Zuckerberg says regulation inevitable. Is Congress up to it?

WASHINGTON — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged Wednesday that regulation of social media companies is “inevitable” and disclosed that his own personal information has been compromised by malicious outsiders. But after two days of congressional testimony, what seemed clear was how little Congress seems to know about Facebook, much less what to do about it.

House lawmakers aggressively questioned Zuckerberg Wednesday on user data, privacy settings and whether the company is biased against conservatives. As they did in the Senate a day earlier, both Republicans and Democrats suggested that regulation might be needed, but there was no consensus and few specifics about what that might look like — or even what the biggest problems are.

New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the panel and a 30-year veteran of the House, said at the beginning of the hearing that he plans to work on legislation but is pessimistic that Congress will pass anything.

“I’ve just seen it over and over again — that we have the hearings, and nothing happens,” he said.

For Zuckerberg, who often found himself explaining what his company does in rudimentary terms to lawmakers twice his age, the hearings could be considered a win: Facebook shares rose more than 1 percent after climbing 4.5 percent on Monday. And his company regained more than $25 billion in market value that is had lost since it was revealed in March that Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining firm affiliated with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, gathered personal information from 87 million users to try to influence elections.

Still, Facebook’s stock remains 10 percent below where it stood before the scandal, a decline that has wiped out about $50 billion in shareholder wealth.

Zuckerberg agreed to the hearings as pressure mounted over the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the company’s own admission last year that it had been compromised by Russians trying to influence the 2016 election. Earlier this year, special counsel Robert Mueller charged 13 Russian individuals and three Russian companies in a plot to interfere in the 2016 presidential election through a social media propaganda effort that included online ad purchases using U.S. aliases and politicking on U.S. soil. A number of the Russian ads were on Facebook.

Zuckerberg told the Senate on Tuesday that the company has been working with Mueller in his Russia probe and apologized over and over again for the company’s handling of data privacy.

“I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here,” he said.

House lawmakers were a bit tougher on Zuckerberg than their colleagues in the Senate, many of whom seemed confused by the company and what it does. Some of the House members curtly cut him off in questioning, trying to make the most of their four minutes each.

Zuckerberg mostly held his composure, repeating many of the same well-rehearsed answers: He is sorry for the company’s mistakes. He is working on artificial intelligence technology to weed out hate speech and at the same time ensure that they don’t block people for the wrong reasons. People own their own data, as far as he sees it. And he’s come a long way since he created the platform in his dorm room almost 15 years ago.

Some of the lawmakers talked to Zuckerberg, 33, as they would their children or grandchildren, and were occasionally befuddled by the complexities of his company.

Wrapping up his four minutes, Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., commended the platform, saying “it’s wonderful for us seniors to connect with our relatives.”

By the close of Wednesday’s hearing, Zuckerberg had spent roughly 10 out of the previous 24 hours testifying before Congress.

On regulation, Zuckerberg said he was open to it.

“The internet is growing in importance around the world in people’s lives and I think that it is inevitable that there will need to be some regulation,” he said.

Still, he said, lawmakers need to be careful, noting that new rules or laws could hurt smaller businesses more than a behemoth like Facebook.

House Energy and Commerce Chairman Greg Walden said the committee will look at what could be done.

“While Facebook has certainly grown, I worry it has not matured,” Walden, R-Ore.,  told Zuckerberg. “I think it is time to ask whether Facebook may have moved too fast and broken too many things.”

Many questions focused on Cambridge Analytica, which gathered data several years ago through a personality quiz created by an academic researcher. The app vacuumed up not just the data of the people who took it, but also — thanks to Facebook’s loose restrictions — data from their friends, too, including details that they hadn’t intended to share publicly. Cambridge Analytica then obtained the data and was said to have used it to try to influence elections around the world.

Zuckerberg said at the House hearing that his own Facebook data was part of that sweep. He told the Senate that Facebook had been led to believe Cambridge Analytica had deleted the user data it had harvested and that had been “clearly a mistake.” He assured senators the company would have handled the situation differently today.

That may be enough to satisfy lawmakers for now. But that could change if Democrats take control of Congress in midterm elections this year.

Pallone said that if Democrats were in charge, “then we would push all the more.”   /muf

source: technology.inquirer.net

Russians charged with meddling in 2016 presidential race

WASHINGTON — In an extraordinary indictment, the U.S. special counsel accused 13 Russians Friday of an elaborate plot to disrupt the 2016 presidential election, charging them with running a huge but hidden social media trolling campaign aimed in part at helping Republican Donald Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.

The federal indictment, brought by special counsel Robert Mueller, represents the most detailed allegations to date of illegal Russian meddling during the campaign that sent Trump to the White House. It also marks the first criminal charges against Russians believed to have secretly worked to influence the outcome.

The Russian organization was funded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the indictment says. He is a wealthy St. Petersburg businessman with ties to the Russian government and President Vladimir Putin.

Trump quickly claimed vindication Friday, noting in a tweet that the alleged interference efforts began in 2014 — “long before I announced that I would run for President.”

“The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong — no collusion!” he tweeted.

But the indictment does not resolve the collusion question at the heart of the continuing Mueller probe, which before Friday had produced charges against four Trump associates. U.S. intelligence agencies have previously said the Russian government interfered to benefit Trump, including by orchestrating the hacking of Democratic emails, and Mueller has been assessing whether the campaign coordinated with the Kremlin.

The latest indictment does not focus on the hacking but instead centers on a social media propaganda effort that began in 2014 and continued past the election, with the goal of producing distrust in the American political process. Trump himself has been reluctant to acknowledge the interference and any role that it might have played in propelling him to the White House.

The indictment does not allege that any American knowingly participated in Russian meddling, or suggest that Trump campaign associates had more than “unwitting” contact with some of the defendants who posed as Americans during election season.

But it does lay out a vast and wide-ranging Russian effort to sway political opinion in the United States through a strategy that involved creating Internet postings in the names of Americans whose identities had been stolen; staging political rallies while posing as American political activists and paying people in the U.S. to promote or disparage candidates.

While foreign meddling in U.S. campaigns is not new, the indictment for an effort of this scope and digital sophistication is unprecedented.

“This indictment serves as a reminder that people are not always who they appear to be on the internet,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said Friday. “The indictment alleges that the Russian conspirators want to promote discord in the United States and undermine public confidence in democracy. We must not allow them to succeed.”

The 13 Russians are not in custody and not likely to ever face trial. The Justice Department has for years supported indicting foreign defendants in absentia as a way of publicly shaming them and effectively barring them from foreign travel.

The surreptitious campaign was organized by the Internet Research Agency, a notorious Russian troll farm that the indictment says sought to conduct “information warfare against the United States of America.”

The company, among three Russian entities named in the indictment, had a multimillion-dollar budget and hundreds of workers divided by specialties and assigned to day and night shifts. According to prosecutors, the company was funded by companies controlled by Prigozhin, the wealthy Russian who has been dubbed “Putin’s chef” because his restaurants and catering businesses have hosted the Kremlin leader’s dinners with foreign dignitaries.

Prigozhin said Friday he was not upset by the indictment.

“Americans are very impressionable people,” he was quoted as saying by Russia’s state news agency. They “see what they want to see.”

Also Friday, Mueller announced a guilty plea from a California man who unwittingly sold bank accounts to Russians involved in the interference effort.

The election-meddling organization, looking to conceal its Russian roots, purchased space on computer servers within the U.S., used email accounts from U.S. internet service providers and created and controlled social media pages with huge numbers of followers on divisive issues such as immigration, religion and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Starting in April 2016, the indictment says, the Russian agency bought political ads on social media supporting Trump and opposing Clinton without reporting expenditures to the Federal Election Commission or registering as foreign agents. Among the ads: “JOIN our #HillaryClintonForPrison2016” and “Donald wants to defeat terrorism … Hillary wants to sponsor it.”

