[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.

Jayhawker wrote:

I really like the opposing views, which is to mock what the evidence looks like, and then suggest something else with not a single bit of information that backs that up. This is, of course, what full blown propaganda is meant to create. Doubt the probable by offering up an assortment of unprovable nothingness. That's why we are still playing this game years after his blatant subservience to Putin was shown for all to see. but since it was so obvious, so visible, we just kind of shrug and say, I bet it was nothing.

Here, we have complaint, a phone call that was at least transcribed, but probably recorded, and instead of pushing to have the complaint exposed and get to the truth, we create reasons that it is okay to just not pursue it. It's like we love carrying Putin's water. Ignore the evidence, stop collecting evidence, and then just cry about how pathetic the Dems are, that it is the folks that want the Trump held accountable that are the real problem.

Russia was the first country to figure out that the age of social media, you can no longer censor the truth. but what you can do is fold the channels with so much FUD that well meaning folks will just start assuming nothing can be trusted, and then just go limp, and favor just allowing it.

Jay, it's not that Russia isn't an issue, it is, but jumping to the conclusion that everything Trump-related is about Russia/Putin is, at this point, becoming parody. As is your entrenchment. As is my disagreement.

I'd say this makes the Saudi Arabia connection unlikely, unless, of course, it involved a promise to get a war started with Iran, which the administration seems to have been working on for some time. I believe the real goal isn't so much the war with Iran, but to bait Iran into supporting terrorist attacks on our soil, which Trump can then use to excuse a round up of anyone of Arab descent decent, or any Muslim. This would satisfy Putin's real goal, which is to cause as much chaos among the our citizens as possible.

So, even when something's possibly about Saudi Arabia it's still about Putin.

This is why I put up the Aliens/Russia meme.

Like, let's hopefully get more info on the situation here before we ram everything into Putin's lap. That sort of thinking is exactly what Putin likes as the idea of him as all powerful is the best thing he has going for him.

I love that we're arguing over *which* county Trump made a promise to that caused our intelligence community to freak out, not that it happened. That's how far we've fallen in three years.

You are being a bit optimistic. I think people have been polarized for a lot longer that trump's rise. He just exposes the situation

OG_slinger wrote:

I love that we're arguing over *which* county Trump made a promise to that caused our intelligence community to freak out, not that it happened. That's how far we've fallen in three years.

Like how Oliver North was totally held accountable in prison along with President Reagan for the multiple instances of high treason they committed in the 80s?

The confusing thing is that it's somewhat hard for a president to do anything on a phone call with a foreign leader that's outright illegal. We don't put a lot of checks on the president, so if he wanted to call up Russia and start reading them top secret documents over the phone he's technically allowed to do that. (There are arguably declassification steps that are supposed to happen first, but we've seen how effective mere procedure and tradition are.)

So what the heck could have alarmed a whistleblower enough to also alarm a Trump-appointed Inspector General?

Gremlin wrote:

The confusing thing is that it's somewhat hard for a president to do anything on a phone call with a foreign leader that's outright illegal. We don't put a lot of checks on the president, so if he wanted to call up Russia and start reading them top secret documents over the phone he's technically allowed to do that. (There are arguably declassification steps that are supposed to happen first, but we've seen how effective mere procedure and tradition are.)

So what the heck could have alarmed a whistleblower enough to also alarm a Trump-appointed Inspector General?

It doesn’t have to be illegal, per se - but something, on its surface tantamount to treason if any other reasonable person had offered it up aside from the president. It is quite possible that the whistleblower merely wants to shed light on this incident so that there is some check on the executive, especially if it is something that should likely fall under the purview of the legislative branch.

Meanwhile exactly nothing will come of this. Just more coverage on the media and Fox News will talk about how terrible Antifa is and we will move on to the next non event.

There’s no line that will be crossed for the GOP to do anything. They are onboard with whatever Trump does.

Is there still time to put me down for Ukraine or did we close the pick 'em game for the week?

Rat Boy wrote:

Is there still time to put me down for Ukraine or did we close the pick 'em game for the week?

Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, hell, I’d even include Iran or the Taliban Afghanistan in this conversation since they have been in the news cycle recently.

I win:

The Washington Post wrote:

A whistleblower complaint about President Trump made by an intelligence official centers on Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the matter, which has set off a struggle between Congress and the executive branch.

The complaint involved communications with a foreign leader and a “promise” that Trump made, which was so alarming that a U.S. intelligence official who had worked at the White House went to the inspector general of the intelligence community, two former U.S. officials said.

Two and a half weeks before the complaint was filed, Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian and political newcomer who was elected in a landslide in May.

That call is already under investigation by House Democrats who are examining whether Trump and his attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani sought to manipulate the Ukrainian government into helping Trump’s reelection campaign. Lawmakers have demanded a full transcript and a list of participants on the call.

Classic Trump move. Send a fall person in to act crazy to deflect attention.

Rat Boy wrote:

I win:

The Washington Post wrote:

A whistleblower complaint about President Trump made by an intelligence official centers on Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the matter, which has set off a struggle between Congress and the executive branch.

