Yeah, their terror-quaking since the story broke is registering on local seismographs.
“You wanna get this done? You wanna be sure it gets done right? What are you, chicken, bwock-bwock-bwock!”
I somehow doubt a Machiavellian degree of manipulation was required.
Again, hypothetically.
I disagree with this. If you are a serious professional and want to build a successful business it makes more sense to say that nothing has come up rather than damage your reputation. There is no point for a third party to pay good money for fake news; they can just make it up themselves.
I think the context matters. There are a lot of established facts about Trump and Russia which are troubling not least the fact that the US intelligence community believes that Russia hacked the DNC in order to help Trump. There is also the fact that he refuses to release his tax returns which makes it difficult to assess his business involvement in Russia. Within that context it makes sense to investigate this report more thoroughly especially since it has been written by a credible intelligence professional.
I don’t think this is true. He knows who he got the info from but doesn’t know who they got it from or their reliability.
This sounds cute, but the reaction by the US public and political establishment is certainly a big negative for them.
What does this mean after stripping out the cutesy lingo? The Russians contact Trump and say “we can hack the Democrats but need you to cough up some money; otherwise we can’t afford it”. That seems ridiculous.
Just for the record, if I were a russian prostitue, I’d be more than happy to pee all over the place so long as the Donald kept his hands off me.
Is it? I thought there was still a prevailing attitude among the U.S. public and political establishment of “Trump won and Trump’s gonna do what Trump’s gonna do - suck it, losers!”
Anything short of Trump getting rapidly impeached doesn’t seem to much matter, and if we’re just talking about feelings and perceptions… big deal. Anyone can say “oh, this will make X look bad”, and reveal nothing more than that person’s wish that X would look bad because it deserves to, if only everyone could see X the way the speaker does. If Congress starts ripping up treaties and trade deals with Russia, maybe you’ll have something.
The Russians don’t have to say “we can’t afford it”. They’d just have to suggest that, for example, if Trump wants to have any control over the process, he has to invest a little. Russia could even offer to loan him the money - he’d take that deal.
Very little about this is truly ridiculous, given the massive recalibration of our ridiculousness-scales we’ve all had to do since Super Tuesday.
OK, I strongly disagree with all that, but am not inclined to pursue this further.
They wouldn’t even have to promise him any “control” over the process.
Russians: We have the capability to damage your opponent. But you have to cough up some money to finance it.
One of Trump’s people: Why do we have to pay? You can afford it easily! Besides, wouldn’t that leave us more exposed to bad things if the arrangement were to somehow be made public?
Russians: Yes, obviously, that’s why we’re doing it this way. It gives you more of an incentive to make sure it stays a secret.
OoTp: I’m not sure this is such a great idea…
Russians: This is the deal, take it or leave it. You want a shot at winning this election or not?
That’s circular.
The only way Trump would know about it is if they approached him. It makes zero sense for them to approach him for money so that he would have an incentive to keep it secret, when they could have not approached him for money and not need any incentives.
Come on. Let them have their fantasies. It makes them happy (well - happier). Whom does it hurt?
Not really, if the Russian goal is to gather leverage instead of just dirt.
Besides, I thought Republicans were all about making sure people had “skin in the game” and such.
Trump, I gather, given the number of capital letters and exclamation points in his tweets.
Poor baby.
cuauhtemoc was presenting the rationale that the Russians might give to Trump.
In that context the ostensible rationale is circular. You can’t tell someone you need him to pay for something in order to ensure his secrecy when the only way he knows about it is because you asked him to pay for it.
This is what my response would be if you were inclined to pursue this further:
It also makes zero sense for the Russians to want Trump in the White House if they don’t own a piece of him. If he’s not gonna put any of his own skin in the game, why help him win at all?
