This was tested but with bulls, not elephants. The bulls carefully avoided all stacked ceramics. I don’t think elephants were tested at a Pottery Barn. Mice, however, can nibble away at the wooden shelves, sending china crashing. China crashing - is that a Tramp goal? Parachute-in more mice!
This is after Tramp admitted participation in a conspiracy to evade federal election laws and receive foreign help. One need only wait five minutes for Tramp to deny saying what he was just recorded saying. So we value those denials as we wish.
(No, unanimous intel findings of Russian cyberwarfare aren’t Deep State distractions. If a Deep State existed, Tramp would never have made it to Washington.)
Everyone agrees Bill stole some money. You say Bill’s stealing some money was not enough to explain why you beat Ted in the “fortune contest”. A court then declares Dave stole from you. You say investigate Dave. You are charged with requesting an investigation into Dave, and your statement that Bill didn’t help you win against Ted is misconstrued as a denial that Bill stole money.
It’s an analogy, Trump denies Russia helping him win the election but doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe Russia interfered and doesn’t mean that Ukraine didn’t interfere as well. Additionally, no one has explained the mechanics of how Russia helped Trump win, facebook ads, memes? Really?!
The Articles are stating that Russia interfered in 2016 (as attested by literally everyone), but that Russian propaganda is pushing the theory that Russia did NOT interfere, Ukraine did.
Found the logical flaw. The Articles are not saying Ukraine didn’t interfere. They are stating that Russia did.
Because all it did for me was make me think that I was greatly underestimating how often and how determinedly someone could post such obviously deluded obfuscation.
Russian military intelligence hacked the DNC server and John Podesta’s email and released the contents by Wikileaks in order to damage to the Clinton campaign.
Jesus fucking Christ, it’s like talking to people who haven’t read a newspaper in the last half-decade.
I’m not sure how you managed to reach that conclusion from that analogy, but let’s assume you’re right. Let’s also assume Trump didn’t say what I quoted and linked about his position on Russian interference. Let’s ignore the Mueller report conclusions. Let’s ignore the 17 intelligence agencies agreeing on who meddled in the 2016 election. Let’s ignore ALL that, and more.
Right, but Bill gave the money to Dave before he stole it from you, and then Dave deposited the money in an interest-bearing account at Ted’s bank. But you hired Dave to investigate Bill, without realizing that Bill and Dave are identical twins, and that they were both Ted’s lovers before Ted was involved in a motorcycle accident that gave him amnesia, and if he ever recovers from the amnesia, he’ll reveal the whole thing, which is why you don’t want Ted to testify.
Well, again, that sounds like a good defense: you misunderstood me. I didn’t say that Bill didn’t steal money, I just said that Dave also did.
So, election interference only depends on the margin of victory? If the same exact things happened in 1984 on behalf of Reagan but he wins 59-41 then nothing to see here, no crime?
I think the prior poster’s point is well taken. A scary sounding term like “interfering in the election” implies far more than a few stupid memes. I mean, not that I like foreign countries having any say in selecting our representatives, but with the global nature of the internet, such mild influences cannot be stopped, in either direction. I was going to say short of war, but even with war you couldn’t stop it.
Of course, we don’t know what the President believes in his heart of hearts but he can be quoted as saying that he doesn’t believe that Russia interfered.
a) I once read a story about a man who went to a voodoo priest and asked to be made invisible. The priest had him strip down and rubbed (magic) lemon juice all over him. Following, the man went to a bank, asked them to hand over their money, was dragged out by the security guards, and arrested for bank robbery.
Was his plan solid? No. Did he ever have any realistic chance of success? No. Did he go to jail? Yes.
Neither competence nor success is a component of committing a crime. One might even say that incompetence is a strong component of going to jail.
b) The intelligence unit of the Russian army hacked into the DNC, looking for information on the Democrat’s campaign strategy and anything scandalous. They shared the former with some Republican candidates and Roger Stone (aka The Trump Campaign) and published the latter to WikiLeaks.
In either case, this is the exact sort of operation that Richard Nixon’s American born and bred operatives were trying to conduct when they raided the DNC headquarters in the Watergate building. It is widely accepted that this sort of thing is “not kosher”, let alone when conducted by foreign operatives, and any President who was allowing of such activities by anyone is a disgrace to the Constitution, the flag, and humanity in general. And, one might note, the Watergate bandits failed in their mission and ultimately had no effect on the election.
In the latter case, there did end up being embarrassing information released, indicating that the DNC had buried Sanders and made him unable to compete against Hillary. One could envision this depressing Democratic turnout.
So… Your belief is that we should release our sources and means for spying on Russia and detecting Russian hacking - to try and prevent it - to the general public?
Care to make an argument in favor?
Personally, I would argue that that would be stuuuuuupid, but I remain open to being convinced.
The way you keep saying “Ukrainian Court”, like it means something roughly analogous to a US court or British court, is incredibly naive.
It doesn’t. Ukraine is not considered a “rule of law” country. The Ukrainian justice system is incredibly corrupt, It’s not just a matter of a few corrupt individuals. It’s not a matter of a lot of corrupt individuals. The corruption is baked into the entire system. It’s an artifact of the oligarchy, basically anyone that holds any power or owns anything of substance came into it originally by corrupt means. It’s a perpetually tricky situation from a diplomatic / foreign relations POV and it isn’t helping matters that the Republicans are taking advantage of the average American’s relative ignorance of foreign affairs with all their gaslighting.
I doubt Ukraine’s purpose in busting Manafort had much, if anything, to do with the US election. Manafort’s history would’ve made him a huge political enemy of the Ukrainians in power in 2016.
It’s no secret that lots of Ukrainians dislike Trump. In 2016 Trump publicly called for Ukraine to concede the Crimean peninsula to Russia. Some top Ukrainian official, who were against giving a large swath of their nation to their worst enemy, wrote op-ed’s pushing back against the idea.
These articles are now being cited by Republicans as evidence that the Ukrainian government had it in for Trump. Please note that this is a classic Trump move. Say or condone something so outrageously horrible that your target is guaranteed to push back against, then use that pushback as evidence that your target hates you, then retaliate.
And please remember that Russia is dead serious about their mission of gaslighting Ukraine. They shot down a commercial airliner so they could blame it Ukraine.
And even if Ukraine did interfere in some minor way, so what? Does that mean they’re obligated to cheat FOR Trump this time? Does that make it OK for Trump to shake down their president? And why do you and your red state cohort suddenly think election interference isn’t OK?
No one is working under the illusion the Ukraine is perfect. They are really corrupt. We aren’t helping them because their leader thinks our leader is brilliant. We aren’t helping them because we “like” them. We help them for reasons like “they are strategically important to the energy security of Western Europe and the entire world.”
No, I’m sorry, you don’t know that the Russians provided those emails to WikiLeaks. Wikileaks denied it and there is no evidence to support it. Even the Mueller report hedges its bets, here’s a great article on this.