Hope the President does a good job for USA

[MarionC]

[QUOTE="the_mother_thing,
@Jimmianne you asked for a list; I supplied one, assuming you were sincere in your request. Just because the source is conservative-leaning doesn’t make the items it listed untrue.]

The mother thing,
I am sincere in wanting to get to the truth, but ——and not to start a fight, but just to say—the source provided is not conservative-leaning, rather, it is cited as an extreme view and a questionable source of information.
So of course it makes me wonder how acurate their statements about Trump’s successes are, and it will give me a good base for fact checking, so I thank you for that.

 

[Ellen]

LOL from the cartoon. Charlie brown and snoopy. The sounds the teachers make haha.

Thanks. Some days I'm the sharpest knife in the set, other days not so much.

 

[Dancing Fire]

@Jimmianne you asked for a list; I supplied one, assuming you were sincere in your request. Just because the source is conservative-leaning doesn’t make the items it listed untrue. I would LOVE to point you to a left-leaning source, but they don’t report anything positive Trump does to make good on his promises. Ever wonder why that is?

Why should they? You should know by now what is good news for our country is bad news for the Dems. Do you ever hear the left talking about our booming economy?

 

[AGBF]

I’m certainly not suggesting he go unchecked; he absolutely should be. So I don’t take offense with the House’s responsibility in the least.

To so broadly & offensively paint every person who chooses to work for the Trump administration as a Nazi not only reflects poorly on yourself, it pretty much immediately shuts down anyone taking your comments seriously. It is exactly that type of hateful, extremist rhetoric that further divides the country with the unnecessary and inappropriate labels & name calling, and frankly, I’m kinda shocked that you - of all people - would actually go there. (I expect that kind of hate from others on this board, but I thought much higher of you).

I don’t recall any member of the Trump administration promoting genocide or suggesting that people should be tortured and burned in concentration camps. It is an absolutely disgusting and abhorrent characterization you’re making, not to mention insensitive as hell.

Except for your overuse of adjectives, I found this to quite a well-written posting, which surprised me. It isn't that you have ever displayed poor writing skills or a poor vocabulary in the past. It is just that your venom sometimes makes your writing illogical. This posting made perfect sense to me. I am actually complimented that you once thought me to be above what you conceive of as hateful posts.

I guess I had to let you down, though. The Nazis of whom I speak are not all burning people in the Eastern European territory they captured during World War II. Some of them are simply marching in Charlottesville and chanting "Jews won't replace us!". But they do have blood on their hands. Remember Heather Heyer.

AGBF

 

[OreoRosies86]

Except for your overuse of adjectives, I found this to quite a well-written posting, which surprised me. It isn't that you have ever displayed poor writing skills or a poor vocabulary in the past. It is just that your venom sometimes makes your writing illogical. This posting made perfect sense to me. I am actually complimented that you once thought me to be above what you conceive of as hateful posts.

I guess I had to let you down, though. The Nazis of whom I speak are not all burning people in the Eastern European territory they captured during World War II. Some of them are simply marching in Charlottesville and chanting "Jews won't replace us!". But they do have blood on their hands. Remember Heather Heyer.

AGBF

And let's not forget the THOUSANDS of migrant children, separated from their families, sitting in detention centers.

 

[Calliecake]

And let's not forget the THOUSANDS of migrant children, separated from their families, sitting in detention centers.

With NO plan in place to reunite them with their families.

 

[ksinger]

The normalization of cruelty towards the most vulnerable continues apace.

 

[AGBF]

And let's not forget the THOUSANDS of migrant children, separated from their families, sitting in detention centers.

I hate to be picky, but when I said "Nazis" I meant "Nazis", not "mean people". The brutality of not caring whether children and their parents suffer the hell of separation at the border is not peculiar to Nazis. The Saudis, for instance, are showing a complete disregard for the life of babies and children in Yemen. (And, indeed, many brutal régimes throughout the history of the world have done so.) I agree that the separation of children and babies at the border is a huge sin we should chalk up to the Trump administration, but I was explaining why I consider Trump's followers to be "Nazi-like".

Deb

 

[MarionC]

One thought this morning about the more balanced power after the elections. Every nation benefits from a system of checks and balances to avoid the abuse of power.

 

[partgypsy]

https://www.businessinsider.com/stu...QF7cD1XxG-QU37aQ8E9H1B2cMnkPjJOvEwumz9f2_eao4

 

[Tekate]

Fox is not something ANYONE should watch.

