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Bill Clinton Gets Combative in Confrontation With Black Lives Matter Activists

by laurindaarmbrust Posted on April 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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Bill Clinton was interrupted by a group of Black Lives Matter activists as he gave a speech on behalf of his wife, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, in Philadelphia on Thursday. The exchange quickly turned combative.

As the organizers criticized Hillary Clinton’s involvement in the infamous 1994 crime bill, her husband initially responded by claiming he welcomed protesters. Then he turned more confrontational, shouting poverty statistics to defend the trends that emerged from the policies he helped enact, such as harsher criminal sentencing and the gutting of welfare programs.

“I love—look, at every campaign rally, I welcome the protesters,” the former president said. “I had a guy in South Carolina interrupt me, and the crowd started booing him, and I said, ‘No, let’s be quiet and listen to him,’ and let him say the same thing twice. I said, ‘May I answer?’ and he just kept screaming.”

Clinton pleaded with the audience to “tell the whole story.”

“I talked to a lot of African American groups, they thought black lives mattered,” he said, referring to his crime bill. “They said to take this bill, because our kids are being shot in the street by gangs. We have 13-year-old kids planning their own funerals. She”—he pointed to a protester in the crowd—”don’t want to hear any of that. You know what else she doesn’t want to hear? Because of that bill, we had a 25-year low in crime, a 33-year low in the murder rate, and listen to this, because of that and the background check law, we had a 46-year low in the deaths of people by gun violence. And who you think those lives were? That mattered. Whose lives were saved?”

Clinton’s remarks come almost a year after he renounced the very same crime bill, implying that he knew at the time that some of the sentencing provisions were too harsh, but that that concern was trumped by his desire to pass the overall bill. Clinton appeared to take the opposite stance on Thursday, asserting that the policies of his administration were worth it because of how many black lives were allegedly saved.

Amid chants of “HRC, HRC” from Hillary Clinton supporters in the crowd, Bill Clinton continued to shout statistics in an attempt to show the Philadelphia organizers that their anger was misplaced. Throughout his remarks, he repeatedly referred to some of the female protesters as “girls.”

“I don’t know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out onto the street to murder other African American children,” Clinton said. “You are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter. Tell the truth.”

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Bill Clinton Gets Combative in Confrontation With Black Lives Matter Activists

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Lindsey Graham Just Went Off on Donald Trump and the GOP: "My Party Is Completely Screwed Up"

by Gabriel0192 Posted on March 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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Shortly after Sen. Lindsey Graham issued a series of spectacular insults aimed at his former Republican presidential challengers—one of which included the line, “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, no one would convict you”—Graham endorsed the Texas senator for president. On the Daily Show on Wednesday, he tried his best to explain why.

“I’m on the Ted train, absolutely,” Graham told host Trevor Noah, grinning and seemingly aware of his own bullshit. “What’s not to like?”

Noah then ran the clip of his memorable Cruz diss, and asked why things have changed. Smiling ruefully, Graham said, “It tells you everything you need to know about Donald Trump.” He later laughed, “I’m gettin’ better at this.”

Graham proceeded to basically call out the entire Republican party, which he called “absolutely screwed up,” even warning Noah to prepare accordingly if Trump were to make it to the White House.

“If Trump wins, your days are numbered, pal,” he said. “Young, black, liberal guy from Africa is not going to work with him.”

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Lindsey Graham Just Went Off on Donald Trump and the GOP: "My Party Is Completely Screwed Up"

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Killer Mike Just Slammed Hillary Clinton’s Record on Race

by MittieMadewell Posted on February 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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With one day to go before the South Carolina primary, Bernie Sanders’ surrogates unleashed some of their toughest attacks yet on Hillary Clinton.

During the Vermont senator’s appearance at a historically black university, a string of speakers, including rapper Killer Mike, slammed the former secretary of state as a latecomer to racial justice who was taking African American voters for granted ahead of the South’s first Democratic primary on Saturday.

