Category: zerohedge

“Sleazy” Donald Trump To Stump For “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz At Texas Rally

Ted Cruz will join Donald Trump on Monday night at a Texas rally, just over two weeks before Cruz faces off with Democratic opponent Beto O’Rourke, reports Bloomberg.

On Friday, Trump tweeted: “Beto O’Rourke is a total lightweight compared to Ted Cruz, and he comes nowhere near representing the values and desires of the people of the Great State of Texas.”

Trump and Cruz, former adversaries, will try and energize Texas republicans just two years after Trump dubbed the Texas Senator “Lyin’ Ted” during the 2016 election.

Cruz, in turn, called Trump “sleazy Donald” and a “sniveling coward,” only endorsing Trump after he was booed off the stage at the Republican National Convention for insisting that people “vote their conscience.”

Cruz’s change of heart inspired several internet memes in which Cruz recognizes Trump’s alpha status, gives him his delegates, and turns into his errand boy, among other things. 

Bloomberg is suggesting that the Cruz-O’Rourke race is a referendum on Trump, writing: “Despite the statewide advantage for Cruz — and even though Trump won Texas in 2016 over Hillary Clinton by 9 points — some Texas Democrats in competitive big-city congressional races are linking their opponents to the president, seeing benefit in making their campaigns a partial referendum on Trump.”  

No Democrat has won a statewide race in Texas since 1994. The White House and Cruz say there is no real alarm about the Senate race, insisting Monday’s rally was discussed since early this year and shouldn’t be taken as the president riding to the rescue.

Cruz said in an interview last month he’s not worried about what it looks like to be aligning himself with a president he once called a “pathological liar.” He said he made a choice when Trump won the presidency that working with him is what’s best for Texas. –Bloomberg

That said, between Beto’s awkward dabbing and skateboarding, while his supporters bob around like cringe-magnets to a Betoized “YMCA” – Ted Cruz better watch out in just over two weeks.

“Beto is banking on the young and minority voters, typically the least inclined to vote,” said Rice University political scientist, Paul Brace, who added that O’Rourke “seems to be doing an uncommonly good job of generating enthusiasm.”

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Pension, Retirement Crisis Is Becoming An Underfunded “Tsunami”, SEC Warns

Authored by Rory Hall via The Daily Coin,

We have detailed this problem over the past 3-4 years warning people about how bad the pensions around the nation have become nothing more than another ponzi scheme. Most, if not all, state, local and federal pension programs are underfunded by 40% or more.

What we stated a mere two months ago, in September 2018!

The steam that is building began in earnest in 2012 and has been picking up speed ever since. Look no further than some of the recent events we have documented time and again – Detroit, CALPers, Jeremy Stein, Teamsters and Dallas Pension Fund. All of these events have taken place in less than five years. What will the next four-plus years bring? How much longer should one sit on their hands and watch as thousands upon thousands of people either have retirement stolen or placed on lock-down as is the case with the Dallas Police Pension fund?

****

We have studied, researched and written about this for well over four years. Harry Markopolous, in 2011, tried to warn us about the ongoing theft, within the pension funds, on a daily basis by the banking cabal – link. CALPers pension program is north of 50% underfunded and losing a little more each and every quarter. – link. These are merely two of the articles that paint a picture of a tsunami of pension bankruptcies in the near future.

That’s a lot of people around the country that are directly impacted by unfunded, underfunded or otherwise completely insolvent pension funds.

It appears either the Forbes writer Elizabeth Bauer or SEC Commissioner Kara Stein read the article we published in September as they are now using the exact same language we used in September – ‘tsunami’ of pension failures.

SEC Commissioner Warns: A Retirement Crisis ‘Tsunami’ Is Approaching

Commissioner Kara M. Stein spoke to the Brookings Institution on Tuesday, giving a talk titled “The New American Dream: Retirement Security.”  Here’s what she had to say:

Since World War II, Americans have planned their retirements around the expectation of combining a pension, Social Security benefits, and personal savings to provide sufficient income for their golden years.

