Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Allegedly Used Email Alias As Exxon CEO (arstechnica.com) 171
According to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, Rex Tillerson used an email alias of "Wayne Tracker" to communicate with other Exxon executives about climate change while serving as CEO of Exxon Mobil. "New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has been leading an investigation of Exxon Mobil centered on whether the company misled investors by publicly arguing against the reality of climate change even though its executives knew the science was accurate," reports Ars Technica. "The investigation was triggered by news reports describing climate research the company undertook in the 1970s and 1980s, which affirmed the work of other climate scientists and showed that greenhouse gas emissions were causing climate change. Exxon buried that work and spent the next couple decades claiming that the science was unclear, although it has recently publicly acknowledged reality." From the report: The e-mails that were provided allowed the attorney general to figure out that Tillerson used the account between 2008 and 2015 at least, but it didn't appear on Exxon's list of accounts for which records were preserved. The letter also mentions 34 other e-mail accounts "specifically assigned to top executives, board members, or assistants" that the attorney general thinks should have been included. In a statement, an Exxon spokesperson explained, "The e-mail address, Wayne.Tracker@exxonmobil.com, is part of the company's e-mail system and was put in place for secure and expedited communications between select senior company officials and the former chairman for a broad range of business-related topics." The Office of the Attorney General's letter claims that "Exxon has continuously delayed and obstructed the production of documents from its top executives and board members, which are crucial to OAG's investigation into Exxon's touted risk-management practices regarding climate change."
I am wayne tracker (Score:5, Funny)
and I approve of this message.
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Also, if you're going to do something this scandalous, why bother to keep using the company's mail servers instead of something else.
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Do you honestly think this guy even knows what a mail server is?
I know it got a lot of coverage due to Clinton, but most of the rent-a-quote politicians talking about it are just reading from a script. I bet 90% of them don't realize that they have email servers too.
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Re:lol... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the crime, it's the coverup. This is the kind of crap that gets people sent to jail.
It's not about the science, it's about what Exxon did:
If their internal research showed one thing, but they publicly declared something something opposite, that's pretty bad, but probably not criminal.
If they testified in a court that they believed the opposite factoids, and didn't mention the internal research, that's really bad, but if the opposing lawyers didn't find the right person to testify (like someone at Exxon who knew about the research,) they are probably still ok.
If they set up secret email accounts for senior executives, and then didn't provide the emails from those accounts to the opposing lawyers during the discovery process, then that's just fraud on the court. It's like your wife "forgetting" to mention her secret bank account in the Cayman Islands during your divorce trial. Seriously, WTF?
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They were not required to disclose any research they conducted. They are also free to interpret the research findings how ever they wished. Climate change science is not an exact science and there are lot of areas that can be challenged.
9I personally believe in the base tenets of global warning and acknowledge carbon emissions can adversely effect the environment in many different ways. But the pro-climate changing side interprets all research findings to bolster their claims and the anti-climate changers d
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"And no one on any side is brave enough to say the solution to reverse or at least slow down climate change is reducing the number of people on the planet"
No. The first thing to do is reduce the pollution, which is easy and makes sense socially, reducing the number of persons so others can go on polluting too much is an ideological non-solution and makes no sense socially.
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No it's not about the crime or the coverup.
It's about how much resources an insane prosecutor can deploy to try and make people's live a living hell.
If you look at a list or recent NY AG's going back to Spitzer there isn't a one of them that shouldn't be in jail for
abuse of office.
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If their research showed one thing and they didn't disclose known risks to investors thats really, really bad.
Popcorn.. (Score:5, Funny)
Wow this story has:
AGW? check
Trump? check.
EMAILS!? check.
Which means I need:
popcorn? popcorn? Not check?!? No popcorn! Sad.
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0) BeauHD? Check
Raging SJW moonlighting as tech editor on /.
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http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/... [alexa.com]
No surprise what's been happening with the traffic stats.
This level of crazy is a very small market.
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popcorn? popcorn? Not check?!? No popcorn! Sad.
I got popcorn for ya! [youtube.com]
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Now I'm sad. I was expecting something more like this. [youtu.be] ;)
Re: Popcorn.. (Score:2)
It's not Russia (Score:2, Insightful)
Russia is neither here nor there. They may have influence, they may not. What matters is that some state-level intelligence agency was able to disrupt the American electoral process. That's bad no matter what team you play for. Not only that, but now that it has been successful, do you think that will result in more attempts or fewer? And tell me, exactly how expensive is it to set up a team of hackers?
