Woman offers WaPo false tale about Roy Moore in effort to discredit the paper
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Veritas tasks her with the main role in busting the Washington Post with an undercover sting. But it doesn't look like she got any training or preparation at all. She used her real name when talking to the WaPo, had a phone number with the wrong area code (given her claimed state of residence), and Veritas didn't remind her to remove her GoFundMe page, which is how the WaPo ultimately confirmed that she was a fraud.
I'm definitely not a fan of Veritas or O'Keefe's bullshit, and this woman has to bear responsibility for her poor choices. But damn, if your mission was sincerely to expose the truth about the purportedly corrupt media, wouldn't you put more prep into it? It's not like Veritas is lacking in resources -- their latest 990 says they had an operating surplus of $1.3M and O'Keefe received $235,471 in salary https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3454912-Project-Veri...
edit: the 2016 990 was just released today. O'Keefe's salary is $317K and the org's revenue increased from 3.7M to 4.8M. Not bad at all.
Source of their income here:
"I'm moving to New York! I've accepted a job to work in the conservative media movement to combat the lies and deceipt of the liberal MSM. I'll be using my skills as a researcher and fact-checker to help our movement."
She was fully aware that her job was to lie and deceive the Washington Post, yet she claimed she aspired to "combat the lies and deceipt of the liberal MSM".
She claimed to have "skills as a researcher and fact-checker", yet she was blindsided and busted by skilled liberal MSM researchers and fact-checkers.
She should learn how to use a spell-checker, too.
I don't feel bad at all for that mendacious hypocrite.
Particularly since this was a two pronged attack on the classic right-wing totems of a) the lying liberal media and b) lying woman who falsely accuse prominent men of sexual assault, I'm a bit disturbed at how many headlines seem to focus on the woman, and not the fascist machine that hired her and intended to profit from this scheme.
It's a fair bet this will be continually referenced in the right-wing media as "woman made false accusation about Roy Moore" (since they continued to cite every other Veritas sting operation even after they'd been debunked) so maybe we shouldn't help them out, since what they're doing is pretty blatantly evil?
But the fact that they're delusional liars who will always twist and deny the truth doesn't mean the Washington Post shouldn't report the news.
They are themselves precisely what they claim to be fighting against: lying partisan media, paying women to make false accusations against Roy Moore.
The most delicious thing about this whole affair is hearing Jamie O'Keefe so flustered to be confronted on the street that he makes the false equivalence of accusing the Washington Post reporters of pulling his own "tricks" on him, as if it was just fine for him to play all those deceptive rat-fucking tricks, just not OK for him to be on the receiving end of some fact-checking and old fashioned street pounding question asking journalism. "I think it's really cute that you guys are borrowing our techniques."
I wonder if this sort of pen-testing could be done more regularly across the industry (by non-shady organizations).
1. Proves fakers are making up stories against Moore
or
2. Is a false flag to try to discredit those claiming #1
When no one is considered credible by both sides I think you would just end up doing more damage.
Hasn’t the Rosenhan experiment been used as an argument against the validity of psychology and psychiatry?
On one hand, these groups are clearly out to slander and discredit hard-working, honest people. On the other hand, I don't think the field of journalism should be entirely self-governing. It would give me great peace of mind to see some score that said these news sources were indeed able to turn away fake sources with regularity.
The crazy "all mainstream news is fake" crowd will not be swayed, but if nothing is done to appease moderates, there won't be any left.
.. and if my aunt had different bits she'd be my uncle. Of course a perfectly executed plot with hard-to-fake corroborating details and no holes whatsoever could have fooled them. WaPo reporters aren't perfect.
But they ARE genuinely interested in the truth, and interested in doing due diligence to ensure they're reporting it. Above personal politics or personal likes/dislikes of public figures. Conservative media don't seem to understand that. Maybe they can't understand it.
The Washington Post interviewed 30 people for their original Roy Moore story. And they checked court records. It was a rigorously researched and thoroughly fact-checked story.
None of the women in that story sought out the Washington Post, who reached out to them first. That's why Jaime Phillips contacting the Post first herself raised some initial suspicions, and she deserved at least as much rigorous vetting as the other women who weren't actively shopping their story around, and who Roy Moore actually diddled.
