August 25, 2016

AP Writers Stephen Braun & Elizabeth Sullivan Do Total Hatchet Job On Longtime Clinton Friend Dr. Muhammad Yunus

August 25, 2016/ Anne Enke

The AP's Big Expose on Hillary Meeting With Clinton Foundation Donors Is a Mess VOX

The media would like you to believe that the Clinton-Trump campaign has hit rock bottom but they can hold their heads high as ethical professionals just trying to promote truth.

No, dear media. You're in the cellar along with DC in terms of being loathed by Americans of all political persuasions. You will sugarcoat the truth, saying that your neutrality will always have people angry at you. But as VOX points out, the AP hit piece on Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation is a new low in journalism. At least Maureen Dowd's anti-Hillary diatribes are marketed as opinion.

The specific hit piece on the granting of favors between then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and donors to the Clinton Foundation has hit a new low for 'credentialed' media. I would expect it from Breitbart.

Nobel winner and founder of women's microfinance Muhammad Yunus receives 11 paragraphs in the AP story. I've met Dr. Yunus in conjunction with a Clinton Global Initiative event and have followed him for years. Many of us were concerned that Dr. Yunus would be imprisoned or worse yet -- executed -- when a new prime minister decided to take him on for trying to liberate' women in Bangladesh through his highly-acclaimed microfinance program. The highly decorated leader was accused of irregularity at Grameen Bank, not only for his efforts on behalf of women but over fears that he would start his own political party to try to clean up Bangladesh's government. The prime minister accused Dr. Yunus and his microlenders as being "bloodsuckers of the poor". Sounds like Trump, right?

NONE of this background is detailed in AP story, and only a few Americans would know the facts. Presumably, writers Stephen Braun and Eileen Sullivan have done no homework on why Dr. Yunus was reaching out to the Clintons for help OR the reality that they have been friends since Arkansas days.

Bill & Hillary Clinton brought Yunus to Arkansas in 1983 to learn more about how microfinance could be used in the state, and Bill Clinton talked about his work during his 1992 presidential campaign.

The vast majority -- if not all the money -- reported as donations by Yunus to CGI represent substantial membership fees that are paid to be a member of CGI.

Yesterday the authors threw their hands up in the air, saying they were only writing facts and not drawing any conclusions in their hit piece.

There may be NOWHERE else in the world with the caliber of professionals from business, education, philanthropy and activism who have gathered in New York every September for CHI meetings. I am furious with the AP story and all its insinuations -- and this is just one example. Melinda Gates, another of my heroes, was also hit.

These same media personalities then tee up the question for Hillary Clinton: why do voters think there's a perception problem with the Clinton Foundation?

You tell me, dear media. Why do you think??? ~ Anne

Quote from VOX: "More than a year ago, Jon Allen wrote for Vox about the special "Clinton Rules" that have governed much reporting on Bill and Hillary Clinton over the past 25 years. On the list are the notions that even the most ridiculous charges are worthy of massive investigation, that the Clintons’ bad faith will always be presumed, and that actions that would normally be deemed banal are newsworthy simply because the Clintons are involved.

The blockbuster AP story released Tuesday afternoon fits the model to a T."

Muhammad Yunus Is A Decades-Long Clinton Friend A Nobel Prize Winner. Donations Aren't Why She Met With Him Media Matters

Clinton Campaign Blasts 'Massive Misrepresentations' in AP Story Politico

No friend to Hillary Clinton, MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell also cautioned yesterday on how to interpret the AP story regarding people who support the Clinton Foundation seeking meetings or a phone call with Hillary Clinton. Those two orbits intersect every day of the week and not for nefarious reasons. On CNN Wednesday morning, the Clinton campaign responded to CNN's Chris Cuomo:

As far as Donald Trump is concerned, Benenson made note of the Republican nominee's past $100,000 contribution to the foundation, sarcastically asking if he was "paying for play," as it has been suggested of the other donors.

"People give donations to this foundation because they believe in the work of this foundation," Benenson said. "And to say that meeting with 84 [sic] people out of 3,000 people over the span of your tenure says something you know, even inappropriate is going on I think is a completely flawed premise. And that's the problem with the AP report looking at this data, lumping together 85 people out of 3,000 that she met with, including people like a Nobel prize winner who's been awarded by the president and Congress for his work in the developing world, helping entrepreneurs start businesses and improve their lives. If that's wrong, then Donald Trump's living on another planet, which he may be anyway."

Hillary Clinton Leads Donald Trump by 12 Points in New Poll Huffington Post

Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by 12 percentage points among likely voters, her strongest showing this month, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Tuesday.

The Aug. 18-22 poll results have 45% of voters supporting Clinton, while 33% back Trump ahead of the Nov. 8 election."

Trump Faces Hurdle With Minority Voters as Clinton Maintains Lead, Poll Shows NBC News

Hillary Clinton continues to hold a large national lead over Donald Trump, 50 percent to 42 percent, weeks after the Democratic National Convention.