The indictment details contacts targeting three unnamed officials in the Trump campaign’s Florida operation. In each instance, the Russians used false U.S. personas to contact the officials. The indictment doesn’t say if any of them responded, and there’s no allegation that any of the campaign officials knew they were communicating with Russians.

Two of the defendants traveled to the U.S. in June 2014 to gather intelligence on social media sites and identify targets for their operations, the indictment alleges. Following the trip, the group collected further intelligence by contacting U.S. political and social media activists while posing as U.S. citizens. They were guided by one contact to target “purple states like Colorado, Virginia and Florida,” prosecutors say.

“They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump,” the indictment states.

Cruz and Rubio ran against Trump in the Republican primary; Sanders opposed Clinton in the Democratic primary.

According to one internal communication described by prosecutors, the specialists were instructed to “use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump_we support them).” And according to one internal review, a specialist was criticized for having a low number of posts criticizing Clinton. The person was told “it is imperative to intensify criticizing Hillary Clinton” in future posts.

The indictment also asserts that the posts encouraged minority groups not to vote or to vote for third parties and alleged Democratic voter fraud.

Ahead of a Florida rally, the Russians paid one person to build a cage on a flatbed truck and another to wear a costume portraying Clinton in a prison uniform. But they also organized some rallies opposing Trump, including one in New York after the election called “Trump is NOT my president.”

The Russians destroyed evidence of their activities as Mueller’s investigation picked up, with one of those indicted sending an email in September 2017 to a family member that said the FBI had “busted” them so they were covering their tracks.

That person, Irina Viktorovna Kaverzina, wrote the family member, “I created all of these pictures and posts, and the Americans believed that it was written by their people.”

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

What went wrong in this year’s presidential polls?

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s victory came as a surprise to many Americans, the nation’s pollsters most of all.

Heading into Election Day, most national surveys overstated what will likely be a narrow popular vote advantage for Hillary Clinton and led many to believe she was a shoo-in to win the Electoral College.

“The polls clearly got it wrong this time,” the American Association for Public Opinion Research said Wednesday in a statement. The association traditionally assesses the state of public polling after each election cycle, and already has a committee in place to do so again this year.

“I think it was an important polling miss. It would really be glossing over it to say that it was a typical year,” said Courtney Kennedy, director of survey research at the Pew Research Center.

For now, it’s impossible to know for certain what exactly went wrong for pollsters this year — and, as votes are still being counted, exactly how far off they were. Some factors pollsters will examine:

How big a miss?

Although most polls throughout the 2016 campaign showed Clinton running ahead of Trump, in the final two weeks of the campaign her advantage narrowed in many national surveys, as well as in states such as Pennsylvania and Michigan. Her apparent lead fell within many surveys’ margins of sampling error.

Kennedy said pollsters may ultimately not have had a historically large miss on the national popular vote, but thinks there was a systematic overrepresentation of Clinton’s support and underrepresentation for Trump’s.

She says people sometimes expect too much of election polls, which “are not designed to provide extremely accurate results.”

Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, says that averages of publicly available polls sometimes give a false sense of certainty in a candidate’s lead.

“You’re taking imprecise estimates and throwing them all together with the hope of eliminating error,” he says.

Shy trump voters?

Trump’s campaign frequently pointed to the possibility that public polls were missing some of his base of support, and some pollsters say that might have played a role in the polling miss.

“One of the biggest problems that polls face nowadays is that people don’t want to participate in them at all,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. He plans to use voter data to find out if certain types of people were less likely to participate in his surveys.

At Pew, Kennedy said it appears that there was a segment of Trump’s support base that was not responding to polls, which she called “fundamentally a difficult challenge to fight.” But, she said, it’s unlikely voters were lying about their support.

Turnout

Harold Clarke, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Dallas who regularly conducts polling, said one of the shortfalls in the presidential prediction was a problem that has plagued survey science for decades.

“We’ve got to filter our surveys as we try to pick out those people that are really going to vote,” he said. “We all have the problem of not getting likely voters right.”

Murray said pollsters are using likely voter models that might have worked in the past, but may no longer. He suggested that public pollsters should take a lesson from campaigns and consider putting out a range of numbers reflecting different turnout scenarios instead of a single number that suggests too much certainty in where the horse race stands.

Tightening race
Republican pollster Whit Ayres suggests that many observers — himself included — assumed that since Trump had never held a lead, he wouldn’t get the benefit of the doubt from voters in the end. But he says that in races where an incumbent is stuck below 50 percent in the polls, late deciders often break toward the challenger.

“There were a number of us who should have raised that possibility before the election,” Ayres said. “If you think about it, Hillary Clinton is about as close as you can get to an incumbent.”

Nationally and in key states such as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, Trump prevailed among voters who said they decided which candidate to support in the last week before voting, according to exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research.

In retrospect, Republican pollster Ed Goeas says that he saw a sign he now believes was a clue of Trump’s advantage. In his national polling, he saw an 8 percentage point edge for Trump in voter intensity and enthusiasm among his supporters.

“But the assumption on our part was that Clinton’s ground game would overcome or neutralize that intensity,” Goeas said. “It just didn’t.”

Not enough polls?

In several key states, including Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, there were few polls conducted in the final week before the election.

“In some of those unexpected states in the Rust Belt — Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin — you didn’t see some of the more rigorous polls being conducted,” said Kennedy.

Goeas confesses to failing to see some late movements, in part because his polling ended four days before the election.

“So basically we were looking at numbers thinking where he might end up,” Goeas said of Trump’s chances in Wisconsin, where he believed the Republican would benefit from Republican Sen. Ron Johnson’s get-out-the-vote operation. “Did we have any comfort he would do it? No.”

“It would have been nice to have a couple more Michigan and Wisconsin polls to adjust that perception” that Clinton was leading, Miringoff said. “The campaigns don’t stop because the pollsters do their final poll.”/rga

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Bitcoin price skyrockets after Trump win

Donald Trump’s election win sent shockwaves to markets around the world. And not just in traditional markets but also in the cryptocurrency world where the Bitcoin price skyrocketed.

At $738, the cryptocurrency rose around 3% from an earlier $708 mark overnight. However, the jump did not happen to other forms of digital money, reports Fortune.

Another form of cryptocurrency like Ethereum and Ripple, which are the second- and third-biggest in the market have gone down by 2% and 1% respectively, according to a Coinmarketcap report.

Bitcoin’s jump in market value is acting as a vindication that it is a haven in times of market volatility. The cryptocurrency has also enjoyed a long period of relative stability in the second half of 2016. Yet, despite the positive trend, its current value is still far from the all-time high of $1,200 that it experienced back in 2013. Alfred Bayle

source: technology.inquirer.net

Donald Trump elected US president

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump has been elected president of the United States.

The Republican nominee won Wednesday after capturing Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes, putting him over the 270 threshold.

Voters eager to shake up the nation’s political establishment picked the celebrity businessman to become the nation’s 45th president.

Trump rode an astonishing wave of support from voters seeking change and willing to accept a candidate loose with facts and accused of sexual misconduct.

He upset Democrat Hillary Clinton, who would have become the first woman to serve in the Oval Office.

Trump struck a populist tone and placed a hardline immigration stance at his campaign’s heart.

Trump rose to political fame after questioning whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States. He will now follow Obama into the White House.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Trump leading Clinton, 232-209, in electoral votes — AP

UPDATED @ 12:40 p.m.