Russia is the least of our problems.
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Russia is neither here nor there. They may have influence, they may not. What matters is that some state-level intelligence agency was able to disrupt the American electoral process. That's bad no matter what team you play for. Not only that, but now that it has been successful, do you think that will result in more attempts or fewer? And tell me, exactly how expensive is it to set up a team of hackers?
Russia is the least of our problems.
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Nice strawman. Trump is simply not important.
As it happens, the CIA has explained the issue fairly clearly. Perhaps you should get your head out of your partisanship. That this was within the reach of an amateur was precisely my point. This is possible. It has been done. It was a shit-show. I'd prefer that not happen again. Regardless of who you support, this sort of shit is not good for the country. We don't need to be yanked around politically by some rat fucker in Somalia.
There are bigger issues than Tru
So what? (Score:2, Funny)
Dude had IT set him up another account so he could surf porn... who hasn't?
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There's no law against a lot of things that got reported. We're talking about because it's interesting and suspicious.
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Get reported. In general terms, I mean. If having a law against it was a requirement for something to be turned into a news story, there'd be a lot less news.
Re: There's no law... (Score:2)
It is illegal to lie to your investors.
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There's no law against using an email alias. Why is anyone even talking about this?
Er, because the NY Attorney General is accusing Exxon of contempt of court (though it's up to the judge to rule) because they were using deliberate tactics to obscure official emails from legal discovery.
But yeah, why would anyone want to make a big deal about someone sending and receiving official emails through unofficial channels? I mean, it's not like they should be locked up for it or anything.
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Re:There's no law... (Score:5, Insightful)
But there IS a law about not informing investors of potential liability issues, which is the actual issue the AG's are investigating. No ones 'opinions' are being criminalized. The active efforts to evade the law is, however.
Sorry to rain facts on your strawman parade of butthurt.
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But there IS a law about not informing investors of potential liability issues
So every company needs to officially warn their investors about global warming, rising tides, and ocean acidification? Because otherwise the investors will be unaware of these problems? Should they also have to warn them about the possibility of an asteroid strike? A global pandemic? A robot uprising?
I am a shareholder in a S&P index fund. So I should have received 500 warnings about global warming. I have received zero. Why isn't the NY AG going after the other 499?
This is not about "failure to
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Considering that it's likely fossil fuel companies have had positive knowledge of AGW for decades, and that eventually he twill lead to significant regulation both nationally and internationally, yes shareholders, and just as importantly potential shareholders have a right to know.
This would be like a gold mine selling futures while having buried reports showing water table contamination that could potentially depress share prices.
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So we have another AC who seems to think Canute can control the tides.
Re:There's no law... (Score:5, Informative)
So every company needs to officially warn their investors about global warming, rising tides, and ocean acidification?
If those things can materially affect the profitability of the company, then yes. And especially if the company knows that it is contributing to them, thus making itself vulnerable to legislative or liability consequences.
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I'm no lawyer... or physicist... but I'm pretty sure the end of the human species affects ALL businesses, not just oil companies...
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I don't think the parent poster understands the risks that global warming has to fossil fuel companies like Exxon and Koch Industries. These companies entire market capitalization is based on the in the ground resources. If those in ground resources will never be extracted than Exxon and Koch Industries aren't worth 10% of their current market value.
If the companies executives knew about this risk that fuels in the ground will never be extracted and failed to tell investors they've committed fraud. The kind
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Sorry for posting AC, but I wanted to create a good run-on sentence that would not be attributed to myself.
If you, as a company, are aware that Global Climate Change is a significant problem that could impact your business and you have done the research that proves it, then YES, lying to the shareholders about it is a crime.
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So every company needs to officially warn their investors about global warming, rising tides, and ocean acidification? Because otherwise the investors will be unaware of these problems? Should they also have to warn them about the possibility of an asteroid strike? A global pandemic? A robot uprising?
Quite possibly, if they've invested significant amounts of the company's monies in those issues AND gotten results that show there is a concern.
You do realize that this is the sort of thing companies DO have to deal with, and Exxon's OWN actions indicate their liability.
