Sliding out of this shithole week and into the weekend like… pic.twitter.com/dEqNKhaVAX
— Siraj Hashmi (@SirajAHashmi) January 13, 2018
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Speaking of walking shitholes / mudslides, via journalist Yashar Ali’s twitter feed, from CNN:
Donald Trump in 2013 asked James O’Keefe, the controversial conservative filmmaker, if he could “get inside” Columbia University and obtain President Obama’s sealed college records, according to a passage in O’Keefe’s forthcoming book, a copy of which was reviewed by CNN…
According to O’Keefe, Trump “suspected Obama had presented himself as a foreign student on application materials to ease his way into New York’s Columbia University, maybe even Harvard too, and perhaps picked up a few scholarships along the way.”…
O’Keefe said he explained to Trump that the request did not fall into his “line of work,” and that he considered himself and his colleagues to be journalists, not “private eyes.”
But that didn’t seem to deter Trump. At the end of the meeting, O’Keefe wrote, “Trump shook my hand, encouraged me to keep up the good work, and half-whispered, ‘Do Columbia.'”
Trump’s desire for these records would likely have had its roots in his obsession with Obama’s birth certificate, and the false conspiracy theory that Obama was born outside the U.S. Several of the many varying and often contradictory threads of the conspiracy theory centered on Obama’s records from Columbia, where he completed his bachelor’s degree in 1983. Some of the conspiracy theorists believed, without evidence, that there would have been something suspicious in his records from that period…
A spokesperson for the White House did not respond to a request for comment from CNN. O’Keefe declined to address the substance of this story, only telling CNN through a spokesperson that he would “be more than happy to go live on the air to answer questions regarding the book.” CNN received a review copy of the book from its publisher…
Publisher seems to be “All Points Books”, nepotism beneficiary Adam Bellow’s attempt to escape the stench of having published “some of the most controversial and notorious right-wing books of our era, including “The Bell Curve” by Charles Murray and Richard J. Herrnstein, Dinesh D’Souza’s “Illiberal Education” and David Brock’s “The Real Anita Hill.”
Gonna be interesting to see how Trump (or his twitter handlers) decide to address this little D-list wingnut-welfare parasite trying to steal some reflected “glory” from His Gilded Majesty. Especially since soliciting the commission of a crime is the sort of behavior that just might interest New York City prosecutors… *if* this story were being told by someone with any credibility.
Friday Night Open Thread: Sliding StandardsPost + Comments (120)