US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9701

On January 17 2018 03:30 Logo wrote:


What did Tulsi say about it? I saw her blame Trump (and importantly past administrations) for handling North Korea poorly and she used the hysteria over the alarm as an example of the harm being done by having this tense situation. But that's very different from blaming Trump for the false alarm.

Did she make some early remarks that were deleted or something?

On January 17 2018 03:37 Plansix wrote:

I cannot think of a reason PR reason why an attorney would actively seek to have his client hit with a subpoena over a voluntary interview. Or tell their client it is a good idea. Getting questioned by the FBI is super serious, well beyond who was leaking what deals from the White House.

On January 17 2018 04:13 TheLordofAwesome wrote:

I mean, he's lost Trump, he's lost Breitbart, and he's lost his radio show. Most importantly he's lost the Mercers, the billionaire hedge fund managers who exploited every tax loophole they could who bankrolled all of Bannon's political activism for the common man against.... the billionaire globalist bankers who exploit tax loopholes (??????). I honestly can't think of a single thing that Bannon has left to lose.

On January 17 2018 03:46 Logo wrote:
How does a thread detailing the specifics of how the state emergency notification system work relate to Tulsi Gabbard speaking about tensions with North Korea?

On January 17 2018 04:21 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Graham has had his heart broken.

https://twitter.com/edatpost/status/953321208094879744

On January 17 2018 03:43 Danglars wrote:

One exhibit does not prove the case. You may have heard of court cases where multiple are offered to support a side on the trial? It is that analogy that I draw on. You can google more to find out more vagaries of the phrase meaning.

Secondly, don’t put words in my mouth. I’m perfectly capable of using Democrats, or leftists, or the radical left if that’s my meaning. I appreciate your attempts to lead me into areas you think I already believe something to be true. They’re unnecessary, but thanks anyways.

If you hadn’t seen the kind of hysteria that prompted Nichols to lay out the facts, save your sanity and be glad you missed it. It wasn’t a group of randos safely ignored, and the writer was wasting his own time creating a response because nobody actually thought the things he wrote to answer anyways (duhh loser). If you’re interested enough, go for it.

Thirdly, fix your quote to match what was said that I reacted to. It matters.

Finally, I responded more in depth in another post on the subject of responsibility and who said what. If you find it substantially insufficient, you can quote and respond there. I find no reason to draw this to Fast and Furious and Obama (the Obama administration), when this did not happen at the federal level (and people falsely claimed it was PACOM at the time). It’s Hawaii, not a department of the federal government. States exercise authority for their own employees and agencies, so if they want to thumb their nose at something like election fraud investigations, they are well within their rights. And feel free to investigate yourself to see your proposed excuses for what might have happened/the errors that might have been made fit it with what actually happened. I saw the timeline and came to the opposite conclusion and was glad to see members of the center call out their allies on the left and put a stop to the tomfoolery. Gabbard tried a quick switch for political points. Hollywood libs reacted with trademark panicked lurchings. It was fun to watch and read.

On January 17 2018 04:08 Tachion wrote:
If Bannon really does have dirt on other people in the White House that is important to Mueller, you gotta think of how ridiculous it was for Trump to denounce him like he did.

Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, was reportedly warned about his friendship with Wendi Deng Murdoch, amid fears she was using the connection to promote China’s business interests.

Early in 2017 US officials urged Kushner, who is a senior adviser to the US president, to exercise caution around Murdoch, according to the Wall Street Journal. Murdoch is a close friend of Kushner’s wife, Ivanka Trump.

Concerns were raised by US officials about a counter-intelligence assessment that Murdoch was lobbying for a high-profile construction project in Washington funded by the Chinese government, anonymous sources told the US paper.

Wendi Deng Murdoch is former wife of Rupert Murdoch, who owns the Wall Street Journal.

The construction project was a proposed $100m (£73m) Chinese garden, which was reportedly declared a national security risk because the design included plans for a tall tower that officials were concerned could be used for surveillance. The garden was planned to be built less than five miles from both the Capitol and the White House.

Murdoch’s spokesman said she “has no knowledge of any FBI concerns or other intelligence agency concerns relating to her or her associations”. He also said she “has absolutely no knowledge of any garden projects funded by the Chinese government”.

A representative for Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, described the meeting where the concerns were raised as a “routine senior staff security briefing”. He said Kushner “has complied with all ethics and disclosure recommendations and has played a helpful role in strengthening the US-China relationship so as to help bring about a better resolution to the many issues the countries have.”

The Chinese embassy in Washington said the information in the Journal’s article was “full of groundless speculations”.

Wendi Deng Murdoch has been a good friend of the couple for many years, according to an interview she did with the Guardian in 2016.

“She’s very impressive,” Murdoch said of Ivanka Trump in the interview. “She has three children and she is teaching them Chinese. It’s very nice. We’ve been friendly for many years. I try to separate [the election] from that.”

Trump has shared several photos of Murdoch on her Instagram account, including one of them travelling together in Croatia.

According to a source quoted in the Journal’s article, Murdoch has surfaced on the radar of counter-intelligence services before. When reports emerged that she may have been linked with Tony Blair while she was married, British security officials discussed with their US counterparts whether they should be concerned. Murdoch and Blair have denied they were ever romantically connected.

The Journal’s story is particularly striking because the newspaper is owned by News Corp, whose executive chairman is Murdoch’s ex-husband Rupert Murdoch. The media tycoon married the then Wendi Deng in 1999; they divorced in 2013. She has kept the Murdoch name and said in the Guardian interview that they were still friendly. They have two children together, Grace and Chloe.

Michael Wolff, the author of a new book on Donald Trump’s presidency and a biography about Rupert Murdoch, claimed on Twitter after the Journal article was published that the media tycoon had been claiming his ex-wife was a Chinese spy to “anybody who would listen” since their divorce.

However, Marcus Brauchli, a former managing editor of the Journal, expressed doubts about the story. “Count me deeply sceptical,” he posted on Twitter. “US counter-intelligence has slurred people before with flimsy suspicions, especially those people with ties to China (eg ethnic Chinese). I’d warrant Trump does more for Russia than Wendi ever did for China.”

The Journal has written extensively about Wendi Murdoch’s background before, including before Rupert Murdoch bought the newspaper in 2007.

In November 2000 the Journal published an investigation into Wendi Murdoch that claimed a Californian couple sponsored her application for a student visa in the US, helped teach her English and gave her somewhere to stay. Shortly afterwards the Californian couple divorced and Murdoch married the husband.

The article also alleged that Murdoch was helping to identify investments for her husband’s company in China and was acting as his “liaison and translator in China”. News Corp said at the time that Murdoch was “entitled to her privacy” and questioned details in the story.