Ex: DF wanks about normal press not glorifying Trump due to his economy. A person who reads knows the Times and WaPo do write about it. A person who watches Fox wouldn't know that the mainline press does give a shout out to Trump AND they always say this is a continuation of the OBAMA presidency, which is true. Fox creates havoc and consistently and constantly brings up Clinton's failed presidency attempt (you know - 2 years ago).. this just stirs anger with the base and disgust with normal voters. Fox is terrible. I would suggest the Wall Street Journal, The Hill and others that lean right.

No one who watches Fox will believe or do what I think is the best thing to be informed btw

https://www.businessinsider.com/stu...QF7cD1XxG-QU37aQ8E9H1B2cMnkPjJOvEwumz9f2_eao4

 

[ksinger]

I hate to be picky, but when I said "Nazis" I meant "Nazis", not "mean people". The brutality of not caring whether children and their parents suffer the hell of separation at the border is not peculiar to Nazis. The Saudis, for instance, are showing a complete disregard for the life of babies and children in Yemen. (And, indeed, many brutal régimes throughout the history of the world have done so.) I agree that the separation of children and babies at the border is a huge sin we should chalk up to the Trump administration, but I was explaining why I consider Trump's followers to be "Nazi-like".

Deb

Yes, the rise of fascism in a country isn't really about one person, it only coalesces around one, and Trump is our seed crystal, so to speak. But there are many people right now, and probably always have been, honestly, who will support enough of what a would-be despot wants to do - especially when it makes them feel better about themselves, that they blind themselves to the stuff he's doing that they just don't want to see.

Deb, you'll like this piece. I haven't checked out the book yet, but it looks like one I might need for the library.

Germans knew of Holocaust horror about death camps
Details of deaths of Jews and other groups in concentration camps were well publicised
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/feb/17/johnezard

All I can think of when I think of what the average German people knew, is what I saw late one night in the early 90s, on our local PBS station. For some reason, they broadcast over an HOUR of the footage taken by the liberators of the camps. Most people have seen grainy stills of the bodies in the pits, but this was the film. LOTS of it. Unedited and totally silent, except for the occasional interjection of a British narrator, in typical matter-of-fact and unemotional British tones - making it even more surreal actually - occasionally telling you what you're seeing. It showed the Allied soldiers forcing the guards to carry the bodies to numbered pits, which were also noted by the commentator, this being a historical record. And it showed them bringing groups of the nearby townspeople to witness, a "See? See what you lived next to for YEARS, and you say you did not KNOW?" type of thing. They knew. The whole country knew. Every ordinary German knew on some level. They didn't want to but they knew. But their feelings of humiliation had been assuaged by the Nazi regime. Only to be restored 1000-fold after they were forced to LOOK at what they had turned a blind eye to.

I watched the WHOLE thing, mostly in tears. It was AWFUL, and has stayed with me ever since. I've not looked too hard to find and watch it again for the obvious reason, but I doubt that any TV station would put that on the air at ANY time these days. The denialists would come out of the closet in droves for one thing. And then the people who might be traumatized would too.

But back to fascism - (and Deb, I think that might be the term you're really looking for, rather than Nazis, because our fascism won't look exactly like theirs and so can't be "Nazi", but it will certainly still be fascism), a theme here that keeps cropping up is humiliation and resentment (a point of Eco's). And what happens when groups of people feel humiliated for whatever reason. Redwood and the_mother_thing have both either stated outright or alluded to this (by the NYTimes opinion piece above) to liberals pushing conservatives to resentment and thus into the arms of Trump. And there is possibly a bit of truth in this. HOWEVER, I would say that the inferiority complex that liberals are exacerbating, has been there FAR longer than even the last 30-40 years, and has been stoked MUCH more by the eagerly consumed resentment-inducing rhetoric by the right's own leaders and on-air talking heads, than liberals.

Anyway, I know I've posted it before, but here is Eco's list of 14 points of ur-fascism. It's not the whole piece by Eco, because his is long an rambling - good, but long and rambling. This is a decently abbreviated list of the points. The ones in red are the ones I see as ginning up in the US right now. I copied the whole piece, so the comments at the end are not mine, just the red stuff. Alas, there's a LOT of red stuff...

n 1995, Italian novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco wrote a piece for The New York Review of Books on fascism.

As part of the article, Eco listed 14 features of what he called Ur-Fascism or Eternal Fascism. He began the list with this caveat:


These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.

Here’s an abbreviated version of Eco’s list:

1. The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”

2. The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”

3. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”

4. Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”

5. Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”

6. Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”

7. The obsession with a plot. “The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.”

8. The humiliation by the wealth and force of their enemies. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.” (This is a biggie)

9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”

10. Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.” (This is the one that prompted my comment about normalizing cruelty)

11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”

12. Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”

13. Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”

14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.” (Trump himself is the poster boy for this - his speaking and speeches are on about a 5th grade level.)

