Ben Carson accepts to serve as Secretary of Department of Housing and Urban Development in Trump's administration

President-elect Donald J. Trump today announced his intent to nominate Dr. Ben Carson to serve as Secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In his words,

“I am thrilled to nominate Dr. Ben Carson as our next Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Ben Carson has a brilliant mind and is passionate about strengthening communities and families within those communities.
We have talked at length about my urban renewal agenda and our message of economic revival, very much including our inner cities. Ben shares my optimism about the future of our country and is part of ensuring that this is a Presidency representing all Americans. He is a tough competitor and never gives up.”

And surprisingly Ben Carson accepted the offer.

“I am honored to accept the opportunity to serve our country in the Trump administration,” said Dr. Carson. “I feel that I can make a significant contribution particularly by strengthening communities that are most in need. We have much work to do in enhancing every aspect of our nation and ensuring that our nation’s housing needs are met.”

Dr. Carson is a distinguished national leader who overcame his troubled youth in the inner city of Detroit to become a renowned neurosurgeon who served as the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland.

Hilary Clinton, Beyonce, Donald Trump and others make TIMES 2016 Person of the Year list

Candidates for the 2016 Person of the Year was announced on Monday, 5th, December 2016 on NBC. The list consist persons who most influenced the news, for better or for worse. Hilary Clinton, Donald Trump, Beyonce, Simone Biles, Valdimir Putin and 7 others made list. See the full list after the cut.

1. Simone Biles

2. Hillary Clinton

3. CRISPR Scientists

4. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

5. Nigel Farage

6. The Flint Whistleblowers

7. Beyoncé Knowles

8. Narendra Modi

9. Vladimir Putin

10. Donald Trump

11. Mark Zuckerberg

Trump hopes Clinton email 'motherlode' found

   Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said he believes the FBI may have found the "motherlode" of Hillary Clinton's emails.

  At a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, he said he hoped the Democratic candidate's 33,000 deleted messages could now be recovered.
  The FBI is investigating new emails that may be linked to its probe into Mrs Clinton's private email server.
Mrs Clinton later told a rally she had nothing to hide.
It emerged in March 2015 that Mrs Clinton had been breaking federal rules by operating a private email server while she was secretary of state from 2009-13.
  Her lawyers combed through the server and provided the State Department with 30,000 work-related emails.
But her campaign deleted another 33,000 messages, saying they were personal in nature.
 FBI Director James Comey concluded in July that Mrs Clinton had been "extremely careless" in handling classified information, but there were no grounds for any charges.
But on Friday, he told Congress he had learned of fresh emails which might be "pertinent" to its previous inquiry and renewed the FBI probe.
  The latest emails were found in a separate investigation into allegations that former congressman Anthony Weiner sent illicit text messages to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. Mr Weiner is married to top Clinton aide, Huma Abedin.
 The FBI has reportedly obtained a warrant to search the cache of emails belonging to Ms Abedin, which are believed to have been found on her estranged husband's laptop.
There are reportedly 650,000 emails to search through on the laptop, but it is unclear who sent or received the emails or what they were about.
  "That's the motherlode," said Mr Trump. "I think you're going to find the 33,000 (emails) that are missing."
He added: "Thank you, Huma. Thank you, Huma. Good job, Huma. Thank you, Anthony Weiner."
But Mrs Clinton told a rally in Kent, Ohio, that the FBI was welcome to check her aide's emails.
"They should look at them and I'm sure they'll reach the same conclusion they did when they looked at my emails for the past year: there is no case here."
 Democrats have angrily demanded that the embattled Mr Comey rapidly make public what the agency knows about the new email trove.
 The White House said on Monday it would neither defend nor criticise the FBI decision.
Obama spokesman Josh Earnest said the president did not suspect Mr Comey of trying to secretly influence the election through his announcement on Friday of the inquiry.
Mr Earnest said Mr Comey is "a man of integrity, a man of character, a man of principle and he has a very difficult job".
 On Sunday, Democratic leader in the US Senate Harry Reid accused Mr Comey of violating an act which bars officials from influencing an election by revealing the bureau was investigating emails possibly linked to Mrs Clinton.