The complaint involved communications with a foreign leader and a “promise” that Trump made, which was so alarming that a U.S. intelligence official who had worked at the White House went to the inspector general of the intelligence community, two former U.S. officials said.

Two and a half weeks before the complaint was filed, Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian and political newcomer who was elected in a landslide in May.

That call is already under investigation by House Democrats who are examining whether Trump and his attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani sought to manipulate the Ukrainian government into helping Trump’s reelection campaign. Lawmakers have demanded a full transcript and a list of participants on the call.

I'm surprised the rumor that Trump asked Ukraine to look into Biden may actually be true. I'm not surprised he asked that (as I said earlier it's exactly the sort of thing Trump would do), I'm surprised the rumor was true.

We used to think that Trump could shoot someone in Times Square and get away with it.
The Republican party has fallen so far that he could give the nuclear codes to Putin and they would do nothing. They could fire our own nuke on the US or one of its allies and he would take a sharpy to show it landed harmlessly in the sea.

fangblackbone wrote:

We used to think that Trump could shoot someone in Times Square and get away with it.
The Republican party has fallen so far that he could give the nuclear codes to Putin and they would do nothing. They could fire our own nuke on the US or one of its allies and he would take a sharpy to show it landed harmlessly in the sea.

Or only on a blue state...

Probably makes more sense to post this here (so consider it cross-posted).

Giuliani & Trump's illegal activities in Ukraine span 2+ yrs
Not sure of the veracity of the author, but interesting none the less.

So I guess it's time for Stupid Watergate Part 2: Ukrainian Boogaloo, eh?

I know the box office numbers for the first one were wild beyond all expectations and you don't really want to mess with a winning formula too much, but somehow I figured they'd be more creative and mix the plot up a bit for the sequel.

So. We have a king.

Top_Shelf wrote:

So. We have a king.

Basically.

Does anyone seriously think he’ll leave office if he loses the election?

Luckily this is a king who has no Praetorian Guard. Best he can do is try and get some ICE agents up to D.C.? Space Force? You can't have a Night of Long Knives unless you've got an SS to go after the SA. He's a wanna be dictator who has spent the whole time in a fight with the spy agency and the national police. Dumbass.

The most reassuring image of this presidency has been him with the toilet paper on his shoe. If his own security detail literally doesn't give a sh*t about Dear Leader, well, that not a bad thing.

Or when he couldn't get an umbrella closed. His security let an old fat guy who can barely golf struggle at the top of a staircase with an umbrella. They would forever be known as the agents who lost a President to a gust of wind and they were like 'lol whatevs'. Compare that to the reaction that one time Castro fell down.

I think he's impressed by dictators because he really wishes he could be one of those guys, but he knows deep down that he wouldn't last five seconds in a real power struggle.

Hopefully the Ivanka & Jared/Bill Barr ratio of fools to hardcases stays the way it is for a little longer.

Well, the WSJ headline sums it up well:

Trump Repeatedly Pressed Ukraine President to Investigate Biden’s Son

Why is he so stupid?

But, I guess, when you keep getting away with sh*t you're emboldened.

garion333 wrote:

But, I guess, when you keep getting away with sh*t you're emboldened.

The phone call was on July 25th. Robert Mueller testified on July 24th. I think there's a pretty direct line to draw there.

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

Luckily this is a king who has no Praetorian Guard. Best he can do is try and get some ICE agents up to D.C.? Space Force? You can't have a Night of Long Knives unless you've got an SS to go after the SA. He's a wanna be dictator who has spent the whole time in a fight with the spy agency and the national police. Dumbass.

The most reassuring image of this presidency has been him with the toilet paper on his shoe. If his own security detail literally doesn't give a sh*t about Dear Leader, well, that not a bad thing.

Or when he couldn't get an umbrella closed. His security let an old fat guy who can barely golf struggle at the top of a staircase with an umbrella. They would forever be known as the agents who lost a President to a gust of wind and they were like 'lol whatevs'. Compare that to the reaction that one time Castro fell down.

I think he's impressed by dictators because he really wishes he could be one of those guys, but he knows deep down that he wouldn't last five seconds in a real power struggle.

Hopefully the Ivanka & Jared/Bill Barr ratio of fools to hardcases stays the way it is for a little longer.

tl,dr: You can't have a Night of the Long Knives without being competent enough to figure out which end of the knife to hold at least two times out of three.

I'm not too reassured. Hitler is an old school blunt force dictator. The new model is slower, subtler Putin, Erdogan, etc. I don't think Trump will succeed in becoming President for Life, but it feels like he's playing a key role in paving an expressway for the American version to come.

We've got plenty of American brownshirts just itching to turn their white supremacist militia meetup into a genocide squad, so forgive me if I'm still nervous.