On Friday, the rival Democratic candidates held events at two neighboring historically black colleges. As Clinton, introduced by Star Jones, spoke at a gym at South Carolina State University, Sanders backer Martese Johnson, told students at Bernie’s Claflin University rally about Clinton’s past.

“We have to understand that this genocide on black lives has been a thing for decades,” said Johnson, who made national headlines last fall after he was bloodied by police while trying to get into a Charlottesville bar. “And a candidate who’s actually speaking to people nearby today was helpful in approving these things to happen with mass incarceration.” (Johnson was referring to Clinton’s support as First Lady for President Bill Clinton’s 1994 crime bill.)

Former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner kept the hits coming, attacking the idea that that African-American voters are, as the Clinton campaign has suggested, an electoral firewall against the Vermont senator as the campaign careens toward Super Tuesday.

“I want to know how you feel about somebody calling you their ‘firewall’?” Turner asked. “You have to earn the black vote, you don’t own the black vote! We are the only ethnic group that people have already presupposed where we are going to be and that is wrong, you have to earn this thing.”

The toughest talk, though, came from Killer Mike, the Atlanta rapper, who came under fire last week for relating the story of a woman who said women shouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton just because she has a uterus. Sanders accused his friend’s critics of playing “gotcha politics.” Killer Mike never explained to the crowd at Claflin what it is he’d said to piss people off, but his first words on stage were an inside joke that alluded to the controversy: “Let me pull out the list of words I cannot say.”

Killer Mike said he wasn’t just personally grateful that Sanders hadn’t condemned his remarks; he believed Sanders’ decision not to demonstrated presidential leadership.

“Since he was a teenager and as a young adult he has fought for the rights of people who don’t look like him, who are not from where he’s from, who are not from his socio-economic background,” he said.

“And just last week, when given the opportunity to separate himself from a black guy who said something that other people didn’t like, he stood on his integrity and his convictions,” he said. Adding, “That means when you’re in office and a hard decision is gonna be made, you’re gonna think about the people you talked with as well.”

He didn’t reprise his “uterus” comments, but he had plenty to say about Clinton. The Democratic front-runner, or at least her supporters, had been rude to an African American who questioned her past statements on crime, he told students. Killer Mike contrasted that with an early moment in the campaign when Sanders handed his microphone to two Black Lives Matter activists at a rally in Seattle.

“That is a firm difference from turning around and staring at a little black girl and saying ‘shut up,’ I’ll talk to you later, you’re being rude’.” It was just as bad to allow “other people to say it to her,” he said.

The rapper also went on to praise Sanders’ work during the Civil Rights Movement. “If I can find a picture of you from 51 years ago chained to a black woman protesting segregation, and I know 51 years later you’re gonna close your arms…and listen to two black girls yell and scream—rightfully so.” (Sanders was arrested at a civil rights demonstration when he was a student at the University of Chicago in the 1960s*.)

“As opposed to someone who will tell you ‘later,’ when it comes to your children dying in the streets,” the rapper said. “I know the only person that I have the conscience to vote for is Bernard Sanders.”

Sanders thanked Killer Mike and the speakers who preceded him “for their calm and quiet introductions,” but not did not elaborate on their comments. Instead, he dove into a more casual version of his standard stump speech, hitting voting rights, police violence, student debt, and the corrupting influence of super-PACs. He kept a lighter tone with the mostly college-age crowd.

When his microphone briefly cut out, he quipped, “it’s my electrifying personality.”

The Vermont senator received a warm welcome from his audience, but it was an uncharacteristically small one for a candidate used to a rock-star reception on college campuses. Although his campaign had worked hard to organize at historic black colleges and universities and made previous trips to Orangeburg, one side of the bleachers was entirely empty and the other was a quarter full; there was plenty of space to move around on the floor. That may not bode well for Sanders’ chances on Saturday—the most recent polls put him about 20 points back.

