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‘Running for VP’: Haley Hammered Over Trump Rape Case Comment

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Despite currently holding second-place in the polls and coming in a close third in the Iowa Republican Caucuses Monday night, former Trump UN Ambassador Nikki Haley appears to have shifted gears. Critics are citing remarks she made Tuesday that, some suggest, show she may be trying to run for vice president.

“You’re the only woman in this race,” CNN’s Dana Bash reminded Haley in a face-to-face interview. “How do you feel about your party’s frontrunner being held liable for sexual abuse?”

Bash was speaking about the latest E. Jean Carroll defamation and sexual abuse case, which is now in the penalty phase. Carroll is suing Trump for $10 million. Jurors were selected Tuesday.

“I mean, first of all, I haven’t paid attention to his cases and I’m not a lawyer,” replied Haley. “All I know is that he’s innocent until proven guilty, and when he’s proven guilty and sitting in a courtroom that’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

READ MORE: Brown Bags and Ballots: Viral Videos Capture Chaotic Iowa Caucus System

“You’ve got investigations on Trump and Biden,” Haley continued. The only law enforcement investigation into President Joe Biden is his handling of classified documents from years ago.

Haley went on to say that some of the cases against Donald Trump, which include 91 criminal charges in four cases across three jurisdictions, “have been political.” Grand juries indicted Trump in all those cases.

Haley also said Trump “needs to pay the price” if he’s “found guilty,” ignoring that the two sexual abuse/defamation cases brought by E. Jean Carroll are civil, not criminal cases.

Critics lashed out at the former South Carolina governor.

“He was found by a jury to have engaged in sexual assault and defamation and is legally barred from contesting those findings,” served up attorney George Conway.

“Nikki Haley is running for vice president. Maybe she always was,” noted former Chicago Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob.

READ MORE: Trump Again Appears to Defame E. Jean Carroll as Penalty Phase of Trial Begins: Expert

Perhaps she should take all of 3 minutes and familiarize herself with a very simple, pertinent, and widely reported story about the literal leader of her own party and the fact that a judge found him liable for sexual abuse,” suggested political commentator and MSNBC contributor Brian Tyler Cohen.

“She’s utterly ridiculous! Women will remember this fall IF she is the GOP nominee or the VP choice. Disgraceful! One day her grandchildren will ask her how the hell she could not clearly answer a direct question about sexual assault of a woman! I mean come on #NikkiHaley,” wrote journalist and former Republican Sophia A. Nelson.

Nelson in 2017 penned a piece for Politico, “What’s Trump’s Problem With Black Women?” In it, she writes, “I am a rarity. For over 20 years I was an active black female Republican. I interned for a U.S. senator and for the Republican National Committee. I worked for the first female Republican governor of New Jersey, for the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee and on George W. Bush’s legal response team during his 2004 campaign. At 28, I was even nominated to run for Congress.”

Award-winning journalist and journalism professor Ira Chinoy offered this insight:

“I’ll translate: ‘I don’t consume any news, I think common sense is overrated, and I don’t think personal courage has any place in politics.’ Also, that ‘I’m not a lawyer thing?’ Not such a good pose for someone who wants to lead a cabinet that includes the Department of Justice.”

Washington Monthly politics editor Bill Scher served up some snark: “Nikki Haley could never become a doctor because she can’t find the jugular.”

READ MORE: Indiana GOP Targets LGBTQ Hoosiers With Sweeping Rewrite of State Laws

Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan wrote, “She is desperate to be his VP. Especially post Iowa.”

Veteran journalist John Harwood called her remarks “the ‘i haven’t read the tweet’ answer, only for a sexual assault case.”

Sahil Kapur, NBC News senior national political reporter, added that Haley, “Memorized the oppo file on Ron DeSantis, down to the esoteric details, but hasn’t ‘paid attention to’ the frontrunner for the nomination being found liable by a jury for sexual abuse. Doesn’t have an opinion on it.”

“Haley is a total coward & incapable of genuine leadership,” critiqued professor of political science and history Daniel Kurz.

MSNBC legal contributor and anchor Katie Phang declared, “She’s so spineless.”

Watch Haley’s remarks below or at this link.

 

 

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Trump Wails His Judge Was Appointed by ‘Democrat Politicians’ – That’s False

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During one of several rants outside the courtroom Monday during his New York trial for alleged criminal business records falsification, election interference, and “hush money,” Donald Trump repeatedly complained falsely that the judge overseeing the case was appointed by “Democrat politicians.”

Trump is well-acquainted with New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan.

Merchan was the judge who presided over the trial of Trump’s former Chief Financial Officer, Allan Weisselberg, who was convicted. He also presided over the fraud and money-laundering trial of former Trump 2016 campaign CEO and senior White House counselor Steve Bannon.

“We have a corrupt judge, and we have a judge who’s highly-conflicted,” Trump, nearly yelling, told reporters Monday afternoon. “And he’s keeping me from campaigning. He’s an appointed, New York judge, he’s appointed.”

READ MORE: ‘He Wasn’t Thinking About Melania’: Cohen Reveals Trump’s Fears in ‘Hush Money’ Testimony

“You know who appointed him? Democrat politicians. He’s appointed.”

Trump repeated his baseless claims Merchan is “corrupt” and “conflicted,” adding, “he ought to let us go out and campaign and get rid of this scam.”

