Victoria Ryan Archive

List Of ‘All the People, Places and Things Donald Trump Has Insulted on Twitter Since Declaring His Candidacy for President’

Monday’s print edition of The New York Times includes a double-page spread listing “All the People, Places and Things Donald Trump Has Insulted On Twitter Since Declaring His Candidacy for President.” In alphabetical order.

It is brilliant.

“The 2016 Election,” “Britain,” “CNN,” “The Daily Beast,” “European Leaders,” “Jeff Flake,” and “Germany,” to name just a few. For example, there are ten topics listed just under the A’s, 27 topics listed under the B’s, etc.

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Another Woman Born Before Women’s Suffrage Votes for Clinton

Estelle Schultz was born before women had the right to vote, and she’s hoping she will soon see the first woman president take office.

Schultz, a 98-year-old Rockville, Maryland, resident recently cast her vote for Hillary Clinton.

“I’m very thrilled to be able to be alive at this crucial election,” she told News4.

The great-grandmother said she never thought she would see the day a woman was so close to being voted into the White House. Schultz was born in 1918, two years before women across the United States got the vote in 1920.

“I think it’s the most exciting thing that can happen to women anywhere, anytime,” she said.

Schultz’s daughter and granddaughter started a website called I Waited 96 Years! that is collecting the stories of women in their 90s or older who are casting their votes for Clinton. As of Monday evening, the site had stories and photos from nearly 20 women.

“I am looking forward to the first female U.S. President. I believe Hillary will do an excellent job as president not because she is a woman but because she is most qualified,” a 102-year-old Arizona woman, Geraldine “Jerry” Emmett, is quoted as saying.

“I can’t say how proud I am to get to vote for her,” a 96-year-old Pennsylvania woman, Alice Siegel, is quoted as saying.

Schultz, a New York native, retired 20 years ago as an assistant schools superintendent in Compton, California. She reads the paper every day and keeps up with every twist and turn of the presidential race.

On one wall of her home hangs a photo of her as a 1-year-old, taken one year before women could vote.

“If you have the privilege, grab it,” she said.

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Salma Hayek: “Make America Great Again” Is Just Locker-Room Talk

Salma Hayek just proved she is a more polished politician than Donald Trump, needling the GOP nominee for his horrid treatment of women and Latinos in a conference call Monday.

The actress, who has become a surrogate for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, recounted a trip she took in 1998 to visit American troops overseas. As she approached a camp in Kosovo, she was surprised by how many soldiers were of Latin American descent. When she talked with the soldiers, she was struck by their commitment and pride.

“I got to know them a little bit — many, many of them,” Hayek said during a call organized by the Clinton campaign. “And some of them said to me they were willing to risk their life for a green card. And that they wanted people to know that they really cared about this country and they wanted to earn the right to be American,” she said. “They said they wanted people to know how much they loved this country.”

Hayek noted that many of the young soldiers who have died in past wars were Latinos. But today, instead of honoring these sacrifices and contributions, a presidential candidate is call them criminals, Hayek said.

“He calls us criminals, but who is the one who has a criminal lawsuit? He calls us rapists, but who has a lawsuit for raping a young girl?” Hayek asked. “He calls Hillary Clinton, ‘crooked Hillary,’ but last time I checked he has 3,500 lawsuits.”

Hayek waded into the ugly discourse surrounding this election when she gave a radio interview last week in Los Angeles detailing the time she met Trump and his subsequent pursuit of her despite her vocal disinterest. Trump, salty from being turned down, would later plant gossip in the National Enquirer suggesting the real estate mogul did not want to date Hayek because she was not tall enough for him, Hayek has said.

On Monday Hayek indicated that Trump did not necessarily treat her badly in these instances but insisted that these encounters demonstrate his overall selfishness and misogyny. She then asserted that Trump vows to be a politician who will do what he says yet Trump admits he has said certain things but then claims he has never done them and that his comments were just locker-room talk.

