Sort of an addendum to my previous note, but I should also note that it seems unlikely that Kushner would have sent the text asking for someone to save him if he had been part of the meeting when the Hillary folder was presented, so I am actually quite favorable to the idea that it was over and done with before he arrived, and I would expect that his text probably was sent at around 4:25.
I couldn’t disagree more. This letter reads like something that a team of lawyers very carefully crafted.
Questions:
We’ve talked quite a lot about the 25% of the voting public who are strong Trump supporters. Is there any data on how many of them voted in 2014? Are there any projections from reliable sources regarding how many of them will vote in 2018?
That 25% number – to what extend is it based on people who actually voted for Trump? I don’t know many Trump supporters, but of the few I know (or knew – one has since passed away) I think there are a couple who didn’t actually vote last November.
I tend to think the whole Trump-Russia thing is very overblown, and that Kushner is being honest here (many of his claims are pretty easily checkable). But I don’t get this specific argument. Trump Jr said that it was obvious pretty early on that she had nothing on Clinton. (ISTM that the Clinton stuff was just a hook to get these guys into a meeting so that she could lobby them about her real concern, which was the Magnitsky Act.) So it would make sense if Kushner showed up thinking this was the real deal and then immediately bailed when he found out that it wasn’t.
FWIW, my impression is that she didn’t show then anything at all. She merely told them that she was aware that some documents existed incriminating HRC in some shady dealings with Russians, and that the Trump people should go out and research it themselves. Not much to go by, which is why they lost interest.
BTW, I believe you meant Manafort and not Bannon in your prior post.
Why would the die-hard Trumpistas turn against him? They KNOW for a fact that the whole Russia thing is a witch hunt. They KNOW, with absolute certainty, that Trump Jr. did not ever, ever meet with any Russians whatsoever, even though he said himself that he did meet with them. They KNOW that Hillary is a criminal and should be locked up, and that the Deep State lefties and University Elite, along with the Lying Media are all working together, along with the Mole Men from the far side of the Moon. Facts? Pffffft. Mere facts cannot penetrate their ego-shields.
Well, OK, would he have walked out of the meeting if he found that they did have some really good shit? And did he take that meeting for totally innocent reasons? He didn’t say that stuff about how he would “love” to have some sweet, sweet dirt?
He wanted to commit a crime, but didn’t because the payoff was too small, therefore he’s innocent?
I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood my post. It’s a mistake to just assume that everything I say argues in the same direction. In this particular case, I was objecting to a pro-Kushner point.
As above, I think the Russia-collusion thing is very overblown, on the whole. However, the particular pro-Kushner argument that I quoted was weak, so I objected to it.
[BTW, you’ve confused Kushner with DTJr in your post.]
I doubt that anyone has much evidence for that 25% number. It’s just spitballing. (I say that as someone who thinks it’s a reasonable ballpark estimate of the fraction of “the voting public” that is solidly for Trump – but that “the voting public” category is in itself a vaguely-defined and ever-changing group.)
Because of our secret ballot, long-term studies of voter behavior are pretty much doomed to rely on self-reporting – i.e., simply asking people “did you vote in the 2016/2014/2012/2010/2008 elections? If so, for whom?”
As a casual reader of the empirical poli sci literature, this self-reporting on past voting behavior is unreliable. People forget or lie. (They tend to say they voted even if they didn’t, and that they voted for the winner even if they didn’t.)
So, Anny, I wouldn’t hold out much hope for the kind of empirical data that would let you make an informed prediction.
Poses an interesting question. “Very overblown”. OK, is that there was no collusion, nothing to see here, or there was collusion, but it is exaggerated? Collusion Lite, perhaps?
Quite correct on the confusion Kushner and Trump. Truth be known, i have a hard time separating them in my mine, one overprivileged rich white snot looks much like another.
I don’t disagree with you about the beliefs held by the Trump-supporters. However, I don’t see this phenomenon–the hunger for the Strong Man combined with ‘post-Truth’ as you put it in an earlier post–as being anything new.*
My guess is that something like a quarter of all human beings in all societies and in all historical periods have a longing for authoritarian rule–for the Strong Father. I can’t offer hard scientific data in support of this theory. Nevertheless, the knowledge acquired during the lifetimes of many people would probably incline them to find the theory plausible.
