President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

I'd like to call timeout here, because there a few things I still don't fully understand.

1/What is it we think the Russians actually DID? Short of reaching into the ballot boxes to change votes, I'm not sure I can get all that outraged. Hillary Clinton lost that election, pure and simple, by being Hillary Clinton.

2/Those of us who are appalled by a President Trump are really gonna hate having a President Pence. At this point, what's the harm of backing off all this impeachment talk and putting together a campaign that actually can win elections (both at the national and state level)?

That's all I got. Carry on.

 

National Review's Jonah Goldberg trying to weasel out from his foisting Trump on us ...

 

What did the Russians do? What we know: 1. Steal emails from DNC and make public, with credulous media eager to present them as the Pentagon Papers II. 2. Flood social media with bots seeking to both advance Trump and create dissension between Clinton and Sanders supporters. 3. Steal emails from RNC, but not make them public. Blackmail? What we don't know. Extent to which Donald Trump has been financially supported by Russian interests controlled by Putin prior to his presidential campaign. And of course, what's in those RNC emails.
Why bother investigating? Because if we don't know the facts and take counter-measures, they'll do it again. And since they have attempted to enter voter rolls, I don't think it's wise to think they're beyond trying to fix results.

Why not back off impeachment talk? If the President is engaged in obstruction of justice, said President should be impeached. The Constitution and our system of checks and balances are supposed to be above party disputes. So Pence will suck (BTW, he's by no means out of the woods on Trump's legal issues). So what. An attempt to create a quasi-authoritarian model of the Presidency will have been quashed.

 

1) A: The Russians participated in a wide ranging propaganda campaign to amplify, magnify and exponentially multiply Clintons flaws (which were not insubstantial) which pale to insignificance before the repulsiveness of Fucko. Who publicly encouraged and thus endorsed the foreign interference, even if he didn't take active part in it.

B: Nobody even dares speak the possibility the Russians jiggered the election results themselves, because once that's on the table, the whole government is illegitimate. It would take months for a physical recount and even then the results would be disputed.

But ..... the election did flip ... at the very last second .... contrary to all the statistical models ... by precisely the minimum margin needed .... and not a single vote more ... Almost Like Somebody Flipped A Switch .... to deliver the entire government to a despot.

2): No reason for concern, except...

 

I don't care whether Trump and his associates are clean as the driven snow when it comes to Russia and the election, but that ship -- Trump's honesty/ability -- sailed long, long ago.

 

You're anti-Comey now, huh?

This is my shocked face.

 

Link?

 

IIRC, I posited that the FBI would spring leaks and let a lot of HRC dirt out if the FBI didn't press the case forward to the DOJ.

But what Comey did in July was damaging enough in my opinion. I didn't like what he did in several respects. He should have deep-sixed her campaign right then in July so the convention could somehow nominate Biden or maybe Kerry. But that whole statement to the press was such a ball of two-sided clusterfuck, it gave something for every voter to be unhappy about, including Comey.

I didn't think Comey would last much beyond 21 JAN to be honest with you.

I feel for him and the FBI. The 2016 election put the whole agency in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

 

Shocker face?

 

Judged strictly by his own self-interest, Comey has made some bad moves. But saying he'll only testify in public is a good one. It puts the Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee on the spot. If they turn down his request, they look like part of a cover up, and he doesn't have to do anything but keep on leaking as he chooses. If they accept, he'll get to call Trump a liar on national TV, which ought to be good for a tweetstorm ragegasm or two from Trump in return.

 

The FinCEN angle is going to reveal Trump was in business with some very shady people (as we already know). They've had info on him dating back to this.

FinCEN Fines Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort $10 Million for Significant and Long Standing Anti-Money Laundering Violations | FinCEN.gov