Mediaboss Marketing

Chuck Schumer / Getty Images

BY: David Rutz July 23, 2017 8:41 am

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) took a veiled shot at Hillary Clinton's excuses for losing the 2016 election to Donald Trump, saying that "you blame yourself" when you "lose to somebody who has 40 percent popularity," not Russia or James Comey.

Clinton has blamed a variety of factors for her loss to Trump, including then-FBI Director Comey's decision-making during the investigation into her private email server use, Russian meddling in the election and the Democratic National Committee.

"When you lose to somebody who has 40 percent popularity, you dont blame other thingsComey, Russiayou blame yourself," Schumer told the Washington Post."So what did we do wrong? People didnt know what we stood for, just that we were against Trump. And still believe that."

Schumer and Clinton formerly served together in New York's U.S. Senate delegation. Trump's polling was historically poor throughout the 2016 campaign but he managed to defeat Clinton, who also had low ratings with the public.

Schumer made the remarks as Democrats roll out an economic platform called "A Better Deal" and begin charting a path back into power in Washington. For the first time in more than a decade, the Democrats find themselves both out of the White House and in the minority in both chambers of Congress.

"Republicans talk in headlines; Democrats speak in fine print," Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) said. "That ends this week. Were going to make sure that were able to reach the American people in a clear and compelling fashion.

Recent polling showed Democrats are viewed by a majority of the public as simply standing against Trump rather than "for something."

Clinton has taken other criticism from her own party for assigning blame for her defeat to outside elements.

"It takes a lot of work to lose to Donald Trump," former Barack Obama adviser David Axelrod said in May.

See more here:
Schumer Takes Shot at Clinton: You Don't Blame Russia or Comey When You Lose to Someone Like Trump - Washington Free Beacon

The former Democratic presidential candidate, a favorite villain of the right, has been featured prominently across Fox News' programming this week.

In many cases, instead of the network's hosts applying pressure to the current President, who is grappling with the fallout from a federal investigation related to Russian election meddling, Fox News' personalities have deflected and turned their attention to Clinton. On Tuesday night, for instance, Clinton found herself a key point of discussion throughout the network's primetime lineup.

"The new rule is any contact with Russia is contact with Vladimir Putin himself and therefore treason," Tucker Carlson said to a guest at the start of a segment. "What do you make of Hillary Clinton and her husband Bill Clinton's contact with the Russians while she was secretary of state?"

Such questions about Clinton continued into the next hour, with the co-hosts of "The Five" devoting a segment to discussing a Bloomberg poll which found Clinton's favorability rating lower than Trump's.

"POLL: TRUMP MORE POPULAR THAN CLINTON," blared the chyron on the bottom of the screen.

Not to be outdone, Sean Hannity, perhaps Trump's most devoted follower on cable news, hosted an entire segment dedicated to the "Clinton scandals." He asked Jay Sekulow, an attorney for Trump, how "damning" FBI documents about the agency's probe into Clinton's private server were.

Related: Fox News' Sean Hannity calls colleague Shep Smith 'so anti-Trump'

In total, Fox News devoted more than 23 minutes to discussing Clinton throughout primetime on Tuesday, according to data compiled by Media Matters, a liberal media watchdog -- an unusual amount, given that she does not occupy public office and is not currently running for one.

The fascination with Clinton continued on Wednesday. A "Fox & Friends" segment covered the same Bloomberg poll finding that Clinton's favorability rating was two points lower than Trump's. And in an interview with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on "The Story," host Martha MacCallum asked, "Do you see any reason to re-open the investigation into Hillary Clinton's email and server?" (Fox News did back off of its Clinton coverage in primetime Wednesday as news of Sen. John McCain's cancer diagnosis and Trump's New York Times interview dominated coverage.)

The network's infatuation with Clinton hasn't been just limited to the airwaves either. Online, Clinton has found herself the subject of lead stories on the Fox News website this week.

"CLINTON'S SECRET? Hillary sided with Russia on sanctions as Bill pocketed $500G in Moscow," read a headline at the top of the network's website on Tuesday.

"RAIN, SLEET OR ELECTION TIME: Postal Service slapped for having workers boost Hillary Clinton," read another headline leading the website Wednesday.

