T.I. slams Kanye West over Trump meeting: ‘I’m ashamed to have ever been associated with you’
The rapper, who has become one of Trump’s highest-profile celebrity supporters, visited the White House, where his planned lunch meeting with the president, Jared Kushner and Ivanka, Kid Rock and Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown gave way to a meandering 10-minute monologue. After running up to hug Trump in the Oval Office in his “Make America Great Again” cap, West told reporters that wearing it made him “feel like Superman” and reiterated his claim that he had been pressured not to wear it, as he said during his recent appearance on the season opener of “Saturday Night Live.”
The Atlanta rapper, who collaborated with ‘Ye on the 2006 track “Swagga Like Us,” publicly unfriended West in an NSFW Instagram post.
“At one time it was a pleasure to work alongside you… now, I’m ashamed to have ever been associated with you,” he wrote. “I’ve reached my limits. This is my stop, I’m officially DONE!!!!”
Maybe the plan was for a brief photo-op with rapper Kanye West and former NFL great Jim Brown to meet with President Donald Trump, before a lunch to talk about policies concerning blacks in America, but Kanye has an audience so… We show you Kanye from all angles in the Oval Office on Oct. 11, 2018.
T.I. prefaced his essay by saying, “Now I’ve been extremely patient and made it a point to not jump to any premature conclusions about Ye’ & his antics,” adding that he’d mishandled similar incidents involving his brother. “But now this (expletive) is next level, futuristic Sambo, Hopping Bob, Stephen off Django (expletive)…Ye!!!!”
The rapper, whose real name is Clifford Harris Jr., revealed he’d turned down West’s invitation to join him at the White House and called the meeting the “most repulsive, disgraceful, embarrassing act of desperation & auctioning off of one’s soul to gain power I’ve ever seen.”
The rapper, whose real name is Clifford Harris Jr., revealed he’d turned down West’s invitation to join him at the White House and called the meeting the “most repulsive, disgraceful, embarrassing act of desperation & auctioning off of one’s soul to gain power I’ve ever seen.” (Had he gone and West had behaved that “spinelessly,” T.I. said he would have felt “compelled to slap the (expletive) out of you, bro – for the people!”)
After accusing West of “bootlicking on a whole new level,” he declared, “I refuse to associate myself with something so vile, weak,& inconsiderate to the effect this has on the greater good of ALL OUR PEOPLE!!!!”
Next he addressed Kanye fans: “To all the people who follow Ye musically, socially, or even personally….who are confused, heartbroken, infuriated…. Let me make this clear… THIS (expletive) AINT COOL!!!”
The bottom line: “WE ARE NOT ON HIS MIND AS HE MAKES THESE COMMENTS AND DECISIONS. Don’t follow this puppet.”
Before dropping the mic, T.I. declared, “As long as I’ve lived I’ve learned that it benefits a man nothing at all to gain the world, if to do so, he must lose his soul. We just saw Mr.West’s soul on auction. If you listen closely you can hear the tears of our ancestors hit the floor.”
Donald Trump’s tight, lonely corner
You’re president of the United States, running the most powerful nation on earth — stock markets soaring, joblessness sinking, the world in a season of relative peace and prosperity.
The bottom line: But President Trump has never been more isolated from allies he needs most.
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The public is against him: A new Washington Post/ABC News poll found a record 60% of Americans view him unfavorably.
Guess who those same people like a lot better: Robert Mueller (63% support his investigation) and Attorney General Jeff Sessions (64% say he shouldn’t be fired; 62% side with him on the Mueller probe).
His legal team is shrinking. Not only is top White House lawyer Don McGahn leaving soon, but McGahn deputy counsel Annie Donaldson is expected to leave soon after. “[T]he White House Counsel’s Office has dwindled to about 25 lawyers, down from roughly 35,” per the WashPost.
His allies are buckling, with embarrassing admissions in the plea deal by personal lawyer Michael Cohen.