Originally posted at 10:35 a.m.

WASHINGTON, United States — The Latest on Election Day 2016 (all times EST):

11:33 p.m.

Donald Trump has won Georgia.

The Republican nominee on Tuesday was awarded its 16 electoral votes.

Trump now has 232 electoral votes while his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton has 209.

The Democrats had some hopes that changing demographics in Georgia could allow then to flip the reliably Republican state but their efforts fell short.

___

11:29 p.m.

Hillary Clinton has won Washington state and its 12 electoral votes.

The victory in Tuesday’s elections brings the former secretary of state’s electoral vote total to 209. Republican Donald Trump has 216.

It takes 270 votes to win the presidency.

___

11:11 p.m.

Donald Trump has won battleground North Carolina and its 15 electoral votes.

The victory in Tuesday’s elections brings the billionaire’s electoral vote total to 216. Democrat Hillary Clinton has 197.

North Carolina was one of the hardest-fought contests of the election and is one of the map’s newest swing states. It consistently went for Republicans until Barack Obama captured it in 2008. Republican Mitt Romney narrowly won the state in 2012.

At least 270 electoral votes are needed to win the presidency.

___

11:06 p.m.

Hillary Clinton has won Oregon.

The Democratic nominee on Tuesday was awarded its seven electoral votes.

Clinton now has 197 electoral votes. Her Republican opponent Donald Trump has 201.

Several key battleground states have yet to be won.

___

11 p.m.

Hillary Clinton has won California and Hawaii. Donald Trump has won Idaho’s four electoral votes.

The results in the West bring Clinton’s electoral vote total to 190 and Trump’s to 201. It takes 270 votes to win the presidency.

The results were not surprising. California, with 55 electoral votes, has voted for Democrats beginning in 1992. Hawaii has chosen Democrats consistently since 1988.

Idaho has voted for Republicans beginning in 1968.

___

10:50 p.m.

Donald Trump has won the key battleground state of Florida.

Trump on Tuesday was awarded 29 electoral votes.

He now has 197 electoral votes. His Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton has 131.

Both candidates have spent an extraordinary amount of time in Florida, one of the most important prizes on the map. Trump calls Florida his “second home” and his campaign acknowledged that a win there is vital to his White House hopes.

Barack Obama captured the Sunshine State in both 2008 and 2012.

___

10:43 p.m.

Hillary Clinton has won Colorado.

The Democratic nominee captured its nine electoral votes Tuesday. She now has 131 total electoral votes while her Republican opponent Donald Trump has 168.

Colorado has become an attainable state for Democrats in recent years thanks to shifting demographics.

Clinton tried to woo a surge in Latino voters and the state’s college-educated whites while Trump repeatedly made pitches to Colorado’s large military population and swaths of rural voters.

___

10:40 p.m.

Hillary Clinton has won Virginia.

The Democratic nominee has captured its 13 electoral votes.

Virginia was reliably Republican for decades until Barack Obama won it twice, thanks in part to huge turnout from Washington, D.C.’s suburbs. Clinton’s running mate, Tim Kaine, is a senator from Virginia, though Trump made a late push in the state.

The victory gives her 122 electoral votes. Her Republican opponent Donald Trump has 168.

___

10:37 p.m.

Donald Trump has won the electoral prize of Ohio, a state known for picking presidents.

The Republican wins the state’s 18 electoral votes in Tuesday’s election, bringing his total to 168. Hillary Clinton has 109.

Clinton had appeared ready to concede Ohio’s 18 electoral votes to Trump as polls showed him pulling ahead even in some traditionally Democratic blue-collar areas. But Trump struggled after release of a video in which he talked about groping women and kissing them without their permission.

Republicans held their nominating convention in Cleveland. Governor and one-time Republican presidential rival John Kasich refused to endorse Trump.

___

10:25 p.m.

Donald Trump has won Missouri.

The Republican nominee was awarded its 10 electoral votes. The result was not as a surprise, as the last Democratic victory in the Show Me State came in 1996.

Trump now has 150 electoral votes. His Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton has 109.

___

10:21 p.m.

Hillary Clinton has won New Mexico and its five electoral votes.

That brings her electoral college vote total in Tuesday’s election to 109. Republican Donald Trump has 140 votes.

___

10 p.m.

Donald Trump has won Montana.

The Republican presidential nominee on Tuesday was awarded the state’s three electoral votes.

The result was not a surprise, as Montana was considered a safely Republican state.

Trump now has 132 electoral votes. His Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton has 104 votes.

___

9:40 p.m.

Preliminary exit polls show the racial divides that were expected to define the 2016 presidential election.

Polls conducted for national media by Edison Research show Republican Donald Trump winning a majority of white voters while Democrat Hillary Clinton is drawing support from about three out of four nonwhite voters.

Trump’s support is strongest among whites without a college degree. He’s winning nearly two-thirds of them. Whites with college degrees are split between Trump and Clinton. Trump is winning both among white men and white women, though his margin is much higher among men.

Clinton’s strongest support comes from African-Americans. She’s winning about nine out of 10 black voters. She’s winning about two out of three Hispanics and Asian-Americans.

___

9:30 p.m.

Republican Donald Trump is maintaining Republicans’ advantage among white voters nationwide, but perhaps not by the usual margin that the party’s nominees have enjoyed.

Preliminary exit polls of voters who have already cast presidential ballots show Trump winning a majority of whites. He has not quite reached the roughly six-out-of-10 share that Mitt Romney notched four years ago in his unsuccessful challenge of President Barack Obama.

The difference appears to come among white women. Trump is posting about the same, if not a slightly wider margin among white men as Romney did in 2012. But his lead over Clinton among white women appears to be in single digits, short of Romney’s double-digit advantage four years ago.

___

9:28 p.m.

Donald Trump has won Louisiana and its eight electoral votes.

That extends his Electoral College total in Tuesday’s elections to 137, compared with Hillary Clinton’s 104.

History was on Donald Trump’s side in the state. Louisiana hasn’t given its electoral votes to a Democrat since Bill Clinton won 52 percent of the vote two decades ago.

___

9:26 p.m.

Hillary Clinton has won Connecticut.

The Democratic nominee on Tuesday was awarded Connecticut’s seven electoral votes.

The result was not a surprise, as Connecticut was considered a safely Democratic state.

Clinton now has 104 electoral votes. Her Republican opponent Donald Trump has 129.

___

9:08 p.m.

Republican Donald Trump has won Arkansas and its six electoral votes.

That brings his electoral vote total in Tuesday’s election to 129. Democrat Hillary Clinton has 97.

It takes 270 votes to win the presidency.

The result was expected. Earlier polling showed Trump leading Clinton by double digits in the state where she served as first lady for 12 years while her husband was the governor.

The once reliably blue state has turned red in recent years. Republicans now control all of Arkansas’ statewide and federal offices, as well as a majority of seats in both chambers of the state legislature.

Arkansas has backed the Republican candidate for the White House in every election since 1980 — except for years when Bill Clinton was running for president.

___

9:05 p.m.

Hopeful Hillary Clinton supporters have gathered on a Brooklyn street corner they expect to be prophetic: The intersection of President and Clinton Streets.

Photos and video posted on social media Tuesday show hundreds of people gathered for a block party where the streets cross.

Organizers have set up a large screen to stream election coverage. A food truck is dispensing tacos to the crowd.

The street signs in the intersection have been an attraction all Election Day for Clinton boosters snapping selfies.

It is just under a mile from Clinton’s national campaign headquarters in Brooklyn.

___

9 p.m.