The Clinton-centric news comes as Trump faces headlines unfavorable to him and his administration as the Russia investigation heats up and much of his agenda remains stalled in Congress. Donald Trump Jr. recently disclosed an email exchange from June 2016 in which he'd agreed to meet with someone he'd been told was a "Russian government attorney" about "very high level and sensitive information" that would "incriminate" Hillary Clinton. And on Tuesday, Senate Republicans conceded they did not have the votes necessary to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama's landmark health care bill which the GOP had for years campaigned on repealing.

Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Clinton's 2016 campaign, told CNNMoney that Fox News' renewed focus on Clinton "shows how difficult it is to defend Trump's conduct on the merits."

"Fox is resorting to dredging up the ghost of Hillary Clinton, who is never running for office again," Fallon said.

Ted Newton, president of Gravity Strategic Communications, who worked on the George W. Bush and Mitt Romney campaigns, called Fox News' coverage of Clinton "absolutely ridiculous."

"I'm sure if there were good things to report, Fox would be all over it," Newton told CNNMoney. "And suddenly this deep Postal scandal would be on the back burner."

"It's certainly something that in the short term will continue to get them ratings," he added, "but that well is going to have to run dry at some point."

A Fox News spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

CNNMoney (New York) First published July 20, 2017: 6:38 PM ET

More:
Fox News turns to Hillary Clinton amid negative news for Trump - CNNMoney

Glenn Simpson, whose Fusion GPS firm has been tied to anti-Trump efforts and pro-Russian lobbying, will not talk to lawmakers in response to a subpoena, the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committe said Friday.

Committee chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and ranking member Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., confirmed in a statement that they subpoenaed Simpson to appear before the committee Wednesday as part of a hearing about the influence of foreign lobbying in last year's presidential election.

"Simpsons attorney has asserted that his client will invoke his Fifth Amendment rights in response to the subpoena," Grassley and Feinstein said.

Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson is seen at the Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, Colo. Friday (Pam Browne/Fox News)

During the campaign, Fusion GPS contracted former MI-6 agent Christopher Steele to look into rumors about Trump's financial and social connections in Russia. The resulting "dossier," which was leaked to the media following Trump's victory in November included a number of sordid allegations about the president's sexual proclivities.

Last week, Fox News reported that Fusion GPS had ties to Russian efforts to undermine U.S. sanctions that were led by attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya.

Investment manager Bill Browder claims Simpson was hired by one of Veselnitskaya's clients, Prevezon Holdings, as part of an effort to repeal the Magnitsky Act, named for Sergei Magnitsky an attorney for Browder who was beaten to death in a Moscow prison after accusing Russian authorities of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars through tax refunds and then laundering the money through New York banks.

Veselnitskaya became the center of a political storm earlier this month after Donald Trump Jr. made public emails indicating that he had taken a meeting with her on the promise of receiving damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

Grassley and Feinstein also noted that both Trump Jr., who met with Veselnitskaya in June of last year, and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who sat in on the meeting, are negotiating their appearances and the possibility of turning over documents, but left open the possibility that the pair would be subpoenaed.

Fusion GPS has said it had nothing to do with the Trump Jr.-Veselnitskaya meeting.

Fusion GPS learned about this meeting from news reports and had no prior knowledge of it. Any claim that Fusion GPS arranged or facilitated this meeting in any way is absolutely false, the company said in a statement.

Manafort had attracted scrutiny for months from congressional committees and Mueller. The Associated Press reported in June that Mueller's probe has incorporated a long-standing federal investigation into Manafort's financial dealings. That investigation is scrutinizing political consulting work he did for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine and the country's former president, Viktor Yanukovych.

Manafort has denied any wrongdoing related to his Ukrainian work, saying through a spokesman that it "was totally open and appropriate."

Manafort also recently registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent for parts of Ukrainian work that occurred in Washington. The filing under the Foreign Agents Registration Act came retroactively, a tacit acknowledgement that he operated in Washington in violation of the federal transparency law.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Read this article:
Co-founder of firm behind Trump-Russia dossier to plead the Fifth - Fox News

Heres a story that has gone completely under the radar, and raises some serious questions that the mainstream media largely seems to have ignored. Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of Fusion GPS, whose firm commissioned the salacious and mostly unsubstantiated Russia Trump dossier, plans to plead the Fifth after being subpoenaed by U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary.

