New York Times:
President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton before agreeing to meet with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign, according to three advisers to the White House briefed on the meeting and two others with knowledge of it.Of course they were. The problem is this story doesn't mesh with the Russian collusion narrative being espoused:
The meeting was also attended by his campaign chairman at the time, Paul J. Manafort, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kushner recently disclosed the meeting, though not its content, in confidential government documents described to The New York Times.
The Times reported the existence of the meeting on Saturday. But in subsequent interviews, the advisers and others revealed the motivation behind it.
The meeting — at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, two weeks after Donald J. Trump clinched the Republican nomination — points to the central question in federal investigations of the Kremlin’s meddling in the presidential election: whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. The accounts of the meeting represent the first public indication that at least some in the campaign were willing to accept Russian help.
But on Sunday, presented with The Times’s findings, [Donald Trump Jr.] offered a new account. In a statement, he said he had met with the Russian lawyer at the request of an acquaintance from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which his father took to Moscow. “After pleasantries were exchanged,” he said, “the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Mrs. Clinton. Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.”Sadly, this story is nowhere near the story being told by the Leftist media:
He said she then turned the conversation to adoption of Russian children and the Magnitsky Act, an American law that blacklists suspected Russian human rights abusers. The 2012 law so enraged President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that he halted American adoptions of Russian children.
“It became clear to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting,” Mr. Trump said.
American intelligence agencies have concluded that Russian hackers and propagandists worked to tip the election toward Donald J. Trump, in part by stealing and then providing to WikiLeaks internal Democratic Party and Clinton campaign emails that were embarrassing to Mrs. Clinton. WikiLeaks began releasing the material on July 22.When you click on the link in the New York Times story, you end up at another New York Times story, "Putin Ordered ‘Influence Campaign’ Aimed at U.S. Election, Report Says", which says:
American intelligence officials have concluded that the president of Russia, Vladimir V. Putin, personally “ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election,” and turned from seeking to “denigrate” Hillary Clinton to developing “a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”More importantly:
The conclusions were part of a declassified intelligence report, ordered by President Obama, that was released on Friday. Its main determinations were described to Mr. Trump by the nation’s top intelligence officials earlier in the day, and he responded by acknowledging, for the first time, that Russia had sought to hack into the Democratic National Committee’s computer systems. But he insisted that the effort had no effect on the election, and he said nothing about the conclusion that Mr. Putin, at some point last year, decided to aid his candidacy.
While [the intelligence report] accused Russian intelligence agencies of obtaining and maintaining “access to elements of multiple U.S. state or local electoral boards,” it concluded — as officials have publicly — that there was no evidence of tampering with the tallying of the vote on Nov. 8.In other words, the election was valid, even if it wasn't what the New York Times wanted. In other words, from the original story, "Russian hackers and propagandists" FAILED "to tip the election toward Donald J. Trump". Even IF there was some kind of collusion, there was no impact from it.
Speaking of the New York Times:
Forbes:
Nothing to see here.
That's the baffling conclusion the editorial board of the New York Times reached after reading a University of Washington (UW) report that was critical of Seattle's major minimum wage increase.
Here's what the Times wrote this morning, in an editorial titled "Seattle Shows The Way To Higher Pay":
"...[It] seems safe to conclude that Seattle has tolerated its minimum wage increase well and that, by extension, other strong economies could do so."
To understand just how bizarre this conclusion is, contrast the board's rosy editorial with the conclusions of the UW authors. You don't have to dig to find them: They're in a summary on the first page of the empirical report, and in a two-page white paper that accompanies it.
- Hours worked by affected employees fell by around nine percent
- Affected employees' net earnings fell by $125 a month on average
It must be nice to live in New York Times World. Sadly, it isn't on this planet, or anywhere in this reality.
In other news...
The Intercept:
JUST AS THE HOUSE Republican bill to slash much of the Affordable Care Act moved forward, Rep. Mike Conaway, a Texas Republican and member of Speaker Paul Ryan’s leadership team, added a health insurance company to his portfolio.The article goes on to list several more examples of insider trading by politicians. For example:
An account owned by Conaway’s wife made two purchases of UnitedHealth stock, worth as much as $30,000, on March 24th, the day the legislation advanced in the House Rules Committee, according to disclosures. The exact value of Conaway’s investment isn’t clear, given that congressional ethics forms only show a range of amounts, and Conaway’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
He wasn’t the only one. As the health care system overhaul advanced last month on the other side of Capitol Hill, Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma purchased between $50,000 to $100,000 in UnitedHealth stock."Consultation" is the key word there. If the senator was to tell someone about their health insurance efforts, who then told his financial adviser, then technically Inhofe didn't "consult" with the adviser. It is funny how information gets from one place to another.
“Sen. Inhofe has a financial [adviser] who makes transactions on his behalf and these transactions are disclosed as required by the STOCK Act,” Nicole Hage, Inhofe’s spokesperson, told The Intercept. “The transaction you reference was routine and made without the Senator’s prior knowledge or consultation.”
No comments:
Post a Comment