US Politics Thread |OT| SAD TRUMP

[El Babua]

Comrade Trump dismantling the oligarchies

[Mandark]

Almost a year ago: Trump says he's 'looking at' breaking up big banks

[Optimus]

Bezos is so fucked

https://twitter.com/gabrielsherman/status/980947043798732802

Now, according to four sources close to the White House, Trump is discussing ways to escalate his Twitter attacks on Amazon to further damage the company. “He’s off the hook on this. It’s war,” one source told me. “He gets obsessed with something, and now he’s obsessed with Bezos,” said another source. “Trump is like, how can I fuck with him?”

Btw, I was watching this video and was thinking how funny it is that the holier than thou neoliberal establishment is so cozy with war criminals. But I thought they hated Trump because HIZ SO EVIL!!!!

[Nola]

At least Huey Long built some bridges, college campuses, actually fist-fought his political rivals, and won some fucking football games.

Trump's giving us all the shitty parts of populist autocracy and none of the good parts.

[Nola]

Making people pay more for stuff on Amazon would probably do more to hurt the GOP in the mid-terms than anything else that Trump has done.

But oh will shuttering all those red state distribution centers so totally trigger the libs! 

[Optimus]

Can we somehow manipulate Trump into starting a war with Walmart too? Without these two cancers there might be hope for small businesses again.

[Nola]

Can we somehow manipulate Trump into starting a war with Walmart too? Without these two cancers there might be hope for small businesses again.

Does Walmart own any major national newspapers that expose his cronyism and corruption? And more importantly, does Fox and Friends or Hannity run segments about it that trigger him? No. Then you have your answer.

Separately, this is about right(unapologetically stolen from a Reee thread):

https://twitter.com/EricKleefeld/status/980806825221255168?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fs9e.github.io%2Fiframe%2Ftwitter.min.html%23980806825221255168

[agrajag]

Shut up Nola. I'm locking this thread until you learn how to be a good human.

[Brehvolution]

Yeah, this is less about Amazon and more about WaPo.

[Nintex]

who the fuck is Eric Kleefeld?

Political punned-it. Left-wing bourgeois neoliberal.

It's pretty clear that the people who tried to reign in Trump have left the White House at this point. "Why don't you tell them how great I am lady."

https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/981226923392200705

https://twitter.com/ABC/status/981215398493282304

And he's sending the army to guard the border until the wall is build.
https://twitter.com/ABC/status/981211555596349440

 

KEEP THE OIL KEEP THE OIL
https://twitter.com/ABC/status/981233178215002113

"You want us to stay, you have to pay" 

[team filler]

[thehunter116]

Where do you keep getting these?

Is there like an alt-right stalker crush website or something?

altinder

[Mandark]

All you need is one person on your FB timeline spamming gun memes to see some wild stuff.

No crisis actor stuff yet, but I have seen "David Hogg is responsible cause he bullied the school shooter" make an appearance.

[curly]

https://twitter.com/GovMikeHuckabee/status/981205780157300736

[Nola]

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/981321255084228610

Benji, Nintex, Shos, and Trump vindicated?

It's a Trap!!?

Q Anon was right all along? Hillary and Podesta to be arrested before mid-terms, boy-scout Mueller actually an unwitting pawn in Trump's 11th dimension chess game to cleanse the deep state and drain the swamp?


Potentially triggering Twitter thread below:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/981335273022861312

[close]

[thehunter116]

https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/981362462464278528?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fs9e.github.io%2Fiframe%2Ftwitter.min.html%23981362462464278528

[team filler]

[kingv]

Is that even her? It looks like a different girl.

[Propagandhim]

Is that even her? It looks like a different girl.

[agrajag]

All you need is one person on your FB timeline spamming gun memes to see some wild stuff.

No crisis actor stuff yet, but I have seen "David Hogg is responsible cause he bullied the school shooter" make an appearance.

[team filler]

Suck my Hogg!!!!!!!!!

[etiolate]

The Britney memes get me.

[Great Rumbler]

(Image removed from quote.)

America's Last Line of Defense has some pretty good stuff.

