Cont: All things Trump + Russia Part 2

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Once again, I am amazed at the extents to which Republicans will go to excuse the Trump staff's collaboration with Russian attempts to influence the outcomes of our elections. Now we are to questioning whether it is _technically_ legal to do so?

Seriously? This is the depths to which you will sink?

The party of Reagan, going to the Russians to help win the election. It's mind-boggling, just mind-boggling.

How about, "It's wrong. You know it's wrong, we all know it's wrong. Stop looking for loopholes and focus on doing the right thing."?

No, everybody doesn't do it, and they wouldn't do it if they were given the opportunity.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I'd like them to add a category: how many Republicans have dropped their party affiliation and now call themselves independent? More than a few people have dropped out of the GOP Party. That would tend to concentrate Trump supporters and a shrinking denominator could explain a rising approval rating.
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One of the problems with polling is assuming that people tell the truth when they are interviewed by a pollster.
 
d4m10n said:
It surely would be.

Even more interesting to know what Akhmetshin and Veselnitskaya got in return.
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It would have been promises at that phase with the exception of the change in the GOP platform on Ukraine. Trumpers first denied any change was made. The latest talking point is that some language about using lethal assistance was taken out because you never use such language in a platform.

Potential collusion may be found with this: Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia? Looking for evidence Trump or the GOP were also hacked, instead a communication door was found: a pattern of human to human communication between the Trump camp and the Ukrainian, pro-Russian, Alfa Bank.

Remember that 'backdoor' Kushner was caught looking for? That was in May. We don't know if the emails about the June meeting are the only communications that are going to be uncovered between the Trump camp and the Putin camp.

The Slate article has a detailed description of the communication between the Trump camp and the Alfa bank and it started soon after the June meeting.

If Kushner was sharing information with Russia on which voters to target for which fake news and other political messages, I'd bet Mueller is going to find it.

As for other 'returns' besides a more pro-Russia stance on the Ukraine, Trump announced he'd weaken the US ties to NATO. Now that Trump is POTUS, Putin is pressing harder for release of the two confiscated mansions.

Trump is in a bad position. If he moves to end Russian sanctions it looks suspicious. If he doesn't, Putin likely has the collusion goods on Trump.
 
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pgwenthold said:
Once again, I am amazed at the extents to which Republicans will go to excuse the Trump staff's collaboration with Russian attempts to influence the outcomes of our elections. Now we are to questioning whether it is _technically_ legal to do so?
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Sure.

A lot of the frenzy over this meeting is all about whether or not a law has been broken. The reason for this is that a broken law can lead to impeachment, so the "technical" legality is very important.


In terms of approval rating, though, I think people are catching on to the bigger issue here. A lot of Trump supporters didn't imagine making America great again by having secret meetings with Russian lawyers. They may not be all that interested in technical legalities, but they can smell a rat when people start having meetings and lying about them. And that approval rating translates into softness in Congressional support. As it drops, representatives and senators start looking over their shoulders, and wondering whether Trump will be a liability or an asset when reelection time comes around.
 
American-based employee of Russian real estate company, Ike Kaveladze, is eighth person at Trump Jr. meeting.

Ike Kaveladze’s presence was confirmed by Scott Balber, an attorney for Emin and Aras Agalarov, the Russian developers who hosted the Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant in 2013. Balber said Kaveladze works for the Agalarovs’ company and attended as their representative.

Balber said Tuesday that he received a phone call from a representative of Special Counsel Robert Mueller over the weekend requesting the identity of the Agalarov representative , which he said he provided. The request is the first public indication that Mueller’s team is investigating the meeting.

Donald Trump Jr. agreed to take the meeting on the promise that he would be provided damaging information about Hillary Clinton as part of a Russian government to help his father’s presidential campaign, according to emails released by Trump Jr. last week.

...

Balber said Kaveladze works as a vice president focusing on real estate and finance for the Agalarov’s company, the Crocus Group. Aras Agalarov requested that Kaveladze attend the meeting on his behalf, Balber said. Kaveladze is a U.S. citizen and has lived in this country for many years, according to Balber, who is said he is representing the man.
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Remember when they claimed the meeting was about adoptions and just attended by Veselnitskaya?
 
pgwenthold said:
Once again, I am amazed at the extents to which Republicans will go to excuse the Trump staff's collaboration with Russian attempts to influence the outcomes of our elections. Now we are to questioning whether it is _technically_ legal to do so?

Seriously? This is the depths to which you will sink?

The party of Reagan, going to the Russians to help win the election. It's mind-boggling, just mind-boggling.

How about, "It's wrong. You know it's wrong, we all know it's wrong. Stop looking for loopholes and focus on doing the right thing."?

No, everybody doesn't do it, and they wouldn't do it if they were given the opportunity.
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It's wrong to accept incriminating evidence about your candidate?
 
CapelDodger said:
Did they absolutely positively say that only Veselnitskaya was there?
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And a translator.

In his statement, Donald Trump Jr. said: “It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up.”

He added: “I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting with beforehand.”
Late Saturday, Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the president’s lawyer, issued a statement implying that the meeting was a setup. Ms. Veselnitskaya and the translator who accompanied her to the meeting “misrepresented who they were,” it said.
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Convenient he forgot the hacker and the financier because that paints a very different picture.
 
Argumemnon said:
Ooh! You want an estimate, now.

Well, there's your goalpost moving. I told you you'd get to see it.
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We've been arguing whether this had value, determining that value if any will be part of it. It's not goal post moving, its moving the argument forward, something you're not interested in doing.
 
