It isn’t a case of the Democrats now going off soul searching, it case of total revamp from top to bottom after Trump’s win last Tuesday. The Amazing Democrats’ advice very early on to the Clinton Campaign (and some of those comments were posted on our social media platforms as far back as the late summer of 2015) went unheard unlike when we worked for the Obama/Biden campaign in 2012. It is time DNC to fire all your overpaid pollsters (who got it so wrong), consultants and the like. The DNC should of known in their hearts of hearts that after Bernie Sanders won twenty-two states with so little money against Hillary Clinton, their candidate of choice would be in serious trouble if the Republicans got a candidate who could storm the mainstream and social media which Trump did and of course got a bit of luck along the way with that first letter released by the FBI Director that certainly damaged Hillary in early voting and gave a huge boast for Trump with his base. Yes, a lot of questions will be asked as to how the FBI were allowed to influence an election so openly. But this was far from the only reason Hillary lost even if the DNC die hards believe it to be so. The DNC and Democrats have lost their way and have been now for a long time. Their obsession only seems to be with fundraising not the core principles of what the party was founded on, Trump was able to tap into that huge hole in the DNC. It was a party that once cared for the low income, the homeless, our veterans, the poor people of America and not the massive billions of dollars in fundraising which was totally wasted trying to take Trump down. Just think today how many homeless people that billion of dollars plus would do to help house the homeless crisis in our major cities which should have been a top issue for Hillary.
Hillary campaign interviewed myself and members of The Amazing Democrats, for the record we call ourselves The Amazing Democrats as we not die hard Democrats, we wouldn’t have followed Hillary in to the fires of hell if she was wrong and we wouldn’t be silent either even if it meant we were fired from the campaign, that’s the way worked in the Obama/Biden 2012 reelection campaign and we were amazed how we survived not to be fired (nearly maybe once or twice when we really overstepped our mark and criticized some of the President’s polices publicly). The interviewing process went back as far as January 2016 to join her campaign. We were subjected to rounds and rounds of interviews, back ground checks, etc. Months would go by and we heard nothing and then it would start all over again. It was by late August this Editor got interviewed for the sixth time, more back ground checks and then was offered four important positions in four different swing states and one of this offers came directly from the DNC. All this was paid employment and not volunteer work. That last weekend in August for me was were I suffered so much turmoil as I had to give them a decision by the following Monday. It meant dropping everything in my life and getting on a plane to Pennsylvania. What was most troubling in my mind was I could sense there was panic setting in for the Democrats and Hillary’s campaign. I didn’t sleep that weekend. I went back to the old formula that the Obama campaign thought me and even though I didn’t have access to data like we did when worked for Obama, never the less, I ran the data all weekend long. It is a long and laborious process that you can see today that both the pollsters and media don’t do, why? Maybe they just are too lazy to do it, who knows? You have to run every state’s county’s data county by county, you have then figure in the data available from both the candidates’ primary wins or loses, a lot of mathematics but in the end you get a somewhat overview, be it very rough. Also you have to take into account that I had been tracking the swing states every week since both primaries ended last year. Not good for Hillary and her team I could see, in fact the Wednesday before the election I was gloomy, I could predict Trump was going to win Ohio by three percent (he won by five percent so I was only out by two percent) and as you know, no Presidential candidate can take their place in The White House if they don’t win Ohio. With all this, it was the hardiest email I ever sent, declining the positions to work on the Hillary Clinton campaign.
As we move into the Trump Presidency, it’s going to be a very dark lonely path for the Democrats. Yes, there is the mid-terms in 2018, but if the DNC works as it has for the last twenty years, they are a very slow climb back up on Capitol Hill as remember this Presidential election in 2016 had the lowest turn out of voters in years, which helped Trump but destroyed Hillary’s chances of winning, nearly 50% of the electorate didn’t bother to vote and historically mid-term voting has a very low voter turn-out. Also if Trump makes any small success of his first term and as everything Trump touches turns to gold, whether you like his manner and process or not and as it very hard to unseat a sitting President, as we all know, Trump going for a second term, then the DNC and Democrats could be looking at the wildness for next eight years at least, that’s 2024, a very depressing thought I know, but maybe a fact unless the DNC make radically chances and that starts today, not six months before the 2018 mid-terms.
