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.

Comments

Growing tension

[Anonymous Coward]

Just goes to show how manipulation of tech can potentially have a huge impact on real lives and influence the view of a society.

Re:Growing tension

[Anonymous Coward]

Another reason tech of any kind needs some sort of regulation.

Re:Growing tension

[jonsmirl]

You are an idiot if you think on-line polls are accurate. Most on-line polls simply record the actions of spam bots.

Re:Growing tension

[Narcocide]

That's not common knowledge though. Roughly 80% of the populace is under the mistaken assumption that law enforcement would both care and be competent.

Re:Growing tension

[Obfuscant]

Finally, they find an admission that could technically become the subject for an article of impeachment...

Someone said that someone else told them to give fake data to an online poll ... you seriously think that rises to the level of a "high crime" that justifies impeachment? Cohen's lied before and you think NOW he's telling the gospel truth?

Wow.

Re:Growing tension

[amicusNYCL]

Another reason tech of any kind needs some sort of regulation

Well that's dumb as hell. What are you suggesting, government oversight of Slashdot polls? Do you suspect Cowboy Neal might be rigging things?

Re:Growing tension

[ShanghaiBill]

Cohen's lied before and you think NOW he's telling the gospel truth?

Well, he does have a motive to say whatever he thinks will keep himself out of prison. But he is a lawyer, and they have mandatory classes on ethics, so I think we can trust him.

Re:Growing tension

[sinij]

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.

Re:Growing tension

[rickb928]

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.

Re:Growing tension

[sinij]

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.

Re:Growing tension

[Sique]

As a matter of fact, no one who voted for whomever, is an idiot (idiotes) in the literal meaning of the word. Everyone who votes is a citizen, not an idiotes. Idiotes are those who just accept whatever others vote for by not going to vote themselves.

Re:Growing tension

[dirk]

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.

Re:Growing tension

[Immerman]

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.

Re:Growing tension

[nehumanuscrede]

"You are an idiot if you think on-line polls are accurate. Most on-line polls simply record the actions of spam bots."

Not even limited to online polls.

If CNN goes out and takes a " random " poll anything Trump related, can you predict what the overwhelming outcome of that poll will be ?

If Fox goes out and takes a " random " poll anything Trump related, can you predict what the overwhelming outcome of that poll will be ?

Not only can you guess the predictable outcomes in both cases, but they will be in stark opposition to one another.

The bottom line is, you can't trust a poll of any kind because someone, somewhere with an agenda is manipulating the outcome in some way.

Re:Growing tension

[dryeo]

The weird thing about America is having the number in Congress frozen since 1911, as if the population hasn't grown, which gives more power to small States on top of their Constitutional power of the Senate.
Originally 30,000 odd people to a Representative, now over 600,000 and this is reflected in the Electoral collage and puts the larger populated States at a disadvantage.
Canada, for example, has over 300 representatives with 1/10th the population.

Re:Growing tension

[Local ID10T]

Just to clarify:

You think we need more politicians?

Re:Growing tension

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Growing tension

[GameboyRMH]

The "other value" was "pwning the libs" over stupid-ass culture war bullshit. Which is why all Trump voters are idiots or evil. Or perhaps evil idiots.

There was no good or reasonably intelligent reason to vote for Trump. If you voted for Romney or McCain then I can still have respect for you and we can agree to disagree. Even if you voted for Bush Jr, or even one of the racebaiter presidents who impoverished Gen. Y, Bush Sr. or Reagan, I can give you the benefit of the doubt. But if you voted for that dimwitted clearly-racist pussygrabbing shitstain Trump, you are by definition at least as stupid and/or awful as he is, and you are worthy of nothing but scorn.

Re:Growing tension

[dryeo]

I think you need more balance in the number of Representatives. It's hard to represent 600,000+ people and as the sibling AC points out, less politicians means easier to influence, as well as making money more important in an election campaign.
If you are going to stick with a system of one representative per 600,000 (and climbing), perhaps other parts of the system need changing so the districts are more balanced. That would take updating the Constitution and it would be easier to just ratify Article the 1st as it would only take 27 more States to ratify. Hey, Article the 2nd did finally pass.

Re:Growing tension

[ath1901]

That's easy: Tribalism. I remember someone saying that the extraordinary thing about the election was that the result was so ordinary. People voted along party lines like they always had.

