US election: Chris Okotie projects Trump’s victory, says Obama made people hate God

Popular Nigerian pastor and General Overseer of the Household of God Church International Ministries, Chris Okotie, has drummed up support for the Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, in the November 8 United States, U.S election.

Pastor Okotie said the 44th and current President of the U.S, Barack Hussein Obama, has turned people away from God, hence, the 70-year-old Republican nominee deserves to win.

On his Facebook page, Okotie wrote, “America’s problem is not gender inequality or a parochial appreciation of immigration sensibilities.

“It is the manifest do goodness of secular humanism as defined by a generation of haters of God and his anointed who are given to a sinister spirit of hedonistic nihilism.

“This is not about Trump or Clinton but the spirit and philosophy that galvanize their political platforms as Republicans and Democrats.

“It is righteousness that exalts a nation not competence and glib political rhetoric.

“Obama and the Democratic party have placed America precariously on the edge of a precipice in diametrical opposition to God.

“Trump’s victory is the first step towards a national reconciliation and rapprochement with God.

“Who is on God’s side?” the former presidential candidate in Nigeria added.

I’ll do more for African-Americans than Clinton – Trump

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Thursday promised to do more for the African-Americans than his rival Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton could do in her lifetime.

Trump, at the third and final presidential debate with Clinton broadcast live early Thursday, claimed that Clinton and President Barack Obama had not made much impact on them.

“Our inner cities are a disaster. You get shot walking to the store. They have no education. They have no jobs. I will do more for African-Americans and Latinos than she can ever do in 10 lifetimes.”TrumpTrumpTrump

“All she has done is talk to the African-Americans and to the Latinos. After they get your votes and then they come to say we’ll see you in four years.

Trump, however, stressed that his administration would not take care of illegal immigrants or their debts.

He cautioned against voting for Clinton, saying a vote for her is a vote for the continuation of Obama’s administration.

He claimed that America “have been depleted militarily" adding, “our policemen and women are disrespected; we need law and order but we need justice too”.

“We’re going to make America strong again. We’ll make America great again, and it has to start now.

“We cannot take four more years of Barack Obama and that is what you get when you get her,” he said.

In her remarks at the debate, Clinton pledged to reach out to all Americans irrespective of their affiliations.

“I would like to say to everyone watching that I’m reaching out to all Americans, Democrats, Republicans and independents because we need everyone to help make our country what it should be.

“I know that we have the awesome responsibility of protecting our country and incredible opportunity of working to try to make life better for all of you,” she said.

According to her, she has made the cause of children and families the centre of mission of her life’s work adding, “that’s what my mission will be in the presidency”.

“I will stand up for families against powerful interests, against corporations, I will do everything I can to make sure you have good jobs with rising income,” she said.

The Democratic candidate also pledged to ensure that America children had better education.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Trump had during the debate, pledged to cut taxes and focus on growing the economy.

Clinton, however, disagreed with Trump, saying that “we need to put more money in social security trust fund”.

“We will make sure we have sufficient resources and that will mean raising the cap… I want to raise health benefits for women.

“If Trump repeals the America healthcare, healthcare will get worse…,” she said.

NAN reports that 52 per cent of American voters remain unchanged in their position that suggest that Clinton was ahead of Trump by nine per cent before the final debate, according to Reuters’s poll.

Trump campaign coordinator resigns after blaming Obama for racism

A volunteer coordinator for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in Ohio resigned on Thursday afternoon after the Guardian published a video interview in which she said there was “no racism” until President Obama came into office and that black people who’ve struggled to succeed since the 1960s have no one to blame but themselves.

“If you’re black and you haven’t been successful in the last 50 years, it’s your own fault,” Kathy Miller, chair of the Republican nominee’s campaign in Mahoning County, Ohio, said in the interview. “You’ve had every opportunity, it was given to you.”

“You’ve had the same schools everybody else went to,” Miller continued. “You had benefits to go to college that white kids didn’t have. You had all the advantages and didn’t take advantage of it. It’s not our fault, certainly.”

