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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.
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You are an idiot if you think on-line polls are accurate. Most on-line polls simply record the actions of spam bots.
I'm struggling to find the technical aspect of this. Because the polls he was trying to rig are online? Or is this nothing more than orange-tinged clickbait?
The technical aspects of this are basically what you think. Asking for some IT guy to create a way to click though online polls to skew them in the way that you want.
What escapes me is the importance of this revelation. Online polls are about as unscientific and irrelevant as you can get in the polling world. They basically are like the junk science of perpetual motion or energy from nothing of the polling world. Nobody but political punditry pay attention to their results and then only when they support their political ideas, otherwise nobody looks at the results or takes them seriously.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Paying for it with campaign donations is what constitutes the felony.
Those polls that are completely and utterly useless in pretty much every respect? Wake me up when something newsworthy happens.
Find solace in the fact that after these guys faked the polls for them Trump/Cohen cheated them out of their payment which is standard Trump Organisation practice. The lesson here is, never do business with anybody whose business practices you haven't thoroughly researched.
At some point, it just becomes a dull buzz when it's so frequent...
That's no joke. We know that the FBI opened an investigation into a sitting US president to determine if he is acting as an agent of a major foreign adversary, and I haven't even discussed that with anyone. Literally. People say they're worried about Trump normalizing hate speech, what's even more concerning is normalizing egregious behavior to the point that people hardly even discuss it.
What's going to happen when Trump is gone? Things are going to seem so boring.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
What escapes me is the importance of this revelation.
Really the humor of it. We've got someone with very high name recognition, who tries to create an image as a savvy businessman, literally hiring a company for a sole purpose of getting him a place on the top 100 business leaders, and he failed. That's pretty funny.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
No, there just aren't enough idiots in US to elect Trump, so significant number of non-idiots voted for him. You need to understand why non-idiots voted for him instead of just calling them idiots or this will happen again.
FTFA:
"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."
And then;
"A second similar effort related to rig a Drudge Report poll of potential Republican candidates worked, according to the Journal. Trump placed fifth in that poll, conducted in February 2015, before he announced his candidacy for the White House."
Oh, it got him placed fifth. Wow, big impact. I remember that time. He was higher than fifth in my estimation, but only because there were only two other candidates I was considering as viable and worth my consideration at the time. And one of those got weeded out pretty early. The rest were so milquetoast as to draw my scorn and humor.
And do we doubt every single candidate was also trying this tactic, to scam the polls any way possible, preferably without getting caught? Really? You think that?
I hope not. the only possible exception, AFAIAC, didn't need to, because they fixed their nomination. Done deal.
I'm not sure this is momentous, but it's another reason for those who loathe our President to expand on that. Mind you, his former lawyer, Cohen, is in the vise of a prosecutorial death march, and is paying for that.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Voting for someone is a value judgment. It is very likely that most Trump voters could see all the things you listed yet chose to vote for him despite that. This means some other value was a higher priority. If you can understand what that other value is, you can understand why Trump was elected. Outright dismissing that there could be such value would just lead to a second term.
>The FBI wanted to correct what they felt was a mistake by the American people, and began to work on a soft coupe
That's not a take, that's Trumpist propaganda. That's the kind of thing that liars like Hannity feed to the rubes. It may even be projection about a coup enabled by foreign actors, installing a failed businessman as President.
Cohen's lied before and you think NOW he's telling the gospel truth?
I agree, we shouldn't just trust Michael Cohen at his word. We should look at the evidence and base it on that. The evidence says he hired the firm he is claiming he hired. In fact the firm is saying he didn't pay them the full amount, which means they admit they did the work as well. Of course to know that you would have to go beyond the headline and care enough to reads the story.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
What I find both astonishing and scary is all the GOPers chirping "So, what LAWS were broken?".... Really, your bar for the leader of the "civilized" world is that low? Don't we deserve better?
The problem is, he hasn't weakened the country.
Except by alienating our allies, randomly engaging in mindless economic and military stratagem, and destroying a lot of moral credibility.
We have a stronger economy, we are checking NoKo, China, and Iran.
