Merged All things Trump + Russia

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Yates hearing, she burned them. Grassley tried to accuse her of partisan action when she refused to defend the Muslim ban and said she disappointed him because he voted to confirm her and her job was to support the POTUS.

She came back with, he had asked her if she'd follow an unlawful order (remember this was when Obama was in office), and she had told him no.

Burn!
 
Meed said:
You seem to be assuming, for some reason, that we only meddle in elections that "are not democratic" and that we are always meddling for the sake of weakening autocrats and promoting freedom. Also, your response does nothing to address my logic, you are making a completely separate point.
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We Swedes haven't meddled in other countries' elections. Are we ok to feel outraged when Russia meddles in ours?
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Yates hearing, she burned them. Grassley tried to accuse her of partisan action when she refused to defend the Muslim ban and said she disappointed him because he voted to confirm her and her job was to support the POTUS.

She came back with, he had asked her if she'd follow an unlawful order (remember this was when Obama was in office), and she had told him no.

Burn!
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Sick burn.
 
Good evening. I must have missed this. Mr. Spicer has repeatedly stated that Acting attorney general Yates gave the White House a "heads up". Repeatedly saying that in quotes. Who is he quoting when he uses that phrase and do these particular quotes have a special meaning like they do when President Trump uses quotes to mean something other than what's in those quotes?
 
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Skeptic Ginger said:
Yates hearing, she burned them. Grassley tried to accuse her of partisan action when she refused to defend the Muslim ban and said she disappointed him because he voted to confirm her and her job was to support the POTUS.

She came back with, he had asked her if she'd follow an unlawful order (remember this was when Obama was in office), and she had told him no.

Burn!
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What's she doing with her life now? Gonna need good candidates in 2018 and beyond. She's badass.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Yates hearing, she burned them. Grassley tried to accuse her of partisan action when she refused to defend the Muslim ban and said she disappointed him because he voted to confirm her and her job was to support the POTUS.

She came back with, he had asked her if she'd follow an unlawful order (remember this was when Obama was in office), and she had told him no.

Burn!
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How about, "The fact that the courts ruled against it shows I was right all along. If the President had listened to me in the first place, it would have saved him a lot of embarrassment. In that respect, you could say I WAS supporting the President, trying to help him not look bad."
 
Meed said:
It's overblown, selective outrage, as I've said.
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Maybe, maybe not. It is much more directly in people's interest to be concerned about things that affect them much more directly, like foreign powers trying to mess with their government in ways that are likely to be negative for them, than to be concerned about things that affect them less directly, like their own government doing similar to other countries, so of course people will be more emotionally involved with one than the other.

Meed said:
And when it comes from members of the federal government, it's also hypocritical.
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If they were actually part of the decisions and implementation, perhaps. The vast majority of the federal government is not, though.


Meed said:
I disagree. We are actually in a position to influence our government, so it makes much more sense to be concerned with what our government does than what other governments do.
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A position to influence it in an effectively negligible way, for a number of those decisions, to put it simply. It's certainly not like pretty much any of the really nasty decisions tend to actually be run by the American people or even be declassified until long after any meaningful action can be taken regarding them.
 
Aridas said:
Maybe, maybe not. It is much more directly in people's interest to be concerned about things that affect them much more directly, like foreign powers trying to mess with their government in ways that are likely to be negative for them, than to be concerned about things that affect them less directly, like their own government doing similar to other countries, so of course people will be more emotionally involved with one than the other.
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The hack resulted in more information being out there. Not really a direct negative. Wrong in principle, but I wouldn't call it a bad thing. It didn't force anyone to vote in a way they didn't want to. And there are a million factors that could have influenced the election. It is selective and overblown outrage, because people are saying things like it's an act of war when it's something routinely engaged in by their own government, and other governments.

If they were actually part of the decisions and implementation, perhaps. The vast majority of the federal government is not, though.
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They are part of the institution that does it (as are we as voters, in a sense).

A position to influence it in an effectively negligible way, for a number of those decisions, to put it simply. It's certainly not like pretty much any of the really nasty decisions tend to actually be run by the American people or even be declassified until long after any meaningful action can be taken regarding them.
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We elect the officials responsible for controlling the CIA. It's our responsibility to care what the CIA does.

I don't think I can express myself more clearly on this, so I'll just agree to disagree with you.
 
