a quick poll about Russia and Donald Trump

they seem to be saying, people who believe above all in tax cuts for the rich are also epic hypocrites. it's not a good look, not that fox/koch nation gives a shit

Posted this on the main thread but worth a note:

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/us/politics/senate-jared-kushner-russia.html?referer

also didn't Roger Stone, who most biographies describe as Trump's closest advisor, straight up admit he was in contact with Russian hackers? isn't it weird how Stone, Guiliani, and every member of the Trump family (besides Tiffany, probably) knew exactly when the Wikileaks stuff was gonna start dropping?

it's only weird if you hate business and jesus and the constitution and success

yeah there seems way way way more here than there was with Benghazi

100 times zero is still zero

yes, but strangely, 100 plus zero is still 100

Some of the people around him might have been compromised and pushed him toward cerain policy positions without his awareness. This could have included direct bribes -- like a slice of Rosneft -- because the thing about deals like that is that they simultaneously work as blackmail. I think that's the most likely scenario -- We already know Flynn took money from Turkey during the campaign.

Granted the last thing we need is another Tweetstorm and the 'we KNOW' bit throughout here is tendentious, but I like this as a summary:

https://twitter.com/ColinKahl/status/846466154617077760

Schiff has formally asked for Nunes's recusal

https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/846493210960637952

For some reason I don't think Trump himself would agree to a quid pro quo and put himself in such a compromised position.

but when you're a celebrity they let you do that

this one's going to be harder to get than Sessions' recusal, right? That one only came about due to some conservative voices suggesting he do it, whereas Ryan already came out in support of Nunes.

Ryan, so loved by conservatives right about now, yes.

Anyway, harder to get, but reaction to Nunes is turning towards the 'uh, dude, you can shut up now,' I've noticed.

it really does prove that Ryan is going to be a piece of shit until they finally flush him out. not that I had any doubts on that.

the things that raise my blood pressure the most are:

a) that Nunes is doing this all out in the open, with the weakest of alibis for every move he makes and
b) as usual, the Republicans demand an orgy of evidence enough to convict a criminal twice over before they'll let you investigate one of theirs, but something as miniscule as Nunes's vague statement (which as of yet has alleged nothing illegal occurred) or Trump's baseless claim = INVESTIGATE NOW.

"b" is why they've managed to be resilient for so many years, because they've kind of become the scum that even the most corrupt of the Dems refuse to become, so they win because they scream the loudest.

Ryan, so loved by conservatives right about now, yes.

I know he's slowly turning into persona non grata, but the Dems don't exactly have any way of enforcing this recusal without at least some pressure from the GOP, and I'm thinking it needs to come from outside of the typical Graham/McCain bloc.

of course, he may already be planning to recuse himself, thinking he already did what he set out to do (which was....give the White House cover in the poorest way imaginable?)

For some reason I don't think Trump himself would agree to a quid pro quo and put himself in such a compromised position.

I'm so tired of this nonsensical straw man people keep pushing around as if they're the only people who ever watched any gangster movie, or a season of the Wire or the Sopranos

Nobody expects there to be some kind of email thread where Trump and Putin agree to sell the country down the river, jesus fuck

"I dunno, I think there might be something to the Russia thing, you know? But I doubt there's going to be a direct connection to Trump himself."

THANK YOU WISEST SAGE

there was this thing called the trump dossier that was published a few months ago, got some coverage

oh right, blackmail is that one kind of illegal, covert influence that you do in person

????

i was saying that i don't think trump is necessarily aware of the extent of the links between russia and his team.

and what was motivating them to advise him in the ways they did

It seems to me that there is just an absurd amount of noise around what is probably some kind of signal. The antics of people like Olbermann, Madoff, Louise Mensch, that twitter person whose name I forget who always prefaces that she "studied authoritarian regimes" have been embarrassing and cringeworthy. All the vague innuendos about "the Russians" and "ties to Russia" etc. Still, there is probably *something* here. If Trump's campaign actively colluded with whoever hacked Podesta that would probably implicate them in illegal activity. The fact that it's Russia almost seems secondary. And if Russia sponsored electoral dirty tricks that weren't actually illegal I'm not sure how much you can make out of it. We'll see.