Trump is incorrect about Judge Merchan’s background: he was not appointed by “Democrat politicians.”

In 2006, Republican New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed Merchan to his first judicial post, to the New York City Family Court. In 2009, Chief Administrative Judge Ann Pfau appointed Merchan as Acting Justice to the Supreme Court of New York. Pfau was appointed to her first judicial post by Republican New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

READ MORE: Johnson Would Contest 2024 Election Results Under the Same ‘Circumstances’

Trump also appeared to suggest appointed judges are somehow suspect – despite frequently bragging that he himself appointed three justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, not to mention 234 judges in total he appointed to the federal bench.

Some legal experts believe a system where judges are appointed rather than elected serves justice better.

“The quality of justice suffers when politics invades the judicial sphere, casting doubt on the impartiality of case outcomes and eroding public confidence in our nation’s system of justice,” an article at the American Bar Association reads.

Watch Trump below or at this link.

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‘He Wasn’t Thinking About Melania’: Cohen Reveals Trump’s Fears in ‘Hush Money’ Testimony

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Former Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen in damning testimony Monday told jurors about Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s fears in 2016 when the “Access Hollywood” tape dropped, and what his real concerns were about the bombshell audio that nearly ended his nascent political career.

Cohen revealed that in 2015 when the then-real estate magnate announced he was running for president, Trump told him, “Be prepared. There’s going to be a lot of women coming forward,” according to Courthouse News.

Cohen told jurors that in 2016 “he caught wind of the fact that adult film star Stormy Daniels was shopping her story that she had sex with Trump a decade prior. Cohen said that he was concerned about the impact it could have on Trump’s presidential campaign, particularly after the release of the infamous Access Hollywood tape.”

“At this time, Mr. Trump was polling very, very low with women,” Cohen testified, adding that Trump “said to me, ‘This is a disaster.’”

READ MORE: ‘Grave Danger’: Trump’s ‘Raw Display’ of Power at Court Alarms Conservative

“‘Women will hate me. Guys, they may think it’s cool. But this is going to be a disaster for the campaign.’”

Cohen also revealed from the witness stand that he had asked Trump how his wife, Melania Trump, was taking the news about Stormy Daniels, the adult film star who Trump allegedly paid hush money to then falsified his business records to hide the transactions in an effort to influence the election, according to prosecutors.

“How long do you think I’ll be on the market for? Not long,” Trump told Cohen, according to his former attorney.

“He wasn’t thinking about Melania,” Cohen said. “This was all about the campaign.”

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins called that a “Remarkable moment.”

The Daily Mail adds, “Asked if Trump was angry during this frantic period of damage control that could surface the Stormy Daniels story, Cohen said ‘Yes. Because there was a negative story that could impact the campaign as a result of women.’ ”

Watch MSNBC’s report below or at this link.

READ MORE: Johnson Would Contest 2024 Election Results Under the Same ‘Circumstances’

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‘On Day One’: Trump Vows to End Protections for LGBTQ Students

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Donald Trump says the day he enters the Oval Office for a second term he will end anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ students implemented by the Biden administration.

Serving up a scattershot series of complaints with the hosts from the Philadelphia-based right-wing talk radio show “Kayal and Company” on Friday, Trump compared LGBTQ+ protections to a “cuckoo’s nest.”

“A lot of things don’t make sense, having to do with what they’re doing, from the border to all of the men playing in women’s sports. I mean, the world is like a cuckoo’s nest right now with what they do,” Trump declared.

One of the hosts alleged President Joe Biden has engaged in “manipulation” of Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools that receive federal funding. She claimed parents now have to “pinch some pennies” to be able to afford private Christian schools for their children, to remove them from the enhancements that go into effect this summer.

“Many schools are grappling with what they’re going to do,” she said, “because as of August 1, as you know, because of Biden’s manipulation of Title IX, these kids, the school boards, have no choice, they’re meeting right now they, many of them perplexed, and they don’t know what to do, Mr. President, because they’re so upset over this that at August 1 a biological boy can change in a locker room.”

READ MORE: ‘Rejection of Trump’: 1 in 5 Indiana GOP Voters Just Cast Their Ballot for Nikki Haley

Trump replied, “It’s crazy. Crazy.”

“We’re going to end it on day one,” Trump vowed. “We’re going to change it on day one. It’s going to be changed. We’re going to end it. That’s right.”

“The whole thing is crazy. Look, it’s like men playing in women’s sports. It’s like open borders for the world to come in. Send all their prisoners. We’ll take as many as you can give us. Send all their people from mental institutions.”

“We’ll get that changed. Tell your people not to worry about it. It’ll be signed on day one. It will be terminated,” Trump promised, vowing to end the LGBTQ+ protections which include protections for sexual orientation and gender identity.

On his first day in office, President Biden implemented “the most far-reaching of any federal protections yet” for LGBTQ+ people, according to NPR.

In an explainer on the new expanded rules, Ms. Magazine reports “The 2024 regulations prohibit discrimination not only on the basis of sex, but also on the basis of sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”

According to GLAAD, which is tracking “the Biden administration’s executive orders, legislative support, speeches and nominations that affect LGBTQ people and rights,” President Biden has made 337 “moves” in 1206 days.

Listen to a short clip below or at this link.

READ MORE: Bannon Will Be ‘Going to Prison’ After Criminal Contempt Conviction Upheld, Experts Predict

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