“I actually think that ‘Make American Great Again’ is also nothing but locker-room talk,” Hayek said, “because he has never done anything for Americans. His big claim is that he has created jobs for America. He didn’t do business to create jobs for America. He did it to make himself rich. That’s all he knows how to do,” Hayek said.

Hayek had nothing but high praise for Hillary Clinton. “She knows what it takes to make a change. She has been fighting for these changes for 30 years, in health, in education,” she said.

Before ending the conference call, Hayek emphasized the importance of this election for Latinos.

“This is a very important time in history, for all of us,” she said. “In honor of those [Hispanic] men and women who gave their life for this country and all of their mothers and all of the sacrifices we have made, we have got to vote. We have to say that we have a voice. We care for this place. We care for this land,” Hayek said.

In a conference call Monday, the actress explained her experience with Trump and why she thinks he is dangerous

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Trump Claims The First Amendment Has ‘Too Much Protection’ For Free Speech

Trump has recently threatened to sue the New York Times and the numerous women who say he has sexually assaulted them.

Trump is right that he would have a better chance of prevailing under English law where an allegedly defamatory statement is presumed to be false. There, it is up to the defendant in a libel suit to prove that their statements are true.

But even if U.S. law were more like England’s, Trump might still have difficulty in prevailing against his accusers or the New York Times.

Many of Trump’s accusers have witnesses who can corroborate their stories. The reporter for People Magazine who says she was assaulted by Trump, for example, has six different people supporting her version of events.

English defamation law was also amended in 2013 to add a “public interest” exemption. This change would potentially allow the New York Times to escape liability in England even if they were unable to definitely prove the truth of their reporting.

Despite his advocacy for restricting freedom of speech in the United States, Trump said his is a “tremendous believer of the freedom of the press.”

“Nobody believes it strong than me,” Trump added.

If Donald Trump is president, he’d like to make some changes to the First Amendment.

In an interview with WFOR, CBS’ Miami affiliate, Trump was asked if he believes the First Amendment provides “too much protection.”

Trump answered in the affirmative, saying he’d like to change the laws to make it easier to sue media companies. Trump lamented that, under current law, “our press is allowed to say whatever they want.”

He recommended moving to a system like in England where someone who sues a media company has “a good chance of winning.”

“Our press is allowed to say whatever they want.”

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Putin Plans To Fracture The West

After Putin’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 caught the United States off guard, Western observers have since struggled to understand Russian strategic decision-making. The apparent disconnect between Russia’s strategic gains and economic costs in theaters such as Ukraine and Syria leaves more questions than answers about “what Putin wants,” and how he perceives Russia’s interests. Alarmed by this uncertainty, a growing chorus of influential voices has warned that unless NATO shores up its land and maritime capabilities in Europe, it risks inadvertently inviting Russia to make a land-grab of NATO’s eastern territory. While NATO must prepare for such a scenario and reassure nervous eastern allies, Putin is probably not looking to rebuild Russia’s imperial frontiers or start a war with the United States, nor is he interested in or capable of reestablishing Russia as a global power like the Soviet Union was. Most analyses about “what Putin wants” miss the mark. Putin realizes that in an era when Russia’s internal challenges dramatically limit its ability to project power, Russia’s security depends not on rolling tanks across the borders of the NATO alliance, but instead on fracturing the West and paralyzing decision-making among Western leaders. Russia’s apparent success in exploiting these fissures within the Alliance is thus the greatest threat the United States and its NATO allies face from Moscow.

A more difficult question to answer, however, centers around why exactly Putin has used this strategy and plunged Russia’s relationship with the West into the worst crisis since the Cold War. Part of the consensus seems to be that Putin is resentful of Russia’s fall from global power and that he craves respect from the United States. Others blame the United States for stoking Russian insecurity by expanding NATO eastward to Russia’s western border. Still others focus on the dynamics of Russia’s internal political landscape, stressing that Putin’s ability to sustain his grip on power depends on promoting an intense nationalistic mentality amongst Russians. In reality, Putin is probably motivated by a combination of all these factors. What is clear, however, is that Russia is intent on honing sophisticated capabilities in the cyber and information domains to sew division in the West and fracture the unity of the transatlantic alliance.