If this is true, it means that it’s not just 2016-and-2017 America where we find large numbers of people who have no idea how much the rule of law has improved their lives, and who have no idea how miserable their lives will become if the rule of law is abandoned as a governing principle. They, quite possibly, wouldn’t believe it if they were told. They are fixated on that Strong Father who will Make Everything Better. They may be education-proof.
But, again: this isn’t new. We know that the Founders were aware of the authoritarian bent of some large proportion of the population of their new nation, because of the way they constructed the Constitution. Specifically, they provided for a fail-safe against the likelihood that a demagogue would capture the popular vote: the Electoral College.
The fact that over the years we’ve chosen, by custom, to turn the E.C. into a rubber stamp of state popular vote counts doesn’t mean that the Founders failed to understand that a large portion of voters could easily make a disastrous choice due to their psychological craving for a dictatorial leader. The Founders understood. We’ve just chosen to ignore their wisdom.
—I don’t intend to say ‘there’s nothing we can do because we made the bad choice over the decades to ignore the real purpose of the E.C.’—this post isn’t about wah-wahing over November 2016. What I’m saying is that it’s a useful antidote to depression to remember:
[ul]
[li]The pro-authoritarians who yearn for a dictator have always been among us (and probably always will be among us);[/li][li]The Founders provided a way to counter their influence, and we should move forward with making that provision relevant again;[/li][li]Those not blinded by dictator-yearning outnumber those who are so blinded, and we’ve seen this already–not only in demonstrations over health care, but in demonstrations about less-immediately-personal issues. The Woman’s March on 21 January brought out millions–mainly for the principle of resisting authoritarianism. The first iteration of Trump’s travel ban brought out huge numbers, too, not all of which were people immediately affected–many were there for, again, the principle of resisting dictatorial over-reach.[/li][/ul]
It’s a grim situation. But there are more of us than there are of them, and we’ve already proven that we will resist.
*What is new in the 21st century is the option of living in a news bubble, and that does matter. But I’ll leave that discussion for another post.
Supposedly, she handed them a plastic folder with specific documents inside that could be used for further investigation.
If it was, as you describe, a simple verbal description, “Russians were doing shady things with Hillary, you should investigate that.”, then yes, I would agree. But I can’t really envision anything that would could be printed on even a single side of a single piece of paper that you could hand someone that would merit immediate dismissal unless you were a complete idiot who had no inkling that this was something that the FSB had custom made just for you to cream your enemy and it’s unlikely to be a big nothingburger.
Donnie Jr. doing such a thing? Plausible.
Kushner, I don’t think so. If he was aware of the folder, I expect that he would have been rubbing it on his nipples in joy.
I didn’t double-check the list of attendees. I still haven’t. But yeah, whoever else was there on the Trump side.
As has been noted, there was collusion, it just wasn’t necessarily secret. Russia didn’t directly send damning information about Hillary to the Trump campaign. But why do so when it’s just as useful to post it publicly, knowing that they’ll use it?
Flynn and Manafort also seem like they may have plausibly been maneuvered towards Trump (particularly Manafort) by the Russian government. But is that collusion so much as “being infiltrated”? I doubt Trump’s intellectual ability to realize that he’s being infiltrated by an enemy government, when those people are doing a good job of sucking up to him.
On the whole, I think that if Trump and his close family prove to be innocent of any wrong-doing, it’s not because they wouldn’t have or didn’t try, but because they were too stupid to realize the opportunities they were given (or, in Kushner’s case, too busy) and there was no real reason for Russia to directly deal with them when they could simply do everything out in the open and let the campaign and media play into their hands on their own. You could effectively accuse the Washington Post and New York Times as colluding with Russia as much as the Trump campaign, for the most part. I’m sure they did a better job of publicizing the WikiLeaks content than Trump’s rallies were able to.