…

Due to a number of factors, the financial health of the Social Security trust fund has been declining. According to the 2018 Trustees Report on Social Security, the fund will be depleted by 2034.That is only 16 years away. At the same time, the availability of employer-provided pension plans has also been declining. Few private sector workers today have access to a pension, and many public sector pension plans are facing severe financial problems.

…

We’ve moved from a collective retirement system to one in which each person is expected to go it alone.

…

The retirement crisis is a tsunami that is rapidly approaching. We can already see it and, indeed, we are starting to feel its effects. Americans are having to work past traditional retirement age. And the number of bankruptcies for those over the age of 65 has increased dramatically. The size and speed of the tsunami is likely to increase as it gets closer and closer to us. Our population is aging and the cost of medical care—an important factor for retirees—is increasing. We must address this problem before we are collectively underwater.

…

As an SEC Commissioner, I’m here to talk about solutions specifically related to the third leg of the stool—investments. Stashing away money in a savings account only gets retirees so far. To have a safe and secure retirement, Americans must invest their savings to allow them to grow… Given the importance of investment to Americans’ ability to retire, what can the SEC do to help?

Stein’s talk continues by addressing the need for improved financial education, and suggests the SEC might create a model curriculum for schools, create spelling bee-like contests, and create an app, for instance.  They might also work to improve the readability of disclosures in an investment prospectus, with key information up-front, or require that 401(k) disclosures include information on projected retirement income.  She revisits the question of the now-discarded plan of holding investment advisors to a fiduciary standard (that is, prohibiting them from steering clients to investments which pay higher commissions) and suggests that a (less-desirable) alternative might be educating investors to ask whether their advisors have conflicts of interest.  In addition, because of the impact that severe market downturns can have on retirement-savers, the Commission should, while recognizing that downturns are a fact of life, look at actions to mitigate the likelihood of the most severe market crashes. 

Source

I am not a financial advisor so I’m not offering financial advice I just have a simple question – does it really take a “professional advisor” to see the writing on the wall? If you are not at least thinking about this problem, then it may be time. At least look at what is going on within your retirement account, especially if it is with a large corporate or state entity. We made our decision in 2009 and still have zero regrets. As a matter-of-fact I am extremely happy I got out when I did. Sorry I missed out on the gains, but I don’t regret the decision for one second. Got physical; we sure do!

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Nomura Explains The One Big Problem Outweighing 8 Catalysts For A Tactical S&P Bounce

“Dip-buyers” remain active in markets the last week or so since the big (rate-spike-driven) plunge in US stocks, but nothing is holding as momentum ignition keeps failing.

While Nomura’s Cross-Asset Strategy Managing Director Charlie McElligott confirms the “upside story” is still the right tactical trade, he explains below that the market remains more likely to chop around for another week or two…

Clients intellectually voice a desire to “want” to trade for the tactical SPX bounce on the same catalysts I’ve been noting over the past two weeks:

  1. MUCH “cleaner” positioning with both systematic- and active- / discretionary- funds;

  2. Fodder for a “short squeeze” re-accumulated (“Most Crowded Shorts” / “High Short Interest” / “Most Shorted” baskets -7.5% to -10.5% MTD as they are pressed into the move lower);

  3. The return of corporate buyback flow as the “blackout” is lifted through EPS season in coming weeks;

  4. Q4 seasonality / “performance chasing” narrative;

  5. The contrarian VIX curve inversion “bullish” signal;

  6. +++ U.S. midterm election historical SPX returns analog;

  7. Still robust U.S. growth with GDPNow printing 3.8%, Consumer Confidence at 18-year highs and Leading Economic Indicators YoY at 8-year highs;

  8. New “low bars” being created by “negative earnings revision” trend to EPS into Q4, especially the “air-cover” provided by tariff talk to “sand-bag”

This has been driving behavior seen late last week where client flows favored selling Puts / buying upside Calls in singles, as well as selling / monetization of index hedges.