I found this list via Paul Bausch, Blogger co-inventor and long-time MetaFilter developer, who writes:

You know, we have a strong history of opposing authoritarianism. I’d like to believe that opposition is like an immune system response that kicks in.

It difficult to look at Eco’s list and not see parallels between it and the incoming Trump administration.

We must resist. Disagree. Be modern. Improve knowledge. Welcome outsiders. Protect the weak. Reject xenophobia. Welcome difference. At the end of his piece, Eco quotes Franklin Roosevelt saying during a radio address on the “need for continuous liberal government”:


"I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land."

And Eco himself adds: “Freedom and liberation are an unending task.”

 

[soxfan]

OMG he's coming unglued.

https://thehill.com/homenews/admini...bOUxA-fr_ekH2aoBGAIT6i3iEqqtgIlcYvd_zlU9Nbivc

 

[AGBF]

It is wonderful to read your beautiful writing, k. I can accept using "fascism" rather than "Nazism". I was writing off the cuff rather than being a purist. (Perhaps if I had bothered to return to the thread I was supposed to where you had initiated a discussion on the nature of fascism, I would have had everything neatly tucked away in my mind. Haha.)

I may look for the film/video footage that you saw on your PBS station in the 90's. I do not really doubt that the German people knew that the Jews were being exterminated, but you also must remember that much of the footage of the extermination camps took place outside of Germany. While German certainly executed Jews in its concentration camps, that is where the executions began, they were on a relatively small scale there. It was once Germany acquired land to the East that they set up their death camps where they had a finely tuned apparatus for exterminating Jews quickly and efficiently, wasting nothing. It is in the extermination camps in Eastern Europe (which Germans might know about but would not see) that we see the footage with piles of shorn hair; piles of fur coats stolen from people about to die; gold extracted from teeth of corpses; etc.

In other words, I am not arguing that the Germans did not know...but I am arguing that the Poles did know. And the Ukrainians who acted as guards.

You quoted Umberto Eco as saying "Freedom and liberation are an unending task". I will respond with this story about the founding of the United States.

"If there is a lesson in all of this it is that our Constitution is neither a self-actuating nor a self-correcting document. It requires the constant attention and devotion of all citizens. There is a story, often told, that upon exiting the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer was: 'A republic, if you can keep it.' The brevity of that response should not cause us to under-value its essential meaning: democratic republics are not merely founded upon the consent of the people, they are also absolutely dependent upon the active and informed involvement of the people for their continued good health."

https://constitutioncenter.org/lear...he-constitution-a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it

 

[Octo2005]

AP reports that Acosta video distributed by the White House was doctored

https://apnews.com/c575bd1cc3b1456cb3057ef670c7fe2a

 

[ksinger]

I do not really doubt that the German people knew that the Jews were being exterminated, but you also must remember that much of the footage of the extermination camps took place outside of Germany. While German certainly executed Jews in its concentration camps, that is where the executions began, they were on a relatively small scale there. It was once Germany acquired land to the East that they set up their death camps

Thanks for the kudos Deb, as always you're very sweet.

On the bolded, I would argue you could just have stopped after the first part, because you've said it, the German people knew the Jews (and many others who always get short shrift in the discussions when the Jews alone get mentioned) were being exterminated. Where most of it was carried out or with what technological precision, is irrelevant. Plenty happened in Germany itself. That fact that they knew is quite damning enough. And after all, it's not like that hadn't been a blatantly stated goal from the start. The article I link actually addresses that - the fact that so many Germans did not just passively acquiesce to what was going on, they helped with a will. I mean the whole idea that what happened could have happened without a LOT fo public support, is really too much to swallow. As the article I linked says:

"Conventional wisdom among post war historians has been that - as Lord Dahrendorf, ex-warden of St Antony's College, Oxford, says in his study Society and Democracy in Germany (1966) - "It is certainly true that most Germans 'did not know' about National Socialist crimes of violence; nothing precise, that is, because they did not ask any questions_." A common explanation among influential modern German historians, including Hans-Ulrich Thamer in his study Wooing and Violence (1986) is that the Nazis "seduced" an unwilling or passive public.

Gellately, professor in Holocaust history at Clark University, Massachusetts, offers a mass of detail to support the theme of an earlier work, Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners, which caused an international sensation in 1995. Goldhagen's theme was that "what the Nazis actually did was to unshackle and thereby activate Germans' pre-existing, pent-up anti-semitism".'"

