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Richard Branson Describes “Bizarre” Lunch in Which Donald Trump Waxed About Revenge

by MackenzTAVY Posted on October 21, 2016

Mother Jones

As our own David Corn noted just this week, Donald Trump loves nothing more than seeking cold revenge. It turns out billionaire Richard Branson has a Trump story that illustrates Trump’s obsession with vengeance perfectly.

Branson, the billionaire owner of the Virgin Group, wrote a post on his company’s website on Friday afternoon describing an out-of-the-blue lunch the two men shared “some years ago.” Branson says it was the first time he and Trump had met, but Trump had only one topic he wanted to discuss.

Even before the starters arrived he began telling me about how he had asked a number of people for help after his latest bankruptcy and how five of them were unwilling to help. He told me he was going to spend the rest of his life destroying these five people.

He didn’t speak about anything else and I found it very bizarre. I told him I didn’t think it was the best way of spending his life. I said it was going to eat him up, and do more damage to him than them. There must be more constructive ways to spend the rest of your life. (Hopefully my advice didn’t lead to him running for President!)

I was baffled why he had invited me to lunch solely to tell me this. For a moment, I even wondered if he was going to ask me for financial help. If he had, I would have become the sixth person on his list!

Branson wrote earlier this month that “Mr Trump’s temperament is irrational and aggressive,” and added on Friday that those character defects are perhaps the scariest part of this election. “What concerns me most, based upon my personal experiences with Donald Trump, is his vindictive streak, which could be so dangerous if he got into the White House,” Branson wrote.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones.

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Richard Branson Describes “Bizarre” Lunch in Which Donald Trump Waxed About Revenge

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Republicans Need to Abandon Angry White Guys

by JonathoMcCants Posted on October 21, 2016

Mother Jones

What’s going to happen to the Republican Party after November 8? I’ve raised the possibility that if Trump loses massively, the party establishment might get serious about marginalizing the tea party caucus in Congress instead of being held endlessly hostage to them. Most of the responses to that suggestion have been skeptical. The more likely possibility is that tea partiers will increase their influence and the GOP will become even crazier and more obstructionist than ever.

That’s pretty much what apostate Republican Max Boot thinks:

Republican leaders like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan may hope that after Trump’s inevitable defeat the party will return to their brand of conservatism — in favor of free trade and American leadership abroad, cutting government spending and taxes, a balanced approach to immigration, and making deals where possible with centrist Democrats. But that’s not a safe assumption anymore.

….Perhaps Trump will fade away after the election and the Republican Party will return to its Reaganite roots. But…survey findings suggest a strong possibility that instead the GOP, or at least a substantial portion of it, could continue veering toward the fringe, muttering darkly about how Trump was robbed of his rightful victory. If that is the case, then the Republican Party may not survive the Trump takeover.

I want to make this easy. There’s basically only one thing that matters for the GOP: whether they double down on being the white men’s party, or whether they take the painful but necessary steps necessary to broaden their appeal. That’s it. Everything else pales in comparison.

If they continue on their current course, the presidency is going to get further and further out of reach. Eventually they won’t be able to hold on to the Senate or the House either. They’ve simply run out of ways to increase the white vote and suppress the non-white vote, and the demographics of America just flatly don’t support a party that’s increasingly loathed by women and minorities.

Lindsey Graham’s critique of four years ago is famous: “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.” Republicans need to print this on a hat and start wearing it at all times. The Southern Strategy worked great for half a century, but nothing lasts forever. It’s time to abandon it.

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Republicans Need to Abandon Angry White Guys

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The One Thing Obama Could Have Done to Fix Food—But Didn’t

by PreciouKKNV Posted on October 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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Like a huge plow roaring through a prairie, the 2016 presidential election has broken plenty of new ground. We’ve had a national conversation about a nonexistent sex tape involving a former Miss Universe; we’ve debated whether boasting of groping women’s genitals amounts to “locker room talk” or the admission of a crime; and we’ve entertained the idea that one of the major candidates might, if his campaign is successful, have the other one tossed in jail.