In the 2006 mid-terms under George W. Bush, the Republicans got wiped out in the House and the Senate. All the media said at that time that Republican Party need to reinvent itself and stop been the “party of no”. Did they? Of course not, in fact under Obama as President and because of their hatred of him, they became the “party of no, no, no” on every bill he sent to the House and Senate. Now look where they are ten years later. The power of Washington again with the Democrats hanging onto their coattails and the sad thing is, Trump gets to pick the next Supreme Court justice. If he gets two terms, who knows, with three more justices ready for retirement in the next few years, he might even hit the golden jackpot of nominating four Supreme Court justices, a very scary thought. The Democrats however can’t do as the Republicans did in 2006, which was nothing to change their image and beliefs but the Democrats aren’t so lucky. If the DNC go back to business as usual, it will be a very dark long road for the Democrats back to the shining lights of The White House. It is simply the base. The Republican base and the Democrat base is so so much different and as Trump said decades ago when he was a registered Democrat, pro-choice and donated a lot of money to Bill Clinton’s Presidential campaigns: “If I was to run as President, I would run as a Republican as their voters as so dumb and easy to fool, I would lie and lie to them until I got numbers”. That’s all he had to do for this Presidential campaign and he is the winner today not Hillary Clinton.
Which brings what fundamentally went south very early on in the Hillary Clinton campaign:
1. NEVER EVER underestimate your opponent.
2. If he/she gets down in the dirt, you go down there with them. Hillary taking the high road was her downfall as political correctness (PC) means nothing anymore in the world of social media as we saw with Trump, the King of Twitter and Obama/Biden in 2008 as the King of Facebook. PC has gone way too far in the US and the rest of the world and Trump, no matter what you think, turned PC on it’s head in this presidential election and as he said on 60 Minutes last night, “it was nasty, very nasty but I am the one sitting here today talking to you and not them”. In fact 2020 and 2024 will be so so much nastier. Rumors were that Trump using his own money, paid pockets of supporters all over America to flood the internet with lies about Hillary and Bill Clinton and the secret? They could never be traced back to him or his campaign. Why didn’t the Hillary Clinton campaign do the same with the rumors about Trump’s ties to the Mafia? Why was this never floated all over the internet? PC I guess but he won and Clinton lost. The new trend now with Presidential campaigns as Trump has lowered the bar, is to win 2020 or 2024 the candidates from both parties to win, will have to get down in the mud and get dirty. Sad? Of course but no cares about the loser, they only care about the winner.
3. Dump the negative ads. One billion dollars was such a waste of money by the Clinton campaign and Trump barely spent a faction of that. We kept telling the Obama/Biden campaign and the DNC in 2012, negative ads don’t work anymore and only turn all the voters off. Pity they didn’t listen.
The Amazing Democrats are not all about criticizing without offering the DNC suggestions for the road forward:
1. Fire all your overpaid pollsters, consultants, lobbyists, etc..
2. Allow the progressive members of the party to take over. (I do not mean the loony left), members who understand the issues of the day to day worries of the lower income Americans (who sadly are too many), the homeless crisis in our cities all over America, our veterans living on our streets.
3. Get back to what a community organizer really is. I used get so annoy with new volunteers who joined our team who tried to tell the person forcefully on the other side of the phone why they should vote for Obama or donate to Obama’s campaign and the DNC. A community organizer’s job is to listen and listen well and then send what they hear up the line and hope they are listening otherwise you get a result like Tuesday’s Presidential elections.
4. As the advice to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, get off the negative ads obsession (turns all voters off).
5. And please with every email you sent, stop looking for donations all the time. It makes us feel you don’t care about anything but money and donations which we know to be true.
6. Find the soul of the Democrat Party again of FDR and John F. Kennedy.
7. And finally, listen. Never stop listening to those on the ground as we are the ones who can make the difference from the Democrats winning or losing an election.
Here is to the 2018 mid-terms, see you then and to 2020 Presidential election. Keep the faith and a sense of humor as The Amazing Democrats do and God Bless America,
It’s not as though Trump didn’t lay out a vision. In fact, he often laid out more than one. On the same issues.