trumplethinskin's second campaign manager, from right before he won the nomination through when he accepted it at the republican national convention, is one of putin's leading american lobbyists, paid $10,000,000 a year from 2006 till when? the only item on the RNC plank the trump campaign changed regarded arming resistance to putin in ukraine. the current secretary of state, the former CEO of exxon, has been awarded a russian medal of friendship. these are all unrelated coincidences

i think it's bizarre that someone like manafort was given such a high profile, official appointment in the campaign. this and the complimenting putin's decision to wait before retaliating to US sanctions was just so flagrant, it seems like donald doesn't understand how this looks or what he is supposed to have done wrong.

like, i think he is not involved, but that there has been an attempt by people in his inner circle to push him toward certain positions. and these people were actively cultivated by the russian government.

i think that rich people receive such affirmative action in this country, that he is effectively too dumb to understand, six bankruptcies into it, that he might ever suffer consequences for his behavior. i mean dude has golfed every weekend he's been president so far, even when major legislation needed the presidential push

If Trump's campaign actively colluded with whoever hacked Podesta

Roger Stone's only defense against collusion with Guccifer 2.0 is that just because you DM with a guy doesn't mean you colluded with them

well, i doubt he will suffer consequences for letting his campaign be infiltrated because i don't think he understood what was happening, what was proper or improper, etc. xp

Perhaps not, but he could suffer consequences for lying about what he knew and when he knew it. Assuming bulletproof obliviousness on his part doesn't hold up when he has to keep firing subordinates and playing "I don't know her" over this shit

Xp Tillerson's medal means jack shit. That's exactly what I'm talking about. You can't just take one meaningful connection and multiply it by a bunch of meaningless connections to get a conspiracy.

tillerson has jack shit diplomatic experience, unless you count being CEO of mega-major corporaration

Ok and Ben Carson has jack shit housing experience

man jack shit sounds like an amazing corporation

it's very diversified

now Paul Ryan is alleging he has new plans for another healthcare bill to start rolling out drafts of to sponsors by like this week's end?

man you gotta bluff better dude

can't wait for "All-American Mega Awesome Health Care Act"

i think it's bizarre that someone like manafort was given such a high profile, official appointment in the campaign

tbf, he was picked to run previous Republican campaigns after doing PR for Ferdinand Marcos and Angolan terrorists. Lobbying seems to be accepted as a completely amoral industry. Also worth noting that The Podesta Group has worked with a similar / overlapping client list. If any good comes of this it might be heavier regulation on crossing over from lobbying to electoral politics but I won't be holding my breath.

did the russian government commit crimes of cyber-warfare against podesta's opponents during a presidential election campaign?

"Crimes of cyber-warfare" is likely to be the worst phrase I read all week, and also for the month of March.

It seems to me that there is just an absurd amount of noise around what is probably some kind of signal. The antics of people like Olbermann, Madoff, Louise Mensch, that twitter person whose name I forget who always prefaces that she "studied authoritarian regimes" have been embarrassing and cringeworthy.

I don't think it's embarrassing, it's the natural result of running such an opaque, dishonest administration. Trump is a known con man who infamously makes everyone he ever comes into contact with sign an NDA, he steadfastly refused to divulge his tax returns under a cover that everyone knew was false, and he settled a massive fraud lawsuit weeks before being sworn in. This administration thus far has been a series of strange, unprecedented occurrences, for which the official explanation frequently makes things more confusing, not less. Certainly there's a possibility that the "bombshell" is just that Trump is such an incompetent that he didn't screen anyone and just offered jobs to whoever was willing to say nice things about him, and he's lying about it now because gaslighting anything that brings the slightest bit of heat is just in Trump's nature. But there just seems to be such an insane amount of smoke here, and that Steele dossier keeps getting corroborated, piece by piece. IDK how you can take anything off the table right now.

