I saw him in the oval office with the russian officials. When donald starts to refuse publically to meet anyone who might be sent from putin, that’s when this will get good.
Trump is an asset of a variety of other foreign powers.
I would bet good money that Saudi Arabia helped to finance at least part of Trump’s campaign and/or inauguration. This was arranged between George Nader, Steve Bannon, and Eric Prince (and, probably, Elliott Broidy) using, somehow, Alfa Bank. That both puts him in debt to them and provides them with blackmail material.
Elliott Broidy has some form of defense spending scheme going on in Romania that, plausibly, Trump had some hand in approving.
While it’s unlikely that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, it’s very likely that they have some form of compromising material on him. Trump is actively trying to get Russia added to the G7 - a group which he hates and thinks should be disbanded; he put (and/or considered putting) tariffs on Chinese, Canadian, Mexican, and European aluminium but dropped the sanctions on Rusal; he went on TV and denounced the American intelligence services while standing next to Vladimir Putin; both he and Giuliani are working to determine how CrowdStrike was able to identify Russian hacking attacks and which attacks they spotted; and Trump first announced his decision to leave Syria (before Christmas of last year) a day after Russia, Iran, and Turkey held a summit together to decide for to split Syria between themselves.
Though, based on the new moves in Syria, that last one could be because Trump is also answerable to Erdogan in some way. I don’t know that that is, though I do know that Trump’s old business partner Tevfik Arif was previously arrested in Turkey for sex trafficking in minors who had been flown in from Russia.
Likely, Trump’s greatest sin is sex trafficking in minors. That could be on the personal side: A business partner or someone sent him some girls who were underage but developed enough for Trump to not turn them away (he used to sneak in on the girls at Miss Teen USA - so his tastes run at least into the 15-16 range), and that was videotaped. Or, it could be on the more involved side and, like Arif, Trump has a history of procuring girls for business partners from Eastern Europe - getting them at whatever age the person he was doing business with asked for.
We know that he procured girls (of unknown ages) for Epstein once, when he was looking to convince Epstein to invest. We also know that Epstein was jealous of Trump Model Management and wanted to set up a similar business for himself.
I think there’s a reason why there’s almost no information about Trump Model Management on the Internet. The FBI has told a whole lot of people that they are not allowed to talk to the press while investigations are pending.
If Trump was getting girls from Russia or ever stayed in a Russian hotel and had girls sent to his room - both of which are relatively likely - then Russia will have stuff on him that’s completely beyond anything that you can get around with spin and misdirection. It’s safe to assume that they do have that.
My guess would be that the Turks somehow got their hands on something related. Maybe they had wiretaps on some people that Trump did business with back when he was working on Trump Towers Istanbul. Tevfik Arif was caught and arrested at just around the same time that the towers were opening, and we can likely assume that he was running in related circles in Turkey as Trump was.
Saying that Trump is in thrall to Putin is not the same as saying Russia has a strategy to weaken the US by inciting internal conflict in the US. The first one is a (or should be but isn’t because moral panic) fringe conspiracy theory, the later is politics as usual.
“You are pushing a moscow/gop line that is a little strange IMO.” what are you implying there?
I’m sorry to say, but that’s the bread and butter of conspiracy theories, fitting facts to theories, quoting Sherlock Holmes:
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
The reality is that following the 2016 election there was a concerted, and documented (i.e. the Steele Dossier), effort to push the idea that Trump under Putin’s control and for the past years people have been busily fitting the facts around that narrative.
Obama was a secret Muslim and had no US citizenship, do you think that (false, obviously) meme, “investigated” with the fervour of the “Trump is a puppet of Putin” meme would not have caused political division? ISTM that it caused enough trouble as it was.
Your understanding of the term is seriously flawed.
It’s circular logic at work, first assume Putin has, what was the word in vogue not long ago?, compromat?, Trump meets in private with Putin, why would he? Well, let’s, from all possible explanations, pick the one that fits the theory (because fitting things to the theory is the objective) and assume it is to discuss the compromat, well, golly, the second assumption supports the first one.
In reality it doesn’t, but multiply that by a myriad memetic evolutionary steps and you end up with people absolutely convinced that, somewhere along the line, assumptions turned into facts that prove a theory.
The problem with all this is that the patterns of behaviour surrounding this CT are extraordinarily dangerous, people can die (and had, by the millions) as a result of such games.
To the extent that it suits Russia’s strategic interests for the USA to face a loss of confidence and respect internationally, and for the internal political atmosphere to be poisoned with similar doubts and lack of confidence, then Putin doesn’t really need to be able to blackmail Trump for a specific policy objective. He just has to wind him up and let him go.
No, Trump aggressively pushed the narrative away from “blackmail” to “collusion” and everyone forgot about what the whole ruckus that Steele started was actually about.
Trump’s activities as regards Russia make no sense in terms of US policy nor Trump policy. There is zero reason for Trump to try and get Russia into G7 when his recommendation to everyone and their mother would be to forget the thing and let it die. There’s no reason for a man who needs to preserve his 40% voter base, who campaigned on protectionism for factory workers in the steel and aluminum industries, to drop sanctions on the one county that we were already “tariffing” and that everyone who advises him would agree that it’s all win on both the economic, strategic, and legal defense side of things (he was still under investigation for collusion when he did that).
We can all vote that Trump simply does things for no reason beyond throwing dice at a wall. I don’t believe that to be the case and if you support Trump enough to think that it’s wrong to suspect him of grave crimes, then it is unlikely that you believe that he does things out of pure, unreasoning, chaos.
