Play Nice 45th President of the United States: Donald Trump - Part 7 - Trump takes full responsibility.

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Terminology aside, the russians were running a disinfo/influence campaign, that's not up for debate. Thats the thing though, I don't think most of the US population realised that "every country in the world would is trying to influence".

Hillary sooked it up instead of just going away like she should have, but pretty disengenuous to lay the entirety of the Russian narrative at her door considering the FBI was already investigating people on Trump's campaign team re: Russian links, and that hacks occured before the election. I'd say the unique aspect is that it was the first time the general populace was made aware that other countries run the same s**t against the US as they've dished out previously.
Wouldn’t you equally expect US intelligence to be running counter operations targeting half the worlds countries continuously?
 
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You're so blinded by partisanship you can't actually think straight.

You can only see this through the NO COLLUSION WITCH HUNT v PUTIN'S BITCH! lens.

You don't understand that the most likely situation, the one backed by the evidence,is that there was no collusion in an active, planned ongoing sense (or any sense really) yet at the same time there was a very comprehensive Russian influence operation going beyond, or setting a new standard for, what the US and Russia do to other, and other countries.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that the mark of a first rate intelligence is to be able to hold two seemingly contradictory ideas in your head at the same time and understand that both can be true
That’s fine
So I would be expecting investigations to be reported on China India Pakistan Israel Saudi
Christ! Half the world

The measure of intelligence is hardly the ability to hold 2 seemingly contradictory ideas - any idiot can do that

The complexity far exceeds that by orders of magnitude.

But good to know you read a little even if you don’t quite understand it very much!
 

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Are we talking about the dossier that everything is predicated on
FISA
Mueller
House Intelligence Committee
2 years of MSM lies
2 years of DNC lying

Without the crock of s**t dossier none of that happens

A timely refresher on the Dossier ....

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/russiagate-is-wmd-times-a-million

Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone - an excoriating take down of the media.:

By June and July of 2016, bits of the dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, which had been funded by the Democratic National Committee through the law firm Perkins Coie (which in turn hired the opposition research firm Fusion GPS), were already in the ether.
....


Though it was shopped to at least nine news organizations during the summer and fall of 2016, no one bit, for the good reason that news organizations couldn’t verify its “revelations.”

The Steele claims were explosive if true. The ex-spy reported Trump aide Carter Page had been offered fees on a big new slice of the oil giant Rosneft if he could help get sanctions against Russia lifted. He also said Trump lawyer Michael Cohen went to Prague for “secret discussions with Kremlin representatives and associated operators/hackers.”

Most famously, he wrote the Kremlin had kompromat of Trump “deriling” [sic] a bed once used by Barack and Michelle Obama by “employing a number of prostitutes to perform a 'golden showers' (urination) show.”

This was too good of a story not to do. By hook or crook, it had to come out. The first salvo was by David Corn of Mother Jones on October 31, 2016: “A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump.”

The piece didn’t have pee, Prague, or Page in it, but it did say Russian intelligence had material that could “blackmail” Trump. It was technically kosher to print because Corn wasn’t publishing the allegations themselves, merely that the FBI had taken possession of them.

A bigger pretext was needed to get the other details out. This took place just after the election, when four intelligence officials presented copies of the dossier to both President-Elect Trump and outgoing President Obama.
...
From his own memos, we know FBI Director James Comey, ostensibly evincing concern for Trump’s welfare, told the new President he was just warning him about what was out there, as possible blackmail material:
...
Comey’s generous warning to Trump about not providing a “news hook,” along with a promise to keep it all “close-held,” took place on January 6, 2017. Within four days, basically the entire Washington news media somehow knew all about this top-secret meeting and had the very hook they needed to go public. Nobody in the mainstream press thought this was weird or warranted comment.


Even Donald Trump was probably smart enough to catch the hint when, of all outlets, it was CNN that first broke the story of “Classified documents presented last week to Trump” on January 10.

At the same time, Buzzfeed made the historic decision to publish the entire Steele dossier, bringing years of pee into our lives. This move birthed the Russiagate phenomenon as a never-ending, minute-to-minute factor in American news coverage.

....

The sequence of events in that second week of January, 2017 will now need to be heavily re-examined. We now know, from his own testimony, that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had some kind of role in helping CNN do its report, presumably by confirming part of the story, perhaps through an intermediary or two (there is some controversy over whom exactly was contacted, and when).

Why would real security officials litigate this grave matter through the media? Why were the world’s most powerful investigative agencies acting like they were trying to move a stock, pushing a private, unverified report that even Buzzfeed could see had factual issues? It made no sense at the time, and makes less now.

In January of 2017, Steele’s pile of allegations became public, read by millions. “It is not just unconfirmed,” Buzzfeed admitted. “It includes some clear errors.”

Buzzfeed’s decision exploded traditional journalistic standards against knowingly publishing material whose veracity you doubt. Although a few media ethicists wondered at it, this seemed not to bother the rank-and-file in the business. Buzzfeed chief Ben Smith is still proud of his decision today. I think this was because many reporters believed the report was true.

