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One of Pete Byrons first jobs as mayor of Wildwood? Making sure everyone keeps tabs on how much President Donald Trumps upcoming rally will cost the city.

The mayor who was sworn in just days before hearing Trump would hold a rally in the Jersey Shore resort town said the city does not have a budget for the event but has asked their first responder departments, along with the public works department to keep detailed accounts for the costs incurred.

Byron said he does not see the costs being as high as some of the rallies held in bigger cities because of the limited access into Wildwood by way of the three roads in, along with the beach and ocean acting as a natural barrier behind the convention center, where the rally will be held on Jan. 28 at 7 p.m.

Do I think that our taxpayers should foot the bill for this? Absolutely not," he said. "I will do my best to get a final tally, and I will certainly pass that on to the local Republican organization, and I hope that we get some sort of reimbursement for the event.

Cape May County Republican party chairman Marcus Karavan said there should be a focus on the economic impact of the Presidents visit.

The eyes of the entire country are on Cape May County and the City of Wildwood right now," Karavan said. "Rather than being short sighted and playing partisan politics, Mayor Byron should be thanking President Trump for bringing tens of thousands of visitors to the Wildwoods who will be spending money in local hotels, bars, and restaurants, including the one run by the county Democrat chairman, on a Tuesday in January when they would otherwise be shuttered.

Byron, who is succeeding longtime former Wildwood mayor Ernie Troiano Jr. on the three-person non-partisan commission, began the year focusing on placing new professionals into the city to help with tackling objectives such as boardwalk repairs, and revitalizing the citys downtown area.

Ive always said that when Wildwood was at its best, which was, in my opinion, the 70s and the 80s. You had the balance of the downtown and the boardwalk, Byron said. Now we have very little downtown and many of visitors at our boardwalk. People need other options other than the boardwalk. We are going to make a conscientious effort to do what we have to do to bring Pacific Avenue, which is the center of our downtown back.

Now the newly-minted Wildwood mayor of the town of 5,000 is focusing on preparations for the presidents visit to support Congressman Jeff Van Drew, a longtime Democrat who abruptly switched to the Republican party and pledged his own support to Trump.

The Wildwood mayor said he had heard estimates that 40,000 tickets had been issued for an event being held in a venue that can hold up to 7,400 people. There is also the possibility another 10,000 may show up to the city.

The President brings out the people who support him, as well as who oppose them or both," Byron said. "There is no in-between, and they are all very passionate. You are going to have protesters as well. You have to factor all of that into the equation, but theres going to be a lot of people out on the street.

Byron said that although the presidents visit is a political event, he is taking the personal perspective that party affiliations should be thrown out the door, and people should come to Wildwood and enjoy the historic moment.

It is no disrespect to the president, but I look at this more about the position versus the individual, and I think that we should bask in this opportunity, the mayor said. This is going to give Wildwood national exposure. The cost relative to the exposure, we would never be able to pay the advertising cost to get the type of exposure were going to get nationally, and then youre the middle of January when it is typically a ghost town down here.

Cape May County Administrator Elizabeth Bozzelli confirmed the countys Prosecutors Office, Sheriffs Office, and Office of Emergency Management would be involved in the event. The county would only be paying overtime costs associated with the people working the event, a procedure the county follows when other significant events and busier weekends occur during the year.

In the summer, Wildwood has about 150,000 people on any given day in July and August, Cape May County spokeswoman Diane Wieland told NJ Advance Media earlier this week. With fewer businesses open, it makes that more challenging, but it is Wildwood, and I have no doubt they can do this.

Wieland said that while plans have still not been finalized, there could be the possibility that the overflow crowds may be able to watch the speech outside at either nearby Fox Park or the boardwalk itself.

Chris Franklin can be reached at cfranklin@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @cfranklinnews or on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips.

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We shouldnt have to pay for Trumps Wildwood visit so were keeping tabs, mayor says - NJ.com

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi brushed off President Donald Trump's online insults as he took off on another Twitter tear amid developments in the impeachment inquiry.

