For the first time in 17 years, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was not voted as the woman Americans most admire, according to a Gallup poll released Thursday.
Former first lady Michelle Obama was named the woman Americans admire most in the world with 15 percent of those surveyed choosing her. Oprah Winfrey came in second place, amassing only 5 percent of the vote, with Clinton coming in tied at third with Melania Trump at 4 percent.
Yea Bitch I Won!
When looking at the breakdown for Democrats who were surveyed, Clinton finished tied with Winfrey and behind Obama. Conversely, the former presidential candidate received less than 0.5 percent of the vote from Republicans.
Former President Barack Obama won the award as the man most admired by Americans for the eleventh consecutive year. President Donald Trump came in second place this year, finishing with 13 percent compared to 19 percent for his predecessor.
The last time Hillary Clinton was not voted “most admired” was in 2001, when then-first lady Laura Bush won the honor. However, Clinton also won four consecutive years prior to Bush’s victory. So Clinton has won the award for 20 of the last 21 years.
Gallup conducted 1,025 phone interviews with people 18 years or older from Dec. 3-12. There’s a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Hell yes Trump’s Lawyer paid her for Trump. Who are we kidding.
Stephanie Clifford, a pornographic actress known professionally as “Stormy Daniels,” offered Monday to return the $130,000 payment she received in Oct. 2016 for her continued silence about an alleged affair with President Donald Trump.
A remittance, her lawyers propose, would invalidate the “hush agreement” she reached with Trump attorney Michael Cohen, permitting her to speak publicly about her relationship with the president.
The New York Times obtained a copy of a letter Clifford’s lawyer, Michael Avenatti, sent to Cohen, which offers to wire the full $130,000 sum to an account of the president’s choosing on the understanding that the 2016 agreement is nullified.
I don’t think that Melania is happy about this.
The contract, known as a nondisclosure agreement (NDA), was executed on Oct. 28, 2016. Under its terms, Clifford agreed not to disclose her alleged affair with the president in exchange for a $130,000 payment from a shell company in Delaware. Cohen officially represents the shell company, known as Essential Consultants LLC, and not the president in this dispute.
The affair allegedly ran from the summer of 2006 to early 2007.
Avenatti’s letter gave Cohen until noon Tuesday to make a decision and promised to transmit payment by Friday.
Once the NDA is voided, Clifford would be at liberty to “(a) speak openly and freely about her prior relationship with the president and the attempts to silence her and (b) use and publish any text messages, photos and/or videos relating to the president that she may have in her possession, all without fear of retribution and legal liability for damages,” according to TheNYT’s copy of the Avenatti proposal.
It also demands that the president’s lawyers take no action to prevent publication of Clifford’s interview with the CBS news magazine “60 Minutes,” which is slated for broadcast Sunday. Sources familiar with the Trump legal team’s thinking say they plan to seek an injunction barring its release.
Clifford is suing Cohen and Essential Consultants in a California state court, arguing the NDA is invalid because Trump himself never signed it. As such, they argue she is not bound by any confidentiality obligations. In turn, Cohen obtained a preliminary restraining order against her in private arbitration, binding her to silence for the time being.
Melania Trump wins round in libel suit over blogger’s ‘escort’ claims
Judge mulls whether to dismiss Daily Mail from case as lawyer reveals first lady is suing newspaper in a London court…
First lady Melania Trump prevailed Friday in the first round of a $150 million libel suit she filed against a Maryland blogger over a report he published last summer about claims that Trump worked as a “high-end escort.”Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Sharon Burrell rejected arguments from lawyers for blogger Webster Tarpley to dismiss Trump’s suit for failing to meet the “actual malice” standard for public figures. The judge also turned down Tarpley’s effort to dismiss the suit under a Maryland law aimed at quickly shutting down bad-faith lawsuits intended to intimidate people speaking out on issues of public concern.
