President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

What's your issue here? Confirmed by a "senior aid." Solid reporting!

 

Please clap.

 

"not necessarily" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

I’ll leave it up for debate, just indicating that I wasn’t signing on to that part of the statement.

Is there an argument that we are less safe now? Let’s hear it.

 

www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/running-north-korea-freakout-thread.128113/page-23

 

DO NOT CONGRATULATE!

 

Um...thanks? I think?

 

They're calling it the Turkey Shoot.

 

Here's a more colorful account of the US SpecOps vs Russian mercenaries at Deir Al-Zour that I threw this up back in February right after it happened. It's worded far less formally, but looks to be pretty well dead on. It might actually tell you more if you can interpret the milspeak and know what MBT, Brrrrrt or ARCLIGHT means. Those poor bastards got absolutely pasted.

Re the Mattis quote given free translation in #14, here's what he actually said:

“I still cannot give you any more information on why they would do this. They took direction from someone, with some local direction. Was it from external sources? Don’t ask me, I don’t know,” Mattis told reporters Feb. 17 while returning from Europe.

“But I doubt that 250-300 people all just decided on their individual own selves to suddenly cross the river into enemy territory and start shelling the location and maneuvering tanks against it. So whatever happened, we’ll try to figure it out. We’ll work with, obviously, anyone who can answer that question.”

 

This is BRRRRRT.

 

Nah. This is silly.

The government routinely makes officials available to speak to the press without attribution. This is normal, and uncontroversial. (Though not preferred.)

What I get frustrated by are anonymous sources, who are undefined, given no context in regards to what biases or motivations they may have, who, as described by the reporter, are second hand sources, at best, and not necessarily in a position to know the information they claim to have.

When a source like this is used, the story is not confirmed by other reporting, and is disputed by the folks who are being reported on, I think it's only fair to question the reporting -- including both the reporter, and the source.

When we have quotes from people not in the room to hear the conversation, we have no way of knowing if the two sources a reporter has are both getting their information from the same one source.

And, there's been a lot of bad reporting on the Trump administration. Stories that have been plain wrong, and stories that had to be retracted.

Do we remember the breathless reports that said candidate Donald Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. had received an email providing a web address and decryption key allowing them to access hacked documents from WikiLeaks before such documents were publicly available?

This was based on multiple anonymous sources who "described the email" to CNN.

Is that good enough? Did the sources not see the email? Why didn't CNN see the email?

Were these sources used previously, or since?

CNN corrects story on email to Trumps about Wikileaks

What about the McClatchy claim that the Justice Department special counsel has evidence that Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and confidant, Michael Cohen, secretly made a late-summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign?

This report was based on two sources familiar with the matter.

What the fuck does that mean? Are these sources in a position to know if this is true?

The story has been denied by Cohen, and no other news organization has reported the same, despite the story being over a month old.

And, to my knowledge, McCatchy hasn't retracted the story, which would be big, and is certainly being pursued by other reporters.

So, should we believe it? Do you believe it?

Sources: Mueller has evidence Cohen was in Prague in 2016, confirming part of dossier

 

As if Trump was alerted before the shooting started.