And I see the desensitization moving along, the violence escalating, the unleashing of white nationalism. And there are always enough people willing to carry out the orders of the leader no matter what. I don't know what our collective crimes will end up being, but they have the potential to be fairly awful. The only thing that we have that the Germans did not, is our long history of resistance and speaking out. I hope it's enough to save us.

 

[Octo2005]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald...-stormy-daniels-and-karen-mcdougal-1541786601

 

[ksinger]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald...-stormy-daniels-and-karen-mcdougal-1541786601

Wish I could read it, but there's a paywall. Doesn't even look like you get a single freebie a month.

 

[soxfan]

Only the best people

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...ng-attorney-general-wpm-scam?CMP=share_btn_tw

 

[Calliecake]

Acting AG Whitaker linked to a “scam” company shut down by the FTC. Our new Acting AG is a scam artist. Sounds like the perfect person for Acting Attorney General.

@soxfan , Did you also hear Whitaker has said judges need to have a biblical view of justice?

Only the best people!

 

[Octo2005]

Wish I could read it, but there's a paywall. Doesn't even look like you get a single freebie a month.

Sorry - I copied and pasted the article below. The text underlined and in blue, was this way in the original article. I simply copied and pasted, some of the photos and graphics of statements didn't transfer properly.

As a presidential candidate in August 2015, Donald Trump huddled with a longtime friend, media executive David Pecker, in his cluttered 26th floor Trump Tower office and made a request.

What can you do to help my campaign? he asked, according to people familiar with the meeting.

Mr. Pecker, chief executive of American Media Inc., offered to use his National Enquirer tabloid to buy the silence of women if they tried to publicize alleged sexual encounters with Mr. Trump.

Less than a year later, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Pecker to quash the story of a former Playboy model who said they’d had an affair. Mr. Pecker’s company soon paid $150,000 to the model, Karen McDougal, to keep her from speaking publicly about it. Mr. Trump later thanked Mr. Pecker for the assistance.

The Trump Tower meeting and its aftermath are among several previously unreported instances in which Mr. Trump intervened directly to suppress stories about his alleged sexual encounters with women, according to interviews with three dozen people who have direct knowledge of the events or who have been briefed on them, as well as court papers, corporate records and other documents.

Taken together, the accounts refute a two-year pattern of denials by Mr. Trump, his legal team and his advisers that he was involved in payoffs to Ms. McDougal and a former adult-film star. They also raise the possibility that the president of the United States violated federal campaign-finance laws.

The Wall Street Journal found that Mr. Trump was involved in or briefed on nearly every step of the agreements. He directed deals in phone calls and meetings with his self-described fixer, Michael Cohen, and others. The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan has gathered evidence of Mr. Trump’s participation in the transactions.

On Thursday, the White House referred questions about Mr. Trump’s involvement in the hush deals to the president’s outside counsel Jay Sekulow, who declined to comment.

In an Oct. 23 interview with the Journal, Mr. Trump declined to address whether he had ever discussed the payments with Mr. Cohen during the campaign.

“Nobody cares about that,” he said. He described Mr. Cohen as a “public-relations person” who “represented me on very small things.”

Mr. Cohen, who left the Trump Organization to serve as the president’s personal attorney in early 2017, and other aides denied Mr. Trump played any role in the two hush-money deals when they were first reported in the Journal.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan came to believe otherwise. In August, they outlined Mr. Trump’s role—without specifically naming him—in a roughly 80-page draft federal indictment they had been preparing to file against Mr. Cohen.

When Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty that month to campaign-finance violations, prosecutors filed a 22-page charging document asserting that Mr. Cohen “coordinated with one or more members of the campaign, including through meetings and phone calls, about the fact, nature, and timing of the payments.”

The unnamed campaign member or members referred to Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the document.

The revelations about Mr. Trump’s involvement in the hush-money deals come as special counsel Robert Mueller continues his probe into Russian electoral interference, and as a newly elected Democratic majority in the House of Representatives has signaled its intention to investigate the Trump administration when it takes power. Manhattan federal prosecutors who investigated Mr. Cohen are now examining business dealings by the Trump Organization.

Mr. Cohen, who implicated the president in his crimes when he pleaded guilty in August, has met with investigators for Mr. Mueller and with federal prosecutors in New York, seeking to provide information that could mitigate his punishment. His sentencing hearing is set for Dec. 12.

He told federal prosecutors he conferred with Mr. Trump in the weeks before the 2016 election about paying Stephanie Clifford, the former adult-film star known professionally as Stormy Daniels, to keep quiet about her allegations of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump. He told them that Mr. Trump urged him to “get it done.”