When a belief becomes a part of your identity, facts no longer matter. Information does change your factual beliefs but not your attitude/position in general. The brain also does motivated reasoning and will find counterarguments for any inconvenient facts. If Trump is caught lying he's not an immoral liar, he's a strategic smart guy playing the opposition etc.

It is important to note this is a universal feature of all humans. We all do top down motivated reasoning. Republicans are not idiots, they just happened to be republicans when an idiot was elected president. It can, and does happen to all of us.

This program explains some of the psychology behind it:

https://youarenotsosmart.com/2...

Re:Growing tension

[AmiMoJo]

Doesn't matter how effective it was. It was illegal campaign spending. TFA says he did it during the campaign and then in early 2017 the Trump org paid him back.

It's the same thing as the Stormy Daniels payment. Not illegal to cheat on your wife, but illegal to spend money covering it up during an election campaign and not declare it.

Re:Growing tension

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Growing tension

[columbus]

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.

Re:Growing tension

[Linux Torvalds]

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?

Re:Growing tension

[kqs]

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.

Re:Growing tension

[Obfuscant]

Huh... I thought the goal was to detect and stop foreign interference in our elections.

Heh heh. Nice way to ignore context. The statement which shows a goal of "impeach" was this: "Finally, they find an admission that could technically become the subject for an article of impeachment... ". That impeachment is clearly not for Cohen, but for ... maybe you can figure it out.

explains why you cheered for a 4+ year investigation into the Benghazi attack

Make stuff up, much?

Patriots cheer for the country, partisans cheer for their team.

And patriots pay attention to the Constitution and the rule of law, one of which requires "high crimes" for an impeachment, the other is based on "innocent until proven guilty". We've not even been shown a crime, much less a "high crime", and no proof that Trump committed it. And yet "patriots" are clamoring for impeachment. Good to see which kind of patriot you are.

Re:Growing tension

[Anonymous Coward]

So the libs/progs start a stupid culture war with the majority of the population and anyone who votes for someone to stop that divisive bullshit is the "idiot" or "evil one"?

You might want to look in the mirror sometime when accusing someone of being evil or stupid.

Re:Growing tension

[Obfuscant]

During the Clinton administration, the GOP set the bar at fibbing about an extramarital BJ.

When you lie about simple facts, you look biased and partisan. The impeachment was for perjury in front of a grand jury, which is not "fibbing". What the perjury was about is irrelevant.

By the way, if abusing one's office and thus committing sexual harassment is such a trivial matter, as you seem to trying to make it out to be, why did Clinton lie about it to a grand jury, and why are so many people being tried and convicted (and losing their jobs) over it?

But no, that's falling into your trap of trying to redefine what the Constitution actually requires. What Cohen did isn't grounds for impeachment of the President.

Re:Growing tension

[ShanghaiBill]

yes, and if they fail ethics class, they have to become GOP candidates.

A lawyer is in his office late at night, working on his billing statements, when there is a puff of smoke. Mephistopheles appears before him, and says "Sell me your soul, and I will make you a senator!" The lawyer thinks for a minute, and then replies "Sure, but what's the catch?"

Re:Growing tension

[subie]

Obviously, someone can't handle a difference of opinion and has to mark this comment as Troll. Sadly you see this a lot more from my party than you do from the right. People need to stop calling others racists, trolls, whatever simple because you don't like the opinion. You don't have to like someone's view but you shouldn't shutdown the ability to speak it.

Re:Growing tension

[GameboyRMH]

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...

Re:Growing tension

[AmiMoJo]

Read TFA properly. The last one was during the 2016 campaign.

Re:Growing tension

[AmiMoJo]

The Dems probably won't try to impeach Trump. It takes too long and can backfire, like it did with Clinton. Better to just keep digging up dirt, subpoena his tax returns, that kind of thing, and wait for the 2020 race.

Re:Growing tension

[GameboyRMH]

Ah, the old "He's not a moron, he's just doing a really good job of pretending to be one for strategic reasons" argument. Well if he's pretending, he's really doing an amazing job:

https://www.apnews.com/a3309c4...

Although I don't see any positive results from doing so. He may have come close to bringing NK to the table but instead he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory:

https://nationalpost.com/opini...