Obviously, Russia was all ready to collude with them by offering whatever material the lawyer attempted to give them in this meeting. But we know from the fact that no connection between Hillary and Russia was ever publicized that the Trump campaign genuinely didn’t follow up on this information. The only attempt at direct collusion offered, they spurned (though, probably for the wrong reasons rather than the right ones).
If there was any collusion, it was most likely financial. They may have helped to keep Manafort financially afloat so that he could and would help the Trump campaign. And, potentially, the would have tried to sneak money into Trump’s campaign budget. But, unless Trump was aware of that, that still wouldn’t be collusion. And why notify him that you’re contributing to his campaign?
The Russia collusion story is a great one for keeping Trump off-kilter, and it may take out Junior and certainly it’s going to take out Manafort and Flynn. But Trump himself was probably innocent of anything that we aren’t already aware of (like using the Wikileaks documents).
This isn’t to say that I don’t think that Trump isn’t a potential patsy for Russia. It still looks plausibly like they might have something serious on him and his finances (and possibly collusion in money laundering). And I suspect that he has any number of non-Russian financial crimes that he has committed.
Overall, Trump’s fondness for Russia and antagonism towards the US when pressed on Russian issues belies a simple fondness for strongmen and/or desire to start off on a clean footing with another major power. It seems unlikely that there isn’t something there to explain his bootlicking behavior towards Russia. It just seems to, probably, not be related to the Presidential campaign.
You nailed it.
Let’s hope. I’m just afraid that people need to realize that they’ll need to do more to resist than put a post on facebook or a message board. It’s going to take effort.
Absolutely true. This is both new, and a worry.
It’s ALREADY time for massive demonstrations. The President of the United States of America, who “swore” an oath to protect and defend this nation, HATES America and is trying to turn it into a satellite of the Soviet Union 2.0
In Kushner’s statement today he repeated the idea that Russia had no actual influence on the election saying President Trump won the election because he had a better message and ran a smarter campaign than Hillary Clinton, not because he had help from Russia.
“Suggesting otherwise ridicules those who voted for him.”
Clearly implying that since the Russians were unsuccessful in their attempts to influence the election that this is a non story. Why does this administration refuse to understand that the Russian attempts at hacking the election are only part of the story. That much of the population is furious to find out that the President and his staff have had an ongoing relationship with a country that can be considered unfriendly at best and an enemy at worst. That this relationship had many quid pro quo implications, and that they hid this relationship from the public at large and the Republican voters in particular.
Whether or not it turns out that the campaign and administration actually broke any laws, THIS IS A BIG DEAL! and to continue to try and act like it’s not is not helping you.
Failure to execute a crime is also, rarely, a defense against a clear attempt to commit one.
The story (at least from the lobbyist, Rinat Akhmetshin) is that Veselnitskaya gave Trump a folder, and he looked at it and asked if she could prove financial links, at which point she suggested that the Trump team investigate it themselves.
Weird that the campaign was so busy that no one had time to read emails, but they managed to find the time to send three of their top people to a meeting that was a mere courtesy not worthy of remembering.
The new orange mouthpiece talking point is that the campaign was ‘a little chaotic.’
As someone who has worked in and with large companies, this doesn’t sound particularly unrealistic. I’ve seen many a person’s calendar where they have 2-3 meetings scheduled for them concurrently at any moment, through the work day, five days a week. They get CCed on almost every email by default (I’ve never gotten a satisfactory explanation for why people want this) but obviously can’t read it all and are going to develop techniques to determine which emails are actually to them. Which meeting they chose to attend at any moment is a mystery - presumably just whichever looks the most important at a glance - and they’ll just discover what it’s about and run with it once they’re actually in the room.
It means nothing if a majority of people actually disagree and oppose Trump. It requires a majority of people to actively oppose him and actively push against him and those who support him even tacitly. The former is not sufficient to stop tyranny, only the latter, and the latter is harder than people think. People often get complacent and fail to recognize the dangers until it’s too late.
Resisting when one is confident that they have the law on their side is one thing. But as African Americans have found out, however, resisting when you suspect that the justice system won’t support you, or worse, might actually be used as an authoritarian instrument to condemn you, is entirely different.