In other words, it's not just that Project Veritas was extremely sloppy, but that their whole model and narrative about the "Liberal Mainstream Media" is deeply and totally wrong, but does apply to themselves, and they're not generally interested in the truth.
They believe their own lies, and project them onto their enemies. They were trying to prove something about the Washington Post that wasn't true, by assuming it was true, in a way that depended on it being true, but it wasn't true.
Jaime Phillips herself claimed on her GoFundie page: "I'm moving to New York! I've accepted a job to work in the conservative media movement to combat the lies and deceipt of the liberal MSM. I'll be using my skills as a researcher and fact-checker to help our movement."
But her job was actually to "combat the liberal MSM with lies and deceipt". (Or "deceit", as it turned out.)
She fancies herself a fact checker, not a spell checker, and presumes the MSM doesn't check facts even though it's their job, because she isn't really a fact checker herself, she just said that to get a job, and presumes other people like the Washington Post reporters who call themselves fact checkers are also misrepresenting themselves and totally incompetent, just like she is.
I guess they believe the stories they tell about the media? It doesn’t seem to have occurred to them that journalists actually do their job.
They just wanted the journalist to say something that they could edit into a narrative. Then all the right-wing rags would in concert publish stories about "secret tapes" that "reveal" the "hidden plot" by "liberal feminists" to discredit "brave christian soldier" Roy Moore.
Actually getting a story published in the paper probably wasn't their goal, what's that Richleau quote again? Give me 6 minutes of secretly recorded video of the most innocent journalist and I can edit it into something to have them fired. Something like that anyway.
That's why the actor was so keen to get them on tape saying that the scandal would definately take down Moore.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/counter-sting-catches-...
edit: I just remembered that a previous fake video of his inspired someone to go into a Planned Parenthood centre with a gun, killing three people and injuring 9.
This situation passed 'fucked-up' a long time ago.
Oddly if you’re a prime member the yearly subscription is still $100.
I wonder how many subscriptions this story resulted in?
This is a great story and it definitely pushed me over the edge. I’m not sure I would have ended up subscribing in the next month or two if it wasn’t for this.
(I do not believe in the slightest that the Washington Post is so compromised.)
The Wall Street Journal
I can't help but feel like Bezos loves them. I can see him open up the paper he owns, see an attack piece on him, and feel absolutely giddy that he's not going to do anything about it. Because he so desperately wants to be the most self-actualized entrepreneur that ever lived.
They were claiming since the CIA uses AWS to the tune of ~$900 million a year, the CIA has a direct line to WaPo.
Any rational person (including the Post editor who commented on it) would agree this is a non-issue, but it does pose an interesting, all be it slight, conflict.
Guess I'm irrational then. $900M/yr is an insanely substantial chunk of change for even the largest companies in the world.
Nope.
1: http://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-cloud-business-hits-o...
At that level, editorial independence is practically a commandment, and Marty Baron wouldn't allow conflicts like that to happen. Think about it, since any of that would have to go through him, the guy who went after the Catholics in Boston. You're telling me he gets to the Washington Post, of all places, and hangs up his integrity? Come on.
It's amazing how often those fake news theories fly in the face of simple logic, and amazing how effective they are at swaying people who do not utilize it or do not understand how a newsroom works. That's probably the failure we're seeing unfold, that journalism has emphasized content over form and failed to educate the public on exactly how it works, and is asking readers to overlook their increasing distrust in institutions. Journalism looking something like "I spoke to blah, she said blah," with recordings next to the text, rather than the way it's currently written in the third person, is probably a necessary evolution now.
Conspiracy theorists will always find because they want to. I don’t think anyone needs to worry about what they will or won’t latch on to, because worrying about it implies that if something wasn’t the case, they wouldn’t latch on to something else. But they always will.
AWS grosses ~$4Bn yearly, so if the CIA truly spends $0.9Bn (~23%) favours can happen and doors can get opened.
There's nothing "direct" about that, to be sure, but "give me WaPo EOC's cell number" is viable.
Besides the fact that it is not in the interests of the company to report in a way that could negatively affect the stock price, it is also in its interests not to report negatively on topics which could impact its lucrative customer contracts. And on top of it all, if Bezos - the richest man in the world - just gets something in his craw, that could also affect what gets reported, as it has been with every media baron in history.
