#including a tweet(?) about how ‘i don’t need to check in on my Jewish friends right now because they’re not zionists’ because

[nope-body]

.

[bobbyischill]

My Relationship With Andi Mack

Two years ago, when I was in 10th grade, my GSA advisor was telling me and a friend about a Disney Channel show. She hadn’t watched it yet, but apparently one of the main characters had just come out as gay! I was really happy for Disney and glad that queer kids all over the world had someone like them to look up to. However, I, a 15 year old, a mature teenager, wouldn’t really enjoy a kids show, right? So I went about the rest of my day without giving it a second thought....

Until I went home and opened up Tumblr. One of the first posts I saw was someone giving props to Disney for making such a diverse, inclusive show that was actually GOOD. They said it reminded them of Girl Meets World, except it was a million times better and diverse. Okay fine, I thought. I guess I’ll check out Andi Mack. (BOOYY I HAD A BIG STORM COMING)

I opened up my iPad around 10:30pm and decided to watch an episode or two, depending on how tired I was. After the very first episode, I recognized that this show was special. Like, REALLY special. The characters were fleshed out and unique. There was the “twist” about Bex being Andi’s mom. The friendships and relationships felt real. I knew I was going to binge the whole show that night.

That night, as I continued on with the show, I fell in love with each one of them. They all had their own quirks, they were all nuanced. I fell in love with how competitive, protective to a fault, and caring Buffy was. I fell in love with how awkward and goofy and relatable Cyrus was. I fell in love with how kind and oblivious Jonah was. I fell in love with how hard-working and funny Andi was, and how much she cared about certain things and the people around her. I fell in love with the dynamics between certain characters and how they were always changing. I loved how it tackled racism in school (Buffy had to change her hair or be sent home), how unfair dress codes are to students (especially girls), how you need to take a stand for what you believe in (the prison uniforms), and how stepping out of your comfort zone is a good thing, even if you get hurt (Andi watching a horror movie and being terrified, but not regretting it). This was all in the first season.

This show already meant so much to me. And then Cyrus looked back at Jonah. In the words of Jonah Beck, “I cried”. Just that hint of representation was more than I had ever scene on Disney or any other show marketed to kids.

And then Cyrus came out to Buffy. I, a pansexual who was out to my friends but not any of my family and who still struggled with intense internalized homophobia, burst into tears. I related to how ashamed and afraid Cyrus looked. I needed to hear Buffy’s heartfelt response. “You may be weird, but you’re no different.” That phrase was constantly bouncing through my head for at least the next few days (and if I’m being honest, it still is). I wrote it all over my notes and assignments because it was literally all I could think about for such a long time. I saw the sign on the wall that said “G: for General Audiences.” That showed me that Disney (or at least Terri Minsky, my queen) truly felt that I wasn’t a freak. I didn’t need to hide my identity from anyone if I didn’t want to. My identity wasn’t a mature subject; it was for general audiences. (Also, I just want to add that Sofia and Josh’s acting in this scene was absolutely fantastic. It was so raw and emotional, and it still makes me cry every time I see it.)

And then in that same episode Cyrus and Buffy talked about his crush on Jonah. They did it so casually, and my mind was blown. At this point, I had honestly never seen so much gay representation in a show as this.

That night, I stayed up until 5am. I was rewatched Cyrus’s coming out scene about 10 times. I fangirled about it on Tumblr. I added “Tomorrow Starts Today” to my Spotify playlist. I even wrote a diary entry about it. (I only write in my diary when I’m feeling very intense emotions that I need to write down in order to figure out.)

The next day at school, I told all my Gay Friends about Andi Mack and how amazing it was. A few of them got into it, and it was fun talking to them about it, but after a while I was pretty heavily hyperfixated on it and I needed more. And I felt like I was bothering my followers with constant posts about how much I loved Andi Mack. So I made this blog. @cyrus-made-tshirts. I haven’t changed the name since. That’s how I became an official part of the friendom.

I love this fandom. I don’t even know many people personally or have made many friends through it, but this fandom was everything to me. I loved the posts, the crackhead theories, josh’s account. I loved the crackships, the real ships, the overanalyzing of every line, of every movement, of every promo. I loved watching the reactions on YouTube. I loved making posts about the show and having hundreds of people relate to it or find it funny, especially the gay ones. My very first post to get more than 50 notes was one about how Miranda and Bex would make a cute couple (this was before Miranda was revealed to be a snake.)

For the past year and a half, Andi Mack has been my life. I have survived the many ship wars. I have survived the months-long hiatuses. I have survived the ominous tweets and posts Josh has made and the frenzy of panicking everywhere that followed it. And I have loved every minute of it.

I’ve seen these characters I love grow up before my eyes. They’ve all changed and evolved and matured so much. There’s so much more representation since I started watching the show. There’s a character with a learning disability, characters with anxiety, a homeless character, a deaf character. There’s been multiple episodes celebrating Jewish and Chinese culture. I’ve seen Cyrus go from nervously nodding in agreement that he liked a boy to unprovokingly telling his friend he liked that boy to flat-out telling his ex-crush he is gay to holding hands with his crush in public. I’ve seen all of Cyrus’s friends support him unconditionally. I’ve seen him find his happily ever after (for middle school, at least).

And then the last episode aired. I knew I was never going to be prepared for it, but HOLY SHIT, it’s over. And the finale was like a fanfiction it was so good. I watched it live on Thursday night at midnight. I freaked out about it online for three hours, then watched it on Disney Now. I pulled an all-nighter because I just kept rewatching it online until Friday night, when I watched it air on Disney. The way Cyrus and TJ sang Born This Way with the rest of the characters cured my depression, cleared my skin, and watered my crops. The bench scene was so fucking beautiful and romantic it caused me to hyperventilate. The acting from both Luke and Josh was incredible. Honestly, Luke crushed it the entire time as TJ and the bench scene was the icing on top. This scene meant more to met than some people could ever know.

A couple months ago, I was in a pretty shit place emotionally and mentally. Literally the only thing stopping me from killing myself was the guilt of leaving my friends and family behind. I needed another reason to stay, something to keep me grounded. And that reason became Andi Mack. I promised myself I would live to see the day Tyrus became canon. And I did it. I’m in a much better place now, and I’m not going to do anything stupid now that Tyrus has become canon (TYRUS HAS BECOME CANON!!! AAKDBEISSHSB I STILL HAVENT PROCESSED THAT YET!!!!). But at the time, I really needed Andi Mack to help me keep fighting. And it was there for me. And I will always be indebted to it for my life.

This show has helped me in so many other ways. It’s helped me drastically reduce my internalized homophobia. It’s given me a community of people that understand me. It’s created so many characters that I love. So thank you to Terri Minsky for creating this show and amazing characters that I will love forever. Thank you to Disney for funding it and not completely censoring it. Thank you to the crew for working tirelessly to make this happen. Thank you to Peyton, Emily, Asher, Josh, Luke, Lilan, Trent, Garren, Sofia, and every other actor for pouring their heart into this show. A special thank you to Josh and Luke for making me feel safe and loved and for caring so much about their story arcs. (And their political activism is pretty awesome, too.)

I’m really going to miss screaming about this show with you guys. I really hope that some people keep creating fanart and fanfics and keep making memes and crackships. I hope the friendom never dies. Because every one of you is so special and fun to hang out with online. And I’m really gonna miss it. And now I’m crying, and this is getting WAYYY too long, so I’m gonna stop talking now lmao. But I want to say this show has changed me in so many ways and I’m grateful to every single person involved, including the amazing friendom. I’ll love you all forever. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

[aimmyarrowshigh]

aheavenlyrush replied to your post “I’ve been on tumblr since 2012 and I was even a John Green fan for a...”

i checked and it happened in 2015

aheavenlyrush replied to your post “I’ve been on tumblr since 2012 and I was even a John Green fan for a...”

i saw that jg post on my feed and i had no energy to comment on it but truly when i saw that you had i felt such relief!! i remember making that one post about stiefvater defending him and telling teenage girls to be quiet and the response to it still fucking haunts me i swear

Oy, was it really that recently? The last three years have taken 900 years. And yeah... Maggie Stiefvater’s post about it was a Really Bad Look, and iirc that was the environment that spawned the beginning of the batshit “Keep YA Kind”* concern-trolling thing (yep, also 2015) that was mainly used to silence girls and women and people of color whenever the four white cishet men in YA fucked up between 2015 and 2018, when it finally publicly came out that most of them were, yk, fucking up because they’re legitimately horrible people and maybe the people calling them out should have been taken seriously.