If you think that North Korea has changed course at all since Trump took power, then they've pulled the wool over your eyes just like Trump's:

https://www.theatlantic.com/in...

Also while pulling out of Syria was not a bad idea, the way he chose to announce it, as a surprise to everyone except himself, was idiotic:

https://www.theguardian.com/us...

It's time to MPGA

[TomR teh Pirate]

Let's Make Polling Great Again!

Talk about a guy obsessed with image. I can't ever remember another story quite like this one.

Re:It's time to MPGA

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't ever remember another story quite like this one.

You're joking right? There's an anti-Trump article posted almost every day it seems like to me. At some point, it just becomes a dull buzz when it's so frequent...

Re:It's time to MPGA

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because it's bullshit. All of this is bullshit. It's 2019 the peak of bullshit. Orange man bad. Our tribe good, their tribe bad. Look at this advertisement. Hate that man! Hate him! Don't you hate him? Wow, I really hate him! Oooo a sale on tampons! That guy won't give us tampons for free! Booooooo!!! Oh look the new Iphone is coming out soon!! I just have to have one! Orange man bad. 20 goto 10

Re:It's time to MPGA

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because it's all bullshit? Cohen turned state's evidence and has been trying to invent stories about Trump in order to win leniency after he got upset that Trump didn't immediately pardon him or something. (Ignoring that you have to be convicted of something to be pardoned of something, and Trump can't control the deep state.) Cohen's a dishonest man and you can't believe a word he says.

Re:It's time to MPGA

[amicusNYCL]

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.

Re: It's time to MPGA

[Nidi62]

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.

Re:It's time to MPGA

[Shotgun]

There's two takes on that.

The first is the spin that the Times put on it in the first few paragraphs of their article. Competent investigators found evidence then started an investigation.

The second is the reality pointed out in about the ninth or so paragraph of their article. The FBI wanted to correct what they felt was a mistake by the American people, and began to work on a soft coupe, by launching an investigation of a duly elected President on the most flimsy and spurious of evidence combined with already debunked and provably false data.

But, don't let the truth get in your way. BTW, Elizabeth Warren proved her case Native ancestry with that DNA test. I'm old enough to remember when they tried putting that spin on it.

Re:It's time to MPGA

[Anonymous Coward]

>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.

Re:It's time to MPGA

[amicusNYCL]

The second is the reality pointed out in about the ninth or so paragraph of their article. The FBI wanted to correct what they felt was a mistake by the American people, and began to work on a soft coupe, by launching an investigation of a duly elected President on the most flimsy and spurious of evidence combined with already debunked and provably false data.

I know that's you, Giuliani. Pull the other one.

Re:It's time to MPGA

[amicusNYCL]

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.

Re:It's time to MPGA

[zilym]

None of what you said provides any explanation for why Bill Clinton received half a million dollars from Russia for "giving a speech" or why Russia donated $2.35 million dollars to the Clinton Foundation.

Nice hand waving though (these are not the droids you are looking for).

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I strongly dislike Trump

[93 Escort Wagon]

But I'm not sure, on the face of it, how this substantially differs from the usual political practice of quoting poll numbers which possess only a tenuous relationship with reality.

Re:I strongly dislike Trump

[ichimunki]

1) Understand what polling is and how it works before saying "polls mean nothing". The actual election itself was a poll. The main difference between the election and the pre-election polls was that the election included the entire sample set of people whose votes were actually counted, whereas a pre-election poll, by necessity, cannot know whether any given voter will actually show up on election day, and even if they could predict that perfectly, they have a margin of error regarding whether or not their MUCH smaller sample size is adequately representative of the population of voters on election day.

2) In 2016, the election hinged on a few states where Trump won by very small margins. Margins much smaller than the margin of error in pre-election polls.

3) It is possible that a) late-breaking events or b) the polls themselves altered the behavior of voters when it came time to vote on election day. People can change their minds about who they will vote for or their likelihood of voting. Events that happen after a pre-election poll cannot be retroactively fitted into existing poll results. People deciding that the election is a foregone conclusion and staying home is also difficult to incorporate. People deciding that they simply cannot stand the projected result is the other side of that coin. Constant exposure to polling information is demotivating to the projected winner's supporters and motivating to the supporters of opponents.