Their dedication is to go after people Jeff Bezos doesn't like
They’re not “going after” anyone. They vet their sources and report what can be verified. If you’re still not getting that after reading this article, then I don’t know what to say to you. Maybe try to diversify your media consumption a little bit. I suspect your news sources may mostly skew far to one side of the political spectrum.
Politico is good for center left reporting, and The Hill is good for center right reporting. Reuters and the Associated Press are a little bland in their presentation, but are fiercely centrist. If you want something that may piss you off but will be written by people who generally do solid analysis with a leftward slant, I suggest Talking Points Memo.
Consuming opinions that differ from your own can give a helpful dose of perspective. I read articles from a number of pretty conservative publications on a regular basis. Sometimes they say things that are interesting, and sometimes they just make me angry. Either way, it’s good to know what everyone else is saying about the events of the day.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/30/james-okeefe-a...
I never know if James O'keefe and his ilk are really into this cause (not sure exactly what, something vaguely conservative?) or if they're just grifters trying to make a buck by whatever means necessary
The story on right wing websites tomorrow will probably be "one of the accusers was obviously lying - this raises questions about the other ones," never mind the lying one was paid by a right wing site.
I think, generally, the result has been that it's harder to do fake journalism; at least when it comes to the undercover work.
When my very Republican stepfather fell into dementia, I helped my mom monitor his mail so he'd stop spending so much money on things he didn't understand. It was a deluge of stuff every day. Often from groups I had never heard of who wanted money to stop Sharia law or stop the "war on Christmas" or whatever the big conservative cause was that day. And even the mainstream GOP got into the act. More than once, a FedEx envelope would show up with a plea that everything was doomed unless a check was overnighted. Once the GOP FedEx solicitation contained a letter accusing my stepfather of no longer being a member of the Republican Party, but he could clear up this misunderstanding by writing a check.
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-long-con
The conservative movement is elder abuse on a grand scale.
Wouldn’t you characterize that as scaremongering given the facts?
He is a political hitman and stalking horse.
Consider: what if O'Keefe is just a decoy?
https://twitter.com/willsommer/status/935274569778319360
I’d be quite happy for his funders to continue wasting their money on things like this
But, they can: the refunding and destruction of ACORN succeeded, as in many jurisdictions has the defunding of Planned Parenthood, both on the back of O'Keefe propaganda stunts (that we debunked in the mainstream media rapidly, sure, but that did little to blunt the political impact of the resulting propaganda.)
The propaganda isn't to persuade the broad public, it's to mobilize a sufficient segment of the activist base of the right. And, sure, only one in a dozen or so has any real effect, but it's that one in a dozen or so that keeps him getting funded through the other 11. Because the losses don't have much political cost.
Maybe Trump was correct to claim he invented fake news.
I'll pen a letter out to my state representatives and state attorney general this week. This is the sort of low-visibility, easy-to-act on thing that tends to be worth reaching out about.
[1] http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/272/2728948...
[2] http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/471/4718096...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/501(c)_organization
[4] https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organiz...
This phenomenon is at least new to me. As bonus points, it's a nice example of an attempt at social "hacking".
Politics is not exactly a clean business.
It is not even a new technique for the specific group (James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas) organizing this instance, which has repeatedly and notoriously used similar false-flag techniques to attempt to discredit organizations that are (or are perceived by them to be) on the left side of the American political spectrum.
This time it was an attempt to undermine journalism in a tricky situation.
> Hitting export on hidden camera footage into Washington Post shortly. Project Veritas vs Bezos 100mm monopoly. Fasten your seatbelts.
https://twitter.com/jamesokeefeiii/status/935266973176487936
EDIT: He posted the video, which is not a denial of the accusations in the WaPo article.
Edit: you guys really will downvote anything, won't you?
I'm not from the UK though, and why they would eschew the simple-and-obvious m and b suffixes in favor of alternatives, especially when Europeans love to lecture us about how metric is so neat and intuitive.
Probably has something to do with the root words -- mil means 'thousand' in a lot of latin languages, and a thousand is M in roman numerals, and I heard somewhere that "MM" stands for "mil mil" or "million million" which, in the context of M equaling 1,000, woudl make sense.
Because not everyone is an American. Those suffixes are not used in other countries.
This is something that I didn't think would be this contentious. It's an old standard.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/181917/mixing-us...