But if a win feels like a long shot, Sanders’ aggressive event on Friday was meant to show their commitment to improving going forward. As Killer Mike put it, “the goddamn firewall has a crack in it.”

Correction: This piece originally misidentified the photo Killer Mike was referring to.

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Killer Mike Just Slammed Hillary Clinton’s Record on Race

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Jeb Bush Drops Out of the Race for the GOP Presidential Nomination

by WilfredCormier Posted on February 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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Jeb Bush is out. After disappointing finishes in Iowa, New Hampshire, and now South Carolina, the former Florida governor announced Saturday evening that he is ending his run for the GOP presidential nomination.

“Tonight I am suspending my campaign,” said an emotional and tired-looking Bush. “Yeah, I am,” he confirmed, after a few people in the crowd shouted, “No!”

“In this campaign I have stood my ground, refusing to bend to the political winds,” he said. “Ideas matter, policy matters.”

To his fellow GOP contenders, Bush congratulated the candidates still “on the island.” Bush, who has taken an aggressive stance recently against front-runner Donald Trump, did not take this opportunity to attack the business mogul.

Bush’s debate performances steadily improved throughout the campaign, particularly when he began to take on Trump. But that failed to give his sagging campaign the lift it needed. Bush came in sixth place in Iowa, fourth in New Hampshire, and is at the back of the pack in South Carolina, far behind Trump, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio. For weeks, the press has noted the sad tone of Bush’s struggling campaign. Tonight, it’s finally over.

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Jeb Bush Drops Out of the Race for the GOP Presidential Nomination

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How Hillary Clinton Won Nevada

by DemiLockett Posted on February 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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It might have been closer than most people would have guessed a month ago, but Hillary Clinton’s long-term investment in Nevada paid off. The former secretary of state edged out Sen. Bernie Sanders by about five percentage points in the Nevada caucuses. It wasn’t quite the 20-point edge that Clinton had in polls from late last year, but it was a decisive win that backs up the Clinton campaign’s contention that Sanders won’t be able to maintain the same level of support he enjoyed in Iowa and New Hampshire as the contest moves to more diverse states.

Nevada was always a big priority for Clinton, a first test to see if she could bring together the multicultural coalition that has formed the Democratic base across the country. Her campaign manager, Robby Mook, got his start on the Clinton team running her 2008 campaign in the state. The campaign had a bevy of staffers in the state, including Mook disciple Emmy Ruiz, as soon as the national campaign launched in March. They replicated the sort of grassroots community organizing that Mook learned on Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign.

Sanders, meanwhile, didn’t get going until half a year later. His state campaign manager, Joan Kato, didn’t arrive until November. While the Clinton campaign spent the final weeks of the race running a get-out-the-vote effort to make sure Clinton backers actually showed up to caucus, the Sanders campaign was still trying to identify its supporters at a phone banking event Wednesday focused on reaching Latino voters.

“I think one of the reasons that we got here a little bit later, that the average person in Nevada understands, is that we were raising our money through small donor donations,” Kato told me later that day. “With a $27 average donation, it might take you a little bit more time to get off the ground.” But the Sanders campaign quickly ramped up, spending more on TV ads in the state and eventually opening more field offices (12) than the Clinton campaign (7).

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How Hillary Clinton Won Nevada

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Ted Cruz’s College Roommate Can’t Stop Talking Smack About Him

by RefugioDurbin Posted on February 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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Craig Mazin is on a Twitter roll.

His antipathy for his former Princeton roommate, Ted Cruz, has made him a public sounding board for Cruz haters and fun seekers, and a target for the senator’s supporters. “I would rather have anybody else be the president of the United States,” Mazin told the Daily Beast. “Anyone. I would rather pick somebody from the phone book.”

