427

UPDATE: Again, as I’ve been arguing, the tapes don’t lie. Katrina Pierson totally denied and dismissed Omarosa’s claims about the N word tape. But little did she know that Omarosa had her on tape while at the WH and on tape Pierson seems to think Trump did use the N word. 

Those who just presume Omarosa is lying are going to be surprised again and again. Not me-I believe a lot of what she says will come to fruition-as her incentive is to deliver; she realizes her reputation for credibility is not great and so she has to deliver the goods.

Lordy there are hundreds of tapes! At this point we’ve just seen the tip of the iceberg. Regarding Omarosa, there seem to be two narratives prevalent in the MSM currently.

1. Both Trump and Omarosa are liars and lack credibility, so we can’t really believe either of them.

2. Some however add that while she lacks credibility it does put the lie to Trump’s claim that he hires ‘the best people.’

It does, although the lie to that is put daily in many different ways. We don’t need Omarosa to show us this-we already know it, and see more evidence of it daily.

Indeed, just like Omarosa shouldn’t be figuring out only now that Trump is a racist we have long known the idea he hires the best people is pure irony. Having said that, I think the dominant narrative on Omarosa right now misses the point. Yes, she’s not credible. In her first season on The Apprentice back in 2004 she accused another contestant of calling her the N word and this claim was never corroborated.

However, in this context, I believe simply declaring their both liars and tuning out is a mistake. Let’s be clear-Trump hopes you do that. This is right out of his playbook-the idea of equivalence, that sure he’s bad but everyone is bad. The idea that this is just about two liars so a pox on both their houses is he and Rudy Giuliani’s strategy against Michael Cohen. And those who buy that are being led down their rabbit hole.

In a post a few weeks back I went through some of the reasons just boiling it down to a ‘he said he said’ between Cohen on the one hand and Trump and friends on the other totally misses the point.

https://lastmenandovermen.com/2018/07/30/the-msm-falls-for-another-trump-canard-its-just-a-he-said-he-said-between-cohen-and-the-trump-family/

What is missed in this analysis is that you aren’t going to bring down a mob boss with choir boys or a busload of nuns-as choir boys and nuns rightly don’t associate with him. If you could never rely on the testimony of bad guys testifying against other bad guys no bad guys would ever be convicted. And every day, the response of a bad guy on trial is to point out how bad the other bad guy testifying against him, the informant, is.

And it’s true so far as it goes-though he leaves out that he’s been associating with this bad guy as a friend and business partner testifying against him for years. Just like Trump only has a problem with Michael Cohen or Omarosa after they turn on him and you see the same in the Manafort trial-now that Rick Gates has turned, Manafort thinks he’s the worst guy to ever live. But he knew about all this when he was working for him and Manafort no doubt saw these character traits as a feature not a bug to success in his corrupt enterprises.

Trump’s own method of defense is not to defend himself so much as claim the other guy is just as bad. He doesn’t try to rise up but bring everyone else down to his level. It’s what he did in the debate after Hollywood Access-his ‘defense’ was basically Bill Clinton is also a sexual predator. Whenever there’s another bombshell his response is whataboutism-what about Hillary, what about Obama, what about Peter Strozk?

His attempts at false equivalence don’t usually work anyway as no one is as bad as him-certainly no one is as big a liar. But his game is to convince people that the other person is just as bad-his strategy is to muddy up his opponents.

FN: Looking back almost a year later here in late July, 2019 what’s sad is how much it does work with the MSM and the extent to which they have normalized him.

End of FN.

With Michael Cohen and Rick Gates there is incentive to tell the truth. If Gates lies, he loses his deal. To the extent that Cohen seeks a deal the same applies to him. And tapes don’t lie. Cohen has them and has already released one showing that Trump knew about the payment to Karen McDougal in advance.

FN: With the new Michael Cohen transcripts released we now have evidence that Trump discussed Stormy Daniels just after Hollywood Access was released with Hope Hicks and Michael Cohen. 