Immunity has been granted to his gossip shield, David Pecker, CEO of the National Enquirer’s publisher; and Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg.
Tensions with staff run high as ever. He has never been close to many of his top staffers, and this is more true than ever.
The N.Y. Times’ Maggie Haberman tweets: “His aides say he is behaving as if he is cornered.”
Be smart … Everything in Trump’s life has been about going big: The buildings got bigger, the deals got bigger, the bankruptcies got bigger —which only made the comebacks bigger, which made winning the presidency all the bigger.
The corner feels small, and he keeps being told the one big move he fantasizes about making — staring down Mueller under the bright lights, one on one — could destroy it all.
♦ Culled from Axios (Author, Mike Allen) Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
First lady Melania ‘stole’ an old FTC pamphlet to launch a new anti-cyberbullying campaign
The campaign’s “Talking with Kids About Being Online” brochure copies an Obama-era FTC document for its “Net Cetera” program back in 2014.
First lady Melania Trump has launched a new anti-cyberbullying campaign called “Be Best,” and the White House has released a pamphlet to go with it — one that’s not quite as new. As BuzzFeed News has pointed out, the campaign’s “Talking with Kids About Being Online” brochure copies an Obama-era FTC document for its “Net Cetera” program back in 2014. If you look at the documents side by side, the covers are almost identical, with slight changes to the smartphone graphics to make them look less like a Samsung Galaxy S3 and more like an iPhone
More importantly, their contents are almost the same. The first lady’s spokesperson Stephanie Grisham told BuzzFeed News that the materials were “updated and edited to reflect today’s event” and they “were happy to be able to provide the children in attendance with such a resource.” But upon checking, it’s clear that the new pamphlet lifted most of the older one’s contents word for word. Even the parts that aren’t exactly the same look merely shuffled around and paraphrased — imagine a student copying parts of Wikipedia and mixing things up a bit in hopes of getting past a plagiarism checker.
When the first lady announced Be Best, she thanked Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Snap and Twitter for supporting the platform. It’s still unclear how they’re contributing to it, but we’re hoping their involvement means Be Best has more to offer other than a copied brochure.
Nigeria summons representative of US ambassador over Trump comments
ABUJA (Reuters) – Nigeria’s government on Monday summoned a representative of the the U.S. ambassador to explain reported remarks by President Donald Trump that immigrants from Africa and Haiti come from “shithole countries”, the foreign ministry said.
Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama “sought clarification on the veracity or otherwise of the substance of the remarks, stressing that if they were true, they were deeply hurtful, offensive and unacceptable”, the ministry said in a statement.
Trump reportedly made the remarks at a private meeting with lawmakers on immigration on Thursday. A U.S. senator who attended the gathering said the president used “vile, vulgar” language, including repeatedly using the word “shithole” when speaking about African countries.
The Nigerian foreign ministry statement noted the “very warm and cordial relations that presently exist” between Nigeria and the U.S.
The United States, represented by Deputy Chief of Mission David J. Young as the ambassador was not in Nigeria, said there were contradictory accounts as to whether the remarks were made, the statement said.
In a separate statement, a U.S. embassy spokesman said Young “reiterated the excellent relations that exist between the United States and Nigeria and they discussed future cooperation between the two countries”.
The U.S. president on Friday denied using such derogatory language. But he has been widely condemned in many African countries and by international rights organisations. African Union countries demanded an apology on Friday.
(Reporting by Felix Onuah and Camillus Eboh; Writing by Alexis Akwagyiram and Paul Carsten; Editing by Andrew Roche)
Bombshell revelation -Trump Says He’ll Immediately Deport Or Imprison Up To 3 Million Undocumented Immigrants
File: A van chartered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement which will take these undocumented immigrants to the border to be deported.
By Roque Planas (The Huffington Post).
President-elect Donald Trump plans to deport or imprison somewhere between 2 million and 3 million undocumented immigrants as soon as he takes office.