I am a shareholder in a S&P index fund. So I should have received 500 warnings about global warming. I have received zero. Why isn't the NY AG going after the other 499?
I wouldn't know, perhaps many of those other 499 are being investigated. Wells Fargo, for example has taken a recent hit for some of its actions. And Merck got in BIG trouble for what they did with regards to VIOXX risks. So did Trump Uni
$175 million payoff (Score:5, Interesting)
And tell me that Exxon's $175 million 'put into trust for Tillerson', isn't really a payoff to leverage his position in government.
I'm sure we should just turn a blind eye to this, except Exxon's major investments are in Siberian oil fields and so *it* has to be Putin's bitch, which means Tillerson has to be Putin's bitch too.
But hey, sell your country out for your own interests Tillerson.
Re: There's no law... (Score:1)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Do you law?
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They aren't being charged with using an "email alias", but obstruction for not turning over email being used to conduct company business. Did they use the email alias to conduct business? If yes, turn over the email. It is all part of the discovery process.
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You do understand that it is irrelevant how officers of a publicly traded company exchange information, if that information has an impact on investors, it is supposed to be disclosed. What you've described is a method that would make proving malfeasance harder, but would be no less illegal.
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It would be even better to see the denialist trash explain why Oil company paid scientists are lying, as they are so fond of saying most scientists lie about the science as they are corrupted due to the grant system.
This utterly discredits that particular lunatic conspiracy theory.
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Can you describe a "Climate Change Believer lab" to me.
And there are a large number of taxpayer-funded climatologists out there, or are until Trump fires them all for committing the most heinous of crimes; telling the world what is actually happening.
Exxon did nothing wrong ... (Score:5, Interesting)
it could not, a company is not animate. People do things on behalf of the company. Thus it is people who misled investors, etc.
The difference is important because all too often they will let the company/corporation pick up the blame for what they did and pay any fines. Until executives start losing their homes and pensions their behaviour will not change, we will continue to see scandals such as this. I am not talking about making executives paying for mistakes, even bad ones, but for deliberate lies/... such as this.
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You are apparently not familiar with Citizens United [wikipedia.org]. Corporations are, for many legal purposes, people. You may think that's stupid (I certainly do), but it is the law of the land.
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That is a limited personhood, and does not absolve directors or the board of a company if they partake in unlawful or actionable conduct.
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You are apparently not familiar with Citizens United [wikipedia.org]. Corporations are, for many legal purposes, people. You may think that's stupid (I certainly do), but it is the law of the land.
They didn't rule that a corporation was people. That is just the bullshit spin. They ruled that associations of people had the right to speak. This right was previously limited to certain associations, like labor unions and news media companies. They rules this distinction was unconstitutional.
"Justice Kennedy's majority opinion[24] found that the BCRA 203 prohibition of all independent expenditures by corporations and unions violated the First Amendment's protection of free speech. The majority wrote, "
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The problem is far more subtle than you think. Consider what would the ramification of this problem have been if the company had been one tenth its current size. Smaller company and whole less problem, in fact something like one hundredth of the problem. Oversize corporations are an extreme danger to humanity as has been repeatedly demonstrated, simply too much power. Bust them up now.
I have 2 email accounts, both aliases (Score:2)
I get 2-3 messages a week in my real email, and 10-20 a day in the other one. I read maybe 2-3 of them.
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sounds agreeable enough. However if you are subpoenaed for your emails and you fail to report both, that is when it gets interesting.
It's difficult for a man to understand something (Score:2, Interesting)
None of this matters. I don't care about climate change. I care about whether I'm going to have a job and whether my kid's gonna have a job because in our civilization those who work eat and those who don't starve.
It's impossible to have a meaningful discussion on climate change without socialism. As long as we accept that it's OK to abandon over half the populace to abject poverty in the name of freedom we have to accept that those people will opp
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Oh give me a break. You don't give a flying fuck about the poor. If you did, you would at least accept that climate change is going to inordinately effect them. But it will affect your kids as well, so it is clear you don't actually give a damn about then either. There are solutions that don't involve socialism, so that to is just a strawman.