How exactly does Russia carry out its policy of fracturing the West? A new report from CSIS on the Kremlin’s influence in Central and Eastern Europe explains that Russia seeks to advance its geostrategic objectives in part by “weakening the internal cohesion of societies and strengthening the perception of the dysfunction” of the West. By shaping the decision-making apparatus of certain countries through the exploitation of weak state institutions and the identification of allies sympathetic to Russian interests, Moscow believes it achieves more than it could through traditional military campaigns, and at much lower cost. Putin has taken this well-known playbook, which includes disinformation campaigns designed to discredit Western institutions and sew doubts about official narratives of Russian behavior, and found new ways to apply it in the West. Recently, footprints of this approach can be seen throughout the United States, Europe, and the Middle East

In the United States, for instance, Russia’s intelligence services hacked the Democratic National Committee’s servers and leaked embarrassing emails between high-level officials to Wikileaks. The Kremlin did not pursue this strategy because it thinks it can help propel Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, but rather thought that by exposing the inner-workings of the American political system that some voters already view as corrupt, it could sew more discontent among Americans, further discredit Western democratic institutions abroad, and politically weaken Clinton. A weakened U.S. administration would find itself distracted during its early days in office and unable to react decisively to Russian aggression in eastern Europe and elsewhere.

Putin’s intervention in the Donbas was also not intended to be a precursor to large-scale military intervention in eastern Europe. Russia solved the perceived problem of Ukraine’s integration into Western institutions not just by fomenting a protracted conflict in its east, but also by exposing deep-seated divisions in the transatlantic community about how to respond to Russian policy. Today, despite outward statements of unity, EU member states still find themselves at odds with one another over new sanctions against Russia. NATO’s capabilities, though improving, have suffered years of underinvestment by many of America’s European allies, and alarming public opinion polls expose deep ambivalence among Europeans for participating in NATO-led campaigns to defend their eastern allies.

The Middle East is another theater where Russian meddling has sewn disunity and division. Since Russia entered the conflict in Syria in September 2015, the Obama administration has been forced to balance its interest in ending the conflict on acceptable terms with the desire to avoid direct military confrontation with Russian military assets and personnel. The collapse of ceasefire talks with Russia in October has forced the United States to confront the uncomfortable reality that although a ceasefire must still involve some form of arrangement with Russia given Moscow’s interests in the conflict, Putin sees no need to hurry the process along. Russian disinformation efforts already blur the full extent of Russia’s crimes in Syria, and as long as Putin continues to prop up the Assad Regime and keep America at bay, he considers Russia’s interests safe.

The bottom line is that by creating cracks in Western unity, Putin believes he can achieve his aim of continued relevance at a time when Russian economic, demographic, and political power is on the decline. Fomenting chaos inhibits the West’s ability to present a united front, and thus provides an artificial boost to Russian power and ability to shape global events. What has also become clear is that relations between Russia and the West are not poised to improve any time soon. Although the United States and Europe must keep diplomatic channels open with the goal of deescalating tensions and avoiding further clashes, the West must understand that the true goal of Russia’s current strategy is to deceive Western interlocutors, deflect attention from its aggression, and undermine the cohesion of Western institutions. Even if Putin does not aim to instigate additional land-grabs or pursue war with NATO, this does not mean that Russia is not dangerous. In fact, through the use of hybrid rather than conventional tactics, Putin has proven that he can create just as much chaos as by sending an armed battalion into NATO territory. By waging underhanded forms of aggression, recent history has shown he can count on a Western response that underestimates Russia’s resolve to assert its interests.

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High-Profile Attorneys Offer To Represent Trump Accusers Free Of Charge

“Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign,” Trump claimed during a speech in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on Saturday. “Total fabrication. The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”

Trump has also threatened to sue publications such as the New York Times for publishing the accusations, which is their right because of the First Amendment.