In an interview with CBS News that will air Sunday night, Trump said he would launch what could be the largest mass deportation effort in modern history, vowing to immediately deport a number of people comparable to the record-setting figure that President Barack Obama carried out over two terms in office.
“What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate,” Trump said in the interview. “But we’re getting them out of our country, they’re here illegally.”
In saying that 2 million to 3 million undocumented immigrants with criminal records live in the U.S., Trump was repeating a claim he’d made earlier in the campaign that The Washington Post fact-checked and determined was inaccurate.
The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, estimates that around 820,000 undocumented immigrants have criminal records ― a figure that includes many people whose only conviction is crossing the border illegally. Under prosecutorial discretion guidelines in place since 2011, undocumented migrants with minor crimes are in some cases able to avoid deportation.
But a review by The Marshall Project of more than 300,000 recent deportations showed that the majority of deportees had no serious criminal record at all. More than 40 percent had no criminal conviction, and another 18.7 percent only had an immigration-related conviction. Less than 20 percent had a criminal conviction that involved or potentially involved violence.
After his initial round of deportations and efforts at border security, Trump said, his administration would assess its policy on the remaining undocumented immigrants residing here.
“After the border is secure and after everything gets normalized, we’re going to make a determination on the people that they’re talking about who are terrific people, they’re terrific people but we are gonna make a determination at that,” Trump said. “But before we make that determination … it’s very important, we are going to secure our border.”
“He’s not calling for mass deportation,” Priebus said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” last week. “He said, ‘No, only people who have committed crimes.’ And then only until all of that is taken care of will we look at what we are going to do next.”
It’s unclear whether Trump could deport or jail that many people that quickly with the resources at his disposal. Deportations are often contested in court. And the ebb and flow of apprehensions at the border at times exceeds the 34,000 beds the federal government reserves on a daily basis to detain migrants.
But his enthusiasm for removals suggests that deportations will likely rise when he takes office, after declining sharply last year. Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed 235,413 undocumented immigrants in 2015, the most recent year for which data is available ― a sharp decline from the Obama administration’s 2012 peak of 409,849 ICE removals.
Projections for the 2016 presidential race have been left in shambles. | Getty
Polls and predictive models failed to predict Trump’s strength.
Everybody was wrong. Again. When Election Day dawned, almost all the pollsters, analytics nerds and political insiders in the country had Hillary Clinton waltzing into the White House.
By the time polls had closed nationwide on Tuesday night, those projections had been left in shambles — just like the ones a year ago that all-but ruled out the possibility of Donald Trump winning the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.
Headed into Election Day, polling evangelist Nate Silver’s 538 website put Clinton’s odds at winning the White House at about 72 percent. By midnight, the site had more than flipped its odds making, giving Trump an 84 percent chance of winning.
Trump had notched hugely significant upset victories in Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin — critical swing states where almost every public poll and most private projections had shown Clinton ahead.
The Republican nominee’s surprisingly strong performance, which left the race on a razor’s edge at the publication of this story, seemed to at least partly validate his claims that many polls “just put out phony numbers.”
And it left pollsters and operatives struggling to explain how everyone had been so far off.
Geoff Garin, a veteran Democratic pollster who worked for the pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA, said many surveys had under-sampled non-college-educated whites, a group that Trump appealed to. He also argued there had been on over-emphasis on the belief that the country’s rising demographic diversity would put Clinton over the top.
“There was too great a belief that demographics are destiny, and that demographics would lead to a certain outcome,” he said. “The reality turned out to be much different that.”
“The pollsters have lost a lot of credibility and won’t be believed on anything soon,” said Jonathan Barnett, a Republican National Committeeman from Arkansas who supported Trump. “The way they poll doesn’t work anymore.”
Some pointed to the possibility of “hidden Trump voters,” who were embarrassed to admit even anonymously to pollsters that they planned to support Trump.
“The very premise of polling is based on the idea that voters will be completely honest with total strangers,” said veteran GOP operative Ned Ryun, who runs a grassroots group called American Majority and had announced his intent to run for Republican National Committee chairman if Trump lost.