Except for the need to bailout agriculture, fake numbers and how neither North Korea or Iran were actual threats and how China is blowing us off.
Oh, and illegals, he is struggling to fend them off, but no one disagrees that they drain our entitlement coffers. Every administration since Reagan has said so.
Actually for the Social Security coffers, they have contributed a surplus and the most expensive drain is on wasteful bailouts for corporations.
They'll make up anything to do that.
Well then it's a good thing we follow the rule of law and have things like trials. But, go on, tell me again how the entire FBI functions as a single entity with one hive-mind.
get the Russians to leak it to the press.
Why would the Russians want to damage their guy? Do you understand how little the Russians like the Clintons? You understand that they were actively working against Hillary, right? But, they're going to do something to damage Trump? And you believe that? Is that the current state of cognitive dissonance in the Trump camp regarding the investigations? Is the current line that Russia was now working AGAINST Trump instead of for him? Do you guys do any actual training for those kinds of mental gymnastics or do you just kind of wing it?
They took down Nixon, and apparently think they can get rid of any democratically elected president they don't like.
Holy shit, I think this is the first time I've seen the "Nixon was innocent" argument. If nothing else, you guys are at least amusing.
I've heard of revisionist history, but holy fuck. Russia was working against Trump? Nixon was innocent? Look at how far you have to go to get to a place where all of these pieces of evidence that you don't like start to line up with your chosen narrative. This is absurd. You're jumping through more hoops than Giuliani trying to explain the campaign's involvement with Russia.
There was NO CONTACT!
OK, there was contact, but it wasn't planned!
OK, it was planned, but not about the campaign!
OK, it was about the campaign, but it wasn't meaningful! And there was another meeting.
Collusion isn't even a crime!
You can't collude with someone you don't personally know!
OK, maybe SOMEONE colluded, but it wasn't Trump!
Oh, but yeah, sure, the ENTIRE FBI is corrupt. OK, yeah, sure buddy. It's not your guy who is an amazingly incompetent dickhead, no it's the entire federal law enforcement agency which is breaking the law and being unconstitutional. You know, literally the two things that they're there to specifically not do.
Time to defund the FBI and bar all members from any future government job.
With all due respect, it's time for you to stop talking like you've got the pulse of "real Americans." The FBI does a fine job. The FBI is staffed with many, many people who love and care about the country and have made it their life's work to help the country. I believe that anyone who goes out of their way to make it seem like the majority of government workers have some hidden, secret agenda is probably full to the tipping point with bullshit. Sorry pal, that argument doesn't pass the smell test. You may believe the turds that fall out of the president's mouth, but let me assure you that you are in a very small majority with regard to that. The majority of the country still believes that the people working in the government - REGARDLESS OF THEIR POLITICAL BELIEFS - are there because they love the country and want to help it, not damage it. Trying to act like the literal federal law enforcement agency would go against the Constitution and break the law is laughably absurd, and it says very bad things about your though process and where you get your information from.
You know what? Don't take my word for it. How strong are your convictions? Are you just a big talker or do you back it up? Because I would encourage you, whole-heartedly, to find the bars around your local FBI office and go in and start telling everyone how all FBI agents are corrupt and hate the country. Go ahead, let me know how that works out for you.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Let me see if I've got this straight. Being a retard, it sometimes takes me a little longer than most of my peers to achieve a working understanding of such matters. You voted to elect the Joker to the office of President of the United States, but I'm the "retard."
Is that basically the size of it?
Huh... I thought the goal was to detect and stop foreign interference in our elections. The fact that you seem to think that "impeach Trump" is the goal probably explains why you cheered for a 4+ year investigation into the Benghazi attack which produced no proof of any wrongdoing, but whine like a president when the Mueller investigation (and offshoots) convict multiple people.
Patriots cheer for the country, partisans cheer for their team. Good to see which you are.
Aaaand that's why he's so seriously considered invading Iran, North Korea, and fucking Venezuela that he's had the military put together plans for him?
I've said it before and I'll say it again, Trump would stumble into more wars than Hillary would enter on purpose, and I think it's been only luck and less-hot heads surrounding him that have prevented it. Now the less-hot heads are gone, and who knows when the luck will run out...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel