It’s like that old joke of mixed feelings watching your mother-in-law drive your new Caddy over a cliff.
I gotta agree.
Especially that thump does not believe he can be destroyed. Nor does he believe he can ever be poor. Death, however-- not his own, of course-- he gets that. He has lost loved ones, weaklings like his brother, whom he finally bested.
With Putin, thump is like a goldfish in a tank thinking he can win a fight with a piranha
I think a “pee tape” exists and I think we will surface at some point. And I think it’s going to be low quality and I don’t think it’s goung to be possible to positively identify the man in the tape. Putin’s idea of fun.
Even if it doesn’t exist, the story was not made up out of whole cloth. We know Trump was in that hotel, and we know Russia offered ( through Keith Schiller ) to send 5 hookers to Trumps room and Schiller said no.
I didn’t believe this part of the dossier for a long time. For all his many many many flaws, I don’t think Trump has a hedonistic bone in his body. He gets off on power and conquest, he only pursues sex with beautiful women because it’s an ego trip. I never saw him as being in to hookers.
So, if Russia planned to make the video, I guess they just scowled and said “Curses, foiled again” when Schiller said no, then they packed up and went home. Or maybe they sent girls to the room anyway. And if they did, I think Trump would’ve accepted. Not out of horniness, but because he didn’t want to seen as rejecting Putins gift.
But it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s true, it’s the narrative that’s out there that matters.
And with all that said, I think there’s been too much focus on the pee tape because the outrageousness of the allegation discredits the entire dossier. And I believe that the primary allegation is true, that Russia groomed Trump for a long time and flattered him into running for President. And that Trump is such a narcissistic idiot that it worked and he didn’t realize he had been played. Because Trump never considers that people that kiss his ass might have ulterior motives.
And that is why Putin owns Trump, because I’m sure that if Russia wants evidence of collusion to surface, it will. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not.
Okay, so I might be wrong about Philip being there, but clearly the Queen reviewed the Troops recently, despite what Trump said.
But couldn’t Putin do this to anyone else? Couldn’t have Putin done this to Obama and his family? Couldn’t have Putin do this to any number of world leaders? Putin’s an abominable human being, but he’s not insane. He’s not going to whack heads of state, particularly those who have the ability to whack back. Going after a former Russian spy is different - he views them as members of a gang who left the gang. He kills them to send a message to anyone else who wants to leave the gang, or other Russian dissidents who want to come back to Russia and cause trouble. Notice how former spies are fair game anywhere; journalists and dissidents tend to be left alone unless they come back into the Russian sphere of influence. For some, the message that Putin sends is “Stay here, don’t even think of leaving.” For others, the message is equally clear, “Don’t even think of coming back here.”
What Trump fears is living life as an ordinary, bankrupt loser. He fears being ordinary, because he has his entire life lived with this facade of being a fake billionaire. Being ordinary would be a horrible enough fate for him to suffer through, and Trump is smart enough to know that he’s a fraud, a fake billionaire. He sometimes forgets that he’s a fake billionaire, but Putin can remind him of that right quick. He knows Putin can deal him a mortal blow of a different kind: life as a bankrupt loser. Oh, and he also has evidence of his financial and other crimes, which would probably put him and his family in one of any number of state or federal correctional facilities across the United States – probably for life. What Trump fears is his ignominious exit from the public stage, into the life of an imprisoned stooge.
It is different for you, for me and for Putin, who at the very least would use less-blatant methods if he did do anything directly against Trump and/or the Trumpettes (it’s not as if the specific nerve agent was chosen because it was the only option available; more-discreet methods do exist). But Trump has as much ability to think of other people, or of consequences, as the average 5 months old.
Those are all excellent points about some great moments in history, but that last one needs clarification, as GWB initially said “would”, not “wouldn’t” – historians frequently get confused on this point.
Most of us still remember the day. It was September 14, 2001, and George W. Bush was at Ground Zero. He climbed on top of some of the still-smoldering rubble of the twin towers, picked up a bullhorn, put his arm around a firefighter, and said those famous words we all remember that became one of the defining moments of his presidency: “I have Osama bin Laden; he just said it’s not al-Qaeda. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be. Bin Laden was extremely strong and powerful in his denial.”
This caused a bit of a kerfuffle, understandably, so his handlers convinced him to do some damage control a couple of days later. Sitting stiffly and reading from a prepared script, looking like he was being forced to make a hostage tape, Bush stated, “Heh, heh, what I meant to say there, is I meant to say ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be al-Qaeda’. Sort of a double negative, you see?” With that out of the way, he quickly added, “or it could have been many other people”. Then, picking up the script again, and reading from a hastily scrawled note to himself that appeared to have been written in crayon, he further added, “But there was no collusion. No collusion.”