4) If the election for president was strictly popular vote, Hillary would have won easily and the polls would have been correct. Instead, polling for who is going to win the office of president is complicated by the fact that you really need to model 50 individual elections and then combine the results. See #2.

5) For the efficacy of polls, you cannot cherry-pick your sample like that and say the 2016 prediction was wrong, therefore polls mean nothing. That is no more insightful than saying that the 2012 predictions were all accurate therefore polls never lie.

6) Different polls have different reliability levels. Online polls of the sort that the President apparently sought to cheat on have some of the worst reliability levels you can get. Online polls have the abysmal selection bias, among other problems. And since his target audience is filled with people who discount science when it comes to things like evolution and climate change, whose education in mathematics, social science, and statistics is almost certainly lacking... it might be useful for him to have polls he cheated on to point to as a counter-point to those produced by the "fake news" folks. Then the narrative becomes "fake news trying to prevent Trump win with fake polls, don't let that happen! The real polls show Trump can win!" Competing polls results can heighten the effects mentioned in #3, to emphasize an "us vs. them" narrative.

Online poll rigging? GTFO

[Spy Handler]

Online polls (and related things like reviews/Yelp ratings etc) have been rigged so often and so easily since the dawn of the internet, the only surprising news here is that Cohen/Trump actually FAILED AT IT.

This is the straw that broke the camel's back.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen the light now. Hillary was robbed. The only solution is to run her again.

Re:This is the straw that broke the camel's back.

[Narcocide]

Hyperbole and sarcasm won't save you when you're stuck in the middle of the desert with nothing but a paraplegic camel and your witty remarks.

But all the polls were biased against Trump...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be much more interested to know who rigged the polls in favor of Hillary.

Re:But all the polls were biased against Trump...

[Solandri]

They weren't rigged. She had a 5 in 6 chance of winning and the die came up 1

That's not how sampling margin of error works. Each poll individually had about a 1 in 6 chance of being wrong about Clinton winning. (Some polls showed it more likely, some showed it less, but on average it was about 1 in 6). But nearly every single poll showed Clinton winning. For that to have happened, the dozens of polls would've had to have each rolled a die, and had it come up 1 every time. That's near-impossible given the number of polls which nearly unanimously showed Clinton winning.

If the bias had simply been due to sampling error, then you'd expect about half the polls to show Trump winning (a % close to the final election tally %). That didn't happen. There was a more systematic bias in all the polling against Trump.

One of the few polls which correctly predicted Trump's win came up with the reason. All the anti-Trump bias in the media's coverage, and the open hostility of Clinton supporters against anyone who dared to even hint that they supported Trump, led to Trump supporters being reluctant to tell pollsters that they were going to vote for Trump. When the L.A. Times/USC poll accounted for this, they correctly predicted a Trump win.

So if Cohen did try to bias online polls in Trump's favor, it was a snowflake in a hellstorm of pro-Clinton bias in the media and by Clinton supporters.

Re:But all the polls were biased against Trump...

[Oswald McWeany]

I'd be much more interested to know who rigged the polls in favor of Hillary.

Honestly, I think it is a case of most Trump supporters were embarrassed to vote for Trump. I live in one of the states that Trump won with one of his biggest margins. I saw Hillary stickers and signs everywhere... besides one Truck that was also, incidentally, flying a rebel flag, so obviously not someone who cares what people think about him, I didn't see a single Trump bumper sticker. Trump voters were obviously quiet and hiding themselves. Not surprising since to out yourself as a Trump supporter outed yourself as a racist/misanthrope in many eyes.

I don't personally know a single person who admits to voting for Trump (besides my own mother, who hates Trump now)- yet there must be some out there in this state- he won it pretty easily.

Women for Cohen

[PopeRatzo]

My favorite part of this story is that Cohen paid a guy who was recommended to him by Jerry Falwell Jr, to create a social media campaign called, "Women for Cohen", that promoted how sexy he was, like sexier than "Andy Garcia in The Godfather". It contained photos of Trump and Cohen together with the caption, "Two Handsome Men" and a photo of Cohen with Diamond & Silk (who are a pro-Trump minstrel show) captioned, "Look at that stud!"

https://www.usatoday.com/story...

You gotta admit, Trump only surrounds himself with the best people.