However, despite these positive catalysts, McElligott believes the market will remain rangebound for a considerably more powerful reason – at least in the short-term…

The “chop” should persist another week or two, as the recent spike in volatility is “dragging” trailing realized volatility higher, creating a dynamic where despite their desire to play for a rally, traders are being forced to “gross-down” books as position limits are exceeded on both “up” and “down” days –similar to some of what we saw in March / April post the VIX-event (although this time around on MUUUUUUUCH smaller overall exposure)

The Nomura strategist also points out that this chop will continued to be exacerbated with Asset Manager “Longs” in SPX still at +$80B (through last Tuesday), even after they sold -$25B WoW—i.e. “more flow to work through.”

SPX / SPY Consolidated Gamma in the market now “less of an issue” with regards to mechanical hedging swings, with Gamma down from -$26B to now a more manageable short of -$18B (delta -$332B)

Additionally,  McElligott notes that the larger more “systemic” story of increased funding pressure through the year-end “turn” continues to be watched, as technicals highlighted last week:

1) increased Treasury bill supply;

2) repatriation pressures impacting prime fund flows and thus, commercial paper markets;

3) pick-up in EU-Italian “stress” aggravating EUR xccy basis;

4) seasonality of YE funding;

5) the larger Fed normalization and…

6) balance sheet run-off / QT à all bleeding-into…

7) LIBOR’s move higher

All of which should continue to drive lower USD liquidity, which in-turn means higher cross-asset volatility – all in-line per my structural “Financial Conditions Tightening Tantrum” phase 2 “end-of-cycle” game…

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“Unicorn Valuations Aren’t Viable” – Khashoggi Crisis Crushes Silicon Valley ‘Vision Fund’ Hopes

Authored by Ben Hunt via EpsilonTheory.com,

Funding Secured?

Can you imagine if Tesla were actually moving forward today with the Saudi sovereign wealth fund in a take-private transaction? Can you imagine the uproar over Elon doing this sort of major deal with the Saudis after the Khashoggi regrettable altercation murder?

Well, no need to imagine. Or at least no need to imagine a unicorn financial transaction caught up in the wake of the Khashoggi events.

SoftBank Group Corp. is in discussions to take a majority stake in WeWork Cos., in what would be a giant bet on the eight-year-old provider of shared office space, according to people familiar with the talks.

The investment could total between $15 billion and $20 billion and would likely come from SoftBank’s Vision Fund, some of the people said. The $92 billion Vision Fund, which is backed largely by Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi wealth funds as well as by SoftBank, already owns nearly 20% of WeWork after last year committing $4.4 billion in equity funding at a $20 billion valuation.

Talks are fluid and there is no guarantee there will be a deal, some of the people said.

“SoftBank Explores Taking Majority Stake in WeWork,” Wall Street Journal, October 9, 2018

Softbank’s Vision Fund is the largest single private equity fund in the world, with about $100 billion in capital commitments, of which about half comes from Saudi Arabia. Over the past two years, the Vision Fund has transformed Silicon Valley, particularly in the relationship between capital markets and highly valued private tech companies – the so-called unicorns like Uber and Lyft and Palantir and Airbnb. Who needs an IPO for an exit when you’ve got the Vision Fund to write a multi-billion dollar check?

Case in point: the deal that was shadow-announced earlier this month between the Vision Fund and WeWork, a company that SoftBank valued at $20 billion last year despite, ummm, shall we say … questionable business fundamentals to support that number and a subsequent bond raise. I mean, can anyone say “community-adjusted EBITDA” with a straight face? But hey, that was 12 months ago! What do you say we literally double down on that valuation and buy out all of the external investors in WeWork, so that it’s just the Vision Fund and WeWork management that owns the company? How does that work for you?