[curly]

https://twitter.com/MurderBryan/status/981395420843855874

[Nola]

https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/981346606476906496
https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/981346782465744897

https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/981347347794972672
https://twitter.com/esaagar/status/981347722216210432

 

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Though could be an honest mistake, still 

[close]

[seagrams hotsauce]

https://twitter.com/MurderBryan/status/981395420843855874

you listen to street fight?

[curly]

nah just ended up following him on twitter somehow

[Joe Molotov]

https://twitter.com/MurderBryan/status/981395420843855874

These Loss memes just keep getting better.

[Brehvolution]

https://twitter.com/ScottWalker/status/981363242768445441

[Nola]

https://twitter.com/axios/status/981476471725346816

But her emails! 

[zomgee]

https://twitter.com/ScottWalker/status/981363242768445441

"As soon as we can come out with a positive message, let's spread that positive message!"

[Nintex]

Russia secretly hacked the most secure systems of the United States and used Donald Trump as a Manchurian candidate with sophisticated cyberspace weapons.

Also Russia:
https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/981121633023705088

[mormapope]

https://twitter.com/ScottWalker/status/981363242768445441

Voted yesterday and im so fucking glad Wisconsin is swerving to the blue side. Scott Walker needs a hard, veiny blue dick to prolapse his red boy cooter. 

[kingv]

That drone looks like it came off the rack at Best Buy.

[team filler]

https://twitter.com/ScottWalker/status/981363242768445441

Voted yesterday and im so fucking glad Wisconsin is swerving to the blue side. Scott Walker needs a hard, veiny blue dick to prolapse his red boy cooter. 

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/981321255084228610

Benji, Nintex, Shos, and Trump vindicated?

Nope, the DOJ's position is a President can't be indicted, which is stupid, so this is just a repeat of the report from last year when they told Trump he wasn't the target of the investigation.

Of course, even if the DOJ's position was more sane, I don't think anyone rational would ever consider Trump the primary figure in any kind of conspiracy or involved in details beyond probably giving a thumbs up. That's why Mueller's grant was/is so broad and you've got him doing things like raiding Manafort for things unconnected to his campaign role. Not only does he have to determine if there even was a crime, he has to (probably first) figure out who in the hell could possibly be the organizational nexus of anything well, organized, in the 2016 Trump campaign. That's also the reason I've cast doubts on this thing from the start, it's too complex of an investigation even if you had a signed confession from Trump as your first piece of evidence. The order to determine if there was a crime is the tell, the whole Flynn transition affair I think showed the lousy hand dealt, and a report on administration obstruction is almost a cry for help.

Apologies if this is in that Twitter thread, I didn't read it on principle.

[benjipwns]

Speaking of insane. The GOP media's desire for a competing special counsel to investigate what is starting to amount to "everything that is not the Trump Administration" has to be one of the dumbest "they got one, now we want one" whatevers in modern politics.

I mean, your administration controls the DOJ already, just start some normal fucking grand juries. Especially since these are slam dunk crimes that we know Hillary Clinton, Loretta Lynch, the FBI, Robert Mueller, James Comey (who Hillary Clinton claims not to have kissed), the entire Obama Administration, the entire Democratic Party, the left-wing DemOp Media, Bill Clinton, Seth Rich's killers, Islam Karimov, the rest of the unindicted co-conspirators of the deep state, etc. committed.

It's like what's even the point of having power if we aren't going to abuse it?!?!?

[Mandark]

Is there a reason you assume any crime would have to be a Rube Goldberg machine?

[benjipwns]

Mainly because the one Sean Hannity seems to want a special counsel for certainly sounds like one.

edit: Oh, you more likely mean Trump-Russia.

I don't assume that at all. I have the problem of not understanding what the crime even possibly could be. Let alone the size of the conspiracy. I think that's part of Mueller's problem too. He has to answer an open-ended question of: what possibly could be the crime here that he's intended to be discovering?

[Mandark]

No, you've said many times you don't think they were capable of coordinating an "international conspiracy."

