Trump and a feeling of momentum for impeachment

Politics & Elections
61

Yeah, no kidding. In the last week, Trump has:

  • Asked the FBI director to lay off an investigation he was potentially involved in
  • Asked the FBI director about prosecuting journalists
  • Fired said FBI director and admitted that that he did it to make the investigation go away
  • Given top secret information from Israel, which Israel had explicitly asked the US not to share, to Russia

Remember when the big scandal of the Obama administration was that an embassy was attacked and the administration “lied” about why it happened?

To be fair, this “liberal bubble” encapsulates essentially all mainstream news media (including international sources) that isn’t directly in the pocket of the republican party.

But okay, let’s spare a thought for the bubble, and pop our heads outside, shall we? How is the “right-wing” media covering this news? Well, I see shit like this:

The Washington Post published its dubious story on President Trump leaking classified information to the Russians less than an hour after the bombshell news broke that murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich was in contact with Wikileaks and that DC Police were ordered to cover it up.
The coincidental timing has led many Trump supporters to accuse the Post of publishing their story in an attempt to distract the rest of the media from focusing on the massive new revelations in the Seth Rich case.

Or this:

Liberals Melting Down and Turning Violent
[…]
Many journalists degraded themselves in covering Trump

Or this:

Deep State Leaks Highly Classified Info to Washington Post to Smear President Trump

That’s how the three biggest right-wing news sources decided to cover the news that Donald Trump handed top secret information to Russia. So okay, let’s look at what the right-wing internet communities like /r/The_Donald are talking about… Oh, look, every post on the front page is about that fucking inane Seth Rich conspiracy, or wondering why the media isn’t covering the Seth Rich conspiracy and instead is focusing on Donald Trump sharing top secret classified information with Russia, or attempts to discredit or invalidate the Washington Post story.

I’m sorry, what, exactly, am I supposed to be looking at here? What was the purpose of this attempt to see past my “bubble” of mainstream news media? To see how Trump supporters think? To see what kind of news they read? Okay, mission accomplished: they don’t, and their news is fucking bat-shit crazy propaganda. Now what the fuck do we do about that?

62

Here’s the downside as I see it from your perspective (and the upside from mine). Those tens of thousands of people who packed stadiums to see Donald Dick- what do you suppose resignation/impeachment will do to them? You think they’ll just shuck it off and say, “Well, I gotta keep on punching that Republican ticket”? I don’t. I think they are going to be turned off bigly. The man they absolutely worship is going to be forced out of office. They weren’t fans of the Republican Party, they were fans of HIM. When he goes, so goes their enthusiasm. They are going to be bitter as hell and they are not going to turn out in droves to loyally vote for the party which is going to wash their hands of him. If he goes in the next say 15 months, kiss that Republican majority in both houses goodbye. A bug from your perspective, a feature from mine.

63

Also, one more thing to add to post #60 above. If I have to go to conservative sources to step outside the liberal bubble, then the right has well and fully ceded the middle ground, because to my knowledge, the list of mainstream conservative news outlets that aim for anything even resembling balance or bipartisanship pretty much begins and ends with the Wall Street Journal. Conservative sources do “bipartisan”, much in the same way the New York Times does “David Icke is totally right”.

64

Well, Putin just threw a wrench in the works:

“LATEST: Russia’s Putin says he can give record of Trump and Lavrov conversation to U.S. congress and senate.”

https://t.co/DJ23iL4wJq
https://t.co/HYaLJepqxV

They have a transcript of the meeting. Not willing to give up the recording, however.

Talking slower so the more gullible can understand:

A. Known. Adversary. Got. The. President. To. Allow. Recording. Equipment. Into. The. Oval. Office. And. Recorded,. Without. Knowledge. Of. The. President. Or. The. Administration,. The. Entire. Conversation.

65

No offense, but that is kind of an example of being inside a bubble and thinking it’s the whole world. Even your article mentions that this is a Democratic polling organization.

If the Democrats are going to impeach Trump, they have to make a case that convinces more than Democrats. Otherwise it’s going to be “but all the polls said Hillary would win!” all over again.