Pelosi appeared on ABC's "This Week" and host George Stephanopoulos asked her about Trump's Sunday morning tweet that called her "Crazy Nancy" and requested Stephanopoulos press her on the evidence presented in the House Democrat-led impeachment inquiry.

The tweet came as the latest in Trump's long track record of attacking the speaker over tweets and public comments, all of which she said result in a "boost."

"It's Sunday morning, I'd like to talk about some more pleasant subjects than the erratic nature of this president of the United States," Pelosi said. "But he has to know that every knock from him is a boost."

Pelosi then responded to Trump's tweet and previous comments that she is "obsessed" with impeachment, adding that the president was initially fixated on her needing to impeach former President George W. Bush. Initially, Pelosi said she had decided Trump was "not worth" impeachment, but his violation of the Constitution in his contact with Ukraine ultimately "could not be ignored."

"So again, I don't like to spend too much time on his crazy tweets, because everything he says is a projection," she said. "When he calls someone crazy he knows that he is. Everything he says you can just translate it back to who he is."

"Let's be optimistic about the future, a future that will not have Donald Trump in the White House one way or another," she concluded.

Trump has a long history of targeting Pelosi over his Twitter feed, but his latest tear came as Pelosi announced that she was preparing to send articles of impeachment to the Senate next week.

The two articles are centered on Trump's contact with Ukraine, in which he appeared to solicit interference from a foreign government ahead of the 2020 election in exchange for withheld military aid so long as the country investigated former Vice President Joe Biden, a fellow 2020 hopeful, and his son Hunter.

Link:
Nancy Pelosi responded to Trump's latest Twitter insult, saying 'every knock from him is a boost' - Business Insider

John Fea, Opinion contributor Published 4:00 a.m. ET Jan. 11, 2020

Trump mocked his enemies, trafficked in half-truths, instilled fear and expressed zero humility. My fellow evangelicals loved every minute of it.

I have spent my entire adult life in the evangelical community. I had a born-again experience when I was 16and I never looked back. I currently teach history at a Christian college with evangelical roots. As a historian, I study American evangelicalism.

But I have never seen anything like what I witnessed last Friday night as I watched Donald Trump speak to a few thousand of his evangelical supporters at El Rey Jesus, a largely Hispanic megachurch in Miami, during the kickoff to his Evangelicals for Trump campaign.

It is no coincidence that this rally took place two weeks after Christianity Today, the historic voice of moderate evangelicalism, called for Trumps removal from office. The magazines editor, Mark Galli, described Trumps character as grossly immoral and warned his fellow evangelicals that their ardent support of the president was damaging to their Christian witness.

While the Evangelicals for Trump campaign had been in the works for several weeks prior to Gallis editorial, it is hard to see the decision to schedule the kickoff event for Jan.3 as anything but damage control. Even the smallest crack in his evangelical support especially in swing states like Florida could result in a Trump loss in 2020.

BeforeTrumps speechFriday night, several evangelical leaders laid their hands on the president and prayed for him. Apostle Guillermo Maldonado, the pastor of El Rey Jesus, prayed that Trump would fulfill his role as a new King Cyrus, the Old Testament Persian ruler who released the Jews from captivity and allowed them to rebuild Jerusalem.

Paula White, a preacher of the Prosperity Gospel (God blesses the faithful with financial and physical health), prayed against the demonic forces, presumably Democrats, trying to undermine Trumps presidency.

"Evangelicals for Trump" event in Miami, on Jan. 3, 2020.(Photo: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

As Trump took the podium, the evangelicals in attendance, many wearing pro-Trump clothing and Make America Great Again hats, began screaming USA, USA, USA. It was clear from the outset that this event would be no different from any other Trump rally. It didnt matter that the room was filled with born-again Christians. Trump only knows how to sing one note, and it is music to the ears of his evangelical supporters.