Which brings us to Omarosa. No she’s not that credible though no one is a bigger liar than Trump himself. But she has tapes. And clearly Trump-and the RNC-is worried. You see this in all the anti Omarosa tweets he’s put out already-he’s already had eight-if you count a couple of RTs from Frank Luntz and Michael Cohen. 

Again, simply dismissing anything she says or does here is what he hopes you will do. I’d urge folks not to take the bait. This doesn’t mean you believe everything Omarosa says-that’s never the answer. But that’s a false choice-simply believe nothing or everything. Verify everything-she isn’t a credible source.

But again tapes don’t lie. And she has released a  few in the last few days. This is because just like an informant, her incentive is to deliver. With her book coming out this week, she knew she had to deliver-and hence all the tapes; she wants to demonstrate she has the goods. Let’s look at what she’s already released:

1. A tape of John Kelly firing her. She accused Kelly, in the way he fired her, of engaging in false imprisonment. 

A little hyperbolic though you can imagine this would be an alarming experience-putting her in a room with four men and warning her to do this nice or she has lots of legal exposure. He claimed there were major integrity issues with her and wouldn’t explain what they were.

But she is right that she had to get a tape of this or no one would have believed her.

“She defended making recordings of her calls and meetings with Trump, Kelly and others, saying that if she hadn’t, the White House would have claimed that the conversations never occurred.”

“Had I not recorded this, people would say, ‘She has a credibility issue,’ ” she said.

2. Then yesterday a tape of her phone call with Trump after Kelly fired her.

“Omarosa, what’s going on?” Trump asks. “I just saw on the news that you’re thinking about leaving. What happened?”

Manigault Newman responds that Kelly told her that she had been dismissed.

“No. Nobody even told me about it,” Trump replies. “You know they run a big operation, but I didn’t know it. I didn’t know that. Goddammit. I don’t love you leaving at all.”

What’s ambiguous is wether Trump  really learned this on the news or he knew Kelly was going to do this all along. My instinct is the latter but stay tuned.

3. Claims to have a tape of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. A lot of people seem to doubt this but I suspect it’s true. Again her incentive is to show the tapes as she knows otherwise she won’t be believed.

4. Now she claims that Trump called his namesake son a you know what up after Jr released the emails about the Trump Tower meeting-rather than let his lawyer handle it.

“Former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman claims in her upcoming book that President Trump referred to his eldest son as a “f— up” for releasing emails about the 2016 Trump Tower campaign meeting with a Russian lawyer with connections to the Kremlin.”

“He is such a f— up,” the president allegedly said, according to Manigault Newman, after he saw his son had posted screenshots of emails setting up the meeting. “He screwed up again, but this time, he’s screwing us all, big-time!”

I don’t know-that sort of sounds like the faux ‘President.’ And his latest ‘defense’ of Jr sure seem to actually be throwing him under the bus. There was no collusion to the best of my knowledge. 

5. And Omarosa’s tapes and revelations have actually raised an important question on Trump’s very restrictive NDAs and his attempts to muzzle all criticism of himself. 

“So it is that former “Apprentice” contestant and White House staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman has grabbed the spotlight with a provocative tell-all book and round of media interviews, a development that was predictable from the season’s first episode. While much of the attention is focused on all the interpersonal nastiness and allegations of things such as the president being on tape using the n-word (would anyone be surprised?), I’d like to focus on one thing Omarosa has brought to light that isn’t in dispute.”

“Among her charges are that she was asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement and offered a $15,000-a-month “job” after she left the White House in order to keep her in line. As she said yesterday on NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” “In fact, there are several former employees from the White House who actually signed this agreement, who are all being paid $15,000 for their silence.”

So far, the White House has not denied this claim. In fact, on ABC News’s “This Week,” Kellyanne Conway said, “We have confidentiality agreements in the West Wing, absolutely we do. And — and why wouldn’t we?”

Uh, because the White House is the people’s house, it’s not one of Trump’s hotels and the public has a right to know?