Regards,
Shodan

66

What really matters isn’t Trump’s polls, it’s the House GOP polls that will determine whether Repubs try to contain the Trumpster fire.

67

Hey, I’m as shocked as you are that obstruction of justice (that is, asking the head of the FBI to drop a case related to you, then firing him when he refuses to do so, and saying outright that that’s why you fired him) doesn’t convince republicans. Why do you reckon that is?

68

You’re right, which is why there’s a very real danger that the House republicans are stuck with Trump and might get drowned by the undertow of his almost daily political scandals. Trump won in 2016 partly because a lot of first-time voters got up out of their lawn chairs and went to vote, which confounded political polls. It’s entirely possible that the antics of Trump motivates some first-time voters to get off their couches to vote in 2018 though there isn’t enough evidence to tell one way or the other just yet. One danger is that Trump becomes their Moby Dick and they get so wrapped up in impeaching him that they fail to craft a middle class agenda and message.

69

And just to provide further context for this story and Fox News’ own truly dubious reporting, there’s this:

The right wing media bubble is growing increasingly unhinged and desperate to distract from the big stories about the imploding Trump administration. Even Bill Kristol is starting to acknowledge it.

70

But it’s not collapsing. There’s no indicating that any of these sources are failing. They did better than ever in 2016, and now many of them have a veneer of respectability. They’re getting more unhinged and ridiculous, but their viewers don’t seem to actually care. And I just don’t know what anyone is supposed to do about that.

71

Well, as I said before we only need to convince the few that were misled into voting for Trump in the mistaken belief that the change was going to be good and the ones that were discouraged and not voting.

And the report from the Hill there does give me hope in the sense that viewers like that **are **beginning to care about the nonsense and looking for other sources when FOX is blatantly omitting information to them.

72

I hate to question the sincerity of your attempt, but I wasn’t thinking of InfoWars or a MediaMatters screen grab. Try reading this article:

FOX News

or go check what other news outlets have to say. I’d suggest looking at some of these:

WSJ

Chicago Tribune

NY Post

Las Vegas Review-Journal

you might try checking in with the National Review too.

That would probably give you a pretty good flavor of what conservatives are reading and hearing on the subject.

Or just keep reading Media Matters. I don’t really care either way.

73

I thought I’d made it clear in my earlier post that I don’t really know if Donald’s going down and I don’t really expect the Republicans in congress to pull the trigger. I just offered that up as a data point, not as a final argument.

Here’s another data point, with discussion of a different poll, just released this morning (Weds 17) -

Ultimately, the Republicans in congress will only dump Trump if they decide he’s a liability. I doubt that would happen in any one thing. If it happens at all, I think it’s going to be lots of little data points piling up that will tip the balance.

…

Or at any rate that’s what I thought before learning that Putin was bragging about his transcript of the Oval Office meeting. I would have expected Putin to try and preserve his asset in Donald but he seems to be trying to do his best to light this puppy up.
Two other data points:

  1. On morning news today, Jonathon Turley said this is like a family car trip. No we’re not there yet. We can still see our house.
  2. The 538 Political editors posted a chat transcript about this.
74

Have you entertained the possibility that you were mistaken about Trump being Putin’s asset?

75

Putin may well figure that toppling a US government for sport is just as destabilizing as helping to elect a cretin, so from Russia’s point of view it’s all good.

76

Trump is Putin’s useful idiot. Which makes him a disposable asset.

77

This is the crux of the biscuit. Trump can begin being afraid when McConnell and Ryan decide they need him gone to stop the loss of either or both chambers.

PPP has the generic congressional ballot at 49-38 against the GOP right now. If that continues into late 2017/early 2018 there’s going to be some cut-our-losses sentiment.

78

Too much idiot, not enough useful

79

The downside is the tens of millions of voters who still support him blindly and see this entire debacle as a huge conspiracy to take their “miracle on ice” level victory away.

80

Yes. It’s about as likely as the possibility that Trump is the Flying Nun. It’s not exactly keeping me up nights.