Billy Bush officially sacked from 'Today show' following leaked lewd conversation video with Donald Trump

     Billy Bush has officially been sacked from the 'Today Show' following his participation in a leaked 2005 lewd video where presidential candidate, Donald Trump boasted of using his celebrity status to get women, with comments such as  “grab them by the p---y” .

“Billy Bush will be leaving the ‘Today’ show’s 9 a.m. hour, effective today. While he was a new member of the ‘Today’ team, he was a valued colleague and longtime member of the broader NBC family. We wish him success as he goes forward.” Noah Oppenheim, NBC News senior vice president, said in a memo to staff on Monday

     According to New York Daily News, Billy Bush will be settled by the company to the tune of $9m after negotiating last Friday with the NBC management.

“I am deeply grateful for the conversations I’ve had with my daughters, and for all of the support from family, friends and colleagues.  I look forward to what lies ahead.” Bush said in his own statement.

US election 2016: Trump faces new sex assault allegations

  Two more women have come forward to accuse Donald Trump of sexual assault, in the latest such allegations against the embattled Republican nominee.
Former Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos said the businessman forced himself on her at a Los Angeles hotel and began "thrusting his genitals".
   Kristin Anderson told the Washington Post he reached up her skirt and groped her in a New York club in the 1990s.
The Republican nominee branded the allegations as "lies and smears".
   Ms Anderson, now 46, said the property mogul touched her through her underwear at a Manhattan nightspot when she was a waitress trying to make it as a model.
   She said she was "very grossed out and weirded out".
Ms Anderson said she turned round to find a man sitting on a red velvet couch whom she recognised instantly as the celebrity property mogul.
   "He was so distinctive looking," she told the Washington Post, "with the hair and the eyebrows. I mean, nobody else has those eyebrows."
    She added: "It wasn't a sexual come-on. I don't know why he did it. It was like just to prove that he could do it, and nothing would happen.
"There was zero conversation. We didn't even really look at each other. It was very random, very nonchalant on his part."
    The newspaper said it had approached Ms Anderson after learning of her story through a third party, and she had spent several days deciding whether to go public.
   Mr Trump's spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, said in a statement emailed to the Washington Post: "Mr Trump strongly denies this phony allegation by someone looking to get some free publicity. It is totally ridiculous."
   Meanwhile, Summer Zervos, a former contestant on season five of The Apprentice in 2006, said she was sexually assaulted by Mr Trump after she was invited by him to discuss job opportunities.
   Ms Zervos, 41, told an emotional news conference in Los Angeles that she met him in 2007 in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where the businessman greeted her by kissing her on the mouth.
   She said he asked her to sit next to him on a sofa where he "grabbed my shoulder and began kissing me again very aggressively and placed his hand on my breast".
   Ms Zervos fought back tears as she said Mr Trump attempted to lead her into the bedroom and "began thrusting his genitals", even as she fended off his advances.
   She said Mr Trump then began talking to her as if she were a candidate for a job interview.
Ms Zervos, who described herself as a Republican, said she was subsequently offered a low-paid job at a Trump-owned golf course.
   She was flanked during the press conference by well-known lawyer Gloria Allred, who has previously represented alleged sexual assault victims of entertainer Bill Cosby.
   At the time of the alleged assault, Mr Trump was recently married to his third and current wife, Melania Trump.

   His campaign said he "vaguely remembers" Ms Zervos, but insisted the meeting at the hotel never happened.
  In a statement, he said: "The media is now creating a theatre of absurdity that threatens to tear our democratic process apart and poison the minds of the American public."
   Referring to another of his accusers during a rally in North Carolina, he said: "Believe me, she would not be my first choice, that I can tell you."

    Ms Zervos said she was spurred to come forward after Mr Trump denied during last Sunday's presidential debate ever having committed sexual assault.
   He rebutted the suggestion on national television as he was asked about a leaked recording from 2005 in which he is heard bragging that he can force himself on women because he is a star.
   Polls suggest Mr Trump is losing ground in some of the key battleground states against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, with just 24 days until the election.
SOURCE: www.naijacop.com

Barbra Streisand comes for Donald Trump and it's epic

The entertainer who is a prominent supporter of Hilary Clinton tore into the Republican presidential nominee in a piece for Huffington post and she pulled no punches. Responding to Trump's jibe that Hillary doesn't look presidential, she called him "a raccoon in a tanning bed with a flying squirrel on his head", she also accused him of “spreading and reflecting bigotry and hatred” throughout America. Read the piece after the cut...