Donald Trump has won Texas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Kansas and Nebraska while Hillary Clinton has won New York and Illinois.

Trump also on Tuesday won two of Nebraska’s congressional districts. In the state that awards by congressional district, one remains too close to call.

Trump was awarded Texas’ 38 electoral votes, the second-largest prize on the map. He also won six from Kansas, four from his victories in Nebraska and three apiece from Wyoming, North Dakota and South Dakota.

Clinton was awarded 20 from Illinois and 29 from New York, the state both candidates call home. Trump had declared he would try to win New York but never mounted a serious effort there.

The Republican nominee now has 123 electoral votes. Clinton has 97.

___

8:55 p.m.

Hillary Clinton is watching election returns with a collection of close campaign aides and her family in a suite at the Peninsula New York, a luxury hotel in midtown Manhattan.

Aides say the group is snacking on salmon, roasted carrots and fries — along with vegan pizza and crème brulee for former President Bill Clinton, who’s careful about his diet. Her granddaughter, Charlotte, is wearing a dress emblazoned with the campaign logo.

Clinton and her husband have also been working on her election night remarks with her speechwriters.

Later Tuesday evening, they’ll move to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City for her election night party. It’s a building with a glass ceiling — a nod to the historic moment.

___

8:51 p.m.

Donald Trump has won Mississippi and its six electoral votes.

That brings his Electoral College total in Tuesday’s election to 66, compared with Hillary Clinton’s 48.

The outcome was not unexpected. Mississippi has voted for Republicans in every presidential election starting with 1972, with the exception of Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1976.

___

8:40 p.m.

Hillary Clinton has won Rhode Island and its four electoral votes.

That brings her total Tuesday to 48, compared with Donald Trump’s 60.

It takes 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

Rhode Island has voted for Republicans for president only four times since 1928.

In 2012, President Barack Obama defeated Republican Mitt Romney in the state by about 27 percent.

__

8:33 p.m.

Exit polls conducted by Edison Research for national media outlets suggest Hillary Clinton is still struggling with white voters who have put Georgia in the Republican column for every presidential election but one since 1980.

Exit polls in Virginia show Clinton and Republican Donald Trump split white Virginia voters with college degrees. In North Carolina, Trump apparently won a slight majority of college-educated whites. But in Georgia, whites with college degrees sided with Trump by more than 2-to-1.

Among whites with no degree, the gaps were even wider. Trump won about two out of three of those voters in North Carolina and Virginia. In Georgia, he won about four out of five.

___

8:27 p.m.

Donald Trump has won Alabama and its nine electoral votes after Sen. Jeff Sessions endorsed the billionaire candidate.

That brings Trump’s total in the Electoral College to 60 votes, to Clinton’s 44 votes.

It takes 270 votes to win the presidency.

The results continue the state’s streak of voting for Republicans every presidential election since 1980.

___

8:13 p.m.

Donald Trump has won Tennessee and its 11 electoral votes.

Tuesday’s vote is the fifth presidential contest in a row in which the state voted for the Republican candidate. That includes the 2000 election, when native son Al Gore lost the state to Republican George W. Bush.

It takes 270 votes to win the presidency. CBB

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Clinton casts her ballot: ‘It is the most humbling feeling’

CHAPPAQUA, N.Y.  — Seeking to become the nation’s first female president, Hillary Clinton cast her ballot Tuesday and settled down to wait for the country to make its choice.

The Democratic nominee and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, voted at an elementary school near their home in suburban New York before greeting supporters waiting for her outside.

“It is the most humbling feeling,” she said of voting for herself for president. “I know how much responsibility goes with this.”

It was a relatively calm moment Tuesday compared with Clinton’s hectic final few days day on the campaign trail. The former secretary of state and New York senator dashed through battleground states, encouraged get-out-the-vote efforts and campaigned with a star-studded cast of celebrity supporters.

It was an election eve punctuated by an emotional rally in Philadelphia with her husband, President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, as well as performances by Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen, and capped by Lady Gaga, who serenaded thousands of supporters before the Clintons took the stage for a 1 a.m. rally in Raleigh, North Carolina. It ended with cheering fans greeting her at the airport back in New York when she landed in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

After the divisive rhetoric of the campaign against Republican Donald Trump, Clinton sought to offer a positive closing message on Monday. She told supporters in Pittsburgh they “can vote for a hopeful, inclusive, bighearted America.” In a buoyant mood, she also greeted voters who cried out “we love you,” smiling back: “I love you all, too … absolutely.”

Some good news boosted Clinton’s spirits in the final moments of the campaign. On Sunday, FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to Congress, informing lawmakers the bureau had found no evidence in its hurried review of newly discovered emails to warrant criminal charges against Clinton.

The late October announcement of a fresh email review rocked the race just as Clinton appeared to be pulling away from Trump in several battleground states. The update from the FBI may have come too late for some: In the nine days between Comey’s initial statement until his “all clear” announcement on Sunday, nearly 24 million people cast early ballots. That’s about 18 percent of the expected total votes for president.

But campaign aides projected confidence in the final moments. They said they felt good about Nevada, where they said support for Clinton in early voting was strong. They were encouraged by the strong Latino turnout in Florida and felt they took a strong lead in Michigan and Pennsylvania into Election Day, when the bulk of votes are cast in those states.

Leading up to Election Day, Clinton made stops in Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and New Hampshire — often flanked by star guests. Jay Z and Beyonce performed with pant-suited backup dancers in Cleveland. James Taylor serenaded New Hampshire voters and Katy Perry sang “Roar” in Philadelphia.

She also campaigned with Khizr Khan, the father of a slain U.S. Army officer whose indictment of Trump at the Democratic National Convention was an emotional high point for Clinton’s party.

Her last two days on the campaign trail felt almost like a Clinton family reunion, with some of her closest confidants jumping on the campaign plane for her final hours. Even Huma Abedin, her embattled personal aide caught up in the email controversy, jumped on the plane for the midnight rally in Raleigh. TVJ

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

A look at FBI Comey’s decisions in the Clinton email case

WASHINGTON — The FBI’s announcement that it recently came upon new emails possibly pertinent to the Hillary Clinton email investigation raised more questions than answers.

FBI Director James Comey said in a letter to Congress on Friday that the bureau had discovered the emails while pursuing an unrelated case and would review whether they were classified.

The announcement, vague in details, immediately drew both criticism and praise to Comey himself. Some questions and answers:

Where did the emails come from? 


A: The emails emerged during a separate criminal sexting investigation into former Rep. Anthony Weiner, estranged husband of Huma Abedin, one of Clinton’s closest aides, a U.S. official with knowledge of the matter told The Associated Press. The official was not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation and discussed the matter on condition of anonymity.

Federal authorities are investigating communications between Weiner, a New York Democrat, and a 15-year-old girl.

It was not clear from Comey who sent or received the emails or what they were about.

Why is this coming out so close to the election?

A: Apparently because the emails were found very recently. In his letter to Congress, Comey said he had been briefed only Thursday by investigators.

Releasing the letter opened Comey to partisan criticism that he was dropping a significant development too close to an election. But keeping it under wraps until after Nov. 8 would surely have led to criticism that he was sitting on major news until after the election.

Comey has said there are no easy decisions on timing in the case. In an internal email sent Friday to FBI employees, he said he was trying to strike a balance between keeping Congress and the public informed and not creating a misleading impression, given that the emails’ significance is not yet known.

“In trying to strike that balance, in a brief letter and in the middle of an election season, there is significant risk of being misunderstood,” he wrote.