OMG. If I’m one of those current private equity investors in WeWork, I am building a shrine in honor of Masayoshi Son, the SoftBank founder and Vision Fund frontman. If I am an investor or an employee of any of these other unicorn tech companies, I am lighting a candle and praying for Masayoshi Son’s continued good health. 

The Vision Fund, and more generally the Saudi money behind it, is a classic fin de siecle undertaking. It is The Greatest Fool in a private equity world that must find greater and greater fools for their investment funds to work here at the tail end of a very long and very profitable business cycle. The Vision Fund and its Saudi money isn’t just a lucky break for both the financiers and the entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley. It is an answered prayer.

And here’s the crazy thing … the Khashoggi murder could blow this all up. Not just the WeWork deal. Not just the next mega-fund that SoftBank puts together. But this fund. The Vision Fund.

And if the Vision Fund is no longer viable as a player in Silicon Valley, then I don’t think the unicorn valuations are viable, either.

Why do I think that there is now existential risk for the Vision Fund? Check out these narrative maps before and after news of the Khashoggi murder broke on October 3.

First here’s the narrative map of the 608 unique major-media articles on “SoftBank Vision Fund” for the three months prior to the murder, so July 2 through October 2, 2018. I’ve colored the nodes (each node is a separate article) by sentiment, so green for positive, yellow for neutral, and red for negative.

Source: Quid

As you can see, the core of the Vision Fund narrative is all about the deals it is doing. The Saudi connection is way off in the periphery of the overall narrative. Moreover, the sentiment across the map, including the peripheral Saudi thread, is VERY positive. Only 5% of these articles have a negative sentiment, and those are dominated by a very peripheral cluster of articles on microprocessor IP, stemming from SoftBank’s acquisition of ARM in 2016.

But now look at the narrative map since October 3, consisting of 225 unique major-media articles on the Vision Fund. 

Source: Quid

This is a narrative train wreck. It’s not just that the negative sentiment articles have more than tripled to 18%, and that positive sentiment articles are now less than half of the total (which is AWFUL for the normally rah-rah business press). No, the much more damaging aspect is that Saudi involvement is now at the core of the Vision Fund narrative. There are still more articles being published about the investments that the Vision Fund is making. But that narrative cluster is no longer at the heart of the map. The Vision Fund narrative is now defined by its Saudi funding, and that’s a bell that never gets unrung.

I wrote a brief note last week about how common knowledge regarding the Saudi regime in general and Crown Prince MBS in particular had shifted, about how what everyone knows that everyone knows about MBS had changed. And once common knowledge changes, so does behavior. In many cases, it’s the ONLY thing that can change behaviors.

Well, the common knowledge on SoftBank and the Vision Fund has changed, too. Today, everyone knows that everyone knows that it’s Saudi money behind the fund. And that will absolutely change Silicon Valley’s behavior vis-a-vis the Vision Fund, even if it changes nothing in what Silicon Valley already knew.

Will greed and the answered prayer of The Greatest Fool overcome the narrative stain that associating with the Vision Fund now brings? Maybe. I’d never want to bet against greed! But even more so, I wouldn’t want to bet against the power of narrative.

Bottom line: I think that the MbS-is-a-Bond-villain narrative is now a significant risk to unicorn tech company valuations, through the intermediating narrative of SoftBank’s Vision Fund.

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Stocks Are Doing Something They Haven’t Done Since The Dot Com Bubble

Third quarter earnings season is set to be another blockbuster for bottom line growth, with EPS expected to grow above 20% Y/Y for the third quarter in a row, and yet some problems are emerging as traders begin to fret what happens in 2019 after the anniversary of the Trump tax reform pushes earnings growth sharply lower and when tariffs from the trade war with China adversely impacts corporate margins.

For one, despite the still impressive earnings growth, reported revenues have been a modest disappointment so far, with only 64% of companies reporting actual sales above consensus estimates and 36% reporting revenue misses: “only” because this beat hit rate is below the 1- year average of 73%, suggesting that analyst estimates for top-line growth are aggressive and/or top-line growth may have peaked.

