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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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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.
#DeleteChrome
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.
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.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
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?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
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
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.
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.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
>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?
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.
Just to clarify:
You think we need more politicians?
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
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
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.
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...
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.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
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.
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?"
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
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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
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...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel