#Zaid Conways

[dhc-official]

Uh-oh master, a fourth rough draft has hit the attention span

State of DHC: #1

On top of shifting my focus to a new draft to take things in a new direction, I'm also procrastinating* starting this newest draft by writing about the older ones! (*we'll call it retrospecting, it sounds more productive that way) So I may as well finally tell you all what I've been up to.

Lilith, what in the ever-loving fuck is Devil Hunter Clara, you might be thinking to yourself as you read those words in the order that I wrote them. Well, I'm glad I asked! As it stands, Devil Hunter Clara (DHC) is a collection of rough drafts and scrapped chapters sitting in my writing folder, a handful of my dearest home-made blorbos, and the thing dominating a great many of my waking hours.

As I'm gearing up to start anew on a fourth draft, I am filled with a tantalizing mix of dread and excitement at the prospect that I don't really know what Devil Hunter Clara is. With each draft, the shape of what I want it to become shifts a little more, like chunks of marble falling away, coming ever closer to its final sculpted form. It's characters become ever more familiar to me, and I grow in confidence about what I do and do not want it to become.

Before me is the blank canvas and all the lessons I've learned so far.

The Before Times

I suppose I should say a little about how we got here. I've wanted to get into writing for almost as long as I can remember, but like many things in life I just kinda,,, never got around to it.

Of course, I had little snippets here and there, lots of ideas for stories, characters, worlds, plans and plots a'plenty, a few I even made halfhearted attempts at penning, but nothing I would say was anything resembling a readable work. I say this not to be self deprecating, I literally mean that the only thing I had that wasn't a note or a character sheet was maybe three pages of illegible scribbles in a forgotten notebook somewhere (something inspired by the hunger games -back when that was the new smash hit- that I attempted to share precisely once, then never touched, mentioned, or even thought about ever again). That all changed early last year.

To make this part brief-ish (lest I ramble forever) I got back into text based roleplaying. I'd made attempts in the past, but those were as shallow and brief-lived as my other foirés into writing. This time though, it was with someone for whom I harbor a not insignificant amount of love, and who assuaged some of my perpetual anxieties (I've played the role of dungeon master in our tabletop games so roleplaying with him was quite a bit more comfortable and familiar than with previous attempted writing partners) and it just sorta clicked. I went from timid wallflower watching from the sidelines to writing thousands of words at a time in longform response basically every couple of days for a few months straight.

I fell in love with the process of it. Taking my strange and broken wreck of a character and putting her in situations™ of her own making again and again, it's hard to describe just how enthralled I became. Eventually we had to slow down our roleplay correspondences (life happens) but now I had an itch to scratch. So I did the only logical next thing, I loaded up a blank .ODT file, and I got back to writing.

The Long Loooong Journey (First Draft)

The first couple paragraphs got kicked up somewhere around fall of last year. I wanted this newest project of mine to be unshackled from any established setting (or fall victim to world-building paralysis as my other project around this time did, a different story for a different blog perhaps). I wanted to get back into The Zone™ and hit that writing flow again as reliably as possible, so the star of the show -as I envisioned her then- shared a lot of surface level traits with the roleplay OC she was loosely based upon: The same hair, the same eyes. Soon though, she took on some more important traits, the same bone-deep transfeminity, the same blood curdling powers and a need to control them. Likewise, the setting was chosen out of convenience: urban fantasy, a familiar world with an underbelly of demonic monsters and a secret order of those that hunt them.

This was all still in the loosey-goosey figuring out the basics stage -nothing written yet. I had one image in my mind of what I (at the time) wanted Clara at her peak to look like but I wanted to figure out how she got there. How would a terrified teenage trans girl go from being a complete nobody, a total shut in and loner, to being the legendary demon slayer I envisioned? That is largely what the first draft (now totaling around 94K words) aimed to answer.

To my great surprise, such massive overhauls take time, if written out and explored in depth. I had a loose outline, a timeline of her evolution from A) confused and afraid inductee to this strange magical underworld, to B) semi-capable pawn in someone else's game to C) Fully Capable Loose Cannon (and perpetual headache to her demon hunting partner Zaid, more on him another day) to D) a rogue agent, even more feared than the demons she was once employed to hunt, and finally to E) Spiraling badly and becoming something of a complicated hero teetering on the very razor's edge of becoming an out and out villain-protagonist.