So whether Trump becomes president or not, his first act after the election will be to file lawsuits against those who have accused him of sexual assault. That is, if he has the balls to actually do it.

But if he does, some of America’s best lawyers are stepping up to the plate to represent Trump’s accusers free of charge.

Leading the effort is Ted Boutrous of the law firm Gibson Dunn.

I vow to take this case pro bono if @realDonaldTrump brings it.


If Donald Trump follows through on his threat to sue the women who have accused him of sexual assault, the nation’s top lawyers are ready to jump to their defense pro bono.


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Top Hispanic Republican in Texas Endorses Hillary

A leading Hispanic Republican in Texas says he has decided to vote for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Lionel Sosa, a veteran ad maker from San Antonio, told The Texas Tribune on Monday he will cast his ballot for Clinton to send a “clear statement” against Republican nominee Donald Trump’s candidacy.

“I want to make sure that I do everything I can to see that Trump doesn’t get elected,” said Sosa, who has worked for Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. “I’m doing this because I don’t think he’s a good representative of the Republican Party. It’s not the Republican Party I know.”

Sosa announced in June that he was leaving the GOP over Trump, writing in a San Antonio Express-News op-ed that Trump’s divisive candidacy left him with no choice. Two months later, Sosa joined the campaign of Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson, though Sosa said Monday that move did not amount to a strong enough rebuke of Trump.

“If I vote for Gary Johnson, it’s not enough of a statement,” said Sosa, who had been helping Johnson on a volunteer basis. “I must make a statement that Donald Trump cannot win.”

Sosa’s decision to vote for Clinton comes as the presidential race looks unusually tight in reliably red Texas. She has trailed Trump by 4 points or less in the last three public polls released in the Lone Star State.

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Poll Shows Clinton Pulling Away From Trump In Swing State

Hillary Clinton is pulling away from Donald Trump in Nevada with early voting underway, according to a poll commissioned by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, has a 7-point lead over GOP nominee Donald Trump, 48 percent to 41 percent.

Libertarian Gary Johnson has 6 percent support. Four percent of voters are undecided and 1 percent support someone else or no candidate.

The poll, conducted by Bendixen & Amandi International, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. The firm interviewed 800 likely voters after Clinton and Trump squared off in Las Vegas Wednesday in the third and final presidential debate. The interviews were conducted between Thursday and Sunday in English and Spanish.

The poll shows growing momentum for Clinton’s campaign. In a late September Review-Journal poll of voters, Clinton had a 1-point lead over Trump.

In that initial poll, Clinton had 45 percent of support, while Trump had 44 percent, putting the race within the margin of error.

Since the September poll, Trump’s campaign has faced fallout from a Washington Post report, complete with a videotape, that showed him engaging in a lewd conversation in 2005 about groping women.

Trump initially called the conversation “locker-room banter” and subsequently apologized. Since the tape’s release, women have come forward with allegations that Trump made inappropriate and unwanted sexual advances toward them. Trump has denied all of the allegations.

“The debates helped Hillary Clinton,” said Fernand Amandi, principal at Bendixen & Amandi International. “She’s now opened up a significant lead over Donald Trump in a race that was a statistical tie. She’s clearly benefiting from her performance in the debates as voters in the final stretch take one, final look.”

FAVORABILITY NUMBERS CHANGE

In addition to the debates, there’s also the backlash Trump has faced from the tape of his 2005 conversation, while Clinton’s campaign has weathered WikiLeaks revelations, he said, referencing the release of hacked emails that have detailed some of the inner workings of Clinton’s campaign.

Trump’s favorability has taken a hit, too. Thirty-eight percent of surveyed voters had a very or somewhat favorable opinion of Trump, down from 42 percent in September. Meanwhile, 59 percent had a somewhat or very unfavorable opinion of Trump, an increase from 56 percent in September.

Clinton’s favorability ratings have trended upward. Fifty percent of voters had a very or somewhat favorable opinion of Clinton, up from 48 percent in September. Forty-eight percent had a somewhat or very unfavorable opinion, a decrease from 51 percent in September.