Mr. Cohen has also described to prosecutors his discussions with Mr. Trump and a Trump Organization executive about how to pay Ms. Clifford without leaving the candidate’s fingerprints on the deal.

Mr. Trump’s involvement in the payments, by itself, wouldn’t mean he is guilty of federal crimes, according to Richard Hasen, a law professor at University of California, Irvine, who specializes in election law. A criminal conviction would require proof Mr. Trump willfully skirted legal prohibitions on contributions from companies or from individuals in excess of $2,700, he said.

When the Justice Department accused John Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, of using illegal campaign contributions to conceal an affair during his 2008 presidential run, he argued the money was meant to hide his mistress from his wife, not to influence the election. A jury acquitted him of one charge and deadlocked on the rest.

Managing bad press
Mr. Trump was leading in most polls for the Republican presidential nomination in the summer of 2015 after announcing his candidacy for president. His past behavior with women—flings with models and divorces that played out in the New York tabloids—caused concern among his advisers.

Mr. Pecker could help manage bad press. The men’s relationship dated to the 1990s, when Mr. Pecker’s former employer, Hachette Filipacchi Magazines, put out “Trump Style,” a quarterly magazine for guests at Trump properties.

BRENDAN MCDERMID/REUTERS
Michael Cohen on whether he is loyal to Donald Trump


2017
’18


SEPTEMBER 2017
“I’m the guy who would take a bullet for the president.”

JULY 2018
“My wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will.”

When Mr. Pecker took over as chief executive of American Media in the late 1990s, he imposed a moratorium on negative stories about Mr. Trump, who was known among Enquirer staff as an “F.O.P.,” or Friend of Pecker.

Mr. Pecker’s August 2015 Trump Tower meeting was arranged by Mr. Cohen. The media executive promised Mr. Trump he would flag to Mr. Cohen any negative stories about women that came to the Enquirer’s attention.

In May 2016, Ms. McDougal, the 1998 Playmate of the year, began to consider telling her story of a nearly yearlong affair with Mr. Trump. She believed the story would come out regardless, after another former Playboy model posted a tweet alluding to a relationship between the two.

Ms. McDougal retained Keith Davidson, a Los Angeles lawyer specializing in representing women who’d had affairs with celebrities. Mr. Davidson reached out to Dylan Howard, American Media’s New York-based chief content officer, to gauge the company’s interest in buying Ms. McDougal’s story.

Messrs. Pecker and Howard alerted Mr. Cohen, who in turn warned Mr. Trump, by then the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who in turn phoned Mr. Pecker for help.

On June 20, 2016, Mr. Howard flew to Los Angeles to meet Ms. McDougal at her lawyer’s office.

Mr. Howard spent hours interviewing Ms. McDougal, pressing her for every detail of the alleged affair. Ms. McDougal seemed reluctant to go public with her story.

“I don’t want to be the next Monica Lewinsky,” Ms. McDougal said, referring to the young White House intern who was vilified after her affair with President Bill Clinton became public. Mr. Howard told her that without documents corroborating her story, it wouldn’t be worth more than $15,000.

When Mr. Howard finished interviewing Ms. McDougal that day, he and Mr. Pecker got on a three-way call with Mr. Cohen to discuss what she had said. They noted she had produced no proof of an affair with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Howard told Mr. Davidson that Ms. McDougal should get back in touch if she found any evidence of the alleged affair.

After the meeting, Messrs. Pecker and Howard learned Ms. McDougal had also been meeting with investigative reporters at ABC News about sharing her story in a televised interview.

Mr. Cohen updated Mr. Trump on developments throughout. The ABC talks prompted American Media to offer to buy Ms. McDougal’s story for $150,000 in early August.

The contract gave the publisher the exclusive rights to her story, and guaranteed Ms. McDougal and American Media two magazine covers on which she would appear as a model. As part of the deal, American Media had the option of publishing health and fitness columns under Ms. McDougal’s name.

In a Skype call, Mr. Howard told Ms. McDougal the covers and columns would help resuscitate her modeling career.

Mr. Pecker researched campaign-finance laws before entering into the McDougal deal. The question was: Would American Media’s payment amount to an illegal campaign contribution to Mr. Trump? Corporations are barred under federal law from giving directly to candidates, either in cash or in-kind contributions.

After speaking with an election-law specialist, Mr. Pecker concluded the company’s payment to Ms. McDougal wouldn’t violate the law, because the magazine covers and health columns gave him a business justification for the deal.