Trump criticized U.S. allies for taking advantage of American security assistance — and criticized President Obama because, he said, U.S. allies no longer felt they could rely on American security assistance. He said his foreign policy would replace “randomness with purpose, ideology with strategy, and chaos with peace” — and that the United States would “have to be unpredictable…starting now.”
But he detailed no plans likely to spark opposition…mostly because he didn’t really offer any details at all; a “senior campaign official — who requested anonymity to keep the spotlight centered on Trump, said [the] positions were ‘politics, not policy,’ and that the goal of the speech was ‘to give his vision, in his words.'” – The Washington Post – April 28th, 2016.
This is disgusting. If the President and Hillary want to introduce more gun control, then it starts here. It is about time our State politicians, Congress and The White House took this issue on once and for all as Black Lives Matter. Let’s please see an end to this in 2016. Too many innocent people have died this way and the figures to date are disturbing, very disturbing.
Democrats and “Hillary’s People” need to seriously wake up to the most dangerous man for America on the planet and could even have a chance of being our next President of the United States. Donald Trump is not only America’s number one clown around the world, he is also a very dangerous man. The Amazing Democrats have remained silent these past few weeks as we are very disappointed with the direction of the Hillary Clinton campaign. We mentioned time and time it needs a massive shake up campaign staff wise and still (even with the new television commercials for Hillary Clinton’s campaign this week), we see the same old, same old boring save approach messages.
This has never worked against the GOP and we certainly wouldn’t have had a hope in hell re-electing Obama against Romney in 2012 if we had taken that approach. We took our gloves off and played in the dirt with the GOP and we did what we set out to do, we won. The fact the Clintons are friendly with Trump (or Jeb Bush for that matter) makes no odds. Trump threw the first punch when recently (in the South) he brought up Bill’s sex life. So Hillary time to get serious. Shake up your campaign staff from top to bottom and don’t be such a stick in the mud by not hiring some of Obama old campaigners as remember we won for Obama in 2012. There were no rules and there simply aren’t when you are up against the GOP, they don’t play fair and Trump certainly won’t. You and your campaign are giving Trump too much of a head start and you will regret this big time should he be nominated as the GOP candidate. Didn’t you make that same mistake with an unknown Senator called Obama in 2008?
The secret with Trump’s weakness is his business deals in the past. Dig and dig hard. In the 1980’s in New York, who did he do business with then? Follow the money. Follow his treatment of people who got in his way. For example take the poor people of Scotland and what he did to the locals there who were just trying to make a living. Trump is not just a man about greed and stupidity, he is a very dangerous man for America and the world. Wake up Ms. Clinton please and start the fight today and shake up your campaign staff and campaign. Don’t repeat the mistakes of your 2008 campaign – Editor, The Amazing Democrats.
Donald Trump was ensconced inside his Manhattan skyscraper early last week, preparing for his first presidential debate. The celebrity billionaire wanted to turn the summer fling that had catapulted him to the front of the Republican pack into a candidacy capable of winning the White House — and his longtime adviser Roger Stone had a plan.
Don’t get dragged down by petty attacks, Stone counseled Trump, but begin offering an agenda focused on the economy and hammer home what makes you a singular candidate. In a 13-page memo to Trump, Stone urged him to state that “the system is rigged against the citizens” and that he is the lone candidate “who cannot be bought.”
“A builder, an entrepreneur and a capitalist versus a bunch of politicians who are clearly part of the problem” is how Stone framed the contest in the document, obtained by The Washington Post from a Republican working with the campaign. The memo suggested a sound bite: “I’m running because when I look at this field — all perfectly nice people — I know that none of them could ever run one of my companies. They are not entrepreneurs.”
But Trump did not heed the advice. Instead, after briefly flipping through the papers, he decided to wing it — just as he had vowed to do. In a debate watched by a cable-news-record 24 million Americans, Trump followed his gut, and the theatre that followed was defined more by outbursts than by substance — most memorably when he sparred with moderator Megyn Kelly over his past incendiary comments about women.