In Nevada, Trump’s favorability is lowest in Clark County, where about 70 percent of the state’s population lives. Thirty-two percent of Clark County voters had a favorable opinion of him and 64 percent had an unfavorable opinion. Elsewhere in Nevada, it’s a different story. Fifty-one percent of Nevada voters surveyed outside Clark County have a favorable opinion of Trump, and 47 percent have an unfavorable opinion.

For Clinton, her strength is in Clark County, where 58 percent of voters surveyed had a favorable opinion and 41 percent were unfavorable. In the rest of Nevada, just 33 percent of voters surveyed had a favorable opinion of Clinton and 64 percent of voters indicated an unfavorable opinion.

Support for the two candidates also varies widely among voters 65 and older. For Trump, 51 percent of older voters have a favorable opinion of him, with 46 percent unfavorable. For Clinton, 41 percent of older voters have a favorable opinion and 58 percent of voters have an unfavorable opinion.

Clinton has the support of a majority of voters surveyed in all other age groups. Trump’s favorability lags in those same age groups, with 25 percent support among voters from 18 to 34 years old; 35 percent support among voters 35 to 49 years old; and 37 percent support among 50- to 64-year-old voters.

NEVADANS SPEAK OUT

Jonathan Tolley of Las Vegas is an undecided voter. The 20-year-old sells tickets for shows on the Strip and said he has issues with both candidates.

Trump would cause gridlock and he has trouble trusting Clinton, he said, adding he had originally supported U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who was seeking the Democratic nomination.

“It’s kind of an understatement to be somewhat disappointed in the candidates,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that I’m any less excited to vote. It doesn’t mean that I’m any less involved politically. If anything, this election, and the ridiculousness, will probably make me more involved.”

Michelle Karony, a legal assistant from Las Vegas, is backing Clinton. She said Clinton has the right experience for the job, pointing particularly to her foreign policy and national security experience as secretary of state. Clinton also will aid equality for women, including equal pay, she said.

Howard Taylor, a 61-year-old semi-retired trucker and general contractor from Sparks, said he has decided “who I’m not going to support — Hillary.” Taylor said he considers Clinton “untrustworthy,” and is backing Trump.

“I like the fact that he’s a businessman and he’s, contrary to what everybody says, he’s very honest in his statements,” Taylor said.

Joe Ellis, a 25-year-old Realtor in North Las Vegas, is supporting the Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson. Johnson’s appeal is that he believes government should have a “lowly role” and be “fiscally conservative,” Ellis said.

Bendixen & Amandi International, based in Miami, has done projects for clients including The Washington Post, Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and President Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns.

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Donald’s Former Ghostwriter Exposes GOP Nominee’s ‘200-Word Vocabulary’

“He has the smallest vocabulary of any person who has ever run for any kind of office, much less president ― how about county commissioner?” Tony Schwartz said Sunday during an appearance with MSNBC’s Joy-Ann Reid.

Schwartz was the ghostwriter for Trump’s 1987 best-selling The Art of the Deal, and has said he wrote “every word” despite being listed as a co-author. Schwartz has said he worries that the book helped create a falsely positive impression of Trump, so the writer started speaking out against the candidate as his campaign picked up steam.

Schwartz said Trump’s vocabulary is tiny ― evidenced by how he ad-libs his speeches with phrases like “believe me.”

“It’s a 200-word vocabulary, so as soon he gets beyond that, you know that he’s reading someone else’s words,” Schwartz said. He theorized that Trump probably doesn’t familiarize himself with prepared remarks before delivering them because of his “incredibly short attention span.”

While most candidates speak at a sixth- to eighth-grade level, Trump “lags behind others” when it comes to vocabulary and grammar, according to a March analysis by Carnegie Mellon University.

Abraham Lincoln’s grammar sets the bar with an 11th-grade level, while former President George W. Bush’s fifth-grade grammar ranked even lower than Trump’s (although Bush’s vocabulary rates much higher).

