Rudy Giuliani goofs on Hannity

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It's only been an hour and it's the top story on every news site. Forums everywhere are blowing up. Rudy on Hannity is the top thread everywhere I look.

The WH is hilariously trying to claim Trump approved it ahead of time.

"That money was not campaign money, sorry," Giuliani said. "I'm giving you a fact now that you don't know. It's not campaign money. No campaign finance violation."

Hannity replied: "Because they funneled it through the law firm?"

To which Giuliani said: "Funneled it through the law firm, and the President repaid him."


https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/02/politics/giuliani-hannity-comey/index.html


There are also other slip-ups from this interview so this definitely deserves its own thread.

For instance, Rudy says that Trump fired Comey because Comey would not tell Trump that Comey was not investigating him.
 
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For instance, Rudy says that Trump fired Comey because Comey would not tell Trump that Comey was not investigating him.


http://thehill.com/homenews/adminis...-comey-because-he-wouldnt-tell-trump-he-wasnt


“He fired Comey because Comey would not, among other things, say that he wasn’t a target of the investigation,” Giuliani, who recently joined Trump’s legal team, told Fox News’s Sean Hannity.

“He’s entitled to that. Hillary Clinton got that and he couldn’t get that,” Giuliani said. “So he fired him and he said, ‘I’m free of this guy.’ ”
 
On the Hannity show, Giuliani insisted that the payment to Daniels, who claims she had sex with Trump in 2006 at a golf tournament in Nevada, was entirely legal and broke no campaign finance laws.

“So they funneled it through the law firm,” Hannity asked, referring to Cohen’s legal practice.

“Funnelled it through the law firm,” Giuliani concurred, “and the president repaid it.”

Hannity appeared to be surprised by the revelation. “Oh, I didn’t know that he did.”

“Yup,” said Giuliani.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...-paid-michael-cohen-stormy-daniels-hush-money

So has Rudy struck a deal with Mueller yet? Seems everyone else has!

And Hannity is going to LOVE being the source of this ****-shower. Because Donny listens to him avidly, and Sean knows Donny is his bosom-buddy pal. Perhaps Rudy picked Hannity specifically for this reason - to stand Donny up and look like a good guy himself?
 
So has Rudy struck a deal with Mueller yet? Seems everyone else has!


You remind me of the best comment I've seen on another forum. This is just from memory:

Rudy is having an old peoples moment. Mueller needs to contact him immediately and ask him to go get a coffee!


Perhaps Rudy picked Hannity specifically for this reason - to stand Donny up and look like a good guy himself?


It's just so weird that the WH is claiming they approved all of these leaks. Why approve it in such a venue, Hannity, and from such a person, Rudy?

Also, Hannity's reaction seems to imply that Hannity knew this stuff was not supposed to be leaked.
 
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It's just so weird that the WH is claiming they approved all of these leaks. Why approve it in such a venue, Hannity, and from such a person, Rudy?
It's the approved operative lie, then?

Perhaps this is a noisy distraction from something far more serious (not that this isn't serious under normal circumstances, but hey, what's "normal" about Donny these days?) How about ignoring this bit of political theatre stand-up, and looking at what else they are trying to do without anyone noticing.
 
Well, the theory is that they were about to get busted for this.

So now they are trying to "get it out there" so they can claim this is what they were saying "the whole time".
Yep, the smaller distraction from the bigger misdemeanor.

Apparently Mueller has been seriously vulturing the Trump team recently, and they have been desperately trying to hide under rocks. In that context, this escapade sounds like a cartoon stick thrown way over there to distract attention while they try another desperate plan to escape (e.g. sacking Rosenstein unnoticed). I...don't think Mueller is going to fall for it...somehow.
 
These guys are so corrupt that they've been anesthetized to the negative connotation of a verb like "funneled."
 
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"On "Hannity," Giuliani said Trump repaid Cohen "over several months" by putting him on a "retainer of $35,000 when he was doing no work for the president."

"I said, 'That's how he's repaying it, with a little profit and a little margin for paying taxes,'" said Giuliani, who added that Trump "didn’t know about the specifics of [the payment], as far as I know, but he did know about the general arrangement that Michael would take care of things like this. Like I take care of things like this for my clients. I don’t burden them with every single thing that comes along."


http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...repaid-130g-to-cohen-over-several-months.html

If I repay a loan. it is a reimbursement of capital and non taxable in the hands of the person receiving the repayment of capital. If I pay a a lawyer a retainer it is ordinary income in the lawyer's hand. This claim by Giuliani makes no sense and may be easy to discredit in court.
 