Others pointed to the surge in momentum Trump received when the FBI announced 11 days before the election that it was reviewing new evidence related to its investigation into the handling of sensitive information by Clinton and her aides at the State Department.
While FBI Director James Comey on Sunday announced the agency had completed its investigation and would not pursue charges.
But operatives on both sides of the aisle agreed the damage was done.
They pointed out that Trump was out-performing projections in states that had minimal early voting, such as New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
“The bad headlines hurt her this past week,” said conservative operative Brendan Steinhauser, a staunch Trump critic. “Trump had the momentum and the enthusiasm at just the right time.”
And the Republican National Committee’s investment over the past three years in its ground game, once regarded as a significant liability, was getting renewed attention as Trump’s electoral vote count mounted.
While Trump’s campaign lacked anywhere close to the field staff and offices maintained Clinton’s operation, the RNC had worked to make up the difference, funding 315 field offices staffed by 6,012 paid employees and fellows.
Robert Blizzard, a veteran Republican pollster who had been an outspoken Trump critic, tweeted “Where the heck is the vaunted Democratic turnout machine? The RNC crushed this.”
Pro-Trump operatives argued that even when some polls hinted at Trump’s strength, it was ignored or explained away by the media and analysts.
“Most of the press and folks in DC were science deniers when it came to this election,” said veteran GOP operative Curt Anderson, an adviser to a pro-Trump super PAC. “Even in the face of polls that showed it very close, they all said that Trump had almost no chance. It was because they couldn’t imagine it happening.”
He added that “they are in a bubble, and that bubble has just been burst.”
Donald Trump’s national political director ‘steps back’ from campaign
With only 19 days left until the election, Donald Trump’s national political director said he has decided to “take a step back from the campaign.”
In a statement to Politico, Jim Murphy said he has not resigned, but for “personal reasons” is taking a lesser role. Murphy is a longtime Republican Party operative who joined the Trump campaign in June, and he has been establishing field programs in battleground states and serving as a point man between Trump and the Republican National Committee. Trump is behind in several key states, and some Republicans worry that in swing states, he doesn’t have the same exposure as Hillary Clinton.
Numerous Trump aides told Politico that in recent days, Murphy, a friend of Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, hasn’t been around. Manafort resigned in August, two months after he replaced Trump’s first campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski.
How Trump created new headaches for Republicans in final debate
He refused to say that he believes the results of the Nov. 8 presidential election will be legitimate
It was disturbing enough that Donald Trump has thrown loose talk around on the campaign trail that he feels the election is going to be rigged against him.
But Wednesday night, in front of a national primetime audience, Trump plunged himself and the Republican Party headfirst into a mess even larger than the one he’s created for the GOP over the past several months, when he refused to say that he believes the results of the Nov. 8 presidential election will be legitimate.
“I’ll look at it at the time,” was all that Trump would say, after being asked multiple times by Fox News’ Chris Wallace, the moderator of the third and final presidential debate.
Trump alleged that there are “millions of people that are registered to vote that shouldn’t be registered to vote” and claimed that this was information coming “from Pew Report and other places.”
He was referring to a report by the Pew Center on the states that have found that “more than 1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as voters.” But as FactCheck.org has noted, “the report did not allege the 1.8 million deceased people actually voted. Rather, Pew said that it is evidence of the need to upgrade voter registration systems.”
And there have been no examples of widespread, orchestrated voter fraud.
Wallace pressed Trump, noting that “there is a tradition in this country — in fact, one of the prides of this country — is the peaceful transition of power and that no matter how hard-fought a campaign is, that at the end of the campaign that the loser concedes to the winner.”
“Are you saying you’re not prepared now to commit to that principle?” Wallace asked Trump.
Donald Trump speaks as Hillary Clinton listens during their third and final 2016 presidential campaign debate at UNLV in Las Vegas on Oct. 19, 2016. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Pool/Reuters)
Trump responded: “What I’m saying is that I will tell you at the time. I’ll keep you in suspense. OK?”