The problem with writing a teenage protagonist struggling to come to terms with powers beyond mortal understanding, however, is that they are a teenage protagonist struggling to come to terms with powers beyond mortal understanding. Jokes aside, out of all the outlined above, 94K words in and I was still sitting somewhere between points A and B. For all her exploration of the secret underworld, she was still largely a scared teenager tenuously wielding power outside of her control. I was learning a lot about her and Zaid, what makes them tick, as well as their extended cast of tag-along weirdos, but as I approached the 100K mark I grew more interested in actually sharing my story someday. I simultaneously grew more aware of the enormity of my task I was setting out on if I ever wanted to reach my image of Clara Prime following my current outline and at my current pace.

Just cut to The Good Shit™ already! (Second Draft)

My second draft started as much more experimental. I was unsure if I wanted to abandon all my precious progress so far, but I assured myself that it's not like I'm deleting it, I'm just trying out other things! Where the first draft was told in third person, largely following Clara but occasionally switching to Zaid when I felt it was more appropriate or impactful, the second draft started out entirely in first person, all in Zaid's eyes.

Here in the second draft we don't follow Clara's rise to power, instead we follow a version where she's not only reached the vision I had of Prime Clara's power in the outline of the first draft, but eclipsed it. I surprised myself in abandoning her somewhat singularly focused powerset (mostly relying on hemokinesis and some baseline demonic abilities, with a handful of other powers laboriously fought for deeeep into the outline). This more powerful Clara was fittingly more mature (still with her occasional dips into tantrums self aggrandizing tirades and mischief being a problem on purpose) and this version of Zaid was aged up to match, with his feigned veneer of confidence becoming an actual foundation of competence (with his trademark bone deep fissures in that foundation owing to the stresses of, well, basically everything leading up to that point in his life)

Besides our protagonists becoming competent and well rounded from the word go, the other major difference was a shift in their dynamic. In the first draft Zaid was somewhat of an unwitting pawn of the highly dubious and very unoriginally named secret organization (go ahead and guess what it's called). Their first meeting was in the end of the prologue where Zaid saves/ kinda sorta kidnaps Clara (she was unconcious and in need of medical attention, its totes fine). In the second draft Clara is already a prisoner, and Zaid has to prove himself to her to be allowed the privilege of her company. Rereading it earlier today (the impetus for me starting a fourth draft and writing this post) their dynamic feels a lot more playful* and fun than in the first draft! *Zaid is def having a bad time, but where the first draft often comes off as a lot of bickering punctuated by moments of something closer to horror than power fantasy, the second draft has a certain fascinating momentum to it, a real verve, y'know? I actually really like this version of Clara and Zaid. She's got all the arrogance and with just a hint of zaneyness that I love, and he's just the right mix of playing it straight, utterly tortured, and surprisingly, he actually manages to come off as fairly intelligent, always thinking quickly and making the best of his very, very poor circumstances.

Unfortunately, I realized after 15k words that first person with occasional POV switches just would not work for the story I wanted to tell in the long term. Thus,

In Medias Res (Third Draft)

While the first draft drags their meeting and growth out far beyond my current willingness to detail, and the second kick starts it, the third rebukes beginnings and doesn't concern itself with their first meeting during its brief stint, instead centering when Clara first dropped the mask. In this timeline the two have been working together for a little while, but Clara has been concealing the full extent of her abilities. This Clara was the scary powerful Clara from the second draft, but then said fuck it and has been pretending to be a 'just some schmuck' demon who just so happens to talk about herself with the same self-aggrandizement of your average chuuni.

The return to third person limited POV (close to equal screentime in each of their brains) does wonders for the flow, and we've moved entirely out of the secretive bases of the still genericly named 'The Order' (Yes, that's actually what it's called in all three drafts. Yes, its stupid and vague on purpose). The first draft is largely enamored with the physical spaces of its giant underground secret complex (and the single bedroom they share there), and the second draft intended to quickly leave its own remote hidden castle setting. The third still has them mentioning it as Zaid's employer but it has an altogether more mysterious presence (its only tangible actions being some encoded transmissions giving them vague orders, with a tacit implication of funding) The second and third drafts are roughly equal in length (with the third draft currently clocking in around 18k across two complete chapters, a third semi-complete, and a fourth that came to me like a vision, hastily scrawled to be worked in later)

Overall I do like this version of the duo, but it hews a little too close to the bickering of the first draft rather than the vivacious dynamism of the second. I mostly chalk this up to an issue of pacing. The third draft was fundamentally as much of an experiment as the second, and I've learned as much from it as its predecessor. Both were penned by the seat of my pants without any sort of outline, but the second was almost entirely contiguous, while the third feels somewhat disconnected because of frequent scene breaks. I had intended to make it more episodic, following a sortof case-of-the-week type beat, but I was more interested in the characters than the cases so I barely put any planning into them. I was perhaps too focused on getting straight to the juiciest parts...