[Nola]

Benji: if anything, the suit filed by Manafort’s team, and the subsequent memo Mueller released in response, has illustrated just how coordinated and focused the investigation has been, in spite of the broad mandate. In spite of the pearl clutching by certain corners.

The process of this suit is also interesting because it is giving us a crack into what else it is Mueller has in his hand that hasn’t been revealed(like Oleg Deripaska and how his employment and connection ties into this investigstion). But clearly Manafort and his lawyers are incredibly concerned about because they are now totally focused on trying to argue against Mueller being able to add additional charges. They saw something in their less redacted versions and they clearly don’t like what’s coming down the pipe.

On the broader points you raised, giving a thumbs up to illegal activity would be a pretty big deal. Though as Mandark points out, I’m not sure why that has to involve complex centralized coordination? Probably far more plausible is that you have a lot of people with questionable motivations and conflicts of interest, including the president, pursuing or stumbling into borderline and actual criminal activities, knowingly or unknowingly, then scrambling to cover up out of fear. Some of which Trump may have known or participated in.

[Nola]

Mainly because the one Sean Hannity seems to want a special counsel for certainly sounds like one.

edit: Oh, you more likely mean Trump-Russia.

I don't assume that at all. I have the problem of not understanding what the crime even possibly could be. Let alone the size of the conspiracy. I think that's part of Mueller's problem too. He has to answer an open-ended question of: what possibly could be the crime here that he's intended to be discovering?

923. 18 U.S.C. § 371—Conspiracy to Defraud the United States

https://www.justice.gov/usam/criminal-resource-manual-923-18-usc-371-conspiracy-defraud-us

This was what was used in the recent Russian hacker indictments, it seems reasonable to think this will be a backbone if Mueller brings any more charges that involve collusion or Russian interference to people in the Trump orbit. Along with any other crimes that may be involved.

But I think it is safe to say that Mueller has answered the year long question pundits have been falling over themselves about whether collusion and interference are prosecutable crimes.

[benjipwns]

I'm not seeing how this could easily apply to the Trump campaign leaving aside the broad application of it against literally anything any person does when needed. What government agencies did the Trump campaign attempt to defraud and how? What government function did the Trump campaign try to impede?

I’m not sure why that has to involve complex centralized coordination?

No, you've said many times you don't think they were capable of coordinating an "international conspiracy."

Because coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian government to illegally alter the 2016 election is inherently a coordinated international conspiracy is it not?

[Mandark]

Sure. My point is you use that cause of the connotation of something complex and difficult. You've explicitly said that you think Trump and his people are too incompetent to pull off a conspiracy, or even to be targeted as potential partners in one.

You changed your mind on that?

[benjipwns]

What I assume I said was that Trump and his people are obviously too incompetent to pull off an international conspiracy that successfully illegally interfered in a federal election altering its outcome and keep every single detail of it a secret for over three years to where there's not even a hint of what is even supposed to be suspected to have been done and by who in what way. If I didn't, I should have.

I just find it hard to fathom why we should be operating under the assumption that this year old investigation is regarding a still undiscovered international conspiracy by the 2016 Trump campaign. Especially considering it's Ken Starring its way through every other federal investigation against Trump associates and/or Russians it can seemingly get it hands on. Which looks exactly like the same problem of a complex investigation not knowing its own endgame that devolved into.

[benjipwns]

You also said you weren't going to bother people by talking about this anymore, especially as it does nothing but expose you as a fraudulent hypocrite.

[Mandark]

"I literally can't even imagine what could possibly be the crime" said the guy whose entire political philosophy is premised on fanciful hypotheticals.

[benjipwns]

edit: In lieu of all that I am putting all of you except filler and curly on timeout for two days. If you want to participate in this thread then you need control over your own mind.

[kingv]

"I literally can't even imagine what could possibly be the crime" said the guy whose entire political philosophy is premised on fanciful hypotheticals.

The “crime” has been explained to Benji multiple times. He just waits a month or two and pretends no one ever explained to him that coordinating with Russians to steal campaign strategy and emails from the DNC to use in a GOP campaign is a crime. Knowing that it is occurring and not reporting it is a crime, and facilitating foreign help even if you get cold feet and decide not to do it is a crime.

