Sound The TRUMPets! A Thread for Presidential Pondering 2016-2020(?)

[kishnevi]

And remember Putin's goal was not electing Trump per se.

Putin's main two goals are polluting the news stream with false data and plain garbage, so that no one can be sure what is and is not fake news, and increasing the dysfunction of our political system and public mistrust of government, thereby (among other things) hobbling US response to his actions and decreasing US standing around the globe.

[Karl Henning]

I think there was no overt collusion between Team Trump and the Russians.  That is, no overt co-operation between the two.  We know that some people in Team Trump at lower levels did, but thought they were working with other pro-Trump Americans.  Nor where the only ones fooled: Michael Moore apparently appeared at a bogus anti-Trump rally.

I think Trump's panic comes from two things: his ego can't admit he needed other fraudsters to succeed in conning the voting public.  And he doesn't want anyone to know anything about his private finances. Even if there are no Russian links there (I think there are) Mueller surely has enough information to show the real figures don't match the public facade.

Aye.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[71 dB]

And remember Putin's goal was not electing Trump per se.

Putin's main two goals are polluting the news stream with false data and plain garbage, so that no one can be sure what is and is not fake news, and increasing the dysfunction of our political system and public mistrust of government, thereby (among other things) hobbling US response to his actions and decreasing US standing around the globe.

The way to decreasing US standing around the globe is to restore democracy. Americans want less wars in the Middle East and instead use the money "home" on infrastructure and social programs. The current interventionism is because of military industry has bought the politicians. Causing chaos helps nobody and even Putin has seen that by now.

[BasilValentine]

And remember Putin's goal was not electing Trump per se.

Putin's main two goals are polluting the news stream with false data and plain garbage, so that no one can be sure what is and is not fake news, and increasing the dysfunction of our political system and public mistrust of government, thereby (among other things) hobbling US response to his actions and decreasing US standing around the globe.

You know what Putin's goal was? How do you know this? You are assuming he had one specific goal in mind rather than, for example, being an intuitive chess player who senses a particular move will improve his position regardless of which among a number of outcomes comes to pass? I suspect the latter is true and that among all the possible outcomes, perhaps the most favorable was Trump being elected and Putin being in possession of information (financial data, tapes proving conspiracy with a foreign power, etc.) by which to blackmail him into actions favorable to him and his cronies. Like, for example, failing to implement sanctions approved with overwhelming bipartisan support. Or clearing certain oligarchs from the sanctioned list or countermanding the Magnitsky Act.     

I think there was no overt collusion between Team Trump and the Russians.  That is, no overt co-operation between the two.  We know that some people in Team Trump at lower levels did, but thought they were working with other pro-Trump Americans.  Nor where the only ones fooled: Michael Moore apparently appeared at a bogus anti-Trump rally.

I think Trump's panic comes from two things: his ego can't admit he needed other fraudsters to succeed in conning the voting public.  And he doesn't want anyone to know anything about his private finances. Even if there are no Russian links there (I think there are) Mueller surely has enough information to show the real figures don't match the public facade.

It has already been demonstrated that Team Trump made concerted attempts to collude with the Russians. We have no idea what evidence Mueller is developing on this matter. Your speculations about Trump's panic are credible. But it is also possible that it comes from having conspired to undermine the U.S. electoral process and knowing the evidence to prove it is out there.

[Baron Scarpia]

You know what Putin's goal was? How do you know this? You are assuming he had one specific goal in mind rather than, for example, being an intuitive chess player who senses a particular move will improve his position regardless of which among a number of outcomes comes to pass? I suspect the latter is true and that among all the possible outcomes, perhaps the most favorable was Trump being elected and Putin being in possession of information (financial data, tapes proving conspiracy with a foreign power, etc.) by which to blackmail him into actions favorable to him and his cronies. Like, for example, failing to implement sanctions with overwhelming bipartisan support. Or clearing certain oligarchs from the sanctioned list.   

I don't think Putin is a master chess player. He is a one trick pony and is applying the Soviet strategy of kompromat (use of real or fabricated compromising material to the poison the waters for a political adversary). He saw with his own eyes how cynicism of the public facilitated the collapse of the Soviet Union, and perhaps he imagines that the same can happen in the US.

Whose to say it can't? Gorbachev was an honest and idealistic man. He thought he could reform the Soviet Union as a real rather than sham democracy. Combined with public cynicism, this led to the collapse. The incompetence and disorder of Yeltsin made Putin seem like a good idea.

Perhaps Obama was our Gorbachev, Trump is our version of the clown-idiot Yeltsin, and our Putin is yet to come.

[BasilValentine]

I don't think Putin is a master chess player. He is a one trick pony and is applying the Soviet strategy of kompromat (use of real or fabricated compromising material to the poison the waters for a political adversary). He saw with his own eyes how cynicism of the public facilitated the collapse of the Soviet Union, and perhaps he imagines that the same can happen in the US.

Whose to say it can't? Gorbachev was an honest and idealistic man. He thought he could reform the Soviet Union as a real rather than sham democracy. Combined with public cynicism, this led to the collapse. The incompetence and disorder of Yeltsin made Putin seem like a good idea.