Even Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, and Trump’s own daughter, Ivanka, had said just hours earlier Wednesday that they would accept the election results. Trump could not bring himself to do so.
Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, who wondered in a column last week why Trump’s complaints about the election being rigged had not drawn more attention, called the move “political suicide.” Weekly Standard founder Bill Kristol called on House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to disavow Trump over these comments.
“What should happen: Tomorrow morning @SpeakerRyan & @SenateMajLdr repudiate Trump, make case for GOP Congress to check & balance Clinton,” Kristol tweeted.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., did not wait for long Wednesday night to do just that. “Like most Americans, I have confidence in our democracy and election system,” Graham said in a statement. “Mr. Trump is doing the party and country a great disservice by continuing to suggest the outcome of this election is out of his hands and ‘rigged’ against him. If he loses, it will not be because the system is ‘rigged,’ but because he failed as a candidate.”
There will now be renewed pressure on Ryan to distance himself further from Trump than he did earlier this month, when he told House members he would not campaign with the GOP nominee after the release of a 2005 tape showing Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women.
It’s unlikely that this debate could have changed the trajectory of the race. But it was possible that Trump could have had a solid performance and failed to fuel new fires. And Clinton, for her part, might have chosen to play a fairly passive role in the debate coming into the night, with Trump plummeting in the polls and already written off for dead by many.
Instead, Clinton showed more poise, command and energy than she had in either of the first two debates. While some of her most effective moments came from lines of attack that were obviously rehearsed, she delivered her critiques of Trump with a style and confidence that had been lacking before.
Hillary Clinton answers a question during the third presidential debate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, on Oct. 19, 2016. (Photo:Joe Raedle/Pool via AP)
Trump looked deflated and tired. He had a few moments where he pressed the case against Clinton over her use of a private email server and the shoddy work of contractors hired by her family’s foundation to do reconstruction work in Haiti, and he spoke clearly and forcefully on the issue of abortion.
But throughout most of the 90-minute debate — the most substantive and policy-oriented of the three, thanks to the moderator, Fox News’ Chris Wallace — it was Clinton who was on the offensive.
Clinton jumped on Trump early, knocking him for having “choked” in his meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, when Trump failed to bring up his frequent promise that Mexico will pay to have a wall built along the U.S. border.
She hit Trump on his mysterious lack of outrage over the hacking of American government and political figures by what U.S. intelligence believes to be Russian hackers. “You encouraged espionage against our people,” she told Trump, referring to his comment in July that he hoped the Russian government would “find the 30,000 emails” that Clinton deleted from a private server she had installed at her home while she was secretary of state.
Clinton, who often struggles to connect with audiences, also showed genuine emotion at several points: when she compared her 30 years in public life to Trump’s, when she ran through his comments about women who have accused him of unwanted sexual advances and assault and when she responded to his refusal to accept the legitimacy of the U.S. election system.
Clinton noted that in the 1970s, she had been working at the Children’s Defense Fund, “taking on discrimination against African-American kids in schools. He was getting sued by the Justice Department for racial discrimination in his apartment buildings.” She ran through other examples and concluded by noting that “On the day when I was in the situation room monitoring the raid that brought Osama bin Laden to justice, [Trump] was hosting the ‘Celebrity Apprentice.’”
Trump replied simply: “I think I did a much better job. I built a massive company… worth many, many billions of dollars.”
When Wallace asked Trump why nine separate women would have made up stories about Trump touching them inappropriately, Trump simply said the stories were “debunked” and switched to talking about videos released this week by the conservative activist James O’Keefe, in which a Democratic operative named Scott Foval brags about having paid homeless people to disrupt Trump rallies.
Trump blamed violence at one particular rally in Chicago earlier this year on Clinton herself, despite the fact that there is no evidence that Foval ever interacted with the Clinton campaign, or that he even had any involvement with the Chicago rally unrest.
“She’s the one, and Obama, that caused the violence,” Trump said.