Mark Bittman David Cooper/Zuma

But like nearly every election before it, the current one has been nearly 100 percent free of any debate around the federal government’s massive role in shaping and regulating the food system. To get a grip on the vital food and farm issues we’re not hearing about, I interviewed Mark Bittman, the legendary home-cooking master and pundit. Back in 2015, Bittman stepped away from a four-year stint as an editorial columnist for the New York Times—a forum he used almost exclusively to weigh in on food and farm policy. He remains deeply involved with the topic, though, serving as a fellow at the Union of Concerned Scientists Food & Environment Program.

Bittman’s political analysis is as direct and pungent as that classic “Minimalist” dish of his, fried chickpeas with chorizo and spinach. He offered a harsh analysis of how President Barack Obama dealt with food and farm issues, echoing a recent New York Times Magazine piece by Michael Pollan. The current president once “talked a fairly decent game on changing the food system,” Bittman said, “but did virtually nothing in eight years.”

Not everyone agrees, of course. Sam Kass, former White House chef and food policy adviser to the Obamas, had a spicy reaction to Pollan’s story:

Bittman defends Pollan’s criticism of Obama, revealing that there was one “way, way easy” thing the president could have done without congressional interference, but didn’t, to take on the meat industry and protect public health:

Removing antibiotics from the routine use and production of animals is something that there’s precedent for. It’s happened in other countries. It’s something the FDA could have done by mandate; it didn’t need to go through Congress. And it wasn’t done. And I think that was the lowest-hanging fruit imaginable.

Yet Bittman pushed back against Pollan’s notion that Obama didn’t do more to challenge Big Food partially because the “food movement” isn’t powerful or cohesive enough. “Do you want to do the right thing, or do you not want to do the right thing? That’s the question,” he said, adding that Obama shouldn’t have needed a push from anyone to make certain overhauls.

The recipe czar also delivered blunt takes on the possibilities and perils of a Trump or Clinton administration—always with a dash of classic Bittman real-talk. He said he never expected Clinton or Trump to use their candidacies to shine a light on the food system. If Clinton wins, will she take on things like GMO labeling and antibiotics as president? “It sort of depends where her soul is at,” he said.

As for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who mounted a surprisingly strong challenge to Clinton in the Democratic primary, Bittman said, “I love Bernie, but what he knows about food comes from the perspective of a Vermont dairy farmer—not that there’s anything wrong with that, but that’s not big picture, exactly.”

Bite is Mother Jones‘ new food politics podcast. Listen to all our episodes here, or by subscribing in iTunes or Stitcher or via RSS.

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The One Thing Obama Could Have Done to Fix Food—But Didn’t

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Paul Ryan Won’t Defend Donald Trump—But Is Still Endorsing Him

by CarmaDja7537 Posted on October 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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Over the weekend dozens of Republicans condemned and abandoned Donald Trump, but Paul Ryan still seems to be hedging his bets. The House Speaker convened a conference call with Republicans in his caucus Monday morning to discuss the state of the GOP amidst the turmoil caused by leaked audio of Donald Trump describing how his celebrity status allows him to get away with sexually assaulting women. Per news reports, Ryan is now trying to distance himself from his party’s presidential nominee but is still standing by his plan to vote for Trump.

According to CNN, Ryan gave his blessing to House Republicans to either ditch Trump or to stay behind the GOP candidate, saying “you all need to do what’s best for you and your district.” It sounds as if Ryan has essentially given up hope that Republicans can defeat Hillary Clinton and win back the White House.

Ryan has expressed general discomfort with Trump throughout the campaign. After Trump went off against an Indiana judge, saying the judge’s Mexican heritage made him unfit to oversee a case against Trump University, Ryan called Trump’s statement the “textbook definition of a racist comment.” Yet Trump was Ryan’s racist, and the House Speaker campaigned for the GOP nominee. At the Republican National Convention this summer, Ryan said, “Only with Donald Trump and Mike Pence do we have a chance of a better way.” Even though he disinvited Trump to campaign with him in Wisconsin this weekend, saying he was “sickened” by the leaked video, Ryan is still planning to vote for the candidate he says he won’t campaign for or defend.