The contract had an effective date of Aug. 5, 2016. Ms. McDougal signed it the following day.

Mr. Cohen assured Mr. Pecker that Mr. Trump would reimburse the publisher, and they began to devise a repayment plan at the end of that month.

‘All the stuff’
Concerned Mr. Pecker might leave American Media, Mr. Cohen wanted to buy other materials the company had gathered on Mr. Trump over the years, including source files and tips. In a meeting at the Trump Organization offices in early September, Mr. Cohen told Mr. Trump of his plan.

Mr. Cohen, who complained to associates about Mr. Trump’s frugality, was also worried his boss would balk at reimbursing Mr. Pecker. He secretly recorded Mr. Trump discussing the deal.

“Um, I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend, David, you know, so that—I’m going to do that right away,” said Mr. Cohen, according to a copy of the audio file.

As Mr. Cohen explained his plans, Mr. Trump spoke over him: “So, what are we gonna pay…One-fifty?” Mr. Trump asked. Mr. Cohen paused and replied, “Yes.”

Mr. Cohen said he would be getting “all the stuff,” meaning the other files on Mr. Trump he had been seeking. They discussed the uncertainty about what might become of the files if Mr. Pecker no longer ran American Media. “Yeah, I was thinking about that,” Mr. Trump said. “Maybe he gets hit by a truck.”

Messrs. Pecker and Cohen signed a contract for the transfer of the McDougal story in late September. Mr. Cohen set up a shell company in Delaware for the transaction on Sept. 30.

The publisher would assign the rights to Ms. McDougal’s story to Mr. Cohen for $125,000—the value they put on Ms. McDougal’s agreement with American Media minus the magazine covers and fitness columns, the rights to which the publisher would retain.

Mr. Pecker called off the Trump-reimbursement deal in October 2016 on the advice of his lawyer. Accepting reimbursement from Mr. Trump, the executive worried, could undermine any argument that the McDougal payment was made for editorial and business reasons, rather than as an in-kind campaign contribution.

Mr. Pecker told Mr. Cohen to tear up the reimbursement agreement, but Mr. Cohen kept a copy. Federal agents found it in a search of Mr. Cohen’s office earlier this year.

Stormy surfaces
As the McDougal deal came together, another woman was shopping her story of an alleged tryst with Mr. Trump.

Earlier in 2016, an agent for Ms. Clifford, the adult-film actress, had approached Mr. Howard about selling her story of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump. The agent, Gina Rodriguez, was seeking upward of $200,000 for the story, but Mr. Howard passed.

Ms. Clifford’s story—she said she had sex with Mr. Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe a decade earlier—had already been told in 2011 on a gossip blog, The Dirty. Mr. Howard reminded Ms. Rodriguez that Ms. Clifford had called the report “bulls—” when contacted five years earlier by entertainment channel E!.

Ms. Clifford gained more leverage on Oct. 7, when the Washington Post published previously unaired footage from a 2005 appearance by Mr. Trump on NBC’s “Access Hollywood.” Mr. Trump could be heard on the video chatting with host Billy Bush about groping women.

After the tape surfaced, nearly upending Mr. Trump’s campaign, Ms. Rodriguez reached out to Mr. Howard and told him Ms. Clifford was prepared to go public. Ms. Clifford, through her agent, was in preliminary talks with ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Mr. Howard alerted Mr. Pecker, and they separately spoke to Mr. Cohen about Ms. Clifford. The Trump camp at the time was scrambling to contain fallout from the tape, as women came forward with stories of sexual misconduct by the candidate, all of which he denied.

Ms. Clifford had taken a polygraph test in 2011, when another celebrity publication, Life & Style, was vetting her claims of a sexual encounter. When asked whether she had unprotected sex with Mr. Trump, she answered “yes,” and the examiner found no signs of deception.

Mr. Cohen had been able to kill that earlier story with a legal threat. Ms. Clifford and Ms. Rodriguez wouldn’t be intimidated this time.

Mr. Cohen asked American Media to buy Ms. Clifford’s story. Mr. Pecker refused on the grounds that he didn’t want his company to pay a **** star.

Messrs. Cohen and Trump would have to handle the payment themselves. Mr. Cohen told federal prosecutors he relayed the news to Mr. Trump in his Trump Tower office in the second week of October 2016.

That is when Mr. Trump, smarting from the “Access Hollywood” tape, told Mr. Cohen to “get it done,” according to Mr. Cohen’s account to prosecutors.

Within days, Mr. Cohen and Mr. Davidson had negotiated a nondisclosure agreement for Ms. Clifford.