It likely comes from SI prefixes. While there's not a standard base unit for currency, the fact they work for so many other units lends them towards easily inferred usage when applied to others.
1: http://www.npl.co.uk/reference/measurement-units/si-prefixes...
outright lying and fabricating stories to try and discredit news organizations seems like it can come back on your no matter what happens.
In this case, Veritas has egg on its face, one of its employees is now outed, and everyone that they "may" have been able to expose that wasn't already on high alert for these frauds is. They've managed to not only prove WP follows proper journalist practices, but they've also given warning to those that don't to be extra careful of them.
WP on the other hand, appears to have done what it usually does, vets information and publishes what it finds. They come out a huge winner over doing nothing, which is exactly the opposite of what Veritas was trying to accomplish.
Maybe they can escape this by rebranding themselves Project Mendacium.
Not when your clear history of willingness to do that is what drives donations. It's literally the entire reason Project Veritas exists and gets funded.
Why? News organizations should never accept fabricated stories. If they do, then something is wrong with their vetting process, and it means that non "pen-testing" fake stories can get through as well, where the intent is to have some effect in the world(say, getting a person out of an election) as opposed to just making the newspaper blush.
This is like running around committing fraud and then claiming "people should have never participated in my fraud!" No, they shouldn't. But no, you shouldn't.
The hypocrisy is... Well, there's a lot of nasty words for it.
Yeah, way to fuck that one up. She's burned.
But I'm afraid this is just the beginning.
I can't believe how much the media landscape changed in the past 2 years...
I feel such powerlessness against it. As long as deep pocketed people are ready to pay to spread lies, I don't see any way to stop them.
The lack of faith is also a bipartisan issue. The alt left and alt right are growing and hate the msm.
Republicans (trump, the republican media) are trying to rebrand the hard left as the alt-left.
And the hard left most definitely exists.
The alt-right pretending the alt-left exists is "thing", a talking point, a false equivalence, and a mendacious lie.
It's a dog-whistle attempting to normalize the alt-right and Nazis, and accuse the left of acting as extreme and irrational as alt-right Whit Supremacists are acting, which is total bullshit.
Being anti-Nazi and anti-racist and anti-misogynist isn't "alt-left", it's "patriotic" and "democratic" and "American" and "mainstream" and "sane" and "ethical".
It's not "hard left" to be anti-Nazi. Even hard right Republicans SHOULD be anti-Nazi too, but apparently now they're not any more. Don't blame it on the left that the right has gone off the deep end and now consider Nazis "very fine people". That doesn't make the left "hard".
The "alt-left" didn't invade Nazi Germany on D-Day, the Allied Forces did. And the Allied Forces never behaved anything like the way the alt-right is behaving.
https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-alt-left/
There is no 'Alt-Left,' no matter what Trump says.
Hours after a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, organized by white nationalists, turned deadly, President Donald Trump blamed "many sides" for the violence that transpired. Three days later, at an impromptu press conference at Trump Tower, the president doubled down on this message, condemning groups "on both sides" of the fighting. “What about the alt-left that came charging at, as you say, at the alt-right?” the president said.
https://newrepublic.com/minutes/141108/no-thing-alt-left
There is no such thing as the "alt-left". But in a piece for Vanity Fair, James Wolcott pretends otherwise:
>Disillusionment with Obama’s presidency, loathing of Hillary Clinton, disgust with “identity politics,” and a craving for a climactic reckoning that will clear the stage for a bold tomorrow have created a kinship between the “alt-right” and an alt-left. They’re not kissin’ cousins, but they caterwaul some of the same tunes in different keys.
Wolcott admits the left “can’t match” the alt-right “for strength, malignancy, or tentacled reach”—then proceeds to make just such an argument. This is bad writing in service of a bad argument: “People say things I don’t like” is not the same thing as “people advocate for a white ethnostate.” This is precisely the false equivalency Wolcott makes by using the phrase “alt-left.” It is a disingenuous characterization designed to undermine leftist claims.
This is obviously a heated topic for you, and as a democrat myself I don't think you are doing us any favors. The hard-left isn't a good thing, they promote violence to achieve their agendas, and say things like "centrists get the bullet too". I really despise the normalization of political violence.
You need to take a step back.