I've yet to hear a vaguely credible 'innocent' explanation as to why...
  • Trump flat out lied about his relationship with Putin
  • Trump flat out lied about his role in GOP platform concerning Ukraine
  • Manafort flat out lied about his/Trump role in GOP platform
  • Flynn flat out lied about his Russian contacts
  • Trump lied by omission about Flynn's contacts
  • Sessions flat out lied about his Russian contacts.
  • Carter Page flat out lied about his Russian contacts
  • Various campaign officials lied about Page's relationship with the campaign
  • Roger Stone flat out lied about his Russian contacts
  • Trump is pretending that Manafort was minimally involved in the campaign
  • Trump remains evasive about Flynn to this day
 
Meed said:
The hack resulted in more information being out there. Not really a direct negative. Wrong in principle, but I wouldn't call it a bad thing. It didn't force anyone to vote in a way they didn't want to. And there are a million factors that could have influenced the election. It is selective and overblown outrage, because people are saying things like it's an act of war when it's something routinely engaged in by their own government, and other governments.
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If you have information that 2 people have done something bad, but only release that information about one of the 2, you have distorted perceptions of those 2 people. You make one look worse than the other when they are not, even if more information is out there.
 
wareyin said:
If you have information that 2 people have done something bad, but only release that information about one of the 2, you have distorted perceptions of those 2 people. You make one look worse than the other when they are not, even if more information is out there.
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Which is called lying by omission. That's one of the major problems with these kinds of hacks. The information could be completely true (although it often isn't - another problem), but it's still just the information that the hacker wants you to see. In an election, a thing such as this could seriously slant people's opinion, even if there isn't much to the actual contents of the hack - like with the DNC hack. The point is, people think there must be something there, and the story keeps in the news.

Meanwhile, nobody is talking about the other guy, and all the problems with him.
 
varwoche said:
I've yet to hear a vaguely credible 'innocent' explanation as to why...
  • Trump flat out lied about his relationship with Putin
  • Trump flat out lied about his role in GOP platform concerning Ukraine
  • Manafort flat out lied about his/Trump role in GOP platform
  • Flynn flat out lied about his Russian contacts
  • Trump lied by omission about Flynn's contacts
  • Sessions flat out lied about his Russian contacts.
  • Carter Page flat out lied about his Russian contacts
  • Various campaign officials lied about Page's relationship with the campaign
  • Roger Stone flat out lied about his Russian contacts
  • Trump is pretending that Manafort was minimally involved in the campaign
  • Trump remains evasive about Flynn to this day
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Yes to all of that, but I still think the biggest scandal, the actual corruption, is in the Trump business ties to Russia, which they've barely dug into - or at least mentioned publicly.

There's still a lot left in this. We need an independent investigator. This snail's pace is testing the collective gnat-like memory of the American public.

Remember the 5 million illegal votes cast? Ha, no one else does either.
 
Meed said:
The US has tried to influence elections in other countries 81 times between 1946 and 2000, and Russia has done so 36 times, according to this article. Not including military coups, direct invasions and things like that. And that's just the ones we know about.
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A little context is important here.

I don't doubt that the U.S. has attempted to influence elections. However, keep in mind that in many of those cases, American attempts were often done as a counterbalance to those of other foreign governments. For example, their interference in the 1948 Italian election provided balance to the Russian interference in the same election.

I also take issue of the claim that Russia only interfered in elections 36 times... that may or may not be true, but the fact is Russia interfered in the political systems of many countries outside of elections.... by funding revolutions (either directly, or through satellite countries like Cuba), or by maintaining almost absolute control over countries like those behind the iron curtain. Simply focusing on "elections" gives a distorted view about just how much Russia interfered in other countries relative to the U.S.
 
varwoche said:
I've yet to hear a vaguely credible 'innocent' explanation as to why...
  • Trump flat out lied about ...
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  • Trump lies and makes bizarre statements constantly. I don't think we can read much into that.

    As to why these people lied about meetings with Russians and so on, it could simply be that they thought they would make them look bad or would be used to attack them (even if the meetings were not nefarious).
 
TraneWreck said:
Yes to all of that, but I still think the biggest scandal, the actual corruption, is in the Trump business ties to Russia, which they've barely dug into - or at least mentioned publicly.
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I agree, that's the important part.
 
wareyin said:
If you have information that 2 people have done something bad, but only release that information about one of the 2, you have distorted perceptions of those 2 people. You make one look worse than the other when they are not, even if more information is out there.
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Uh, are you implying there's evidence Russia had access to Trump's emails as well, and decided not to release those?

Also, I don't agree that Podesta's emails made Clinton look worse than Trump, but that's obviously subjective.


Segnosaur said:
A little context is important here.

I don't doubt that the U.S. has attempted to influence elections. However, keep in mind that in many of those cases, American attempts were often done as a counterbalance to those of other foreign governments. For example, their interference in the 1948 Italian election provided balance to the Russian interference in the same election.
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That's just one example of 81 and I'm not sure it's a good justification anyway.

I also take issue of the claim that Russia only interfered in elections 36 times...
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I explicitly said "that's just the ones we know about". The US has also likely interfered in more than 81, considering that 2/3 of these attempts were done in secret.

that may or may not be true, but the fact is Russia interfered in the political systems of many countries outside of elections.... by funding revolutions (either directly, or through satellite countries like Cuba),
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As did the US. Orchestrating coups, funding revolutions, installing dictators, direct invasions....

