President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

I wrote a single sentence about a turnbuckle. I didn't make it into anything. I just thought it was an odd, poorly-chosen thing to write, to someone agreeing with you.

 

In what would worry me this evening were I William Barr, Trump swept past reporters without stopping as he boarded the helicopter at the White House as he left for Mar-a-Lago. No gloating, no "NO COLLUSION," just silence, the most ominous of sounds. Somebody's cranky.

 

I still would like to know the justification for showing to his personal lawyers. White House counsel is fine, I guess, from an executive privilege perspective but otherwise it simply a spin/PR aid.

 

I think that's fair.

What's equally appalling was the time, effort and focus put onto an investigation of a truly convoluted situation where, at the end of the day, the buffoonish associates of a presidential candidate - who may not have even wanted to win, and certainly didn't expect to - aspired to collude with a disinformation campaign (that in itself is hard to understand) but probably did not, or, if they did, did so like a bunch of slappys stumbling around the dark to the point of confusion/incomprehension of their actual culpability.

The Trump team was more clueless and less organized than the group beleaguered conmen and lame crooks OJ assembled for his memorabilia heist. When you really meditate on the report, you realize this, and boy, is it depressing, that so much hope was pinned on an investigation of men this dim.

 

I am probably misreading this. Are you saying that there should not have been an investigation because these guys are so incompetent that there could not possibly have been any intent? Therefore it was all cool?

 

There should have been an investigation. Hell, there was an investigation.

I'm saying that the amount of daily - hourly - attention affixed to it was a mistake. I posted it for months before its release and I was ripped every time: Man, Mueller better deliver. The amount of hype attached to this report was equivalent to that of a Georgia football team before the actual season began.

NOW...the media has to follow this thing all the way down. It's not going away, I don't think. The first news agency that does will be accused of being whatever you don't want to be accused of in all the right bars and cocktail parties up and down the East Coast. (Yes, I'm that reductive because, yes, I think media groupthink is a huge problem.)

 

I don't think that's what Alma is saying. He's basically repeating whoever it was who said way back in 2017 that the Trump administration was "malevolence tempered by incompetence." The US Code, however, does not allow for incompetence as a defense. Nor should any article of impeachment.
PS: As regards impeachment, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said he didn't think it should be considered because there was an election coming up in 18 months. Reactions I have seen from Democrats not in the House were very fierce and very hostile. You know how in Westerns a guy will poke a hat on a stick up from the rocks to see if there are hostile gunmen about? Well, I think Hoyer was Pelosi's hat, and that's she now pondering all the bullet holes. Worth remembering, as I'm sure Pelosi does, that the average big Democratic donor is more to the left than is the average Democratic voter.

 

The only reason Trump isn’t completely sunk by this is his closest advisors and most senior staff don’t follow his orders. That’s insane.

Watched some Fox earlier just to see what was being said (what % of viewership does that make up, ya think? Probably not 0.) anyway, they were touting this all as no big deal expressly because those close to the president know not to follow his orders. “They know him. They know when he’s just blowing off steam.”

It sure is comfortable thinking about how many of those all-knowing advisors have moved on.

 

Their primary argument is, "he hasn't blown up the world yet, so what are you worried about?"

 

But the president was accused of colluding with Russia and obstructing justice. Doesn't that warrant media coverage? I don't understand what you mean by "Mueller better deliver"? We haven't even seen the report.

 

The hype probably worked against Mueller. If you didn't have pundits spending hours giving their theories and jacking up expectations - this report would be a lot more devastating. An eager prosecutor could easily indict this President. (Ham sandwich etc.) You could also go after a few legislators for obstruction or accessory after the fact. But we're in the "is it criminalizing politics or politicizing criminality?" zone now. The public will ultimately decide.

 

Beseeching an adversary nation to interfere with the election process on live worldwide teevee. (Which they did do, that very day.)

Yeah maybe that's just normal politics.

Anyway, he hasn't blown up the world yet.