Donald Trump went after a former Miss Universe in a string of early-morning tweets Friday, encouraging voters to “check out” an alleged “sex tape” of Alicia Machado, who has been on the offensive against the GOP presidential nominee all week.And "early morning" doesn't mean six o'clock:
Pre-dawn tweet fest from @realDonaldTrump about "my worst Miss U" and frustration about leaks.
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) September 30, 2016
Time stamp on his 1st of four: 3:20 a.m. pic.twitter.com/ieSn9H9DqP
Yup:
Anytime you see a story about me or my campaign saying "sources said," DO NOT believe it. There are no sources, they are just made up lies!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2016
Followed by:
I have to agree with this:
@JenniferJJacobs @nomoremister New ad: 3 AM phone call in White House, Trump too busy tweeting to answer
— Rande B (@RBeidel) September 30, 2016
Get on it, Robbie Mook! Also, maybe this tweet from Monday night wasn't so crazy:
Notice Trump sniffing all the time. Coke user?
— Howard Dean (@GovHowardDean) September 27, 2016
Donald Trump is a distractible guy -- every report on his debate prep said he had trouble concentrating on the process -- but this he's concentrating on. Remember, the debate was Monday. It's Friday. He's still fuming about Machado.
On the other hand, he came out of the debate with a plan to attack Hillary Clinton over her husband's sex life and her own responses to Bill's infidelities. I predicted that Trump and the rest of the right would have trouble focusing on the more disturbing allegations, because they couldn't restrain themselves from talking about Bill's fully consensual affairs, which most of America shrugs off. As it turns out, Trump can't focus on the more disturbing Clinton allegations because he can't focus on the Clintons at all -- he set out to smear them with talk of Bill's alleged sexual assaults and Hillary's alleged acts of intimidation and got distracted by a completely different line of attack that wasn't directly focused on the Clintons at all.
There have been allegations of criminal conduct in Machado's past -- but the one specific item Trump mentions isn't criminal at all. It's an alleged "sex tape." But, as Snopes notes, he may be talking about a fake:
In 2009, a video clip purportedly showing the former Miss Universe winner engaging in anal sex was circulated online, and that is the clip that now most frequently shows up in response to web searches on the phrase "Alicia Machado porn." However, the woman seen in that video is not Alicia Machado -- the clip was taken from the 2004 DVD Apprentass 4, which features porn actress Angel Dark, and was later retitled to suggest it showed Alicia Machado....And if that's what Trump is referring to, it's hypocritical of him to bring it up, given the nature of the contestant contracts used on The Apprentice:
Machado is also often described as having been in a "sex tape," a claim that stems from her 2005 appearance on the Spanish reality show La Granja (similar to the United States' The Real World), which she was reportedly kicked off of after being filmed having sex with another cast member....
However, the so-called "sex tape" stemming from that incident, which is nothing more than some grainy, night-vision footage of a couple of covered figures writhing in a bed, hardly qualifies as explicit. And reality television being what it is, the scene the tape depicts was quite possibly staged or fabricated.
Appearing on The Apprentice with Donald Trump required agreeing to a series of odd and invasive demands regarding sex [and] nudity.... According to a copy of an NBC contract reviewed by The Daily Beast, contestants had to agree to be filmed, “whether I am clothed, partially clothed or naked, whether I am aware or unaware of such videotaping, filming or recording.”So Donald? Please proceed.
... [Contestants] were made to undergo sexually transmitted disease screenings, which tested for “HIV, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, HPV, syphilis, chlamydia, gonorrhea, and herpes,” according to the contract.
Along with such testing, contestants had to accept “that Producer may impose one or more Series Rules regarding the type of sexual activity, if any, that participants will be permitted to engage in.”
And, the contract states, “I further acknowledge and understand that the film, tape, audio and other recordings that will be made of me in connection with the Series might in other circumstances be considered a serious invasion of my privacy.”
"Donald Trump is a distractible guy"
ReplyDeleteCan you imagine what Vladimir Putin could do to him with a laser pointer? Or throwing the invisible ball?
It's not cocaine, it's synthetic testosterone. Why else would he have his levels checked?
ReplyDeleteHe can't let anything negative said or written about him, go.
ReplyDeleteHe'd better be careful, because it's not like his present wife, Melania, has a pure past.
There are plenty of photo's of her out there, nearly nekkid - or clearly nekkid!
Are there any sex-tapes of her, pre-Donald?
It would be irresponsible not to ask.
@Mustang Bobby: Excellent! [ROFL]
ReplyDeleteChris "CW" Cizilla at the WaPoop a couple of days ago:
"... There is no other Donald Trump. No new leaf. No pivot. No 2.0. This is it — take it or leave it. Trump is absolutely convinced that who he is — before he reads a single policy paper or briefing book or participates in a single mock debate — is good enough to win. That's the most risky bet he's ever made."
Should Killary have opportunities to lure Trump into taking the bait for the next four weeks she might find herself in landslide territory come November. Perhaps the lesson of September is that the electorate has a very short attention span, and needs periodic reminders of just how gawdawful a human being Trump is.
HuffPo has posted an article stating that Trump took the 5th 97 times in testimony during the divorce from Ivana: "he later bragged that he managed to settle the divorce without giving his first wife a penny more than required by the prenupt..."
The 5th for me, not for thee. I could imagine that "not a penny more" would be really popular with undecided wimmin.
Dorothy Rabinowitz of the WSJ - IIRC a far-right Killary-hater - endorses Killary. The least negative epithet commenters use to describe her betrayal of The Cause is "liberal". Not that Rabinowitz' endorsement will sway any voters, but ... "confusion to the enemy!"
