Cont: The Trump Presidency VI

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SezMe said:
...We have public evidence of collusion and there may be more still not released...
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No may be about it. There is information not made public. Possibly a lot.
Robert Hannigan, then the head of the U.K.’s intelligence service the G.C.H.Q., had recently [August 2016] flown to Washington and briefed the C.I.A.’s director, John Brennan, on a stream of illicit communications between Trump’s team and Moscow that had been intercepted. (The content of these intercepts has not become public.) Link
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It's a constant on many Internet forums, that posters read the news or watch it on TV, develop opinions and, over time, seem to forget that that there is almost always a lot of information that is not being made public. Especially in criminal investigations. The intelligence community seems so determined to call out Trump over his Russian contacts, it leads me to wonder what exactly they may have (or intercepted). For many reasons, they have to hold back. The accused, or those being investigated, have rights too. The investigators have to be careful what they release. They're going to err on the side of caution. In a case like this one, that involves matters of really serious national security, where some information has been developed from intercepts, the intelligence agencies don't want those methods to be compromised by disclosure. Some of the information has come from Russians themselves and in their system, disclosure -- or even strong hints as to who they are -- could cost them their lives. Finally, withholding information is a standard tactic in criminal investigations. It is an adversarial proceeding and the investigators don't want to give too much away.

The reality is, many journalists say privately, they are often privy to all kinds of information that they cannot disclose. Information that would alter the public's perception of an event or public figure. But there's legal requirements and professional standards that control what they can and cannot report.
 
newyorkguy said:
It's a constant on many Internet forums, that posters read the news or watch it on TV, develop opinions and, over time, seem to forget that that there is almost always a lot of information that is not being made public. Especially in criminal investigations. The intelligence community seems so determined to call out Trump over his Russian contacts, it leads me to wonder what exactly they may have (or intercepted). For many reasons, they have to hold back. The accused, or those being investigated, have rights too. The investigators have to be careful what they release. They're going to err on the side of caution. In a case like this one, that involves matters of really serious national security, where some information has been developed from intercepts, the intelligence agencies don't want those methods to be compromised by disclosure. Some of the information has come from Russians themselves and in their system, disclosure -- or even strong hints as to who they are -- could cost them their lives. Finally, withholding information is a standard tactic in criminal investigations. It is an adversarial proceeding and the investigators don't want to give too much away.

The reality is, many journalists say privately, they are often privy to all kinds of information that they cannot disclose. Information that would alter the public's perception of an event or public figure. But there's legal requirements and professional standards that control what they can and cannot report.
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It is, perhaps, worth pointing out that around this time last year, The Guardian were quoting a source as saying:

“They now have specific concrete and corroborative evidence of collusion,” the source said. “This is between people in the Trump campaign and agents of [Russian] influence relating to the use of hacked material.”
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It's also worth bearing in mind that while that report about the beginning of the investigation into Trump/Russia doesn't specify exactly what information GCHQ passed on to US intelligence agencies it does say that the information was deemed sensitive enough that it was passed personally from the head of GCHQ to the CIA chief. In another report it's said that he flew to America to hand-deliver it himself. That suggests to me that there may have been more there than just phone records detailing who had talked to who, like perhaps actual intercepts of conversations.

That's just supposition on my part, of course, and it could easily be that there was no more than the fact of communications, but it's worth considering.
 
Hmm, and I suppose that's a thought - if we're to take seriously, as some seemingly do, that this whole thing is a witch hunt brought about by an FBI conspiracy to undermine Trump, then we also have to come up with a plausible explanation for why the intelligence agencies of the UK, Germany, Estonia, Poland, and Australia were part of that conspiracy. Also the Dutch intelligence services who infiltrated Cozy Bear.

It seems more parsimonious to me that the people with long-standing ties to Russia (including Trump himself) had ties to Russia, but what do I know?
 
Isn't this about what one expected?
President Trump decamped to his oceanfront estate here on Friday after a head-spinning series of presidential decisions on national security, trade and the budget that left the capital reeling and his advisers nervous about what comes next. The decisions attested to a president riled up by cable news and unbound. Mr. Trump appeared heedless of his staff, unconcerned about Washington decorum, or the latest stock market dive, and confident of his instincts.

Aides said there was no grand strategy to the president’s actions, and that he got up each morning this week not knowing what he would do. Link
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His business career, outside of a narrow field of real estate developments, was a disaster. Any wonder he's turning out to be a horrible president?

Trump's said to be "confident of his instincts." This is what I have heard business people (successful ones) wonder about. Over the years The Dunce made so many bad moves, lost an incredible amount of money and saw business after business go down the tubes. Yet he emerges from all of this mayhem, "confident of his instincts?" I agree with them, he seems so completely incapable of learning from past mistakes, he seems to be in the grip of some kind of underlying pathology. It's just hard to believe anyone could be that naturally stupid!
 