Argumemnon said:
Ironic, given that you're playing semantics and pretending to not understand basic everyday stuff.
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Then you should be able to show this everyday stuff. I find it very interesting that these oppo research teams are not very open about what they do.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Trump is in a bad position. If he moves to end Russian sanctions it looks suspicious. If he doesn't, Putin likely has the collusion goods on Trump.
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Of course whether or not Putin did interfere materially with the US election he wants people to think he did. To get maximum benefit from that he needs to keep the story in the headlines, with titbits like this meeting.

An alluring prospect. :popcorn1
 
CapelDodger said:
Of course whether or not Putin did interfere materially with the US election he wants people to think he did. To get maximum benefit from that he needs to keep the story in the headlines, with titbits like this meeting.

An alluring prospect. :popcorn1
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It exacerbates the problem that the administration's first reaction to any news is to lie.
 
Stacko said:
It exacerbates the problem that the administration's first reaction to any news is to lie.
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Even worse in this case, lying was also the second and third reaction. Trump apparently didn't teach Junior to stick with first lie.
 
Minoosh said:
I had the same thought, but I considered it a relatively minor point - relative to the fact that a presidential candidate was urging a U.S. adversary to hack his opponent in hopes of uncovering (and sharing with the press) classified information. He wasn't joking, he meant it quite literally.
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I don't think he was urging them to hack his opponent. I think he was implying that if they had hacked the DNC they would already have hacked Clinton, and would already have her emails. I also don't think he was 100% serious, but also not 100% joking.

Consider, if I were to say "China, if you're thinking about assassinating Trump, you've got my blessing. I think there would be a lot of people in the US who would be grateful if you did!". I'm not exactly urging China to assassinate Trump, because I don't think they are listening to me, and I don't think they have any reasonable plans to do so, and I don't have any influence over the Chinese government.

So I'm not 100% serious. But on the other hand... if they actually did assassinate Trump, I'd be outraged on principle but also a little bit happy about the outcome.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
It would have been promises at that phase with the exception of the change in the GOP platform on Ukraine.
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Oh would it have been? For certain? What evidence do you have to support your speculation?

Skeptic Ginger said:
Trumpers first denied any change was made. The latest talking point is that some language about using lethal assistance was taken out because you never use such language in a platform.
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Also a correction - "Trumpers" didn't deny that a change was made - they denied that the Trump campaign was responsible for the changes that occurred. They have held to that claim. And it's been known for a while that the only change made was to soften the language from providing 'lethal defensive weapons' to Ukraine to providing 'appropriate assistance' to Ukraine.

The shift is in line with Trump's general policy perspective, but there isn't hard evidence that anyone on his campaign was actually responsible for that change. It is reasonable to think they may have suggested it, as it does benefit their campaign platform. But still, no hard evidence of that regardless of what's been said in so many articles.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/aug/04/did-trump-campaign-soften-platform-language-benefi/
Politifact said:
So did Trump and his campaign influence the change? It’s hard to know for sure, and that’s why we’re avoiding putting this question on the Truth-O-Meter.
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Skeptic Ginger said:
Potential collusion may be found with this: Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia? Looking for evidence Trump or the GOP were also hacked, instead a communication door was found: a pattern of human to human communication between the Trump camp and the Ukrainian, pro-Russian, Alfa Bank.
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Again, you might want to dig a little bit deeper. There is no supporting evidence that a Trump server was communicating with Russia.
http://www.snopes.com/trump-server-tied-to-russian-bank/
Quotes in Snopes article below are originally from an article by Robert Graham, a well-known cybersecurity expert.
Snopes quoting Graham said:
But the article quotes several experts confirming the story, so how does that jibe with this blog post. The answer is that none of the experts confirmed the story.

Read more carefully. None of the identified experts confirmed the story. Instead, the experts looked at pieces, and confirmed part of the story. Vixie rightly confirmed that the pattern of DNS requests came from humans, and not automated systems. Chris Davis rightly confirmed the server doesn’t look like a normal email server.

Neither of them, however, confirmed that Trump has a secret server for communicating with the Russians. Both of their statements are consistent with what I describe above — that’s it’s a Cendyn operated server for marketing campaigns independent of the Trump Organization.

Those researchers violated their principles

The big story isn’t the conspiracy theory about Trump, but that these malware researchers exploited their privileged access for some purpose other than malware research.
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logger said:
Let me guess, the deep state have invested so much in war with Russia? Having a workable relationship must be very upsetting?
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Russia is interested in bringing down America, which is why they supported Trump who is unfit to be President of the United States. Case in point:

6 months in, Trump's presidency is teetering on the brink of disaster

(CNN)The collapse of health care reform in the Senate on Monday night is a fitting coda to President Donald Trump's first six months in office, a tenure that has lurched from controversy to controversy and now appears to be on the verge of tilting directly into the political abyss.
Consider the following facts:

1. Trump's job approval rating at the 6-month mark is lower than eight of the past nine presidents'. He's tied with Gerald Ford, who had taken over from Richard Nixon, who had fled Washington in the wake of the Watergate scandal and whom Ford, very controversially, pardoned.

2. Despite his braggadocio, Trump has a pittance of legislative accomplishments to tout. Health care appears to be dead in the water -- and even Trump can't seem to decide what the right next step should be. There is currently zero new funding for Trump's much-touted border wall. Tax reform still in its infant stage, with few details added to the first, basic proposal. Infrastructure proposals are in limbo. There is no announced strategy on the raising of the debt ceiling. And on and on and on.

3. A special counsel was appointed and is investigating Russia's attempts to meddle in the 2016 election and the possibility that members of the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to aid his campaign. That investigation has triggered a major lawyering-up of all the major players -- including several Trump family members -- and a series of ever-changing stories about who said what and when.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/18/politics/trump-president-6-months/index.html
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That should be another indication as to why Trump's approval ratings are at record lows and his ratings have been sliding downward since he took over the presidency.
 
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