Perhaps Obama was our Gorbachev, Trump is our version of the clown-idiot Yeltsin, and our Putin is yet to come.

Several good points. ^ ^ ^ Maybe it will be Steve Bannon?

But ... I wasn't describing a master chess player. I was describing an aggressive, opportunistic one who hasn't thought things through all that deeply but who lucks out bigly.

[Karl Henning]

(* munches popcorn *)

Son-in-law of Russian businessman to plead guilty to making false statements in Mueller probe

The London-based son-in-law of one of Russia's wealthiest men is set to plead guilty Tuesday afternoon in Washington to making false statements in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's probe of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, according to a new court filing.

Alex Van der Zwaan was charged with one count of making false statements, a felony, about his work as an attorney employed by a law firm engaged in 2012 by the Ukraine Ministry of Justice to prepare a report on the trial of former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

Tymoshenko was imprisoned by former president Viktor Yanukovych for signing a controversial gas supply deal in 2009 with Russia. Van der Zwaan is the son-in-law of Russian oligarch German Khan.

U.S. prosecutors in Mueller's office said the case was related to former Trump 2016 presidential campaign manager Paul Manafort, who was an adviser to Yanukovych.

[Baron Scarpia]

Several good points. ^ ^ ^ Maybe it will be Steve Bannon?

No, Steve Bannon is another clown. Like Trump, he had an innate feel for the power of white working class resentment, but his psychopathic need for attention has stripped him of all influence, expelled from Trump's circle, Breitbart news and his neo-conservative backers. He's reduced to getting inflammatory quotes included in other people's books. He's down and I don't think he's coming back.

If Trump, like Yeltsin, is setting the stage for an American Putin, it will be someone like John Kelly, who seems to share Trumps malignant view of America, but with self-discipline.

[Karl Henning]

"Unwitting." [El Tupé] and his defenders take that as exoneration, even though it is limited to just this aspect of the probe. But it's another way of saying they were useful idiots.

Thanks to Mueller, they are now witting. [El Tupé], in his refusal to respond to this Russian attack, continues to play the useful idiot, because it suits his selfish purposes. Will his supporters also continue to let Putin play them for fools?

[Karl Henning]

[El Tupé's] conduct is inexplicable, unless he's in Putin's pocket

[...]

Republicans should be worried about the developing impression that [El Presidente Tupé] does not care to defend the country, or worse, knows that the Kremlin would weigh in on his side as it did last time — and is happy to take the help. (That's, after all, what the [El Tupé] campaign did in meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer in hopes of getting "dirt" on Hillary Clinton and what [El Tupé] did in hyping the emails hacked by WikiLeaks, a Russian helpmate.) Republicans now face the prospect, fairly or not, that their party will be seen as a Russian asset.

[Karl Henning]

[El Tupé's] audacious whopper: He's tough on Russia

[Karl Henning]

[El Tupé's] audacious whopper: He's tough on Russia

Not even Jonah Goldberg is having any of that:

Don't Overestimate [El Tupé's] Ability to Knowingly Collude with Russia

He may have been willing, but could he really pull it off?

Despite the indictment of 13 Russian professional social-media pranksters who worked to tip the 2016 election to Donald Trump, I remain somewhere between skeptical and agnostic on the question of whether or not Trump knowingly and secretly colluded with the Russians to win the election.

[...]

It is President Trump's character that leads me to think he didn't do it, at least not in a way the impeachment-hungry mob hopes he did.

Oh, I think he's morally capable of having done it. As a candidate he publicly called on the Russians to (further) hack Hillary Clinton's server and release the missing emails. He is the one member of his administration incapable of condemning Russian president Vladimir Putin or his regime. Indeed, his instincts are to hail Putin's "leadership."

Nor do I think Trump surrounded himself during the campaign with people who would have talked him out of collusion (save for then-senator Jeff Sessions). Saying that his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, is not overly scrupulous would be a mind-bending understatement. And Trump's son Don Jr. has already admitted a) that he met with a Russian emissary and b) that he didn't care where anti-Clinton dirt came from.

But while they may have been willing to coordinate with the Kremlin, I'm not at all certain they would have been able to pull it off — and keep it a secret [....]

[Karl Henning]

[...] Emerging conventional wisdom in Washington, however, remains that there's little reason to believe that Robert Mueller's ongoing investigation will end up proving much of interest. Politico magazine editor-in-chief Blake Hounshell this weekend wrote one of the buzziest pieces advocating a skeptical approach to Mueller's ongoing inquiry, titled "Confessions of a Russiagate Skeptic," throwing cold water on the notion of high-level cooperation between Trumpworld and the Russians.

But to believe this, frankly, requires a much greater suspension of disbelief than to posit that the president colluded with Russia. You have to believe that after a decade of paying Manafort millions for his expertise to help pro-Russian candidates win elections in Ukraine, no one from Moscow thought to consult with him about how to help a pro-Russia candidate win an election in the United States.