She added: “I don’t think there was any racism until Obama got elected. We never had problems like this. … Now, with the people with the guns, and shooting up neighborhoods and not being responsible citizens, that’s a big change, and I think that’s the philosophy that Obama has perpetuated on America.”

“My personal comments were inappropriate, and I apologize. I am not a spokesperson for the campaign and was not speaking on its behalf,” she said in a statement. “I have resigned as the volunteer campaign chair in Mahoning County and as an elector to the electoral college to avoid any unnecessary distractions.”

Her resignation comes as Trump continues his attempted outreach to African-American voters in crucial swing states like Ohio.

At a Fox News town hall focused on black issues in Cleveland on Wednesday night, Trump proposed that police departments launch or reinstate controversial “stop and frisk” policies in high-crime cities like Chicago.

Trump gave a grim assessment of black neighborhoods at a rally in North Carolina the night before.

“Our African-American communities are absolutely in the worst shape that they’ve ever been in before, ever, ever, ever,” he said.

Trump began his pitch to Ohio’s black voters last month.

“What the hell do you have to lose?” Trump said at a rally before a predominantly white crowd in Akron on Aug. 22. “Give me a chance. I’ll straighten it out.”

Hillary Clinton and her fellow Democrats have been critical of Trump’s remarks.

“You may have heard Hillary’s opponent in this election say that there’s never been a worse time to be a black person,” Obama said at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation dinner in Washington on Saturday night. “I mean, he missed that whole civics lesson about slavery and Jim Crow.”

“He says we got nothing left to lose,” Obama continued, “so we might as well support somebody who has fought against civil rights and fought against equality, and who has shown no regard for working people for most of his life. Well, we do have challenges, but we’re not stupid.”

Clinton hammers ‘dangerous’ Trump after Putin praise

Hillary Clinton portrayed herself Thursday as a steely stateswoman ready to fend off the dangers facing the United States, as she denounced Republican rival Donald Trump as "unpatriotic" and unfit to lead.

With just 61 days before America chooses a new commander in chief, the Democrat went on the offensive highlighting the risk of electing a political novice who praises Russia's leader while dismissing the US president, and who has no real plan to combat IS jihadists.

Trump pushed back just as hard, accusing Clinton of being a failed and "trigger-happy" secretary of state whose policies triggered mayhem across the world.

Clinton, 68, and Trump, 70, have clashed repeatedly over foreign policy, but their battle rose to a new level Wednesday night when the two were separately grilled over their national security credentials at a New York forum.

"One thing you didn't hear from Donald Trump last night is any plan to take on ISIS, one of the biggest threats facing our country," Clinton said, using an acronym for the Islamic State group.

"He says his plan is still a secret, but the truth is he simply doesn't have one. And that's not only dangerous, it should be disqualifying."

Instead of laying out a Middle East strategy at the forum, she said, Trump praised Putin and suggested the strongman is "far more" of a leader than US President Barack Obama.

"Even I was shocked by this," Clinton said later at a rally in Charlotte, in the battleground state of North Carolina.

"That is not just unpatriotic, it's not just insulting to the office and to the man who holds the office. It is scary, it is dangerous."

Clinton invoked one of the nation's most popular Republican presidents in driving home her point.

"What would Ronald Reagan say?" Clinton asked, "about a Republican nominee who attacks America's generals and heaps praise on Russia's president? I think we know the answer."

The seniormost elected US Republican, House Speaker Paul Ryan, distanced himself from Trump's praise of Putin just one day after returning to Congress after a seven-week break.

"Vladimir Putin is an aggressor that does not share our interests," Ryan said, citing US authorities who believe Moscow is conducting cyber-attacks on the US political system.

Seeking to strike a commanding tone, Clinton called for the United States to track down and kill Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as it did Osama bin Laden.

"Getting al-Baghdadi will require efforts at the top levels, but it will send a resounding message that nobody directs or inspires attacks against the United States and gets away with it," she said.

With the campaign now in the final two-month stretch, Clinton was wasting no opportunity to harangue Trump over his missteps, accusing him of having "trash-talked" US generals.

"We've never seen anything like this," she said, highlighting Trump's call to bring back interrogation techniques deemed to be torture, and to kill relatives of terrorists.