Upon learning of Comey’s intention to send lawmakers the letter, Justice Department officials conveyed disapproval and advised the FBI against it, according to a government official familiar with the conversations who was not authorized to discuss the matter by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Department leaders were concerned that the letter would be inconsistent with department policy meant to avoid the appearance of prosecutorial interference or meddling in elections, the official said.

Is the disclosure standard for the FBI?

A: No, but neither was the Clinton email investigation.

In a nod to the extraordinary nature of an election-year probe into a presidential candidate, Comey promised extraordinary transparency as he announced the investigation’s conclusion in July.

“I am going to include more detail about our process than I ordinarily would, because I think the American people deserve those details in a case of intense public interest,” Comey said at the unusual news conference where he announced the FBI would not recommend criminal charges against Clinton.

Since then, the FBI has periodically released investigative files — that is, summaries of witnesses who were interviewed. Those materials aren’t typically public.

Comey, a former Republican who is not registered with a political party, has served in government under both Democratic and Republican administrations and speaks repeatedly about the need for the FBI to be accountable to the public.

His letter Friday seemed in keeping with a statement he made to Congress last month, that although the FBI had concluded its investigation, “we would certainly look at any new and substantial information” that emerged.



But why was the letter so vague?

A: For one thing, the FBI avoids publicly discussing ongoing criminal investigations, or even confirming it has one open.

It also appears the FBI isn’t sure what it has. Comey said the FBI cannot yet assess whether the material is significant, or how long it would take to complete the additional work.

Nevertheless, the letter’s vagueness was immediately seized upon by critics as unacceptable and leaving the public in the dark.

What happens now? Does this increase the likelihood that someone could be changed?

A: The FBI will review the emails to see if they were classified and were improperly handled.

It’s impossible to say if anyone is in greater jeopardy than before.

The FBI announced in July that scores of emails from Clinton’s server contained information that was classified at the time it was sent or received. So, new emails determined as classified might do nothing to change the legal risk for anyone who sent them.

Comey said in July that the FBI had found no evidence of intentional or willful mishandling of classified information, of efforts to obstruct justice or of the deliberate exposure of government secrets. Those were elements that Comey suggested were needed to make a criminal case.

Nothing in the letter appears to change that standard. TVJ

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Clinton’s showbiz pals spend big as Hollywood shuns Trump

LOS ANGELES—Glance at the list of Hillary Clinton’s biggest donors and you could be forgiven for thinking she was funding a Hollywood movie rather than a presidential campaign.

It is hardly surprising that the left-leaning entertainment industry is supporting a Democrat for the White House, but the gulf between candidates in donations from Tinseltown this election cycle is staggering.

Actors, studio executives and other employees of the film, TV and music industries have donated $20.7 million to Clinton’s run for the presidency, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign funding.

Her Republican rival Donald Trump has meanwhile raised less than $350,000 from Hollywood.

“The Clintons have always been Hollywood darlings, going back to Bill’s term in office,” said Usman Shaikh, a Los Angeles-based entertainment attorney and a contemporary of Trump’s daughter Ivanka at the University of Pennsylvania.

“If you recall when it was Clinton and Obama for the primaries in 2008, Hollywood was supporting Clinton.”

Within hours of the former first lady confirming last year she was running to become America’s first female commander-in-chief, dozens of celebrities clamored to give their stamp of approval.

By the fall of 2015, according to the Los Angeles Times, she had taken about $5 million of the $5.5 million that Hollywood figures had donated to the 2016 campaign.

Film titans Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg gave $1 million each, while “Star Wars” director J.J. Abrams stumped up $500,000.

Clinton supporter George Clooney hosted back-to-back dinners in San Francisco and Los Angeles in April which reportedly raised over $15 million, with donors paying as much as $350,000 a head.

Clinton attended 17 starry fundraisers in California over the summer, part of an eye-watering schedule that included nine events spread across the state over just three days in late August.

Onslaught of negativity

That string of fundraisers included an August 22 cocktail reception for 500 people — including actor Samuel L. Jackson — hosted by NBA legend Magic Johnson and his wife Cookie.

That was followed later the same day by a 90-minute event put on by billionaire media mogul Haim Saban and his wife Cheryl at their Beverly Hills home. One hundred guests paid at least $50,000 each.

The following day involved fundraisers in Piedmont and Laguna Beach, each requiring donations of $33,400 from attendees, and a 75-minute swing by the Hollywood Hills home of Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel.

Guests there — including Jennifer Aniston, Tobey Maguire, Shonda Rhimes, Jamie Foxx and Katie Holmes — raised more than $3 million.

Trump, meanwhile, has faced an unprecedented onslaught of negativity from the entertainment industry — and not just the liberals.

Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a statement on Twitter at the start of October saying he would not be voting Republican for the first time since gaining US citizenship in 1983.

Meanwhile Harry Sloan, former head of MGM and a lifelong Republican, has announced he is backing Clinton and has even donated to her campaign.

According to Shaikh, there are an abundance of conservatives in Hollywood — but hardly any who will support the Republican candidate because of his divisive rhetoric on Mexicans, Muslims and women.

In fact, the driving force behind Trump’s fundraising activities is veteran Hollywood producer Steve Mnuchin, the man behind the “X-Men” franchise and “Avatar,” who has been finance chair of the campaign since May.

Political consultant Patrick Dorinson led a contingent of entertainment figures including Oscar-winner Jon Voight on a bus tour across the US in mid-September, giving speeches and news conferences on behalf of Trump.

‘Just too extreme’

But the litany of celebrities who have openly disparaged the real estate mogul and former reality TV star by far outweighs his supporters in Hollywood.

Some of America’s biggest stars, including actors Robert Downey Jr. and Scarlett Johansson, appeared in a video in September to take potshots at Trump while rallying voters to the polls on Election Day.


“Do we really want to give nuclear weapons to a man whose signature move is firing things?” asks Leslie Odom Jr., a Tony winner for his turn as Aaron Burr in the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton.”

“I just think culturally he’s a very different fit from Hollywood. On so many of his issues, he’s just too extreme, particularly on women’s issues,” said Steve Maviglio, a California-based political consultant.

“He’s been actually good on gay marriage and you’d think that would be a natural to attract people in Hollywood. But you’re not even seeing the Hollywood Republicans helping him out.

“Look at the Republican convention. He had hardly any entertainment, any Hollywood, there at all.  Where is Clint Eastwood, even?”

But while support of Hollywood is an important source of campaign fundraising, surveys have shown that the backing of celebrities holds little sway over the way Americans vote.

“We saw Susan Sarandon do a lot of work for Bernie Sanders this year,” said Maviglio, who served as Bill Clinton’s director of public affairs in the 1990s.

“She got a lot of attention because she was one of the first people out there. But did it have an impact at the end of the day? No.”

source: entertainment.inquirer.net

Clinton warns Trump is ‘threatening’ US democracy

CLEVELAND—Hillary Clinton excoriated rival Donald Trump as a threat to American democracy Friday for not pledging to honor results of the upcoming presidential election, as the bitter rivals battled for supremacy in battleground states.

The 2016 election cycle pitting the Republican nominee against the former secretary of state has turned increasingly toxic, with Trump fueling wild conspiracy theories about vote “rigging” and Clinton warning that the provocative billionaire was straying into authoritarianism.

“We know the difference between leadership and dictatorship, and the peaceful transition of power is one of the things that sets us apart,” Clinton told a rally in Cleveland, Ohio, one of the key swing states up for grabs on November 8.

“Donald Trump refused to say that he’d respect the results of this election. By doing that, he’s threatening our democracy.”

Her comments marked a stern rebuke to Trump’s bombshell suggestion during their third and final presidential debate that he may not recognize the election result — a surprising rejection of political norms.