According to documents obtained byLawNewz,attorneys for Fusion GPS Simpson sent a letter to Chairman Chuck Grassley expressing concern over the direction that the hearing was taking. The letter stated that Simpson would not voluntarily show up at the hearing due to a pre-planned vacation, and if subpoenaed he would exercise his First and Fifth Amendment rights not to testify before the committee examining the influence of foreign lobbying in the 2016 election.

Since March, the Senate Judiciary Committee has been seeking documents and information from Fusion GPS about the former M16 intelligence officer Christopher Steele who authored the research, and the dossier, which contained unverified salacious details of Trumps alleged escapades in Russia.The dossier was reportedly first commissioned by Republican opponents of Donald Trump, and then taken over by a Democratic client.

Every time committee investigators made requests, though, they were stonewalled by the Washington D.C. opposition research firm. The firm asserted that the information and documentation requested was protected by the First Amendment privilege of Fusion GPS and its clients, as well as confidentiality agreements and attorney client privilege. On Friday, Sen. Grassley slapped Simpson with a subpoena to appear before the committee.

Given the limitless scope of the hearing, as well as the privileges that Fusion GPS has already asserted, Mr. Simpson cannot risk a waiver of those privileges at the hearing. In the event of a subpoena, Mr. Simpson will assert applicable privileges, including but not limited to those under the First and Fifth Amendments, attorneys for Simpson wrote in a letter to the committee.

The Fifth amendment privilege, of course, allows witnesses to decline to answer questions that have the potential to incriminate them. So, the question remains, what exactly could Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, say that he fears will put him in legally precarious territory?

It could mean various things, but the invocation on its own does not mean Simpson broke any laws. It could just as easily be a tactical move by his lawyers to try and secure a deal before he testifies, Bradly Moss, a national security expert and attorney toldLawNewz.com.

Questions about this to the communications firm representing Fusion GPS were not answered as off press time.

This article has been updated with legal commentary.

Read more here:
What The Heck? Man Who Runs Firm Behind Trump-Russia Dossier to Plead the Fifth - LawNewz

This handout photo taken and released on July 23, 2017 by Turkish Presidential Press Service shows Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L) meeting with Emir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah (R) upon his arrival, in Kuwait City. Erdogan embarked on July 23, 2017 on a key visit to the Gulf region aimed at defusing the standoff around Turkey's ally Qatar, saying no-one had an interest in prolonging the crisis. (HO/AFP/Getty Images) This handout photo taken and released on July 23, 2017 by Turkish Presidential Press Service shows Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L) meeting with Emir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah (R) upon his arrival, in Kuwait City. Erdogan embarked on July 23, 2017 on a key visit to the Gulf region aimed at defusing the standoff around Turkey's ally Qatar, saying no-one had an interest in prolonging the crisis. (HO/AFP/Getty Images)

Published Sunday, Jul. 23, 2017 2:55PM EDT

Last updated Sunday, Jul. 23, 2017 2:56PM EDT

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan traveled to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait on Sunday, the Gulf states official news agencies reported, as part of a diplomatic tour aimed at healing an Arab rift with Ankaras ally Qatar.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut ties and imposed sanctions on Qatar last month, accusing it of supporting terrorism. Doha denies the charges.

The boycotting countries want Qatar to close down a Turkish base, curb relations with their arch-foe Iran and shutter the Al Jazeera TV channel. Kuwait is seeking to mediate in the crisis.

Saudi King Salman and Erdogan discussed efforts to combat terrorism and its sources of funding, the Saudi press agency reported, without elaborating.

Erdogan arrived in Kuwait in the evening and is scheduled to visit Qatar to conclude the two-day trip.

Under a 2014 agreement, Ankara maintains a military base in Qatar which is set to eventually host as many as 1,000 troops.

The two countries also maintain ideological ties, as Erdogans party has Islamist roots and Doha is a main backer of the Muslim Brotherhood, which its Arab opponents deem a terrorist organization.

Turkey's Erdogan to seek extended state of emergency (Reuters)

Discover content from The Globe and Mail that you might otherwise not have come across. Here well provide you with fresh suggestions where we will continue to make even better ones as we get to know you better.

You can let us know if a suggestion is not to your liking by hitting the close button to the right of the headline.

See the rest here:
Turkish President Erdogan visits Gulf states in bid to defuse Qatar tensions - The Globe and Mail