The money was slow in coming because Mr. Trump, Mr. Cohen and the longtime chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg, couldn’t settle on a plan for getting it to Mr. Davidson without anyone being able to trace it back to Mr. Trump, according to Mr. Cohen’s account to prosecutors. Among the options they considered: routing the payment through a Trump-owned property, Mr. Cohen told prosecutors.

Mr. Cohen offered a suggestion: Why not have Mr. Weisselberg make the payment? “You’re the CFO,” he told the longtime Trump aide, according to Mr. Cohen’s account to prosecutors. “You pay this.” Mr. Weisselberg said he couldn’t come up with the money.

Mary Mulligan, a lawyer for Mr. Weisselberg, said he had been “fully cooperative” with the investigation and declined to comment further. A person close to Mr. Weisselberg disputed the account Mr. Cohen gave to prosecutors.

Mr. Cohen had told Mr. Davidson to expect a $130,000 wire transfer by Oct. 14, but missed the deadline, as well as an extension, prompting Ms. Clifford to walk away.

While Mr. Cohen considered a path forward, he offered excuses to Ms. Clifford’s camp. He told Mr. Davidson banks were closed for the Jewish holidays and he couldn’t reach Mr. Trump on the campaign trail. “My guy is in five states today,” Mr. Cohen said.

Mr. Davidson told Mr. Howard on Oct. 25, 2016, that Ms. Clifford would soon speak publicly. Mr. Howard texted Mr. Cohen that they needed to coordinate “or it could look awfully bad for everyone.”

In a tense three-way call on an encrypted app, Messrs. Pecker and Howard urged Mr. Cohen to complete the deal before Ms. Clifford disclosed the hush-money negotiations.

Out of options and time, Mr. Cohen decided to cover the payment himself. “F— it, I’m just going to do it,” he told Mr. Davidson in a phone call.

He drew down his home-equity line and transferred $130,000 to Mr. Davidson on Oct. 27. Ms. Clifford signed a fresh nondisclosure agreement the next day.

That month, a news site called “The Smoking Gun” published an account of Ms. Clifford’s alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump. Then-Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus and Trump campaign chief Steve Bannon confronted the candidate. Mr. Trump told them the encounter never happened.

Four days before the 2016 election, The Wall Street Journal revealed the $150,000 payment to Ms. McDougal by American Media. The company said at the time Ms. McDougal had been paid for magazine covers and fitness columns and denied buying her story to protect Mr. Trump.

The Trump campaign professed ignorance. “We have no knowledge of any of this,” Hope Hicks, Mr. Trump’s spokeswoman, said of the McDougal deal. Ms. Hicks, who discussed the matter with Mr. Trump before issuing the comment, was relaying what she had been told, according to people familiar with the conversation. She also denied Mr. Trump had sex with Ms. McDougal.

As Mr. Trump headed to victory on Nov. 8, Mr. Howard joined Mr. Cohen at the candidate’s election night celebration at the New York Hilton.

Repaying Cohen
Later that month, after Mr. Trump’s election win, Mr. Cohen met with Mr. Weisselberg to discuss reimbursement for the payment to Ms. Clifford, Mr. Cohen has told federal prosecutors.

While Mr. Cohen waited, he asked Mr. Pecker to lobby Mr. Trump to pay him more money.

Mr. Pecker visited Trump Tower twice during the presidential transition. When he raised Mr. Cohen’s request during a meeting in the first week of December 2016, Mr. Trump demurred, saying Mr. Cohen had plenty of money. During Mr. Pecker’s second visit, in January 2017, Mr. Trump thanked him for suppressing the McDougal story.

Mr. Weisselberg soon completed the reimbursement plan.

It would turn out to be a costly deal for Mr. Trump.

Had he just paid the ex-adult film star himself, Mr. Trump would have been out of pocket $130,000. Instead, Mr. Weisselberg authorized a reimbursement of twice that much, characterized in Mr. Trump’s records as legal fees, to cover the income tax hit Mr. Cohen would take. He also added a $60,000 bonus. Mr. Cohen received the money in monthly installments of $35,000.

In the first year of Mr. Trump’s presidency, American Media continued to feature him on the Enquirer cover. In July 2017, Mr. Trump hosted Messrs. Pecker and Howard at the White House for dinner, an Oval Office visit and a private tour of the Lincoln Bedroom led by the president.

After the Journal reported on the payment to Ms. Clifford in January 2018, the relationships between Messrs. Trump, Cohen and Pecker began to fracture.

