Daily Archives: May 25, 2022

Pie. To many, its a delicious treat at the end of a meal that rivals the almighty cake, so versatile that a slice of pumpkin, rhubarb, or pecan could also be enjoyed for breakfast. Some prefer chocolate, others lemon meringue. Popular the world over, apple pie is specifically synonymous with America and all things patriotic. But to former president Donald Trump, a man who was once in possession of the nuclear codes? It is a dangerous, extremely menacing piece of food whose presence he will not tolerate.

Yes, just weeks after we learned that Trump believes tomatoes, pineapples, and bananas are dangerous stuff that could kill a personand that his security team has been under strict instructions to use physical force to eliminate any such threatscomes the news that the former president of the United States at one point was absolutely terrified about being struck with pie.

The Daily Beast reports that during a four-hour deposition he sat for this month, Trumps former fixer, Michael Cohen, revealed that his old boss frequently obsessed over a 1998 incident in which Bill Gates was hit with a pie while walking into a building in Belgium, and believed the same fate would befall him. For some reason that upset Mr. Trump terribly. We were all instructed that if somebody was to ever throw anything at him, that if that persondidntend up in the hospital, wed all be fired, Cohen said, noting the directive came from Trump himself. Asked to elaborate, Cohen told Daily Beast reporter Jose Pagliery, It wasnt just one time. It was an ongoing and regular thing. As he would go out to various different open venues, he would always remind [head of security] Keith [Schiller] to keep his eyes open. He never would turn around and say, If anyone throws a rock or a bottle Its always a pie. He always brought up that pie thing.

While some might wonder about the veracity of Cohens claims, and the possibility that theyre simply an attempt by an ex-employee to embarrass their former boss, its important to remember that Trump himself spoke at length, during a sworn deposition, about his deep-rooted fear of someone throwing a tomato, pineapple, or banana at him. And that the following words literally came out of his mouth: You get hit with fruit, itsno, its very violent stuff. We were on alert for that. Its worse than tomato, its other things also. But tomato, when they start doing that stuff, its very dangerous. I wanted to have people be ready because we were put on alert that they were going to do fruit. I think that they have to be aggressive in stopping that from happening. Because if that happens, you can be killed if that happens.

Cohens testimony re: Trumps fear of piesand the instruction to his security team to hospitalize anyone packing such a weapon in his vicinityis relevant because he was answering questions as a witness for a 2015 lawsuit brought by a group of activists who allege the Trump Organizations security chief, Schiller,attacked them while they were protesting outside of Trump Tower. While Trump has sworn under oath that he did not order Schiller to rough up the protesters, and that he only learned about what happened the next day, Cohen testified that that was not actually the case.

Per The Daily Beast:

During his May 9 deposition, Cohen described the scene that day. He saw protesters on his way into Trump Tower that morning, then eventually made his way into Trumps office on the 26th floor. When he informed his boss about the gathering downstairs, Trump called in Schiller.

Did you see that theres a demonstration going on? Trump asked, according to Cohen. Get rid of them.

OK, boss, Schiller allegedly said. When Schiller reappeared in his bosss office less than half an hour later, he had a large piece of a cardboard sign he had ripped out of the hand of Queens resident and demonstrator Efrain Galicia.

According to Cohen, Schiller told Trump, I took the sign. He grabbed me, so I hit him across the side of the head, to which Trump responded, Good.

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Report: Trumps Security Team Was Under Strict Instructions to Hospitalize Anyone They Suspected Might Hit Him With a Piece of Pie - Vanity Fair

Former Vice President Mike Pence has not officially declared whether he will launch a 2024 presidential run, but he has taken several steps that indicate he is prepared to face former President Donald Trump for the Republican nomination if he runs too.

The former president's running mate and second in command has taken several steps to distance himself from Trump ever since they both left office in 2021, including rebuking Trump's suggestion earlier this year that he had the power to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

"President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election," Pence said during a February speech before the Federalist Society in Florida. "The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone. Frankly there is almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president."

In recent months, Pence has made several symbolic moves that are raising his profile in the political sphere and establishing himself as a foil to Trump in key ways. This includes his April visit to the Charlottesville, Virginia, memorial for Heather Heyer, who was killed in a white supremacist riot in which Trump notably attributed the blame to "both sides." And this week, Pence is set to help rally for Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, who Trump has denounced as a "RINO" (Republican in name only).

Politico described Pence's plans to speak at the Georgia rally as his "most aggressive political move yet in defiance of his former patron and ticket-mate."

In March this year, while speaking to Fox Business Network's Maria Bartiromo, Pence refused to rule out the possibility of a 2024 run.