[kingv]

Similarly, you don’t have to have actually committed a crime to commit obstruction of justice.

[Brehvolution]

The incompetence to the trump campaign being that they didn't think it could be a crime. After all, they say Obama set up the meeting with don jr and the russians.

[Joe Molotov]

The incompetence to the trump campaign being that they didn't think it could be a crime. After all, they say Obama set up the meeting with don jr and the russians.

Obama's 47-dimensional chess finally pays off.

[Nola]

I'm not seeing how this could easily apply to the Trump campaign leaving aside the broad application of it against literally anything any person does when needed. What government agencies did the Trump campaign attempt to defraud and how? What government function did the Trump campaign try to impede?

I’m not sure why that has to involve complex centralized coordination?

No, you've said many times you don't think they were capable of coordinating an "international conspiracy."

Because coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian government to illegally alter the 2016 election is inherently a coordinated international conspiracy is it not?

I feel a bit of deja vu with this, but here is a lawfare piece on how it might be used:

https://www.lawfareblog.com/about-russia-indictment-robert-muellers-legal-theory-and-where-it-takes-him-next

Which echos other takes I’ve read on it.

[Nola]

"I literally can't even imagine what could possibly be the crime" said the guy whose entire political philosophy is premised on fanciful hypotheticals.

The “crime” has been explained to Benji multiple times. He just waits a month or two and pretends no one ever explained to him that coordinating with Russians to steal campaign strategy and emails from the DNC to use in a GOP campaign is a crime. Knowing that it is occurring and not reporting it is a crime, and facilitating foreign help even if you get cold feet and decide not to do it is a crime.

Yeah I am a little perplexed on that as well.

I guess I take issue first with the assumption Trump is too incompetent to navigate a corrupt, possibly criminal working relationship without getting caught. One that probably was much more patchwork than organized. His entire career suggests he is at least moderately competent in doing that sort of stuff....running the presidency is another matter.

Or that nothing has leaked that suggests what the relationship was or what the crimes were. From Pappy, to Stone, to the Trump Tower meeting, and boatloads of circumstantial evidence, we seem to have exposure to a lot of suggestive evidence.

And thirdly the idea of fishing. It really does not appear that is what Mueller is doing. If Mueller really wanted to do something like that, he would probably push on Trump in India or start going after his commercial leases. Every leak coming out seems to suggest he’s staying within the bounds of looking into Russia matters and things directly tied to it. If it becomes known Mueller is seeking to flip Kalpesh Mehta to get Trump on FCPA violations in India, I’ll concede he may be “Ken Starring” this thing. That doesn’t seem to be what’s happening though.

[benjipwns]

The problem is that last I knew the timelines don't line up. The Podesta e-mails were phished months before the Trump Tower meeting and the DNC ones had to be before that as well if it the meeting was July or June probably. And the claim that the Trump campaign was involved in the e-mail acquisitions are often the widest of the wide guesses by respected "experts" traditionally usually Democratic Party members.

And people seem to continue to like to attach all sorts of bits of pieces of minutiae to my actual statement like the above examples. So I should probably restate the only differences here.

I just don't have any faith in someone with the history of Robert Mueller. I don't think that the current available information suggests an intended path that is something other than an evidentiary dead end, again, based on currently available information. Maybe that changes, but to me it hasn't so far, especially considering how far afield every public aspect and actual event (vs. sources say/time for some game theory/etc.) of this case has gone. I have no favorable impression of the credibility of Mueller to somehow pull off the original suggested scope of the investigation to prove cooperation between the Trump campaign and the Russian government and if anything expect him to likely cover up for power again by giving Trump a "win" on that while scoring a prosecutors "win" via a bunch of unrelated charges. (That's why I don't say I oppose the investigation as anything that hinders or indicts or arrests people who have shared a room with Trump, ala Hillary Clinton (rip in peace), is just fine with me.)