It was one of history’s inspiring moments.
The tape may not exist, but the fact that Trump is worried that it does means the incident did occur.
It’s not important, though. It’s only talked about because it’s fun to think of him being personally humiliated for all the world to see, in a way he can’t hannity his way out of.
Could be, or could be that it came out of the bribery negotiations with Putin for his hotel projects there.
Putin doesn’t even need something to blackmail him with, just knowing how much he loves autocracy and flattery.
Trump is an extraordinary loser!
Bwaaaaaaaaaaa ha ha ha
In all likelihood the tipping point would be a massive recession sparked by his dumb trade war, but whatever happens, I hope it happens before martial law is declared.
Something I’ve noticed on Twitter is Russian bots and their Trumpists followers will, in the middle of a thread about Russia’s attacks on democracy, write:
“America isn’t a democracy, it’s a Republic.”
This is an old saw, and of course it’s stupid; America is both a democracy and a republic. But the Russians are pushing it big time on social media. You know why? To get the Trumpists to think it’s okay if the USA isn’t a democracy.
Um, no, sweetie. Obama made that comment in October of 2016 before the election.
You’re just sad that hostilities aren’t escalating between Russia and the US. We’re supposed to be mired in endless war like the Good Lord intended, right?
This all reminds me of the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. Most of the country had been brainwashed with the idea that Saddam Hussein has something to do with the 911 attacks and that there was clear evidence of WMDs. How did that turn out?
You’re all brainwashed by CNN just like you were in 2003.
Idiots.
Except no one is currently arguing that Russia was able to directly tamper with votes at the ballot box.
So you’ve built a strawman, and now you’ve knocked him down! How did that feel?
Not sure where you’re going with this line of argument. I don’t think anyone wants hostilities to escalate. But it’s important to be aware of certain facts and to be appropriately cautious: that Russia has been working to undermine democracy in Europe as well as the US, that it has and continues to meddle in US elections through hacking and propaganda, that it invaded a sovereign nation, that it has imperialist ambitions, that it shot down a civilian airliner in 2014, and that Putin has had people killed both at home and abroad. Aside from Trump and his cronies, there is general bipartisan agreement that the Russians are not our friends. There’s a big difference between wanting to escalate hostilities and defending our basic institutions of democracy.
Bingo.
I just posted somewhere yesterday that fully 1 in 6 in a recent poll suggested that military rule might be form of government to experiment with. I’m guessing the percentage of conservatives is way higher.
This “old saw” always bothered me. I went back and looked up who was saying it. Invariably, it’s Republicans. My first thought was – they couldn’t be THAT petty, could they? American is a “Republic” – like “Republican”, not a “Democracy,” like “Democrats”. This isn’t just because of some chance resemblance between the names of the party, is it? It has to be some deeper philosophic or technical political scientist argument, right?
Nope. It’s just petty resemblance of the names.
(If you don’t think so, I defy you to find one Democrat who says the phrase)
If they’re trying to sway people with the use of this phrase, it’s pretty clearly Republicans they’re trying to sway.
Were you born yesterday?
Remember when Putin “had no respect” for Obama and Obama didn’t have a “great relationship” with Putin? That sure was an awful eight years of full-on shooting war with Russia, huh?
Funny. I would have thought a win for free speech would imply that conditions in which it doesn’t even occur to the speaker that anonymity might be desirable had been strengthened.
So, here’s a (probably stupid) question.
Are you actually interested in discussing, debating, understanding, etc.? Or are you just here in an attempt to score cheap rhetorical points and “pwn the libs”?
Because if the former: nobody here wants war between the US and Russia. The single most shitty, obnoxious thing you can do is present stupid strawman arguments about your opponents, and the interesting thing about trolls on this forum is that, for the most part, they don’t stick around long enough to earn a seniority bonus á la doorhinge.
Nobody here wants war with Russia. That said, it is important to keep in mind that Putin is an aggressive, expansionist dictator with a trail of dead bodies in his wake who has been doing quite a lot to upset the modern western order and destroy the cohesion that’s given Europe unprecedented peace and prosperity. The only way to deny his meddling in the US election is to completely reject the conclusions of the entire US intelligence apparatus. Maybe you do this; maybe Iraq was the last straw for you. (I’d hope it was equally the last straw for the republican party, but apparently not - what’s your opinion on John Bolton?) I think that’s foolish, but okay, that’s an opinion. I’d just hope you’d apply it consistently.