They are not necessarily “conflicting”.
“While multiple officials say the summary was included in the material prepared for the briefers, the senior official told NBC News that the briefing was oral and no actual documents were left with the Trump team in New York. During the briefing, the president-elect was not briefed on the contents of the summary.”
So it was in “the briefing” (if you consider the materials “the briefing”) but Trump wasn’t briefed on it.
I think it’s odd that Donald Trump acknowledged for the first time in his press conference that Russian’s were responsible for the hacking, had he not been briefed on the topic.
Glenn Greenwald complaining that a secret document shouldn’t be in the public’s hands. That’s fucking rich.
If I had to give a concise example of political genius in this post-fact world, this would be perfect. The whole conversation shifted from what actually makes a difference (potential conflicts of interest and their affect on policymaking) to him saying something outrageous in response to outrageous and salacious claims. Not that the important stuff isn’t getting some attention, but it’s vastly overshadowed by gasp what he said to CNN and oh my what he tweeted in the middle of the night.
He’s done this time and again, deflected serious (adult) discussion by stirring up an empty-calorie hullabaloo to wait out the general attention span, garner headlines and get the yuck-yuck-har-har crowd a-crowing and the sakes-alive crowd moaning.
Manna from Hell. Couldn’t happen to a worser guy. The “bogus” story is bogus, and, as was mentioned before, has been kicking around for a while. Intel people are supposed to tell you about bogus shit floating around, because you’ll want to know.
But now Il Douche gets to pretend that one thing is just like another, the bogus and the factual are the same, fake news set up to bring down the people’s guy. Any thing that surfaces henceforth. And the only reason I don’t think the Trump team leaked it, is because it would be fucking brilliant to have done so.
The standard Cold War Moscow “honey trap” depends on the victim being offered some high-falutin’ depravity he can’t get down on the farm. But a rich guy from New York City gets all hot and bothered with sophisticated Slavic perversity? Be like a high roller from Vegas goes on a visit to Akron, Ohio, and they try to tempt him into Bingo Night at the V.F.W. hall.
God, this is clueless.
You mean buying their hydrocarbons on the open market?
I’m really not. I haven’t said I believe anything in this release. I’ve only spoken about given the circumstances and behavior it seems quite likely that there would be blackmail material for the Russians, and so something like this is more likely to exist than not.
It’s being taken seriously enough that the president and president elect are being briefed on it, it’s being brought to intelligence agencies by senators, and apparently high up people involve think that it has credibility. That gives it a lot more weight than the example you gave.
It may absolutely be disinformation, but I don’t think the people who are currently concerned about it (McCain, Obama, most of the CIA and FBI) made it up. They’re investigating the legitimacy, which is what they should be doing. Which is far different from being the source of the disinformation themselves.
Or - or - the CIA is made up of people who’ve dedicated their lives to serving this country and they more than most people know what a fucking disaster Trump is going to be and so they’re hostile to him because they know he’s going to weaken this country. They know what they do is important, and yet this guy blows off intelligence briefings, regularly belittles the intelligence agencies, calls them liars and biased - even beyond mere self preservation, if they know they’re doing what they can to serve the country and Trump is opposed to that - then they’re being good patriots by opposing him.
I would like to see you try to back up your idea that 95% of people who join the CIA are center-left. It can’t just be because it’s a government job - the military is all government jobs and they’re certainly not 95% center-left. That’s an extremely convenient declaration to make which sounds quite implausible to me.
I mean - one of the most dangerous things Trump said in the campaign - something that people either aren’t well-informed enough to care about or it wasn’t as attention grabbing as misogynstic statements - was Trump saying that he’d have to look at our commitment to NATO and our allies when they asked for our help. He basically said that if someone attacks a NATO ally, at that point he’d weigh the contribution they’d brought to NATO in the past and possibly decline to help them.
This is extremely dangerous and destabilizing. The unshaking, unconditional support of our NATO agreements is a bedrock on which world stability rests. Hinting that we may not honor that commitment invites potential aggression which could put us into a complex and dangerous situation that would potentially obligate us to destroy civilizations. It’s an extremely serious matter, and Trump’s comments on NATO have been extremely egregious. To me, his comments on NATO and “why can’t we use nukes” and the idea that we could start sinking vessels because the sailors mooned us and they wouldn’t cause a war are a thousand times more dangerous than calling Rosie ODonnel Fat or even sexual assault.
In fact, a recent study shows that about 44% of civilian federal employees are Democratic-leaning while 40% are Republican-leaning, with the remaining 16% having a plurality of self-described “conservatives”.
It seems reasonable to me that a bunch of those Republicans who think national security is the most important issue would be in the CIA. Certainly the idea that 95% of CIA workers are center-left sounds unlikely.
