You know nothing about why the KGB/GRU would groom a wealthy American as an asset. Even idiots can be useful.
Then how do you explain that it was such a great outcome, for the russians? You mean they just stumbled into this one by accident? Yeah that must be it.
A grade B+ celebrity (He had a #1 show) who needs your money because he’s crooked and can’t get loans at home, loves hookers, and has been threatening to run since 1986 or so, is not a good prospect for espionage?
Especially when said American owes the Russian mob, and thus Putin, money. Donny Half-scoop has said outright that Trump got money from Russia and I see no reason he was any more wise with their investments than anyone else’s.
If Trump isn’t a Russian asset he’s doing a bang-up job playing one on CNN.
I’ll just note that I don’t particularly follow celebrity news, I’m not involved in the real estate industry, have never lived further east than Chicago, and I’ve never particularly followed New York culture or events. Even so, I’ve been all too familiar with Trump, dating back to the mid-late 1980s.
Even back then, he was a very visible icon of “greed is good / aggressive business,” and he was regularly parodied in the national media – two examples I can think of from the late 1980s were in Bloom County (after an accident, Trump’s brain was surgically implanted in Bill the Cat’s body for a while), and Spy Magazine (the origin of the “short-fingered vulgarian” nickname). When it came out that he was having an affair with Marla Maples in the early 1990s, while that story was very likely much bigger in New York, it was definitely national news for a long time.
You do know that Russia has been peddling propaganda during every election since the 40s? It’s never been particularly effective. It’s just something that one does if he’s Russia.
Indeed, SNL even parodied the Trump/Ivana divorce in the early 90s with Phil Hartman and Jan Hooks.
When you run an airline, a football league, and a few casinos into the ground, word gets around.
Not to mention that he was the biggest sideshow in the Republican primary. Who do you think the Russians were going to back to foment unrest? Kasich? Jeb!?
[quote=“Silver_lining, post:4328, topic:782799”]
Muller has nothing on Trump.
Trump is not a suspect, and there is no evidence of evidence of collusion. All Mr. Muller has is about three dozen layer of questions, some of which if answered might yield conditioning answer based on the way they are written.
This investigation isn’t about Russia at all. Its aimed to go after Trump’s connections and to slander his PResidency.
Trump has the power to dismiss this carnival sideshow under article two. He’s not doing that. I get it, the Democratic base is worried about Trump’s possibly winning in 2020, and the media has fed them cap nit, using words like allegedly and according to sources without naming any. But the BS will stop soon, and I predict many areas of Muller’s work will look partisan once exposed by Trump’s legal team.
A federal judge raised concerns on Thursday about the scope of special counsel Robert Mueller’s authority in the Russia investigation.
The judge’s questions over Mueller’s power in the Russia probe came up in a hearing in the criminal case involving President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.
The judge accused Muller’s team of lying. Here what Hannity has to say. Sure he might be partisan too, but his words are powerful.
[/QUOTE]From YOUR first link
*Jackson issued no ruling Thursday on the issue of Mueller’s authority or on two other defense motions to dismiss individual counts in the indictment. However, she did not seem persuaded that the potential overbreadth of Rosenstein’s order had actually resulted in any harm to Manafort.
The judge said it seemed likely that scrutiny of Manafort’s business ties to Ukraine was already part of the broader Trump-Russia investigation when Mueller was appointed last May. She also suggested Manafort’s activities in the Ukraine would qualify as part of Mueller’s announced mandate to look at all “links” between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
*
But Russia is not Ukraine! Look at this map, right here! See? Not the same, not the same at all! That’s like saying Texas is the same as Oklahoma! Oklahoma is full of ignorant peckerwoods, while Texas is…bigger! And further south! Game over, man, game over!
I don’t see that.
Your point that I commented on was that the dossier’s knowledge of the movements of Trump’s people was, in a sense, “amazingly prescient”. My point was that this knowledge was not amazingly prescient.
The reason this is relevant is that the poster you were responding to tried to use the dossier’s supposed accuracy about some details to infer the accuracy about other details. In the context of that reasoning, whether the dossier was “amazingly prescient” about anything at all is highly significant.
Silver Lining posted the wrong link. There are two separate cases against Manafort, and two judges ruling on the same issue. His link was to an article about an earlier ruling by Judge Jackson in the DC case. The judge who “raised concerns on Thursday about the scope of special counsel Robert Mueller’s authority in the Russia investigation” was Judge Ellis in the Virginia case.
Suppose you shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die. You are convicted, and they hire a hangman from Reno. Then your lawyers bring a case that the incident occurred outside the city limits of Reno, therefore that hangman cannot be hired! Another hangman must be hired!
They win that point, and rush to celebrate their stunning victory. You thrilled?
If you look at it in one way then it is amazingly prescient - part 1 of the post.
If you look at it another way then it still is largely unproven - part 2 of the post.
Agree with people before disagreeing with them. It’s a technique for gaining support.
Right.
The first poster said “the fact that the dossier was right about some stuff strongly suggests it was right about other stuff”.
You said “the fact that the dossier was right about some stuff doesn’t strongly suggest it was right about other stuff”.
I said “the dossier wasn’t right about some stuff in any meaningful sense”.
So we disagree.
Not looking to gain support, in discussions here. Looking to say my thing, that’s all. I can do Dale Carnegie in other areas of life, where my priorities are different.
So what are you trying to do here then?
Typically when debating, the point of the effort is to attempt to win people over to your side with the use of arguments that you present. If you aren’t trying to do that, then I’m unclear on what you are trying to achieve.
If semantic quibbling makes you happy, then I’m happy that you’re happy.
I find this type of thing entertaining. More entertaining than work, anyway …
That’s not semantics. That’s a completely different rationale.
If the only way you can view this is in terms of “the dossier proves that Trump colluded with the Russians” versus “the dossier doesn’t prove that Trump colluded with the Russians”, then I suppose you might dismiss the matter of just what the rationale is for either of these conclusions as unimportant. But that’s not how I look at things.
My point was that evidence is still necessary. Did you have a different point than that? My read was that that’s what you were saying.
As above, I was offering a different rationale for thinking that evidence is still necessary.
Your point was that even if the dossier was right about some things, it could still be wrong about other things. I don’t disagree with this point (having made essentially the same point in post #4316, second paragraph). But I said further that even if you disagreed with this logic and believed that you can infer from the dossier being right about some things that it’s likely right about other things as well, that the underlying premise that the dossier has been right about anything significant is itself highly dubious.
I have yet to see anyone with any knowledge say anything other than that Steele is a credible source with a history of professionalism and real results. While it could well be that this is the case where his work fell down, fundamentally we don’t have the evidence in the public sphere to really comment one way or the other. But, minus evidence, the best bet is his historical performance.
It’s like if you look at Earth and the presence of life here - while it’s possible that we’re the first planet in the Universe to develop life, from a sample size of one, you have to assume that we’re somewhere in the middle of the pack, since that’s the statistically most likely position for a sample size of 1. Bad data isn’t unusable data. It’s just not good data.