Plenty of Cruz fans tweet at Mazin to disagree with his mini-diatribes or, since yesterday, to gloat over their candidate’s victory in Iowa. But Mazin politely gives as good as he gets. Here are his relevant exchanges from the past 48 hours or so. (Click the links for more context.)

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Ted Cruz’s College Roommate Can’t Stop Talking Smack About Him

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Robert Gates Not Impressed With Modern Republican Party

by TrevorGottschalk Posted on January 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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Former defense secretary Robert Gates has had a few uncomplimentary things to say about Hillary Clinton over the past couple of years, but they’ve mostly been fairly restrained. Not so much for the current crop of Republican presidential candidates:

“The level of dialogue on national security issues would embarrass a middle schooler,” Gates said of the Republican contenders at a Politico Playbook event in Washington on Monday. “People are out there making threats and promises that are totally unrealistic, totally unattainable. Either they really believe what they’re saying or they’re cynical and opportunistic and, in a way, you hope it’s the latter, because God forbid they actually believe some of the things that they’re saying.”

….“In some cases, the things they’re saying they’re going to do are unconstitutional or merely against the law and others are, from a budgetary standpoint, inconceivable, and so it seems to be that the press has not hammered hard enough and been relentless in saying, ‘How the hell are you going to do that?’”

In fairness to the press, the candidates have flatly refused to provide any more detail about how they’d do any of the things they say they’re going to do. And the public doesn’t seem to care. So what are reporters supposed to do? In other remarks, Gates explained why he didn’t want photos of the Bin Laden raid released to the public:

The intelligence veteran of nearly 27 years also spoke about the danger of leaks and recalled the 2011 raid in Pakistan that killed terrorist Osama bin Laden. A friend later emailed him a Photoshopped version of the famous picture in the situation room with the occupants wearing superhero costumes: Obama as Superman, Joe Biden as Spider-Man, Clinton as Wonder Woman and Gates himself as the Green Lantern.

“And we all had a good laugh, and then I said, ‘Mr President, this is the reason the photographs of the dead Bin Laden must never be released, because somebody will Photoshop them and it will anger every Muslim in the world, even those that hated Bin Laden, because of being disrespectful of the dead, and it will create greater risk for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and for all Americans, especially in the Middle East.’ And to the best of my knowledge, those photographs are the only things about that raid that have never leaked.”

Fair enough.

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Robert Gates Not Impressed With Modern Republican Party

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Clinton’s New Pitch to Iowa Voters: Republicans Want Sanders to Win

by Rad7edzw Posted on January 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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Hillary Clinton’s campaign has recently turned to a new tactic to convince Iowa Democrats that they should caucus for her over Sen. Bernie Sanders: Republicans, the campaign says, want Sanders to win.

Clinton and her surrogates have taken to pointing out that Republican super-PACs and donors have started to air ads that appear intended to boost Sanders’ campaign. “The best evidence that I have the best plan is that the Republicans and their billionaire allies are running ads against me,” Clinton told a crowd at a middle school in Marshalltown, Iowa, on Tuesday night. Clinton was referring to the news that Joe Ricketts, a major Republican donor, is funding a super-PAC to air ads in Iowa that could serve to bolster Sanders’ caucus bid by describing him as “too liberal.”

“Now you’ve got to stop and think, why are they spending all this money trying to convince Democrats not to support me?” Clinton said.

She also lashed out at former George W. Bush guru Karl Rove, who since his former patron left the White House has founded a top conservative super-PAC, which is running ads portraying Clinton as beholden to Wall Street. “Along came Karl Rove, the errand boy for the billionaires,” she said. “He’s now running an ad against me.”

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Clinton’s New Pitch to Iowa Voters: Republicans Want Sanders to Win

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Little Did These Adorable Kids Know That Carly Fiorina Was Using Them as Anti-Abortion Props

by LeticiaManna Posted on January 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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Carly Fiorina has upset some Iowa parents, who say the presidential candidate “ambushed” their children and used them as the backdrop of an anti-abortion rally.