For some reason I don't think Trump himself would agree to a quid pro quo and put himself in such a compromised position.

What, the same dude who literally paid off an attorney general (with charity money) so she wouldn't investigate Trump U? The same guy who volunteered that he sexually assaulted women to a total stranger even though he knew there was a hot mic?

Xps

The point is that evidence of having worked for unsavoury characters in Eastern Europe - which Manafort has, as has Podesta, and CTI, and Finsbury, and Bell Pottinger and Akin Gump and Squire Patton Boggs etc, etc - is basically meaningless without evidence of collusion on the specific charges.

You could build a similar stack of 'dirt' about Clinton - pointing to oligarchs and their families donating the maximum allowable amounts to her campaign, to Viktor Pinchuk, multi-billionaire son-in-law of, corrupt, journalist-murdering former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma being one of the top donors to the Clinton Foundation, to donors and lobbyists with ties to crooked businessmen and politicians backing her, etc but it wouldn't mean she had done anything wrong by the standards of the game. The nature of the crossover between corrupt wealth, lobbying and politics is that almost everyone of any standing is about one degree of separation from gangsters.

If the specific evidence against Manafort being involved in a Russian-state backed campaign to push Kremlin interests stacks up, and this can be documented more recently than a few years ago - all of which Manafort denies - that is definitely of interest. In the absence of that, it barely even registers as suspicious by lobbing standards. It's a great argument for trying to break the link between lobbyists, politicians and business but there are few high horses.

well the difference is that the Clintons would likely say "this is all legal, here's the paperwork" while Trump would offer something like "I've never taken money from any foreign lobbyists, I don't know who any of these people are, shame on you for investigating a charitable operation"

tombot, i can do better! how about crimes of cyber-passion??

I'm still not buying Darth Putin's Evil Plan as the explanation, but you gotta admit, ShariVari, this doesn't help Trump's team look good at all in general:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-administration-sought-to-block-sally-yates-from-testifying-to-congress-on-russia/2017/03/28/82b73e18-13b4-11e7-9e4f-09aa75d3ec57_story.html?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.a0a4a3d8602f

"I've never taken money from any foreign lobbyists, I don't know who any of these people are, shame on you for investigating a charitable operation"

and let's not forget "and anyone who says otherwise has obtained information by means of illegal wire-tapping"

I don't think it's embarrassing

nah it's definitely embarrassing

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8AZ71tWkAE01L4.jpg:large

The likes of Abramson,Mensch should ignored obviously. But then again I still have to see people reference Greenwald on this issue as though he's not even more ridiculous.

the likes of donald trump should be in jail, not the white house

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/usa-today-trump-business-linked-to-russians-with-alleged-ties-organized-crime

here's what i don't get about the spiralling mysteries of kushner, trump, manafort, billion-dollar bailouts, dead witnesses, and the apparently maddeningly elusive "truth" that threads it all together, is that these guys are not exactly wily geniuses. their motivations are not murky. they are just greedy douchebags. it shouldn't be so hard to piece together a corruption case with such dimbulb perps. should it?

obviously it's no one's top criteria. i supported sanders in the primaries. i just think it's too simple to say she will be a lightning rod like hillary just because she is a woman and a POC.

xp boring, MD

trump. i guess i'm making the assumption the republican candidate will be trump. if not him, i guess it would tucker carlson. white america loves a motherfucker

They may even run an actual banana.

The only thing that would actually surprise me is if they nominated a competent and relatively sane human being. Anyone/thing outside of that is definitely on the table.

my feeling about Harris is that, as someone who pays more attention to politics than is healthy, I have no sense of what her priorities are and what, if anything, she genuinely believes in. She also doesn't have an immediately recognizable persona in the way that Biden does. Makes me think Republicans would have a very easy time defining her on their terms and villainizing her.

the Russia thing feels a little too good to be true - my guess would be that Russia's involvement in the election is a bunch of scattered directives to underlings, a few minutes in meetings here and there as the primaries progress, etc, rather than some novelistic meeting in which the fiendish plan is devised.