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Michael Cohen Says He Tried To Rig Online Polls 'at the Direction' of Donald Trump (cnbc.com)
Dan Mangan, writing for CNBC: President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer and longtime fixer Michael Cohen on Thursday said he tried to rig online polls -- including one conducted by CNBC -- "at the direction and for the sole benefit of" Trump when he was thinking about making a run for the White House. "I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn't deserve it," Cohen said in a tweet copping to the electronic chicanery to have Trump's name rank higher in online polls than it otherwise would have.
Cohen's admission came shortly after The Wall Street Journal published a story detailing how he retained an information technology company to manipulate a 2014 CNBC online poll identifying the nation's top 100 business leaders to bolster Trump's chances of making that list. That effort failed. And Trump himself fumed in 2014 on Twitter about his absence from CNBC's poll results.
Cohen's admission came shortly after The Wall Street Journal published a story detailing how he retained an information technology company to manipulate a 2014 CNBC online poll identifying the nation's top 100 business leaders to bolster Trump's chances of making that list. That effort failed. And Trump himself fumed in 2014 on Twitter about his absence from CNBC's poll results.
So what you're saying is it's ok to sling racial epithets at minorities who don't agree with you politically. So progressive.
Did it involve campaign funds?
The summary above references 2014. TFA mentions:
Most don't notice, but few candidates jump in as an officially declared candidate, instead they 'form a committee to explore the option of running' (or some such similar nonsense.
Kirsten Gillibrand could engage in the exact same kind of poll rigging today, and use her exploratory committee funds to do it legally... because she's not an actual declared candidate.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
That in a hectic campaign where you're constantly being hounded by the fake news media, it's hard to fully vet everyone who ends up involved with the campaign?
Cohen starting working for Trump in 2006.....when Trump was still a registered Democrat.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The money came from the "Trump Foundation" which was ordered disbanded by New York. Since the Foundation was used as a personal Trump check book for both private and election activities, there are likely a litany of laws broken.
There's several ongoing investigations so we're only beginning to scratch the surface of this shit storm
In other news today Giuliani now claims - contrary to 18 months of loudmouthing - "I never said there was no collusion".. And they called Kerry "flip-flop/flip-flop". Giuliani must be running for cover or he's just insane, I wouldn't rule out either.
The realty is the Mueller investigation alone has thus far resulted in 36+ indictments, guilty pleas (9) and people in Jail (4). Incoming House Intelligence chair Adam Schiff will be handing over tons of documents to Meuller (where and Nunes woundn't) and will likely implicate Don Trump Jr. in lying before the House Intelligence committee. I'm going to invest my money in popcorn for this one.
Trumpkins continually cry "What laws were broken?".... Campaign finance laws, fraud (Trump U), IRS rules (Tim Tebow helmit), election laws by emailing foreign officials to solicit political contributions, illegally using a superpac, trade laws to Cuba, copywrite infringement....and a long yet to be determined list... Sorry Trumpkins, the OompaLoompa king will ultimately go down painfully.
That's the first time I've heard anyone make the accusation that state borders are gerrymandered. And I rather doubt that was actually your intent.
Quick civics lesson: Virtually all electors cast their vote based on who won the popular vote in their state. Any gerrymandering (redrawing of voting boundaries) would require redrawing interstate borders - which I don't believe has ever happened to a state after it has joined the union.
Now, the electoral college *is* set up so that each state gets as many electoral votes as it has congressional representatives, which does mean that some citizen's vote counts for more than others, the same way some citizens get more congressional representation, since states get two senators each, regardless of population. And it was set up that way for a reason - so that the small, densely-populated states couldn't just ignore the large rural ones. Without that, the large rural states would have had little incentive to join the nation in the first place. Who would want to be the farming-bitch for the cities, with little political power?
We could change the laws for how states get federal representation - but to do so we'd need a constitutional amendment to be ratified by all those states that would be delegated to political bitch status - and they'd have to be stupid to support that.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
A man will say anything to shift the blame onto anyone but himself when facing potential prison time.
It's the same principle as to why a " confession " under torture is unreliable.
Folks will say anything you want to hear to make the pain stop.
And Trump's campaign is obviously the inventor of such tactics?
Why is it Trump supporters are unable to discuss anything without inventing a new reality? Such as inserting a claim that this was only Trump into a post that is still sitting right there, with no such claim.
"Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?"
Come on, everybody plays this game.
Then why'd you ask what the point of this story was? If you knew "everyone plays this game", then you'd be well aware of the point. It's almost like you're flailing about for excuses and justifications.
and BOTH campaigns clearly made similar claims based on the same kinds of evidence.
[Citation Required]
Since Clinton was leading in traditional polls, there was no need to game online polls to point to. They could just point to the "real" polls. Democrats aren't above using a similar tactic, but it was unnecessary in this particular case.
(And before you go off on those polls, the 2016 election result was within the MOE of those polls)
Not even slightly true. The gap between CNN and Fox polling is really very narrow. That's because they're both making a good-faith effort to be at least slightly scientific.
For instance, on December 9-11, Fox polled Trump's approval ratings at 46%. That same week, NBC/WSJ polled it at 43%. The next poll with CNN's name on it was Jan 10-11 - 3 weeks into the shutdown - when CNN put it at 37%. Allowing for margins of error and base drift (which has gone against Trump during the shutdown), those are pretty damn' close.
See here for a comprehensive list.
Not to dispute your main point about gerrymandering, but state boundaries have been re-drawn after states have joined the union.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
(separation from Massachusetts)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
(ceded territory in exchange for assumption of debt)
Hasn't happened for a while though, that I'm aware of.
friends don't let friends teleport drunk
they are well aware of biases and the like and have detailed methods for weighting them and accounting for them. They were pretty spot on in general.
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Read TFA properly. The last one was during the 2016 campaign.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The first paragraph of the Wikipedia article for "minstrel show" (emphasis mine):
You are likening Diamond and Silk to playing a derogatory stereotype of "blackness" for the sole purpose of pleasing white people. You are claiming they are going against what you would consider "acceptable blackness", because they are black people who don't ascribe to the political beliefs that you think black people should have. You are being racist.