I’m sure those people would like to speak up, but they’re in a tough spot. See, Trump has promised them that he’s going to make America great again with coal-mining jobs. Who would want to look a gift horse like that in the mouth?
Drip drip drip…
So our allies have been spying on Trump’s team since last August. And it sounds like they know more about all of this than any of our elected officials do.
I’ll raise your 15-words. It needs to be one-two words, like “emails”, or “Benghazi”. And it needs to equate to something they “feel” is negative. Just because the Trump campaign had contact with Russian intelligence officials during the race, does not “feel” all that bad. Trump will say “I think it would be a good idea to have good relations with Russia” and his followers will accept that.
“Communist hackers” is the lead-in. So “Trump campaign staff colluded with communist hackers during the campaign” is the headline.
Few Trump supporters would do anything but applaud if Trump came out tomorrow and stated that he worked with Russia to hack the DNC and in exchange he will lift sanctions on them. That’s just the nature of the hyperpartisan world we live in.
But we don’t need to flip Trump supporters or get him impeached in order to put checks on his power. We need to turn people out to vote in 2018. If the same Dems who voted for Hillary turn out in 2018, they’ll take back the House. It’s super unlikely. But way more likely than the GOP impeaching their own leader.
Jesus. It’s impossible to keep up with the revelations.
And the world is starting to look like … Revelations.
Pootie-poots poodle?
I don’t disagree, but “colluded” might be a bit of a big word for these people.
Next up is James Garfield; November 19, 1831 – September 19, 1881 (199 days). Trump will pass that on August 7th, 2017. Not that I’m counting or anything. 
I’m no apologist, but I’m wondering what would happen if regular Joe Schmo Me would have been caught talking to Russian officials. Or Jose Schmo Rodriguez, my Hispanic cousin would have been caught doing this. What would be the legal ramifications be on me?
Yes, and viewed this way “fake news” was inevitably going to be co-opted to mean “Any news Trump or Fox News doesn’t like” (or, indeed, no concrete meaning beyond “Booo! Down with the other guys!”). We played into their hands. If only it had been a three-word term it would have been out of their reach…
The latest one I see them trying hard to stick is “alt-left”. With essentially the same definition as “fake news”.
There probably would not be that much interest if you weren’t in a position where this is compromising, i.e., a position where you have an important job in the U.S. government and/or access to classified information. [In the present case, I suppose the people were not necessarily yet in important positions…but they had the now-realized potential to be.]
Based on the backpedaling that Trump has done on all things NATO and Russia, and Putin has done similarly on Trump, telling the Russian media to start going anti-Trump, I’m feeling like (if there is genuine collusion between his camp and Russia) both sides will have cut off communication.
Which then would mean that they need to re-establish communication, along a path that isn’t being watched by the FBI/CIA/NSA.
Realistically, that should mean that they’d simply use better cryptography and more obscure methods of communicating electronically.
But historically it would have been popular to find a neutral intermediary. And I noted today that Erdogan has issued an announcement that he wants to become best buds with President Trump.
While highly conjectural, if this line of reasoning was correct, then we would expect to see something like this occur over the next year or so:
- Trump attempts to hand Gulen over to Turkey, and becomes Erdogan’s best friend. They’re golfing regularly, way out of proportion to Turkey’s importance to the US.
- There will be a series of events that cause rising aggression between the US and Russia, in and about Turkey.
- Turkey will step up to broker a deal between Russia and the US, and as part of the de-escalation process, giving over the Ukraine (and who knows what other assets) will be a part of the deal that the US will have to choose to accept.
Of course, as said, at this point in the game, where we don’t even have any real evidence of collusion between Trump and Putin, let alone any reason to believe that it will be an ongoing affair, this line of thinking - let alone this level of specificity - is really just a dart throw in the dark. But I thought that I would throw it out there, just to be able to get 1 million credits should the prediction pan out.
But, I probably would recommend that the NSA start watching communications between the Trump administration and Turkey.
The New York Times story you linked was Fake news:
I wouldnt call that ‘fake news’ -
Fake news is stuff that is made up out of whole cloth - pizza gate.
What you have here may be bad reporting or later debunked - but it wasn’t created with bad intent. (IMHO)
‘Fake news’ is getting applied to way too many ideas - its not fake news just because it turns out to be incorrect later.
Situations like this, however, are places where ‘MSM’ needs to hold itsefl to a higher standard of checking sources and getting away from the sensationalism, first to report, scoop, mentality.
This article is a nothing burger. It says:
And there’s no evidence that these contacts were anything other than what would be expected from people doing business in Russia or Eastern Europe. With all of these intercepted calls and leaks nothing has come out that is clearly inappropriate or points to collusion.
You mean aside from the various participants consistently lying about the contacts occurring? Because that seems pretty damn inappropriate to most of us.
The business Manafort was doing was political work for pro-Russian politicians. It’s disingenuous to the extreme to equate his “coming into contact” with Russian intelligence with someone getting a road or mining contract.
Easy to say at the very beginning of an investigation that is likely to take many months if not years, very little of which appears to have been made public. Note also that even the longest-lived investigation, that of the FBI, is continuing.
(And please don’t insult my intelligence with an argument that it would have been leaked by now if there was anything damning.)
This bears repeating. Often.
And the update at the end of that article…
I think I’ll wait before calling “Fake News”, the category for FOX, Breitbart and that ilk…