Clinton pointed to the US military code of honor, saying "that, Donald Trump,... is what we're going to stand up and defend in the face of your outrageous, disgraceful attacks on the men and women of our armed forces."

The bitter back-and-forth was likely to be on display for the campaign's duration. Trump joined the fray Thursday with attacks on Clinton, whom he accused of having "raced to invade, intervene and topple regimes."

"Hillary Clinton is trigger-happy," with policies that "produced ruin" in Libya, Iraq and Syria, Trump said in Cleveland, Ohio in a 10-minute anti-Hillary riff before delivering planned remarks on education.

"Her policies unleashed ISIS, spread terrorism and put Iran on a path to nuclear weapons."

Trump has gained on Clinton over the past 10 days, but the former secretary of state still maintains an advantage of 2.8 percentage points, according to the RealClearPolitics poll average.

A new Quinnipiac Poll of battleground states shows Clinton ahead 48 percent to 43 percent in Pennsylvania and ahead 47-43 in North Carolina. But Trump leads in Ohio, 46-45, while the two are tied in Florida, 47-47, according to the poll.

A Suffolk University poll shows a different story in North Carolina, with Trump ahead by three points.

Clinton's tarmac address to reporters marked the first podium press conference in nine months for the candidate, who broke a long media drought by speaking to journalists at length on her campaign plane this week.

She also rebuked an "undisciplined" Trump for discussing elements of a recent classified intelligence briefing during Wednesday's commander-in-chief forum, in which he said he learned that Obama and other US leaders "did not follow" the advice of US national security experts.

"I would never comment on any aspect of an intelligence briefing that I received," Clinton said.

Trump not qualified to be president, says Obama

President Barack Obama condemned Donald Trump as unsuitable to be commander-in-chief Thursday, after the Republican nominee blasted US military brass and praised Vladimir Putin.

“I don’t think the guy’s qualified to be president of the United States and every time he speaks, that opinion is confirmed,” Obama said in unusually caustic language while overseas.

Obama is in Laos for a summit with South East Asia leaders and his final trip to east Asia.

“I can tell you from the interactions I have had over the last eight or nine days with foreign leaders that this is serious business,” Obama said.

“You actually have to know what you are talking about and you actually have to have done your homework. When you speak, it should actually reflect thought out policy you can implement.”

Trump on Wednesday raised eyebrows by saying that Russia’s president was “far more” of a leader than Obama.

Putin is “very much of a leader,” Trump said in a televised interview.

“It’s a very different system, and I don’t happen to like the system. But certainly in that system he’s been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader.”

Trump also drew fire for criticising the military.

“The generals have been reduced to rubble,” Trump said, before noting he had “faith in certain of the commanders”.

The bombastic mogul will face Hillary Clinton in November’s election, which the Democratic former first lady is tipped to win.

Trump has previously angered many in the military community with mocking remarks against US Senator and former prisoner of war John McCain for being captured in Vietnam.

Obama is expected hit the campaign trail with Clinton when he returns to the United States, with voter turnout likely to be a key theme.

Obama won the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections handily by mustering large numbers of young, black, Latino and Asian voters to go to the polls.

AFP

Doctor: I wrote Trump's bill of health in 5 minutes

The doctor who has produced the only public medical record about Donald Trump during his presidential campaign reportedly said he spent only five minutes writing it.

Harold Bornstein, Trump's doctor who wrote a four-paragraph note last December declaring the GOP nominee to be the "healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency," said Friday that he spent very little time on the note.

"I try to get four or five lines down as fast as possible so that they would be happy," he told NBC News, explaining that he penned the note as he waited for a limo to pick him up. "In the rush, I think some of those words didn't come out exactly the way they were meant."

Bornstein said he added some hyperbole to the note because "I think I picked up his kind of language and then I just interpreted it to my own."

Asked about Trump's health, Bornstein told NBC: "I don't think he's in any better or worse (shape) than the average person that goes and exercises every single day," he said. "Doesn't smoke, doesn't drink -- and that's simply the best advantage you can have to live -- and he's got a good family history."