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Paul Ryan Won’t Defend Donald Trump—But Is Still Endorsing Him

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Obama Just Signed a Bill of Rights for Sexual-Assault Survivors

by AngelSwanzedehs Posted on October 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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President Barack Obama on Friday signed into law the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act, a sweeping piece of legislation that guarantees specific rights for people who have been victimized by a sexual assault.

The measure focuses on collecting and preserving rape kits, the forensic evidence collected in a medical examination after a suspected sexual assault. Police enter the DNA collected from rape kits into state and national databases, sometimes identifying and solving other crimes in addition to the initial rape case. Rape kits—more than 100,000 of them, as of 2014—have often languished for years in police warehouses and crime labs, going untested due to a lack of funds and, some argue, contempt for victims. The new law is the first at the federal level to address these problems, protecting survivors’ access to the initial forensic medical examination and instituting measures to ensure evidence of rape is appropriately preserved and tested.

Survivors can no longer be charged fees or prevented from getting a rape kit examination, even if they have not yet decided to file a police report. Once the medical examination is completed, the kits must be preserved, at no cost to the survivor, until the applicable statute of limitations runs out. Survivors will now be able to request that authorities notify them before destroying their rape kits, and they have the right to request that the evidence be preserved. Once the kit is tested, they’ll also have the right to be notified of important results —including a DNA profile match and toxicology report.

Survivors must also be informed of these rights, regardless of whether they decide to pursue legal action against an assailant. The law also creates a task force to examine how well the new regulations work.

The act was spearheaded by Rise, a nonprofit led by Amanda Nguyen, who became an advocate after her rape almost three years ago when she learned that her rape kit would be destroyed by the state of Massachusetts within six months unless she filed repeated “extension requests.”

“The system essentially makes me live my life by date of rape,” Nguyen told the Guardian in February.

Nguyen then contacted Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), who began working with her to craft the bill, eventually introducing it in February. “Beginning today, our nation’s laws stand firmly on the side of survivors of sexual assault,” Shaheen said in a statement Friday. “I hope that these basic rights will encourage more survivors to come forward and pursue justice.”

The act passed unanimously in the House last month and by voice vote in the Senate last week. Obama signed the bill on Friday, two weeks after the White House launched a new effort to combat sexual assault for the youngest survivors—those in K-12 schools.

This story has been updated.

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Obama Just Signed a Bill of Rights for Sexual-Assault Survivors

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Trump Says He Mocked Women’s Looks to Be Entertaining

by AlannahEbden Posted on October 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump defended his habit of publicly ridiculing women’s looks, arguing that it has entertainment value. Trump, who made the comment during an interview with an NBC affiliate in Las Vegas before giving a speech there Wednesday evening, seemed to claim that as long as mocking women is funny, it’s a fine way to grab headlines and ramp up ratings.

“You have two beautiful daughters past their teenage years,” the reporter said. “Can you understand the concern from parents of younger girls that some of your comments could be hurtful to girls struggling with body image and the pressure to be model-perfect?” Trump responded, “A lot of that was done for the purpose of entertainment. There’s nobody that has more respect for women than I do.”

Much of Trump’s public persona over the years has been shaped by his comments about women. He wanted to fire women from one of his golf courses because they weren’t hot enough. He made degrading comments about women in regular appearances on the shock jock Howard Stern’s show in the 1990s and 2000s and in public speeches where he boasted about hiring women for their looks. In last week’s presidential debate, his fat-shaming of Miss Universe Alicia Machado became a campaign issue.

But Trump’s claim that his comments about women over the years were just for entertainment is undermined by the fact that they weren’t limited to his public appearances. He didn’t just shame Machado in front of the cameras; he also allegedly called her “Miss Piggy” in private. He commented when female executives in the Trump organization gained weight. On the set of The Apprentice, he talked about the women contestants’ appearances when the cameras weren’t rolling. He once reportedly asked a Miss Universe whether she thought his then-16-year-old daughter, Ivanka, was hot. He passed the 1993 White House Correspondents Dinner talking to a model seated next to him about “the ‘tits’ and legs of the other female guests and asking how they measured up to those of other women, including his wife.”