But another, far more troubling indicator has been observed in the market’s response to company beats and misses. As BofA notes in a Monday morning note, this observation that “good news are now bad news” means that all earnings upside announcements are fully priced in, resulting in negative alpha for beats.

Specifically, as FactSet notes, in a curious twist, companies that have reported positive earnings surprises for Q3 2018 have been punished on average by the market, with their stock price decreasing by -0.5% two days before the earnings release through two days after the earnings. Meanwhile, and as one would expect, companies that have reported negative earnings surprises for Q3 2018 have an average price decrease of -3.5% two days before the earnings release through two days after the earnings. This percentage decrease is larger than the 5-year average price decrease of -2.5% during this same window for companies reporting downside earnings surprises.

While the market penalizing companies for earnings misses is hardly a surprise, the lack of reward for EPS & sales beats is typically a later-stage bull market signal according to BofA strategist Savita Subramanian who writes that “this suggests that the good news is priced in.”

Putting these market reactions in context, the only time when the market had a sub-1% relative surprise reaction for beats was in both 1Q00 and 4Q07.

And while we’ve seen similar sub-1% reactions in four of the last six quarters since 2Q17, including in 3Q18 to date, what is most troubling is that this is the first time since the launch of Regulation F.D. in August 2000 that the market has reacted negatively to earnings beats. In other words, the market is doing something it hasn’t done in 18 years, with the last time such a response was observed was just as the dot com bubble was bursting.

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Kushner Tells CNN What Advice He Shared With MbS After Khashoggi Killing

Jared Kushner is one of the most – if not the most – elusive member of President Trump’s inner circle. Since the president’s inauguration, he has spoken publicly to reporters only a handful of times. And as the fallout from the Saudi state-sponsored murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi continued to widen, Kushner sat for an interview with CNN’s Van Jones where he downplayed the role of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, with whom Kushner reportedly shares a “special relationship” (the prince reportedly once bragged about having Kushner “in his pocket”) and defended the administration’s “cautious approach” toward the investigation into what exactly led a team of 15 Saudi nationals to torture and butcher Khashoggi during an Oct. 2 visit to the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul.

Kush

In excerpts from the interview released by CNN, Jones asked Kushner whether it is wise to trust MbS to oversee Saudi Arabia’s investigation, given that he’s also the prime suspect. Kushner, who, in the absence of a US ambassador to KSA, has been handling the kingdom’s relationship with the Trump administration directly via his friendship with MbS, said the US will examine facts from “multiple places.”

Jones: Do you trust the Saudis to investigate themselves?

Kushner: We’re getting facts in from multiple places. Once those facts come in, the Secretary of State will work with our national security team to help us determine what we want to believe, and what we think is credible, and what we think is not credible.

Jones: Do you see anything that seems deceptive.

Kushner: I see things that seem deceptive every day I see them in the Middle East and in Washington. We have our eyes wide open. The president is looking out for America’s strategic interests…the president is fully committed to doing that.”

Given their close relationship, media reports have implied that Kushner has been acting as an unofficial liaison of sorts to MbS since the crisis began (it has also been reported that the Crown Prince initially didn’t understand why the backlash to Khashoggi’s murder had been so intense). In light of this, Jones asked Kushner what advice, if any, he has given the Saudi royal during their conversations (to be sure, MbS has also spoken with President Trump directly on the phone).

 

Jones: What kind of advice did you give MbS?

Kushner: Just to be transparent. To be fully transparent. The world is watching. This is a very, very serious accusation.

Jones: How did he respond to that?

Kushner: We’ll see.