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Ah yes, the old "eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we shall die" line. There's no evidence that humans are going to go extinct. Life will become more expensive for many, for many it will become worse, and for some it will likely mean death. You're just trying to mask your lack of desire to actually do anything in some sort of hedonistic nihilism. It's pathetic, in part because I think even you know what you're claiming is pure bullshit, and in part because it betrays just how selfish you really are.
Socialism is NOT necessary (Score:1)
What is necessary is for polluters to pay the full price of the damage that they are doing to the environment. This can be achieved by carbon pricing in the case of the flap over climate change, which can occur without 'socialism' as such. If however you fail to implement that, it's as immoral as dumping sewage on someone's front garden or graffiting priceless painting...
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It's impossible to have a meaningful discussion on climate change without socialism.
No, you've picked up a cheap trick from the denialist crowd which sounds convincing but is wrong. It's an argument in the gamut of "we don't know, the evidence isn't there, the evidence is fiddled, ok the evidence is right but we don't know people are doing it and finally it's too political to discuss properly".
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It's impossible to have a meaningful discussion on climate change without socialism.
No, you've picked up a cheap trick from the denialist crowd which sounds convincing but is wrong.
I'm sorry, which word do you think is wrong? All government which attempts to serve the people is socialist by definition. Therefore all government except perhaps our current one is partly socialist by definition. The only thing left to argue about is what percentage socialist a government is. If it does things for everyone, that's socialism. It's not a bad word.
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I'm sorry, which word do you think is wrong?
It's the meaning of the sentence that's not correct.
All government which attempts to serve the people is socialist by definition.
Erm, I'm not sure precisely what you mean. Also, aren't we talking about climate change?
Therefore all government except perhaps our current one is partly socialist by definition
I don't think that's a commonly accepted definition of socalism to be honest.
The only thing left to argue about is what percentage socialist a government is.
Well,
aliase's (Score:2)
What have we learned, Palmer? (Score:3)
The people who are ruling our world are really a bunch of lying jackoffs. All the money, all the power, but they're still lying jackoffs.
Don't that beat all! (Score:2)
Why, all it takes to outwit them there government revenuers, I mean regulators, is just a email alias. Hell, even I cun unnderstand tha-ut.
Seriously, an email alias was his cover? Geesh!
Note the soft glove approach to Exxon (Score:5, Insightful)
If a small company was being investigated and their emails were significant to the crime, then there would be no problem with grabbing everything despite the damage that it would do to the small firm. Yet when a big firm is being investigated, they are free to hand over what they feel like. A similar problem was visible when News International was done in the UK over its phone hacking behaviour. A little less subtly from prosecutors would be welcome!
Interesting...Richard Windsor anyone? (Score:2)
EPA head Lisa Jackson, also used an alias to communicate at the EPA. She was known as Richard Windsor. Funny how that wasn't a scandal.
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You have a point... provided the EPA was involved in a subpoena for this communication
Re: Interesting...Richard Windsor anyone? (Score:2)
Certainly foia requests.
How To Punish (Score:2)
Re:Trump says (Score:5, Informative)
Moron.... private company != Government
I can create all the email account I want for my company ... the Government has no constitutional power to complain.
The witch hunt to file some sort of criminal complaint because I dare to talk about climate change or deny climate change.. is simply that.
The problem isn't that he used a secret email address.
The problem is that he used that secret email address to hide communications.
Those communications were allegedly about a scheme to mislead the public (and investors) about the state of climate science.
Misleading investors with information you know to be false is a bad thing because it causes them to make investments based on your lies, if those emails show that Tillerson knew he was lying it could be a very bad thing.
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They did not mislead.... they reported the Global Warming Risk on their 10k... !!!!!
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Wow, non sequitur much?
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Yepper disagreeing on an issue is a criminal matter.
Re: Trump says (Score:2)
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https://ericschneiderman.com/r... [ericschneiderman.com]
Hey if you have to hang a few people to get elected why not.
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> Misleading investors with information you know to be false
Can you prove that he knows it to be false?
You might be able to prove that it is false. Or you might be able to prove that you know it's false. But how do you prove that he knows it's false?
Possibly by looking at the emails in his secret account.
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Misleading investors with information you know to be false is a bad thing because it causes them to make investments based on your lies, if those emails show that Tillerson knew he was lying it could be a very bad thing.
Agreed. It also occurs to me that your sentence could be valid in so many more ways.
