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Decoding Trump: How he engaged, deflected or ducked my questions at Mar-a-Lago

I came armed with a fistful of blue cards, and still didn’t get to half the questions, but Donald Trump made a whole lot of news in our Mar-a-Lago interview.

What’s revealing is how he chose to answer the most sensitive questions, or to deflect them, and how various media outlets chose to frame them.

Some, like the New York Times, ABC and the Hill, played it straight. Other operations, many of them left-leaning, cherry-picked quotes to make Trump look as awful as possible, while ignoring the reasonable-sounding things he said.

A classic example was when I asked the former president about the murder of Alexei Navalny in a Siberian prison camp. I thought he might duck because of his friendly relationship with Vladimir Putin.

But I put it to him point-blank: Is the Russian dictator responsible for the death of the opposition leader?

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"Perhaps," Trump said. "I mean, possibly, I could say probably. I don't know. He's a young man, so statistically he'd be alive for a long time…Certainly that would look like something very bad happened."

Keep in mind that Trump has never even mentioned Putin in the same paragraph as Navalny, and now he’s saying "probably" responsible. Of course, Trump can’t prove it, and neither can I.

Here are some of the headlines:

"Trump Couldn’t Bring Himself to Condemn Putin for Alexei Navalny’s Death."

"Trump Delivers Head-Spinningly Awkward Answer to New Question About Putin." 

"Trump: ‘I Don’t Know’ If Putin Was Responsible for Navalny’s Death."

You get the idea.

Which brings us to Trump’s rhetoric. I asked why he uses words like "vermin" and "poisoning of the blood" to describe illegal migrants – especially since the press says such language was used by Hitler and Mussolini.

Trump says he didn’t know that and then repeated "our country is being poisoned" – prompting a wave of headlines that he had doubled down on such harmful language.

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I guess you could say that – and I’m not letting him off the hook – but the more telling part of his answer came next.

I asked the 45th president whether he uses "over the top" and "inflammatory" language to drive the media debate, meaning a focus on his words gets news outlets spending days on his turf, on his preferred issue, in the arguments over whether he went too far. And Trump didn’t deny it, saying he wouldn’t limit himself to "politically correct" verbiage.

"It also gets people thinking about very important issues," he said. "That if you don't use certain rhetoric, if you don't use certain words that maybe are not very nice words, nothing will happen." My theory, based on decades of observing him, was correct.

Then he went off on migrants coming from insane asylums and how crime will double – neither of which has been shown to be true on a major scale. 

The same was true with NATO, when Trump caused a global uproar by saying he’d encourage the Russians to "do whatever the hell they want" to NATO countries that don’t pay their fair share of defense costs.

That sounds like someone taking a pro-Putin stance, I said.

"It sounds like somebody that wants to get people to pay money," Trump said. In other words, it was a negotiating tactic.

Half an hour before airtime, the media were awash in headlines about Trump saying there would be a "bloodbath" if he lost the election. So I watched that portion of his speech at an Ohio rally the night before.

There have been times when Trump used loaded words to signal the possibility of political violence. This wasn’t one of them.

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Trump was going on about Chinese cars and their impact on the American auto industry. Then he said if he wasn’t elected there would be a bloodbath – in terms of the impact on jobs. Then he went right back to talking about electric vehicles and industry competition.

Now some pundits said the mere use of the word bloodbath was like a bat signal, telling his supporters to get ready for violence. After all, he was so Machiavellian that he added, "That’s going to be the least of it." But as I said, too many outlets were so in love with the bloodbath story that they wrenched it out of context.

Trump also said at the rally that some migrants were "animals" and "not people." That’s unacceptable language, in my view, but remember what he said about inflammatory words driving the media debate. I wanted to decode his approach for viewers.   

Trump also made news on abortion. I asked him about a Times story that said he is discussing with advisers a national ban after 16 weeks of pregnancy – not knowing his campaign had dismissed it as fake news – and figured he’d dismiss the story.

Nope. He essentially confirmed the 16-week story – saying he’d make a decision "pretty soon," which would obviously be in that range – that had previously been attributed to unnamed sources. He said, despite my skepticism, that he wants to "make both sides happy."

When Republicans grapple with abortion in the post-Roe world, Trump said, "you have to go with your heart. But beyond that, you also have to get elected." He said that opposing the three exceptions – rape, incest, life of the mother – caused Pennsylvania Republican Doug Mastriano to lose the governor’s race in a landslide.

Then Trump went off on the Democrats and late-term abortions – which I said in one of several fact-checks are exceedingly rare.

He also made news on subjects ranging from Israel to TikTok.

The first time I met Donald Trump was in 1987, in New York, when he was promoting his first book "The Art of the Deal."

