WaPo:
“Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to hide details of talks with Putin, such as taking interpreter’s notes, U.S. officials say”
An alternate explanation is that senior officials are testifying that they were kept in the dark because if they knew and didn’t act they are part of the conspiracy.
An important link. Thanks for sharing it. Those private Putin meetings have been extremely troubling to me.
This whole filthy mess has been like trying to hold back a geyser with a manhole cover for the past 2 years. She’s about to blow, and spectacularly. I’m afraid the stinking detritus that rains down on us all for awhile will be worse than an exploding whale on an Oregon beach.
Nixon, for all his faults, did not want to send the country into turmoil. Turmoil is exactly what Trump has planned, on the other hand. He will burn the White House to the ground if it helps him one iota.
Another salient data point: the otherwise-inexplicable change to the Republican Party platform in July 2016:
2016 RNC Delegate: Trump Directed Change To Party Platform On Ukraine Support : NPR
With Trump being an idiot, we sort of know at least some of the details of some of his meetings.
When he first met Putin at G8, he talked to him “about adoptions” and then later in the day, on the plane back to the US, penned the coverup story about the Veselnitskaya meeting. So we can reasonably infer that he was talking with Putin about the Veselnitskaya meeting.
When Trump came back from Helsinki, he mentioned reconsidering the membership of Montenegro in NATO, letting Russia deal with North Korea, and a few other things which I don’t recall at the moment. But principally, they seem to have discussed trading Montenegro for peace in Korea.
To steal a comment I saw:
“Would you want your job performances reviews made public?”
A week or 2 back, Rachel Maddow did a piece on the weird and inexplicable intersections of Trump and Montenegro…like the above, or the time in an interview he randomly interjected how belligerent Montenegrans are and how they could drag us into WW III. (Capped off with video of Trump shoving aside the Montenegro Prime Minister at his first G8.)
Yeah, I saw that. Putin didn’t want Montenegro joining NATO. And with Trump’s recent defense of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in '79, he’s basically acting as Putin’s spokes-tool.
I mean, Trump probably couldn’t find Alaska on a map without help. What the hell would he know about Montenegro? Probably thought it was a Vegas casino.
It’s got “negro” right in the name; what more does he need to know?
A whole mountain of negroes! :eek:
The fruit was poisoned.
I’m tired of quoting Bismarck, who predicted WWI would be caused by “some damned foolish thing in the Balkins.” I don’t want it to be usable describing WWIII.
Nice.
“Well, shit, Montenegro, that’s all you had to say!” - Samuel L. Jackson
The notion of Trump actually defecting is starting to look less outlandish and more like a credible possibility.
You got it all wrong. Donny Two-scoops as QB for an NFL all-star team vs. whatever team it was that led in sacks this season. With all that anthem-kneeling bullshit I’m sure they’d be proud as punch to protect their quarterback.
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Uh, three?”
“Close enough; send 'im back in!”
I think that Trump had a certain period of time in which he could have stood down from office and, possibly, all of the various investigations would have been allowed to go dormant under a President Pence, leaving him sitting free.
But Trump is a narcissist and loves risk-taking, and now his options are to live as the most hated man in America, in an American prison, or to flee the country and try to live in splendor. He will make a run for it.
But, since he’s a narcissist and a risk taker, he’ll try to maintain his position as the President of the United States of America for every extra moment that he thinks that he can get away with it. So while he could just leave right now and he’d be clear and free, and we wouldn’t be able to stop him, we do have at least some chance of actually grabbing him, since he has a history of playing it too risky and going off a cliff. He’s liable to wait too long and trust too much to his own cleverness to stop the process, somehow.
Yes… my notion on him defecting to Russia is based on the idea that if there really is something highly criminal for the investigation to find, Trump is impulsive and does not seem to think things through.He generally has no filter on doing massively stupid stuff on impulse. Putins probably promised him he’ll have his back. So if he panics he may well bolt for it. Against it is the fact that hes gotten away with everything he has ever done with no consequences. He may not have the imagination to realize that consequences may happen.
If he does, what happens after will be interesting in a “may you live in interesting times” sense. I think there will be frantic backpedalling away from Trump by all who can, especially in politics. I have a problem seeing Pence or anyone that close to him being trusted with any sensitive position. Russia - Us relations would be… tense. But if Putin kept Trump, Trump may broadcast speeches claiming it was a coup. And a lot of people who had emotional investment in Trump or against the US would believe it.
Can they act? If The president of the united states tells senior officials that the information about the Putin and US joint exercise to nuke California is classified, would they not be subject to severe legal ramifications?
Not that it would’t be the right thing to do, of course, but they may not have much room to move legally either way.
What about that translator, what happens if he “tells all”?
I’m sure that Putin would be happy to help Trump find Alaska on the map of newly acquired neo-soviet territory.
Yeah, that time ended at noon, January 20th, 2017.
The only question is, and I don’t know the answer to this at all, is whether he cares enough about his family to take them down with him as well. It is slightly possible that he will see the damage he will do to even the ones who are not involved, and decide to back off and step down. Then there is the possibility that he doesn’t give a fuck about anyone, even his family, and he will ruin them as he desperately tries to claw his way out of the hole he is still digging.
Serious question, do you think he gives a shit about them?
I think that after Trump defects to Russia, his age catches up with him surprisingly quickly, and he dies with absolutely no suspicion, allowing his followers to follow him in spirit, but not in tweet.
He will be far more useful to Putin as a martyr than as a president in exile, and I think that Putin would be happy to arrange that.