The one silver lining that I see in this particular scandal is that the Wall Street Journal is spearheading the revelations. NYT and WP are so deeply ingrained in the "lamestream liberal media" myth that most conservatives automatically dismiss anything that shows up in those newspapers, but WSJ still has a fairly high reputation among conservatives (probably because the editorial page is a disgusting melange of neocon garbage). It's purely anecdotal, but I was visiting my parents yesterday. My dad has been a Trump supporter for a while, and recently began wavering, but he still doesn't trust NYT, CNN, WP, etc. However, he's been a WSJ subscriber for twenty years, and when I pointed out the cover story about this, he said it was pretty damning stuff.

Well, here's their Opinion's Editorial Board article about the situation:

The story of Donald Trump ’s phone call to Ukraine’s new president is unfolding in the familiar if depressing Trump -era pattern. An accusation leaks from an unidentified intelligence source about the President’s July 25 call, and his political and media opponents immediately conclude he has betrayed America and deserves censure or impeachment. Mr. Trump says the conversation was “perfectly fine and routine.” The public is left to sort the truth from the partisan histrionics.

Mr. Trump acknowledges that he asked Ukraine’s new President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden as part of his effort to clean up corruption. More on Mr. Biden later, but Mr. Trump’s request showed bad judgment. He was trying to draw a foreign leader into the middle of American presidential politics, which can only lead to political trouble. We learned that from the Russia fiasco of 2016.

The request to Mr. Zelensky is worse if it came with a threat to cut off U.S. military aid. Mr. Trump and others say there was no quid pro quo request. But we know the Trump Administration delayed U.S. aid to Ukraine in early July for unexplained reasons. The U.S. released the aid later after bipartisan criticism of the delay. Mr. Zelensky surely understood the potential risk of not complying with Mr. Trump’s request even if Mr. Trump wasn’t explicit.

What we know of the call underscores Mr. Trump’s greatest flaw as President, which is his political narcissism. Every decision boils down to how it affects him or his re-election prospects. Other Presidents have made similar calculations, but Mr. Trump lacks the basic filter to know when he is crossing a line that creates trouble for himself or the country.

***

Yet in making sense of all this it’s impossible to ignore the excesses and double standards of Mr. Trump’s opponents. Like the Russia collusion claims, this one began with a charge from an unidentified source in the intelligence bureaucracy. He’s reported to be a “whistleblower,” but we know nothing about his role, his access or his motivation.

An inspector general has found the claim credible enough to require reporting to Congress’s intelligence committees. But the acting director of national intelligence disagrees after consulting with the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. As we read the relevant whistleblower statute, section 3033(k), it doesn’t seem to apply to the President and probably not even to the substance of this accusation.

More troubling is that none of the whistleblower’s cheerleaders in the press and Congress seem to care about the precedent of making a President’s private calls with other world leaders open to public scrutiny. Imagine if this happened to JFK ’s calls amid the Cuban Missile Crisis or to Richard Nixon ’s during the Arab-Israeli war of 1973. We have reached a dangerous pass if intelligence officials feel they have open season to use whistleblower laws whenever they dislike a President or one of his policies.

Then there is the failure of Mr. Trump’s critics to appreciate that to millions of Americans this all looks like Russia redux. That melodrama started with intelligence accusations and dubious “unmasking” of Americans that we later learned came from Obama Administration officials. That doesn’t justify Mr. Trump’s request, but it does explain why Republicans aren’t joining the rush to judgment.

Little of the breathless reporting about Mr. Trump’s Ukraine call stops to note that Democrats and the Clinton campaign financed foreign accusations against Mr. Trump to defeat him in 2016. Those accusations, though uncorroborated, were used to justify wiretaps against at least one Trump campaign official, and to gin up a two-year special counsel investigation that severely damaged the Trump Presidency. All without finding evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.

As for Mr. Biden, the excavation of Mr. Trump’s call means his interventions in Ukraine will also get a thorough vetting. As vice president, Mr. Biden threatened to withhold U.S. loan guarantees to a previous Ukraine government if a prosecutor investigating corruption wasn’t fired. The prosecutor was investigating, among other things, a Ukrainian natural gas company that hired Hunter Biden, Joe’s son, as a director and also retained Hunter’s law firm. The prosecutor was fired.

Joe Biden says his demand was in the U.S. national interest and had nothing to do with his son. That may be true, but it does appear to be the kind of a conflict of interest that Democrats accuse Mr. Trump of having all the time with less evidence.

All of this is likely to play out in the familiar Trump-era fashion, with Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff making claims that turn out to be exaggerated, the media resistance hyping impeachment, and Mr. Trump fighting back in tweets that call the whole thing a hoax. Without evidence of worse behavior by Mr. Trump, nothing much is likely to come of it.

Americans will have to add all this to their judgment in 2020 about whether Mr. Trump or his fanatical opponents are the bigger risk to American well-being.

garion333 wrote:

Well, here's their Opinion's Editorial Board article about the situation:

Hot garbage

Oh, I'm not saying that they're going to present it in a calm, logical manner on their opinion page, and I don't think that this magically makes all conservatives see the light. But the story they published in their actual news section is much more damning, and that might break through to some individuals where the exact same article in the NYT or the like would not.