Perhaps when Trump says “a lot of that was for entertainment,” he just means he personally found it entertaining.

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Trump Says He Mocked Women’s Looks to Be Entertaining

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Donald Trump Promised to Release a List of His Creditors. We’re Still Waiting.

by JoanW10cgjdlk Posted on October 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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During the first presidential debate, moderator Lester Holt asked Donald Trump about his refusal to release his tax returns, explaining that part of “the reason nominees have released their returns for decades” is so voters can determine if a potential president’s debts reveal any conflicts of interest. “Don’t Americans have a right to know if there are any conflicts of interest?” Holt asked. Trump brushed the question off, saying that “you don’t learn that much from tax returns.” (As the New York Times reported this weekend, just a few pages of Trump’s tax records from 1995 reveal that the GOP nominee may not have paid federal income taxes for 18 years.) He claimed that the personal financial disclosures he had already filed with the Federal Election Commission provided a more detailed overview of his finances, though those records do not reveal income, tax rates, charitable donations, and loan interest payments. “But,” Trump told Holt, “I could give you a list of banks, I would—if that would help you, I would give you a list of banks. These are very fine institutions, very fine banks. I could do that very quickly.”

Mother Jones has been trying to determine Trump’s full roster of creditors, so we immediately contacted his campaign to request the list Trump offered. A week later, we’re still waiting.

Even without the release his tax returns—a standard practice for presidential candidates since the Nixon era—it is clear that should he reach the White House he would face significant conflicts of interest due to his complex business interests. His personal financial disclosure report provides an incomplete view of his finances. Filed in May, the form lists 16 loans that are valued in vague ranges that make it impossible to determine the total amount he owes. For instance, five of Trump’s loans are valued at $50 million or more (the FEC doesn’t require anything more specific). According to this disclosure, Trump owes a minimum of $315 million. But the real amount appears to be much higher. A search of property records throughout the United States shows that those 16 loans are valued, conservatively, at $675 million.

His financial disclosure forms likely do not reveal the full scope of his intricate finances. As the New York Times reported in August, Trump has invested in partnerships that owe nearly $2 billion—loans, including one from the Bank of China, that are not identified within his personal financial disclosure. Trump’s representatives told the Times that Trump would not be liable for those loans, but because he is an investor in the buildings used as collateral for these loans, his investments are certainly linked to the loans.

And Trump’s most recent financial disclosure is already out of date. For instance, Trump reported to the FEC in May that he owed UBS Real Estate, a subsidiary of the Swiss banking giant, between $5 million and $25 million in connection with a loan for commercial property at New York City’s Trump International Hotel and Tower. But Trump no longer has this loan. According to New York City property records, the loan was for $7 million, and his company paid it off with a new $7 million loan from a much smaller lender named Ladder Capital Finance. Trump’s history of failed deals and repeated bankruptcies has made him persona non grata with many of the world’s top banks, forcing him to rely on smaller institutions such as Ladder Capital. According to public documents, Trump currently owes Ladder Capital at least $275 million.

Ladder Capital specializes in packaging loans into larger portfolios that are eventually sold off to other lenders. This is significant because it would be important to know exactly who owns Trump’s debt—a potential source of leverage over a commander-in-chief. Tax returns would reveal to whom Trump is paying interest. It would be a small step forward in transparency, if the Trump campaign issues a list of his creditors. But the full scope of his finances—and his creditors—will not be known unless he releases his tax returns.

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Donald Trump Promised to Release a List of His Creditors. We’re Still Waiting.

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For Hillary Clinton, Gary Johnson Is a Juicier Target Than Jill Stein

by DarleneDon Posted on September 19, 2016

Mother Jones

Patrick Caldwell summarizes the effect of third-party candidates on Hillary Clinton’s standing among millennials:

In a Quinnipiac poll from last week, when Stein and Johnson were included, Clinton received just 31 percent support from likely voters 18-34. Johnson came in second with 29 percent, while Trump garnered 26 percent and Stein 15 percent. When Stein and Johnson weren’t offered as options, that age cohort sided with Clinton over Trump by a 55-34 margin.

