US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7565

On May 18 2017 06:31 Doodsmack wrote:
Apparently Republicans derided the Watergate scandal as a witch hunt until there was tape. So there basically needs to be a smoking gun. If Comey's memos get confirmed, to me that's as good as a tape.

On May 18 2017 06:48 Danglars wrote:

I don't think Lieberman is the right guy to tamp down on the leaks and restore some credibility in the department.

On May 18 2017 06:48 Gorsameth wrote:

Not really. The tapes was Nixon's own voice. Comey's memo's is his after the fact writing of what happened. Republicans will simply claim them to be false.

Now if Trump has tapes like he threatened with then you might have a smoking gun.

On May 17 2017 23:31 Acrofales wrote:


The fact that totalitarian regimes use propaganda to indoctrinate the population seems entirely unrelated to the (real) problem of media being biased.

1) The media is not controlled by the government in any way, shape or form. If they happen to be biased, that is their bias, and you are entirely free to start up your own TV station that gives a different view of things. The fact that Fox, MSNBC and CNN are all TRASH doesn't mean there is some nefarious plot to shove crap down your throat. It just means your TV is trash.

2) The media is not trying to indoctrinate you. They have no message they are pushing beyond "watch us! we earn a living by showing you advertisement". The different media companies have different biases and cater to different public. Once again, that they all SUCK is not due to some nefarious scheme, it's due to us (their public) not valuing proper reporting.

3) Tangential, but controlling the media is not limited to fascist regimes, it is ubiquitous amongst totalitarian regimes. You can say what you like about Stalin, but he was not a fascist. Yet his control over the Soviet media was just as strong as that of the Nazis, and probably more rigorous than that of Franco or Mussolini. Being totalitarian is not a sufficient (although it is a necessary condition) for being fascist.

Finally, there is no liberal plot to bring Trump down. The liberals probably wish there was. What there is is that Trump is a trainwreck, and the whole world is gobbling up every bit of news that comes out of the white house. The news companies have never had it easier. They don't need to (in fact, they probably can't) hype up what comes out of the White House, they just have to copy verbatim what Trump says/does and watch their views skyrocket. If Trump wasn't such an ideal combination of (a) attention whore, and (b) blithering idiot, you wouldn't get nearly as much of this stuff. But unsurprisingly, a reality tv star loves the spotlight and has no clue about politics, so what we have is the 24/7 great orange ape show on every single tv channel (and newspaper). And yeah, reality does have an anti-Trump bias. Because he can't string two sentences together without blurting out an obvious lie or contradiction.

KIEV —A month before Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination, one of his closest allies in Congress — House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy — made a politically explosive assertion in a private conversation on Capitol Hill with his fellow GOP leaders: that Trump could be the beneficiary of payments from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016 exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) immediately interjected, stopping the conversation from further exploring McCarthy’s assertion, and swore the Republicans present to secrecy.

On May 18 2017 07:04 pmh wrote:
It seems unlikely to me that a man who is worth already over 4b would risk it all,not only for himself but also for his beloved family,for a few mill from rusia. Like how much do people think rusia has paid trump, 10m, 100m, 1b?
It is trump so everything is possible,that much I have learned. But this just seems so unlikely to me.

The Justice Department has appointed Robert S. Mueller III, the former F.B.I. director, to serve as a special counsel to oversee its investigation into Russian meddling in the election, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein announced on Wednesday.

The appointment of Mr. Mueller dramatically raises the stakes for President Trump in the multiple investigations into his campaign’s ties to the Russians. It follows a swiftly moving series of developments that have roiled Washington, including Mr. Trump’s abrupt dismissal of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, and the disclosure that the president urged Mr. Comey to drop the bureau’s investigation into his former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn.

On May 18 2017 07:04 pmh wrote:
It seems unlikely to me that a man who is worth already over 4b would risk it all,not only for himself but also for his beloved family,for a few mill from rusia. Like how much do people think rusia has paid trump, 10m, 100m, 1b?
It is trump so everything is possible,that much I have learned. But this just seems so unlikely to me.

On May 18 2017 07:10 Nevuk wrote:

19.5% of Rosneft stock worth at least 1.6 billion is alleged in the dossier.

On May 18 2017 07:11 IgnE wrote:
it seems unlikely he is worth "over 4B"