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Cont: The Biden Presidency Part II

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cmikes said:
No, it doesn't make sense, which is the point. If Trump was the Russian Secret Agent Man of Democratic fevered imaginations, why was a Russian agent working with the Clinton campaign via Christopher Steele to spread anti-Trump disinformation? Or why were Russian agents paying for and organizing anti-Trump marches and rallies with Michael Moore and other D-list celebrities?

Disruption of the US elections was the point, not that any particular candidate won.

And if Putin could be guaranteed that the US wouldn't interfere via his Secret Agent Man, why would he wait to take the rest of the Ukraine?
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Riiiiiight....the US Intelligence agencies got it all wrong:

A new report by the U.S. intelligence community on Tuesday says Russia sought to help former President Donald Trump in last year's presidential election. But the document also emphasized there was no indication Russia or any other country attempted to alter actual votes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized "influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden's candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process and exacerbating socio-political divisions in the U.S," says the report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
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The unclassified document is the most comprehensive look the intelligence community has released regarding foreign efforts to meddle in the 2020 election.

But the central message is the same one the intelligence community has been delivering since last August: Russia wanted Trump to win, though its effort was not on the same scale as in the 2016 election.
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But what do our Intelligence agencies know? It's not like it's their job or anything, amirite?
 
Ziggurat said:
Bwahahahahahaha!

No.

What exactly was the primary NATO tension when Trump was in office? Trump wanted Europe to spend more money on their own defense, and they didn't want to. Yeah, Russia really sided with Trump on that one. :rolleyes:

How about since? Well, we had the cluster **** of the Afghanistan withdrawl. Our NATO allies were pretty damned pissed about that debacle.
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Donald Trump on NATO: Top quotes

From disparaging NATO member states to calling it "obsolete," US President Donald Trump has rarely said something positive about the decades-old military alliance. DW looks at the US president's most memorable quotes.

'Days of the Soviet Union'
While on the campaign trail in 2016, Trump made clear that he saw NATO as a relic of the Cold War. "You know, we're dealing with NATO from the days of the Soviet Union, which no longer exists. We need to either transition into terror or we need something else." But his remarks didn't account for how the alliance backed the US well after the collapse of the Soviet Union, especially in Afghanistan.

'Germany owes vast sums'
Trump has made defense spending his main talking point on NATO. But he has falsely accused member states of owing money to Washington, saying: "Germany owes vast sums of money to NATO, and the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany." The problem is NATO doesn't work like that. No money is owed to the alliance for defense or otherwise.

'Obsolete'
Days before his inauguration, Trump caught NATO members off guard when he claimed the alliance was "obsolete" and threatened to withdraw support. "I said a long time ago that NATO had problems: Number one, it was obsolete, because it was designed many, many years ago." Months later, he retracted his statement, citing changes within the alliance. "Now they fight terrorism," he said.

'Doesn't sound very smart'
Trump had tended to lump trade between US allies with how much Washington spends on defense. "We are spending a fortune on military in order to lose $800 billion (in trade losses). That doesn't sound very smart to me," Trump said. The problem is that while NATO members have agreed to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense, the alliance has nothing to do with international trade.

'We are the schmucks'
During a 2018 rally in Montana, Trump hit out at European allies, saying: "They want (us) to protect against Russia, and yet they pay billions of dollars to Russia, and we're the schmucks paying for the whole thing." Trump was referring to Russia as Europe's primary source for oil and natural gas, but he created a false dichotomy between energy reliance and NATO's defense spending goal.

'Congratulations, you're in World War III'
In an interview with Fox News, Trump was asked why the US should jump to the defense of NATO ally Montenegro if it was attacked. The president said he asked himself the same question, a remark that appeared to undermine the alliance's collective defense clause. Trump went on to describe Montenegrins as "very strong" and "very aggressive," and that that aggression risked starting World War III.
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cmikes said:
No, it doesn't make sense, which is the point. If Trump was the Russian Secret Agent Man of Democratic fevered imaginations, why was a Russian agent working with the Clinton campaign via Christopher Steele to spread anti-Trump disinformation? Or why were Russian agents paying for and organizing anti-Trump marches and rallies with Michael Moore and other D-list celebrities?

Disruption of the US elections was the point, not that any particular candidate won.

And if Putin could be guaranteed that the US wouldn't interfere via his Secret Agent Man, why would he wait to take the rest of the Ukraine?
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I agree with the part I bolded there. That also means that supposing Trump's "toughness" caused Russia to hold back is buying into Putin's planned disruptive narrative.
 
cmikes said:
So why didn't he? Putin invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014 to President Obama's angry talk of "red lines" and "consequences" while not actually doing anything.