Clinton did not address the O’Keefe tapes, which have resulted in Foval being fired from the group Americans United for Change, and instead focused on Trump’s response over the past week or so to the women who have accused him of assaulting them.
Donald Trump listens to Hillary Clinton during the third presidential debate at UNLV in Las Vegas on Oct. 19, 2016. (Photo: Patrick Semansky/AP)
“He held a number of big rallies where he said that he could not possibly have done those things to those women because they were not attractive enough for them to be assaulted,” Clinton said.
Trump interjected: “I did not say that. I did not say that.”
Clinton continued: “He went on to say, ‘Look at her. I don’t think so.’ About another woman, he said, ‘That wouldn’t be my first choice,’” she said. “Donald thinks belittling women makes him bigger. He goes after their dignity, their self-worth, and I don’t think there is a woman anywhere who doesn’t know what that feels like.
“That’s who Donald is. I think it’s really up to all of us to demonstrate who we are and who our country is, and to stand up and be very clear about what we expect from our next president,” she said.
Trump’s response? “Nobody has more respect for women than I do. Nobody,” he said. Wallace had to hush the audience’s laughter.
Near the end of the debate, Trump, who is running behind by huge numbers with women of all ages and incomes, raised eyebrows when he interjected, after Clinton took a quick jab at him while she was talking about Social Security, that she was “such a nasty woman.”
And when Trump said he would not promise to accept the outcome of the election, he again attacked Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server, which he said was a “very, very serious crime.” Clinton noted that the Justice Department had found no reason to prosecute her — a decision some think was not well-founded — and focused on Trump’s remarks.
Clinton called Trump’s refusal to accept the American electoral system “horrifying.”
“We’ve been around for 240 years. We’ve had free and fair elections. We’ve accepted the outcomes when we may not have liked them. And that is what must be expected of anyone standing on a debate stage during a general election,” Clinton said.
Her voice rose a level as she said to Trump, “It just shows you’re not up to doing the job.”
“He is denigrating, he’s talking down our democracy. And I, for one, am appalled that somebody who is the nominee of one of our two major parties would take that kind of position,” Clinton said.
Barring some unforeseen chain of events, Clinton is on track to win the presidency, possibly in overwhelming fashion. On Wednesday night in Las Vegas, Trump surprised no one and made it painfully obvious that he is happy to take the party down with him. Clinton did something unexpected, demonstrating that she would not — at least for this one night — just bide her time and hope Trump can’t catch her.
If “Our Lives really Matter” Let’s Get Ready to Hit the Polls
The general election is here, and again, the American masses have a chance to use their votes as the tool to bargain
By Dr. Anthony Obi Ogbo
their communal interests. The process of democracy rightly accords power to the electorates in choosing leaders who represent their interests. Unfortunately, anytime this opportunity comes, my community, the African American community will blow away their own chances, either through a lack of participation or confusion over choice of priorities on sociopolitical matters.
Amidst surmounting societal concerns, it is undeniable that the criminal justice system is still hostile to this community. The recent squabble between the law enforcement community and the people of color, AKA, Black Lives Matter (BLM) is enough to provoke a collective involvement of Blacks in America in the ongoing campaign process.
Prevalently, the US locks up more of its citizens than any other country, and this has highlighted mass incarceration and criminal-justice reform as prominent issues on the presidential campaign trail. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School – a nonpartisan, law and public policy establishment, revealed that the U.S. has less than five percent of the world’s population, yet incarcerates nearly a quarter of the world’s prisoners.
With these startling revelation, it remains a habitual blunder, that communities would overlook the election seasons, then flock out to the streets to protest anytime they are violated by the justice system. This election is roughly two week away, and it would be crucial not just to look at candidates; who they allegedly slept with, or how many emails they supposedly deleted, but also assess them by who they really are; their party affiliations, and what they represent.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are the forerunning candidates whose party-political attachments, principles, and idiosyncrasies emit significant contrasts in most issues, but more especially the criminal justice system. For instance, Clinton believes that ex-felons should be allowed to vote, and advocates limited use of death penalty for heinous crimes. These are fundamentally a reflection of the liberal governance ideology. Trump in a contrast believes that restoring voting rights to ex-felons is bizarre; and advocates death penalty for convicted cop killers. Another terribly contrasting proposal by Trump is his support for privatization of the prison system. Clinton wants to end the use of private prisons for federal inmates.