“I don’t follow any memo, actually, because no memo can prepare you for what goes on in these campaigns or at these debates,” Trump said Sunday in an interview with The Post. “I’ve got to be me. That’s why I am where I am, leading the polls. It’s not because of memos. The whole thing — the debate, asking me to raise my hand about running as an independent, everything — it was wild.”
Trump’s improvisations have created the defining friction in his unorthodox universe: He has struggled to expand his campaign from one appealing to an angry fraction of the electorate into a lasting, durable enterprise that can secure the presidency.
The result is a staff shake-up at the highest levels. The turbulent week ended with Stone, a political confidant to Trump since the 1980s, departing under uncertain terms.
Trump said he “fired” Stone because he was seeking too much publicity; Stone said in a resignation letter to Trump that he was quitting out of frustration with what he saw as Trump’s scant platform and the “current direction of the candidacy.”
On Sunday, Trump was at the center of another swirling storm. GOP leaders voiced outrage at his jeers about Kelly.
In rollicking television interviews, Trump defended himself and the long-term viability of his bid.
Ed Rollins, a veteran GOP consultant who is close to some of Trump’s advisers, said: “A campaign is not a reality TV show. It’s a very tough exercise. You don’t have the privilege of just saying, ‘I’m a billionaire, I’m going to build a wall and screw you.’ Can you take his campaign right now and fix it and make it about substance? Could he be a credible candidate? Possibly.”
A new phase
Trump is entering a new and likely more difficult phase in which questions about his temperament and scrutiny of his past and current positions will mount. The pulse of the campaign has been and remains Trump’s personality — both mercurial and unpredictable — with decisions at times based on the candidate’s interests or grievances at the moment.
Trump wants to turn the page, vowing in the interview to further professionalize his operation and roll out policy details that will lend weight to his soaring rhetoric.
“We’re getting the best” operatives, Trump said. “I’m going to come out with more positions. Look, I already have done that on many issues,” he added, citing immigration, jobs, and trade negotiations with China and Japan.
Republican policy minds have been offering assistance. Economist Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation said he reached out a few weeks ago by e-mail to Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager, to pass along his ideas on taxes.
“The problem for Trump is that he’s full of all of these contradictions,” Moore said. “He’s kind of a tabula rasa on policy. I wrote to Corey that if you do tax reform right, you can tax imports that come in from these countries Trump has been talking about.”
But Moore said he never got a response. “A lot of people haven’t been able to connect,” he said.
Lewandowski said Sunday: “Steve might have been using my old account. If I didn’t e-mail back, I meant no slight to Steve Moore.”
“We’re going to release policy statements on [Trump’s] time frame, not anyone else’s,” Lewandowski said. “Every speech with Mr. Trump is different. That’s part of why people are supporting him. He talks about policy in each one and has done so consistently.”
Economist Larry Kudlow, a former CNBC host and an acquaintance of Stone for decades, said that he heard in mid-June from Stone that Trump was resisting Stone’s input and holding off on releasing policy planks.
“He e-mailed me after I wrote a column wondering whether Trump would run as a supply-sider,” Kudlow recalled in an interview. “Roger wrote back that he’d been trying to get that message in with Trump but was being blocked.”
There was internal pressure as well on Trump to develop a more nuanced economic program. In mid-July, as Trump was surging in the polls thanks to his strident opposition to illegal immigration, he flew to New Hampshire for a rally. State Rep. Stephen Stepanek, Trump’s New Hampshire chairman, met with the candidate at the Laconia airport.
“My message was: ‘We need to focus on the economy, on jobs. Obviously, security is very important, immigration on the border is very important, but across the nation the number one issue is jobs and the economy,’” Stepanek said.
Trump was receptive, Stepanek recalled: “He said, ‘That’s why I’ve said I will be the greatest jobs president this country has ever seen.’”
Trump’s debate preparation, held at Trump Tower and managed by Lewandowski, was described by aides as informal but substantive. It consisted mostly of Trump reading printed-out news articles about policy developments in Washington, culled by spokeswoman Hope Hicks. Lewandowski and adviser Chuck Laudner guided Trump on tactics and stagecraft, as well as policy reports.