* The other notable “why the fuck is this happening???? why is HE the one getting the sympathy here?????” events from “Keep YA Kind,” which, listen, I would bet you anything that it was very very nearly called “Keep Kidlit Kind” until the only person involved with 1/4 of a braincell managed to realize the acronym on their Twitter handle looked REALL BAD:

Andrew Smith, a straight white adult man, says out loud with his human adult man mouth, that he knows he can’t write female characters well and relies on fetishization and stereotypes because he never really met a girl until his daughter (??? SO WHAT IS YOUR WIFE, ANDREW? CHOPPED LIVER?) and, being as that is Bullshit and also his books were also being lauded as though they were Infinite fucking Jest Jr. even though the interview in question was for a book in which mutant grasshoppers take over the earth and a teenage boy gets trapped in a bunker with a teenage girl who eventually has to git to birthin’ babies she doesn’t want and isn’t medically prepared to have safely For The Good Of Humanity, he’s called out.

He’s called out mostly on a technical, writing level at first, even! Like, “Here’s how to write a female character: you write a fully considered, well-rounded character. They’re a girl.” And Andrew Smith FLIPS HIS SHIT, does some op-ed about how his mother used to beat him so he can’t see girls as people, and makes his twitter private. The “Keep YA Kind” sycophants support him HARD.

And then this happens to pop up on a mysterious Twitter that just HAPPENS to start while HIS twitter’s offline...

NOTE: Jay Asher, author of 13 Reasons Why, was literally dropped from his publisher and SCWBI for being a sexual predator. So like, I don’t think he was bullied, I think his predation was being remarked upon. Like, idk, maybe that he was being called creepy or sth idk idk idk

And then when A.S. decided to unsockpuppet to promote his next book, The Alex Crow, which is about mutant crows and a bunker or whatever:

The “asshole” in specific that Andrew Smith was calling an asshole was delightful human being and fellow author Kate Messner, who, coincidentally, was one of the victims to come out against Lemony Snicket’s sexual harrassment, so she’s had a BULLSHIT time just trying to do her JOB of being an author while female.

Which leads to Tommy Wallach! All-around fucknut! Whose major interest seems to be being That Guy In Philosophy 101 Who Always Has To Be Devil’s Advocate, Even Though No One Asked, and has a deeply vested interest in making sure that teenage girl readers -- who are his target audience, because he chose to write YA, as an adult man who made a choice in what he wrote and chose to make it YA, and not, like, any of the hundreds of genres that AREN’T largely written about and for teenage girls, yk -- know that teenage girls are Dumb. Victoria Schwab actually wrote an essay for YA Books Central about the incessant problem that IS/WAS Tommy Wallach called “We Need To Talk About Tommy” back in -- you guessed it! -- 2016, but it’s offline now and I’m not going to go Wayback it rn.

I’m just going to copypasta YAinterrobang’s Wallach timeline because he’s exhausting, he reminds me of undergrad.

Wallach’s continual pattern of behavior is worth discussing, especially in the context of sexism in YA and the continual marginalization of “diverse” voices in the community despite the efforts of the We Need Diverse Books movement.

Wallach’s problematic behavior runs back over a year, starting with a defense of Andrew Smith where he ignores the opinions of author and advocate Tessa Gratton in favor of a dictionary definition of sexism. (Andrew Smith’s behavior and the fallout around his statements have, of course, already been documented on YA Interrobang in “The Curious Case of Andrew Smith, Twitter & sexism.”) Wallach postures that women are inherently “other” from men, accuses Gratton of “gin[ning]up the controversy” and explains that he is a feminist because he was “raised by a single working mother and she’s still my best friend in the world.”

[View Wallach’s defense of Smith and attack on Gratton as a .pdf.]

Fast forward to later that year. Author Justina Ireland takes to Twitter to discuss a book where she feels the black character is self-hating. Ireland, being black herself, is asked about the book in question; she says that it’s Wallach’s debut novel We All Looked Up. Though Wallach is not tagged, he swoops into the conversation and demands Ireland provide proof that his character Anita is self-hating before claiming that author Dhonielle Clayton, who is also black, is friends with him and “engaged” with him on the issues in the book.

Clayton later stated publicly that she had not done any sensitivity reading on We All Looked Up.

What brought Wallach’s behavior to the attention of the YA world as a whole came this past November in the wake of the horrifying terrorist attacks in Paris. When the hashtag #prayforparis went viral, Wallach responded with multiple social media posts and a blog post about how atheism was the only belief that could make the world a better place. (Though Wallach argues that it is not, in fact, a belief: “The fact that we have a word for it makes it seem like it’s equivalent to other belief systems, but it’s not. The absence of something is not equivalent to the thing itself.”)

[View Wallach’s comments on atheism as a .pdf.]

After Wallach Tweeted that he was a “a rabid atheist, and the world would be a better place if more folk were” – a Tweet he subsequently deleted before deleting his account in its entirety – he doubled down in a block post that outlined all the way religions failed and all the reasons atheism was awesome.

Those who tried to explain to him why this behavior was – to say the least – problematic found themselves quickly blocked or shut down; at once point, Wallach tried to explain anti-Semitism to Jewish author Hannah Moskowitz before claiming that “if [her]parents are atheists and [his]dad is Jewish, [he’s] as much Jewish as [her].”

(For those wondering, Wallach blocked me during this incident despite being friendly with me and having taken my advice previously; while he did believe me in regards to his behavior towards Justina Ireland, which you can see in Tweets above, my snarky comment to him about “the only good people are the people who are exactly like me” was, apparently, too much for him to take. As Wallach’s account has since been deleted and I purged my social media account in January, that interaction is no longer publicly available.)

Take this behavior in comparison to author LJ Silverman, who recently received a sea of anti-Semitic hate mail – including crude manipulated images of her in an oven – for Tweeting that she was worried about the upcoming election in the context of history. Wallach painted himself to be the victim, somebody “attacked” for insulting all of the religious folks in the YA community, while Silverman, who simply shared a worry plaguing her, became a victim of virulent trolls.

While Wallach deleted his social media accounts after this, there were no public consequences to his actions despite ill-will from the YA community at large. If another member of the YA community had spoken out – one of our Catholic or Islamic or Jewish or Mormon authors, for instance – the backlash would have been substantially worse, possibly career-ruining.

Wallach’s career, however, was not ruined; he recently landed a six-figure deal for a book trilogy centered around a “holy war.”

And thus, we return to Wallach’s dismissive comments on suicide – which, it turned out, were neither new or original. In a blog post deleted after it came to light during this discussion, Wallach rated “the top ten literary suicides (organized by emo-ness)” which included all of the characters of HBO’s Girls – “It’s really just a fantasy of mine.” – and, ranking at number one, Sylvia Plath – who is not a character but a real person who suffered from depression before taking her own life at a young age.

[View Wallach’s post on suicide as a .pdf.]

“I’m only going to talk about the fact that a successful YA author found it appropriate to glorify, romanticize, and mock what for many of his readers is among the highest causes of death,” wrote Schwab in her “We Need To Talk About Tommy” post. “That this author could be so very careless and flippant and insensitive about such a very serious issue is abhorrent. That two years after penning this post he still sees suicide as something to be made light of, to be used as a marketing tool.”

Simon & Schuster made no public comment about any of Wallach’s comments. His career, save for making enemies of some fellow authors, seems relatively unscathed by his callous actions.