Misleading _voters_ with information you know to be false is a bad thing because it causes them to make investments based on your lies, if _records_ show that _the president_ knew he was lying it could be a very bad thing.
Then again, I suppose there is no penalty for lying your arse off in record and breathtaking ways to get elected, and then keeping it up when your in power.
There should be though. There should be. The impeachment criteria literally mean whatever the congress thinks it means. In no other job in the world would his behavior be acceptable, but it is okay for the president? Really?
All politicians lie to some extent, Trump is unusually egregious but they all try to mislead.
Ultimately it's the responsibility of voters to hold politicians to account for their honesty. Trump was an exceptionally dishonest candidate, any voter who voted for him either accepted his lies as part of the bargain, wasn't paying the slightest attention to the campaign, or was a complete idiot.
Doesn't pass the smell test. (Score:2)
but the purpose is the same as a political use: to hide something that you're afraid might backfire on you some day.
Would it be too much to ask that folks of great power and privilege conduct their affairs more honorably? Let's not forget he wasn't using the pseudonym for private communications... it was being used to deny global warming was anthropogenic after Exxon's own studies clearly indicated to the contrary.
Re:Trump says (Score:5, Informative)
Moron.... private company != Government
I can create all the email account I want for my company ... the Government has no constitutional power to complain.
The witch hunt to file some sort of criminal complaint because I dare to talk about climate change or deny climate change.. is simply that.
Except that Exxon Mobil is not a private company. Its stock is sold in various currencies on numerous exchanges around the world.
The executives of a publicly-traded company have a legal fiduciary responsibility to inform shareholders of potential risks to the company's profitability. Trying to bury their own evidence that their products contribute to climate change arguably is a violation of that responsibility. Hence the investigation by the AGs.
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They reported the risk of global warming on their 10k.
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Weather is not climate. You do understand what the "global" in global warming means, right? You did get far enough in school to learn about average and mean, it I assume so.
Mu too (Score:2)
As I replied to the other poster, the idea that climate could change at all was established separately from the idea that man could affect the climate. The two terms are nowadays synonymous. You are of course completely dependent on the fruits of science and certainly know very little about anything.
As it happens, AGW is at least as well established as Relativity, and it predates it. You could verify the theory in your basement. Why do you not feel ashamed of your ignorance?
Mu (Score:2)
This is well intentioned but inaccurate. The predominant theory in the 19th and early 20th Century was that the climate did not change, that it was solely cyclical and that warm years would cancel out cold ones. Theories of climate change were still necessary even in the 19th Century to explain ice ages. That mankind could do anything to affect the climate, and that the effect of this would be warming, was established separately from the idea that long-term climate could change. The two terms are used inter
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And more non sequiturs
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Well, enjoy the consequences of your madness.
Aha. Is that what you crazies tell each other now that you don't run the asylum anymore?
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Or just STFU, that's also an option.
Yeah, I am sure the fascist Democratic Party would like that.
at some point you have to move on from the talking points of the election
It hasn't been 2 months and he's practically done with all the campaign promises. You really don't see that you are the monsters, do you? You really think you are on the right side of history. You are defending running criminals for office and making excuses for it. And the man you are so hard to smear is just doing his job. And so far he is doing fairly well. Of course, the media wants to smear him. He doesn't need them as the messengers a
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It hasn't been 2 months and he's practically done with all the campaign promises.
Really? Where's the Hillary indictment?
Where's the wall that Mexico is paying for?
He said he would create 25 million jobs and be "the greatest jobs president God ever created", that hasn't happened yet.
He said he would "Get Apple to start building their damn computers and things in this country instead of in other countries", he hasn't done that.
He said he would bring the steel industry back to Pennsylvania, that hasn't happened.
He said he would both leave the federal minimum wage at $7.25 and raise it to
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Repeal Obamacare - hasn't happened yet and if the current bill does happen it will fuck a lot of Americans.
Fuck you with a cherry on top. Obamacare is a killer. Millions of people are forced to buy insurance which denies coverage and then they don't have enough money to pay for the actual medical treatment when they need it. Oh, and FUCK YOU if you think anyone supporting Obamacare deserves anything but the bottom level of hell. No one who would destroy the system of medical care which consistentl
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The Hillary Derangement Syndrome is strong with this one.
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WSJ (Score:1)
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