Plus, you're all supposed to be on timeout. Your understanding of a timeout is as bad as lazy ((cowardly)) Mandark's understanding of my entirely hypothetical free political philosophy. It's getting real easy to tell which of you are the lobster free thinkers and which are part of the hate mob. I'll give you a tip: mental conditioning. When you freaked out over the faintest idea of lack of faith in federal officials then you revealed you lack control over your own thoughts and behavior.  The timeout is to give you some time in which maybe dealing with yourself will actually help.

[kingv]

Timeline:

- Papadopoulos met with Mifsud and “Putin’s niece” in March 2016. Podesta hacked around this same time.
- DNC jacked in April 2016. Also in April 2016, Papadopoulos net with Mifsud again and is told that the Russians have Hillary’s emails.
- June 2016, Donald Jr and Kushner met with the “Russian Government Lawyer” about dirt on Hillary. A reasonable person might assume that this was to further discuss the not-yet-public emails that the Russian government hacked and how to release them.
- DNC Emails release in July, Podesta emails release in October.

Whether anyone can establish that Donald’s Trump himself knew, I’m not sure, but it’s clear that at least 1 person in the campaign knew that the Russians hacked Hillary as early as April 2016, common sense would suggest that he told st least somebody in the campaign and common sense would suggest that the trump tower meeting was quite possibly to actually discuss the email hack and not some OTHER dirt on Hillary, as Don Jr claims.

There’s really nothing about the timeline that makes a conspiracy not work, and the Trump Tower meeting itself is potentially a crime, if the people involved learned about the hack but didn’t contact the FBI and decided to hide it instead.

[Joe Molotov]

What does benji know and when did he know it? #ReleaseTheBenjiMemo

[Brehvolution]

Timeline
- No collusion
- No collusion
- There was no meeting with the russians
- There was a meeting with russians, but there was no dirt on Hillary
- The meeting was set up by Obama to frame don jr. doing nothing wrong
- No collusion
- If there was collusion, it's not illegal

[etiolate]

If you just become a neolibcon shill then you'll understand when daddy government tells you all the leaks are tied to Russia then you'll see the light. Even if the timeline doesn't make sense. Even if there is no evidence. Corkboards are for crazy conspiracy theorists. We're not Alex Jones here. We won't show you the idea. We have experts like Mandy Patinkin and Carrie Matheson. And they rely on us, the resistance! (Buy Frito Lay!) Each of us has our own elaborate web---well web is a bad word. Webs have connections. No, we have an elaborate pollack painting of (what will be) two years of investigation in which we randomly cut out a piece here and there and then present it to our gallery of experts. (Who are congressman who need an aide to help open their e-mail.) Yet the experts really already know, but they don't know that you know. We aren't sure you have faith. Faith is what matters.

Gosh.

[Nola]

- 2014, according to Mueller’s indictment, groundwork was layed for what would become the Russia hacking campaign. Information gathering, resource fostering etc. no mention of any cooperating US actors at this time. *But the conspiracy to defraud angle leaves open some interesting possibilities.

- June 2015 was the first time we know hackers accessed the DNC servers. The dates on the emails don’t go past May of 2016. We know the FBI warned the DNC of a potential breach in 2015, and that there were multiple breaches.

- March 2016 the phishing email of Podesta happened.

- Early 2016 Pappy was contacted by a professor claiming to have the emails and wanting to set up a working relationship with the campaign. The extent of this relationship and who was involved is still up in the air. Though at least one senior campaign official knew and encouraged Pap to pursue it.

- June 2016 is the infamous Trump tower meeting. “If it’s what you say it is, I love it, especially later in the summer.”

- few weeks later, surprise!

I don’t think anyone not in full conspiracy hat mode has suggested Trump coordinated that hacking campaign. That seems like it was going to happen regardless. Though once Trump threw his hat in the ring officially, Manafort suspiciously comes over to work on the campaign for free after getting paid as a Putin patsy in Ukraine, outreach and odd staffing choices seem to begin happening. And in that context the timeline seems to align, well, rather perfectly, no? The problem for Trump is does he at any point authorize this meeting and how much further do any of these relationships go? One person that might know is Flynn, another is Manafort. And Mueller seems really intent on trying to flip him specifically. Unless you think Trump is 100% innocent, that hardly seems like a evidentiary dead end.