[News] Trump, Russia, and the 2016 Election

All news related to Donald Trump's alleged ties to Russia and to the Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. New details should be cited to reputable sources.

So basically the only thing the memo proved was that my Facebook feed has too many gullible right-wingers. Even the complaints about the legal process are wrong-headed: that's not how this kind of investigation works. Which Nunes should remember, given that he was the lead sponsor of the bill to reauthorize Section 702 and helped shut down efforts to reform it.

Calling the current state of the US a banana republic is an insult to the South American countries destabilized by the CIA. At least there the CIA put some actual work in, not this Republicans-falling-over-themselves-to-undermine-the-Republic thing.

Kind of ironic to keep calling themselves Republicans when they are trying so hard to destroy Republic institutions. At least the National Socialists named themselves appropriately.

Gowdy knows what's coming. Gowdy knows how bad it is for Trump and how badly the GOP has compromised itself to protect him. That's why he announced his resignation.

Trump is not Nixon, who resigned to prevent further damage to his party and to the country. Trump has no loyalty to the GOP or the country. With Trump, loyalty is always a one-way street. Right now he's trying to tear down the DOJ to protect himself. It won't stop there. Trump would burn down the GOP and the country if he thought he had to to protect himself.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Gowdy knows what's coming. Gowdy knows how bad it is for Trump and how badly the GOP has compromised itself to protect him. That's why he announced his resignation.

Trump is not Nixon, who resigned to prevent further damage to his party and to the country. Trump has no loyalty to the GOP or the country. With Trump, loyalty is always a one-way street. Right now he's trying to tear down the DOJ to protect himself. It won't stop there. Trump would burn down the GOP and the country if he thought he had to to protect himself.

That’s one of many things that’s driving me nuts about the reaction of our fellow Americans on the right wing. I would bet my life savings that if the walls close around him he’d consider launching a nuclear missile. The stakes are so high. When are our fellow Americans going to f*cking wake up?

My hope is that when he "goes full tantrum" there is someone in the room, with enough of a spine to tell him "No.

(you're very right, Clock)

Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:

"goes full {ableist slur}"

Please, don't. I know that's a movie reference, but the word " {ableist slur}" is an awful and hurtful one. There are better ways to express what you mean without slurs.

DSGamer wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

Gowdy knows what's coming. Gowdy knows how bad it is for Trump and how badly the GOP has compromised itself to protect him. That's why he announced his resignation.

Trump is not Nixon, who resigned to prevent further damage to his party and to the country. Trump has no loyalty to the GOP or the country. With Trump, loyalty is always a one-way street. Right now he's trying to tear down the DOJ to protect himself. It won't stop there. Trump would burn down the GOP and the country if he thought he had to to protect himself.

That’s one of many things that’s driving me nuts about the reaction of our fellow Americans on the right wing. I would bet my life savings that if the walls close around him he’d consider launching a nuclear missile. The stakes are so high. When are our fellow Americans going to f*cking wake up?

Can't be prosecuted if the world's been reduced to nuclear ashes.
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/lCfL8Dq.gif)

Politics is like a drug.
You hear something that confirms your bias, you get a dopamine hit.
And we're all addicted. Every where you turn: politics, politics, politics, etc.
All those talking heads on TV, Twitter blue-checks, Facebook - they proverbial drug dealers.

Every time I see People talk about Trump its like those People are high.

Garomcfbgdd wrote:

Politics is like a drug.
You hear something that confirms your bias, you get a dopamine hit.
And we're all addicted. Every where you turn: politics, politics, politics, etc.
All those talking heads on TV, Twitter blue-checks, Facebook - they proverbial drug dealers.

Every time I see People talk about Trump its like those People are high.

First, I have no idea how this relates to the actual topic of this thread. You can post this on any topic, and it would have the same impact.

Second, this sounds more like way to justify ignoring news that questions your bias instead of trying to understand it. We get the same dopamine hit when talking abut games, sports, and al things pop culture.

You point is accurate, but lacking any real depth. Politics is important for all of us to follow and understand. Social media has complicated the ability for many to do so, but it has not prevented us from doing so. I think going forward we will need to start educating, starting in elementary school, how to discern reality based reporting from punditry. That used to be as simple as differentiating from opinion and facts. But the rise of Fake News means we haver to learn how to weed out bogus news from sites and blogs that purport to be fact based.

Of course, if we want to be topical with this assessment, you could look at the dubious "news" that flooded Facebook, twitter and other social media, which was propagated by Russia. We'll see how well Facebook and Twitter adjust to the abuses of their platforms.

From looking at the Current Affairs forum for my local newspaper, it's clear that more than en ought Americans are still captivated by Fake News outlets and the feel compelled to promote spin lacking any reality based reporting to back up their claims.

Maybe it would be better if you're offering some clarity on something that is being discussed in the thread? Or maybe you are really just above all of us suckers that following the news and discussing it.

I do very much love it when people moderate themselves in short order. Thanks, clock and wink.

I am just looking forward to the movie of this, Tom Hanks will be the perfect age to play Mueller and then there will be this line in the movie,

"are you saying that some staff of the president are Russian agents?"
"No, I'm saying, if this Intel is correct,..... The President of the United States of America IS a Russian agent!"