Trump and the 'Prosperity Gospel': He's selling false promises to credulous evangelical Christians

Trump bragged about the crowd size, adding that there were thousandsof people outside trying to get in. He called the Evangelicals for Trump movement the greatest grass roots movement in American history. He reminded everyone that he took the life of Qasem Soleimani. You Cant Always Get What You Want, the Rolling Stones anthem that has become Trumps theme song, blared over the church loudspeaker in Spanish when he finished his speech. Maybe Onward Christian Soldiers would have been more appropriate.

Trump painted himself as a president who is protecting American evangelicals from those on the political left who want to punish people of faith and destroy religion in America. One of the evangelical Christians in the audience screamed Pocohontas, a racist reference to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Trump was visibly pleased.

Trump the strongman was on display. Like autocratic leaders before him, he stirred fear among his people and offered them safety under his regime.

At one point in his speech, Trump rattled off the names of the Fox News personalities who carry his water on cable television. The crowd roared as the president read this laundry list of conservative media pundits.

This rhetorical flourish was all very appropriate on such an occasion because Fox News, more than anything else, including the Bible and the spiritual disciplines, has formed and shaped the values of so many people in the sanctuary. Trumps staff knows this.Why else would they put such a roll call in the speech?

At times, it seemed like Trump was putting a new spin on the heroes of the faith described in the New Testament book of Hebrews. Instead of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Joseph, Moses, David, and Samuel, we got Sean (Hannity),Laura (Ingraham), Tucker (Carlson), and the hosts of Fox and Friends.

Message to evangelicals: Impeachment is about Donald Trump. It's not an attack on you.

I am used to this kind of thing from Trump, but I was stunned when I witnessed evangelical Christians those who identify with the good news of Jesus Christ raising their hands in a posture of worship as Trump talked about socialism and gun rights.

I watched my fellow evangelicals rising to their feet and pumping their fists when Trump said he would win reelection in 2020.

Trump spent the evening mocking his enemies, trafficking in half-truths in order to instill fear in people whom God commands to fear not, and proving that he is incapable of expressing anything close to Christian humility.

His evangelical supporters loved every minute of it. On Friday night, Christians who claim to be citizens of the Kingdom of God went to church, cheered the depraved words of a president, and warmly embraced his offer of political power. Such a display by evangelicals is unprecedented in American history.

I usually get angry when members of my tribe worship at the feet of Trump. This time I just felt sad.

John Fea teaches history at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. He is the author of "Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump," which was published Jan. 7.

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DO NOT PUBLISH 'Evangelicals for Trump' was an awful display by supposed citizens of the Kingdom of God - USA TODAY

Was it a birth certificate? You tell me, he told ABC News in 2013. Some people say that was not his birth certificate.

That same year, Nunberg arranged for Trump to make his Levin show debut, preparing a memo to familiarize Mr. Trump with Mark Levin, he wrotedeploying tried-and-true ways to pique Trumps interest. Nunberg emphasized Levins ratings history (In the first 18 months on the air, the program jumped to #1 in the time slot), the company he kept (considers Sean Hannity his best friend), his reach (books Liberty and Tyranny and Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America sold more than a million copies, Nunberg noted), and his compensation (a reported annual salary of $12.5 million a year). Nunberg mentioned, too, that what he said on the air often was disseminated on a variety of websites like TheRightScoop.com. People, in other words, some people, many people, a lot of people, were listening to what Levin was saying.

Armed with this advance work, the memo as well as the emails, Trump fit in well with Levin. In addition to shilling for the upcoming season of The Celebrity ApprenticeTrace Adkins, La Toya Jackson, Dennis RodmanTrump delivered to Levins listeners what they wantedwhich essentially was Levins ideas, studiously collected by Nunberg, consumed by Trump and regurgitated back to the host.

If the Republicans are going to win, Trump said, theyre going to have to break away from the Karl Roves of the world and, frankly, get more involvedyou know, the Tea Party, these people are great. Ive done some speeches in front of the Tea Party. They are great Americans, they love this country, they work so hard, and they have been so mistreated by the liberal media. They truly are not treated with proper respect.

