US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1477

On May 22 2019 12:00 NewSunshine wrote:
Most legitimate stories are also posted on more than 1 or 2 outlets. If Fox News and Breitbart are the ones peddling a story that makes no sense because nobody else is running anything like it, I'm gonna have serious reservations about that story.

On May 22 2019 12:19 Danglars wrote:

If someone who's newsworthy appears on a network, I'm interested. You're really being disingenuous pretending that it's "legitimate stories" or "peddling a story" when it's the literal subject of the interview and what that person is saying that is important.

I'll put it simply for you. Elected politicians are not straight news articles or opinion articles or opinion hosts. Let's get that straight.

On May 22 2019 12:19 Danglars wrote:

If someone who's newsworthy appears on a network, I'm interested. You're really being disingenuous pretending that it's "legitimate stories" or "peddling a story" when it's the literal subject of the interview and what that person is saying that is important.

I'll put it simply for you. Elected politicians are not straight news articles or opinion articles or opinion hosts. Let's get that straight.

On May 22 2019 12:27 xDaunt wrote:

I just find it funny that they are still ignoring Nunes when everything that he has said about this Spygate/Russiagate stuff has proven correct. It's really going to be hilarious when the declassification hits.

On May 22 2019 08:46 iamthedave wrote:

However, this is also Trump, and I believe by now we should be well past the point of 'that's too petty for Trump'. There is nothing in the world too petty for Trump. The man became President and EVEN THAT isn't enough for him to stop spending half his time attacking his enemies instead of actually running the country.

Cohen: Do you want a better example? We could -- oh, the ones with the CNBC poll that people are talking about now, where I helped to rig the poll.

Goldman: Did he know about that?

Cohen: Yes.

Goldman: And what did he know about that?

Cohen: So I actually found a document, "CNBC Contenders." lt says "Michael C." with an arrow pointed down. Came to his office. Generally the way that that would work was Rhona or one of the young ladies in the front would send an email out to everyone in the company saying, "Mr. Trump is on the contenders list. Please log on to your various devices and vote for him," or one of the golf courses or what have you. And in this specific case, it was for him as one of the top businesspeople, you know, in the world, recognized.

Wasn't doing very well in the poll and brought it to my attention. When it said "Michael C.," pointing down, what that means is come see him about it. And so I did. And I told him that, you know, there are ways that you could play with these online polls by using bots and algorithms and so on, that there's a company
that I know that can actually do it.

And he said, well -- he goes, you know, how good do you think that they can do this? And I said, you know, they could do
anything. lt all depends on how many lP addresses that you're able to, you know, to use.

So he said, I want to be number one. And I said, well, that would kind of be suspicious, don't you think? Like, out of 250, I think we're, like, 238 or 240, something like that. And I said, it'd be kind of suspicious. How about if we just go for number 9? He says, all right, number 9 is good because it was top 10.

So I reached out to this company called Redfinch, and they started. And we moved up, like, 50, 60 points in the day, and I showed him, and he was pleased. And I said that we needed, like, another $6,000 to buy another 100,000 lP addresses, and he said, okay. And I went ahead and bought those. And then we're up into the mid-30s or 40s and needed another, like, $8,000 to buy another 250,000 bots, lP addresses. And I went to him, and he said, okay, great.

And then we finally got to number of 9, and then the poll closed.

But CNBC had a little clause at the bottom that said that we have the right to remove anybody that we want from the poll simply because we want to. And he was very upset about it. And so was T. Boone Pickens, who was number 8. And I have an email to this effect, too, where T. Boone Pickens' assistant contacts Rhona, saying, should our PR people get together and do something about Mr. Pickens being removed as number 8 and Mr. Trump number 9?

Mr. Trump calls me in. He's really upset, even though, of course, we really didn't win, but he was very upset about it. And he had me reach out to - I think his name is Mark Halioran, who is the president of CNBC. And I said to him, it's not right, you know, we're going to bring a lawsuit. You basically did this in order to get people's lP addresses so that you have more addresses for marketing.

And that's just as an example of something that I would say it's not illegal, it's just improper.

Goldman: You said before that you know Mr. Trump and that you believe that the reason why he did not go speak with the special counse l was because he was concerned about a perjury trap. "Perjury trap" has a technical definition, but I'm curious what you mean by that.

Cohen: Well, you lie, you get hit with 1001, and then you end up my roommate.

On May 22 2019 12:40 GreenHorizons wrote:


I'm not going to harass you about it, but I'm just curious about your reasoning for not answering whether you think Trump is moral?

On May 22 2019 12:25 NewSunshine wrote:

That's fine in general terms, but it rapidly breaks down when you look at the video that's been linked and remember that Nunes is an ass clown with no credibility. When I say "lol Fox News" or use a few more lines than that to say the like, it's because they willingly and endlessly peddle the shit idiots like Nunes have to say.