Specifically for African Americans, this election is a lifetime opportunity to embrace the policies that would further create a platform in the judicial process and pave way for social transformation. If Blacks in America are really serious about how “Black Lives Matter”, they must all hit the polls to validate that liberty.
Besides the prisons system, one of the most fundamental legacies of the next president would be the constitutional power to nominate justices to the Supreme Court. The court is still undermanned after the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, and with two of its sitting justices older than 80, America now has an opportunity to elect a president who would shape the its ideological bearings. A Trump presidency would restore the status quo, and in fact move it further right; whereas Clinton would move it toward the left to benefit those voters disenfranchised by the justice system who would likely march the streets to agitate inequality or injustice.
Currently, the Obama administration has advanced criminal justice reform in crucial areas, including; commuting sentences of individuals still locked up under severe penalties and obsolete guidelines; a creation of presidential commission to study mass incarceration; elimination of federal financial subsidization of mass incarceration; and most importantly, proposing a ban on “the box” — the question that asks applicants to disclose whether they’ve been convicted of a crime — on applications for federal employment.
So, how would a Trump presidency consolidate these reforms? Just last week, President Barack Obama fired a warning that a Trump presidency would be a threat to democracy and undo eight years of progress; further he cautioned that “democracy itself” was on the ballot, not just the candidates. Obama may be right based on electioneering proposals being touted by Trump from the very beging of his campaign.
With less than three weeks left for this election, it is a choice, whether to embrace the Republican Party and dwell on the status quo or vote the Democratic Party where transformation possibilities are limitless. This election is not necessarily about Trump and Hillary, but about what they represent. The former represents sociopolitical doom through the most repressive approach, whereas the later represents a brighter future through economic opportunities and social fairness.
Specifically for African Americans, this election is a lifetime opportunity to embrace the policies that would further create a platform in the judicial process and pave way for social transformation. If Blacks in America are really serious about how “Black Lives Matter”, they must all hit the polls to validate that liberty.
♦ Anthony Obi Ogbo, Ph.D. is the editor of International Guardian, and the author of The Influence of Leadership.
Trump: ‘The shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for America the way I want to’
Trump unloaded on Ryan in a series of tweets on Tuesday, calling him “weak” and “ineffective.”
Donald Trump is lashing out at Republican leaders in the wake of the news that House Speaker Paul Ryan told his fellow House Republicans he could no longer defend the party’s nominee.
Trump unloaded on Ryan in a series of tweets on Tuesday, calling him “weak” and “ineffective.”
“Paul Ryan is focusing the next month on defeating Democrats,” Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck said in a statement. “And all Republicans running for office should probably do the same.”
The brash real estate mogul drew the ire of some current and former GOP leaders by bringing three of Bill Clinton’s accusers as his guests to Sunday’s presidential debate, and he appears to be continuing a scorched-earth strategy, suggesting Hillary Clinton would be in jail if he were president.
In a 2005 video tape published Friday by the Washington Post, Trump was caught on a hot mic bragging to then “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush that he could do anything he wanted to with women because of his celebrity status.
“I just kiss. I don’t even wait,” Trump said. “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the p****. You can do anything.”
The comments led to a cavalcade of Republicans — including Arizona Sen. John McCain — rescinding their endorsements of Donald Trump.
During a conference call Monday morning, Ryan said he would no longer defend Trump but would focus instead on down-ballot races.
Trump fired back on Twitter.
On Tuesday, Trump suggested the Democratic Party has been “far more loyal to each other” than the GOP has been to him.