Anyway, the moral of the story is, like, if you wanna read books by straight white dudes, go for it, but check them out from the library. Spend your book-buying money on books by women, nonbinary/other folks, and dudes who aren’t straight and/or white. Straight white men, PARTICULARLY in categories of literature that are largely targeted towards girls and women, and largely written by girls and women -- but published, edited, and marketed by other straight white men -- are lauded FAR above what they’re actually worth, as like, storytellers or human people go.

The Glass Escalator is a one-way trip to wonderland, but YA is a skyscraper that was built by women and I PROMISE you, whatever book by one of these dudes you’re considering reading, there’s a better version by a woman and/or person of color on the shelves nearby that just didn’t get 1/10th of the marketing money.

And of course there should be an effort to be kind on social media, but “keep YA kind”... to whom? To the people who were being silenced when they were pointing out legitimate problems with the behaviors of men in social power? (And one of whom, in the case of Jay Asher, was LITERALLY DANGEROUS BC HE IS A SEXUAL PREDATOR.) Like, really? There had to be a hashtag campaign to silence dozens of people with legitimate, not-bullying-just-pointing-out-problems-that-are-problems-with-stuff-you-did-dude problems, to make social media feel more comfortable for four middle-aged straight white men?

As though the outside world isn’t comfortable enough for middle-aged straight white men????

[bethevenyc]

Tamika Mallory and is a fan of Louis Farrakhan and people are outraged

Women’s March co-founder Tamika Mallory, who is under fire this week. (Photo: Getty Images)

The Women’s March organization — decried from the start for being non-inclusive by a variety of critics, including some trans women, women of color, sex workers, and even and anti-abortion activists — can now add another rapidly growing rank to that list: Jewish feminists. Or, more broadly, those who oppose anti-Semitism. The latest controversy stems from Women’s March cofounder Tamika Mallory and her recent attendance at a speech given by incendiary National of Islam leader and noted anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan. “Satan is going down. Farrakhan has pulled the cover off the eyes of the Satanic Jew and I’m here to say your time is up, your world is through. You good Jews better separate because the satanic ones will take you to hell with them because that’s where they are headed,” the controversial leader said in what was reportedly a three-hour speech given in Chicago on Feb. 26 in honor of Saviour’s Day, a Nation of Islam holiday celebrating the birth of its founder. Mallory posted a quick Instagram video from the event, plus photos, and received a shout-out from the stage by Farrakhan, according to a report by the Anti-Defamation League. “He even mentioned the Women’s March, saying that while he thought the event was a good thing, women need to learn how to cook so their husbands don’t become obese,” the ADL reported. “Tamika Mallory, one of the March organizers, was in the audience, and got a special shout-out from Farrakhan. Mallory posted two Instagram photos from the event, which Carmen Perez, another Women’s March organizer, commented on with ‘raise the roof’ emojis.”

Louis Farrakhan. (Photo: Getty Images)

This is far from the first public calling-out of Mallory’s association with Farrakhan (not to mention repeated charges of anti-Semitism aimed at cofounder Linda Sarsour), but this one — stoked by Jake Tapper of CNN — appears to be a churning storm that just keeps gaining power, and from which there may not be any turning back for many. “Tamika Mallory has not just gone to see a man oozing of such hatred speak. She has publicly endorsed him,” noted Elad Nehorai in an opinion piece for the Forward. “She has refused to back down for her attendance. She has refused to denounce his words. She has composed her own anti-Semitic dog-whistling comment. And she has thanked others for supporting her attendance.” Much of the increasing blowback has indeed been related to Mallory’s response tweets (in lieu of her releasing an official statement), and to the official Women’s March response, being called too little, too late by many critics. https://twitter.com/TamikaDMallory/status/970487355856576512 The statement, provided to Yahoo Lifestyle and posted on social media by the Women’s March, reads in part: “Anti-Semitism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism and white supremacy are and always will be indefensible. Women’s March is committed to fighting all forms of oppression as outlined in our Unity Principles. We will not tolerate anti-Semitism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia  and we condemn these expressions of hatred in all forms. “Women’s March is an intersectional movement made up of organizers with different backgrounds, who work in different communities. Within the Women’s March movement, we are very conscious of the conversations that must be had across the intersections of race, religion and gender. We love and value our sister and co-President Tamika Mallory, who has played a key role in shaping these conversations. Neither we nor she shy away from the fact that intersectional movement building is difficult and often painful.

Women’s March co-founders Tamika Mallory, right, and Linda Sarsour, at the Power to the Polls event in Las Vegas. (Photo: Getty Images)

“Minister Farrakhan’s statements about Jewish, queer, and trans people are not aligned with the Women’s March Unity Principles, which were created by women of color leaders and are grounded in Kingian Nonviolence. Women’s March is holding conversations with queer, trans, Jewish and Black members of both our team and larger movement to create space for understanding and healing.” Mallory addressed questions regarding her support of Farrakhan (already known by many who have been following the issue) in a Canada public television interview on Feb. 16, before she spoke at a NDP (New Democratic Party) Convention in Ottawa. “I think people have to ask Mr. Farrakhan about his views. I’m not responsible for Mr. Farrakhan nor am I a spokesperson for him,” Mallory said. “What I do know is that I’ve worked with him for many years to address some of the ills in the black community where we’ve transformed lives. Under his guidance, there have been many people who have turned away from drugs, away from crime, to get themselves cleaned up. Many black men have reentered their homes to take care of their families. In those areas, we’ve been able to work together.” When further pressed by the interviewer about how her support could be troubling to many Women’s March supporters, she said, “I would be afraid to go into your families and check to see that all the people that you have dinner with and break bread with during holidays… So when we start this moral purity question, it really is a pretty dangerous road to travel.” Mallory then attempted to shift attention to her own activism. “If we just look at the Women’s March, the most recent action that I was involved with, and something that I led, it was truly intersectional… that’s the work that we need to be focused on.” As part of that work, at the Women’s March Power to the Polls event in Las Vegas on Jan. 21, Mallory gave a rousing speech, calling out many of the white women in the audience. “Don’t come to this rally today and sit here with your pink hat on, saying that you’re with us and you’re nowhere to be found when black people ask you to show up in the streets and defend our lives… Stand up for me, white woman. Come to my aid.” She spoke with Yahoo Lifestyle about that powerful moment recently. “It is always very uncomfortable to be the one or to be among the few who are willing to speak truth to power — even when you happen to be speaking to people who are considered to be friends — and no one wants to be that girl, if you will,” Mallory said. “That you’re the one who is constantly removing the veil from some of these really deep, hurtful, and confrontational discussions is not a popular position… But I’m able to sleep better at night with myself, knowing that I am not just sort of existing within the space without being a part of the voices that actually transform the space.” But now the fact that Mallory has not personally denounced Farrakhan’s bigoted beliefs has put many other women in that same “removing the veil” position, with some believing that her specific silence in this instance makes her — and the other individual March cofounders — complicit. https://twitter.com/jcinthelibrary/status/970093524027957249

A short thread on the Women's March leaders & their support for Farrakhan. 1) Three out of the four co-Presidents of the Women's March have expressed their support for Farrakhan, one of the most vile antisemites in America. Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarour and Carmen Perez.