Where to Next? (thoughts going into draft four)

That's always the question, isn't it? Big lessons, it's absolutely got to be in third person limited, the metaphorical camera is just so much easier to navigate in and out of their heads that way. I've sortof bounced off of the idea of them solving generic monster-of-the-week style cases, at least the way I framed them in the third draft. I just can't get myself invested in the day job part of their super-powered day job, not when the beat they were on was so vastly overshadowed by the tensions (of various sorts) between the main pair. Going forward, we'll have a lot less procedural investigations and a lot more over the top violence. I'd still like to see them engaging in some deductive investigation, its fun in spurts, but at its core DHC isn't aiming to be Holmes and Watson, its aiming to be about toxic romance, powers beyond mortal ken, and the frayed edges where the two meet.

Speaking of Zaid's employment status, It was an odd problem to have in the first place, considering that Zaid's motivation has been so singular and driving since at least the second draft. (The exact same motive was present as early as chapter 3 of the first draft, but bafflingly, I had chosen to leave it as already resolved and largely in his backstory?? This is my first serious project of this sort, so some ametuer mistakes are expected, but it's still baffling) It's apparent to me now that they don't need 'busywork'. So, this next draft should follow them on their 'main quest', not fucking around on side quests waiting for permission to actually do something.

To that end, I'm heavily considering axing The Order as a thing that either of the main characters are directly associated with. As dumb as it may sound, its not always easy to kill your darlings. The entire first draft (besides the prologue), 88 of the roughly 127 thousand words currently put into this universe (not counting the notes, which are similarly split) take place in its cramped hallways, and I find myself having grown inordinately fond of its little idiosyncrasies. Like a first kiss, it's hard to forget where the duo's strange approximation of romance began. But alas, as Clara faught to buck it's shackles, I must too let myself and the story be free of its tyrannical reign.

Oddly I find myself returning to a (paraphrased) snippet from another urban fantasy thing, specifically a bit from the rules of Eureka (the TTRPG). Your investigators aren't cops. They just can't be. You can try to force it, but this story just doesn't fit together when you have reinforcements, assets, and a chain of command. The Order aren't cops per se, but their narrative function is close enough to cause the same issues. I think they'll still be kicking around somewhere in the background, but not as an ally (not that they were ever more than two steps from enemies in the first place).

So where does that leave our duo? Well, the shift towards an episodic-ish style was partially inspired by a certain show with an emphasis on road tripping mystery solving/monster hunting, I could take a page out of a certain hunter's book and simply say that Zaid funds his single-minded investigative work through the careful use of a method known as 'lots of credit card fraud' (or I could handwaive how these misfits get money for food and hotels entirely) but I feel like this may be a problem better left grappled within the constraints of who the characters are and what they would do.

That leaves Zaid working odd jobs only because he needs to in order to keep perusing his own primary goal (Not because his boss paged him and told him to do it). That's Zaid's motivations laser focused in, but what about the charming woman for whom the series is actually named? Well, I'm a tad worried about leaving her at the frankly ludicrous power level I've established her at, but I think rather than nerfing her back to her teenager-era limitations, the more elegant solution would be to give her more opponents that require her frankly busted levels of 'oomph' to defeat. Parrying bullets with your blood-katana is kinda overkill for fighting run-of-the-mill humans, but it's not called normal human Hunter Clara, now is it?

So Zaid is 'self employed' and Clara is just as overpowered as she's ever been with all the baggage to match. So why are they even in the same room? The order provided a backdrop of casual callousness towards demons where Zaid was practically forced to keep Clara close (draft one Zaid tried his best to offer decency and agency to her but healthy boundaries and clear communication doesn't always make the best story to read, and the order wasn't too fond of it either) and in the second and third drafts she basically waited around for Zaid -or someone like him- to show up and let her loose to do some bombastic violence. Book one is called A Demon and Her Leash for a reason, after all. Currently I'm thinking that Zaid purposely went looking for someone like Clara, that after years of searching on his own he finally caved and sought a deal with a devil. Perhaps, in her own hour of shifting circumstances, Clara agreed to a less than favorable arrangement with her typical level of thinking ahead. (which is to say, not very much) Or perhaps the joining of their fates follows some other more fantastically twisted path. Who knows. I certainty don't, not yet anyway.