Then Trump came into office and shipped weapons to the Ukrainian government, bombed Russian troops in Syria, and sold missile defense systems to Poland, all while urging NATO countries to spend more in their own defense. And not just militarily, Trump also hit Putin economically by fighting against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and increasing America's energy independence.

Now President Biden is in office, and the Ukrainian invasion is back on the menu. It's obvious that after the disastrous withdraw in Afghanistan, Putin believes that the US is not going to be able to do anything to effectively stop him.

The whole "Trump is a Russian agent" falls apart just by simple logic. Or was Ronald Reagan a Soviet agent? Or maybe Joe McCarthy? Was President Obama an agent of the Republican party?

The Hillary campaign had much closer ties to Russian agents in just setting up the whole Trump-Russia hoax than Trump ever actually had to Russia.
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What total BS,
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
No Americans got killed in the exchange with Iran.

The withdrawal from Afghanistan is a good example. Americans like the idea of military operations in theory, but freak out when confronted with even a tiny number of casualties. The small number of troops killed during the withdrawal sent the public into a tizzy.

Maybe I'm totally off base, but I suspect a bombing exchange with Russia would result in casualties that would result in political and public pressure for the US to engage in escalating retaliation that could easily lead to a broader war.
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More specifically, the Republican propagandist media would and will hammer at Biden and the Democrats from any angle that they think will have any effect at all, even if it's contradictory, irresponsible, and/or brazenly disingenuous. That will then be amplified by much of the MSM and naturally result in pressure.
 
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bruto said:
I'm not sure the two things are entirely exclusive. Why not **** up the electoral process, make everyone doubt its integrity, and get a President who is weak, beholden and stupid?
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No, absolutely not mutually exclusive. However, csmike's claim was that "Disruption of the US elections was the point, not that any particular candidate won."
There were certainly more objectives, but with the main objective of Trump being elected:

Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized "influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden's candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process and exacerbating socio-political divisions in the U.S," says the report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The unclassified document is the most comprehensive look the intelligence community has released regarding foreign efforts to meddle in the 2020 election.

But the central message is the same one the intelligence community has been delivering since last August: Russia wanted Trump to win, though its effort was not on the same scale as in the 2016 election.
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https://www.npr.org/2021/03/16/9779...t-russia-tried-to-help-trump-in-2020-election
 
cmikes said:
No, it doesn't make sense, which is the point. If Trump was the Russian Secret Agent Man of Democratic fevered imaginations, why was a Russian agent working with the Clinton campaign via Christopher Steele to spread anti-Trump disinformation? Or why were Russian agents paying for and organizing anti-Trump marches and rallies with Michael Moore and other D-list celebrities?
Click to expand...

That the Trump campaign worked with Russia to attack the integrity of the 2016 election is not in question.

Disruption of the US elections was the point, not that any particular candidate won.
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Putin didn't just cause disruption. He picked a side. He picked Trump. Twice.

And if Putin could be guaranteed that the US wouldn't interfere via his Secret Agent Man, why would he wait to take the rest of the Ukraine?
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He couldn't risk damaging the standing of his BFF and staunchest ally on the world stage. He invades now, he makes Trump's opponent in the 2024 election look bad.

It's pathetic how hard conservatives are trying to spin this. Trump openly supports Putin. The American Right openly supports Putin. They go on Fox News every night and praise him. It's not remotely ambiguous.

From the Big Lie to anti-vaxxerism, and now this, conservatives have really committed themselves to the denial of reality.
 
Whether you say Putin waited til Biden was in office because he thinks Biden is "weak", or because doing it with Trump in office might have politically harmed his "asset/puppet/BFF", you're agreeing with each other that Putin's timing was based in any way at all on anything about the American Presidency. (And that the inauguration was just last week, not over 13 months ago.)
 
johnny karate said:
That the Trump campaign worked with Russia to attack the integrity of the 2016 election is not in question.



Putin didn't just cause disruption. He picked a side. He picked Trump. Twice.



He couldn't risk damaging the standing of his BFF and staunchest ally on the world stage. He invades now, he makes Trump's opponent in the 2024 election look bad.

It's pathetic how hard conservatives are trying to spin this. Trump openly supports Putin. The American Right openly supports Putin. They go on Fox News every night and praise him. It's not remotely ambiguous.
From the Big Lie to anti-vaxxerism, and now this, conservatives have really committed themselves to the denial of reality.
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Tucker Carlson:

“Ukraine is not even a democracy," he said. "Ukraine is a corrupt, eastern European autocracy that has spent millions of dollars lobbying politicians in Washington and made the Biden family rich.”

In previous statements, Carlson has called Ukraine's elected president Volodymyr Zelensky a "dictator who's friends with everyone in Washington."