— Daniel Sugarman (@Daniel_Sugarman) March 6, 2018

https://twitter.com/x0x0x00x0x0/status/970538744481804288 Some Jewish feminists, in particular, expressed feelings of abandonment and disappointment. https://twitter.com/erintothemax/status/970864852808978432 https://twitter.com/jaclynf/status/970728629855404036 Mallory still has plenty of prominent activists in her corner, including Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union, and writer and Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King, who both tweeted support. https://twitter.com/JustAskDonna/status/970322013901467648 https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/969705132421197825 But a pointed essay in the Medium, “An Open Letter to Tamika Mallory,” takes the activist to task over a particular phrase — “enemies of Jesus” — used in one of Mallory’s tweets. “Perhaps you truly do not know that the phrase ‘enemies of Jesus’ is an anti-Semitic dog whistle,” writes Ariela Bee, “that goes back to when the Romans converted to Christianity and they needed a religious narrative that would suit the political demands of the empire.” But in any case, she continues, she is “hurt.” “Let me be very clear: I am not hurt because you are a black woman who is tweeting these words… I am hurt because you are a leader who is tweeting these words. You have influence. You have visibility. You do not force anyone involved in the Women’s March to follow you. People follow you because you have power. Because you have power, your words have the power to hurt.” Adding to that growing chorus this week was Lily Herman, writing for Refinery 29 and laying out not only the recent Farrakhan situation but past evidence of anti-Semitism on the part of Sarsour and cofounder Carmen Perez. “Understandably, the Jewish community — particularly people who have supported the Women’s March and other social justice causes — wanted answers. We also wanted something that most thought would be pretty simple for a bunch of women who spend their days parading around their intersectionality: We wanted them to denounce anti-Semitism and the words Farrakhan said against Jews. This isn’t a new thing; after all, we ask public figures to denounce awful people and hate speech all the time,” she wrote. “To say we didn’t get that is an understatement.”

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

The reason was simple — Trump won: Why 9 women decided to run for political office

Trump-loving conservative women protest the Women’s March: ‘A feminist is someone who is kind of hateful’

Faces of Power to the Polls, the Las Vegas Women’s March: ‘Our voices are finally being heard’

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[celticnoise]

Last night, someone drew my attention to a number of tweets and posts on social media attacking our fans for the Donald Trump banner at the weekend.

One particular eejit was trying to provoke Tom English and Graham Speirs into a bizarre conversation over whether an anti-Pope banner and an anti-Trump banner were necessarily different things.

That this needs explaining to someone is a sign of the low IQ we’re dealing with.

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But that individual wasn’t alone.

His was just the most extreme reaction.

Others foamed at the mouth over the “politics” of it, for reasons that are hard to understand.

What Trump’s done here isn’t exactly subtle, and it’s not exactly universally popular. Just about every government on Earth has roundly condemned it, including the British one. His own State Department is said to be in virtual meltdown over it. There are people there who have devoted their careers to a two-state solution. Trump gave it the old two fingered one. Their life’s work is in ruins because this guy is appealing to the lowest common denominator.

He’s a strange one, is Trump, and so are a lot of those who defend him.

I am particularly amused by those who do it from the far right of the Sevco support. Those who are most vocally, and venomously, aggrieved by a section of our own fan base being pro-Palestinian have embraced Israel tightly in response.

Talk about a stupid reaction.

Quite how the same people who dabble on the fringes of fascism here in the UK can readily embrace the hard-core government which promotes the rights of Jewish citizens to a country of their own I really do not know.

The general consensus on that side of the political spectrum isn’t pro-Israel or pro-Jew, it’s Hitlerian, and they make no bones about it.

I’ve said before, any Israeli citizen who’s looking for friends amongst this lot ought to think again.

They ought to book up on the Loyalist paramilitaries and their association with Combat 18 and other UK far-right organisations who would have gladly let the more extreme Arab leaders get on with the job of “driving the Jews into the sea.”

I’ve also read some right old clap-trap about Celtic fans supporting Palestine as being “support for terrorism.”

Jesus, can’t these people do basic research?

One acquainted support for Palestine with support for Hamas.

Ahem, nice try but technically all over the place … besides, since 2016 – and actually before – Hamas has been explicitly concerned with assisting Arab regimes in tackling extremist groups. They haven’t been openly at war with Israel since 2008-09, at the height of the Gaza conflict.

Someone else mentioned Hezbollah; haha. Such poor research.

They are a Lebanon based organisation funded in part by Syria and Iran. Whilst having much in common with Hamas, they aren’t necessarily one in the same and Hezbollah’s interests aren’t so much conjoined with that of the Palestinians inasmuch as they occasionally criss-cross each other.

Neither organisation was affiliated to Al Qaeda – both in fact have history in fighting Al Qaeda forces on the ground.

Both were vehemently opposed to the agenda and leadership of Islamic State; connecting the two was another stupid mistake a lot of these online muppets have made … and neither Al Qaeda nor IS has the slightest connection with the Palestinian cause.

No Palestinian linked organisation has carried out a terrorist attack in the West since the late 70’s, with the Abu Nidal organisation and the PLO now past history.

Honest to God, the ignorance of these people is mind-numbing.

It hasn’t dawned on them that Celtic fans might just be concerned global citizens … that idea is so far from their own reality that I don’t wonder they’ve excluded it from their thinking.

Our fans have a great and honourable history on the side of the Palestinian people.

That really gets up the noses of a lot of folk.

And those who are defending Trump and calling our fans disgraceful for launching an attack on the policies of this “global leader” would do well to check out Roy Moore, the sectarian bigot Trump just endorsed to be governor of Alabama.

One of the things he’s accused of, incidentally, is sexual abuse involving minors; a lot of Sevco’s online bile mongers seem awfully obsessed by that subject.

You’d think they’d have had anti-Trump banners of their own if it bothered them so much.

But it doesn’t. They are shameless, point-scoring, snivelling hypocrites without a shred of decency or humanity amongst the lot of them, and they are mugs if they don’t think the whole world knows it.

  http://ift.tt/2yfV9zY

[nancy-astorga]

The new face of Trump’s legal team has never done anything like this — and allies think he’s the perfect fit

When Jay Sekulow found himself backed into a corner during a heated interview with Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday, he pulled out his inner Trump.

The host of “Fox News Sunday” was pressing Sekulow on President Donald Trump’s Friday tweet, in which Trump wrote: “I am under investigation.”

Wallace and Sekulow, a big time conservative lawyer who is quickly becoming the face of Trump’s legal team, went back and forth on the issue. Sekulow, while trying to explain why Trump wasn’t personally under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, found himself saying that Trump was under investigation. Twice.

“You’ve now said that he is being investigated,” Wallace said.

“No, Chris,” Sekulow replied. “Let me be crystal clear so you completely understand: We have not received nor are we aware of any investigation of the president of the United States.”

“Sir, you’ve just said two times that he’s being investigated,” Wallace said.

As the president has done on many occasions, Sekulow then doubled- and tripled-down on his point even while his rhetoric from just moments before contradicted it. Trump was not under investigation, he reiterated time and time again.

And he became more forceful in each answer.

“I just gave you the legal theory, Chris, of how the Constitution works,” Sekulow said.

“If in fact it was correct that the president was being investigated, he would be investigated for taking an action that an agency told him to take,” he continued, referring to Trump’s firing of James Comey as FBI director, which reportedly sparked the investigation into Trump. “So that is protected under the Constitution.”

By the time the testy exchange reached the question of whether Trump would fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein or Mueller, Sekulow had turned his ire onto Wallace himself.

“Here’s what you’re trying to do, Chris,” Sekulow said.

“Now you’re reading minds again,” Wallace replied.

“No, Chris, I deal with fact and law,” Sekulow said. “You’re asking me to read people’s minds.”

It was the most notable moment from Sekulow’s wild tour across four of the five Sunday shows on his second week of appearing on such programs to defend his newest client, the president of the United States.

Without much fanfare or even notification, Sekulow had appeared on TV as a member of the legal team defending Trump from the increasingly pointed investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russian officials in the 2016 presidential election and, more recently, whether Trump himself committed obstruction of justice in his firing of Comey.

The recent addition to Trump’s legal team, which also includes his private attorney Marc Kasowitz and former US Attorney John Dowd, an expert in white-collar criminal law, happens to be the only member who has experience litigating before the Supreme Court. His record in those cases is eight wins and four losses.

But although that experience comes with an impressive record of victories, Sekulow has no experience in anything similar to the kind of battle that Trump is now facing.

Those who know Sekulow, however, aren’t surprised that he’s taking on Trump’s battle. And even though he has no experience in white-collar crime, some say he is the perfect choice to be the face of the president’s legal team.

Still, Sekulow is a controversial figure in his own right.

Through a spokesperson, Sekulow, in addition to anyone from the American Center for Law and Justice legal organization he heads, declined to comment for this story.

Who is he?