When a politician ends almost every sentence with “believe me”... don’t! He’s probably lying.

According to PolitiFact, Donald Trump’s statements are rated “false,” “mostly false,” and “pants on fire” 71 percent of the time. In other words, the majority of the time that Trump speaks, he is not telling the truth.

But do the facts matter to Donald Trump or many in the media who are too entertained to correct his lies? We saw how Matt Lauer didn’t challenge him. Chris Wallace, the Fox News personality who is hosting one of the debates, has gone on record saying that facts are not relevant to him. This should be profoundly unacceptable to the American people. Our country and its stability is on the line. Facts do matter!

When Trump throws around words like “crooked,” he’s really describing himself and he doesn’t even know it. In psychological terms, it’s called “the disowned self.” Psychiatrists have explained how a person who refuses to recognize his own flaws will often project them onto other people.

As an article in The Washington Post recently said, “Trump’s history of corruption is mind-boggling.” This is a man who has bankrupted companies, reneged on bank loans, and cheated small business owners. For someone who claims to be a champion of the people, his m.o. is actually to stiff the little guy. Trump is notorious for refusing to pay painters, carpenters, plumbers and all sorts of vendors the money he owes them. The contracts he signed mean nothing to him. After the work is done, he’ll offer pennies on the dollar and say, If you don’t like it, sue me!... knowing full well that these mom-and-pop businesses don’t have the resources to take him to court. Even so, he’s been sued nearly 1,500 times over the last 30 years.

To those supporters who believe he’s a rich businessman and think he’s going to make them rich... get the facts straight. Investors in his failed casino ventures lost 90 percent of their money between 1995-2005. When the going gets tough, Trump vanishes. He eventually filed for bankruptcy, leaving others holding the bag.

And this man has the nerve to insult Hillary, who has always cared about other people? From the time she was in college, she’s been working to improve the lives of others... women, children, minorities.
What has Donald Trump ever done to serve others?

He only cares about promoting himself.
While Trump was being investigated and then sued by the Department of Justice for refusing to rent apartments to black and Hispanic people... Hillary was in Texas helping to register black and Hispanic voters.
While Donald had to be shamed into coming up with the contribution he promised to veterans... Hillary actually got legislation passed when she was in the Senate to expand their health care and other benefits.

While Donald has vowed to appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn the ruling on marriage equality, Hillary declared that “gay rights are human rights” when she was Secretary of State.
Trump is both spreading and reflecting bigotry and hatred. He said a judge was not capable of doing his job because of his Mexican heritage.

One in five of his supporters believe slavery should never have been abolished and 61 percent believe President Obama wasn’t born in the United States. For five years, Trump has wasted our time with his crackpot birther conspiracy theory.  Only now he has suddenly had a conversion, but he doesn’t even have the decency to apologize. And he has the audacity to say Hillary started it all... another outrageous lie. He sounds like a child on the playground trying to escape punishment.

He’s basically a bully, but like all bullies, he’s a coward at heart. He skipped out on a debate because he didn’t like the moderator. He can’t handle the tough questions. He’s so thin-skinned that as soon as anyone challenges him, he sues them.

Hillary has been attacked right and left for decades and is still standing.

She has negotiated with leaders around the world to keep us safe from nuclear threat because it would destroy the planet... while he shockingly said, “If we have nuclear weapons, why can’t we use them?”
And he has the nerve to call her “trigger-happy”? “Unstable”?

His ignorance is astounding.

So how come Hillary is not getting credit for all her accomplishments? It goes back to something I’ve felt for many years...strong women, powerful women have always been suspect.

Some men are challenged by strong women... afraid of them... and some women are jealous of them.
Strong women have too many opinions for some people... they prefer women who are quiet. They want us to speak less and smile more. After Hillary answered questions on national security, Reince Priebus complained that she didn’t smile enough. Well, guess what... there was nothing to smile about. As she said, this is serious business.