Trump, 70, then told a rally crowd that he could launch a legal challenge if Clinton prevails.

His remarks follow weeks of Trump warning about the likelihood of a “rigged” election including massive voter fraud, despite members of his own party disavowing the comments and Trump earning condemnation from President Barack Obama.

Despite isolated allegations of voter fraud, controversy over the tight 2000 vote and rampant gerrymandering, US elections have been regarded as free and fair.

Invigorated by both her commanding poll numbers and Trump’s eyebrow-raising declarations, the candidate vying to become America’s first female president was in Ohio aiming to block Trump’s efforts to claim the blue-collar heartland state.

Trump, well aware that no Republican has ever won the White House without winning Ohio, campaigned in the Buckeye State Thursday.

Meanwhile the Manhattan real estate mogul hosted rallies Friday in the battlegrounds of North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

“Eighteen days. You’re going to look back at this election and say this is by far the most important vote you’ve ever cast for anyone at any time,” Trump told a crowd in Fletcher, North Carolina.

‘Win, lose or draw’

“We’re fighting this juggernaut…. because they have billions of dollars they’ve raised,” he said of the Clinton campaign, which reportedly has outspent Trump on television advertising in recent months.

Trump said he would give the campaign everything he had, “right up until the actual vote.”

“Win, lose or draw… I will be happy with myself,” he added. “I don’t want to think back if only I did one more rally I would have won North Carolina by 500 votes instead of losing it by 200 votes, right?”

Clinton is narrowly leading in polling in North Carolina, a state Obama won in 2008 but lost to Republican Mitt Romney in 2012.

Clinton and Trump are coming off an evening of stinging humor at a white-tie charity event in New York where they traded jokes and jabs at what is meant to be a friendly roast — and where Trump was booed.

The bitterness of the campaign was quickly on display, with Trump calling the 68-year-old Clinton “corrupt” and jabbing her for disclosures from her campaign’s hacked emails.

“Here she is in public, pretending not to hate Catholics,” he said, as Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York looked on.

Despite the prickly barbs — including Clinton proclaiming that Trump sent “a hearse” to bring her to the dinner — the two candidates shook hands at the end of the evening.

Battleground focus

Trump is trailing badly in the polls, and his debate threat opened him up to a stinging attack from Obama at a Miami rally.

“When you try to sow the seeds of doubt in people’s minds about the legitimacy of our election, that undermines our democracy,” Obama said Thursday.

“When you suggest rigging or fraud without a shred of evidence, when last night at the debate, Trump becomes the first major party nominee in American history to suggest that he will not concede despite losing… that is not a joking matter.”

In the battle of the battlegrounds, Clinton holds leads in several states, ranging from razor-thin, such as in North Carolina, to moderate in Florida and Pennsylvania and commanding in Virginia.

She is even narrowly ahead in Arizona, the traditionally Republican-leaning state where First Lady Michelle Obama — who galvanized voters with a searing attack on Trump last week — campaigned for Clinton on Thursday.

If Trump loses Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, Clinton is all but assured of victory, experts have said.

In Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Trump supporters streamed into a convention center to hear Trump speak in their depressed former steel town, where most mill jobs have evaporated.

Trump promised that he would bring many of them back.

“We don’t make things anymore” he told the cheering crowd. “When I’m president, we’re going to start making things again in America.”

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

‘Nasty’ women swarm in support of Clinton after Trump insult

WASHINGTON—Suddenly, it seems America is crawling with nasty women.

Female unpleasantness as a tongue-in-cheek rallying cry is on T-shirts, in memes and in tweets galore — a furious backlash mocking Donald Trump’s latest insult of Hillary Clinton.

Trump’s dis — “such a nasty woman” — came during one of his interruptions of his Democratic rival in Wednesday’s final presidential debate.

Social media lit up as women came to Clinton’s defense.

T-shirts emblazoned “Nasty Woman” went up for sale on e-commerce website Etsy.

“Nasty Woman” took off on Twitter, with actress Lena Dunham, who has campaigned for Clinton, spreading the word.

“RT if you’re a nasty woman and it’s made your life a freakin’ pleasure,” Dunham tweeted.

Trending were #ImANastyWoman, #ImANastyWomanBecause, #NastyWomenVote and #NastyWomanUnite.

Trump’s comment immediately called to mind for many Janet Jackson’s 1986 “Nasty” video, where the singer champions “nasty boys.”


A new video mashing up Jackson’s hit and Trump and Clinton debate clips quickly went viral.

Spotify streams of Jackson’s song soared 250 percent after Trump’s remark, CNN reported Thursday.

A CNN clip of Trump’s “nasty” remark quickly garnered almost 27,000 views on YouTube.

News site Vox.com said that “calling Hillary Clinton a ‘nasty woman’ may have been the best thing Donald Trump has ever done for her campaign.”

It noted the Clinton campaign purchased the web domain nastywomengetshitdone.com, which automatically links to the candidate’s website, www.hillaryclinton.com.

Trump’s comment came in response to a dig from Clinton to the effect that the Republican nominee — who has bragged about his savviness in avoiding paying taxes — might also try to get out of chipping in toward the nation’s pension and health insurance programs.

In their third and final debate before the November 8 election, Trump accused Clinton and her campaign team of drumming up allegations that he has groped almost a dozen women.

“I believe,” Trump said, “she got these people to step forward,” accusing Clinton of running a “very sleazy campaign” and adding of the claims aired by several women dating back decades: “It was all fiction.”

“Donald thinks belittling women makes him bigger,” Clinton said.

“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.”

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Clinton says she takes ‘no satisfaction’ in Trump’s actions

SEATTLE — With Donald Trump on the defensive, Hillary Clinton says she is taking “no satisfaction” in his actions and promising to repair the damage and project a message of unity during the campaign’s final weeks.

Hours after her Republican rival furiously defended himself against multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, Clinton spoke Friday of the need for national healing in a Seattle fundraising speech that also saw her call upon Americans to help her govern if she’s elected president.

“This election is incredibly painful. I take absolutely no satisfaction in what is happening on the other side with my opponent,” Clinton said while visiting a Seattle campaign field office. “I am not at all happy about that because it hurts our country, it hurts our democracy, it sends terrible messages to so many people here at home and around the world.”

The Democratic presidential nominee said earlier at a Seattle fundraiser that while she understands many voters want to “turn away,” her supporters need to help her win the election to “demonstrate the positive, optimistic, confident, unifying vision of America that I believe in and that I think, together, we can demonstrate America’s best days are still ahead of us.”

While President Barack Obama is ending his two terms with high approval ratings, Clinton’s struggles with high unfavorability ratings and questions about her honesty could undermine any electoral mandate she might achieve in November.

So as Trump has dealt with a firestorm that started last week with the release of an 11-year-old videotape of him bragging about kissing and groping women, Clinton is increasingly aiming her message not only at Democrats but at disaffected Republicans and independents turned off by the spectacle.


draiser at the Paramount Theatre, where Trump backers gathered outside on a blustery day, one bearing a sign that read, “Hillary for Prison 2016,” Clinton struck a tone of conciliation. She said she wanted people “to start looking after each other again,” and that while she would aim to pass laws and seek “some real national commitments,” people needed to support each other at the end of an acrimonious campaign season.

“I will be asking for your help. I need your help not just to win this election but to govern and to heal the divides that exist in our country right now,” Clinton said. “I do believe there isn’t anything we can’t do once we make up our minds to do it.”

The former secretary of state said those challenges extend across the globe, saying she had talked to many foreign leaders who complained about Trump’s praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin or her opponent’s calls for a temporary ban on foreign Muslims entering the country.

