That isn’t the storyline that anyone else here is seeing. I, for one, have clearly stated that I am not convinced that the Trump campaign coordinated with Russian intelligence.
So here is this guy, an obvious dirty tricks type of operation, trying to get Hillary’s emails to score some points. Okay, this is the 21st century, it’s a tough campaign, I understand that.
But then he is told something to the effect of, “Holy cow, you’re talking to Guccifer 2.0? That’s a terrible idea! It’s probably a front for Russian intelligence, and you have no fucking clue who you are getting in bed with!”
Dude essentially says, “I don’t care. I just want dirt.”
If this story is mostly true, sure seems like Trump can’t use the “no evidence of collusion” line anymore. Because this dude was apparently warned that he shouldn’t mess with Russian intelligence. And he persisted.
This is true, and overall I think that it’s unlikely that the Russians would have had sufficient reason to collude with Trump to help him win the race: Why deal directly with an obvious idiot? What does Trump have to offer them in return? You can help him out through Facebook, Twitter, voter registries, etc. just as easily without working with him directly.
But some things which we should still note are that:
Any concept that the Republican party is a bastion of goodness and purity and it’s the other party that is corrupt and slimey, is clearly not true. There are obviously operatives in the Republican party who are pure slime.
This isn’t to say that the Democratic party might not have the same sorts at the same or similar level. But, realistically, if we look back through history, it’s worth noting that the Clintons are believed to have done some slimy things in their personal lives but, in office, there was no particular political subterfuge, no conspiracies, nor any gross lies. Reagan had the Iran Contra affair; George W Bush had the whole “Weapons of Mass Destruction” thing; and those interested in Donald Trump’s campaign don’t seem to have cared much about the distinction between working for the Republican party and working against the United States of America. HW Bush and Barack Obama seem to be, on the whole, clean. And if we go back further in time, obviously Nixon was a crook, but I’ve heard tell that Johnson simply got away with the same sorts of things.
If we look at criminal politicians since Johnson, I count 45 Republicans and 44 Democrats.
Trying to paint the other party as the “criminal one” is a no go. At the Presidential level, the Republicans have gotten caught a lot more often, so if we’re going purely by data and being honest we’d have to lean on them being the slimy ones. (But that may simply be a matter of the Press being against them.)
Trump is a far more target-rich environment than pretty much any other person, ever, including Bill Clinton. If Russian collusion for the campaign doesn’t pan out, that still leaves money laundering, emoluments, sex crimes, various financial crimes, fraud, etc. The collusion thing took off, in the media, not because it was the most promising but simply because if it panned out it would be like Watergate meets Benedict Arnold. But I somewhat doubt that people have been ignoring all of the other possibilities. They might not have been getting much press attention, but had the collusion accusation never come out, one of those other tangents would be slowly dripping new lurid tales into the papers every day.
There’s just no helping when the man you’ve elected is not just a criminal, but also an inept one, that he’s going to be taken apart. On the whole, I recommend against hiring inept people. Nixon was at least a good President (he did some dumb things, but so did Obama). It seems plausible, from descriptions of how Lincoln became President, that it was basically impossible to become President at that time without being an amazingly criminal and corrupt person. A smart and capable criminal, as President, is not necessarily the end of the world. But don’t elect a fucking moron and then be all happy nor complacent when one of several dozen potential crimes doesn’t prove true. You’re still left with the fact that you’ve hired a moron and criminal target extraordinaire.
This is the part I don’t understand. Everyone seems to be overlooking that the investigation is now into any damn thing Mueller wants it to be. Anyone who wants to lay money down on the idea that Trump has been clean for the past five decades is insane.
So this is Muellers doing? Don’t you mean “Every damn thing in the investigative chain that indicates criminal activities of the president or his administration”? It was good enough for Ken Starr wasn’t it?
Didn’t mean to imply that Mueller was acting inappropriately. Just that he was wide ranging authority to delve into fraud, laundering, mob activity and all other manner of illegal activity that Trump and the Trump Organization has no doubt been involved in for the past several decades.
Yeah. But I don’t know if anyone is ignoring this. There are two kinds of people. Those who see the writing on this wall and those who are obfuscating, legal nitpicking, scrubbing, and pointing elsewhere.
Donald thinks he is in the second category, but he’s so bad at it and out of his own impulse controls, he’s really just declaring himself to be in the first.
If I were Mueller, I’d want to talk to the IRS. They’ve had Trump under audit for, what, 17 years running now? I would think they’d have fairly extensive financial records.
President Milquetoast just agreed to sell Poland Patriot PAC-3 missiles. This was the issue over which Obama was caught on open mic promising Dimitri Medvedev that he would have ‘more flexibility’ with after the election, as I recall.
Between this, the US arming, training and fighting along with the Kurds and Syrian Defense forces, the reprisal bombing of a Syrian airbase, and pushing NATO to shore up spending, it’s getting pretty difficult to see ‘Kremlin Stooge’ in Trump’s actions.
Pretty much. And, of course, the intelligence agencies. Hey, they made a mistake once before, so it must mean that the same thing is happening again. He gave us a two-for-one deal on (alleged) scapegoats today.
Christ. The dipstick got flattered when the Polish dictator in the making bussed people in to fawn over him. The Obama quote may or may not have been about missiles specifically in Poland. But Obama never publicly criticized American intelligence on foreign soil (or anywhere else), undermining their morale. Obama never childishly blamed his predecessors for everything and took responsibility for nothing, as Cheeto has done. Obama did put sanctions on Russia for its election meddling, which is a far cry from the “nothing” that Twitler claims. Obama never betrayed the Israelis by giving their intel to the Russians. Obama never held a meeting in the White House with Pravda welcome but the American press barred. Obama never revealed locations of American submarines to the Russians.
The bombing of the Syrian airbase was nothing more than a waste of munitions. The Howling Yam of course tipped of his boss in the Kremlin beforehand, who in turn tipped off Assad. The damage was repaired in days and the bombing accomplished nothing.
I fully expect this moron to pull Putin’s dick out of his mouth just long enough to say “Yowsuh, yowsuh, we’ll end those sanctions asap.”
I think he’s saying if Russia was this villain subverting the American elections then Obama would have done something about it. Trump thinks he didn’t, so either Russia didn’t do it and it’s fake news, or Obama is a feckless liberal pussy and it’s his fault.