Kushner’s interview followed reports published Sunday night that MbS tried to convince Khashoggi to return to Riyadh during a brief phone call with the journalist after he had been detained at the Saudi consulate Khashoggi refused, reportedly because he feared that he would be killed, and was subsequently killed anyway. Adding another macabre twist to the saga of Khashoggi’s murder and dismemberment, Surveillance footage released Monday showed one of the Saudi operatives leaving the consulate wearing Khashoggi’s clothes with the suspected intent of serving as a “decoy” to bolster the kingdom’s claims that Khashoggi had left after receiving his papers. It was later reported that Turkish investigators had found an abandoned car that once belonged to the Saudi consulate.

We imagine we’ll be hearing more about these strange developments on Tuesday, when Turkish President Erdogan is expected to deliver a report on the killings.

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Dow Dumps 300 Points, Back Below Overnight Lows

Dow futures are down over 300 points from pre-opening highs (ramped by China’s National Team), and back below overnight lows. The S&P is also back in the red but Nasdaq – for now – remains in the green…

 

Pushing The Dow back to Friday’s lows…

 

The Dow and S&P are both well underwater but the machines still have control of Nasdaq…

With all major indices unable to hold bounces over their crucial technical support levels…

 

 

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Morgan Stanley Declares “The Dead Cat Bounce Is Over”

Two weeks after Morgan Stanley’s chief equity strategist Michael Wilson ominously warned that US capital markets have “hit the tipping point” – just days before a furious drop in the S&P – and predicted that the US stock market is set to peak some time in December…

… while cautioning that when looking at the Equity Risk Premium, the S&P 500 is once again overvalued relative to the 10Y yield…

… on Monday, the Morgan Stanley chief equity strategist targeted recent calls by the likes of JPMorgan’s Marko Kolanovic, who not once but twice in one week predicted that with selling pressure at systematic funds having been exhausted, stocks are set for a big rebound, said that… this won’t happen.

Commenting on the sharp moves observed last week, especially Tuesday’s 500+ point Dow jump, Wilson notes that “last week saw the US Equity market rebound sharply from the prior week’s sell off” and categorizes the sharp move higher as “a dead cat bounce with the downtrend resuming on Thursday.”

To justify his thesis, Wilson writes that his preferred explanation of recent market moves, namely the “rolling bear market” has “unfinished business with the S&P” and two weeks after “the rolling bear market made its latest and loudest statement yet by attacking this bull market’s darlings – Growth stocks, concentrated in the US Technology and Consumer Discretionary sectors” it is going for the overall market itself.

And speaking of the recent hammering of growth stocks, Wilson notes that “this caused much more portfolio pain than what the rolling bear did earlier in the year because this is where portfolios are exposed.“

As a result, we now hear more clients acknowledging our Rolling Bear Market narrative.

For those following Wilson’s rolling bear market thesis, this also means that as of the end of last week, “the rolling bear has now hit virtually every major asset class and the S&P 500 is the final holdout, beating the CPI year to date.”

Looking at the chart above, in which the S&P remains the only holdout from the “rolling bear market” mauling, Wilson concludes that “to the chagrin of many, we think the S&P will eventually succumb, too, and probably soon” and,adds that a definitive break of the S&P 500 through its 200 day moving average will serve as confirmation that the latest dead cat bounce is finally over.

We look forward to Marko Kolanovic’s “btfd” response.

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This Is What A Paper Gold Short Squeeze Looks Like

Authored by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,

Huge recent imbalances in the gold futures market led many to predict that speculators (usually wrong at big turning points) would be forced to close out their historically extreme short bets. Put another way, too many traders were using gold futures contracts to bet that precious metals will go down, and when those bets are reversed out it will make gold and silver go up.

Last week this prediction started to come true, with gold rising and speculators reacting by closing out a big part of their shorts. The shift displayed below is one of the biggest on record for a single week:

Here’s the same data for gold displayed graphically.

Note how unusual it is for speculators (the gray bars) to be net short and commercials (red bars) to be net long, and how quickly that part of the imbalance was extinguished.

But even after these big changes, speculators are still less long than usual and commercials less short. To restore a normal structure to the paper gold and silver markets, another few weeks of rising prices will probably be necessary — which, yes, precious metals investors deserve. After all the chatter about a short squeeze, it would hugely anticlimactic for this single week’s action to be all there is.