“The court finds the plaintiff has stated a claim for defamation,” Burrell ruled after hearing arguments on the issue in a Rockville courtroom. “The court believes most people, when they hear the words ‘high-end escort’ that describes a prostitute. There could be no more defamatory statement than to call a woman a prostitute.”
However, at the conclusion of a roughly two-hour-long hearing, it was unclear whether the first lady would be allowed to proceed against another, deeper-pocketed defendant in the Maryland suit–the New York-based corporate affiliate of London’s Daily Mail newspaper. That outlet published a similar account to Tarpley’s last August.
An attorney for Mail Media, Kelli Sager, argued Maryland was the wrong place for a New York resident like Trump to sue a New York company, Sager also disclosed that Melania Trump is also suing the parent company of the Daily Mail newspaper in a London court for libel over the same article that appeared on the Mail website.
Both Tarpley and the Mail retracted their articles after receiving complaints from Trump’s lawyers.
A lawyer for Tarpley, Danielle Giroux, insisted that Tarpley wasn’t vouching for the truth of the allegations he aired, but simply publicizing the fact that there were rumors that had a potential to impact the presidential campaign.
“He did not say that Melania Trump was a high-class escort. What he said was there are rumors about that,” the attorney said. “He’s writing about the rumors and that, itself, is newsworthy.”
However, Trump attorney Charles Harder said it was evident from Tarpley’s post that he was endorsing the accuracy of the claims, particularly by referring to them as “widely known.”
“That’s not how the law works. You can’t print a rumor if it’s not true and it damages or harms someone’s reputation,” the attorney said. “That is textbook defamation.
Harder also complained that Tarpley had done nothing to investigate the accuracy of what he was circulating. For example, the attorney said the blogger could or should have checked “a library of porn content” to see if Trump had appeared in pornography.
“You have to verify. You can’t just say anything you want about someone when it’s defamatory,” Harder said.
Giroux said Harder was wrong on that point. She insisted journalists covering matters of public concern are entitled to publish facts they haven’t personally verified.
“A reporter does not have to publish only statements that he knows are true,” she said. “They are not required to do an investigation.”
Burrell said Tarpley’s bid to end the case under Maryland’s Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation law (sometimes called a SLAPP law) failed becausethere was no indication the suit was brought in bad faith. The judge also seemed skeptical that such salacious claims were deserving of the highest level of legal protection given that Melania Trump was the wife of a candidate and not a candidate herself.
“The interests affected are arguably not that important because the plaintiff wasn’t the one running for office,” Burrell said.
Giroux also labeled as “rhetorical hyperbole” Tarpley’s claim that the escort rumors, the publication of nude modeling photos of Trump and other events led her to have a “mental breakdown” that drove her from the campaign trail.
“It’s the flourish reporters use so the way they present the facts isn’t so dry,” the lawyer explained.
The judge didn’t buy that, dismissing that argument as “word games.”
Burrell issued no immediate ruling on the Mail’s bid to escape the Maryland suit, but she did halt discovery against the Mail–a signal that she’s giving serious consideration to dismissing the Mail from the case.
The arguments on that point were highly technical, but Harder argued that the Mail website is viewed in Maryland 40 million times a year, giving Maryland courts jurisdiction over the libel dispute. He also said the Mail knows people from Maryland are registering on its site and leaving comments there.
However, the judge seemed concerned that Harder was suggesting Trump could have filed the case anywhere in the U.S.
Sager underscored that point. “It is essentially forum shopping,” she said. “This is a free website.”
Burrell tossed out a claim that Tarpley damaged Trump’s current and prospective business deals. The judge said those allegations lacked detail, but she said she’d allow Trump’s lawyers to refile them if they want.
Melania Trump showed up for an initial hearing in the case last month, but was not present in the courtroom Friday. The closest thing to celebrities there were Harder and Sager, two well-known Los Angeles litigators who often do battle in high-profile fights involving celebrities and the media.
Yea Bitch I Won!