Schwartz, who spent 18 months working closely with Trump in the 1980s, noted that the GOP nominee’s limited vocabulary is reflected by his policy positions: The candidate began his run with populist rhetoric, but his current agenda favors the ultra-wealthy.

“I don’t think he knows the word ‘irony,’” Schwartz said. “Irony, nuance, subtlety … those aren’t part of that small vocabulary.”

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Trump Employee Suing for Extreme Anti-Gay Harassment

We already know that a culture of sexual harassment poisoned other Trump properties, that many women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct, and that Trump himself has boasted of committing criminal sexual assault. Andres’ lawsuit may not tie directly back to Trump himself, but it does confirm that Trump’s misogynistic beliefs and lax attitudes toward harassment permeate his properties from the top down. The discrimination Andres allegedly suffered may be horrific and shocking. But at this point, we should not be surprised that it occurred—and was allowed to spiral out of control—in a workplace owned by Trump.

These horrors are alleged in a lawsuit that Andres filed for harassment and discrimination in New Jersey state court. (The case is currently in court-mandated mediation.) But the allegations don’t end there. Rather, Andres’ suit documents a stunning negligence of the persistent harassment by management at the Trump National Golf Club—negligence that enabled further discrimination and ultimately curdled into retaliation when Andres dared to speak out. His complaint is an indictment of the culture of unlawful harassment fostered at one of Trump’s prized properties, a culture quite similar to the atmosphere of sexual harassment that purportedly pervaded some of Trump’s other workplaces.

As Andres’ suit documents, his direct supervisor actually witnessed several incidents of name-calling and physical abuse. Andres also lodged several formal complaints with this supervisor regarding his hostile work environment. The supervisor did nothing to ameliorate the situation. Following his hospitalization for the assault and battery he suffered, Andres spoke to one of the golf course’s managers. The manager said he would take care of the problem. But when Andres asked for information about his attackers for a police report he planned to file, the manager refused. Andres filed the police report anyway and informed management that he no longer felt safe going to work. Management promptly fired him.

Andres is now suing Trump National Golf Club under New Jersey’s robust nondiscrimination law, alleging that he experienced sexual orientation harassment, a hostile work environment based on sexual orientation, discrimination based on sexual orientation, and unlawful retaliation. He is also suing for assault and battery. He argues that the club is liable “for the acts constituting hostile work environment” and “sexual orientation harassment” because it “failed to properly address” his complaints and “failed to implement any preventative or remedial measures to protect against unlawful harassment” and discrimination. Andres then lists a variety of training programs and policies recognized by the courts as effective tools for combatting discrimination.

Rather than implementing these policies, Andres argues, the club displayed “egregious” and “willful indifference” to his ceaseless homophobic harassment, an indifference that allowed the mistreatment to escalate dangerously. Instead of taking “proper corrective action,” the club terminated Andres’ employment “as a result of his complaints of workplace harassment and discrimination”—unlawful retaliation under New Jersey law. Andres also claims that the club is vicariously liable for the assault and battery he suffered at the hands of the club’s employees.

These are deeply alarming charges. Trump’s attorneys deny almost all of them; they do admit that Andres’ co-workers did, indeed, throw rocks at him. As a defense, Trump’s attorneys attempt to blame Andres, arguing that his claim is barred by the Doctrine of Unclean Hands. That means Andres himself is “guilty of inequitable conduct” and is “a wrongdoer with respect to” his own lawsuit—in other words, that Andres somehow fostered or provoked the discrimination against him, or committed some other serious wrongdoing. It is difficult to imagine a more offensive response to a discrimination suit. Judging from legal filings, Trump’s attorneys are not merely gaslighting Andres; they are blaming him for his own harassment.

Shortly after Eleazar Andres took a job as a maintenance worker at New Jersey’s Trump National Golf Club in 2014, his life became a living hell. When he told his co-workers that he was gay, Andres became the target of intense homophobic harassment. His co-workers routinely called him “maricón,” “faggot,” and “fag,” and regularly threw rocks and golf balls at him. One of his harassers threw a rock at his head so hard that it sent him to the hospital.

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