And Trump says Hillary doesn’t look presidential? What does that mean... coming from a guy who looks like a raccoon in a tanning bed... with a flying squirrel on his head? That’s what a president is supposed to look like? A wrestler who dies his hair blonde?

Republicans play dirty and their smear tactics unfortunately work. As they say, “If you repeat a lie long enough and loud enough, people will believe it.” And that’s what’s happening and it’s terrifying.
We can’t allow ourselves to be swiftboated again. We can’t let that happen to Hillary... a woman who has the temperament and the experience to be president... unlike Donald Trump, whose idea of foreign policy was bringing the Miss Universe pageant to Russia. How can you support a man who says, “Women... you have to treat them like sh—“ and believes such hateful things about 51 percent of the American population?

These views are deplorable. Hillary Clinton was right to denounce Trump’s racism, sexism and xenophobia.

And then he has the nerve to say he’s going to make America great again??

Here are some more facts. The New York Times just reported that household incomes rose for American families by 5.2 percent last year, according to figures from the Census Bureau... the biggest one-year increase since 1967! Household incomes are now higher than when President Obama entered office. The stock market is above 18,000, which means it has more than doubled since Obama came into office.

If we want the country to continue to improve, we must continue President Obama’s incredible policy work, successful despite the worst opposition we’ve ever seen in Congress, and vote for Hillary Clinton — and down the ballot for Democratic senators and congresspersons who will not be negative and obstructionist. Instead, they will work with her to get legislation passed on gun control and campaign finance reform. My heart sinks when I read that billions of dollars have already been spent during this Presidential election cycle. Just think what that kind of money could have done for medical research... our schools... our infrastructure.

We cannot allow America to fall into the hands of a narcissist who has shown no regard for anyone but himself... a bigoted and misogynist reality-TV character with no political experience and no qualms about lying loudly and often.

There is NO equivalency between these two candidates. Only Hillary Clinton has the skills, the knowledge, the temperament and the compassion to lead this nation.

Source: www.naijacop.com

Trump mum while campaign says he believes Obama born in US

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump himself won't say it, but his campaign is now declaring that the Republican presidential candidate believes now that President Barack Obama was born in the United States. And his campaign is cheering Trump for bringing an end to an "ugly incident" that it blames, without evidence, on Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
For many years, Trump was the most prominent proponent of the "birther" movement, which claimed Obama was born outside the U.S. and thus ineligible to be president — despite the fact that he was born in Hawaii. As recently as Thursday, Trump would not acknowledge Obama's birthplace, declining to address the matter when asked by The Washington Post.
"I'll answer that question at the right time," Trump told the paper. "I just don't want to answer it yet."
want to answer it yet."
Clinton seized on Trump's refusal during a speech Thursday night before the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.
"He was asked one more time where was President Obama born and he still wouldn't say Hawaii. He still wouldn't say America," Clinton said. "This man wants to be our next president? When will he stop this ugliness, this bigotry?"
The answer to her question came hours later when campaign spokesman Jason Miller issued a statement that suggested the question had been settled five years ago — by Trump.
"In 2011, Mr. Trump was finally able to bring this ugly incident to its conclusion by successfully compelling President Obama to release his birth certificate," Miller said.

"Mr. Trump did a great service to the president and the country by bringing closure to the issue that Hillary Clinton and her team first raised," he added. "Inarguably, Donald J. Trump is a closer. Having successfully obtained President Obama's birth certificate when others could not, Mr. Trump believes that President Obama was born in the United States."
Yet Trump repeatedly stoked the issue in the years since Obama released his birth certificate. In August 2012, he was pushing the issue on Twitter.
"An 'extremely credible source' has called my office and told me that @BarackObama's birth certificate is a fraud," he wrote.
Trump has said repeatedly during the campaign that he no longer talks about the "birther" issue while refusing to retract his previous comments.
"I don't talk about it because if I talk about that, your whole thing will be about that," he told reporters aboard his plane last week. "So I don't talk about it."
Trump's comments speculating on Obama's birthplace have been seen by many as an attempt to delegitimize the nation's first black president, and have turned off many of the African American voters he is now courting in his bid for the White House.
Miller's claim that Clinton launched the birther movement during her unsuccessful primary run against Obama in 2008 is unsubstantiated and long denied by Clinton. On Twitter, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon did not address that allegation, but said that acceptance that Obama was born in the U.S. comes up short."Trump needs to say it himself. On camera. And admit he was wrong for trying to delegitimize the country's first African-American president," Fallon wrote.
Indeed, Trump himself has said that his aides shouldn't be trusted to speak on his behalf.
"Don't believe the biased and phony media quoting people who work for my campaign," he tweeted in May. "The only quote that matters is a quote from me!"
___
AP White House Correspondent Julie Pace contributed to this report.