Oh, and since Jerry Falwell Jr's name is in this story, it's worth mentioning that Jerry Falwell Jr and his wife met an attractive pool boy while on vacation in Miami and ended up giving him $1.8 million for...something.

https://www.miaminewtimes.com/...

Part of me is really gonna miss Trump when he's gone. You gotta admit, he's done the "circuses" part of "bread and circuses" better than any president since WWII. You got your porn stars, you got your Putin, you got your Rudy Giuliani (who fucked his cousin), you got your evangelical leaders w/ pool boys, you got your Women for Cohen. Haberders. I don't know how I'm gonna be entertained when Trump is gone.

Re:Women for Cohen

[fortythirteen]

...a pro-Trump minstrel show

So what you're saying is it's ok to sling racial epithets at minorities who don't agree with you politically. So progressive.

Re:Women for Cohen

[fortythirteen]

This is how I know that people of your ilk are in a state of mass delusion. I have seen left-wingers call minority conservatives every derivation of "race traitor" (which is what calling a black person a "minstrel show" is), and then, when caught in their racism, double down on some imagined "evilness" of anyone who should disagree with their behavior, as if their "progressiveness" makes them morally superior - no matter how abhorrent their actual behavior is.

Re:Women for Cohen

[jeff4747]

Uh...Cohen wasn't a candidate for anything. It appears he was trying to get a date or something.

Re:Women for Cohen

[fortythirteen]

Any evidence of this claim? What if calling a minstrel show is merely stating an observable fact?

The first paragraph of the Wikipedia article for "minstrel show" (emphasis mine):

The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American form of entertainment developed in the early 19th century. Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that mocked people specifically of African descent. The shows were performed by white people in make-up or blackface for the purpose of playing the role of black people. There were also some African-American performers and all-black minstrel groups that formed and toured under the direction of white people. Minstrel shows lampooned black people as dim-witted, lazy, buffoonish, superstitious, and happy-go-lucky.

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.

Re:I'm struggling

[bobbied]

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.

Re:LOL...Next Up. Trump Removed Mattress Tags

[Anonymous Coward]

Now call everybody NPC's and tell us about how Trump is the spearhead of a push to lock up Hillary and her cabal of Satanic child molesters who send secret messages using pizza emojis on Twitter.

Re:Online Polls?

[Narcocide]

Paying for it with campaign donations is what constitutes the felony.

Re:Online Polls?

[Freischutz]

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.

Re:Online Polls?

[DaHat]

Did it involve campaign funds?

The summary above references 2014. TFA mentions:

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.

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.

Re:Online Polls?

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll see what happens when Mueller's final report comes out.

No you won't. If it does become public (which is not required, hell, it's not even required to be shared with the Congress), at this point it can never live up to the hype.

Expect to be *very* disappointed.

Re:I'm struggling

[amicusNYCL]

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.

Re:Online Polls?

[slinches]

What law was broken here? It isn't illegal to game online polls. As far as I can tell from the stories so far, the funds were legally reported as a campaign expense. No one seems to be claiming that it was an illegal donation like they were with the hush payments. So where's the issue?

I mean, sure it's "dishonest" to try to influence a poll, but that's about the least dishonest thing political campaigns are doing online as standard practice these days.

Do I think politicians should be better than that? Yes, of course. But news organizations impugning Trump for trying to influence polls that are only there to be gamed or produce a biased view of "public opinion" is hilariously hypocritical.

Re:I'm struggling

[mykepredko]

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.

That's not quite their purpose. Polls like the ones Mr. Cohen paid to manipulate allows Mr. Trump to stand up in front of his audience and say "I have an 87% approval rate on the highly respected, scientific *whatever* poll. Not only that, the equally comprehensive poll by *clickbait* says that 94% of you are saying I've got the country on the right course!" and it allows Fox News to say that "The biased CNN/NBC/WashingtonPost/NewYorkTimes polls don't match what we're seeing in terms of Mr. Trump's popularity with our own polls."

It's faked references to support a lie.

Re:Online Polls?

[sdinfoserv]

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.

Re:Online Polls?

[sdinfoserv]

The specific "poll" thing may not break the law, unless Cohen previously lied about it. Of which you have no information.
However - On Donald Trump’s orders, Cohen twice broke campaign finance laws by paying off women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump.. that's laws broken sparkey.