Trump and his allies have raised suspicions about Hillary Clinton's health in recent days, but he and his campaign have released virtually no other records about his own health beyond Bornstein's note. As CNN's Brianna Keilar put it on "The Situation Room" this week, "There is nothing that would lead you to believe he is healthy. ... His letter from his doctor is borderline ridiculous when you talk to other doctors who look at it."

Trump, at age 70, would be the oldest man to assume the presidency if elected in November, about eight months senior to Ronald Reagan when he was first sworn-in more than 35 years ago. But both he and Clinton, according to a federal life expectancy model from 2013, are statistically likely to live comfortably through and beyond potential second terms in the White House, well into their 80s.

There is little in Trump's personal medical history or lifestyle to suggest he is disproportionately disposed to future risks.

US election: Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort quits

Paul Manafort, campaign chairman for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, has resigned just two months after taking the helm.

Mr Trump confirmed Mr Manafort's departure in a statement.

He first took control of Mr Trump's campaign after the businessman's campaign manager was fired in June.

Mr Manafort, 67, has come under fire for his ties to Russian interests and former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

But it is not yet clear why he left the team, which was overhauled earlier this week with the addition of a new campaign chief executive and a new campaign manager.

Mr Trump has come under pressure in recent weeks after a series of controversial remarks and falling poll numbers.

Mr Manafort's lobbying connections to pro-Russia politicians in Ukraine are certainly a distraction for Mr Trump's presidential campaign - but unlikely to be the main reason for his departure.

In spite of Mr Manafort's efforts to impose discipline on the Republican nominee, Mr Trump continues to do badly in the polls and has reportedly bristled at efforts to bring him under control.

After all, "being Trump" is how he won the nomination in the first place.

His new team now faces the task of allowing him to be himself while making sure he stays on message - attacking his Democratic rival Hilary Clinton instead of sparking controversy with his own verbal missteps.

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"This morning Paul Manafort offered, and I accepted, his resignation from the campaign," Mr Trump said in a statement.

"I am very appreciative for his great work in helping to get us where we are today, and in particular his work guiding us through the delegate and convention process."

Mr Manafort has faced public scrutiny in recent weeks after the New York Times reported that the Ukrainian government had uncovered ledgers pledging more than $12m (£9.2m) in undisclosed cash payments for his work with Mr Yanukovych, who fled after an uprising in November 2013.

Ukraine's Anti-Corruption Bureau is also investigating business deals worth millions of dollar that are linked to Mr Manafort.

He has vehemently dismissed the claims and denied any wrongdoing.

Mr Manafort, a former adviser to George HW Bush and Bob Dole, only joined the Trump campaign in March, to help the New Yorker secure the party's nomination.

The announcement of new campaign chief, Kellyanne Conway, and campaign CEO, Stephen Bannon, earlier this week raised questions about whether it would diminish Mr Manafort's role.

The longtime Republican operative was considered a guiding hand in steering Mr Trump toward a more conventional campaign as opposed to the anti-establishment brand of politics that made his primary campaign successful.

A hotel developer with no previous experience of politics, Mr Trump stunned the political world by beating far more experienced figures in the Republican party.

He faces Democrat Hillary Clinton, who has faced intense criticism over her email arrangements while secretary of state, in November's election.

Revealed: A Playboy for President

Donald Trump in 2003 with Victoria Silvstedt, 1997 playmate of the year, left, and his future wife, Melania Knauss, at a Playboy event. Credit Richard Corkery/NY Daily News Archive, via Getty Images

IN a different campaign or era, it would have been a race-altering moment; in this one, it was barely a scandal. There was Melania Trump, the potential first lady of the United States, posing stark naked in ’90s-era photos published by the New York Post — and then in the next day’s edition, canoodling lipstick-lesbian style in bed. Yet the press yawned, her husband’s latest outrage overshadowed it, and it only stayed a story because the date of the photos raised questions about the future Mrs. Trump’s immigration status.

This election was supposed to be a referendum on Hillary Clinton, long a polarizing figure because she seemed to embody the cultural transformations of the 1960s — the liberal, feminist, working-mother spouse of the first boomer president.

But in the year of Donald Trump, the religious conservatives who fought many of those transformations find themselves reduced to a hapless rump. The best have retreated to rebuild; the worst have abased themselves before a sybaritic, irreligious presidential nominee.