The weirdest part is when your official story contains the word "funneled" (as in "funneled it through the law firm").


Keeping in mind that (and someone please correct me if I am wrong) after you declare that you are running for president you have to disclose all payments over $30,000 to campaign finance. Even payments for things that have nothing to do with you running for president.

Trump declared in summer 2015.
Mrs. Daniels was paid off in summer 2016.


But also, it is even more severe if someone secretly makes a payment for you over $30,000 after you declare. Called an "in-kind contribution".

So that is why they might have allowed Rudy to leak this.

If Cohen was not paid back then Cohen made an even more serious campaign finance violation than if Trump funded it himself.

Now here is the hilarious part that they probably don't realize:

The campaign finance law specifically says that being paid back later does not remove the violation...
 
All the news sites are running with the "funnel" slip up, for obvious reasons. But I think the one I posted in post #2 might in the end be more damaging:

He fired Comey because Comey would not, among other things, say that he wasn’t a target of the investigation,” Giuliani, who recently joined Trump’s legal team, told Fox News’s Sean Hannity.

“He’s entitled to that. Hillary Clinton got that and he couldn’t get that,” Giuliani said. “So he fired him and he said, ‘I’m free of this guy.’ ”


If true, that breaks several laws, all of which make a campaign finance violation look like a parking ticket!

And the interview also contained some other weird stuff. All of the major news networks go to overnight airings after the time this Hannity interview aired. So we might have to wait until the morning to see exactly how this plays out.
 
Here is an excellent example or President Trump, and his team's, brilliance at work.

Had the underlying story broken, Donald Trump slept with a porn star while married and paid her of with $130k then it may have been a bombshell. Instead we've had a drip-drip-drip of claim and counterclaim with the President, and his team, continually changing their story. We have no idea what may be true, all previous versions are in doubt and the media is in a complete tizzy trying to scramble to assess the implications of the latest revelation.

Meanwhile the Trump Presidency and GOP sail blithely on with pornstar allegations distracting from more important issues like alleged Russian interference in elections, alleged obstruction of justice, the slow dismantling of the ACA, the rapid transfer of wealth from government debt and poorer people to the top 0.1% and the erosion of democracy itself as gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts intensify and as the executive and legislative branches seek to put themselves beyond the reach of the judicial branch......

..... and we are all complicit by allowing ourselves to be distracted :mad:
 
What do you mean by goofs on Hannity? I'll say it right here, if Giuliani said it, it probably means that this is something they are letting out. He didn't blurt it out by accident.

And as for the 130K, does anybody really believe that Trump didn't repay his lawyer for that? I will assume since Giuliani mentioned it that there is some sort of paper (i.e. tax document) that will verify that.
 
Here is an excellent example or President Trump, and his team's, brilliance at work.

Had the underlying story broken, Donald Trump slept with a porn star while married and paid her of with $130k then it may have been a bombshell. Instead we've had a drip-drip-drip of claim and counterclaim with the President, and his team, continually changing their story. We have no idea what may be true, all previous versions are in doubt and the media is in a complete tizzy trying to scramble to assess the implications of the latest revelation.

Meanwhile the Trump Presidency and GOP sail blithely on with pornstar allegations distracting from more important issues like alleged Russian interference in elections, alleged obstruction of justice, the slow dismantling of the ACA, the rapid transfer of wealth from government debt and poorer people to the top 0.1% and the erosion of democracy itself as gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts intensify and as the executive and legislative branches seek to put themselves beyond the reach of the judicial branch......

..... and we are all complicit by allowing ourselves to be distracted :mad:
Precisely my POV too. Cup-and-ball trick to keep focus elsewhere.
 
What do you mean by goofs on Hannity? I'll say it right here, if Giuliani said it, it probably means that this is something they are letting out. He didn't blurt it out by accident.


You act like we haven't covered that in this thread already. Repeatedly.

For instance, here is post #6:

Well, the theory is that they were about to get busted for this.

So now they are trying to "get it out there" so they can claim this is what they were saying "the whole time".


