The Trump Presidency 13: The (James) Baker's Dozen

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newyorkguy said:
Notice, nobody is claiming he denied it? Ever. It's probably not realistic to think that Putin ever will admit it any time soon nor would any current Russian government officials make such an admission in defiance of Putin -- Russians who create problems for Putin have a way of turning up dead -- but many Russians outside the government or safely retired from the government have stated they believe Putin at least okayed the interference if not actively orchestrated it.

Among the many Russians who believe their country did interfere is Gennady Gudkov, the former KGB colonel. He told NPR in 2017:
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Putin wants people (especially Russians) to think he did it, whether he did or not.
 
Looks like... Cohen's appearance mostly followed my expectations. Cohen made a number of claims about a number of Trump's wrongdoings and was able to back them up with documentary evidence. Republicans fought back loudly, childishly (Women for Cohen tweets set up prominently? WTF?), dishonestly, and with... nothing of substance to counter the claims made. Democrats... well, investigated. I think AOC, for example, did an exemplary job. Little to no grandstanding, several direct questions about some of the many things (generally likely to provide direct evidence of criminal actions by the President) that have fallen to the wayside a bit and names of people who could verify or provide more information, then yielded the rest of her time.

Ahh, right. This is a bit belated, though. The Trump Tower Moscow projects. That Trump was still working on them well after becoming the Republican Presidential candidate is another indication that he wasn't exactly expecting to win. Rather, his plans still rather suggest that he would have been happy to lose.

According to some, the real estate entrepreneur actually has something quite different in mind. They say he wants to start a right-wing media outlet of his own, a cable channel and digital-media platform based on the Trump brand, like a cross between Fox News and the website Breitbart News.

Rumors of such a plan first surfaced in a Vanity Fair piece in June, which reported that Trump had discussed such plans with both his daughter Ivanka and with his son-in-law Jared Kushner, the owner and publisher of New York’s Observer magazine, who has advised Trump on media matters.

According to a source that theVanity Fair spoke to, the view inside the Trump camp was that “win or lose, we are onto something here. We’ve triggered a base of the population that hasn’t had a voice in a long time.” Trump has also been celebrated by many for his use of social media platforms like Twitter to raise support and engage with his fan base.

Since that initial report, the Trump campaign has made a number of moves that lend credence to such an idea. For example, former Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes—who was ousted from the network after being hit with multiple sexual-harassment allegations—is now said to be advising Trump on his media strategy.
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dudalb said:
Cohen just predicted a Nightmare Scenario for 2020:Trump loses the election but refuses to leave office.
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If Trump loses the 2020 election, he is no longer the President as of noon, January 20, 2021. The Secret Service no longer protect him, the Marines in the White House must regard him as an intruder. They remove him; by force if necessary.
 
smartcooky said:
If Trump loses the 2020 election, he is no longer the President as of noon, January 20, 2021. The Secret Service no longer protect him, the Marines in the White House must regard him as an intruder. They remove him; by force if necessary.
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I thought all ex-presidents got some level of security. Anyone clarify? Not that this will stop Occupy Donny.
 
Norman Alexander said:
I thought all ex-presidents got some level of security. Anyone clarify? Not that this will stop Occupy Donny.
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Yes, ex-presidents receive Secret Service protection for life.

No, the Secret Service would not stop Trump from being escorted from the White House, if he attempted to refuse to leave after the inauguration of a new president.
 
What The F@CK!!!! Otto Warnbier question..... Trump takes Kim at his word about what happened. WTF!?!?!?!?Did this just happen or am I drunk? Both?
 
Checkmite said:
And this laughable capitulation by the United States turns out to have been pointless; it has suddenly been announced that the summit has been ended early with no agreement.
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Its all the fault of the democrats. If they weren't having Cohen getting interviewed in the House then Trump would be able to focus on negotiations.

Said nobody intelligent. Ever.

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Segnosaur said:
Just out of curiosity, how many nuclear weapons does the U.S. have in South Korea? I tried googling, and from what I can see, American nuclear weapons were removed from South Korea back in the early 90s.

From: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/n-korea-won-t-give-nuclear-weapons-unless-u-s-n950211
The United States removed its tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea in the 1990s.

On the other hand, North Korea is not just demanding "denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula", they want removal of nuclear weapons from areas NEAR North Korea (which would include nuclear subs) and the removal of all "sources of nuclear threat" (which could mean U.S. troops in south Korea).

From the same article:
"When we talk about the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, it means the removal of all sources of nuclear threat, not only from the South and North but also from areas neighboring the Korean Peninsula," the statement said.
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Highlite
I suspect this is the key phrase with which Kim jong Un wants to keep his nucleair weapons. As long as the US has nucleair weapons with which it can reach the entire world, Kim can rightly say that there are still sources of nucleair threat to North Korea.
And as long as these are there, he just can't get rid of his weapons. (so sorry sir, but you do understand, don't you?)

The problem is the situation where he could get Trump to agree with this phrase, with Trump not thinking things through what it means. That would basicly mean that the US would accept North Korean nucleair weapons, as long as the US has those as well.

In practice I don't think the US will stand for that (obviously), but it will still be the mother of all diplomatic victories by North Korea.
 
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a_unique_person said:
Focus on the facts. Cohen is a liar, not Kim.
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Kim's probably a liar, too. With that said, though... I don't recall any reason to believe that Kim had direct knowledge or interest in Otto's situation (at least until much too late), though he likely bears responsibility for the general state of things that caused it. Either way, without some reasonable evidence at hand to back up even insinuations if Kim's direct involvement, pushing on that point would likely only be counter-productive. With evidence, of course, things change.
 
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Hmm? Here's a random tidbit. GOP's tea party win under Obama got twice as much media coverage as 2018 blue wave.

Last year, during Trump's first midterm election cycle, ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News aired 274 minutes on the topic, according to monitoring done by television news researcher Andrew Tyndall, who recently emailed his annual findings to followers. But during Obama's first midterm election cycle in 2010, the same network newscasts aired an astounding 666 minutes when tea party activists rallied against the Democratic president and helped the GOP take control of the House.

The networks just weren't that enamored with Democrats last year. For instance, World News Tonight spent more time covering Hurricane Florence in South Carolina (68 minutes) than it did covering the entire midterm election cycle (67 minutes), which Democrats dominated.
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The "liberal" media shows its bias, yet again! Oh, and for the fun of it...

That's because the press went bonkers producing coverage of the GOP's so-called Contract With America in 1994, when Bill Clinton was president (453 minutes), and the tea party uprising under Obama (666 minutes). In both instances, the press played a key role in hyping Republicans’ claims and helping them turn the midterm cycles into national referendums.
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This calls for a Bible quote!

This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666.
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Oh my, maybe the Bible was predicting the Tea Party! ;)
 
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