On Wednesday, the former Hewlett-Packard executive was attending an anti-abortion rally at the Greater Des Moines botanical garden as part of a campaign stop in Iowa. After entering the gardens, she passed a group of preschoolers on a field trip. According to the Des Moines Register, Fiorina “headed straight for a group of giggling 4- and 5-year-olds,” and ushered them onto the rally’s stage and beneath a giant picture of a fetus.

“We’re being told to sit down and be quiet about our God, about our guns, and about the sanctity of life,” Fiorina told the crowd. “No one is going to tell me to sit down and be quiet, not on this issue, not on any issue. And the more we talk about abortion, the more people learn, the more we find common ground.”

The presidential candidate has made her opposition to abortion a central part of her campaign. During the second GOP primary debate in September, Fiorina claimed she’d seen video of a “fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.” (As Mother Jones reported soon after, the footage she described was fabricated by Carly for America, the super-PAC backing her candidacy.) Fiorina also recently told Fox News that she believes most Americans agree with her that abortion should be banned “for any reason at all after five months.” Nearly 20 states ban abortion after about 20 weeks, or five months, of pregnancy, but most allow exceptions for the life and health of the pregnant woman.

But Fiorina’s spontaneous inclusion of the children at her pro-life rally on Wednesday has upset at least one parent, who says the candidate did not get permission to use the children during the event. “The kids went there to see the plants,” Chris Beck, the father of a four-year-old at the event, told the Guardian. “She ambushed my son’s field trip”

“Taking them into a pro-life/abortion discussion was very poor taste and judgment,” Beck continued, adding, “I would not want my four-year-old going to that forum—he can’t fully comprehend that stuff. He likes dinosaurs, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers.”

Sarah Isgur Flores, Fiorina’s deputy campaign manager, refuted the claim that Fiorina forced the children to attend her event, saying that the group followed her onto the stage. “I guess the kids must have thought she was pretty neat,” Flores said, “because then their teachers and parents and the kids all followed Carly into the event complete with Carly stickers.”

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Little Did These Adorable Kids Know That Carly Fiorina Was Using Them as Anti-Abortion Props

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Palin Stumps for Trump, and It Gets Weird

by HoracioBar Posted on January 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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Fresh off her endorsement of the real estate mogul, Sarah Palin teamed up with Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump for a campaign rally Wednesday in Tulsa, Oklahoma (or, according to press credentials provided by the Trump campaign, “Tusla,” Oklahoma). In her signature rambling style, the former Alaska governor delivered sweeping attacks of President Barack Obama, accusing him of wearing political correctness “like a suicide vest.”

Trump, not to be outdone by his opening act, hammered Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders for being “a socialist, a communist,” repeatedly berated the camera crews for not panning to see how huge the crowd was, threw out several protesters, and, before leaving the stage, made his boldest promise yet of just how much winning America would experience under the leadership of a Trump administration.

“You people are going to get sick and tired of winning,” Trump said. “You’re going to say, ‘Please, please, President Trump, we can’t take this much victory. Please stop, we don’t want any more wins.’ And I’m going to say to you, ‘We’re going to win, I don’t care what you say.'”

Palin, meanwhile, appeared to use the Monday night arrest of her son Track, after he allegedly punched his girlfriend and child’s mother in the face and then threatened to shoot himself with an AR-15, to attack Obama. Palin slammed Obama for his disregard for veterans like Track, who often experience difficulty after they return from combat.

“I can speak personally about this, I guess it’s the elephant in the room because my own family, going through what we’re going through today with my son, a combat vet in a striker brigade fighting for you all, America, in the war zone,” Palin said, to cheers. “But my son, like so many others, they come back a bit different, they come back hardened…and it makes me realize more than ever, it is now or never for the sake of America’s finest that we have that commander in chief who will respect them, and honor them.”

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Palin Stumps for Trump, and It Gets Weird

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