“There are a number of reasons, but the question that needs to be answered is what exactly those confidentiality agreements entail. Because they are absolutely not standard practice in the White House.”

No, if you work in the private sector maybe but not the WH. Did Obama have a NDA with Robert Gates and Chuck Hagel, both who were very critical of him after leaving each of their tenures as his-Republican-Defense Secretary?

“Employees who deal with classified information may have to sign an agreement pledging not to reveal that information, but it sounds as though the White House is requiring broader agreements from its employees, which would put us in new territory. One critical question is whether the agreements signed by White House staff include non-disparagement clauses, which would be not just unprecedented but also shocking.”

“Remember: Throughout his career, Trump required his employees to sign nondisclosure agreements that not only stopped them from revealing what they had seen but also forbade them from ever saying anything uncomplimentary about Trump, his family, his company or his products. This then carried over into his presidential campaign, which required even volunteers to pledge not to disparage Trump for the rest of their lives.”

The document Omarosa made public (which is an agreement not with the government but with the Trump reelection campaign) contained this clause, using almost identical language as the document people on the campaign signed:

During the term of your service, and at all times thereafter, you hereby promise and agree not to demean or disparage publicly, in any form or through any medium, the Campaign, Mr. Trump, Mr. Pence, any Trump or Pence Company, any Trump or Pence Family Member, or any Trump or Pence Family Member Company or any asset any of the foregoing own, or product or service any of the foregoing offer, in each case by or in any of the Restricted Means and Contexts.

“We don’t know whether the Trump White House NDAs include such a clause, but if they do, it’s quite frankly appalling.”

Indeed. According to Omarosa Trump is paying Sean Spicer to praise him,  to ‘call him a unicorn jumping over rainbows.’

And this goes to another pattern besides restrictive NDAs to silence all criticism of him. It’s his habit of hiring people who worked for him to the 2020 campaign, people who in many cases are persons of interest and potential witnesses against Trump in the Mueller probe.

He has Brad Parscale-a major person of interest for Mueller for his work in the 2016 campaign with Trump’s social media campaign; Parscale also dealt with Cambridge Analytica. Now he’s invited Hope Hicks to join the 2020 campaign-she is another major person of interest in the probe with all the records and emails she kept for the Trump campaign, transition and WH.

Then he has Donald Jr campaigning for him.

https://lastmenandovermen.com/2018/08/13/donald-jr-is-a-major-person-of-interest-in-investigation-of-his-father-and-yet-is-out-campaigning-for-him/

So there are two potentially very important issues for the Mueller probe-the NDAs and buying off those he fires with jobs in the 2020 campaign, including those who are potential witnesses against himself.

P.S. Omarosa says she has ‘plenty of other tapes’ and will give any tapes Mueller wants ‘if he calls again.’ Yes-this implies he already did.

P.S.S. Regarding the alleged tape with Trump using the ‘N word’ she says the people who have it want to release it before the election as an October surprise.

No doubt we will be hearing more about this.

UPDATE: Turns out this prediction was wrong. We have not heard more about this-after a fast start Omarosa’s tape offensive fizzled. The question remains why-was she simply exaggerating what she had or did Trump’s lawyers shut her up?

As for the ‘n word tape’ on the one hand such a tape has still not been revealed-with Tom Arnold spending considerable time searching for it-but on the other hand the tape Omarosa revealed of Katrina Pierson shows that Pierson herself believed such a tape exists. And, of course, we hardly need such a tape to prove Trump’s a racist-he does it himself 50 different ways a week.

OTOH Omarosa’s claim that Trump called Don Jr an ‘f-ing moron’ is totally believable-and in line with what Michael Cohen said under oath-that Trump doesn’t trust him to tie his own shoes and certainly wouldn’t let him do something like the Trump Tower Russia Collusion meeting of June 9, 2016 on his own without supervision.

But then this takes us back to Mueller’s inexplicable refusal to charge Jr for a campaign violation.

But then as Ronald Klain says the Mueller Report was constructed to minimize Trump’s wrong doing.

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