And that's not even taking into account Farenthold's and Eisenwald's latest exposes.
Good times!
Can't stop Won't stop. All women well bow down to Trump!
ReplyDeleteI don't think a landslide is even remotely likely. By the standards of any other election and certainly any other developed democracy an out and out criminal like Trump, a textbook, unstable psychopath should be losing enormously but the GOP has become such a bunch of cynical degenerates that he is only a few points behind Clinton. If turnout among Democrats and Dem-leaning Indies drops even modestly, especially in the battleground states, this country is in deep, deep trouble.
ReplyDeleteI doubt whether it's cocaine, but it wouldn't surprise me if the short-fingered vulgarian's personal physician (who, as someone observed a few weeks ago, looks as though he has wandered off the set of a Paul Thomas Anderson film) is prescribing him some "pick-me-ups" à la "Dr. Feelgood," that keep the candidate restless in the wee hours.
ReplyDeleteLittle Hands is on something, else he wouldn't be up all hours flailing at bits of string & perceived slights.
ReplyDeleteI don't see why Hillary - who seems fairly familiar with male impulse control and certainly Can Take A Punch - can't drive him absolutely bananas in Episode 2 of Big Baby Debases For The White House. The possibilities of that make it difficult for me to discount entirely the potential for the sort of epic exhibition of Id-driven impulse control that goes so viral it devastates GOP turn-out. I don't think it's realistic to imagine there's any great potential for the sorts of people who've stuck with supporting or voting for him to this point to change their vote to HRC, but I do think there's big room for GOP voting malaise.
If you think Trump was insane about Machado wait till tonight. Trump's deposition in Trump U case will be release today. Hold on.
ReplyDelete@Jimbo: "landslide [not] remotely likely" ... had you asked me about a landslide a week ago I'd have thought you were asking the chances of a Trump landslide. What a difference a week makes!
ReplyDeleteMachado, "smart" not to pay taxes, and "that's business" in the debate; followed by this morning's 3AM tweetstorm... it's just like July with the Khans, Trump has been baited into a meltdown.
The October Surprise came early this year ... it wasn't the surprise anyone expected.
To be sure, I'm not predicting a Killary landslide, but it seems indisputable that Trump has inflicted non-trivial damage on his chances in the space of a week by taking the bait. I'm saying that if Killary finds new opportunities to put bait in front of him, and if Trump keeps taking that bait, the results won't be close.
Krugman's article today points out that Hillary's slide in the polls was (at least in part) caused by our failed press corpse feeding frenzy over supposed Clinton Foundation pay-for-play scandals, even though none of the reports turned up wrong-doing.
I dunno, but Farenthold and Eisenwald have their teeth into serious Trump wrong-doing ... as Lamonica says, there's a deposition to be released today. (Although I believe that's the deposition in the lawsuits with the chefs who bailed on Trump, not the Trump U case.)
Agree in general with the rest of Jimbo's point, but much of that is tribalism. GOP leadership - RNC PR BS, Paul Raynd, and Mitch the Turtle - have decided to hold their nose and go with the flow ... and the tribe followed their leaders. Chait has a (relevant) strong closer today in his "pivot" article:
"... their plan is to conceal Trump’s unfitness through the elections and hope for the best, without much regard for what would happen if they succeed in handing control of the Executive branch to an unstable bully. It is one of those moral decisions so awful it can’t be described in plain terms."
Not quite sure how to make the point, but seems to me that the real problem is that the GOP's leadership have collectively decided that they'd rather have a GOP-run banana republic than compete in a democratic republic. And yes, that is scary.
Link to the Trump deposition video:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.buzzfeed.com/danielwagner/trump-video-depositions
@Feud: overlooked your comment, but yeah, that's what I was trying to say, and you made the point without my verbosity. :-)
ReplyDelete@Jim Snyder: "Killary"? That's what you're going with?
ReplyDeleteDisgraceful.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteY'know, it's really irritating the way the comment system a) doesn't allow edits, and b) swallows tags it doesn't recognize. Jes' sayin'.
ReplyDelete@Jeff Ryan: IMO an effective way to mock an adversary is to repeat that adversary's epithets in a context in which it is clear that you are mocking that adversary.
Not everyone agrees with me, of course. [/dryly]
Perhaps I should have provided a [/sarcasm] tag, eh? [/pointedly]
@Jim Snyder: I sort of thought that was it. But I think you passed the point of irony some ways back, pard. Just my opinion, of course.
ReplyDelete@Jeff Ryan: you're not the first to say so. :-)
ReplyDeleteI employed the moniker "Hitlery" for a while, but someone objected.
On another list, but still ...
I will try to be politically correct in the future. Takes a lot of the fun out of commenting, but "we aim to please". (cue Firesign Theatre reference ...)
@Jim Snyder: Write what you want. There's no need to pacify anyone. I have spent my life unintentionally offending hundreds, if not thousands of people, so it's more my problem than anyone else's.
ReplyDeleteYou guys are being duped. What Alicia Machado Didn't Tell You! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhzzuL5EK9s
ReplyDeletePaul Ryan has stated that the Republicans won't be allowing Trump's crazy ideas. He will be their useful idiot as they distract him with shiny objects.
ReplyDelete@Jeff Ryan: "unintentionally"? Where's the fun in that?!? If you're not intentionally offending, why bother?
ReplyDelete[/snark]
@Ed: Unless you are prepared to factually rebut her account, you are wasting out time. I note the Orange One has not even tried to claim this.
ReplyDelete