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The Trump Presidency: Sweet/Sweat 16

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Trump Tweets

All Polls, and some brand new Polls, show very little support for impeachment. Such a waste of time, especially with sooo much good that could be done, including prescription drug price reduction, healthcare, infrastructure etc.

GREAT progress on the Border Wall!
 
Lurch said:
This whistleblower kerfuffle is getting interesting. How it's shaping up thus far...

On a phone call to a foreign leader, Trump makes a "promise" that alarms an intelligence official who had access to the call transcript (if not audio, we might wonder). The latter reports it to the IG, who deems the complaint credible and urgent, and then forwards it to the (acting) DNI, as prescribed by black letter law. The latter is then to inform the House Intelligence Committee within 7 days. But the acting DNI instead consults with the Justice Department, which agency is not permitted to be involved. Moreover, the White House may have been brought into the loop as well. A request by Adam Schiff for the complaint was ignored, and tomorrow (Thursday) the acting DNI is supposed to appear before the HIC.

The whistleblower laws are very clear, but the Barr JD could be glomming onto one clause which states something to the effect that the IG (? memory hazy here) is not subject to oversight by the Justice Dep't, which they might be using to twist to some new interpretation.

The foregoing is my flawed recollection after seeing this covered by Lawrence O'Donnell.

It sure looks like some number of Departments have been corrupted and are acting to shield a POTUS who is a clear security risk/threat.

One mooted motivation: Trump could have promised Putin normalized relations during the call in which aid to fight Russian wildfires was discussed, in return for help in the next election. A theory, to be sure, but well within the bounds of possibility. Trump will certainly be desperate to not lose in 2020, because of the statute of limitations having not run out on some of his shenanigans, particularly the campaign contribution business Cohen is currently doing time for.
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Hmm, "aid to fight Russian wildfires"? Dump let California burn - that shows where is priorities really are.

Also, the Russian media releases had a different take - they said that it in the future, "it will be possible to restore full-format relations between the two countries.” - help with some wildfires won't do that.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest the following

1. Trump and Putin spoke on the phone on July 31 and Trump makes his mystery promise. The whistleblower either hears the promise being made or reads about it in a transcript

2. Within 24 hours, Trump begins removing funding from the European Defence Initiative, an arrangement designed to push back on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and occupation of Crimea. Eventually, he pulls US$770m from the EDI

3. By August 12, the whistleblower realises that not only did Trump promise this, he is now acting on it, so he writes to the IG intelligence with his complaint.

To Trump, this would be the trade off of a lifetime - it would look like killing two birds with one stone...

A. He pulls the money from the EDI, which will make his handler very pleased

B. He uses the money to finance his vanity project on the southern border.
 
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Captain_Swoop said:
Trump Tweets

All Polls, and some brand new Polls, show very little support for impeachment. Such a waste of time, especially with sooo much good that could be done, including prescription drug price reduction, healthcare, infrastructure etc.

GREAT progress on the Border Wall!
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Yes, the Canadians are trying to stop the invaders from the south.
 
dudalb said:
Trump's bad, but IMHO Buchanan still is the worst, going by the damage he did the country.
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It probably wouldn't be wrong to say that without Buchanan (and Koch and co capitalizing on his work) we definitely wouldn't have either Trump or anywhere close to as many serious underlying problems... worldwide.
 
Lurch said:
This whistleblower kerfuffle is getting interesting. How it's shaping up thus far...

On a phone call to a foreign leader, Trump makes a "promise" that alarms an intelligence official who had access to the call transcript (if not audio, we might wonder). The latter reports it to the IG, who deems the complaint credible and urgent, and then forwards it to the (acting) DNI, as prescribed by black letter law. The latter is then to inform the House Intelligence Committee within 7 days. But the acting DNI instead consults with the Justice Department, which agency is not permitted to be involved. Moreover, the White House may have been brought into the loop as well. A request by Adam Schiff for the complaint was ignored, and tomorrow (Thursday) the acting DNI is supposed to appear before the HIC.

The whistleblower laws are very clear, but the Barr JD could be glomming onto one clause which states something to the effect that the IG (? memory hazy here) is not subject to oversight by the Justice Dep't, which they might be using to twist to some new interpretation.

The foregoing is my flawed recollection after seeing this covered by Lawrence O'Donnell.

It sure looks like some number of Departments have been corrupted and are acting to shield a POTUS who is a clear security risk/threat.

One mooted motivation: Trump could have promised Putin normalized relations during the call in which aid to fight Russian wildfires was discussed, in return for help in the next election. A theory, to be sure, but well within the bounds of possibility. Trump will certainly be desperate to not lose in 2020, because of the statute of limitations having not run out on some of his shenanigans, particularly the campaign contribution business Cohen is currently doing time for.
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What we need is Giuliani on the case. He'd leak the details in four minutes or less, just to show off for a Fox reporter. With Donnie it'll take a little longer but it can probably be grokked by watching his defensive and distracting tweets for a few days. CNN listed the potential conversations as Russia, North Korea, Pakistan, Netherlands and Qatar. I'm betting it's the Netherlands. :eek:
 
dudalb said:
Not an Iran hawk, but also think that Iran gets cut a bit too much slack around here. IMHO morally, little to choose between Iran and Saudi, except that Iran seems to have a slightly better PR machine, and is smart enough to conduct it's killings on the quiet.
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And has more hope of engagement actually strengthening the more liberal elements. As opposed to giving the hardliners more credit like all of Trumps actions.
 