When I read the report, I was in shock. I thought it read like fourth-rate suspense fiction (I should know: I write fourth-rate suspense fiction). Moreover it seemed edited both for public consumption and to please Steele’s DNC patrons.

...

The Steele report was the Magna Carta of #Russiagate. It provided the implied context for thousands of news stories to come, yet no journalist was ever able to confirm its most salacious allegations: the five year cultivation plan, the blackmail, the bribe from Sechin, the Prague trip, the pee romp, etc. In metaphorical terms, we were unable to independently produce Steele’s results in the lab. Failure to reckon with this corrupted the narrative from the start.

For years, every hint the dossier might be true became a banner headline, while every time doubt was cast on Steele’s revelations, the press was quiet. Washington Post reporter Greg Miller had a team looking for evidence Cohen had been in Prague. Reporters, Miller said, “literally spent weeks and months trying to run down” the Cohen story.

“We sent reporters through every hotel in Prague, through all over the place, just to try to figure out if he was ever there,” he said, “and came away empty.”

This was heads-I-win, tails-you-lose reporting. One assumes if Miller’s crew found Cohen’s name in a hotel ledger, it would have been on page 1 of the Post. The converse didn’t get a mention in Miller’s own paper. He only told the story during a discussion aired by C-SPAN about a new book he’d published. Only The Daily Caller and a few conservative blogs picked it up.*

It was the same when Bob Woodward said, “I did not find [espionage or collusion]… Of course I looked for it, looked for it hard.”

The celebrated Watergate muckraker – who once said he’d succumbed to “groupthink” in the WMD episode and added, “I blame myself mightily for not pushing harder” – didn’t push very hard here, either. News that he’d tried and failed to find collusion didn’t get into his own paper. It only came out when Woodward was promoting his book Fear in a discussion with conservative host Hugh Hewitt.

When Michael Cohen testified before congress and denied under oath ever being in Prague, it was the same. Few commercial news outlets bothered to take note of the implications this had for their previous reports. Would a man clinging to a plea deal lie to congress on national television about this issue?

There was a CNN story, but the rest of the coverage was all in conservative outlets – the National Review, Fox, The Daily Caller. The Washington Post’s response was to run an editorial sneering at “How conservative media downplayed Michael Cohen’s testimony.”

There is much more of this at the link.

Taibbi's knowledge and research nails the mediass culpability in this saga.

He will make a great witness if there ever is a far reaching 9/11 style inquiry into this Democratic Party hoax, but I won't be holding my breath!




 
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Wouldn’t you equally expect US intelligence to be running counter operations targeting half the worlds countries continuously?
Me? Based on their history in this area and the perspective we get living outside the US, sure.

The average US citizen? Not so much I reckon, and even less likely there'd be a common understanding that other countries would also be pulling the same stuff on them.
 
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Me? Based on their history in this area and the perspective we get living outside the US, sure.

The average US citizen? Not so much I reckon, and even less likely there'd be a common understanding that other countries would also be pulling the same stuff on them.
And that is my point - there is enough mud and muck between the US and every country on earth. Meaning you can concoct a viable narrative against anyone.
The Russians were already in the gun over Ukraine and Syria - so the public were well primed to accept and expect some calumny from the Russians

This was the easiest narrative to exploit against a neophyte like Trump. Too convenient by far.

In other words at any given time there might be 100 operations being conducted focusing on foreigners.

Imagine the same accusation made against Trump was targeted at a new President Jeb Bush. He would have been advised to get on the front foot and laugh at it. You can hear him saying -“ of course we are talking to Russians and everyone else - that’s my job! Now, what about the Clinton foundation! Selling uranium to Russia by Obama! We might talk but we don’t sell out!”
BANG! Narrative dead.
 
There is much more of this at the link.

Taibbi's knowledge and research nails the mediass culpability in this saga.

He will make a great witness if there ever is a far reaching 9/11 style inquiry into this Democratic Party hoax, but I won't be holding my breath!

It is a great piece that.

It was Taibbi's reporting in 2015 that first made me realise that the Trump candidacy was a very real thing, and just how deeply he was tapping into the anger of forgotten flyover white America.

He had one line about how everybody he met at one rally in "not Boston" Massachusetts was wearing a piece of New England Patriots gear, how all the people he spoke to had lost a family member to opiates, all had either served or knew someone who'd served and been screwed up by Iraq/Afghanistan and crucially, how they all knew that they were living shittier lives than their parents and that their kids were going to have a shittier standard of living again.

That Hillary was - and entirely correctly - the face of the economic and political changes that brought those people to that situation, was what won Trump the election, not some GRU influence operation.
 
And that is my point - there is enough mud and muck between the US and every country on earth. Meaning you can concoct a viable narrative against anyone.
The Russians were already in the gun over Ukraine and Syria - so the public were well primed to accept and expect some calumny from the Russians

This was the easiest narrative to exploit against a neophyte like Trump. Too convenient by far.

