Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Trump/Russia investigation, continued

The latest shoe drops ....

It's revealed that Trump Jr., Jared Kishner, and Paul Manafort met with a Russian lawyer in order to receive damaging information to use against Hillary Clinton during the campaign (The Three Stories of Donald Trump Jr. (So Far)) ...

And the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, explains why this information is so important in the investigation of collusion between Trump and the Russians ...

15 comments:

  1. Now we get to spend equal time on the Trump e-mail scandal. Trump Sr. said he never used e-mail because you can't destroy the evidence. I guess he didn't teach his son.

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  2. According to this impeachment is unlikely to happen unless Ryan and McConnell want it to. And that is a long shot. Trump is useful to them as long as he will sign off on their agenda. The tipping point will be when he becomes a liability rather than an asset for them getting re-elected. Or if they decide that their country matters more than their party. But that would really be a long shot.

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  3. Ryan, McConnell and the Republican Congress first have to get their act together to have anything to sign. If they continue to have their internal problems they may blame it all on Trump.

    Trump's biggest mistake was choosing Pence as VP. The Republican Congress may decide that with Trump gone and Pence as President they will be given a new chance by the voters.

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  4. Whether he can be impeached or not, the truth should be found out and made public. But maybe he will get put on trial for treason - one can hope. Tim Kaine brought up the T word ... https://youtu.be/WQEMs7Omszs

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  5. I like that Mark Warner from Virginia. He is measured and not jumping to conclusions.

    Yes, let's investigate, but the Democrats are doing themselves no favors by using overblown rhetoric here. Even I don't think this is "treason." And it looks like they are hoping to get back in power by discrediting Trump than by having actual ideas.

    Moreover, I continue to be disheartened at the broadcast news's preoccupation with Trump family operatives. The Washington Post is still trying to cover the machinations going on with the health care bill.

    Cruz wants to allow the marketplace companies to sell less-than-basic care policies, with the probable effect of making broader coverage even more expensive for older people. Another GOP wants to put a cap on broader coverage as a percentage of these crappy policies. Bernie plans to introduce a single payer alternative bill. This isn't being covered.

    And I have sure had my fill of near-misses at airports. Why is this even news?

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    1. Reminds me of the near-miss reports we are supposed to fill out at work when some type of accident almost happened. I suppose the reasoning is good, prevent problems before they happen. But I have yet to hear of anyone actually filling out one of these reports.

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  6. Why is this even news?

    What Trump did - using Russian help to win the election - is treason. And now the president of the US is Russia's bitch and our politics will be skewed in their favor. Russia, where there is no real free press, where there is little freedom of speech or protest, where political adversaries of Putin wind of dead, where the state church is ultra-conservative and run by a former KGB thug, where women and gays are treated like poop, where taking over other countries is business as usual.

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  7. Crystsl, I believe Jean is referring to the air traffic near miss at SFO.

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  8. Oh - haven't seen the news yet.

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  9. No, I get why the Don Junior/Russian lawyer is news. Just not why it is the ONLY news. Or why the press keeps reporting on airline disasters that did not happen.

    Raber has a standard joke: If CBS broadcasts some important news by accident, he says, "Why is this s**t on?! Wasn't there a near-collision somewhere in which no one was hurt?!"

    Anyway, America has always been friends with countries run by thugs. That's not the issue, though maybe it should be. The issue is that Don Junior, as a Trump operative, may have done something illegal in attending a meeting that Boris set up with Natasha, who seems to have used the meeting as a ruse to talk about orphans, dahlink. Fearless Leader must be laughing himself sick about jacking us all around the block, and at Trump & Co's ignorance, which weakens our standing and influence abroad. Ironic since Trump hates, above all else, being laughed at and looking weak.

    But the fact that the president is a bozo with no sense of decency or shame is well established at this point. It's fascinating in the same way a geek show is, but as long as reporters are focused on the Orange Disaster who may force his first born son to bite his own head off to give President Dad deniability about that Russky meeting, the press are not covering other stories that need to be heard.

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    1. Boris and Natasha and Fearless Leader, love it!

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    2. Can't wait for the upsydaisium and Watsamatta U. oh right, Trump University.

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    3. I was always partial to Gidney and Cloyd, the moon men who got sick fame. Just as we will get sick of winning. I'm pretty sick of it now.

      The Cold War spawned some great TV and movies: "The Manchurian Candidate," "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold," those Harry Palmer movies, "Get Smart," "The Man from U.N.C.L.E," "The Prisoner," a lot of TZ episodes, Rocky & Bullwinkle.

      And, of course, "Dr. Strangelove."

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  10. Even if the Trump Jr thing was a violation of the law, it's probably not the real target of the investigation. We now know that the Russians tried, in many ways, to mess with the election. And the Trump emails now tell us that at some level some Trump people were involved with the Russians, whether effectively or not.

    But what we don't know is how deep the rabbit hole goes. The truly juicy stuff will be about Trump's connections to the Russians before the election. Especially if Trump was doing any money laundering through his real estate transactions.

    But there is something else here. It may be that the Russians never thought that Trump would be elected. What they may have wanted was to sow internal chaos in the US where the results of the election, whichever way they went, would be mistrusted by some large segment of the population. Right now, whatever happens to Trump, the population is at each other's throats.

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    1. Yes! I think that this is why Putin was so nice and charming to Trump. Trump as thrown the country into disarray, and while we are squabbling, the Kremlin can continue its evil machinations.

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