Most other candidates arrived in Cleveland the day before the debate, to get acclimated to the setting and to huddle with advisers and donors. But Trump touched down late Thursday afternoon. The entourage rode straight to the Quicken Loans Arena, the site of the debate, where they got ready in a sparse green room.
“Once Mr. Trump went on, we were comparing notes,” Laudner said. “I kept tabs on time, number of questions. After it was over, I threw my notebook out. My notes were irrelevant. It wasn’t a debate. It was a weird quiz show.”
Trump said the tenor and subject of questions from Kelly and the two other Fox moderators, Bret Baier and Chris Wallace, caught him off guard.
“When the questions came like they did, I held my breath and said to myself: ‘Let’s go. If this is how it’s going to be, okay, fine — let’s go, let’s do it,’” he said. “It wasn’t like I had two or three softballs that’d give me much of a chance to talk about how to grow jobs or stop illegal immigrants from coming over our border with Mexico. It was boom, boom, boom, in terms of their questions, right from the start. You deal with it.”
As he walked off the stage, Trump was upset with the questioning, and his decision to wage war with Fox was his own, Lewandowski said.
“He knows how he wants to lead,” he said. “He is unafraid.”
Simmering tensions
For weeks inside Trump’s campaign, tensions have simmered between Lewandowski — a youthful and hard-charging strategist hired earlier this year after directing state political projects for Americans for Prosperity, a group backed by industrialists Charles and David Koch— and Stone and other Trump loyalists.
After Lewandowski successfully navigated Trump’s labyrinth of employees, business partners, political whisperers and family members to consolidate power, Trump granted him full authority. Along with Hicks, Lewandowski is regularly at Trump’s side aboard his “Trump”-emblazoned Boeing 757 and advises him before media interviews.
Working for Trump is an intense experience, based on The Post’s observations of the staff at work with the candidate. Trump constantly monitors Twitter, cable news channels, Web sites, newspapers and magazines. He keeps freshly updated binders of articles about his campaign in his office and on his plane. The latest barb or headline is his political oxygen.
During stressful episodes, the campaign endures Trump’s mood swings and acts on his impulses. The candidate is also a social animal who treats those around him like family. He warmly shares meals with aides and asks them about their dating lives or children.
Shortly before Trump launched his campaign, Lewandowski met with Rollins for drinks at the 21 Club in New York, where Rollins offered advice about working for a billionaire candidate. In 1992, Rollins managed businessman Ross Perot’s independent presidential campaign.
“I’ve been around billionaires, and when it’s their money, they don’t want to listen,” Rollins said. “Perot said to me, ‘I’ll give you $150 million and you spend whatever it takes,’ but he took out his little checkbook and fought over everything we spent. I suspect Trump is the same way.”
Lewandowski, known for his clipped New England accent and no-nonsense attitude — he requires staffers to arrive for work at 7 a.m. and stay until at least 8 p.m. — is on a mission this week to bolster the campaign’s infrastructure. He is traveling to Nevada and Michigan to interview potential hires and has deployed supporters in Virginia to work on ballot access issues. Alan Cobb, a former adviser to Koch Industries, is helping Lewandowski build out the team.
Trump has also hired Michael Glassner, a former aide on Robert J. Dole’s 1988 and 1996 presidential campaigns and adviser to former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, as political director and is considering making additional national hires in coming weeks. Former Federal Election Commission chairman Donald McGahn, a partner at Jones Day, is assisting the campaign with its legal responsibilities.
But not all of Trump’s staffers are so experienced. In Iowa, which hosts the nation’s first caucuses and where Laudner is guiding Trump’s efforts, Tana Goertz is a campaign co-chair.
“I was a finalist on ‘The Apprentice,’ as you probably know,” she said in an interview. “Politics isn’t my expertise. There would be no way I would talk to [Trump] about how to run a presidential campaign, because this is my first time at this.”
Goertz said her job is to explain Iowa’s Midwestern culture to Trump. Although, she acknowledged, “I’m not a native Iowan. I’m a transplant here from the East Coast as well [as Trump]. We’re East Coasters with a certain way of doing things.”