Oof. She loses 24 percent of the millennial vote to Gary Johnson and Jill Stein. But wait. Jacob Levy says that, on net, Johnson helps Clinton because he’s also taking away votes from Trump. On a net basis, it’s only Stein who’s really hurting her:

Quinnipac is unusual in directly comparing people’s answers in the two-way and four-way match-ups. Of people who chose Clinton in the head-to-head, 85% stay with Clinton in the 4-way, 8% go to Johnson, and 7% go to Stein. But of people who chose Trump in the head-to-head, 90% stayed Trump, 9% went to Johnson, and 1% went to Stein.

….What this suggests to me is: Clinton’s widely-reported overall loss in the switch from two-way to four-way polling match-ups is entirely due to Stein. Although Johnson is polling much higher than Stein and seems like he should therefore be having a bigger effect on the race, that effect is largely neutral between the two leading candidates, or perhaps favors Clinton slightly.

Hmmm. Maybe. The question is whether you can take the behavior of all voters and extrapolate it to the behavior of young voters. I’m not so sure about that. But even if we assume we can do that, I think it misses something.

Among people who are left of center, Jill Stein is a pretty obvious choice if Hillary Clinton isn’t your cup of tea. That’s especially true among former Bernie Sanders supporters who are far to Clinton’s left. But Gary Johnson doesn’t make any sense at all. At a policy level, he’s a left-wing disaster. Bernie Sanders would rather cut off his big toe than put Gary Johnson in the White House. So why is Johnson getting any love from voters on the left?

From an electoral point of view, my guess is that it’s a waste of effort for Clinton to try to peel off young Stein voters. Stein makes sense for them. But peeling off Johnson voters should be pretty easy. Just point out that he wants to repeal Obamacare, slash Social Security, supports Citizens United, and doesn’t want to do anything about climate change. He’s a pretty ripe target.

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For Hillary Clinton, Gary Johnson Is a Juicier Target Than Jill Stein

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Chicago just named a street for an environmental justice hero.

by SallyLandon Posted on September 15, 2016

At the Our Ocean Conference in Washington, D.C., this week, Obama announced the creation of The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which will protect deep-sea ecosystems off the coast of New England.

The monument, which lies about 150 miles east of Massachusetts, includes three submerged canyons — one of them deeper than the Grand Canyon — and four underwater mountains. The designation means that commercial fishing will be phased out of the region, and resource extraction such as mining and drilling will be prohibited. That’s good news for creatures like endangered whales, sea turtles, and deep-sea coral — and those less sexy microorganisms that sustain all of them, like plankton.

According to a recent study by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, ocean temperatures in this section of the Atlantic are projected to warm three times faster than the global average. This new monument, according to the White House, “will help build the resilience of that unique ecosystem, provide a refuge for at-risk species, and create natural laboratories for scientists to monitor and explore the impacts of climate change.”

President Obama has protected more land and water than any other American president — including the world’s largest marine protected area in the Pacific.

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Chicago just named a street for an environmental justice hero.

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China and the U.S. really want you to know we’re in it together on climate change.

by hamishfrisby459 Posted on September 3, 2016

On Saturday, Presidents Obama and Xi Jinping formally joined the Paris climate agreement in a joint event in China, giving the deal a big boost from the two top polluters.

The future of the climate agreement is something of a numbers game: 55 countries representing 55 percent of global greenhouse emissions must ratify it before the deal becomes official. China and the U.S. together represent 38 percent of global emissions.

If all the countries that said they will try to ratify the deal this year do so, including Brazil, Japan, Argentina, and South Korea, then the agreement could be entered into force before year’s end.

The sooner Paris is official, the better, the thinking goes: It gives nations a head start on how they’re going to meet their (non-legally binding) promises, and makes Donald Trump’s promises to “cancel” the agreement look foolish.

“This is momentum with purpose,” a White House adviser said in a press call Friday.

Just six years ago, Obama famously crashed a secret meeting held by China, India, and Brazil because the Copenhagen climate negotiations were deadlocked. Considering their complete transformation in years since, their joint ratification is a remarkable symbolic moment.

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China and the U.S. really want you to know we’re in it together on climate change.

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