And we have to believe that even though we know Trump's son was both in touch with WikiLeaks and openly enthusiastic about the idea of collaborating with Russia on obtaining and disseminating anti-Hillary Clinton dirt, when he met with Russians on this very topic, they didn't talk about it. And, of course, we have to believe that Trump's specific — and quite public — call for Putin to hack more Clinton emails was completely random.

Trump–Russia skeptics, legion in the political press, brush all this aside in a gesture of faux sophistication, positing a bizarre series of coincidences complete with a massive cover-up all — for no particular reason.

[...]

Donald Trump is not stupid

One thing Trump's supporters tend to get right is that the political media in the United States is generally far too willing to paint a portrait of Trump as some kind of dolt. But everything in Trump's record suggests a cunning, ruthless, and, in many ways, insightful man — not some kind of Forrest Gump-like figure ambling through history.

A few examples:

◙ The means he used to get himself out of bankruptcy and make his big Atlantic City comeback were incredibly shady and dishonest but also genuinely clever.
◙ His reinvention of himself as an asset-light brand licensor was incredibly successful, as was his career as a television show host.
◙ He has, for years, used lawyer Michael Cohen and a relationship with a major tabloid conglomerate to keep affairs hushed up and manipulate the public's image of him.
◙ Last but by no means least, he ambled into the 2016 GOP primary field with little fundraising, no political experience, and minimal organization and wiped the floor with everyone.

People who cover American politics for a living are accustomed to covering politicians who have at least a passing familiarity with the main issues in public policy, and Trump does not. He answers questions about national politics like he's a real estate developer turned brand licensing magnate and reality television star, which he is.

I'm not here to tell you that Trump is an evil genius or a criminal mastermind. And he's certainly more impulsive than your average politician or business leader. But he's not an idiot. When he keeps on doing something, it's probably for a reason.

[...]

The one place I do agree with Mueller skeptics is that liberals shouldn't get their hopes up that the special counsel will "save" them or the country from Trump. Trump appeared on national television and explained to an NBC News audience that he improperly used his powers of office to remove the FBI director in an effort to shield his friends and associates from criminal scrutiny. The institutional Republican Party shrugged that off, and eventually, the public moved on.

My guess is that whatever revelations are forthcoming from Mueller will fit a similar pattern — most people already have a negative view of Trump, so it's hard to move the needle too much more on public opinion, and the whole GOP has already wagered so heavily on the Trump experiment that they're not going to pull the plug regardless of what happened.

But politics aside, the suspicion of illicit collaboration between the highest-ranking members of the Trump campaign and the Russian pro-Trump information operation is well-founded, and the ongoing criminal investigation into that possibility is steadily bearing fruit. There's no earthly reason for journalists to adopt a stance of preemptively exonerating Trump when, so far, suspicion has been validated at nearly every turn.

[Spineur]

Trump is considering arming the professors.  LOL.  Let see what do I need today ?.  The loptop, last week tests, the textbook....god I almost was forgetting the M15 !!

[milk]

[Turner]

NRA spent at least $ 30 million on the Trump campaign
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-trump-russia-nra-connection-heres-what-you-need-to-know-w515615
http://fortune.com/2018/02/15/nra-contributions-politicians-senators/

One has to verify visual sources a lot these days, but this one is real.

"Trump holds list of compassionate responses while meeting with Parkland survivors"
https://mashable.com/2018/02/21/trump-notes-school-shooting-survivors/?utm_cid=hp-h-2#XzjHSzO.iqq3

[milk]

NRA spent at least $ 30 million on the Trump campaign
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-trump-russia-nra-connection-heres-what-you-need-to-know-w515615
http://fortune.com/2018/02/15/nra-contributions-politicians-senators/

One has to verify visual sources a lot these days, but this one is real.

"Trump holds list of compassionate responses while meeting with Parkland survivors"
https://mashable.com/2018/02/21/trump-notes-school-shooting-survivors/?utm_cid=hp-h-2#XzjHSzO.iqq3

Yeah, I should have added that. I first saw this from the Washington Post or the NYTimes (I forget) - a real image. I guess it's no secret that Tump is hard-hearted and doesn't really possess normal human compassion, self-reflection, etc. Weird guy.

[71 dB]

At the time the second amendment was written Mozart had just died and firearms were muskets. So, the amendment protects the right to keep and bear muskets. They hardly thought that some 200 years later people would walk around with a M15 and turn semiautomatics weapons to automatic with bump stocks. That kind of massacre-level killing power hardly was what they had in mind. Musket of today is a stunner gun.

[Karl Henning]

At the time the second amendment was written Mozart had just died and firearms were muskets. So, the amendment protects the right to keep and bear muskets. They hardly thought that some 200 years later people would walk around with a M15 and turn semiautomatics weapons to automatic with bump stocks. That kind of massacre-level killing power hardly was what they had in mind. Musket of today is a stunner gun.

The NRA has cultivated a fervent minority of gun absolutists.

[71 dB]

The NRA has cultivated a fervent minority of gun absolutists.

Yep, but even the majority of NRA members are for rational gun restrictions because they don't want their children slaughtered in schools.