Part of the culture in Trump’s New York orbit is to fight and forgive. Stone, in an interview Sunday, said he might one day return to Trump Tower.
Ivana Trump once accused the real-estate tycoon of ‘rape,’ although she later clarified: not in the ‘criminal sense.’
Donald Trump introduced his presidential campaign to the world with a slur against Mexican immigrants, accusing them of being “rapists” and bringing crime into the country.
“I mean somebody’s doing it!… Who’s doing the raping?” Donald Trump said, when asked to defend his characterization.
It was an unfortunate turn of phrase for Trump—in more ways than one. Not only does the current frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination have a history of controversial remarks about sexual assault, but as it turns out, his ex-wife Ivana Trump once used “rape” to describe an incident between them in 1989. She later said she felt “violated” by the experience.
Michael Cohen, special counsel at The Trump Organization, defended his boss, saying, “You’re talking about the frontrunner for the GOP, presidential candidate, as well as a private individual who never raped anybody. And, of course, understand that by the very definition, you can’t rape your spouse.”
“It is true,” Cohen added. “You cannot rape your spouse. And there’s very clear case law.”
Ivana Trump’s assertion of “rape” came in a deposition—part of the early ’90s divorce case between the Trumps, and revealed in the 1993 book Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump.
The book, by formerTexas MonthlyandNewsweek reporter Harry Hurt III, described a harrowing scene. After a painful scalp reduction surgery to remove a bald spot, Donald Trump confronted his then-wife, who had previously used the same plastic surgeon.
“Your fucking doctor has ruined me!” Trump cried.
What followed was a “violent assault,” according to Lost Tycoon. Donald held back Ivana’s arms and began to pull out fistfuls of hair from her scalp, as if to mirror the pain he felt from his own operation. He tore off her clothes and unzipped his pants.
“Then he jams his penis inside her for the first time in more than sixteen months. Ivana is terrified… It is a violent assault,” Hurt writes. “According to versions she repeats to some of her closest confidantes, ‘he raped me.’”
Following the incident, Ivana ran upstairs, hid behind a locked door, and remained there “crying for the rest of night.” When she returned to the master bedroom in the morning, he was there.
“You’re talking about the front-runner for the GOP, presidential candidate, as well as a private individual who never raped anybody. And, of course, understand that by the very definition, you can’t rape your spouse.”
“As she looks in horror at the ripped-out hair scattered all over the bed, he glares at her and asks with menacing casualness: ‘Does it hurt?’” Hurt writes.
Donald Trump has previously denied the allegation. In the book, he denies having had the scalp reduction surgery.
“It’s obviously false,” Donald Trump said of the accusation in 1993, according to Newsday. “It’s incorrect and done by a guy without much talent… He is a guy that is an unattractive guy who is a vindictive and jealous person.”
Cohen acknowledged Monday that he has not read the entire deposition but said he had read the two relevant pages of it, including the rape accusation.
“It’s not the word that you’re trying to make it into,” Cohen told The Daily Beast, saying Ivana Trump was talking about how “she felt raped emotionally… She was not referring to it [as] a criminal matter, and not in its literal sense, though there’s many literal senses to the word.”
Cohen added that there is no such thing, legally, as a man raping his wife. “You cannot rape your spouse,” he said. “There’s very clear case law.”
That is not true. In New York, there used to be a so-called marital rape exemption to the law. It was struck down in 1984.
Trump’s lawyer then changed tactics, lobbing insults and threatening a lawsuit if a story was published.
“I will make sure that you and I meet one day while we’re in the courthouse. And I will take you for every penny you still don’t have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know,” Cohen said. “So I’m warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me?”
“You write a story that has Mr. Trump’s name in it, with the word ‘rape,’ and I’m going to mess your life up… for as long as you’re on this frickin’ planet… you’re going to have judgments against you, so much money, you’ll never know how to get out from underneath it,” he added.
When Lost Tycoonwas about to be printed, Donald Trump and his lawyers provided a statement from Ivana, which was posted on the first page of the book. In it, Ivana confirms that she had “felt violated” and that she had stated that her husband had raped her during a divorce deposition. But Ivana sought to soften her earlier statement.