Aridas said:
It probably wouldn't be wrong to say that without Buchanan (and Koch and co capitalizing on his work) we definitely wouldn't have either Trump or anywhere close to as many serious underlying problems... worldwide.
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I'm not sure you two are speaking of the same Buchanan. I assume Dudalb was talking about President Buchanan and you are presumably talking about Pat Buchanan.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Trump Retweeted

Allen Sutton
@StewardshipAmer

President @realDonaldTrump is the best president to happen for America since Abraham Lincoln. President Lincoln saved America; President Trump, by his "America first" policies, is restoring it for the future
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Pretty soon they'll be calling him 'father Donald', or 'uncle Trump, or 'duce'.

What is it with cults of personality? He's just a man, and a poor excuse for one at that. Why can't people see through his act? Or do they not care?
 
dudalb said:
Not an Iran hawk, but also think that Iran gets cut a bit too much slack around here. IMHO morally, little to choose between Iran and Saudi, except that Iran seems to have a slightly better PR machine, and is smart enough to conduct it's killings on the quiet.
Click to expand...



The problem is, the last 19 years of being in Afghanistan have shown that you really can't force an entire country into not being huge jerks. So if you want them to stop being huge jerks, you need to try something else.

Obama tried something else in the Iran Deal, and hey, it was working. Sure, they were still big jerks, but that's an improvement over being huge jerks. It holds out promise of them becoming just normal jerks, and then maybe not jerks at all. That was a good start.

Now here comes Trump, and he's not only okay with SA just being huge jerks, he's bound and determined to get Iran back to their old huge jerk ways. That's why we give Iran more slack than SA. They're still big jerks, but they're big jerks with promise, they're not just wallowing in their jerkdom.
 
Regarding the whistle blower:

I'm curious what the opinions are here: Now that the initial reports are public, do you think there's a significant chance that the administration can still bury the details and no real govt action will be taken (outside of the Trump toadies in govt)?

Or is this one of those things where now that we know there's a cat in the bag it's only a matter of time before the actual process begins to remedy whatever the whistle blower whistled about?
 
Cabbage said:
Regarding the whistle blower:

I'm curious what the opinions are here: Now that the initial reports are public, do you think there's a significant chance that the administration can still bury the details and no real govt action will be taken (outside of the Trump toadies in govt)?

Or is this one of those things where now that we know there's a cat in the bag it's only a matter of time before the actual process begins to remedy whatever the whistle blower whistled about?
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This is Trump. When they let the cats out of the bag, they just talk about "Look at all the free kitties we've given you!" and it's glossed over by the Senate.
 
Cabbage said:
Regarding the whistle blower:

I'm curious what the opinions are here: Now that the initial reports are public, do you think there's a significant chance that the administration can still bury the details and no real govt action will be taken (outside of the Trump toadies in govt)?
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Sadly, the Trump administration has such a firm control over its voter base and the republican-lead senate that it probably won't go very far, regardless of what details are revealed.

Trump's toadies will call information 'privileged', Democrats will fight it, things will drag out in the courts, until eventually the next scandal is uncovered. Republican voters will say "But... but... her emails". Republican congress critters will say "this is an outrage! The person who leaked Trump's collusion with foreign governments should be punished".

After all, this is the party that's manage to effectively 'bury' the Mueller report, despite the fact that it contains some rather damaging information.

Maybe we'll get lucky and more details will come out. Maybe the whistle blower has more details, and if the incident doesn't get investigated properly, the'll release transcripts or recordings showing who Trump was talking to and about what.
 
Horatius said:
The problem is, the last 19 years of being in Afghanistan have shown that you really can't force an entire country into not being huge jerks. So if you want them to stop being huge jerks, you need to try something else.

Obama tried something else in the Iran Deal, and hey, it was working. Sure, they were still big jerks, but that's an improvement over being huge jerks. It holds out promise of them becoming just normal jerks, and then maybe not jerks at all. That was a good start.

Now here comes Trump, and he's not only okay with SA just being huge jerks, he's bound and determined to get Iran back to their old huge jerk ways. That's why we give Iran more slack than SA. They're still big jerks, but they're big jerks with promise, they're not just wallowing in their jerkdom.
Click to expand...

Yeah but look at how our resident conservatives reacted to the Iran deal. They assured us that it would make things worse but couldn't really explain how except to repeat the Fox news talking heads' argument that you can't verify that Iran is complying.

It's a knee-jerk, Obama-did-it-ergo-it's-wrong partisan reaction.
 
And now Trump's suing to prevent the release of his tax returns again.

The man's really good at showing us the inadequacies of the systems in place. If I didn't know better I'd think that was his entire point.
 
Belz... said:
And now Trump's suing to prevent the release of his tax returns again.

The man's really good at showing us the inadequacies of the systems in place. If I didn't know better I'd think that was his entire point.
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You're definitely not wrong. He hasn't had any issues at all doing what he wants and keeping information from going public. He's successfully blocked most things that have come his way.

I wonder if he's kind of delaying the inevitable. If all of the court cases wrap up and he loses them in the summer of next year, it could be a bit damaging.

ETA: Link:

President Donald Trump on Thursday filed a lawsuit against Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, who subpoenaed eight years of Trump's personal and corporate tax returns earlier this month.

The subpoena stems from Vance's criminal investigation into the Trump Organization about hush money payments made to two women who have alleged affairs with the president. Trump has strongly denied the affairs.
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