And this, unprompted, is what he said to me:

"When I go up to New Hampshire – I'm not running for president, by the way – I got the best crowd, the best of everything in terms of reception. The politicians go up and get a moderate audience. I go up and they're scalping tickets. You heard that? They're scalping tickets. Why? Because people don't want to be ripped off, and this country is being ripped off. I think if I ran, I'd win."

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I confess I did not then envision Trump, still a largely local real estate guy, in the White House, but now he’s going to head the Republican ticket for the third straight time.

2024/03/19 03:00

Legal experts weigh in on Trump’s options after failure to secure $464M appeal bond: ‘uncharted territory’

Legal experts are weighing in on Donald Trump’s options after attorneys for the former president said he has not been able to secure a $464 million appeal bond he needs following a New York civil fraud judgment against him. 

Trump’s lawyers wrote in a Monday court filing that obtaining the nearly half-a-billion appeal was a "practical impossibility under the circumstances presented." 

David Gelman, a criminal defense attorney and a former deputy district attorney, called the judgment a "unicorn." He argued that the judge should give Trump a lot more leeway to satisfy the bond because "not even the richest man in the world has $464 million lying around." 

A New York Appeals Court judge denied Trump’s request late last month to delay payment of the $464 million owed as a result of the lawsuit brought by New York State Attorney General Letitia James, but said he would temporarily allow the 2024 front-runner and his sons to continue running their business during the appeals process. 

A New York Appeals Court judge previously ruled that the former president must post a bond for the full amount of the judgment and that an independent director of compliance will be appointed.  

That ruling comes after New York Judge Arthur Engoron handed down his decision earlier in February after a months-long trial beginning in October in which the former president was accused of inflating his assets and committing fraud in financial documents.

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Engoron ruled that Trump and other defendants were liable for "persistent and repeated fraud," "falsifying business records," "issuing false financial statements," "conspiracy to falsify false financial statements," "insurance fraud" and "conspiracy to commit insurance fraud."

Gelman told Fox News Digital that "everyone needs to realize how unprecedented this is." 

"There has never been a judgment of this magnitude against a company or individual in the history of New York, so we are really in uncharted territory." 

Gelman said Trump has three options: not appeal, ask the court to allow Attorney General James to use his property as collateral, or take it to a federal court and say the New York law is unconstitutional on its face. 

"Courts really don’t deny bonds when there are other ways to pay. Again, because this is so unprecedented, and I don’t care how rich you are, nobody has that much liquid cash. So if a court had the option to allow a defendant to use some other collateral to satisfy the bond, they will," Gelman said. 

He added that there was no reason for the judge or Attorney General James to say no. 

"You’re dealing with Trump. He’s not going anywhere. He’s the most famous and well known person in the world. It’s not like he can just disappear and can’t be found," Gelman said. 

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Former federal prosecutor Andrew Cherkasky told Fox News’ The Story with Martha MacCallum that he "would not count Trump out yet." 

Cherkasky said that even if the court denies Trump’s appeal, he "still has paths to move forward through federal court – ultimately to the Supreme Court to complain about Eight Amendment violations." 

Per the Eighth Amendment, which deals with cruel and unusual punishment, "excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." 

Cherkasky argued that the fines imposed on Trump were so "astronomically high here that it seems unbelievable for the Constitution to permit it under these circumstances." 

"I think – and I hope – that the New York Court of Appeals looks at it appropriately," Cherkasky said. "But like I said, I think even the Supreme Court would have an interest in this case on Eighth Amendment grounds." 

Trump attorney Alina Habba told the X22 report Monday she was "confident" Trump's debt would be dismissed. 

"Despite the fact that witnesses frankly had said that they were great clients, we all made money, they did nothing wrong, we got slammed with this egregious number, and I'm confident we'll overturn it," Habba told the online podcast. 

Writing on his Truth Social platform later Monday, Trump called the bond set by Engoron "unconsitutitonal, un-American, unprecedented, and practically impossible for ANY company, including one as successful as mine." 

"The Bonding Companies have never heard of such a bond of this size before nor do they have the ability to post such a bond, even if they wanted to," Trump wrote. 

Fox News' Greg Norman contributed to this report. 

2024/03/18 21:51

Effort to revive Mississippi ballot initiative process is squelched in state Senate

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi legislators are unlikely to restore a ballot initiative process this year after a Senate chairman killed a proposal Monday.

The move came days after the Senate voted 26-21 to pass a bill that would have allowed Mississippi residents to put some policy proposals on statewide ballots. But the bill needed another Senate debate and that never happened because Republican Sen. David Parker, of Olive Branch, who chairs the Accountability, Efficiency and Transparency Committee, didn't bring it back up before a Monday deadline.

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Parker said last week that efforts to revive an initiative process were "on life support" because of significant differences between the House and Senate. Republicans control both chambers.