So in word, deed and his wife’s “artistic” shots, it’s Trump rather than Clinton who has confirmed the full triumph of the sexual revolutions.

I say revolutions, plural, because Trump is a reminder that the 1960s happened in stages, with different figures and worldviews shaping its social shifts. As John Podhoretz wrote in a shrewd column, Trump and Hillary are both children of the ’60s — but of its opposite ends, the Brat Pack era in Trump’s case and the flowering of boomer liberalism in Hillary’s.

Much of what seems strange and reactionary about Trump is tied to what was normal to a certain kind of Sinatra and Mad Men-era man — the casual sexism, the odd mix of sleaziness and formality, even the insult-comic style.

But while that male culture was “conservative” in its exploitative attitudes toward women, it was itself in rebellion against bourgeois norms and Middle-American Christianity. And if Hillary is a (partial, given her complicated marriage) avatar of Gloria Steinem-era feminism, her opponent is an heir of the male revolutionary in whose club Steinem once went undercover: Hugh Hefner.

It was Hefner who fully embodied the male sexual revolt. Today he’s just a sleazy oldster, but in the beginning he was a faux philosopher, preaching a gospel cribbed from bohemia and various Freudian enemies of repression, in which the blessed pursuit of promiscuity was the human birthright. But really a male birthright, for a certain kind of man: The sort of hep cat who loved inviting the ladies back to his pad “for a quiet discussion on Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex.”

That was the ideal, at least. Trump, the thrice-married ubermensch who jokes about Megyn Kelly’s period, is the more usual reality. (So, albeit with more surface class, was the ultimate early-’60s man, the sex-addicted J.F.K.)

That obvious gulf helps explain why Hefner passed from a phenomenon to a sideshow, while a more feminist vision of liberation became the official ideology of the liberal upper class.

But only gradually and partially. The men’s sexual revolution, in which freedom meant freedom to take your pleasure while women took the pill, is still a potent force, and not only in the halls of Fox News. From Hollywood and college campuses to rock concert backstages and Bill Clinton’s political operation, it has persisted as a pervasive but unspoken philosophy in precincts officially committed to cultural liberalism and sexual equality.

It has also endured by going downmarket in the culture. If you watched “The Girls Next Door,” the TV show about Hefner’s ménage, you noticed that the Playboy mystique was emphatically not a joke in the lower middle class environs that produced his centerfolds and their most adoring fans. Like Trumpism, Hefnerian values have prospered in the blue-collar vacuum created by religion’s retreat, community’s unraveling.

Then finally, among men who were promised pliant centerfolds and ended up single with only high-speed internet to comfort them, the men’s sexual revolution has curdled into a toxic subculture, resentful of female empowerment in all its forms.

This is where you find Trump’s strongest (and, yes, strangest) fans. He’s become the Daddy Alpha for every alpha-aspiring beta male, whose mix of moral liberation and misogyny keeps the Ring-a-Ding-Ding dream alive.

There aren’t nearly enough of these fans to win him the election. Steinem’s revolution (Clintonian complications and all) should easily beat Hef’s at the ballot box this year.

But the cultural conflict between these two post-revolutionary styles — between frat guys and feminist bluestockings, Gamergaters and the diversity police, alt-right provocateurs and “woke” dudebros, the mouthbreathers who poured hate on the all-female “Ghostbusters” and the tastemakers who pretended it was good — is likely here to stay. With time and Christianity’s further decline, it could eclipse older culture war battles; in the pop culture landscape, it already does.

Ten years ago, liberals pined for a post-religious right, a different culture war.

Source: New York Times

Trump unveils anti-terrorism plan

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Bill Pugliano/Getty Images/AFP

Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump on Monday unveiled his anti-terrorism plan, saying he would implement “extreme vetting” of immigrants as one way to protect the United States and suspend immigration from certain countries.

“We should only admit into this country those who share our values and respect our people,” Trump said in a speech.

“In the Cold War, we had an ideological screening test. The time is overdue to develop a new screening test for the threats we face today. I call it extreme vetting.”