"I'm confident the Republican Party will nominate a candidate who will be the next president of the United States of America and at the right time, my family and I will reflect and consider how we might participate in that process," he said.

Though Trump also has yet to formally announce whether he will run in 2024, he has teased a potential bid. While speaking about the possibility of again becoming a presidential candidate during a March rally in Georgia, he said: "We just may have to do it again."

He also reiterated unproven claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election at the Georgia rally.

"The truth is I ran twice, I won twice and I did much better the second time. And now we just may have to do it again," he told the crowd.

Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich criticized Pence's recent political moves in a statement shared with the New York Times.

"Mike Pence was set to lose a governor's race in 2016 before he was plucked up and his political career was salvaged," the statement read. "Now, desperate to chase his lost relevance, Pence is parachuting into races, hoping someone is paying attention. The reality is, President Trump is already 82-3 with his endorsements, and there's nothing stopping him from saving America in 2022 and beyond."

Even if Pence is preparing for a 2024 presidential run against Trump, the chances of him beating out the former president may be slim. A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll from late January this year found that Trump received 57 percent of GOP support, while Pence received 11 percent.

Newsweek reached out to Pence's team and a Trump spokesperson for comment.

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Mike Pence is Prepared to Take On Donald Trump in 2024 - Newsweek

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, is willing to spend over $100 million on his preferred candidate in the 2024 election.

What Happened: In a recent podcast interview with Jacob Goldstein, Bankman-Fried said he had a soft cap of $1 billion that he would likely spend on supporting his ideal candidate in a presidential campaign.

Goldstein asked whether the FTX chief was going to be a big spender on campaigns in the next election cycle, to which Bankman-Fried responded that it would largely depend on who would be running.

Lets say Donald Trump runs for President. Would that cause you to probably give a lot of money to the person who was running against him, asked Goldstein.

Thats a pretty decent guess, replied Bankman-Fried, who explained that hewould be looking less at the political party itself and would focus his attention on sane governance.

Bankman-Fried believes that the U.S. has a big responsibility to the world to shepherd the west in a powerful, but responsible, manner.

Everything that we do there has massive, massive ripple effects on what the future looks like, he said.

The billionaire entrepreneuris known to have made significant donations to political campaigns in the past. In 2022, he made a $23 million donation to a single Political Action Committee (PAC).

Bankman-Fried is also a big believer in Proof-of-Stake blockchains and their role in the future of cryptocurrencies. Earlier this month, he said Bitcoin BTC/USD has no future as a payments network.

See Also: PROOF OF STAKE VS PROOF OF WORK

Price Action: According to data from Benzinga Pro, BTC was trading at $29,755, down 2% over the last 24 hours.

Photo: Courtesy of Cointelegraph via Wikimedia

Excerpt from:

FTX Chief Willing To Spend $1B Against Donald Trump In 2024 - Benzinga - Benzinga

JOE LYONS| Burlington

I am so tired of right-wing media and even some of mainstream media portraying Donald Trump as a strong leader and an astute politician.

The awful truth is that he is now, and has always been, a serial liar and a third-rate demagogue.He cares about nothing except himself not his party, not his country, not his friends. He is quite willing to throw his colleagues under the bus if they disagree with his inane views and opinions.

Nor was he a self-made businessman: His father had to bail him out of several serious bankruptcies, and both his initial secretaries of state and defense criticized his abhorrent behavior as president. And now he is under investigation for income tax evasion and bank fraud.

But his most flagrant actions occurred before and during the Jan. 6 insurrection, which he illegally incited. So stay tuned for his coming indictments by the Department of Justice and hopefully for his much-deserved incarceration.

JOE LYONS

Burlington

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Donald Trump: Reader depicts the 'real story' of the former president - Burlington Times News

WASHINGTON DC Donald Trump left office a year and a half ago. In that time there has been no shortage of books of varying quality about his term as president of the United States. These books normally fall into one of two camps.

The first campis what I call the Covering Trump book. These are reported books by journalists about Trump and his administration. There were many such books during the Trump years so many that Carlos Lozada, Washington Post book critic, wrote a book about all the books about Trump and the end of his term in the White House did not mean the end of the genre.

Last year we had, among others, I Alone Can Fix It by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker and Frankly, We Did Win This Election by Michael C Bender, both New York Times best-sellers. This year we will have Susan Glasser and Peter Bakers The Divider in September and Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America by Maggie Haberman, arguably the reporter with the best sources of the Trump era, in October.