On May 22 2019 12:55 xDaunt wrote:

Moral in what sense? There are certainly aspects of his personal life that I don't approve of. But as president, I think he's been fine.

1. concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character.

2. holding or manifesting high principles for proper conduct.

On May 22 2019 13:10 GreenHorizons wrote:


I don't think morality splits itself into a professional and personal capacity. One either tries to be a moral being or doesn't afaik. Granted we all fall short sometimes, my question is whether he fits the textbook definition of a moral person in your view?



Or I suppose I'd like you to expand on your understanding of morality that distinguishes one's personal behavior from their professional behavior?

On May 22 2019 09:51 xDaunt wrote:


This is the part that may get Mueller in trouble. In Brennan-speak, there's a growing "corpus" of evidence showing not only that the FBI knew that the dossier was rotten before using it, but also that its information came directly from Kremlin-insiders who were very close to Putin -- notably Surkov. The recent revelations on the Kavalec notes are particularly illuminating on both of these points. And people who have dug deeper on the various players in the origins of the dossier have noted that basically everyone involved -- from FusionGPS, to the American three-letter agencies, to Halper, to the UK intelligence networks, to even the Russian sources (via the Skolkovo project and Uranium 1) -- have some connection to the Clintons. That's quite an interesting coincidence. Pay attention to what Nunes says here about Mifsud in his "hypothetical" (start at 3:10):



"Let's say he was working for some organization that was hired either by a spy agency, a contractor, or possibly a campaign."

I promise you that Nunes did not throw that out there casually.

Anyway, the scuttlebutt from the FoxNews hosts that are following this stuff is that Trump is going to start the declassification process either this week or next, and the first thing that he's going to declassify is the exculpatory evidence that the FBI hid from the FISA court. This is probably why Trey Gowdy has been making the rounds over the past few days talking about transcripts of surreptitious recordings of Papadopoulos that the FBI has but failed to present to the FISA court:



Getting back to Mueller, he would have had all of this stuff during the course of the investigation. If he kept it hidden during the prosecution, he's going to have some ethical issues to face at a minimum. At worst, he may be a conspirator with the other FBI/DOJ officials who were in on this. We'll find out soon enough.

Even if the FBI didn’t get Kavalec's memo, it is just as implausible that the bureau couldn’t figure out, during the many hours that its agents spent with Steele, what Kavalec divined in a few short minutes: He was political, inaccurate, spinning wild theories and talking to the media.

All those concerns would weigh against Steele’s credibility and should have been disclosed to the judges under the honor system that governs the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, experts say.

Steele offered Kavalec other wild information that easily could have been debunked before the FISA application — and eventually was, in many cases, after the media reported the allegations — including that:

Trump lawyer Michael Cohen traveled to Prague to meet with Russians;

Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort owed the Russians $100 million and was the “go-between” from Russian President Vladimir Putin to Trump;

Trump adviser Carter Page met with a senior Russian businessman tied to Putin;

The Russians secretly communicated with Trump through a computer system.

Notes and testimony from senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr make clear Steele admitted early on that he was “desperate” to get Trump defeated in the election, was working in some capacity for the GOP candidate’s opponent, and considered his intelligence raw and untested. Ohr testified that he alerted FBI and other senior Justice officials to these concerns in August 2016.

Steele eventually was fired by the FBI for leaking to the press — in violation of his source agreement with the bureau — and lying about it. But that did not happen until Nov. 1, 2016 — after the FISA warrant was secured. And, even then, the court wasn’t notified until a few months later, well after Election Day.

On May 22 2019 13:29 xDaunt wrote:

I’ve never pretended that Trump is some paragon of virtue. But regardless of personal shortcomings, I do find that he has governed morally enough as president.

Let me ask you this question: do you think Obama was moral?

On May 22 2019 13:29 xDaunt wrote:

I’ve never pretended that Trump is some paragon of virtue. But regardless of personal shortcomings, I do find that he has governed morally enough as president.

Let me ask you this question: do you think Obama was moral?

On May 22 2019 13:09 Danglars wrote:

When you say "lol Fox News," I won't personally autocorrect it to "lol I think Nunes is a joke no matter who interviews him." Say what you mean and we'll get along better.

On May 22 2019 21:56 brian wrote:
as news continues to break that it seems more and more likely Congress will eventually get their hands on Trumps tax returns, the optimist in me continues to hope they’ll find nothing.

but also for all the traction this absurd shit is gaining i kind of also hope they do have some bombshell to drop from them else this will have looked all very stupid for nothing. when the best possible outcome of all this is piece of mind, it doesn’t look good imo.