Ms. Clifford, initially willing to keep quiet, began to seek more exposure and threatened to break the agreement after Mr. Cohen acknowledged paying her in a February statement to the news media. Mr. Trump instructed Mr. Cohen to coordinate with his son Eric Trump to silence Ms. Clifford in arbitration. It didn’t work; Ms. Clifford ignored the arbitrator’s restraining order.

Mr. Cohen continued to insist he had done the deal with Ms. Clifford on his own, while Mr. Trump said he knew nothing about it when talking to reporters on Air Force One on April 5.

“You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen,” the president said. “Michael is my attorney.”

Days later, on April 9, the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided Mr. Cohen’s office, apartment and hotel room. Agents approached Messrs. Pecker and Howard. Federal prosecutors subpoenaed American Media and the Trump Organization, among others.

As Mr. Trump continued to distance himself from Mr. Cohen and the payment, American Media turned on Mr. Cohen, with a National Enquirer cover featuring the headline, “Trump Fixer’s Secrets & Lies.” Mr. Cohen learned he had been let go as Mr. Trump’s personal attorney when he saw it on television.

Both Messrs. Cohen and Pecker began seeking to minimize their exposure. Mr. Pecker, granted immunity for his grand jury testimony, told investigators about Mr. Trump’s involvement in the McDougal deal.

Three years after Mr. Pecker promised to work with Mr. Cohen to help Mr. Trump, the deals they made have unraveled. Ms. McDougal and Ms. Clifford have both been let out of their hush agreements after filing lawsuits.

The three men no longer speak to one another.

Write to Joe Palazzolo at [email protected], Nicole Hong at [email protected], Michael Rothfeld at [email protected], Rebecca Davis O’Brien at [email protected] and Rebecca Ballhaus at [email protected]

 

[AGBF]

I just e-mailed ksinger what you posted. I don't have a subscription and my husband's is through his job, so I didn't want to post it myself. Thank you for doing so, Octo. Now everyone can read it.

Deb

 

[HollyS]

Why should they? You should know by now what is good news for our country is bad news for the Dems. Do you ever hear the left talking about our booming economy?

Economy upswings are cyclical and not necessarily the result of any current policies or presidents. Economy downturns are also the same, and every economist out there says we are heading for a big one. So . . . clutch your pearls and your stocks. It's been about 10 yrs from the last really bad one; and a decade is the usual pendulum swing.

 

[Dancing Fire]

Economy upswings are cyclical and not necessarily the result of any current policies or presidents. Economy downturns are also the same, and every economist out there says we are heading for a big one. So . . . clutch your pearls and your stocks. It's been about 10 yrs from the last really bad one; and a decade is the usual pendulum swing.

Very true, I'd agree with you 101%.

 

[ksinger]

I just e-mailed ksinger what you posted. I don't have a subscription and my husband's is through his job, so I didn't want to post it myself. Thank you for doing so, Octo. Now everyone can read it.

Deb

Thanks Octo2005 and thanks Deb!

That's quite a sordid tale isn't it? What a sleaze.

 

[Calliecake]

Sordid tale sums it perfectly.

Meanwhile California is living thru one of the worst fires in their history and our President is busy calling journalists losers, lying and trying to distance himself Whitaker, as Whitaker’s scams are being exposed. He hasn’t said a word about California today. It’s always about him.

Trump is a sleaze who is only concerned with how he will personally profit and con our citizens, The country and our people are not his priority. He is only out for himself. How many fathers involve their sons in the cover up and payoffs of their mistresses?

 

[AGBF]

Trump attacked black women and the press. But I heard he attacked President Macron of France, too. I shall have to look for that. It isn't nice to attack your host. (He is currently in France to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I.) He should continue to pick on people smaller and less powerful than himself. Well...maybe that includes President Macron. All of the attackees are smarter than he is.... The black woman he said asked a lot of stupid questions, Abby Phillip, went to Harvard.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/...=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer

 

[House Cat]

Trump attacked black women and the press. But I heard he attacked President Macron of France, too. I shall have to look for that. It isn't nice to attack your host. (He is currently in France to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I.) He should continue to pick on people smaller and less powerful than himself. Well...maybe that includes President Macron. All of the attackees are smarter than he is.... The black woman he said asked a lot of stupid questions, Abby Phillip, went to Harvard.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/...=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer

In trump’s disordered mind, everyone is smaller and less powerful than him. I’m sure there is an echo chamber surrounding him that tells him so.

 

[soxfan]

OMG

 

[House Cat]

OMG

There actually is some truth to the fact that our forests are mismanaged

https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_hess...hat_we_can_do_about_it/transcript?language=en