all but guarantee an acquittal of Trump, it now appears that Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith has thought ahead and has a backup plan.

In a column for The Atlantic, two noted legal experts, Ryan Goodman and Andrew Weissmann explain that Trump’s indictment also suggests he committed crimes in other locations, which gives Smith lots of options.

According to the Justice Department and a taped recording of the former president, Trump took classified records from Mar-a-Lago to Bedminster (New Jersey), where he showed off the contents of such records to others.

The two then elaborate on their thesis:

“The indictment alleges that Trump showed a map to a political ally and also showed a writer and a publisher a secret military plan to attack Iran. These two episodes were arguably the most egregious allegations of criminal wrongdoing mentioned in the indictment; they allege not just the improper retention of our nation’s most highly classified information, but the intentional communication of such information.”

That’s bad news for Trump, they allege, because New Jersey then becomes a viable option for more charges against the former president.

Trump’s Bedminster conduct, as described in the indictment, appears to fit the description of two federal offenses designed to keep America’s national-security secrets safe. One makes it a crime to intentionally communicate national-defense information to people not authorized to receive it, and the other makes it a crime to intentionally disclose classified information to the same.

These are more serious crimes than willful retention of such documents, which is done to prevent possible leakage. Deliberate dissemination is the leakage itself.

So if indeed Cannon short-circuits the case in Florida by refusing admit crucial evidence or by other methods, Smith can easily charge Trump in New Jersey.

The legal uncertainties that surround bringing charges in Florida for dissemination of national-security secrets in Bedminster leaves open the possibility that charges might yet be brought in New Jersey — a backup plan of sorts for Smith.

If Aileen Cannon, the Florida judge assigned to the case, were to seek to pocket-veto the charges before her by, say, scheduling the trial for after the 2024 presidential election, the special counsel would be able to sidestep her tactic by proceeding with charges in New Jersey.

Could it be any clearer that Jack Smith is playing three dimensional chess while Trump’s attorneys and others who might try to get in his way are still busy with checkers?

 

Categories
Crime Donald Trump Espionage Russia

Did Trump’s Motive For Stealing Classified Documents Involve Russia?

As he continues to investigate the matter of classified documents former president Donald Trump illegally removed from the White House and took with him to Mar-a-Lago when he left office, Special Counsel Jack Smith is focusing in on Russia as the motive for why the failed ex-president took thousands of secret files and stored them at his Palm Beach golf resort.

In what may wind up being the greatest irony of all, according to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Murray Waas, Special Counsel Smith and a grand jury he impaneled believe Trump’s obsession with Russia led him to steal the information.

As he left office, Waas has learned, Trump desperately tried to declassify thousands of pages of secret documents that detailed Russia’s efforts to help defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

But Trump was stymied in his efforts to make the records public, leading the outgoing president to rage to aides that the documents would never see the light of day.

Now, sources close to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation tell me that prosecutors have questioned at least three people about whether Trump’s frustrations may have been a motive in Trump taking thousands of pages of classified papers from the White House to Mar-A-Largo, in potential violation of federal law. One of those people was compelled to testify before a federal grand jury, the sources say.

The sources say that prosecutors appear to believe the episode may be central to determining Trump’s intent for his unauthorized removal from the White House of the papers.  Insight into the president’s frame of mind—his intent and motivation, are likely to be the foundational building blocks of any case that the special counsel considers seeking against Trump.

That has led Smith to take a close look at conversations between the White House counsel, the Justice Department, and then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the last frantic hours of the Trump administration.

The sources familiar with some aspects of the special counsel’s investigation further disclosed to me that prosecutors sought information regarding the following issues:   the witnesses were asked about any conversations they personally had with then-president Trump or any of their White House colleagues about the Russia papers; they were asked about conversations between senior Justice Department officials and attorneys with the White House counsel’s office, including two former senior lawyers in the office, John Eisenberg and Pat Philbin, regarding Trump’s presidential order to declassify the Russia papers; and they also were asked about the circumstances surrounding a memo written by Trump’s then Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, the day following Trump’s declassification order, in which Meadows appeared to reverse course and related that the papers would not be released before the concerns of other agencies regarding the Privacy Act were fully assuaged.

“It was very clear from what they asked that their emphasis was on Trump and Meadows,” one person said.

Another former aide to Trump, Kash Patel, has publicly stated that he saw all of the records the disgraced ex-president wanted declassified, telling Breitbart:

 “It’s information that Trump felt spoke to matters regarding everything from Russiagate to the Ukraine impeachment fiasco to major national security matters of great public importance—anything the president felt [the public] had a right to know is in there and more.”

So it was Russia that allegedly helped elect Trump, Russia that led to his impeachment, and Russia that may wind up sending him to prison for the rest of his life if Smith’s investigation proves Russiagate was what Trump clung to even after he left the White House.

Right about now, Donald Trump is probably wishing he had never heard of Russia or his BFF, Vladimir Putin.

 

Categories
Crime Elections GOP Whining

Lindsey Graham Tries To Defend Trump From Indictment And Steps Into A Steaming Pile Of Irony

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) went on Fox “News” Monday evening and did his best impression of Henny Penny, declaring that the sky was definitely falling if disgraced former president Donald Trump wound up being indicted in the state of Georgia for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Appearing with Fox host Jesse Watters, Graham whined that the legal problems facing Trump were “unfair.”

“The American people can decide whether they want him to be president or not,” Graham declared. “This should be decided at the ballot box, not a bunch of liberal jurisdictions trying to put the man in jail.”

As HuffPost notes, many couldn’t help but wonder if Graham fully appreciated the irony of his words.

Users on … Twitter said deciding Trump’s fate at the ballot box was “sorta the point here.”