“So make no mistake, we do have to repair the damage which he has done, which we will do. But on both domestic and national security grounds, repudiating his candidacy sends exactly the right message,” she said.

Leading in many battleground state polls, Clinton’s team is assessing the possibility of expanding the map to compete in traditional Republican states like Utah, Georgia and Arizona. She is preparing for next week’s final debate in Las Vegas and then an intense stretch of campaigning. While she continues to call Trump unqualified to be president, much of her message appears aimed beyond November — and into a possible first term.
READ: Clinton reaching past Trump, as he denies report of assault

“Bringing people together to solve problems is key to our democracy. There’s no question about it,” Clinton said. “And I want us to do that in a spirit of mutual respect, listening to one another, having each other’s backs.”

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Clinton edges ahead of Trump in post-debate poll bump

WASHINGTON—Hillary Clinton has pulled ahead of presidential rival Donald Trump in a new national poll out Friday, just days after her strong showing in the first televised debate.

The Democrat and former secretary of state bested her Republican rival by three percentage points in a Fox News poll which showed her ahead 43 to 40 percent.

Although Clinton’s lead is within the poll’s three percentage point margin of error, it shows a bump for Clinton, who beat Trump by only one percentage point in the same poll two weeks ago.

Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein polled at eight and four percent respectively.

The nationwide results come as Clinton’s numbers improve in a number of critical swing states following the debate.

Florida — with its prodigious number of electoral votes — has swung back toward Clinton since Monday’s political showdown, polling shows, offering her a tantalizing opening to reach the White House.

Meanwhile a Detroit News-WDIV-TV four-way matchup conducted in the battleground state of Michigan found Clinton leading Trump by seven percentage points after the debate.

The first of three, the debate was the most watched in US history with 84 million people tuning in, according to a Nielsen tally.

During the clash the Democrat frequently forced her prickly opponent on the back foot over judgment, taxes, foreign policy and terrorism.

But American voters do not particularly like either candidate and many are still undecided.

The Fox News poll found that 53 percent had an unfavorable opinion of Clinton, while 55 percent view Trump in a negative light.

The number of voters who find Trump honest and trustworthy, meanwhile, sank eight points since mid-September to 31 percent.

Clinton’s numbers remain relatively unchanged: 35 percent now find her honest and trustworthy compared to 34 percent two weeks ago.

The Fox News poll interviewed 1,009 registered voters, and includes results among 911 likely voters. It was carried out Tuesday through Thursday.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

A Miss Universe insulted by Trump steps up for Clinton

WASHINGTON— Alicia Machado says that when she gained weight after being crowned Miss Universe for 1996, Donald Trump labeled her with a sexist nickname — “Miss Piggy” — that caused her shame and humiliation.

Two decades later, Machado’s dealings with Trump, her one-time beauty pageant boss, are reverberating through the 2016 campaign as the Republican businessman and reality TV star seeks the White House.

Democratic rival Hillary Clinton told Machado’s story toward the end of Monday’s first presidential debate, scolding Trump for referring to the Venezuelan-born actress as “Miss Housekeeping,” as Clinton said, “because she was Latina.”

“Donald, she has a name,” Clinton said, prompting Trump to ask, “Where did you find this?”

Clinton said, “Her name is Alicia Machado and she has become a U.S. citizen, and you can bet she’s going to vote this November.”

Asked about the exchange during an interview Tuesday with “Fox and Friends,” Trump said Machado was “the worst we ever had,” adding: “She gained a massive amount of weight. It was a real problem. We had a real problem.”

On CNN Tuesday night, Machado said she thinks Trump believes women are “a second class of people.”



“I love this country,” Machado said. “I don’t want to have some misogynist president.”

Clinton’s embrace of Machado brought comparisons to her campaign’s defense of Khizr Khan, whose son was killed while protecting other U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Khan spoke at the Democratic National Convention, holding up a copy of the U.S. Constitution while accusing Trump of smearing the character of Muslims.

Clinton’s campaign is trying to mobilize Latinos and women in November’s election and has assailed Trump for derogatory comments about women in the past. It quickly released a web video detailing Machado’s story, portraying her as a mortified pageant winner whom Trump called “fat” or “ugly” and blindsided by inviting reporters to watch her work out.

Machado went on a diet in 1997 after saying she gained at least 15 pounds. Trump said during Machado’s workout in front of the media that year that “she likes to eat — like all of us” and supported her weight-loss efforts.

She was embroiled in controversy of a different sort one year later, after a judge in Venezuela accused her of threatening to kill him after he indicted her then-boyfriend for attempted murder. The boyfriend, Juan Rafael Rodriguez Regetti, was accused of shooting and wounding his sister’s husband, whom he blamed for his sister’s suicide. The victim’s family accused Machado of driving her boyfriend’s getaway car, but she denied any involvement and apparently was never indicted, due to lack of evidence.

Now a U.S. citizen, Machado told reporters Tuesday in a conference call arranged by the Clinton campaign that her experience with Trump could “open eyes” in the presidential election. She said she was “really surprised” to hear Clinton refer to her story during the debate — she said she was overcome with emotion and started crying — but wanted to help Clinton in the election.

After the debate, Machado tweeted her thanks to Clinton, writing in Spanish: “Thanks Mrs. Hillary Clinton. Your respect for women and our differences makes you great. I’m with you.”

In June, Machado appeared at a news conference in Virginia held by immigrant advocacy groups to encourage Latino voters to support Clinton.

“I want to keep working on my campaigns for women’s equality, for respect for women and that our physical appearances do not define us productive or intelligent beings,” Machado told reporters in Spanish. “We are more than what we look like physically, that’s my point.”

source: lifestyle.inquirer.net

George H.W. Bush said to be voting for Clinton

WASHINGTON  – A prominent member of the Kennedy family says former Republican President George H.W. Bush told her that he plans to vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton for president this fall.

Former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend posted a picture of herself with Bush on Facebook Monday and added, “The President told me he’s voting for Hillary!!” Townsend later confirmed the conversation she had while meeting Bush in Maine to Politico, which shared a screengrab of the Facebook post.

Bush’s spokesman, Jim McGrath, says in a statement that the 92-year-old former president’s vote is private and Bush isn’t commenting on the race. McGrath later said on Twitter that he’s “still checking” if anyone was there to verify Townsend’s conversation.

Bush hasn’t offered support for GOP nominee Donald Trump, who defeated his son, Jeb Bush, in a testy Republican primary.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Did Melania Trump ‘Rickroll’ in speech?

CLEVELAND, United States—Did 1980s pop star Rick Astley make an unwitting cameo appearance in Donald Trump’s wife Melania’s speech at the Republican convention?

It may not be as serious as allegations that her speech plagiarized First Lady Michelle Obama, but a number of people are also seeing in her lines a reference to Astley’s song “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

The Slovenian-born model said of her billionaire husband on the convention’s opening day Monday: “He will never, ever give you up. And, most importantly, he will never, ever let you down.”

Such sentiments are common in speeches by political spouses but her sentences happen to closely mimic those in the chorus of Astley’s 1987 smash hit.

The song has had an unlikely comeback in recent years as an online meme known as “Rickrolling” in which unsuspecting internet users receive links to the video for “Never Gonna Give You Up,” with the tidily dressed English singer swaying his hips.

A number of social media users juxtaposed Ashley’s song and Melania Trump’s speech, leading some to become true believers that the aspiring first lady was Rickrolling the convention in Cleveland.

Scrutiny has turned to Melania Trump’s speechwriter after her remarks contained striking similarities to the address by President Barack Obama’s wife Michelle when she addressed the 2008 Democratic convention.