Jay Alan Sekulow, 61, was born in Brooklyn, New York.

A seminal moment for Sekulow happened in college, when the Jewish New Yorker underwent a spiritual awakening and found Jesus. It would become the starter for his involvement with the non-profit organization Jews for Jesus, which led him to his first battle in front of the Supreme Court. And, later, to his partnership with televangelist Pat Robertson and his crusade for causes important to the religious right.

But before he found himself arguing constitutional law before the nation’s highest court, Sekulow was an Atlanta-based tax attorney who ran his own law firm almost as soon as he left college.

Jeffrey Cohen, an Atlanta tax attorney, worked at Sekulow’s firm in the early 1980s. It wasn’t a fruitful partnership, as Cohen sued Sekulow after he failed to pay Cohen a promised year-end $20,000 bonus after an eight-month stint at the firm. Cohen won the suit, and he told Business Insider the jury gave him everything he wanted “plus attorney’s fees.” In 1991, he described the experience at Sekulow’s firm as “an eight-month nightmare.”

Cohen said he’s only spoken to Sekulow one time over the past three decades — a 10-second “cordial” exchange in the Atlanta airport. Although he sued Sekulow, Cohen said the two “never had a bad relationship” during his stint at the firm.

“We weren’t what I would call friends, we weren’t butting heads either,” he said.

Cohen described the young Sekulow as “fantastically successful.”

“One thing I’ll never forget about him was that given that he was younger than me,” Cohen said. “And I was young.”

He continued: “His law firm was very new, he hadn’t been practicing law a long time at all. Yet he was mind-numbingly successful at bringing in new clients, a number of clients. … He was very charming and an excellent business generator.”

The Atlanta tax attorney admitted to seeing some of the clips of Sekulow on TV defending Trump, expressing little surprise.

“This is a man who’s had his own television show, radio show, been in the public eye and he is very comfortable, evidently, in front of the camera, behind a microphone,” he said. “And I am not surprised at all that he is that smooth and eloquent as he was back then. He was a prodigy in terms of being impressive and charming and never at a loss for words. I compliment him highly from that standpoint.”

Things came to a quick crash for Sekulow from his early days in Atlanta. In 1986, after he and his associates were sued for fraud and securities violations related to a development project, Sekulow declared bankruptcy. Later that year, he signed on as general counsel for Jews for Jesus.

The following year, he won a 9-0 decision for the group at the Supreme Court, arguing in defense of Jews for Jesus’ right to hand pamphlets out at the Los Angeles International Airport. It was the first of 12 cases he’d argue before the Supreme Court over the next 21 years, almost all of which were similar in nature to the Jews for Jesus case.

In 1992, he joined forces with Robertson and became chief legal counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which was dubbed a conservative alternative to the American Civil Liberties Union. That organization has since expanded throughout the world to promote Christian and religious-right causes.

Sekulow has previously come under fire for reportedly using the ACLJ, where he is chief executive officer, and another legal nonprofit, Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism (CASE), to build “a financial empire that generates millions of dollars a year and supports a lavish lifestyle — complete with multiple homes, chauffeur-driven cars, and a private jet that he once used to ferry Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia,” according to a 2005 story in Legal Times.

In 2011, a Tennessean investigation reported that the two non-profits paid out “$33 million to members of Sekulow’s family and businesses they own or co-own” over a span of 13 years.

Both organizations have raked in millions of dollars.

The ACLJ, Bloomberg reported, pulled in more than $19 million in grants and contributions in 2015, the most recent year an IRS filing is available. Sekulow’s family members occupy many of the organization’s most important positions, including chief financial officer, chief executive officer, and director of major donors. Although Bloomberg found that the filing showed Sekulow received no salary from the ACLJ in 2015, the nonprofit transferred more than $5 million to a Washington law firm that Sekulow is a 50% owner of.

CASE, the other non-profit, raised more than $52 million in 2015, according to its filing. Bloomberg reported that four of Sekulow’s family members, including his wife and brother, serve on the CASE board of directors, and the organization transferred roughly $16 million to the ACLJ in addition to payments of about $1.2 million to Sekulow-owned businesses.

Michael McLachlan, a Colorado attorney who served as the state’s solicitor general in 1999, when he won a Supreme Court decision for the state over Sekulow in Hill v. Colorado, pointed to Sekulow’s money-making abilities as a cause for question during an interview with Business Insider.

“He’s kind of like what I would consider a legal Billy Sunday or Elmer Gantry,” McLachlan said, referencing the early 20th Century evangelist and his fictional 1920s evangelical peer who both made a great deal of money from their preaching. “He’s in the camp raiding the money.”

“These little old ladies mailing in their welfare checks to the 700 Club and to [Sekulow] … Hey, I mean I think that somebody needs to get a little handle on what he’s making millions and millions of dollars a year on television,” he said. “And, he’s a good lawyer, don’t misunderstand me, I’m not faulting him as being a good lawyer.”

McLachlan, who served a brief stint as a Democratic representative in the Colorado House of Representatives earlier this decade, said there’s “no doubt that” Sekulow is “experienced in Supreme Court arguments,” but added that “he’s successful in my opinion more than he should be.”

“As far as the merits of what he does, he’s an extremely effective voice for the religious right,” he said. “And at the same time, he’s making millions and millions of dollars a year, really, fundraising through television. And it’s very unique. I would love to see his tax returns.”

Sekulow, who had influential roles as a Supreme Court adviser to President George W. Bush and as an adviser to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2008 and 2012, has mostly transitioned from Supreme Court litigator to television pundit in recent years. Sekulow is a frequent guest on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s program, and on a number of Christian broadcasting programs. He also hosts “Jay Sekulow Live!” along with his son, Jordan. The show is syndicated on satellite radio.

“Jay is a incredible lawyer, a gifted communicator,” Hannity told Business Insider in an email. “His track record with Supreme Court cases speaks for itself. He knows and understands the law, the Constitution and is a passionate articulate advocate for those he represents.”

“I think people are missing the strategic intent behind it”

David French, a longtime friend and former colleague of Sekulow’s at the ACLJ, told Business Insider that it makes perfect sense for Trump to bring on the attorney to his legal team.

Even though most onlookers are questioning why a lawyer with Sekulow’s background in fighting for legal causes of the religious right would fit into the picture in this instance, French, now a writer at The National Review, said it actually makes perfect sense, adding that onlookers are “missing” something big in their analysis.

“I’m hearing all these people say ‘oh, well, Jay is not a white-collar criminal defense lawyer,'” French said. “They totally misunderstand the nature of this proceeding. I don’t think the real issue is ‘will Donald Trump face a jury in the Southern District of New York or in DC.’ The really important issue is ‘is this a scandal that can threaten a presidency up to the potential of impeachment?’ That’s the real guts of this. And that’s a political question that is heavily influenced by legal arguments.”

“Jay’s a very, very good lawyer,” he continued. “But what he’s been spending years doing is making political arguments from a legal perspective. And he’s a master at it. So no, it doesn’t surprise me one bit that Trump would hire Jay or retain Jay for that purpose. And I think people are missing the strategic intent behind it and the strategic sense of it.”

French, who co-authored a 2014 book with Sekulow about the Islamic State terror group, called Sekulow a “very effective” and “very forceful public communicator.”

“Unfortunately, Trump has been ill-served by some of his spokesmen,” he said. “Now, Trump compounds a heck of a lot of his problems with his irresponsible and reckless tweeting and his own lack of discipline. I mean, arguably he’s right now sleeping in a bed that he has made through his own statements and his own actions. But, you know, if there’s one thing that he needs, it’s forceful and effective public advocates who can go into the court of public opinion and make a strong legal argument and put it in a way that people can and will understand.”

To French, it’s becoming clear that Sekulow is becoming the public face of Trump’s legal team.

“If you just judge Jay’s performance vs. some of the other legal spokespeople for Trump, I think Jay’s in his element,” French said.

McLachlan also said he too was not surprised to see Trump tap Sekulow to join the legal team.