No one on /. thinks online polls are accurate

[rsilvergun]

but it gives an echo chamber something to report on. This is how the sausage is made:

1. Commission an online poll.
2. Game said poll.
3. Have sites you own pick up the story of you "winning" the poll.
4. Sites you don't own but who are sympathetic with your cause pick up the news stories you wrote based on those faked polls.
5. Eventually if you get enough faked polls and matching stories mass media (Fox, CNN,etc) pick up on them and report them with an itty bitty * to say these numbers aren't scientific.

This works because Americans don't value news and so they don't pay much for it, so there's heavy pressure to keep costs down and overworked journalists and editors will run anything that gets eyeballs. If we paid more for news and had more journalists as a result they'd fact check and find the base polls were bullshit. But a deadline's a deadline and a story's a story as long as it gets those eyeballs on it.

This is how you manipulate the institution of media to do bad things.

Re:No one on /. thinks online polls are accurate

[lgw]

And it's not just online polls. Most polls are partisan efforts designed either to show their candidate in the lead, or to push misinformation to voters under the guise of polling.

Re:I'm struggling

[bobbied]

Yea, but you KNOW why this was even a story right? It's not for humor on "The Onion" or something.

This was reported, not because it is funny, but because it feeds the whole narrative being pushed about Trump by the punditry, because it serves to inflame the unthinking and keep the outrage alive in some about all the many ways he "cheated" is way into the Oval Office.

So I see why you find it funny, but I also see why it had enough traction to find it's way into Slashdot where "funny" isn't the point...

Astonishing

[sdinfoserv]

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?

Re:Astonishing

[nehumanuscrede]

" Don't we deserve better?"

Of course, though it is unlikely we'll ever get it. Certainly not with the Two-Party system we have today.

Show me how things have improved for the working class in the United States since the day you were born.
Take a look at how many Presidents since then have promised to " fix the world " if they get elected.
Make note of how many followed through on those promises.
Take a good look at where we are today.

We're basically worse off than we have ever been and you really can't pin that blame on just one guy.
This incompetence goes back decades. Many, many decades.

Re:Astonishing

[Obfuscant]

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?

When it comes to talking about impeachment and the claims of criminal acts, the bar should be pretty high. Much higher than "someone said someone told him to do something that wasn't illegal... and then reimbursed him when he submitted his expense report." So, sure, express your dismay that some people still believe the rule of law requires evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, and the Constitution requires a conviction prior to impeachment.

No longer believe ANY polls

[AnalogDiehard]

I no longer believe ANY polls, regardless whether or not they align with my preferences. They have been manipulated way too many times.

Re: Still trying to polish that turd ?

[CronoCloud]

While I wouldn't use the word sociopaths, I think "revenge" for purported slights is fairly accurate. A black man was president, they were now expected to be nice to people they considered their "lessers" (glbt folks, racial/ethnic/religious minorities) and the changes in amercian society and economy were affecting them in various ways. No more factory jobs making TV's, adult children asking for help from parents to pay for things like school supplies, maybe their old white doctor retiring and getting replaced a 2nd generation immigrant or something.

So they threw in with Trump, he promised to return things to the way it was, he said the things they thought in their deepest hearts. And it didn't hurt that he was a famous businessman with gold apartments with a model wife.

They didn't read Newsweek, Time, US News & World report, Mother jones, what have you to know that Trump was a charlatan who'd been "faking it" since the 80's. I first heard of him via a lifestyles of the rich show, where he claimed to be a billionaire...... some time later one of the newsmagazines debunked it said he was deep in debt, had been bailed out by his dad before, and was maybe worth 400 million, tops.

They didn't know that he'd said the Central park 5 who had been exonerated of the crime they'd been jailed for, should stay in jail. He said their settlement for wrongful conviction was a disgrace.
The DNA evidence and their forced confessions mean nothing to him, they're just "thugs" like other black men are to him.

And to a lot of his followers, they have a similar opinion.

Go read 538's blog

[rsilvergun]

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.

Correct the Record

[Undead Waffle]

And in 2016 the Super PAC "Correct the Record" paid people to join online conversations to post pro-Hillary stuff and attack comments critical of her. It also coordinated with her campaign, claiming they were exempt from rules against coordination. That was much more extensive than a few internet polls.