They didn’t have to leak anything; they could have just sat on whatever the hackers managed to dig up on Clinton. As far as Trump knew, he was being offered “guarantee” that any leaks would favor him and not his opponent. All he had to do was get his hands dirty in the operation, and cross his fingers that if it ever came back to bite him in the ass, he’d get away with it just like every other piece of shit thing he’s done in his life.
Hunh? I cant make a choice between two things without it ‘owing me something’ or being beholden to me?
They could have done it just to spite Clinton alone. Not to mention thinking a Trump Presidency favors them on general principles.
I don’t understand the prevailing failure of imagination. Hypothetically, Trump hires people to look for dirt on his rivals. The Russians (most definitely not hypothetically) gather dirt on Trump and his rivals. Somewhere along the way, a Trump operative meets a Putin operative and the latter says “I got some real dirt on your boss’s enemy, if he’s interested in buying it.” The Trump operative reports back to Trump, who says yes, and now the Russians get a major bonus - evidence of Trump arguably engaging in espionage or even treason. Whatever’s Russian for “Score!”
This is a new scenario (apparently unrelated to the discussion we’ve been having about Trump paying for Russian hacking efforts), but seems at odds with what’s being alleged so far.
You’re now suggesting that Trump released dirt on Clinton that was sold to him by the Russians. I’m not aware that anyone has alleged that to this point.
If you want to just speculate on the basis of nothing at all, the sky is the limit.
Put in this way:
Imagine you’re Russia. You have the opportunity to possibly, maybe tip the election to Trump by releasing selectively damaging information about his opponent. And it’s maybe possible that a Trump administration would be more Russia-friendly than a Clinton administration. And of course it would be worse for America, and you like that because they’re one of your main rivals for global domination. So yeah, that scenario would be okay.
Then again, you really never know. Trump’s ideology is unclear, and it’s a diplomatic risk, and besides, it’s got like a one in a thousand shot of working anyway. It might not even be worth it, unless…
Y’know what would be even better? If you had something damaging on Trump that you could hold over his head. Something that would make him look illegitimate in the eyes of the American people.
Now, you wouldn’t try this with an ordinary candidate; even the most corrupt among them has at least a trace amount of love of country and inclination toward actually serving the public. Anybody else on the stage at those primary debates, you risk them telling you to get bent, going public with evidence that “Russian is meddling in our elections!” and looking like a hero for doing so.
But not this guy. He will do literally anything to win this election. He’s out for himself, and himself alone. If he thinks there’s something in it for him, he’ll take any “deal” you offer.
Whatever, he’s probably going to get creamed in the election anyway, and it’ll just be one more “asset development project” that didn’t amount to anything. But it won’t cost much, and if it does work… hoooo boy!!!.
fast forward to November 9th
Holy crap! You managed to (almost accidentally) install a puppet in the White House!
You’re typing a lot but not addressing the central question. What ostensible reason would the Russians be offering Trump as to why they needed him to pay for the hacking?
You addressed it earlier, but that logic was circular. Now you’re just falling back to talking about Russian motivations. That doesn’t get you there.
I speculated that Trump wanted dirt on Clinton, which is actually such a tepid notion that it didn’t occur to me that anyone would find it implausible. Your view of what I was supposedly “suggesting” is fanciful at best.
The relative novelty of this as-yet hypothetical is that a candidate would be sufficiently dumb and sufficiently unethical to let himself be played by Putin in this way. Before Trump, I would’ve thought it highly unlikely at best. With Trump, I’m at the “yeah, I could see that happening” level.
ISTM that you were clearly suggesting that. You didn’t just say he wanted dirt. You said the Russians had it and speculated that they made a deal to sell it to Trump. (The only thing I added was the notion that Trump then released it.)
I don’t see the point of these hypotheticals. We’ve been discussing things that are at least being alleged by someone to have happened. Pointing out that various other things could have hypothetically happened is not relevant to that.
I mean, no one can stop you from discussing any number of made-up hypotheticals if that happens to be your interest. I’m just going to limit myself to pointing out for the sake of clarity that this speculation is not in support of any actual allegations.