“In fact, it’s in my opinion it really is par for the course as far as [Sekulow’s] career path,” he said. “And you know, President Trump’s close to Pat Robertson, he’s close to Liberty University, he’s close to the religious right.”

It’s clear too to McLachlan that Sekulow is going to be the face of Trump’s high-profile team. McLachlan thinks the president wanted it this way because Sekulow “has a huge following” and “is articulate.”

McLachlan pointed to Sekulow’s interview with Wallace.

“As you saw in the interview he did on television, the president tweeted ‘I am under investigation.’ Those are a series of unequivocal words,” McLachlan said. “And [then] Jay Sekulow got into his mealy mouth an explanation that made it sound as if he’s not really sure.”

SEE ALSO: Trump appears furious with his deputy attorney general after a wild 2 days — and ‘resignation is a real serious possibility’

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: ‘I’ll ask it one more time’: Kellyanne Conway won’t say whether Trump thinks climate change is a hoax

[alanafsmith]

The new face of Trump's legal team has never done anything like this — and allies think he's the perfect fit

When Jay Sekulow found himself backed into a corner during a heated interview with Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday, he pulled out his inner Trump.

The host of "Fox News Sunday" was pressing Sekulow on President Donald Trump's Friday tweet, in which Trump wrote: "I am under investigation."

Wallace and Sekulow, a big time conservative lawyer who is quickly becoming the face of Trump's legal team, went back and forth on the issue. Sekulow, while trying to explain why Trump wasn't personally under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, found himself saying that Trump was under investigation. Twice.

"You've now said that he is being investigated," Wallace said.

"No, Chris," Sekulow replied. "Let me be crystal clear so you completely understand: We have not received nor are we aware of any investigation of the president of the United States."

"Sir, you've just said two times that he's being investigated," Wallace said.

As the president has done on many occasions, Sekulow then doubled- and tripled-down on his point even while his rhetoric from just moments before contradicted it. Trump was not under investigation, he reiterated time and time again.

And he became more forceful in each answer.

"I just gave you the legal theory, Chris, of how the Constitution works," Sekulow said.

"If in fact it was correct that the president was being investigated, he would be investigated for taking an action that an agency told him to take," he continued, referring to Trump's firing of James Comey as FBI director, which reportedly sparked the investigation into Trump. "So that is protected under the Constitution."

By the time the testy exchange reached the question of whether Trump would fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein or Mueller, Sekulow had turned his ire onto Wallace himself.

"Here's what you're trying to do, Chris," Sekulow said.

"Now you're reading minds again," Wallace replied.

"No, Chris, I deal with fact and law," Sekulow said. "You're asking me to read people's minds."

It was the most notable moment from Sekulow's wild tour across four of the five Sunday shows on his second week of appearing on such programs to defend his newest client, the president of the United States.

Without much fanfare or even notification, Sekulow had appeared on TV as a member of the legal team defending Trump from the increasingly pointed investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russian officials in the 2016 presidential election and, more recently, whether Trump himself committed obstruction of justice in his firing of Comey.

The recent addition to Trump's legal team, which also includes his private attorney Marc Kasowitz and former US Attorney John Dowd, an expert in white-collar criminal law, happens to be the only member who has experience litigating before the Supreme Court. His record in those cases is eight wins and four losses.

But although that experience comes with an impressive record of victories, Sekulow has no experience in anything similar to the kind of battle that Trump is now facing.

Those who know Sekulow, however, aren't surprised that he's taking on Trump's battle. And even though he has no experience in white-collar crime, some say he is the perfect choice to be the face of the president's legal team.

Still, Sekulow is a controversial figure in his own right.

Through a spokesperson, Sekulow, in addition to anyone from the American Center for Law and Justice legal organization he heads, declined to comment for this story.

Who is he?

Jay Alan Sekulow, 61, was born in Brooklyn, New York.

A seminal moment for Sekulow happened in college, when the Jewish New Yorker underwent a spiritual awakening and found Jesus. It would become the starter for his involvement with the non-profit organization Jews for Jesus, which led him to his first battle in front of the Supreme Court. And, later, to his partnership with televangelist Pat Robertson and his crusade for causes important to the religious right.

But before he found himself arguing constitutional law before the nation's highest court, Sekulow was an Atlanta-based tax attorney who ran his own law firm almost as soon as he left college.

Jeffrey Cohen, an Atlanta tax attorney, worked at Sekulow's firm in the early 1980s. It wasn't a fruitful partnership, as Cohen sued Sekulow after he failed to pay Cohen a promised year-end $20,000 bonus after an eight-month stint at the firm. Cohen won the suit, and he told Business Insider the jury gave him everything he wanted "plus attorney's fees." In 1991, he described the experience at Sekulow's firm as "an eight-month nightmare."

Cohen said he's only spoken to Sekulow one time over the past three decades — a 10 second "cordial" exchange in the Atlanta airport. Although he sued Sekulow, Cohen said the two "never had a bad relationship" during his stint at the firm.

"We weren't what I would call friends, we weren't butting heads either," he said.

Cohen described the young Sekulow as "fantastically successful."

"One thing I'll never forget about him was that given that he was younger than me," Cohen said. "And I was young."

He continued: "His law firm was very new, he hadn't been practicing law a long time at all. Yet he was mind-numbingly successful at bringing in new clients, a number of clients. ... He was very charming and an excellent business generator."

The Atlanta tax attorney admitted to seeing some of the clips of Sekulow on TV defending Trump, expressing little surprise.

"This is a man who's had his own television show, radio show, been in the public eye and he is very comfortable, evidently, in front of the camera, behind a microphone," he said. "And I am not surprised at all that he is that smooth and eloquent as he was back then. He was a prodigy in terms of being impressive and charming and never at a loss for words. I compliment him highly from that standpoint."

Things came to a quick crash for Sekulow from his early days in Atlanta. In 1986, after he and his associates were sued for fraud and securities violations related to a development project, Sekulow declared bankruptcy. Later that year, he signed on as general counsel for Jews for Jesus.

The following year, he won a 9-0 decision for the group at the Supreme Court, arguing in defense of Jews for Jesus' right to hand pamphlets out at the Los Angeles International Airport. It was the first of 12 cases he'd argue before the Supreme Court over the next 21 years, almost all of which were similar in nature to the Jews for Jesus case.

In 1992, he joined forces with Robertson and became chief legal counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which was dubbed a conservative alternative to the American Civil Liberties Union. That organization has since expanded throughout the world to promote Christian and religious-right causes.

Sekulow has previously come under fire for reportedly using the ACLJ, where he is chief executive officer, and another legal nonprofit, Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism (CASE), to build "a financial empire that generates millions of dollars a year and supports a lavish lifestyle — complete with multiple homes, chauffeur-driven cars, and a private jet that he once used to ferry Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia," according to a 2005 story in Legal Times.

In 2011, a Tennessean investigation reported that the two non-profits paid out "$33 million to members of Sekulow’s family and businesses they own or co-own" over a span of 13 years.

Both organizations have raked in millions of dollars.

The ACLJ, Bloomberg reported, pulled in more than $19 million in grants and contributions in 2015, the most recent year an IRS filing is available. Sekulow's family members occupy many of the organization's most important positions, including chief financial officer, chief executive officer, and director of major donors. Although Bloomberg found that the filing showed Sekulow received no salary from the ACLJ in 2015, the nonprofit transferred more than $5 million to a Washington law firm that Sekulow is a 50% owner of.

CASE, the other non-profit, raised more than $52 million in 2015, according to its filing. Bloomberg reported that four of Sekulow's family members, including his wife and brother, serve on the CASE board of directors, and the organization transferred roughly $16 million to the ACLJ in addition to payments of about $1.2 million to Sekulow-owned businesses.

Michael McLachlan, a Colorado attorney who served as the state's solicitor general in 1999, when he won a Supreme Court decision for the state over Sekulow in Hill v. Colorado, pointed to Sekulow's money-making abilities as a cause for question during an interview with Business Insider.