The briefing was oral? I thought oral was in the briefing. Or was that something else?
But seriously, just because “no document was left” with them, doesn’t mean they weren’t briefed.
Personally, I don’t care if Trump was the recipient of multiple Sevastopol Steamers, it’s just fun to watch the sunuvabitch deny it.
Right. From where he’s sitting, all he needs to do is to keep those who were already behind him hopped up, because as long as he keeps that up, plus some ostensibly mainstream people who are too cowed or too opportunistic, he keeps the support that got him where he is. He does not need ***US ***to respect him, he won without us, and if in a desperate search for something, anything that will be the “silver bullet” we end up looking like we’re throwing whatever’s the nearest crap at hand at him hoping something will stick, he’s got the advantage.
By now, a lot of America has normalized that an incoming President’s opponents will seek to delegitimize everything about him – not just impugn his character or his aptitude or whether he’s misguidedly proposing things that will harm the country, but to question his identity, his very elegibility to run, the legality of the election and of his actions within the powers of the office, accuse him of deliberately seeking to ruin the country. Though much of that is not new, it has intensified in the last generation, and Trump had a turn as a driver during his tenure as Most Visible Birther. So indeed for a lot of those who voted for him, it’s assumed as a given that nasty things will come up and they won’t care.
As for the Press… oy, the corporate MSM will say “thank you very much sir may I have another” out of fear of losing access. This is no time of heroes. AND they’ll keep publishing things w/o really looking too close in the mad dash to get the scoop – that’s just the way of this age.
Does anyone really doubt that this report was deliberately leaked by someone in the intelligence community in an attempt to damage Trump? That for me is the most worrying thing about this and it should worry everyone no matter their political allegiance. The implications of it are far more frightening than any Russian meddling.
Let’s say the CIA does know Trump has been compromised by Russia. They go to the GOP leadership who say they’ll do nothing. We know that’s the case because they’ve been the ones actively shutting down any sort of investigation into the whole thing.
So then what do they do? Just let the blackmail happen? Or do they leak it and try to undercut the power Russia has over Trump by getting it out in the open? If that were the case, that’s not even a partisan move - that’s just patriotic.
There is nothing I could add here that SenorBeef hasn’t already said better than I could. Well done, sir, and carry on. For the rest of the thread, count me as a +1 to whatever he says.
Yes, I think the facts clearly indicate that the intelligence community did not leak this document. In fact, I think the facts show that this assertion is paranoid conspiracy theory nonsense that could only be supported by people with just a very thin understanding of what has actually happened over the last 72 hours, and more importantly, the last several months.
First, let’s start out with a common understanding of the term “leak.” I think it means that information that others do not have is given out in a way that it was not supposed to, so that others who would not have access to the information (generally journalists or more broadly speaking the public) that is of some kind of importance.
It is now undeniable that the dossier was given to numerous journalists over a series of months by the authors of the report, in an effort to get the media to run a story on it. From what I can gather, this was done from roughly August through October, and perhaps even after that. (Cites available upon request, but seriously, this is covered in probably the majority of media stories about the report.)
You specifically said that the IC must have leaked the report. That makes zero sense, because the very people who wrote the report – the private intelligence firm – were giving it out like candy months ago. In no way, shape or form can that be considered a leak by the IC.
I’m discouraged that Trump even thinks that the IC is behind the leak. It shows to me that the man is unable to listen to anyone, or make basic connections between facts, and is instead driven by a paranoia that lives in a fact-free world where enemies’ lists rule his actions.
Unlikely (but more like yes and no). I was listening to MSNBC this AM with interviews of Cokie Roberts and David Ignatius (two seasoned reporters in DC) and they laughed at the idea. As reporters, they wish leaks came from the intel community like that!
They did say that leaks came further down the line (usually from congressional staffers), but it would be fair to say that when those intel reports are sent over to Congress, the intel folks expect that it will be leaked at some point. Still, it is their duty to send this stuff to the folks who have to see it.
Six pages of trying to turn a story about fake news into a Trump failing Even for the Dope, that’s quite an achievement. Well done!
Without knowing if the report is true, it’s still kind of a big deal in that the POTUS, Trump and like nine senators needed to know about it or else they wouldn’t have been briefed. I ain’t no Leonard Bernstein, but I think any classified briefings from James Clapper, James Comey, John Brennan, and Mike Rogers are bound to be a little bit newsworthy.
It’s not CNN’s fault if people don’t know what “uncorroborated” means. Of course it’s unverified. The story says it over and over. Even if the report itself is 100% baloney, that doesn’t make it not news. It still has important political and diplomatic implications even if it’s a hoax.