Watched this last night and it’s just come online- it’s 4 minutes long.
Basic idea is Russia wanted only to undermine Clinton’s legitimacy and to cause here domestic distractions. At no point did Russia support Trump.
Part of the rationale: Russia has always known where the red lines were with the West, the West was predictable and Putin could play ‘threshold war’. Not so with Trump, Trump plays the game more like the Russians i.e. more unpredictably.
Trump is a mistake.
p.s. the speaker is Igor Sutyagin: Igor - Wikipedia Sutyagin, he would seem to not be a Russian asset:
Part of it, sure. Bigger part is that Hillary was likely to keep sanctions in place, and Putin’s chances of breathing life back into his Exxon deal would be boned. Oil. Its about the oil.
Remember that Republican Party platform about helping Ukraine resist Russia? How it mysteriously disappeared without leaving any fingerprints? Spontaneous combustion, poof! Gone! And nobody did it, it just happened!
Nobody knew superpower relations were so complicated!
Not that new… To quote myself from 12/11/16:
Kind of makes a Titanic-sized hole in a bunch of the current political narratives on the Hill … and it certainly gives Trump some space …
In other news, Voltaire wins the banana!
I think Cenk Uygur has a good take on this. Follow the money. “Give me money, sanctions get lifted”. The deal was money, pure and simple.
I don’t doubt that Trump benefited from Russian interference, sure, I buy that. But did Putin collude with Il Douche, conspire with a notorious blabbermouth about something sooper seekrit? That one is harder to choke down. Far easier to let him think he won legit, and let his friendly advisers do the grunt work on dismantling the sanctions.
And it was cheap. Hackers don’t cost money, you catch 'em and offer them the happy prospect of continuing to breathe, they cooperate. If the only result is to embarrass and undermine Hillary, he spent ten cents on a lottery ticket and won a car. If it means Trump wins, its the same ten cents, but he won a swimming pool full of money.
Why would he risk telling Trump about it? Trump thinks he’s a winner, you want to risk all that by telling him something different?
Trump is innocent of conspiracy because he’s too stupid to be guilty. Or Putin is a dumbass who conspired, betrayed and backstabbed his way to the top of the KGB by trusting people who can’t keep their mouth shut. Place your bets!
Yeah, about that. I think they may have identified a few freakishly-small fingerprints.
“According to CNN’s Jim Acosta, however, [J.D.] Gordon said that at the RNC he and others “advocated for the GOP platform to include language against arming Ukrainians against pro-Russian rebels” because “this was in line with Trump’s views, expressed at a March national security meeting at the unfinished Trump hotel” in Washington, DC.”
The cherry on that sundae? The meeting was chaired by the Honorable Jeff Sessions.
But this needs to explain why even before Russia’s shenanigans regarding the hacking came to light Trump seemed to be pro Putin. I suppose it could be a coincidence,but it seems doubtful, particularly for a candidate running as a Republican where appearing strong against our traditional global rival would seem to be a good thing.
But this needs to explain why even before Russia’s shenanigans regarding the hacking came to light Trump seemed to be pro Putin. I suppose it could be a coincidence,but it seems doubtful, particularly for a candidate running as a Republican where appearing strong against our traditional global rival would seem to be a good thing.
I’m pretty sure Vlad’s prime directive is to keep breathing, which is impeded by a mushroom cloud over the Kremlin.
From that point of view any of the repulsive Republican candidates would be a safe bet — Bush, Ryan, Walker, Christie et al may be appalling from a domestic point of view but they are not purely stupid enough to double-dog-dare other nuclear powers to assert primacy.
“Look what I did to Gaddafi ! Feeling lucky, punk ? I am woman ! Go on, try and resist me, just try, Russian pig.”
You beat me to it back then – but, FWIW, I heard it somewhere else back then:
Point being, yeah, not new.
Trump is always pre-Putin. Vladimir Putin is the one and only person who has Trump’s full admiration and cooperation. Trump will sometimes pretend that he doesn’t know who Putin is, but even then, he’s always respectful.
Donald, who has no loyalty to anyone, is 100% loyal to Vlad.
I think Donald is afraid of Vlad, and Vlad is using him as an unwitting Russian agent, for his (Vlad’s) own money and power. I think Vlad will have Donald killed if Donald gets to be too loose-lipped, and I believe Donald knows it.
I think this fits the behavior of the people involved more than suggesting that Putin wasn’t really trying to do what he deliberately did.
What is it that Putin “deliberately did” because 17 US agencies are stilla little short on evidence?
Is he. Is this something in your head?
And meanwhile, bets are being taken in the diplomatic community as to which next Russian Ambassador’s turn is next. Four down in two months, where will the fickle finger of fate strike next ? Along with the ex-Red Army Choir hitting the sea.
Vlad must feel he’s under siege. Maybe Mr. Seagal, now Russian, can offer protection…
Or maybe Trumpo can stand them down.
Used the Kremlin hacking and propaganda talents to acquire information and release them to influence the US election in Donald Trump’s favor. Here’s NY Times article on it.
Intelligence Report on Russian Hacking
It’s incorrect to say that the various US intelligence agencies have no evidence. They don’t have enough unclassified evidence that they want to talk about publicly, atm, which is a different matter.
Nope. You’re welcome to try and prove me wrong though. All you have to do is find video of Donald insulting Vladimir Putin. Good luck with that.
Of course, Donald’s connections with Russia are of long standing (My thread from a year ago about Donald & Vladdetails some of it) and it’s clear that Donald’s administration is full of people having secret meetings with Russian pols, so it’s a bit much to insist that it’s all just a funny coincidence.
Oddly enough, acquiring information however obtained from foreign entities is neither criminal nor unethical.
Neither is releasing it, except for monetary gain.
You’d think most voters and the chattering classes would welcome as much information available before the People Choose. Not as if they think voters are mugs.
And not that it is particularly likely it was the Russians who took the information to give to Wikileaks. Mr. Podesta fell on his sword and blamed his own stupidity ( although it wasn’t that egregious an error, and most of us have done worse than that he was alleged to have committed ); but it is evident the DNC was wholly incompetent at basic security — which gave no confidence in the Democrats and their singularly incompetent candidate, who made a lifelong career of giving unnecessary hostages to fortune — and practically any hacker could have struck the motherlode.
The reasons more breaches don’t occur with most firms, are a/ they have nothing to hide b/ no hacker suspects they are so bad at security.
The real dark amusement to the Gods lies in the fact the DNC used public servers ( GMail ? Really ? ) no doubt to cheap out, whilst old Hil used her own private server when she should have used ( provided ) government servers, no doubt out of paranoia.
Of course they both got wacked.
So you’re saying that even though it would be illegal for me to hack DNC servers it’s perfectly legal for Russian agents to do so? Do you think an “IANAL” might have been a good thing to prefix that statement?
Well, actually, yeah. Probably illegal in America, but they don’t have to be here to do it. (TG, IANAL)