"It should make you very nervous that Joe Biden, [Director of the US Domestic Policy Council] Susan Rice, and the National Security Advisor kid, they're all telling us with a straight face … it's a democracy," he said at the time.

Ukraine is a democracy, but it is considered a developing democracy by the international community, including the US.
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Laura Ingraham and Trump:

“Given what’s unfolded, sadly with a lot of weakness in the United States, they [Russia] just decided to go for it,” Ingraham said. “I mean it looks like they’re going for it. And where does that leave the NATO alliance?”

Then Trump said: “I think that’s what happened, he was going to be satisfied with a piece, and now he sees the weakness and incompetence and stupidity of this administration. And as an American I’m angry about it, and I’m saddened by it, and it all happened because of a rigged election.”
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Maria Baritomo and Greg Gutfeld:

Many top hosts for Fox News and other conservative media voices are blaming the White House for supposedly enabling Russia’s attack on Ukraine — even some of the same personalities who previously ridiculed President Biden’s warnings that an invasion was imminent.

“It’s just extraordinary what this president has allowed our adversaries to do,” Fox Business Network anchor Maria Bartiromo told viewers Thursday morning,.....[Biden] “has not been tough enough on Russia” and, “so far, anything that this administration has said has been weak.”

But days earlier, Bartiromo had sounded confident the Biden administration was inflating the threat of Russian aggression to distract from bad political news at home — particularly, a motion filed by special counsel John Durham that was described by many Fox News hosts as a massive scandal.

“Was this a ruse?” ....“Was this whole thing an effort to take everybody’s attention away from what Hillary Clinton did and what we know to be a complete hoax over this Russia investigation?”

Fox News host Greg Gutfeld also said late last week that “there is something going on here that feels very, very manufactured.”
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The NYT is reporting that Biden shared US intelligence about Russian preparations with China, and asked China to pressure Putin to stand down. Instead, China shared the US intel they'd received with Russia, and assured Russia they would not try to intercede on Ukraine's behalf.
 
theprestige said:
Right, condemn the scorpion for being predictably true to its nature, instead of condemning the toad for being an absolute prat. /s
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LOL. Right...because trying to stop an invasion of Ukraine by attempting to get China to intercede with Putin was such a horrible thing, right? Giving China information on Russia's build up really hurt the US and Ukraine, right? At least he wasn't sharing classified information with Russia given to him confidentially by an ally country thus putting that ally's intelligence security in jeopardy. Now, that would be bad, amirite? Oh, no wait....

From the NYT article:
Over three months, senior Biden administration officials held half a dozen urgent meetings with top Chinese officials in which the Americans presented intelligence showing Russia’s troop buildup around Ukraine and beseeched the Chinese to tell Russia not to invade, according to U.S. officials.

Each time, the Chinese officials, including the foreign minister and the ambassador to the United States, rebuffed the Americans, saying they did not think an invasion was in the works. After one diplomatic exchange in December, U.S. officials got intelligence showing Beijing had shared the information with Moscow, telling the Russians that the United States was trying to sow discord — and that China would not try to impede Russian plans and actions, the officials said.

The previously unreported talks between American and Chinese officials show how the Biden administration tried to use intelligence findings and diplomacy to persuade a superpower it views as a growing adversary to stop the invasion of Ukraine, and how that nation, led by President Xi Jinping, persistently sided with Russia even as the evidence of Moscow’s plans for a military offensive grew over the winter.

If any world leader could make Mr. Putin think twice about invading Ukraine, it was Mr. Xi, went the thinking of some U.S. officials.
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theprestige said:
Right, condemn the scorpion for being predictably true to its nature, instead of condemning the toad for being an absolute prat. /s
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Democratic administration that makes an effort to stop the invasion of Ukraine = Absolute prats.

Republican administration that supports and praises Putin = No notes.
 
To poke at a not Russia/Ukraine subject -

Tucker Carlson Says Biden Chose Ketanji Brown Jackson to 'Destroy' and 'Defile' the Supreme Court

I'm just going to say that Carlson's just projecting, after what he's pushed. To address the selection, herself, I don't have any current immediate objections, but I'm willing to admit that my knowledge is far from enough to make any definitive statements, given that it's based on information like MSNBC's article. To compare a little to the last couple, with Kavanaugh, I had objections that were especially based on his previous perjury, brazen history of problematic forms of partisanship, and the way that Republicans happily engaged in dirty tricks to provide cover to confirm him and, well, Barrett was rammed down our throats at the last second and had a rather problematic history, too. With that said, Republicans are, of course, struggling to find any pretext to oppose Jackson. Much like Garland, though, there doesn't seem to be pretty much anything of actual note to attack.
 
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