And he landed especially hard on immigration and any notions of amnesty for undocumented immigrants.

I watched last night, he continued, referring to Obamas State of the Union that year, as Senator McCain and everybody were jumping up and down, you know, applaudingI never saw him move so fast, you know, nice guy, but he jumped upand was applauding as soon as the immigration became a part of the discussion, a part of the speech.

Immigration, Trump said, will be the next thing, based on what Im watching.

Trump and Levin wrapped up by exchanging compliments.

Im extremely impressed with what youre doing, Levin said.

You just have a great show, Trump said. Im always listening.

Donald Trump, Levin told his listeners after Trump signed off. See that, folks? Very solid. Very conservative. To the right of the Republican establishment. Strong supporter of the Tea Party. Im telling you. Ive been watching this. Ive been listening. People have been sending me his tweets.

There was a reason for that. Hes putting stuff out there, Nunberg told me of Trumps tweets at the time, some of which Nunberg was suggesting, that sounds like Mark Levin.

In the few months before his interview with Levin:

And in the few months after:

This ear-to-the-proverbial-ground political ramp-up wasnt limited to Levin and talk radio. It was around this time as well that Trump began to give more and more talks on the pre-presidential hustings, GOP chicken dinners in places like Iowa and New Hampshire.

He talked to Pat Caddell about what he was picking up on the trail. He would put forth his position or his feelings, and he would judge the level of the response to it, and that helped him organize, I suppose to whatever degree it was organized, his views about issues, Caddell told me in 2018. Things he said that didnt go over disappeared. Things that did stayed.

Twitter, too, increasingly served a similar purpose.

He glommed onto it like it was an oxygen source, Caddell explained. And he would tweet what he believed, and people would retweet or answer or whatever, and it was kind of his ongoing focus group.

He loved it, Nunberg said. He doesnt trust the political people who do the focus groups. Instead: What are we getting the most retweets on?

In 2014 and 15well before Trump came down the escalator and announced his intention to runNunberg sent Trump nearly daily updates of snippets of news and possible topics and wordings for tweets. At the tops of the documents he showed the number of Trumps Twitter followers ticking up (a snapshot from December of 2014: 2,751,488 2,753,548 2,757,190 ) and the number of days left until the GOP primary debate at the Reagan library and the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries ticking down.

A month into the presidential campaign, after the Vietnam-avoiding Trump insulted McCain by saying he was not a war hero and that he liked people who werent captured, he refused to apologize. That, Nunberg said, partly was because of what he had internalized by listening to Levin. Nunberg told Trump it was going to help him. (It certainly didnt hurt him.) He said, Why? Nunberg said. And I said, Because our people despise John McCain. They despise the fact that McCain hides behind his military record to shit on Republicans and you cant criticize him on anything because of his military record. I said, John McCainhe is hated almost as much as Barack Obama on talk radio. I said, He might as well be Barack Obama on talk radio.

Talk radio led the way. Trump followed.

Theoretically, Trump could have changed. As successful as this pattern of behavior had been in the years preceding his run and during the campaign itselfhe was, after all, elected presidentTrump could have adjusted once he took office, having at his disposal, suddenly and quite unexpectedly, the worlds preeminent intelligence-gathering apparatus. But nosticking to that gossip kind of mentality, said ODonnell, the casino exec, Trump has continued to mine Twitter, plucking what he wants, very comfortable with half thoughts, always looking for tidbits of information that he can use to his advantage.

He sees the ones that are the most popular, former Fox News anchor Eric Bolling, identified by Time as someone who speaks regularly to Trump, told the magazine in June of 2018, and getting the most [of the] zeitgeist, most attention on social media.

And then? The last and most important piece of this by now almost rote process?

He repeats it, Bolling said.

Go here to read the rest:
Trumps Art of the Steal - POLITICO

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Imagine a man who is accused of a crime and faces a trial. Imagine the man has connived to prevent testimony from several key witnesses, and that he has met privately with the jury foreman who promises openly that he will work hand-in-glove with the accused man during the trial. It would not be a huge deductive leap to conclude the man fears a fair trial, because he is guilty.