Trump claims that bill just passed gives the largest pay rise to the armed forces in a decade. It's a lie. It's smaller than Obama's pay rise of 2010
 
SezMe said:
Diplomacy is not weakness.
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I think it’s fair to say that sometimes, through the lens of history, diplomacy can be viewed as weakness.

We can look at the rearming of Germany after WW1 and see that more firm action taken earlier could have saved millions of lives.

Decades of diplomacy with NK has resulted in a nuclear-capable State. Maybe there never was a moment where interceding militarily was practical. But we can surely see that diplomacy and sanctions have not worked. If NK ever launches a nuclear armed missle that strikes the US, I don’t think history will view kindly the decades of diplomacy and sanctions that got us to that point.

I’m not a hawk. I’m generally opposed to war. I was actively involved in the anti-war movement in the 60’s. But sometimes diplomacy fails and there’s no other choice.
 
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Trump has issued orders to ban transgender troops from serving in the military, except under "limited circumstances"

And, because there's always a tweet:

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Squeegee Beckenheim said:
It's being reported that some of Trump's most staunch public supporters - including Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter - have been very critical or even abandoning their support after Trump signed the latest financing bill
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I listen to Limbaugh for as long as I can handle.
He was saying, basically, "We've been wanting - needing - the Republicans in charge to bring common sense spending back to DC, and now we have this."

He was either really annoyed or doing a good and well with respect to dog-whistling.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
He said it twice. The first sentence was almost grammatically passable, but the second sentence definitely needed a noun and I'm almost certain he didn't know the word form for a noun.
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Fox and Friends probably avoids the use of unfamiliar words like that to avoid disturbing their target audience. No reason to expect Trump to know it.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Did anyone notice his bottle of Trump brand water next to him? Do you think that is being paid for by the WH?
He's getting paid for the water.
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He buys his own. The Chief Steward of the Whitehouse presents the first family with a bill every month for their food. The only food the first family doesn't buy is for official functions like state dinners.
 
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3point14 said:
Why wouldn't he? At what point in the past has the '**** the rules, I'll just do what I want' tactic failed him and his extended family?
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I think it was Matt Yglesias who expressed hope that this presidency could bring to attention all the ways states have allowed the rich to casually have their way with toothless state regulation.
 
LSSBB said:
A President doesn't do a rapid cave-in like that when they are operating from a position of strength.

My guess is he is feeling deeply wounded and losing influence.

Not very stable, genius.
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My guess is that he is simply too dumb and too disinterested to do the basic work a president needs to do to shape legislation. When legislation comes to the desk, and you would rather golf than work the weekend, your options on signing are limited.
 
BobTheCoward said:
The conspiracy we don't have convincing evidence for.
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That's not the point. If you're going to investigate something investigate an actual crime. All crimes have elements and you have to meet some or all of those elements to be guilty. Collusion, not being a crime has no elements so you can neither prove it or clear your name of it. Conspiracy means two or more people (three if one is a government agent or informant) met and/or discussed an illegal act and one or more of those people took an affirmative act in furtherance of committing that crime. That's what we should be talking about because there are elements you can prove.

There's a strong prima facie case for conspiracy with the meeting at Trump Tower, and Roger Stone's admission of communicating with WikiLeaks. The lying to the FBI convictions of some of the potential co-conspirators and lying on security clearance forms betrays a consciousness of guilt. Mueller might not be there yet for Trump but based on what is publicly known he has a strong conspiracy case against a few people (Kushner very likely and Don Jr, probably).
 
[G]ive it 24 hours and they'll be back in the fold.
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Not Ann Coulter. She started bailing on The Dunce (whom she once gushed was our "Emperor-God!") six months ago. This is from a September 2017 news story:
“I think everyone who voted for him knew his personality was grotesque, it was the issues,” she told The Daily Caller. "Now, making an argument about the issues is more difficult. “I’m not very happy with what has happened so far,” Coulter said. She even called developments in the administration a “disaster so far.” Link
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Below I'm attaching a full page ad that appeared in the Palm Beach [FL] Daily News, Palm Beach being the site of The Dunce's 'Florida' White House. What's noteworthy about this to me is, the folks who know Dumpster the best never seem to have much respect for him. He grew up in Queens, NY -- his family were longtime residents; his father a prominent local builder -- nonetheless in 2016 he lost the popular vote in Queens to Clinton by about twenty points. He did even worse in what is now his 'home' precinct in Manhattan. My favorite memory of that was, his neighbors booing him when he showed up to vote.

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newyorkguy said:
Not Ann Coulter. She started bailing on The Dunce (whom she once gushed was our "Emperor-God!") six months ago. This is from a September 2017 news story:
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Ann Coulter is primary a print journalist, so she is not as dependent on ratings as someone like Limbaugh is. I suspect he will be back in the Trump camp by the middle of next week, at the latest.
 
dudalb said:
Ann Coulter is primary a print journalist, so she is not as dependent on ratings as someone like Limbaugh is. I suspect he will be back in the Trump camp by the middle of next week, at the latest.
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He has a lot of hours to fill a week.
 
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