Clinton's 8-pt advantage is in a steady state, virtually unchanged from her 9-point lead last week, in line with similar margins since the end of July. The latest NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll among registered voters. The gender gap remains with Trump leading among men by 6 pts 49 pts to 43 pts and Clinton ahead among women by 21 pts -- 56 pts to 35 pts. Clinton's clear dominance among minority voters remains unchanged.

Hillary Clinton Headlines August 25, 2016

Poll: Clinton, Trump Tied in North Carolina Politico

The Gordon Gekko period: Donald Trump's lucrative time as an activist investor CNN

Clinton Quietly Amasses Tech Policy Corps Politico

Bernie Sanders' new group is already in turmoil Politico

How the first liberal Supreme Court in a generation could reshape America VOX

Can Hillary Clinton change gender roles in politics? The Nation

Clinton, Ryan Team Up on Anti-Poverty Plan Politico

The Slow Fade of the Angry White Male Bloomberg Politics

August 22, 2016

A Complex Trump Hits Bookstores In 'Trump Revealed' By WaPo's Michael Kranish & Marc Fisher

August 22, 2016/ Anne Enke

The Blurbs on WaPo's New Book on Trump Are All Trump Quotes Mediaite

A new book on Donald Trump titled 'Trump Revealed' is hitting bookstores, co-authored by Washington Post investigative reporter Michael Kranish and senior editor Marc Fisher, along with reporting from 'dozens' of other reporters. The book has been overseen by Editor-in-Chief Martin Baron and is edited by publisher Scribner's EIC Colin Harrison.

Donald Trump has banned the Washington Post team from his political events but did cooperate originally in the book's narrative.

Related: Heavily reported, detailed Trump biography offers complex look at man who would be president Boston Globe

Trump paid dearly to boost fundraising Politico

The devil is always in the details, and the reports of Donald Trump's July fundraising are apples and oranges, compared to how the Clinton campaign reported its data. Much of Trump's fundraising amount is attached to the RNC and comes with heavy party-related strings attached. Just $36.7 million of the $80 million reported went directly to the Trump campaign.

Probably no better example of differences between the strategy of the two campaigns is found in Trump only increasing spending on his 84-person ground game staff from $392,000 in June to $432,000 in July. By comparison, the Clinton campaign spent $2.9 million on its 703-person payroll, most of it in the states. Rather than hire state-level staff for a get-out-the-vote campaign, Trump dropped $1.8 million on hats and other merchandise, two-thirds of what Clinton spent on national payroll. Will hats get voters registered and to the polls on election day? To be determined . . .

Election Update: National Polls Show the Race Tightening (Slightly) But State Polls Don't by Nate Silver FiveThirtyEight

Trump has gotten some slightly better results, with national polls suggesting a race more in line with a 5- or 6-percentage-point lead for Clinton instead of the 7- or 8-point lead she had earlier in August. But state polls haven’t really followed suit and continue to show Clinton with some of her largest leads of the campaign. Trump received some decent numbers in Iowa and Nevada, but his polls in other swing states have been bad.

Hope Is What Separates Trump Voters From Clinton Voters The Atlantic

Our presidential candidates are measured on countless factors, but only one matters to media pundits: the trust question. It's more important than competency, say the pundits. More important than temperament or working well with others. Because Hillary scores low -- and Trump lower -- no candidate will have a mandate to govern, argue the talking heads, because we are not casting positive votes for Hillary, but votes against Trump.

Pundits let slide the high figure that a large majority of Americans believe America is on the wrong track -- as if there is a consensus among the majority regarding what is wrong. They let stand the critical differences between how Republicans and Democrats view their candidates on the topic of hope -- and nowhere is that more obvious in the extraordinarily insulting new Trump commentary to African Americans that their lives are so bad that they have nothing more to lose.

If Trump understood Democratic voters, he would know that African Americans score high on hope -- with African American women starting more small businesses in America -- than any other group.

Instead Trump takes the fear of the future among his supporters and applies them to Democratic voters. As Gallup pointed out earlier in August, Trump voters are not Sanders voters. Fully 25% of Sanders voters were unemployed or disabled. Trump voters are not. In fact, they are doing better than the average American as high school degree voters, but they fear the future -- that they will be next in a perceived downwards spiral of America.

The key is optimism -- a measure of no interest to the talking heads. But the differences are critical in understanding the political landscape.

"Two-thirds of Hillary Clinton’s supporters think the next generation will be in better shape than we are today, or least the same, according to Pew Research. The reverse is true for Trump’s camp. Sixty-eight percent of his supporters think the next generation will be worse off. What’s more, the vast majority of Trump voters say life is worse today for people like them than it was 50 years ago. Only two percent —two!— think life is better now and that their children will also see improvement.

What we’re seeing is a hope gap. And it turns out that hope isn’t necessarily linked to a person’s current circumstances. Folks living in a poor community can still believe their children’s lives will be better, and people working in a reasonably secure local economy can still despair for the future. Rothwell’s work suggests it’s the communities that have seen the least societal change that are most likely to support the New York billionaire—by and large, they have fewer immigrants, fewer lost jobs, fewer impacts from global trade. People who have lost something aren’t voting for Trump, at least not uniformly. It’s the people who think they’re about to lose something."