The last time gold speculators went from that short with a huge cover was March 1999…

On that longer-term note, mining stocks have begun to lead the underlying metals, which, according to the Rosen Market Timing Letter, indicates that the precious metals bull market is about to resume.

… both the silver and gold shares have closed above their most recent peak. Could this be a sign of the resumption of the bull market in the precious metals complex? Having started my Wall Street career in the year 1956 this truly Old Timer says, “Yes indeed.” There is nothing new about the precious metal shares moving up before the precious metals. All that is required to know that this is happening is the simplest form of technical analysis. No fundamentals, nothing fancy, no degrees of any kind required in order to see who’s leading who or what’s breaking out first. Just draw a few lines and “Voila” the answer will be yours.

[ZH: but back to the underlying paper gold market, we have the biggest short followed by the biggest buy, based on data going back to 2006 for money manager positioning.

If that short position keeps unwinding — and the gross short open is still 144,000 contracts — upward pressure in gold prices should result. When money managers moved to a net long in 2015, prices jumped 30 percent.

A similar move now would see gold above $1,500 an ounce.

As Bloomberg’s Eddie van der Walt notes, for a parallel, look at sugar.

After a record net-short position in the commodity in April, money managers turned bullish by Oct. 16. Futures hit an 8-month high last week, having surged about 40% from a decade low in August.]

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“Sloppy” Carl Bernstein Says Trump To Declare Midterms Illegitimate If GOP Loses Power

President Trump has discussed ways to challenge the results of the midterm elections if the GOP loses control over Congress, according to journalist and ardent Trump foe, Carl Bernstein. 

The Washington Examiner reports Bernstein’s Sunday comments on CNN, in which he said that Trump has talked about “a disruption campaign if the results are close but have the Democrats taking control of the House or Senate.” 

“I talked to people … in touch with the White House on Friday who believe that, if the congressional midterms are very close and the Democrats were to win by five or seven seats, that Trump is already talking about how to throw legal challenges into the courts, sow confusion, declare a victory actually, and say that the election’s been illegitimate,” said Bernstein, adding “That is really under discussion in the White House.”

Bernstein and Trump locked horns in August after the veteran journalist co-wrote a CNN article claiming Trump had foreknowledge of the infamous Trump Tower meeting, and that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen would attest to that in the Russia investigation.

The article specifically states that Cohen’s attorney and Clinton pal, Lanny Davis, “declined to comment” on the report. Weeks later, however, Davis admitted he was CNN’s source and backpedaled on the claims of Trump’s foreknowledge. Thus, CNN – and Bernstein, were seemingly caught in a lie. 

In an attempt to save face, Bernstein claimed that there were multiple sources for the report. Not buying it, President Trump gave Bernstein the nicknames “Sloppy” and “Degenerate Fool” – while Don Jr. called him a “leftist hack” peddling “literal fake news.” 

Many wondered what Trump meant when he called Bernstein a “degenerate fool.” To that end, a 1989 Wahington Post exposé on Bernstein offers some clues – after Bernstein’s angry, cheated-on ex-wife published a novel which “portrays a Bernstein-like character as an emotionally empty, self-absorbed, narcissistic man capable of having sex with venetian blinds.“

And when ABC Washington offered Bernstein a job as the Washington bureau chief in the 80s, the “power seemed to go to his head,” and he was “drinking more heavily,” reported the Post.

“I gotta tell you, at ABC, he was just a terrible screw-up. It’s awful to say it. It was awful to watch it.” About this time, people noticed that Bernstein was drinking more heavily. His life had gone beyond chaotic. While Nora was pregnant with their second child, Bernstein had his now-notorious affair with Margaret Jay, wife of the British ambassador. –Wahington Post

Bernstein’s latest accusation that Trump won’t accept the results of an election sound familiar…

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