Is this a case of replying to the thread title before reading the thread?

Did you watch Don Lemon tonight on CNN? Actual experts are torn on this. One claims the opposite of what you do. She says, quite enthusiastically, there is no way they approved this.

There is no way to be sure.
 
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Here is an excellent example or President Trump, and his team's, brilliance at work.

Had the underlying story broken, Donald Trump slept with a porn star while married and paid her of with $130k then it may have been a bombshell. Instead we've had a drip-drip-drip of claim and counterclaim with the President, and his team, continually changing their story. We have no idea what may be true, all previous versions are in doubt and the media is in a complete tizzy trying to scramble to assess the implications of the latest revelation.

Meanwhile the Trump Presidency and GOP sail blithely on with pornstar allegations distracting from more important issues like alleged Russian interference in elections, alleged obstruction of justice, the slow dismantling of the ACA, the rapid transfer of wealth from government debt and poorer people to the top 0.1% and the erosion of democracy itself as gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts intensify and as the executive and legislative branches seek to put themselves beyond the reach of the judicial branch......

..... and we are all complicit by allowing ourselves to be distracted :mad:


Fantastic post The Don.
 
It's only been an hour and it's the top story on every news site. Forums everywhere are blowing up. Rudy on Hannity is the top thread everywhere I look.

The WH is hilariously trying to claim Trump approved it ahead of time.




https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/02/politics/giuliani-hannity-comey/index.html


There are also other slip-ups from this interview so this definitely deserves its own thread.

For instance, Rudy says that Trump fired Comey because Comey would not tell Trump that Comey was not investigating him.

Telling the truth is a goof, now?

It's been established that Trump lies, so I don't know why anyone would take his word for anything.
 
It's the lead story on all the international news networks (radio and television) over here, too. Well, except for Fox. They're running an apologia for Sessions' rollback of forfeiture, followed by a fly infestation at a VA hospital and a a take down of some feminazi perfesser who dissed Barbara Bush. No mention of Rudi or Donni.


>>> Update: 45 minutes later"Fox & Friends First" finally gets around to the story but it's not the same one other networks are covering they have Jason Chaffetz on and he highlighted all of Giuliani's negative comments against the investigation. The eye candy finally asked him what he thought about the comment that Trump had paid back the loan and he danced around it with some double talk about how "open this administration's been".
 
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Giuliani did not say anything coherent. I tried to transcribe it, gave up. There's a reason why news organizations have to report snippets of quotex and work to stitch them into something coherent. Yes, a $35K retainer, is how Giuliani interpreted it as paying Cohen back - with (incoherent) statements about taxes and profit - but the figure is $130K and then Giuliani denies Trump knew anything, just, you know, he pays someone to handles details whenever stuff of this nature (!) comes up.

There's no smoking gun. Incoherence is the strategy and it probably will work pretty well.
 
All the news sites are running with the "funnel" slip up, for obvious reasons. But I think the one I posted in post #2 might in the end be more damaging:

If true, that breaks several laws, all of which make a campaign finance violation look like a parking ticket!

I saw it as a way to get Trump off the charge of obstruction. If Trump fired Comey because he would not confirm what Trump wanted to hear, then the charge that the firing was a act of obstruction of justice goes away.
 
Meanwhile the Trump Presidency and GOP sail blithely on with pornstar allegations distracting from more important issues like alleged Russian interference in elections, alleged obstruction of justice, the slow dismantling of the ACA, the rapid transfer of wealth from government debt and poorer people to the top 0.1% and the erosion of democracy itself as gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts intensify and as the executive and legislative branches seek to put themselves beyond the reach of the judicial branch......

..... and we are all complicit by allowing ourselves to be distracted :mad:

:bigclap
 
Here is an excellent example or President Trump, and his team's, brilliance at work.

Had the underlying story broken, Donald Trump slept with a porn star while married and paid her of with $130k then it may have been a bombshell. Instead we've had a drip-drip-drip of claim and counterclaim with the President, and his team, continually changing their story. We have no idea what may be true, all previous versions are in doubt and the media is in a complete tizzy trying to scramble to assess the implications of the latest revelation.

