Merged All things Trump + Russia

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The Dump hasn't the foggiest...

Trump's comments about Putin and Ukraine came when ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked the Republican presidential nominee about his campaign's efforts to soften a portion of the Republican platform about the United States' commitment to helping Ukraine.

"I was not involved in that," Trump said on ABC about his campaign's work on the GOP platform. "I’d have to take a look at it."

"Do you know what they did?" Stephanopoulos asked.

"They softened it, I heard. But I was not involved," Trump replied.

Stephanopoulos explained that the platform does not call for the U.S. to supply arms to Ukraine, a position widely supported by Republicans.

"It’s — look, you know, I have my own ideas," Trump said in response.

Asked about Trump's comments on Russia and Ukraine, campaign co-chair Sam Clovis said that Trump was likely "thinking about something else" while responding to the question about Russia.
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Ms. Maddow lays out a pretty solid case.

At about 8:10, it gets really interesting...

The GOP platform had a "give Ukraine weapons to help fight Russia" plank/platform in it.

Leaked info claims, "Russia leaked Mrs. Clinton's and the Dems' e-mails..and in return Mr. Trump and his campaign staffers/crew/member...et al...will remove the 'give Ukraine weapons to fight Russia'"

http://americannewsx.com/hot-off-the-press/maddows-bombshell-trump-russia-scandal/
 
C_Felix said:
Ms. Maddow lays out a pretty solid case.

At about 8:10, it gets really interesting...

The GOP platform had a "give Ukraine weapons to help fight Russia" plank/platform in it.

Leaked info claims, "Russia leaked Mrs. Clinton's and the Dems' e-mails..and in return Mr. Trump and his campaign staffers/crew/member...et al...will remove the 'give Ukraine weapons to fight Russia'"

http://americannewsx.com/hot-off-the-press/maddows-bombshell-trump-russia-scandal/
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Yeah that was touched upon in the video I linked. The evidence is mounting, and it's become quite entertaining to watch Trump supporters try to hand wave it away.
 
Feinstein wants to subpeona Trump's tax returns.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who sits on the intelligence committee, said she also wants to include Trump's tax returns -- which the President, bucking longstanding precedent, did not release during the campaign -- as part of this investigation.
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:dc_biggrin:
Unfortunately the GOP committee members have to cooperate. A talking head just said that Olympia Snowe (R) might vote to subpeona.
 
Here are a couple pieces I highly recommend:

Russia: The Conspiracy Trap By Masha Gessen, in The New York Review of Books

And sort of building and expanding on that, Glenn Greenwald in the Intercept:
Leading Putin Critic Warns of Xenophobic Conspiracy Theories Drowning U.S. Discourse and Helping Trump

I think reasonable people can of course disagree, but I think they at least both make thought-provoking arguments. Neither of these people are either pro-Trump or pro-Putin by the way; very much the opposite in fact.
 
Puppycow said:
Here are a couple pieces I highly recommend:

Russia: The Conspiracy Trap By Masha Gessen, in The New York Review of Books
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Great article. Thanks for the link. Of course I don't agree with her on the politics, but I think she's bang on as to her central thesis.

And sort of building and expanding on that, Glenn Greenwald in the Intercept:
Leading Putin Critic Warns of Xenophobic Conspiracy Theories Drowning U.S. Discourse and Helping Trump
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I found this line amusing:
[Masha Gessen] now has a new article in the New York Review of Books – entitled “Russia: the Conspiracy Trap” – that I cannot recommend highly enough.
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It reminds me of a great book I bought a long, long time ago called The Lexicon of Intentionally Ambiguous Recommendations. Available here at Amazon I see.

I think reasonable people can of course disagree, but I think they at least both make thought-provoking arguments. Neither of these people are either pro-Trump or pro-Putin by the way; very much the opposite in fact.
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I actually don't think reasonable people can disagree. It only takes a few minutes of introspection to understand the truth of Gessen's argument. Consider how the anti-Trump media would have handled some of the Obama administration scandals if they had happened under a Trump administration. The Fast and Furious scandal? It would have been unrelenting. The IRS targeting of [progressive] 401(c)(4)s? Even worse than Watergate. Whenever you throw vast investigative resources at an administration, you'll uncover dozens of misstatements and suspicious looking actions, and, through the process of investigating, cause dozens more. By reporting only on those, in front page headlines no less, it is very easy to create a conspiracy theory narrative that appears plausible.
 
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Argumemnon said:


Keeps piling up.
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Thanks for the link, but good God, how do people listen to her? I think this is the first I've heard her, and it's a dreadful, repetitive presentation. She really does sound like a liberal Rush Limbaugh (in terms of style, not degree of partisanship really).

It should not have taken so long to tell us what the damned story was, repeating how weird it was at the time, blah blah blah.

Well, back on topic, if Politico's story is correct, this should be a mighty interesting story to follow.
 
phiwum said:
Thanks for the link, but good God, how do people listen to her? I think this is the first I've heard her, and it's a dreadful, repetitive presentation. She really does sound like a liberal Rush Limbaugh (in terms of style, not degree of partisanship really).