Nunes would have been better off keeping it classified so he could fuel the salacious speculation. Instead, putting it out there really just f*cked him.

Paleocon wrote:

Nunes would have been better off keeping it classified so he could fuel the salacious speculation. Instead, putting it out there really just f*cked him.

To be fair I think Nunes might not be the brightest crayon in the republican box...

thrawn82 wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

Nunes would have been better off keeping it classified so he could fuel the salacious speculation. Instead, putting it out there really just f*cked him.

To be fair I think Nunes might not be the brightest crayon in the republican Russian box...

IMAGE(https://gadgetflow-ycomvalpjriovmn.stackpathdns.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Trump-Russian-Matryoshka-Nesting-Dolls-08.jpeg)

Paleocon wrote:

Nunes would have been better off keeping it classified so he could fuel the salacious speculation. Instead, putting it out there really just f*cked him.

Kinda like the guy who tried to defend himself against allegations of cooperating with Wikileaks by posting pictures of his Twitter DMs to Wikileaks...

There is a reason this is called:

oilypenguin wrote:
thrawn82 wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

Nunes would have been better off keeping it classified so he could fuel the salacious speculation. Instead, putting it out there really just f*cked him.

To be fair I think Nunes might not be the brightest crayon in the republican Russian box...

Same thing.

Paleocon wrote:

Nunes would have been better off keeping it classified so he could fuel the salacious speculation. Instead, putting it out there really just f*cked him.

Yeah, I thought he was kinda clever, "summarizing" a bunch of classified documents so that no one would be able to double-check his statements. But then he got wrong some things we DO know, and capped it all off by including the line that the investigation started with Popadopolous anyway!

Then we find out Nunes never even READ the FISA warrant application. He was doing Cliffs Notes of Gowdy's Cliffs Notes. And then here comes Gowdy himself saying this has no effect on the Russia investigation anyway.

It shouldn't even need to be mentioned that Nunes should not be involved in any Trump-Russia investigation, since he was part of the transition team.

And recused himself before he totally take backsies when he realized how vulnerable that made him.

The longer this goes on, the more I suspect Nunes is getting money from somewhere.

I mean, he's going a really long way for just your average sycophant republican.

At some point, most of the rest of them have figured out just to tut-tut where appropriate and generally try to stay out of the way. Nunes is going out of his way to muddy the waters and has since this whole thing started.

oilypenguin wrote:

The longer this goes on, the more I suspect Nunes is getting money from somewhere.

I mean, he's going a really long way for just your average sycophant republican.

At some point, most of the rest of them have figured out just to tut-tut where appropriate and generally try to stay out of the way. Nunes is going out of his way to muddy the waters and has since this whole thing started.

From the start (45's election) i've always assumed money was what has been driving this. Just a question of whose money it is...

oilypenguin wrote:

The longer this goes on, the more I suspect Nunes is getting money from somewhere.

I mean, he's going a really long way for just your average sycophant republican.

At some point, most of the rest of them have figured out just to tut-tut where appropriate and generally try to stay out of the way. Nunes is going out of his way to muddy the waters and has since this whole thing started.

This is a real Occam's Razor thing for me. The simplest answer, given his position with the administration, is that he's implicated in this situation, whatever it may be, and is scrambling foolishly to use what influence he has to try to blow the whole thing up and cover his ass.

As has been pointed out before, the only explanation that consistently explains everyone's behavior is simply guilt.

"We saw a targeting of 21 states and an exceptionally small number of them were actually successfully penetrated."

Was that exceptionally small number f*cking zero?

That's the first official acknowledgement of something reported by the Intercept sometime last year, if I recall correctly.

But yes, Russian hackers penetrated the voter rolls in some (as-yet-undisclosed) states. But hey, no evidence of tampering! Because, you know, there's almost no way to know.

Cool, can we all go back to ignoring this now? It's a nothingburger. They just did it that once (allegedly) to see if they could. I'm sure they won't do it again, and it's not like we have any consequential elections coming up.

Someone came into my office at work and I showed her. Her response was immediately, "fake news."

A KNOWN ENEMY IS MEDDLING WITH THE FABRIC OF OUR DEMOCRACY AND HOMELAND SECURITY IS CONFIDENT ENOUGH TO TELL US. SOME THINGS ARE BIGGER THAN POLITICAL SIDES.

Holy sh*t am I scared for us as a nation.

oilypenguin wrote:

Someone came into my office at work and I showed her. Her response was immediately, "fake news."

A KNOWN ENEMY IS MEDDLING WITH THE FABRIC OF OUR DEMOCRACY AND HOMELAND SECURITY IS CONFIDENT ENOUGH TO TELL US. SOME THINGS ARE BIGGER THAN POLITICAL SIDES.

Holy sh*t am I scared for us as a nation.

That’s just it. Trump might be impeached or leave office after 4 years, but we’re stuck with this 35% that American oligarchs have been feeding propaganda to via Rush, Fox, etc. We’re stuck with them and they’re never going to learn. They’re never going to admit they’re wrong.