“During a deposition given by me in connection with my matrimonial case, I stated that my husband had raped me,” the Ivana Trump statement said. “[O]n one occasion during 1989, Mr. Trump and I had marital relations in which he behaved very differently toward me than he had during our marriage. As a woman, I felt violated, as the love and tenderness, which he normally exhibited towards me, was absent. I referred to this as a ‘rape,’ but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”
The statement, according to a “Notice to the Reader” in the book, “does not contradict or invalidate any information contained in this book.”
Nevertheless, Cohen, Trump’s attorney, said that “there is nothing reasonable about you wanting to write a story about somebody’s usage of the word ‘rape,’ when she’s talking [about how] she didn’t feel emotionally satisfied.”
“Though there’s many literal senses to the word, if you distort it, and you put Mr. Trump’s name there onto it, rest assured, you will suffer the consequences. So you do whatever you want. You want to ruin your life at the age of 20? You do that, and I’ll be happy to serve it right up to you,” he added.
“I think you should go ahead and you should write the story that you plan on writing. I think you should do it. Because I think you’re an idiot. And I think your paper’s a joke, and it’s going to be my absolute pleasure to serve you with a $500 million lawsuit, like I told [you] I did it to Univision,” Cohen continued.
The 1990 divorce case between the two Trumps was granted on the grounds of Donald’s “cruel and inhuman treatment” of Ivana. The settlement, under which the Trumps agreed on the division of assets, was finalized in 1991. Her divorce involved a gag order that keeps her from talking about her marriage to Donald Trump without his permission.
Divorce records in New York state are not open to public inspection. But some of the legal documents surrounding the contract dispute over the Trumps’ prenuptial agreement are still available and were reviewed by The Daily Beast.
In one such document, Ivana Trump’s lawyers claim that in the three years preceding their divorce Donald Trump, “has increasingly verbally abused and demeaned [her] so as to obtain her submission to his wishes and desires” as well as “humiliated and verbally assaulted” her. The New York County Clerk’s records office couldn’t locate at least one box of documents relating to the contract dispute. (It’s not uncommon for court files to go missing.)
Ivana Trump did not respond to a request for comment.
Donald Trump has a history of grandstanding on rape. His controversial campaign-trail comments this year about Mexicans were hardly the first time he has waded into the hot-button issue of sexual assault.
Two years ago, Trump weighed in on the alarming rate of sexual assault and rape in the military—and in doing so, pinned the blame on the presence of women.
“26,000 unreported sexual [assaults] in the military—only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?” he tweeted in 2013. “The Generals and top military brass never wanted a mixer but were forced to do it by very dumb politicians who wanted to be politically [correct]!” he continued.
In 1989, the real estate mogul placed a full-page ad in four New York City newspapers calling for the execution of the five alleged rapists of Trisha Meili, the Central Park jogger who was put in a coma by her assailants. The defendants received different sentences and served between six and 13 years behind bars before new evidence of coerced confessions emerged that led to their convictions being vacated in 2002.
“Criminals must be told that their CIVIL LIBERTIES END WHEN AN ATTACK ON OUR SAFETY BEGINS!” Trump’s 1989 ad blared. “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!”
Trump’s other public statements on rape cases range from tone-deaf to offensive. In 1992, he floated the idea that convicted rapist and boxer Mike Tyson should be allowed to pay “millions and millions” of dollars to rape victims instead of serving jail time. Trump’s modest proposal did not go over well.
“How offensive,” shot back Dollyne Pettingill, spokeswoman for the mayor of Indianapolis, where Tyson committed the assault. “We have a judicial process for these matters and it’s not for sale.”
Whether Trump’s comments about rape—or the accusation of assault from his ex-wife—will hurt his burgeoning political career is an open question. So far, Trump has been able to shake off the sorts of scandals that would destroy any other campaign for president. Dissing Mexican immigrants and prisoner of war has not cost him his campaign, nor has his history of giving to Democratic campaigns. In the latest CNN poll, Trump leads all other candidates in the Republican presidential field, with 18 percent support.
—with additional reporting by Nina Strochlic and Asawin Suebsaeng.
The Amazing Democrats 