Thank you so much if you read this far. With any luck, someday I'll have more updates!

I think it's time I started writing a new chapter one...

[duaneodavila]

Kellyanne Says White House Staff Sign NDAs — Lawyer Point Outs That’s Probably Unconstitutional

Kellyanne Conway (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The Kellyanne Conway show is a relatively predictable comedy routine unleashed on Americans every weekend. Some news show brings her on to explain away the latest embarrassing yet totally predictable consequence of installing a half-wit in the Oval Office and then she somehow, some way, manages to make everything worse. Rudy Giuliani may be stealing all the headlines for self-destructive interviews these days, but he’s just a pale imitation. This is Kellyanne’s game.

Buried in her weekend interview with This Week — the one where she visibly squirmed when asked if there’s any black people on the West Wing staff — was a gem where she denied Omarosa’s claim, in her new tell-all book about the administration, that she was offered $15K to keep quiet about the goings-on inside the White House. Kellyanne explained that one away by saying it wasn’t “hush money,” it was just money offered to keep someone quiet. Specifically, an NDA:

“It is typical, and you know it, to sign an NDA … in any place of work,” Conway, counselor to the president, said to host Jonathan Karl on ABC’s “This Week.” “I’d be shocked if you didn’t have one at ABC.”

“I’m told she signed them when she was on ‘The Apprentice,’ certainly at the campaign. We’ve all signed them in the West Wing,” she added. “And why wouldn’t we?”

When Karl noted that Conway is a public employee, Conway said, “But confidentiality is implied.”

Karl’s point, seemingly lost on Conway, is that presidents can’t go around asking public employees to keep quiet, much less paying them to do so. Public accountability doesn’t work like that, which attorney Mark Zaid was quick to point out:

It's entirely inappropriate & likely unconstitutional to require Fed employees to sign NDA that applies post-employment beyond classified info. We'll rep anyone who has signed & wishes to challenge such agreement pro bono. @BradMossEsq https://t.co/Hjia3THh69

— Mark S. Zaid (@MarkSZaidEsq) August 13, 2018

So, to recap, in an effort to dismiss Omarosa’s gossipy book, Kellyanne has told the world that the White House is making the whole staff sign NDAs ripe for legal challenge. A completely unforced error — it’s not hard to just say, “nothing she says is true” and be done with it. But Kellyanne just can’t help but drag in the NDA policy and make everyone realize we’re treating public employees like porn star mistresses.

Rich people who misbehave love NDAs and the Michael Cohen affair shows that Trump is no exception. But did this administration really not have a single attorney on hand to point out that serving as president is different than serving as the head of a cut-rate steak branding company? That public employees have obligations that extend beyond the individual holding the office? No one mentioned any of this?

Alas, here we are. I guess the moral of the story is that if you’re working in the White House and planning a tell-all book, you have a free lawyer now.

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

[theconservativebrief]

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Trump strips a former CIA director of his security clearance; no one wants to take the blame for a suicide attack at an Afghan school.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

President Donald Trump officially stripped former CIA Director John Brennan of his security clearance, the eligibility to access classified national security information, on Wednesday. [The Hill / Brett Samuels and Morgan Chalfant]

Press secretary Sarah Sanders announced Trump’s decision in a press briefing. She reasoned that Brennan was undeserving of the clearance because of his “frenzied commentary” and “erratic conduct and behavior.” [Slate / Matthew Zeitlin]

But Brennan believes he lost the clearance simply because he spoke out against the Trump administration. He said Americans should “gravely worry” about Trump’s efforts to “suppress freedom of speech and punish critics.” [Twitter / John O. Brennan]

Sanders also said the White House is considering revoking a number of other individuals’ security clearances as well, including former FBI Director James Comey and former acting Attorney General Sally Yates. Comey claimed last month that he was already stripped of that clearance. [Politico / Rebecca Morin]

Sanders announced at the end of July that the president was thinking of taking away former officials’ security clearances because they’ve “politicized” and “monetized” their access. She also blamed “inappropriate” comments made about Trump’s relationship with Russia. [ABC]

Mark Zaid, a national security attorney, fears that this expulsion could “set back the entire security establishment that we’ve created over the last 75 years.” [Vox / Jen Kirby]