Starting in the 1990s, Mississippi had a process for people to put proposed state constitutional amendments on the ballot, requiring an equal number of signatures from each of the five congressional districts. Mississippi dropped to four districts after the 2000 census, but initiative language was never updated. That prompted the Mississippi Supreme Court to invalidate the initiative process in a 2021 ruling.

In 2022 and 2023, the House and Senate disagreed on details for a new initiative process.

Republican House Speaker Jason White has said this year that restoring initiatives was a core concern of many voters during the 2023 election.

The House adopted a resolution in January to restore the initiative process through a constitutional amendment, which would have eventually required a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate. The Senate bill would not have required a two-thirds House vote because it wouldn’t change the state constitution, but it contained provisions that could have been a tough sell in the House.

Under the House proposal, an initiative would need more than 150,000 signatures in a state with about 1.9 million voters. To be approved, an initiative would need to receive at least 40% of the total votes cast. The Senate version would have required 67% of the total votes cast.

Parker and some other senators said they wanted to guard against out-of-state interests pouring money into Mississippi to get issues on the ballot.

Both the House and Senate proposals would have banned initiatives to alter abortion laws. Legislators cited Mississippi's role in enacting a law that laid the groundwork for the U.S. Supreme Court to upend abortion rights nationwide.

2024/03/18 20:08

Chinese billionaire pleads guilty to straw donor scheme in New York and Rhode Island

NEW YORK (AP) — A Chinese billionaire pleaded guilty to federal election crimes on Monday, admitting that he made thousands of dollars in contributions to New York and Rhode Island political candidates in the names of others.

Hui Qin, a Chinese cinema magnate, faces up to 27 years in prison on charges that include orchestrating a straw donor scheme, immigration fraud and using false identification documents.

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Beginning in December 2021, Qin began working "to find individuals to make more than $10,000 in straw donor contributions" to an unnamed candidate running for citywide election in New York City, prosecutors said.

At least one individual donated $1,000 on Qin’s behalf to the citywide candidate. The following day, Qin reached out to a co-conspirator, who told him they expected to be able to obtain up to $20,000 in straw donor contributions for the candidate.

Prosecutors also say he engaged in similar straw donor schemes to funnel donations to a U.S. representative in New York and a congressional candidate in Rhode Island.

As part of the plea deal, Qin also admitted that he filed a false application for lawful permanent residency status in 2019 when he claimed to have never used an alias. In fact, prosecutors said, he was provided the alias "Muk Lam Li" by an official in the Chinese government in 2008.

He used that name to transfer more than $5 million from the Chinese government to a U.S. bank account. He spent a portion of it on a luxury apartment in Manhattan, according to prosecutors.

Qin was previously listed on Forbes list of billionaires, with an estimated net worth of $1.8 billion from his stake in film and entertainment companies, including the Honk Kong-based SMI Culture.

A phone call to his attorney was not immediately returned.

"Qin pleaded guilty today to engaging in a brazen web of deception, spreading lies to federal election and immigration authorities and a state agency," U.S. Attorney Breon Pace said in a statement. "No one is above the law, no matter their wealth or station in society."

2024/03/18 19:36

GOP candidate blasts AP 'hit piece' as 'debunked' after adult website founder calls alleged profile a 'prank'

Republican Ohio Senate candidate Bernie Moreno is blasting the Associated Press after a story published days before the primary election linking him to an adult online dating site, which a former intern has taken credit for creating, was called into question by the dating site’s founder.

On Friday, a post on X from one of the founders of the online site Adult Friend Finder, who says he wrote "most of the early code," seemingly rejected a key aspect of an Associated Press report days earlier that suggested "geolocation data," which is commonly understood as involving an IP address or GPS, linked the account to the area of a Moreno family home.

"I reviewed all the available information and it showed that the account had only a single visit, no activity, no profile photo, consistent with a prank or someone just checking out the site," Andrew Conru, the engineer who founded Adult Friend Finder, wrote on social media. "That's it."

"The AP report seeming to claim that the available data proves the account was created in Florida is inaccurate, as location information is manually entered during the signup (sic) process. In reality, there appears to be no public geolocation data tied to the account."

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Conru continued, "It's important to recognize that even temporary access to an email account is sufficient to create a fake dating profile in someone else's name. My sincere apologies to Bernie and anyone similarly affected by the 2016 data incident."

The Associated Press reported on Thursday, days before Tuesday’s primary, that Moreno’s work email address registered on Adult Friend Finder 16 years ago with an account with a caption that said, "looking for young guys to have fun with while traveling." The Associated Press reported that "geolocation data" it gathered from a 2016 data leak from Adult Friend Finder showed that the account "was set up for use in a part of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where property records show Moreno’s parents owned a home at the time."

"Beyond the work email, the profile lists Moreno’s correct date of birth, while geolocation data indicates that the account was set up for use in a part of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where property records show Moreno’s parents owned a home at the time," the story said.