There are no "hard left" senators or representatives or supreme court justices or attorney generals or campaign chief executives or presidents, but there are many alt-right ones.
edit: changed "right" to "far right"
It's not the ones you catch you should be worried about, it's the ones you don't...
Yes, this is what they do. But ‘profrssional’ just doesn’t seem like a word that should apply.
That is, they've been pretty much complete successes where the actual purpose for which they are done is concerned.
They are professionals that seem like amateurs if you don't consider their purpose.
Also an Amazon Prime member, so I'm getting my 6 months free trial and a discounted rate thereafter.
The sad part is that people might assume it actually supports the position that WaPo can't be trusted. That seems to be the norm these days. Say something and throw out random video or audio as evidence when it isn't anything of the sort, since most people won't pay enough attention to really check and will just assume that if it was presented as evidence, it must be evidence. :/
I'm sure if the reporters had responded to this fake woman's story with any soundbites about how it would effect Moore's election results, regardless of if they published anything or if they kicked her out the door the next minute they would put up a video about how "WaPo reporters are desperate to destroy the honorable Roy Moore!"; just look here is one saying this fake story would be bad for his campaign!
Disgusting.
The question is if the truth they stumble upon outweighs the misinformation and lies they spread to come across it.
They're all doing shady shit, but sometimes one of them hits on something useful.
I’m not talking about some partisan thing, I mean a story that gets picked up as teal by MSM outlets and a real issue.
I honestly don’t know.
So they basically stalked her? Interesting to see how WP treats some (all?) whistleblowers that come their way.
If this were analogous to a judicial proceeding, it would be one in which one side submitted fabricated evidence. How is that "well played on both sides"?
All of these come together to be a flood of unvetted claims to keep Moore ahead until the election. It doesn't matter if they're disproven because many voters hear about them and take them as gospel without ever hearing the other side of the story.
Where is an example where they've done that? I haven't seen a single one.
So just because they made a story up, and lied to reporters in order to spread a lie, that’s not wrong? Jeez, what do you think is wrong? Can you even tell anymore?
And a lot of men escaped a LOT of charges because of that.
I think we’re still pretty far from the pendulum going too extreme. We’ll have to figure out the balance.
But what’s happening right now still seems pretty healthy. The fact that so many stories can be found so easily and corroborated shows what has been waiting in the wings.
This has been horrifyingly common and we are still a long way from justice.
Stories like this show the dedication that has gone into avoiding a "witch hunt" scenario (maybe even at the expense of victims without strong corroborating evidence). There's just so much low hanging (and very rotten) fruit.
The bar right now is extrajudicial punishment through trial by media that get arbitrary enforced by which ever journalist that decide if a story is believable or not. In this case the journalist of WaPo made the right judgment call, but is that the role of journalists in 2017? Extrajudicial punishment is not a viable solution to social problems, and has a very long history of causing harm to individuals and society. Today its a rule rather than exception that the accused get death threats based on this kind of news articles, including targeting of the accused family and children. That is how far the pendulum has swung.
I would last add that here in Sweden there is two crimes that have very similar clearing rates. Sexual violence and violence. Taken together everything from sexual harassment to rape has a total of 11% clearing rate. Similar, everything from assault to murder have a total rate of 11%. For both, the primary reason for police to stop investigating and prosecutor to not bring the case to court is a lack of evidence that is not word against word.
Part of the problem is that people wouldn’t prosecute even if you met the standard of evidence.
Another problem is that there are statutes of limitations, often quite short. So many people who were assaulted have no other recourse than the media to try to protect other future victims.
What should happen instead? They got away with it past the statute of limitations so no one is allowed to bring it up or criticize them? No one is allowed to decide how they will behave towards the abuser now that they know the information because a court didn’t convict them?
What would you solution be?
A typical sexual assault case involve two individuals that are alone in a room. The accused says there was consent, the accuser says there wasn't. Similarly a typical assault case involve two individuals alone in a room where both accuse the other of being the aggressor. In both cases the accuser and accused know each other.
What should happen in those 90%? Lets make a law. What about a national news paper which get delivered to every person in the nation for free that describe every case from the point of view of the accuser of every crime that don't get cleared? Would that protect other future victims? Would it help giving every potential victim the same privilege of trial by media, or would it just create further problems for society?