Meanwhile the Trump Presidency and GOP sail blithely on with pornstar allegations distracting from more important issues like alleged Russian interference in elections, alleged obstruction of justice, the slow dismantling of the ACA, the rapid transfer of wealth from government debt and poorer people to the top 0.1% and the erosion of democracy itself as gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts intensify and as the executive and legislative branches seek to put themselves beyond the reach of the judicial branch......

..... and we are all complicit by allowing ourselves to be distracted :mad:

Being aware of one of these things doesn't imply that I cannot also be aware of the others.
 
Being aware of one of these things doesn't imply that I cannot also be aware of the others.
This might be easier if you're not in the U.S., where anything new is quickly snapped up to keep up with the never-ending demand for Trump tidbits. Or even better, tit-bits.

ETA:
Avenatti tells @TheLastWord he hopes Giuliani is not suggesting the Cohen reimbursement took place over several months to avoid $10K+ payments to avoid reporting those payments: “That’s a serious, serious problem. It’s a violation of federal law. It’s a criminal act to do that.”

Of course he hopes Giuliani is suggesting that.

I don't think this is going to turn out to be a "serious, serious problem" for anyone. Then again, I could be wrong.
 
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This might be easier if you're not in the U.S., where anything new is quickly snapped up to keep up with the never-ending demand for Trump tidbits. Or even better, tit-bits.

Hardly any of this news is reported at all over here in the UK. I have to actively seek it out.

Then again, perhaps the fact that I'm not just passively consuming the news is what allows me not to be distracted away from various topics. OTOH, I'd have thought that anybody discussing the news on a message board would, by definition, have to be doing more than just passively consuming the news.

So, really, I don't know who The Don was addressing when he said "we all are complicit". 2 of the top 10 threads on this subforum are about different aspects of the Trump/Russia thing, with both having posts made within the last 12 hours, so what makes him think that that's an issue that's being ignored here?
 
Good morning Norman Alexander
Precisely my POV too. Cup-and-ball trick to keep focus elsewhere.
I also agree. The only problem is a good Cup-and-Ball Trick is well choreographed and time tested, improved on through feedback from live performances, with the end result being something entertaining for the audience to enjoy. An audience that knows they are watching a deception for entertainment purposes. This is more like the drunken, out of control uncle, attempting to pull a coin from a kids ear while accidentally poking the kid in the eye and then proceeding to puke on the birthday cake while family and friends watch in horror. The real problem is the adults in the room (Congress and Trumps supporters) will hand him his car keys and send him out into traffic to continue to do damage. Then claim, they never saw it coming.
 
So, really, I don't know who The Don was addressing when he said "we all are complicit".

We are all complicit was hyperbole, the vast majority of us, including me, are complicit by being eager consumers of this tittle-tattle and allowing the media outlets to focus on it, diluting their focus on things which IMO present a greater threat to the well-being of the US, and by extension, the world such as those things I mentioned.

Sure people can be aware of many things but time spent attempting to interpret the verbal rorschach which is President Trump and his team lets him and the GOP control the narrative.
 
We are all complicit was hyperbole, the vast majority of us, including me, are complicit by being eager consumers of this tittle-tattle and allowing the media outlets to focus on it, diluting their focus on things which IMO present a greater threat to the well-being of the US, and by extension, the world such as those things I mentioned.

Sure people can be aware of many things but time spent attempting to interpret the verbal rorschach which is President Trump and his team lets him and the GOP control the narrative.

How would you suggest we disallow the media outlets to focus on it?
 
I don't see it as a goof.

Here's what I think their story is. Trump has a lawyer, Cohen, who is told that certain things are going to come up, and it's his job to fix them. He'll get paid back for anything he spends.

Cohen "fixes" the Stormy Daniels situation. Trump pays him back, using personal funds.

The key point of Giuliani's statement is that the Trump campaign wasn't involved, and that the Trump organization wasn't involved. It was Donald Trump, personally. He didn't know the details as to exactly which people would be paid off by Cohen, he just knew that there would have to be hush money paid, so he told Cohen to pay it, and he would get reimbursed later, and that's what happened.

Previously, Cohen had said that neither the Trump organization nor the Trump campaign had paid him back, and that is still the story. Rumor has it that Cohen was complaining that Trump didn't pay him back, and that's still the story. It was many months after the events that money started to flow to Cohen from Trump to cover the hush money costs.

I don't see any "goof" involved here.
 

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