Donald Trump to Address Black Detroit Church Saturday

In the weeks since Donald Trump began making an overt appeal to African-Americans, one of the greatest criticisms he has received is that his appeals are made before largely white audiences. This weekend, Trump is addressing those concerns head-on, traveling to Detroit, Michigan, to attend a black church service and interview with the presiding bishop.

He will attend the Saturday service at Great Faith International Ministries and will also participate in an interview with Bishop Wayne Jackson that will air on Jackson’s Impact Network. This is the first time that Trump has attended a black church during this cycle. Conversely, his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and her running mate, Tim Kaine, have visited several Sunday services at various black churches.

Pastor Mark Burns, a frequent introducer at Trump rallies, will be meeting Trump in Detroit. A vociferous supporter of Trump who has long proclaimed that Trump would be better for African-Americans than any Democrat, Burns says that Trump will deliver brief remarks that echo his economic message.
"Well I think you’ll be able to see how Mr. Trump really does care and can relate to the African-American community more so than has Trump at a majority African-American congregation," Burns said. “This is just the beginning.”

Trump first began making his heavy-handed appeals to black voters earlier in August, asking black voters, “What the hell do you have to lose?” and at times citing misleading statistics about how many African-Americans live in abject poverty and are unemployed.

Today, Trump began the first of his weekend’s outreach, traveling to Philadelphia to meet with 14 business and religious leaders in the black community. He also met with a diverse group of members of the Republican Leadership Initiative, a program sponsored by the Republican National Committee.

 But with this address, Trump places himself in unfamiliar territory with a potentially wary crowd. To account for such uncharted circumstances, the Trump campaign, in concert with African-American advisers and black Republicans, developed a script for Trump, with Jackson providing a list of questions for which the candidate could prepare, as first reported by The New York Times.

Jackson said, during an interview on CNN, that he also submitted a prayer beforehand when Vice President Joe Biden was in town and pushed back against reports that the campaign had edit rights.

"That's not true. That's not true. That is not true. That -- then it would be tainted. It would be tainted and it would not be good. No. This has never been discussed with me,” Jackson said.

Plans have also been discussed to have Trump tour an impoverished neighborhood with supporter and former candidate Dr. Ben Carson.

"The reason that Donald Trump is willing to go into this territory is because he’s not necessarily trying to cultivate votes like your typical politician does,” Carson told ABC News in a recent interview. “He recognizes that there is no way we can have a strong country if we have big pockets of weakness. And he also realizes that in this election cycle he probably won’t get the majority of their votes.”

Donald Trump visit Louisiana

The governor of Louisiana said Sunday that Donald Trump's trip to his state was "helpful" in getting the country's attention on the devastating flooding around Baton Rouge.

Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, had released a statement before the GOP nominee's visit decrying a "photo-op," but Edwards told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union" Sunday that Trump had always been welcome if he were coming to be "helpful."

 "Because it helped to shine a spotlight on Louisiana and on the dire situation that we have here ... it was helpful," Edwards said.

 

He also praised Trump's running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who joined the visit.

"I also appreciated the good phone call, the conversation that I had with Gov. Pence, who was sincere and genuine when he called, and we spoke for a long time on Friday morning, about their desire to be helpful," Edwards said.

Republicans have questioned why Democratic leaders including President Barack Obama have not been more active in supporting and highlighting Louisiana, but Edwards defended the White House.

Edwards said the White House asked about coming to Louisiana, but that his office asked them to wait until the immediate response phase was over.

Obama will visit Louisiana next week, after the scheduled end of the vacation he has been taking in Martha's Vineyard.