Simply focusing on "elections" gives a distorted view about just how much Russia interfered in other countries relative to the U.S.
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As does focusing only on Russia's interferences outside of elections, but not the US's.

But my point was not to compare the two and argue that the US does it more. My point was that it's routine for both.
 
It took a long time for all the deception in the run-up to Iraq War 2.0 to come to light, but it eventually did.
I am quite confident that the morass of Trump's rise to power will be discovered and published, but not very soon, at least on in the US.
But it is likely that everything the CIA/FBI knows also is known by the rest of the Five-Eyes Club, plus any Intelligence Agency with special interests Russia, such as the German BND.
As the saying goes, three people can keep a secret if...
 
Meed said:
Uh, are you implying there's evidence Russia had access to Trump's emails as well, and decided not to release those?
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No, I'm fairly confident that Russia had information about Trump which would have made him look bad that they did not release. Whether that was stuff about his sex-capades in Russian hotels, how much money he owes/owed them, or something else, I'm not sure.

Meed said:
Also, I don't agree that Podesta's emails made Clinton look worse than Trump, but that's obviously subjective.
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It is inarguable that they made Clinton look worse in relation to Trump to some voters.
 
uke2se said:
Which is called lying by omission. That's one of the major problems with these kinds of hacks. The information could be completely true (although it often isn't - another problem), but it's still just the information that the hacker wants you to see. In an election, a thing such as this could seriously slant people's opinion, even if there isn't much to the actual contents of the hack - like with the DNC hack. The point is, people think there must be something there, and the story keeps in the news.

Meanwhile, nobody is talking about the other guy, and all the problems with him.
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I don't think that would be lying by omission. You are not omitting something that modifies perception about the issue. Testifying that you saw person X commit robbery, while not discussing your history of all the other robberies you have seen in other places is not lying by omission.
 
BobTheCoward said:
I don't think that would be lying by omission. You are not omitting something that modifies perception about the issue. Testifying that you saw person X commit robbery, while not discussing your history of all the other robberies you have seen in other places is not lying by omission.
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If there is a choice between two people and you say that one is a petty criminal, and don't mention that the other has committed far more serious crimes, then it is an attempt to mislead at the least.
 
wareyin said:
No, I'm fairly confident that Russia had information about Trump which would have made him look bad that they did not release. Whether that was stuff about his sex-capades in Russian hotels, how much money he owes/owed them, or something else, I'm not sure.



It is inarguable that they made Clinton look worse in relation to Trump to some voters.
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More to the point, the release had a negative effect for one candidate and not the other. Whether or not this made the first candidate look worse than the second, it made her look worse than she otherwise would have, while the second suffered no similar fate.
 
wareyin said:
No, I'm fairly confident that Russia had information about Trump which would have made him look bad that they did not release. Whether that was stuff about his sex-capades in Russian hotels, how much money he owes/owed them, or something else, I'm not sure.
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So you think Trump owes the Russian government money or vice versa, or that the Russian government has sex tapes of Donald Trump and you are fairly confident of this. And you think they chose not to release this stuff at the same time as they were leaking Podesta's emails. Gotcha. Not sure I agree, but I understand your argument.

It is inarguable that they made Clinton look worse in relation to Trump to some voters.
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Not really inarguable, but it's likely that was the case with some non-zero amount of voters.
 
jimbob said:
If there is a choice between two people and you say that one is a petty criminal, and don't mention that the other has committed far more serious crimes, then it is an attempt to mislead at the least.
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But it isn't a choice between two people. Your choice is more likely between one person and not voting.
 
phiwum said:
More to the point, the release had a negative effect for one candidate and not the other. Whether or not this made the first candidate look worse than the second, it made her look worse than she otherwise would have, while the second suffered no similar fate.
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Of course. The same was true of the Billy Bush tape, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't have been released.
 
Meed said:
So you think Trump owes the Russian government money or vice versa, or that the Russian government has sex tapes of Donald Trump and you are fairly confident of this. And you think they chose not to release this stuff at the same time as they were leaking Podesta's emails. Gotcha. Not sure I agree, but I understand your argument.



Not really inarguable, but it's likely that was the case with some non-zero amount of voters.
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They almost certainly have compromising information about his business links with Russia.
 
Segnosaur said:
A little context is important here.

I don't doubt that the U.S. has attempted to influence elections. However, keep in mind that in many of those cases, American attempts were often done as a counterbalance to those of other foreign governments. For example, their interference in the 1948 Italian election provided balance to the Russian interference in the same election....
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I don't think we have any room to call Russia evil over this. We've not only interfered, we've gotten involved in deposing elected leaders, installed dictators, deposed dictators and there are many egregious examples. These often amounted to supporting the corporatocracy which were using the nations' natural resources.