As of 2010, only 1 percent of people had their security clearances revoked or their request to obtain it denied. That figure is now likely to change. [Vox / Lindsay Maizland]

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A suicide bomber attacked an education center in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Wednesday. At least 48 people are dead and 67 more injured. [BBC]

It’s unclear who is to blame for the attack. The editor-in-chief at Afghanistan’s 1TV broadcaster believes the Taliban is trying to thwart responsibility by pinning the bombing on ISIS. [Al Jazeera]

The bombing comes amid scores of Taliban-claimed attacks. Hundreds have fled their hometowns as fighting, which has killed hundreds of civilians and troops, continues between Afghan forces and the terrorist organization. [AP / Rahim Faiez and Amir Shah]

The Taliban also withdrew its commitment to leave members of the International Red Cross out of the crossfire because they have not focused on the health of Taliban members who are held captive by Afghanistan. [Reuters]

Attacks on schools — in particular girls’ schools — have resurfaced after decreasing about 10 years ago. [NYT / Najim Rahim and Jawad Sukhanyar]

Former White House aide/Apprentice contestant Omarosa alleges in her new book that first lady Melania Trump intentionally wore her controversial “I really don’t care, do u?” jacket to “punish” the president. [Racked / Rebecca Jennings]

Happy National Relaxation Day! Sit back, put a few cucumber slices over your eyes, and, perhaps, turn off your smartphone — even if just for a few minutes. [Mental Floss]

Authorities thought a pet parrot was stranded on a roof in London because she was injured. But when firefighters came to the rescue, the potty-mouthed bird literally told them to “f**k off.” [Telegraph / Jamie Merrill]

An ad for The Nun, a new horror movie, was so scary that YouTube had to remove it from its site. Give it a look … if you’re not too chicken. [Variety / Tara Bitran]

“‘That photo was from before you cried,’ Kellyanne says. ‘Now I cry for other reasons,’ George mutters. Kellyanne pretends to ignore that comment, something she’s been doing a lot of lately.” [The Washington Post’s Ben Terris, recounting Kellyanne and George Conway discussing a photo from election night 2016, when George still supported Trump]

When houses are the size of parking spaces. [YouTube / Johnny Harris]

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What will happen if a Trump n-word tape comes out? Look at the Access Hollywood tape.

2 years of NFL protests, explained

Crazy Rich Asians is a dazzling, sumptuous success

Hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, explained for non-Muslims

All life on Earth, in one staggering chart

Original Source -> Vox Sentences: A suicide bomber attacks an Afghan school

via The Conservative Brief

[investmart007]

WASHINGTON | Reality White House: Trump, Omarosa trade insults, charges

New Post has been published on https://is.gd/JHxOPR

WASHINGTON | Reality White House: Trump, Omarosa trade insults, charges

WASHINGTON  — President Donald Trump and former aide Omarosa Manigault Newman faced off Monday in a messy clash that involved an explosive tell-all book, secret recordings and plenty of insults — reviving their roles as reality show boss and villain.

Trump accused Manigault Newman, the former White House liaison to black voters, as “wacky” and “not smart” after his former co-star revealed her recording of a phone conversation with the president during a media blitz for her new book.

Beyond their war of words, the row touched on several sensitive issues in Trump’s White House, including a lack of racial diversity among senior officials, security in the executive mansion, a culture that some there feel borders on paranoia and the extraordinary measures used to keep ex-employees quiet.

In an unusual admission, Trump acknowledged that the public sparring was perhaps beneath a person in his position, tweeting that he knew it was “not presidential” to take on “a lowlife like Omarosa.” But he added: “This is a modern day form of communication and I know the Fake News Media will be working overtime to make even Wacky Omarosa look legitimate as possible. Sorry!”

The dispute has been building for days as Manigault Newman promotes her memoir “Unhinged,” which comes out officially Tuesday. The book paints a damning picture of Trump, including her claim that he used racial slurs on the set of his reality show “The Apprentice.”

In a series of interviews on NBC, Manigault Newman also revealed two audio recordings from her time at the White House, including portions of a recording of her firing by chief of staff John Kelly, which she says occurred in the high-security Situation Room, and a phone call with Trump after she was fired.

In a series of interviews on NBC, Manigault Newman also revealed two audio recordings from her time at the White House, including portions of a recording of her firing by chief of staff John Kelly, which she says occurred in the high-security Situation Room, and a phone call with Trump after she was fired.