"He's kind of like what I would consider a legal Billy Sunday or Elmer Gantry," McLachlan said, referencing the early 20th Century evangelist and his fictional 1920s evangelical peer who both made a great deal of money from their preaching. "He's in the camp raiding the money."

"These little old ladies mailing in their welfare checks to the 700 Club and to [Sekulow] ... Hey, I mean I think that somebody needs to get a little handle on what he's making millions and millions of dollars a year on television," he said. "And, he's a good lawyer, don't misunderstand me, I'm not faulting him as being a good lawyer."

McLachlan, who served a brief stint as a Democratic representative in the Colorado House of Representatives earlier this decade, said there's "no doubt that" Sekulow is "experienced in Supreme Court arguments," but added that "he's successful in my opinion more than he should be."

"As far as the merits of what he does, he's an extremely effective voice for the religious right," he said. "And at the same time, he's making millions and millions of dollars a year, really, fundraising through television. And it's very unique. I would love to see his tax returns."

Sekulow, who had influential roles as a Supreme Court adviser to President George W. Bush and as an adviser to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2008 and 2012, has mostly transitioned from Supreme Court litigator to television pundit in recent years. Sekulow is a frequent guest on Fox News host Sean Hannity's program, and on a number of Christian broadcasting programs. He also hosts "Jay Sekulow Live!" along with his son, Jordan. The show is syndicated on satellite radio.

"Jay is a incredible lawyer, a gifted communicator," Hannity told Business Insider in an email. "His track record with Supreme Court cases speaks for itself. He knows and understands the law, the Constitution and is a passionate articulate advocate for those he represents."

"I think people are missing the strategic intent behind it"

David French, a longtime friend and former colleague of Sekulow's at the ACLJ, told Business Insider that it makes perfect sense for Trump to bring on the attorney to his legal team.

Even though most onlookers are questioning why a lawyer with Sekulow's background in fighting for legal causes of the religious right would fit into the picture in this instance, French, now a writer at The National Review, said it actually makes perfect sense, adding that onlookers are "missing" something big in their analysis.

"I'm hearing all these people say 'oh, well, Jay is not a white-collar criminal defense lawyer,'" French said. "They totally misunderstand the nature of this proceeding. I don't think the real issue is 'will Donald Trump face a jury in the Southern District of New York or in DC.' The really important issue is 'is this a scandal that can threaten a presidency up to the potential of impeachment?' That's the real guts of this. And that's a political question that is heavily influenced by legal arguments."

"Jay's a very, very good lawyer," he continued. "But what he's been spending years doing is making political arguments from a legal perspective. And he's a master at it. So no, it doesn't surprise me one bit that Trump would hire Jay or retain Jay for that purpose. And I think people are missing the strategic intent behind it and the strategic sense of it."

French, who co-authored a 2014 book with Sekulow about the Islamic State terror group, called Sekulow a "very effective" and "very forceful public communicator."

"Unfortunately, Trump has been ill-served by some of his spokesmen," he said. "Now, Trump compounds a heck of a lot of his problems with his irresponsible and reckless tweeting and his own lack of discipline. I mean, arguably he's right now sleeping in a bed that he has made through his own statements and his own actions. But, you know, if there's one thing that he needs, it's forceful and effective public advocates who can go into the court of public opinion and make a strong legal argument and put it in a way that people can and will understand."

To French, it's becoming clear that Sekulow is becoming the public face of Trump's legal team.

"If you just judge Jay's performance vs. some of the other legal spokespeople for Trump, I think Jay's in his element," French said.

McLachlan also said he too was not surprised to see Trump tap Sekulow to join the legal team.

"In fact, it's in my opinion it really is par for the course as far as [Sekulow's] career path," he said. "And you know, President Trump's close to Pat Robertson, he's close to Liberty University, he's close to the religious right."

It's clear too to McLachlan that Sekulow is going to be the face of Trump's high-profile team. McLachlan thinks the president wanted it this way because Sekulow "has a huge following" and "is articulate."

McLachlan pointed to Sekulow's interview with Wallace.

"As you saw in the interview he did on television, the president tweeted 'I am under investigation.' Those are a series of unequivocal words," McLachlan said. "And [then] Jay Sekulow got into his mealy mouth an explanation that made it sound as if he's not really sure."

SEE ALSO: Trump appears furious with his deputy attorney general after a wild 2 days — and 'resignation is a real serious possibility'

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 'Where is Sean?': Things got awkward when April Ryan asked Sarah Sanders why Spicer didn’t attend the WH briefing

from All About Law http://www.businessinsider.com/jay-sekulow-new-face-trump-legal-team-russia-2017-6

[nancy-astorga]

The new face of Trump’s legal team has never done anything like this — and allies think he’s the perfect fit

When Jay Sekulow found himself backed into a corner during a heated interview with Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday, he pulled out his inner Trump.

The host of “Fox News Sunday” was pressing Sekulow on President Donald Trump’s Friday tweet, in which Trump wrote: “I am under investigation.”

Wallace and Sekulow, a big time conservative lawyer who is quickly becoming the face of Trump’s legal team, went back and forth on the issue. Sekulow, while trying to explain why Trump wasn’t personally under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, found himself saying that Trump was under investigation. Twice.

“You’ve now said that he is being investigated,” Wallace said.

“No, Chris,” Sekulow replied. “Let me be crystal clear so you completely understand: We have not received nor are we aware of any investigation of the president of the United States.”

“Sir, you’ve just said two times that he’s being investigated,” Wallace said.

As the president has done on many occasions, Sekulow then doubled- and tripled-down on his point even while his rhetoric from just moments before contradicted it. Trump was not under investigation, he reiterated time and time again.

And he became more forceful in each answer.

“I just gave you the legal theory, Chris, of how the Constitution works,” Sekulow said.

“If in fact it was correct that the president was being investigated, he would be investigated for taking an action that an agency told him to take,” he continued, referring to Trump’s firing of James Comey as FBI director, which reportedly sparked the investigation into Trump. “So that is protected under the Constitution.”

By the time the testy exchange reached the question of whether Trump would fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein or Mueller, Sekulow had turned his ire onto Wallace himself.

“Here’s what you’re trying to do, Chris,” Sekulow said.

“Now you’re reading minds again,” Wallace replied.

“No, Chris, I deal with fact and law,” Sekulow said. “You’re asking me to read people’s minds.”

It was the most notable moment from Sekulow’s wild tour across four of the five Sunday shows on his second week of appearing on such programs to defend his newest client, the president of the United States.

Without much fanfare or even notification, Sekulow had appeared on TV as a member of the legal team defending Trump from the increasingly pointed investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russian officials in the 2016 presidential election and, more recently, whether Trump himself committed obstruction of justice in his firing of Comey.

The recent addition to Trump’s legal team, which also includes his private attorney Marc Kasowitz and former US Attorney John Dowd, an expert in white-collar criminal law, happens to be the only member who has experience litigating before the Supreme Court. His record in those cases is eight wins and four losses.

But although that experience comes with an impressive record of victories, Sekulow has no experience in anything similar to the kind of battle that Trump is now facing.

Those who know Sekulow, however, aren’t surprised that he’s taking on Trump’s battle. And even though he has no experience in white-collar crime, some say he is the perfect choice to be the face of the president’s legal team.

Still, Sekulow is a controversial figure in his own right.

Through a spokesperson, Sekulow, in addition to anyone from the American Center for Law and Justice legal organization he heads, declined to comment for this story.

Who is he?

Jay Alan Sekulow, 61, was born in Brooklyn, New York.

A seminal moment for Sekulow happened in college, when the Jewish New Yorker underwent a spiritual awakening and found Jesus. It would become the starter for his involvement with the non-profit organization Jews for Jesus, which led him to his first battle in front of the Supreme Court. And, later, to his partnership with televangelist Pat Robertson and his crusade for causes important to the religious right.

But before he found himself arguing constitutional law before the nation’s highest court, Sekulow was an Atlanta-based tax attorney who ran his own law firm almost as soon as he left college.

