President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

We aren't there. QYFY is there. YankeeFan is there. Many, if not most, Trump supporters are there.I'd like to think most Americans know better. And clearly, by the popular vote results and his approval ratings, most Americans are not Trump supporters.

 

Wait.

What?

 

It can be argued that the "Russia thing" has paralyzed the administration. That's a negative. It can be argued that it rendered the administration "illegitimate" in many's eyes. That's a negative. It can be argued that any SERIOUS attempt at cooperating with the Russians --- and there are many world issues in which cooperation can be helpful --- will be torpedoed from the start under the auspices that the administration is just being a puppet of the Kremlin. That's a negative.

The GOP would have been better off had the Russians' plan worked the way it was intended: Damage Hillary to the point where her term is ineffective, she's gone in four years, the GOP doesn't get clobbered in the midterms and can take control of all three branches --- with a real president --- in 2020.

The 81 elections America has interfered in in the past half-century don't count.

Only if you got the good leads. The Glengarry leads.

That's not my take at all. My take is, "Eh, WE'VE been doing it for more than a half-century, so how can we act so holier than thou when someone else does the same thing?"

I swear, it's like Charles Manson being escorted to jail and then complaining, "Hey, there's a bunch of murderers in here!"

 

Neither of those are true.

The investigation was launched first and foremost to determine the specifics of how Russia interfered with the 2016 election, with an eye to preventing it from happening again. Discovering whether the Trump campaign colluded in that effort – given that we know for a fact that Russia's interference was designed to help the Trump campaign/hurt the Clinton campaign, and that members of the Trump campaign have repeatedly "forgotten" to reveal contacts with Russians – was a natural, but secondary, emphasis. This investigation started in the summer of 2016 and continued after the election. It should still be seen as vitally important to all Americans. Sadly, it is not.

The special counsel (not prosecutor) was only named in May, after Trump's actions gave the deputy attorney general – who was overseeing the investigation because the attorney general had already had to recuse himself because he'd lied about his own contacts with the Russians – good reason to think that Trump and his minions might be impeding the investigation. Specifically: a) Trump fired the Director of the FBI, and then told Lester Holt on national TV, and the Russians in private, that he did so because of the Russia investigation; b) Comey released memos providing evidence that Trump had earlier sought his "loyalty" and had asked him to see if he could "let go" the investigation into Michael Flynn.

Of course, we've already covered these things, so I don't imagine any of this will change your thinking in the least. But as your former senator, Daniel Patrick Moniyhan, used to say – everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.

 

Or like Donald Trump saying to Bill O'Reilly: “There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent?”?

 

Can someone quantify the Russian influence?

Are we talking about a 50% effect on voting, or 10%, 5%, 1% or 0.1% effect, or less?

And how does that effect translate to any change (if at all) to the Electoral Votes of each state? Would any of them have flipped?

In particular, I'd like to be shown how this flipped FL, PA, OH, MI and WI.

 

It takes months of research to quantify ANY specific impact on an election by any factor, even one that's as plain as the nose on your face, such as, more black voters came out when Obama was on the ballot or white racism helped Trump in swing states. Russian impact through social media and hacking would take years to quantify. On the other hand, if the NRA was taking donations from rich Russians as a means of laundering contributions to the Trump campaign, that'd be a specific violation of federal law, for prosecutors, not political scientists, to investigate. I use that only as an example.

 

Today's hot take prediction: Trump will decide not to release the Nunes memo. But he'll make it clear that it's just because his lily-livered DOJ, FBI, etc. whined so much that he went along with them. Then he will continue to Tweet and otherwise drop hints about all the terrible things that the memo proved, and if only people saw it they'd know (like he does) that the Deep State is out to get him, but the DOJ, FBI, CIA, etc. – all led by people he's appointed – are keeping it from the American people, which is a terrible shame, etc.

That's a perfect play for him, because he and his acolytes get to keep talking about what the memo supposedly proves, while nobody can publicly rebut it since it's still classified. It just mucks things up, which is to his benefit. Plus it's a classic Trump move: "This Iran deal sucks, but I'll still certify it," etc.

 

Can someone quantify the precise numerical influence of the Willie Horton ad? Thanks in advance.