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The Associated Press story did not confirm that Moreno created the account.

The Moreno campaign denied that he had anything to do with the account, and a campaign lawyer provided a statement from a former intern who knew Moreno’s personal information and claimed responsibility, saying the incident was a "juvenile prank."

Moreno, his family and supporters quickly labeled the Associated Press story as "debunked" and a "vile hit piece" following Conru’s social media posts that explained how his website tracked location by the zip code entered in 2008, not using an IP address that would provide specific geolocation data.

"My husband and I have known Matt Dolan and his family for years. For him to stoop this low, simply because he’s losing this race is disgusting, disgraceful, and he should be embarrassed," Moreno’s wife, Bridget, said in a statement, pointing the finger at Moreno’s opponent, Republican state Sen. Matt Dolan, whose super PAC released an ad hitting Moreno over the report less than 24 hours after publication.

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"If he’s willing to slander my husband simply to win a political election, he doesn’t belong anywhere near elected office," she continued. "I know family values might not mean much to Matt Dolan, but they mean a lot to this family. His desperate attempts will backfire, and I have full confidence that Ohioans will see through his dirty tricks and elect an actual conservative to the U.S. Senate. Now that this story has proven to be 100% false, if Matt even has an ounce of integrity left in him, he will publicly disavow this slime coming from his family-funded Super PAC."

The Dolan campaign did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.

On Friday, Moreno rejected the report as a "sick, last-minute attack by desperate people."

Ohio Republican Sen. JD Vance, who has endorsed Moreno, wrote on X that Conru’s post showed the story was "verifiably false," and Ohio Republican Attorney General Dave Yost, also a Moreno endorser, wrote on X that the AP story was "falling apart."

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Associated Press Vice President of Corporate Communications Lauren Easton defended the story.

"This is a deeply reported piece of accountability journalism in an election year. We stand by the story," Easton said. "We did not report the location where the account was created."

Easton also pointed to a follow-up tweet from Conru in which he said he "clarified his response" but which also appeared to show that the "geolocation data" AP had was based on a zip code that was entered by the user who could have registered from anywhere.

"Ah, just noticed what people are calling geolocation," Conru wrote. "In 2008, when someone entered any zip code during signum (sic), we just had a lookup table to map it to latitude and longitude. Geolocation today means to deduce someone's location based on the browser's IP address which isn't the case here."

Geolocation, the term used by AP, is currently defined as "the process of determining the location of an electronic device, as a computer, [cellphone], satellite, etc."

"My review was looking for 'geolocation' and there is none," Conru wrote in another X post. "In 2008, when someone entered any zip code during signum , we just had a lookup table to map it to latitude and longitude. Geolocation today means to deduce someone's location based on the browser's IP address which isn't the case here. As I have been building websites since 1993, I was being too technical in my post."

Fox News Digital followed up with the Associated Press and asked whether they possessed any data showing the location of the device consistent with the current definition of "geolocation" or if their data was simply the longitude and latitude of the zip code entered at the time of sign-up.

Easton’s response said, "We stand by the reporting, including that geolocation information showed the account was set up for use in the Ft. Lauderdale area."

"In defense of your story, you point to a thread that explicitly shows the opposite of what you claim," Vance wrote on X in response to the AP's defense. "'Geolocation data' is a term with a specific meaning. Your reporter misused that term, and I demand a correction."

Vance also pointed to AP's own style guide on geolocation and argued it is not consistent with the use of the word in the story.

Fox News Digital reviewed an analysis from the cybersecurity firm CTC International, which registered an account on Adult Friend Finder using two different methods, including one it says was "used by the AP reporter," and pulled the data from those accounts. In both cases, the latitude and longitude in the data shows up as being in the submitted Washington, D.C., zip code even though the VPN was locked to Mississippi. 

"There is a possibility of a lawsuit by GOP candidate Bernie Moreno over what is being denounced as a ‘hit piece’ by AP on the eve of the Ohio primary," George Washington University Professor Jonathan Turley wrote on X. "If Moreno sues and gains access to discovery, this could prove costly and embarrassing for the company."

2024/03/18 19:28

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He is categorically opposed to offshore oil drilling for the purpose of lowering gas prices.


In Orwellian logic, Obama believes we should allow China, Mexico and others to drill our oil in the gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean instead of drilling it ourselves. Instead of increasing supply in order to bring aggregate prices down, Obama believes the key to solving the gas crisis is greatly taxing the oil companies and giving the tax revenue from that levy back to the American people. The only problem with this logic is that the American people will be brought back to square one, as the oil companies will simply increase the price of oil by the same extent to which they are additionally taxed. Obama clearly did not take Macroeconomics 101: Given the same demand, prices only go down when supply goes up. In order for supply to go up, you must drill, drill, drill!