What I watch happening is lots of decisions happening based on nothing. That all or most the particular men accused at the moment are actually guilty is of no interest to me. But the way we decide on anecdotes and stories is. When we decide before the courts, we commit irreversible damage. If we say once Joe Person is a molester or a rapist or a paedophile, and then he's proven innocent, it's basically impossible to find every single person who has read the wrong accusations and convince them otherwise.
Also, it's not only the bar that is lowering, the definition of what's normal advances and what's molesting is changing. In not so distant past invasive behaviour of men were even expected in some circumstances. Good that we do away with these problematic behaviours and protect people from unwanted experiences, but that in no way legitimises leaving people defenceless in front of slander.
We’re punishing today’s men for what today’s men were still doing. And what yesterday’s men continued to do into today.
People can behave how they wish, rightly or wrongly. There isn’t much of a way of stopping at. You could always try suing for libel/slander but even if you win everyone’s going to remember the lie.
A big part of the problem is there are so many people with a lot of credibility making these accusations.
And, I was talking about the social punishment anyways. People can behave how they wish, but that does not mean they should be pushed in a wrong direction by the media and by the accusations before there's a court decision or very strong evidence (like a cam recording, a photo, etc.).
It seems to me that you're trying to not understand me, so, my participation in this thread ends here.
I get you’re concerned that if someone were to be given an accusation they could lose their career and then we could find out later that it was all fake. Nothing legal went down, society simply decided to shun them.
Outside of making it illegal to publish any kind of accusation in less it has been proven in a court of law… I don’t see how we could avoid people deciding to shun the accused.
And maybe that’s fair given the number of women who have had their career is ruined because they chose not to work day in and day out with someone who harassed and/or raped them. Who had to leave the workforce instead, or take another job and start at the bottom of the ladder again.
There’s no good solutions to ANY of this. It’s a giant mess. We’ll just have to see how it society sorts it out.
In the end the long victimized group has gotten some temporary power. That seems like a step forward even if it raises the possibility of false accusations a small amount.
The only men who are being punished are those who actually engaged in that behavior. I dare say that it is acceptable to punish them.
"But the way we decide on anecdotes and stories is."
We're not; and we're not actually sending anyone to jail based on just that. The accusations that have been publicized have been vetted, and they have been found to be quite likely true. Keep in mind that, for most of these accusations, there wouldn't be much, if any physical evidence. If I force a woman to kiss me, or grope without consent, there's not going to be any evidence of that. If I ask a woman if I can masturbate in front of her, it's highly unlikely that there would be a recording, or that she would take my semen with her.
"Also, it's not only the bar that is lowering, the definition of what's normal advances and what's molesting is changing."
No. What's changing is that people feel stronger and more able to stand up for themselves and come out with what happened. The behavior was never really acceptable; it's that women didn't feel strong enough to come forward and say that.
On the last paragraph, I do agree you, and don't see why it should negate my statement that you've quoted. I'm on my twenties, so maybe I don't know enough, but how people flirt is definitely changing, and what is acceptable does also change too (interpreting "acceptable" not as "moral" but as "not frowned upon").
In abstract I think it’s a understandable/useful concept but in this particular situation I think it would only benefit the side that needs help the least (due to historical factors/biases).
You know what can really ruin someone's life? Being harassed/assaulted and not being able to talk about it for fear that you'll be ostracised by your friends and family.
I know that out of experience. Long long experiences. You never know who you're talking to on the interwebs, so be careful (not that I'm trying to intimidate you, but just an advice: a thoughtless remark might be hurting someone receiving your ones and zeros).
> The, "the real victims in all of this are the men!" takes on this are getting pretty old. False accusations are extremely rare. Whereas harassment and sexual assault are actual, real things that women have to deal with on a daily basis.
I'm not saying that at all, this is a strawman argument.
This is like me saying "some dose of alcohol can be lethal" and you going "yeah so you say we ban alcohol consumption because most of the stupid people who die consume alcohol". Good god...
Did 16 women accusing Trump of sexual harassment ruin his life? Did it get them sued for slander? Did it even prevent him from being elected president? No, no, and no.
Yet Trump is still playing the victim: we are now to believe the Access Hollywood tape that Trump confessed to and apologized for is not only "locker room talk", but actually fake.
Poor Billy Bush is a victim for losing his job over something that never even happened, but Trump got elected in spite of confessing to and apologize for something he didn't even do, huh?