In other words at any given time there might be 100 operations being conducted focusing on foreigners.

Imagine the same accusation made against Trump was targeted at a new President Jeb Bush. He would have been advised to get on the front foot and laugh at it. You can hear him saying -“ of course we are talking to Russians and everyone else - that’s my job! Now, what about the Clinton foundation! Selling uranium to Russia by Obama! We might talk but we don’t sell out!”
BANG! Narrative dead.

You overlook the fact that Trump was out on the campaign trail saying stuff like "Russia! Steal her emails!"
 
That Hillary was - and entirely correctly - the face of the economic and political changes that brought those people to that situation, was what won Trump the election, not some GRU influence operation.
It still stands as one of the most staggeringly tone-deaf political decisions I can think of. A 'business as usual' politician being selected as the candidate by the Dems in an era where people were agitating for change.
 
No - it was funny
You over look context
All Words are embodied in circumstances.
Other wise anyone would think Christian communion was a form of cannibalism!
Don’t be so dim.

I know that it was Trump doing his stream of consciousness thing.

But he still said it.
 
The dossier was pretty clearly a latter day version of the Zimmerman Telegram, and the bullshit map that FDR was given by none other than Roald Dahl.

The Brits were getting rather up and close and personal with the Russians and wanted to ensure the Yanks stayed the course.
 
It still stands as one of the most staggeringly tone-deaf political decisions I can think of. A 'business as usual' politician being selected as the candidate by the Dems in an era where people were agitating for change.

The sense of entitlement on Hilary is beyond measure. She had her chance in 2008 and was beaten fair and square by Obama.
 

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It still stands as one of the most staggeringly tone-deaf political decisions I can think of. A 'business as usual' politician being selected as the candidate by the Dems in an era where people were agitating for change.
Obama campaigned like Sanders but governed like a Clinton. The Democrats somehow figured that the people wanted more Clinton.
 
Obama campaigned like Sanders but governed like a Clinton. The Democrats somehow figured that the people wanted more Clinton.
The last Clinton POTUS deregulated the prison industry which led to a huge spike in incarcerations, especially among the afro-american population.
The more you look at it, the dumber Hillary's nomination gets.

Jeb Bush was the popular pick for the 'establishment' GOP nominee and he got creamed, that should have demonstrated where the political winds were blowing.
 
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And that is my point - there is enough mud and muck between the US and every country on earth. Meaning you can concoct a viable narrative against anyone.
The Russians were already in the gun over Ukraine and Syria - so the public were well primed to accept and expect some calumny from the Russians

This was the easiest narrative to exploit against a neophyte like Trump. Too convenient by far.

In other words at any given time there might be 100 operations being conducted focusing on foreigners.

Imagine the same accusation made against Trump was targeted at a new President Jeb Bush. He would have been advised to get on the front foot and laugh at it. You can hear him saying -“ of course we are talking to Russians and everyone else - that’s my job! Now, what about the Clinton foundation! Selling uranium to Russia by Obama! We might talk but we don’t sell out!”
BANG! Narrative dead.

Reckon there were more important factors than Ukraine and Syria - most obvious being the FBI investigation of Trump campaign members re: russia links and russian hacking of both DNC and GOP targets, which both occured well prior to the election.

I get what you're saying, I just don't agree that it was this massive con you believe it was. There was smoke - how much and whether it justified invesigation is the debate.

Larger point remains (and all I was saying here) - if Trump hadn't sacked Comey and just let the FBI investigation wrap up, there would have been no Muller.
 
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Again, you're full of fallacies today aren't you seeds, this election had one of the highest voter turnouts in recent history.
Even if it was the most ever it doesnt change the point. In any case it ranked 3rd for highest voter percentages out of possible voters in the past 4 elections. So dont make stuff up.
 
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Rand Paul shots down the Mueller report being made public, seems like they're really afraid of letting people read it
300 plus pages must contain more than
BDC777E8-6BAE-48BB-AF2B-A71DF4E3C5B4.jpeg
 

GuruJane

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It is a great piece that.

It was Taibbi's reporting in 2015 that first made me realise that the Trump candidacy was a very real thing, and just how deeply he was tapping into the anger of forgotten flyover white America.

He had one line about how everybody he met at one rally in "not Boston" Massachusetts was wearing a piece of New England Patriots gear, how all the people he spoke to had lost a family member to opiates, all had either served or knew someone who'd served and been screwed up by Iraq/Afghanistan and crucially, how they all knew that they were living shittier lives than their parents and that their kids were going to have a shittier standard of living again.

That Hillary was - and entirely correctly - the face of the economic and political changes that brought those people to that situation, was what won Trump the election, not some GRU influence operation.

Am chuffed this has gone down so well. Hadn't heard of Taibbi before I found it - many years since i was a reader of rolling stone.:)
 
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