Which means that these things have some logic behind them. If you have a theory that explains why Trump wants Russia in the G7 and why he cares about CrowdStrike, and so on, your are free to make it. But if you have none, then don’t be telling me that I’m off base. I have genuinely tried to envision some demented, off-the-wall, or even mildly plausible reason for them that would allow me to give Trump the benefit of the doubt. In the case of his denouncement of the US intelligence services, for example, we might say that he was simply sucking up to Putin as a component of negotiations. Trump likes to squeeze people quietly while being just as sweet and effusive about their greatness as he can publicly, when he’s negotiating with them.
But, there’s nothing for most of it. If you can think of something, by all means suggest it and you may sell me. But either the man is crazy or he’s doing stuff for a reason. If you think there’s a reason, than you can’t just handwave away that you can’t think of something. Because I do have something and it explains everything that we see and is based on things we know about the man, his connections, and his MO.
So far as what Trump is guilty of, that others might hold over him, I am certainly merely speculating.
But Trump has closely associated with 4 men who have trafficked in children, Epstein, Arif, Nader, and John Casablancas. Having 4 different, unrelated child sex traffickers among your business partners is statistically zero - it’s not something that happens by random happenstance. Republican women who modeled as tweens have testified that Trump snuck into their changing room. The man had two wives from Eastern Europe. We are reasonably confident that he has arranged women for his business partners and we know that those in his circles do that. Robert Mueller has Michael Cohen’s sworn testimony that some form of blackmail materials existed somewhere, on tape, according to a person that he knew in Eastern Europe.
It’s possible that Trump isn’t guilty of this particular crime. But if you think that the odds of it are low enough for you to sleep comfortable, you should remember that everything in the previous paragraph is true. Is it really unbelievable that a man whose legal defense against campaign finance spending violations is literally “My lawyer is on permanent retainer to fix issues with women who I used the casting couch on” would be a slimeball? Let’s also not forget that he repurposed money that was given to his charity for US veterans to buy a painting of himself and that he appointed a guy who was literally convicted for bribing politicians to serve on his finance committee, all while running on a campaign message of “Drain the Swamp”.
A default assumption that Trump is guilty is not unreasonable. Yes, it’s guess work to figure out which specific things he’s guilty of and in which countries, but I did predict that Turkey had turned to Russia something like two years ago. The media is only just today starting to report that. I didn’t start from “Trump diddled the kiddies”. I started at money laundering - because that’s what Steve Bannon’s investigation firm landed on at the same time as Steele - and revised as more information came in and that theory looked insufficient for the levels to which he has gone to work to Russia’s advantage on the world stage and as I learned more about how he operated and who all he did business with.
There’s no evidence to directly support the conclusion, I don’t mean to lead anywhere to believe otherwise, but if you’re sleeping comfortable, you’re ignoring a whole lot of reality. He might not have done this thing. But there’s lots of evidence that he’s the sort of man who would. He’s done something unforgivable and you’d be foolish to trust your future to the belief that no one on Earth has evidence of it.
Sounds to me like you are just trying to insinuate that theories about why Trump acts as he does are conspiracy theories.
its actually normal to look at the evidence in question and advance theories to fit those facts, like people do here. If you do not think they are a good fit, bring your own explanations that fit the facts better. Just calling them facts fitted to theories isn’t enough. It just looks like you’re trying to obfuscate something.
The US political situation is in a tailspin and what you have to justify it is, paraphrasing your last paragraph, we don’t know what he may have done, but he’s the kind of person who would have done it; you (general you) are tearing your country apart based on that, literally.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and claims like “Donald J Trump is not a president, he is a puppet put in power by Vladimir Putin” and the damage they cause and the risks they entail need to have more than Trump’s (or associates) poor character or as a rationale.
Any competing theory you care to offer, then, that explains all of the behavior he just mentioned? Assuming it wouldn’t “literally tear our country apart,” of course. That would be bad.
I am very well aware of this. I was making the point that Occam could reasonably support the idea of no blackmail.
It is certainly a big thing whether or not he is a foreign asset. I am merely saying that getting bogged down in a discussion of what Occam’s razor says about it is not really helpful, as it can get pretty subjective what an assumption is, and it would be best to just get back to the regular discussion. ETA: And most important, I am not assuming his innocence. I don’t think he is being blackmailed, but I don’t and cannot know this for sure.
See my last post.
Re personalities, to a degree, I suppose, but I’d rather be informed on direct evidence, rather than something as subjective as what a person may or may not be actually thinking. I am not a mind reader.
There isn’t any “direct evidence”. That’s painfully obvious at this point. The entire “President Trump is a foreign agent” claim is built on suppositions and guesswork, and feverish, overactive imaginations.
I was speaking in general there, which wasn’t clear I guess, but I agree with you. And as I’ve said, while I cannot rule out the possibility entirely, it’s really just conspiracy theories all the way down.
- You are aware of what? That Occams razor may support two outcomes, both mine and also yours? It can’t. You are delimiting the evidence you will admit to in your mind.
2)Occams razor is about what is evidentiary. It is as relevant as saying “let’s analyze this.” To refuse to “go there” is a retreat from reasoning.
What evidence is there that trump is not in thrall to putin?
Define “data”?
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Can you restate that but be more clear? Address it to me specifically.
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How is it flawed? How might the principle of Occams razor be applied in this case?
In short, I know what Occam’s Razor is!
2)Occams razor is about what is evidentiary. It is as relevant as saying “let’s analyze this.” To refuse to “go there” is a retreat from reasoning.
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We can discuss evidence without bringing OR into it. I suggest this is sufficient. That’s all I’m saying. If you want to preface your posts going forward as to why OR supports them, fine.