“My truther theory: Melania’s speechwriter slipped in a Rickroll to let us know they were tanking it on purpose,” New York hip-hop radio host Jay Smooth tweeted.

Others felt some immediate effects from the online story.

Ireland-based Twitter user @brassafrax wrote: “I’ve had Rick Astley stuck in my head all day. Thanks a bunch, Melania Trump.”

“Never Gonna Give You Up” has been watched more than 224 million times on YouTube, an extremely high number for a nearly 30-year-old song.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Trump, Clinton sweep to victory in Northeastern contests

PHILADELPHIA — Donald Trump swept all five Republican primaries Tuesday, a commanding showing across the Northeast that kept the Republican front-runner on his narrow path to the GOP nomination. His rout was a blow to rivals who are running out of ways to stop the brash billionaire.

Hillary Clinton was dominant in Democratic contests in Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania. She ceded Rhode Island to rival Bernie Sanders, and they were locked in a close race in Connecticut.

With her three victories, Clinton now has 88 percent of the delegates she needs to become the first woman nominated by a major party. She’s already increasingly looking past Sanders, even as the Vermont senator vows to stay in the race until primary voting ends in June.

“We will unify our party to win this election and build an America where we can all rise together,” Clinton declared during a victory rally in Philadelphia, the city where Democrats will gather for their national convention in July.

Sanders spent Tuesday campaigning in West Virginia, where he drew several thousand people to a lively evening rally. He urged his supporters to recognize that they are “powerful people if you choose to exercise that power.”

Still, there were some signs that Sanders’ campaign was coming to grips with his difficult position. Top aide Tad Devine said that after Tuesday’s results were known, “we’ll decide what we’re going to do going forward.”

Trump’s victories padded his delegate totals, yet the Republican contest remains chaotic. The businessman is the only candidate left in the three-person race who could possibly clinch the nomination through the regular voting process, yet he could still fall short of the 1,237 delegates he needs.

GOP rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich are desperately trying to keep him from that magic number and push the race to a convention fight, where complicated rules would govern the nominating process. The Texas senator and Ohio governor even took the rare step of announcing plans to coordinate in upcoming contests to try to minimize Trump’s delegate totals.

But that effort did little to stop Trump from a big showing in the Northeast.

Cruz spent Tuesday in Indiana, which votes next week. Indiana is one of Cruz’s last best chances to slow Trump, and Kasich’s campaign is pulling out of the state to give him a better opportunity to do so.

“Tonight this campaign moves back to more favorable terrain,” Cruz said during an evening rally in Knightstown, Indiana. His event was held at the “Hoosier gym,” where some scenes were filmed for the 1986 movie, “Hoosiers,” starring Gene Hackman as the coach of a small town Indiana basketball team that wins the state championship.

Trump has railed against his rivals’ coordination, panning it as “pathetic,” and has also cast efforts to push the nomination fight to the convention as evidence of a rigged process that favors political insiders.

Yet there’s no doubt Trump is trying to lead a party deeply divided by his candidacy. In Pennsylvania, exit polls showed nearly 4 in 10 GOP voters said they would be excited by Trump becoming president, but the prospect of the real estate mogul in the White House scares a quarter of those who cast ballots in the state’s Republican primary.

In another potential general election warning sign for Republicans, 6 in 10 GOP voters in Pennsylvania said the Republican campaign has divided the party — a sharp contrast to the 7 in 10 Democratic voters in the state who said the race between Clinton and Sanders has energized their party.

The exit polls were conducted by Edison Research for The Associated Press and television networks.

With his five victories Tuesday, Trump will win at least 82 of the 118 delegates up for grabs in Tuesday’s contests. And he has a chance to win a lot more.

In Pennsylvania, Trump collected 17 delegates for winning the state. An additional 54 are elected directly by voters — three in each congressional district. However, their names are listed on the ballot with no information about which presidential candidate they support.

Those delegates will attend the GOP convention as free agents, able to vote for the candidate of their choice.

Democrats award delegates proportionally, which allowed Clinton to maintain her lead over Sanders even as he rattled off a string of wins in previous contests. According to the AP count, Clinton has 2,089 delegates while Sanders has 1,258.

That count includes delegates won in primaries and caucuses, as well as superdelegates — party insiders who can back the candidate of their choice, regardless of how their state votes.

Clinton’s campaign is eager for Sanders to tone down his attacks on the former secretary of state if he’s going to continue in the race. She’s been reminding voters of the 2008 Democratic primary, when she endorsed Barack Obama after a tough campaign and urged her supporters to rally around her former rival.

Ahead of Tuesday’s results, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said that while Sanders has run a “unique and powerful” campaign, he does not believe the Vermont senator will be the party’s nominee.

According to exit polls, less than a fifth of Democratic voters said they would not support Clinton if she gets the nomination. The exit polls were conducted in Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Maryland.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Sanders wins Wyoming to extend victory run

NEW YORK, United States — White House hopeful Bernie Sanders extended his winning streak in his bid to pull off a shock and defeat Hillary Clinton, grabbing victory in the Wyoming Democratic caucuses Saturday, US media said.

The state — which is overwhelmingly Republican — awards only 14 delegates, meaning Sanders barely puts a dent in Clinton’s more than 200-delegate lead, but it gives the self-described democratic socialist another morale boost, ahead of the crucial New York primary on April 19.

The Vermont senator won 56 percent of the Wyoming vote to 44 percent for Clinton, CNN projected, with most ballots counted.

Clinton though remains the clear frontrunner for the Democratic party ticket for November’s general election, but Sanders has the momentum and has enjoyed a string of successes at the polls.

Speaking to supporters in New York, Sanders broke into his speech to say to cheers: “All right. News bulletin. We just won Wyoming.”

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Republican candidates Bush and Trump clash over 9/11 remarks

WASHINGTON - Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush transitioned from defense to offense on Sunday after criticism from rival Donald Trump that his brother, former President George W. Bush, carried some blame for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Trump, the flamboyant front-runner in the 15-candidate Republican field, once again provoked a tit-for-tat with Bush on Friday by saying his brother must share some of the blame for the attacks that occurred during his first year in office.

"Look, my brother responded to a crisis, and he did it as you would hope a president would do," Bush said on CNN's "State of the Union."

"The great majority of Americans believe that. And I don't know why he keeps bringing this up."

Bush said Trump's comments about the Sept. 11 attacks called his credibility into question. The former Florida governor attacked Trump's foreign policy credentials and compared his grip on international issues to a reality television show the billionaire businessman formerly hosted.

"Across the spectrum of foreign policy, Mr. Trump talks about things that -- as though he's still on 'The Apprentice,'" Bush said on CNN.

"Talking about Syria - saying ISIS should take out (Syrian President Bashar al-Assad), then Russia should take out ISIS, as though it was some kind of board game and not a serious approach," he said.

Trump doubled down on his comments during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday," using a oft-repeated Jeb Bush phrase - that his brother "kept us safe" - against him.

"Jeb said 'we were safe with my brother. We were safe.' Well the World Trade Center just fell down," Trump said on Fox.

"I'm not blaming George Bush, but I don't want Jeb Bush to say 'my brother kept us safe,' because September 11th was one of the worst days in the history of this country."

Bush has defended his brother's actions after the Sept. 11 attacks, but his campaign has kept its distance from the unpopular president indelibly linked to the unpopular Iraq war.

He mocked Trump's comments and likened them to blaming President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the World War Two attack on Pearl Harbor.

"Next week, Mr. Trump is probably going to say that FDR was around when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor," he said. "It's what you do after that matters. And that's the sign of leadership." — Reuters