Manigault Newman says she has more recordings. Asked on MSNBC’s “Hardball” if special counsel Robert Mueller — investigating possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia — would be interested in any of them, she said, “If his office calls again, anything they want, I’ll share.”

Trump officials and a number of outside critics denounced the recordings as a serious breach of ethics and security — and White House aides worried about what else Manigault Newman may have captured in the West Wing.

The latest tape recording appears to show Trump expressing surprise about her firing, saying “nobody even told me about it.” But Manigault Newman said he “probably instructed General Kelly to do it.”

On Twitter, Trump declared Monday that she had been “fired for the last time,” a reference to her appearances on his reality TV show. He said Kelly had called her a “loser & nothing but problems,” but he himself had tried to save her job — because he liked her public comments about him.

“I told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me – until she got fired!” Trump tweeted. Responding on NBC, Manigault Newman said, “I think it’s sad that with all the things that’s going on in the country that he would take time out to insult me and to insult my intelligence.”

She added, “This is his pattern with African-Americans.”

First lady Melania Trump, meanwhile, is disappointed that Manigault Newman “is lashing out and retaliating in such a self-serving way, especially after all the opportunities given to her by the President,” said White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham.

Manigault Newman’s exit does highlight the lack of diversity among Trump’s top aides. She was the highest-ranking African-American on the White House staff. She said on NBC that in her absence “they’re making decisions about us without us.”

Trump’s battle with his former top black aide underscores the racial tensions that have defined his presidency. He notably blamed “both sides” for violent clashes between white supremacists and counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, a year ago and has questioned the intelligence of other prominent black figures including California Rep. Maxine Waters, basketball star LeBron James and TV journalist Don Lemon. He also has targeted black NFL players for kneeling in social protest during the national anthem.

Manigault Newman also alleges that Trump allies tried to buy her silence after she left the White House, offering her $15,000 a month to accept a “senior position” on his 2020 re-election campaign along with a stringent nondisclosure agreement.

The offer raises fresh question about the ways that White House aides are being offered safe landing spots after they leave. For example, Trump’s former personal aide John McEntee, who was removed from his job in April, went to the campaign. Trump tweeted Monday that Manigault Newman has a “fully signed Non-Disclosure Agreement!”

It was not clear exactly what he was referring to. White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway said Sunday on ABC that there are “confidentiality agreements” in the West Wing. And Trump’s campaign said that in the 2016 race she “signed the exact same NDA that everyone else on the campaign signed, which is still enforceable.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, said on “Fox and Friends” Monday that Manigault Newman may have broken the law by recording private conversations inside the White House. “She’s certainly violating national security regulations, which I think have the force of law,” Giuliani said.

But experts in national security and clearance law said that, while she seriously violated rules — and would likely be barred from ever being granted a security clearance — she probably didn’t break any law unless the conversations she recorded were classified.

“None of us have been able to identify that it would be illegal if unclassified,” said Mark Zaid, a Washington attorney, who has focused on national security law.

In the recording with Kelly, which Manigault Newman quotes extensively in her new book, Kelly can be heard saying that he wants to talk with her about leaving the White House.

“It’s come to my attention over the last few months that there’s been some pretty, in my opinion, significant integrity issues related to you,” Kelly is heard saying, before adding that if she makes it a “friendly departure” then she can “go on without any type of difficulty in the future relative to your reputation.”

Manigault Newman said she viewed the conversation as a “threat” and defended her decision to covertly record it and other White House conversations, saying otherwise “no one” would believe her. She may not be finished talking.

Manigault Newman said, “There’s a lot of very corrupt things happening in the White House and I am going to blow the whistle on a lot of them.”

By CATHERINE LUCEY and JILL COLVIN ,  Associated Press

[martinscreeton]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jcygsN8txw)

HERE IS THE ORANGE LIAR... In His own Words ;) Big Picture Panel: Zaid Jilani, The Intercept & Dave McCulloch, Capitol Media Partners. During an interview with MSNBC last night - White House counselor Kellyanne Conway brought up the Bowling Green massacre as an example of the kind of terrorist attack Donald Trump's Muslim ban could prevent. Pretty persuasive, right? There's just one problem: the Bowling Green massacre never happened. It was a creation of Kellyanne Conway's Alternative Fact prone mind. Obviously, this is a funny situation, but how concerned should we be about the Trump administration and it's embrace of what the Nazis called the Big Lie?