More recently we had This Will Not Pass by the New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns. Upon publication, both journalists came under heavy criticism for withholding information namely the disgust with which leading congressional Republicans reacted to Trumps incitement of an insurrection on 6 January 2021 that perhaps could have been useful to the health of the American republic had it been reported at the time, or at least not saved for a book more than a year later. (This Will Not Pass was also a say it with me! New York Times bestseller.) The criticism is not unique to Martin and Burns; Bob Woodward was similarly censured for saving the revelation that Trump knew Covid-19 was dangerous, even while he publicly played it down, for his 2020 book Rage.

The other campis what I call the Covered for Trump book books published by former Trump officials and allies about their time working with him. On 10 May, Mark Esper, Trumps defence secretary, published A Sacred Oath, in which he described Trump musing about having protesters shot in the legs. Many, including Trumps niece, also accused Esper of keeping information to himself to use itfor hisbook. Esper wasnt the first from Team Trump to write this kind of book: consider, for example, the press secretary Stephanie Grishams Ill Take Your Questions Now,in which Trump comes off as surprise! chaotic and wholly unfit for the office of the president. Nor was Esper the last.

A memoir from Kellyanne Conway, Trumps longtime senior adviser, is outtoday (24 May). In the book, titled Heres the Deal,Conway sensationally writes that democracy will survive, but alas, her marriage to the vocal Trump critic George Conway may not. While perhaps some might find it comfortingthat Kellyanne Conway has faith in the democracy that she actively worked for years to corrode, I dont see how a tell-all by a person who repeatedly told lies excuse me, alternative facts is a trustworthy document.

I dont mean to suggest that these two types of books are the same. Covering Trump is not the same thing as going to work for him. Still, in both cases, as salacious details drip out, as we learn that as bad as we thought his presidency was, the reality was actually far worse, as Trump book after Trump book becomes a best-seller, Im left wondering: what exactly are we doing with any of this information? If Trump runs for the White House again in 2024, will these books lead voters to view him more thoughtfully? Will it lead journalists to cover him more critically? Will Republican operatives think twice before going to work for him? Or will we all go on, the same as before, the better to gather material to publish in future books?

[See also: Are we prepared for Donald Trump to return to Twitter?]

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Kellyanne Conway's new memoir and the two genres of Trump book - The New Statesman

WWE has had many celebrities taking part in various matches as participants or ringside guests. Vince McMahon has always minted dollars out of these appearances by the celebrities at major events or weekly shows. One such celebrity who has appeared at WWE events is the forty-fifth U.S. President Donald Trump.

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Donald Trump and Vince McMahon share a great relationship. The former US president provided WWE with arenas for WrestleMania 4 and 5 and had a feud with The Boss at WrestleMania 23.

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A WWE fan will never forget the Battle of Billionaires match between Bobby Lashley w/Donald Trump and Umaga w/Vince McMahon at WrestleMania 23. The company hyped the match among the fans, as the stipulation was Hair vs Hair.

Bobby Lashley won the match, and eventually, Donald Trump won the feud. Per the stipulation, Trump and Lashley shaved the head of Mr.McMahon in the middle of the ring. As per Bleacher Report, Trump earned a whopping $4 million dollars in all the appearances leading up to this feud to WrestleMania. All the money which Trump earned went to charity in the Donald J. Trump Foundation.

This was not the first time Donald Trump had appeared on a WWE show, but it was his first major feud. Two years after the Battle of Billionaires, the former US President appeared on WWE as a guest host on RAW. This appearance earned him an extra $1 million dollars, which went to his charity funds.

The money Trump minted in his all WWE appearances directly went to his charity, which is a good thing. Since Mr. McMahon and Donald Trump are friends, The Chairman might not have hesitated to pay him this amount as it went for a good cause.

Hulk Hogan was excited to face his arch-rival Andre the Giant at WrestleMania 4. Before going into the match, Mean Gene interviewed Hogan, who cut a promo on his opponent.

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Hogan claimed that when he would slam Andre, the East Coast of the USA would separate from the mainland and the impact would result in mega destruction for many citizens. However, during the promo, Hogan started talking about being there to save Donald Trump if his bout with Andre caused any destruction.

He added, But Donald; if something happens, you run out of gas, and all those little Hulkamaniacs run out of gas, just hang on to the largest back in the world, and Ill dog-paddle us, backstroke us all to safety!

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Watch this story:- From Being An Ice Hockey Fan to Hunting: Brock Lesnars Favorite Hobbies Outside WWE

Was Trumps love for Hulkamania the thing that gave rise to him hosting WrestleMania 4 & 5 at his arena and being associated with WWE in the future as well?

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How Much Did Former President Donald Trump Earn For Shaving The Head of Vince McMahon at WrestleMania 23? - EssentiallySports