It should not have taken so long to tell us what the damned story was, repeating how weird it was at the time, blah blah blah.
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She drags on for a while, sure, but she's damned thorough. A good watch, but sometimes takes a while. Most good information is like that.
 
phiwum said:
That article is confusing. Are they investigating whether there was a link or whether the link was significant?
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Whether the link was significant. The only things the public knows is that the bank was contact the Trump Org. server and the FBI is looking into it. There's no information available on the nature of the communication which would clear up what was going on.
 
phiwum said:
Thanks for the link, but good God, how do people listen to her? I think this is the first I've heard her, and it's a dreadful, repetitive presentation. She really does sound like a liberal Rush Limbaugh (in terms of style, not degree of partisanship really).
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On style, I have always thought that Maddow was absolutely unwatchable. It is amazing to me that she has lasted this long (or that she was even given a show in the first place). I honestly cannot watch her for more than a few minutes, and it has nothing to do with her politics (which I would ordinarily be interested in hearing). It's her ability to be condescending, nails on the chalkboard grating, and mind-numbingly boring, all at the same time. Quite a feat actually, but not one that makes for good TV.

Rush, on the other hand, is actually pretty entertaining. It doesn't seem like you've listened to Rush at all if you think he and Maddow have similar styles.
 
Argumemnon said:
She drags on for a while, sure, but she's damned thorough. A good watch, but sometimes takes a while. Most good information is like that.
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No, not like this. PBS Newshour (BBC, too) is thorough, sometimes even a bit dull, but not repetitive and maddening like Maddow or talk radio. She must have told us a dozen times that this thing was weird, really weird, before she told us what the hell it was.

That's manipulative.

I'm not saying she wasn't also informative, but I really don't need to be primed before you tell me what the hell happened

Matter of taste, I suppose, and I apologize for the derail.
 
phiwum said:
No, not like this. PBS Newshour (BBC, too) is thorough, sometimes even a bit dull, but not repetitive and maddening like Maddow or talk radio. She must have told us a dozen times that this thing was weird, really weird, before she told us what the hell it was.
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Yes I agree that this was a bit much. She doesn't usually do it quite to that level. But my point was that good information is often boring because it's not spinned.

No apologies required. The whole point of this forum is discussion, and naturally we'll veer a bit off-course sometimes.
 
The issue with the bank posted above:

Sources: FBI investigation continues into 'odd' computer link between Russian bank and Trump Organization
Questions about the possible connection were widely dismissed four months ago. But the FBI's investigation remains open, the sources said, and is in the hands of the FBI's counterintelligence team -- the same one looking into Russia's suspected interference in the 2016 election.

One U.S. official said investigators find the server relationship "odd" and are not ignoring it. But the official said there is still more work for the FBI to do. Investigators have not yet determined whether a connection would be significant.

The server issue surfaced again this weekend, mentioned in a Breitbart article that, according to a White House official, sparked President Trump's series of tweets accusing investigators of tapping his phone.
CNN is told there was no Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant on the server.
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The connection is odd because it amounted to:
Internet data shows that last summer, a computer server owned by Russia-based Alfa Bank repeatedly looked up the contact information for a computer server being used by the Trump Organization -- far more than other companies did, representing 80% of all lookups to the Trump server.
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But the same bank computer did not make those same connections to other organizations, in other words it doesn't look random.
 
a_unique_person said:
She is unwatchable. Anything on NPR that explains all this in human terms?
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Here's a brief summary:

1. There has been a GOP platform position on the books for some years that is supportive of Ukraine.
2. The wording was softened at the GOP convention.
3. Trump campaign flat-out denied any involvement in the change.
4. A trump campaign official now admits to being the conduit between Donald Trump (personally) and the GOP committee to make the change.
5. Konstantin Kilimnik is a Russian operative who had close ties to Manafort.
6. Kilimnik reportedly visited Manafort at the GOP convention for the purpose of effecting the platform change.

Authorities looked into Manafort protégé
Manafort’s man in Kiev
 
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varwoche said:
1. There has been a GOP platform position on the books for some years that is supportive of Ukraine.
2. The wording was softened at the GOP convention.
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The issue as I understand it was whether to call for supplying lethal aid (or increasing the supply or supplying more sophisticated weapons) to the Ukrainians (which would be a more hawkish position than Obama). The language about sanctions was left in as I understand it.

The article was slightly misleading: it made it seem like Trump’s people made the party abandon a plank that would have called for maintaining or increasing sanctions and lethal aid. In fact, the sanctions part of the plank stayed in the platform—it was the lethal-aid amendment, a step that had hitherto not been taken, even during the height of the Ukraine war in 2014, that was tabled. The issue is far from a clear-cut one: few people in Washington, whether Republicans or Democrats, are on record as favoring lethal aid.
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The report sounded damning—unless one knew, of course, that the “language” to which Acosta managed to refer four times in the space of thirty seconds did not exist—no statement on Ukraine was inserted into the Republican platform by the Trump campaign—and that the sentiment ostensibly ascribed to candidate Trump falls squarely in the foreign-policy mainstream and was, in fact, the position held by the Obama administration.
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Basic point being that the resulting Republican platform was not substantially different on the Ukraine question than the status quo Obama policy. We condemn the annexing of Crimea and the eastern areas of Ukraine; we impose economic sanctions on Russia as an expression of this condemnation, but we don't escalate the war.
 
Whatever the facts of Russian influence, we know that...

  • Trump flat out lied about his relationship with Putin
  • Trump flat out lied about his role in GOP platform concerning Ukraine
  • Manafort flat out lied about his/Trump role in GOP platform
  • Flynn flat out lied about his Russian contacts
  • Trump lied by omission about Flynn's contacts
  • Sessions flat out lied about his Russian contacts
  • Carter Page flat out lied about his Russian contacts
  • Various campaign officials lied about Page's relationship with the campaign
  • Roger Stone flat out lied about his Russian contacts

Did I miss any liars?

That's a whole bunch of lying.
 
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