So we should not be so outraged.

Rather we should expect it and take measures against it. That includes getting to the bottom of this thing with Trump and Russia.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
It took a long time for all the deception in the run-up to Iraq War 2.0 to come to light, but it eventually did.
I am quite confident that the morass of Trump's rise to power will be discovered and published, but not very soon, at least on in the US.
But it is likely that everything the CIA/FBI knows also is known by the rest of the Five-Eyes Club, plus any Intelligence Agency with special interests Russia, such as the German BND.
As the saying goes, three people can keep a secret if...
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I say let it drag out until after the 2018 election, make sure they take Pence down with Trump and that leaves third in line which will hopefully be the Democratic Speaker of the House.

It's only fair given how dishonest the 2016 election was.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I don't think we have any room to call Russia evil over this. We've not only interfered, we've gotten involved in deposing elected leaders, installed dictators, deposed dictators and there are many egregious examples. These often amounted to supporting the corporatocracy which were using the nations' natural resources.

So we should not be so outraged.

Rather we should expect it and take measures against it. That includes getting to the bottom of this thing with Trump and Russia.
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Yes, to this.

It's as I keep saying, the problem with the election was not Trump, but the people that supported him.

Similarly, the problem with Russian influence is not the Russians, it is Americans who pass it off as no big deal.

The Russians have all the interest in trying to meddle with international elections. That doesn't mean we have an obligation to fall for it.

Seriously, who would have imagined 30 years ago that the Republicans would fall over themselves supporting a candidate who was preferred by Russia?

Ronald Reagan has to be rolling over in his grave.
 
jimbob said:
I don't understand your question.
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Well, there could be incriminating ties like saying, "his loans come from this bank that did X, Y, and Z and is ran by this terrible person" that a dumb person might this is compromising when in actually it is a completely reasonable practice. Maybe a global fund that dumb person invests in has ties to that exact same bank.

Then there is doing things that are a person more aware would see as an unreasonable practice.
 
Henri McPhee said:
Obama interfered in the French election. This means war.
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False equivalence is false. Endorsing a candidate is nothing like using your clandestine agencies to hack servers or paying a troll army to influence opinion through comments.

Nice try, though.
 
BobTheCoward said:
Do you mean compromising for a stupid person reading it or compromising for a smart person reading it?
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The Podesta hacks released information that was compromising if the person reading it was either stupid, naive, or already anti-Clinton. They still had a damaging effect.
 
Meed said:
So you think Trump owes the Russian government money or vice versa, or that the Russian government has sex tapes of Donald Trump and you are fairly confident of this. And you think they chose not to release this stuff at the same time as they were leaking Podesta's emails. Gotcha. Not sure I agree, but I understand your argument.



Not really inarguable, but it's likely that was the case with some non-zero amount of voters.
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Not inarguable? How could you argue against it, then?
 
wareyin said:
The Podesta hacks released information that was compromising if the person reading it was either stupid, naive, or already anti-Clinton. They still had a damaging effect.
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Which is why I'm curious if people think Russia has incriminating evidence for smart people or just the smart people.
 
Meed said:
The hack resulted in more information being out there. Not really a direct negative. Wrong in principle, but I wouldn't call it a bad thing. It didn't force anyone to vote in a way they didn't want to. And there are a million factors that could have influenced the election.
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More information in a notably skewed fashion, released with intent to mess with public opinion in ways that had little to do with good decision making. If a group focuses on releasing the stories of the people who die each year of vaccine-related causes to try to convince people not to get vaccinations, should we simply be happy at the added information that they put out there, especially after disease outbreaks start getting nasty and deadly?

Meed said:
It is selective and overblown outrage, because people are saying things like it's an act of war when it's something routinely engaged in by their own government, and other governments.
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While "act of war" likely is overblown, outrage is natural, regardless of how routine it may be.

Meed said:
They are part of the institution that does it (as are we as voters, in a sense).
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When a guy who distributes the incoming mail to the people who will deal with it is being effectively treated on par with a CEO when it comes to responsibility for the decisions of the leaders of the company, arguments like this rather lose any meaningfulness.

Meed said:
We elect the officials responsible for controlling the CIA. It's our responsibility to care what the CIA does.
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Of course it's our responsibility to care what the CIA does, but when you're relying on a link that honestly only leads to each of us bearing a negligible amount of the responsibility, through a convoluted path that effectively removes our influence at multiple parts from the process, your stated reasoning for why we should care fails, badly.

Meed said:
I don't think I can express myself more clearly on this, so I'll just agree to disagree with you.
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We could agree to do such, but to what end? To let you try to protect the notably flawed reasoning that you're trying to employ?
 
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