Jeffrey Cohen, an Atlanta tax attorney, worked at Sekulow’s firm in the early 1980s. It wasn’t a fruitful partnership, as Cohen sued Sekulow after he failed to pay Cohen a promised year-end $20,000 bonus after an eight-month stint at the firm. Cohen won the suit, and he told Business Insider the jury gave him everything he wanted “plus attorney’s fees.” In 1991, he described the experience at Sekulow’s firm as “an eight-month nightmare.”

Cohen said he’s only spoken to Sekulow one time over the past three decades — a 10 second “cordial” exchange in the Atlanta airport. Although he sued Sekulow, Cohen said the two “never had a bad relationship” during his stint at the firm.

“We weren’t what I would call friends, we weren’t butting heads either,” he said.

Cohen described the young Sekulow as “fantastically successful.”

“One thing I’ll never forget about him was that given that he was younger than me,” Cohen said. “And I was young.”

He continued: “His law firm was very new, he hadn’t been practicing law a long time at all. Yet he was mind-numbingly successful at bringing in new clients, a number of clients. … He was very charming and an excellent business generator.”

The Atlanta tax attorney admitted to seeing some of the clips of Sekulow on TV defending Trump, expressing little surprise.

“This is a man who’s had his own television show, radio show, been in the public eye and he is very comfortable, evidently, in front of the camera, behind a microphone,” he said. “And I am not surprised at all that he is that smooth and eloquent as he was back then. He was a prodigy in terms of being impressive and charming and never at a loss for words. I compliment him highly from that standpoint.”

Things came to a quick crash for Sekulow from his early days in Atlanta. In 1986, after he and his associates were sued for fraud and securities violations related to a development project, Sekulow declared bankruptcy. Later that year, he signed on as general counsel for Jews for Jesus.

The following year, he won a 9-0 decision for the group at the Supreme Court, arguing in defense of Jews for Jesus’ right to hand pamphlets out at the Los Angeles International Airport. It was the first of 12 cases he’d argue before the Supreme Court over the next 21 years, almost all of which were similar in nature to the Jews for Jesus case.

In 1992, he joined forces with Robertson and became chief legal counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which was dubbed a conservative alternative to the American Civil Liberties Union. That organization has since expanded throughout the world to promote Christian and religious-right causes.

Sekulow has previously come under fire for reportedly using the ACLJ, where he is chief executive officer, and another legal nonprofit, Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism (CASE), to build “a financial empire that generates millions of dollars a year and supports a lavish lifestyle — complete with multiple homes, chauffeur-driven cars, and a private jet that he once used to ferry Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia,” according to a 2005 story in Legal Times.

In 2011, a Tennessean investigation reported that the two non-profits paid out “$33 million to members of Sekulow’s family and businesses they own or co-own” over a span of 13 years.

Both organizations have raked in millions of dollars.

The ACLJ, Bloomberg reported, pulled in more than $19 million in grants and contributions in 2015, the most recent year an IRS filing is available. Sekulow’s family members occupy many of the organization’s most important positions, including chief financial officer, chief executive officer, and director of major donors. Although Bloomberg found that the filing showed Sekulow received no salary from the ACLJ in 2015, the nonprofit transferred more than $5 million to a Washington law firm that Sekulow is a 50% owner of.

CASE, the other non-profit, raised more than $52 million in 2015, according to its filing. Bloomberg reported that four of Sekulow’s family members, including his wife and brother, serve on the CASE board of directors, and the organization transferred roughly $16 million to the ACLJ in addition to payments of about $1.2 million to Sekulow-owned businesses.

Michael McLachlan, a Colorado attorney who served as the state’s solicitor general in 1999, when he won a Supreme Court decision for the state over Sekulow in Hill v. Colorado, pointed to Sekulow’s money-making abilities as a cause for question during an interview with Business Insider.

“He’s kind of like what I would consider a legal Billy Sunday or Elmer Gantry,” McLachlan said, referencing the early 20th Century evangelist and his fictional 1920s evangelical peer who both made a great deal of money from their preaching. “He’s in the camp raiding the money.”

“These little old ladies mailing in their welfare checks to the 700 Club and to [Sekulow] … Hey, I mean I think that somebody needs to get a little handle on what he’s making millions and millions of dollars a year on television,” he said. “And, he’s a good lawyer, don’t misunderstand me, I’m not faulting him as being a good lawyer.”

McLachlan, who served a brief stint as a Democratic representative in the Colorado House of Representatives earlier this decade, said there’s “no doubt that” Sekulow is “experienced in Supreme Court arguments,” but added that “he’s successful in my opinion more than he should be.”

“As far as the merits of what he does, he’s an extremely effective voice for the religious right,” he said. “And at the same time, he’s making millions and millions of dollars a year, really, fundraising through television. And it’s very unique. I would love to see his tax returns.”

Sekulow, who had influential roles as a Supreme Court adviser to President George W. Bush and as an adviser to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2008 and 2012, has mostly transitioned from Supreme Court litigator to television pundit in recent years. Sekulow is a frequent guest on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s program, and on a number of Christian broadcasting programs. He also hosts “Jay Sekulow Live!” along with his son, Jordan. The show is syndicated on satellite radio.

“Jay is a incredible lawyer, a gifted communicator,” Hannity told Business Insider in an email. “His track record with Supreme Court cases speaks for itself. He knows and understands the law, the Constitution and is a passionate articulate advocate for those he represents.”

“I think people are missing the strategic intent behind it”

David French, a longtime friend and former colleague of Sekulow’s at the ACLJ, told Business Insider that it makes perfect sense for Trump to bring on the attorney to his legal team.

Even though most onlookers are questioning why a lawyer with Sekulow’s background in fighting for legal causes of the religious right would fit into the picture in this instance, French, now a writer at The National Review, said it actually makes perfect sense, adding that onlookers are “missing” something big in their analysis.

“I’m hearing all these people say ‘oh, well, Jay is not a white-collar criminal defense lawyer,'” French said. “They totally misunderstand the nature of this proceeding. I don’t think the real issue is ‘will Donald Trump face a jury in the Southern District of New York or in DC.’ The really important issue is ‘is this a scandal that can threaten a presidency up to the potential of impeachment?’ That’s the real guts of this. And that’s a political question that is heavily influenced by legal arguments.”

“Jay’s a very, very good lawyer,” he continued. “But what he’s been spending years doing is making political arguments from a legal perspective. And he’s a master at it. So no, it doesn’t surprise me one bit that Trump would hire Jay or retain Jay for that purpose. And I think people are missing the strategic intent behind it and the strategic sense of it.”

French, who co-authored a 2014 book with Sekulow about the Islamic State terror group, called Sekulow a “very effective” and “very forceful public communicator.”

“Unfortunately, Trump has been ill-served by some of his spokesmen,” he said. “Now, Trump compounds a heck of a lot of his problems with his irresponsible and reckless tweeting and his own lack of discipline. I mean, arguably he’s right now sleeping in a bed that he has made through his own statements and his own actions. But, you know, if there’s one thing that he needs, it’s forceful and effective public advocates who can go into the court of public opinion and make a strong legal argument and put it in a way that people can and will understand.”

To French, it’s becoming clear that Sekulow is becoming the public face of Trump’s legal team.

“If you just judge Jay’s performance vs. some of the other legal spokespeople for Trump, I think Jay’s in his element,” French said.

McLachlan also said he too was not surprised to see Trump tap Sekulow to join the legal team.

“In fact, it’s in my opinion it really is par for the course as far as [Sekulow’s] career path,” he said. “And you know, President Trump’s close to Pat Robertson, he’s close to Liberty University, he’s close to the religious right.”

It’s clear too to McLachlan that Sekulow is going to be the face of Trump’s high-profile team. McLachlan thinks the president wanted it this way because Sekulow “has a huge following” and “is articulate.”

McLachlan pointed to Sekulow’s interview with Wallace.

“As you saw in the interview he did on television, the president tweeted ‘I am under investigation.’ Those are a series of unequivocal words,” McLachlan said. “And [then] Jay Sekulow got into his mealy mouth an explanation that made it sound as if he’s not really sure.”

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