That is precisely what President Trump has done with the impeachment proceedings in Congress. It's yet another sign among many that he is guilty beyond any question of trying to blackmail Ukraine into subverting the 2020 election.

To review, President Trump withheld about $400 million in military aid to Ukraine until its government promised to start a fake investigation into the Biden family. We know this because the aid was indeed held back until the scheme came to light, and from testimony describing the effort from acting Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor, National Security Council Ukraine specialist Alexander Vindman, and Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, who actually participated in the plot. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky himself implicitly confirmed Trump pressured him to smear the Bidens indeed, he was going to go along with it in despair until the plot became public.

(There is also no evidence Biden actually abused his power as vice president as the conspirators allege on the contrary, his efforts to remove a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor made scrutiny of his son's business dealings there more likely, not less.)

The president's lawyer Rudy Giuliani has admitted to demanding Ukraine look into Biden, and Trump's acting White House Chief of Staff has also acknowledged the whole scheme. Trump himself has all but admitted his guilt, saying in response to accusations that he demanded Ukraine dig up dirt on Biden that "[I]t's very important to talk about corruption. if you don't talk about corruption, why would you give money to a country that you think is corrupt?" The memorandum the White House released describing the call between Trump and Zelensky also contains an unmistakable veiled blackmail demand.

That is unquestionably why Trump has prevented his top officials from testifying before the House impeachment inquiry. Giuliani, Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Vice President Pence were all party to the conspiracy, while former National Security Adviser John Bolton was (oddly) dead against it, according to other testimony. Yet Trump has prevented any of them from testifying before the House and when Bolton said he would be happy to come before the Senate, Trump quickly said he would try to restrict what Bolton could say through claims of executive privilege.

Trump claims that, no, he would really like all his close associates to testify, but the welfare of future presidents prevents it. "I am fighting for future presidents and the office of the president. Other than that, I would actually like people to testify," he tweeted. This is absolutely preposterous. In addition to the gigantic conflict of interest here, and the fact that he lies pretty much every time he opens his mouth, Trump is probably the most nakedly selfish person ever to occupy the White House (and that is saying a lot). He's a guy who ran out the budget of his own bodyguard service nickel-and-diming them for staying at his own properties and renting his own golf carts. One would struggle in vain to recall a single instance in which Trump has ever taken the slightest move to benefit anyone outside himself or his immediate family.

At any rate, after a president is impeached, the Senate conducts a trial (which requires a two-thirds vote to convict and remove him from office). Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised on Sean Hannity's Fox News show which is akin to Saddam Hussein's state propaganda TV except Baghdad Bob had considerably more concern for the appearance of neutrality that: "Everything I do during this, Im coordinating with the White House counsel ... There will be no difference between the presidents position and our position as to how to handle this to the extent that we can." The fix is in.

McConnell also recently met privately with Trump to discuss impeachment, and announced on January 7 that he is prepared to conduct the trial without any agreement with House Democrats about calling witnesses. He implicitly argued that it would be breaking Senate precedent to call witnesses which would be true except for the niggling detail that witnesses were called in every single one of the previous 15 Senate impeachment proceedings. (Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has refused to send over the articles of impeachment until there is such an agreement.) Any trial run by McConnell is so obviously going to be a sham that even a couple Republican senators have expressed concern about a fair process.

This is not the behavior of an innocent man who wants to clear his name. Trump whines that the impeachment is an unfair "Democrat Scam," but as we have seen, in reality the process is heavily biased towards him the Senate is controlled by Trump's shameless allies, and it is virtually impossible to imagine them voting to remove him from office no matter what came to light at the trial. No, this is what someone does when he wants to avoid any discussion of his flagrant abuses of power or Republican senators having to take embarrassing votes revealing themselves as amoral political hacks. The man is guilty.

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Donald Trump is behaving like the guiltiest man alive - The Week