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Russia is trying to influence the U.S. election

Puppycow

Penultimate Amazing
Puppycow
Joined
Jan 9, 2003
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I think the interesting thing about the latest release of DNC emails by Wikileaks isn't really what's in the emails themselves, but who they come from. The hack, remember, came from Russia. And hacking is still a crime last time I checked.

Who benefits ultimately? Trump. And why would Russia want to do Trump a favor? Well, he seems to be very favorable to Russia and Putin. This is the big picture. Sanders wasn't going to win the nomination anyway. The DNC doesn't have that much influence.

It's actually pretty alarming just how pro-Putin Trump is. In the past Trump has had nice things to say about Putin. More recently he suggested that he might not intervene to defend NATO allies. He questioned whether Putin had anything to do with the killing of journalists and political opponents. It's all very favorable to Putin. Here is a refresher:

Putin’s Puppet

If the Russian president could design a candidate to undermine American interests—and advance his own—he’d look a lot like Donald Trump.

By Franklin Foer

Yesterday, Donald Trump told the New York Times that he would not necessarily come to the aid of NATO states threatened by Russia and would make his decision to defend them from an attack after reviewing whether they “have fulfilled their obligations to us.” It was the latest statement from Trump that was likely greeted with delight in the Kremlin. Earlier this month, Franklin Foer wrote on the frightening ways in which Trump seems to be playing right into Vladimir Putin's plans for destabilizing the West.​

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Edited by jsfisher: 
Content edited for compliance with Rule 4 of the Membership Agreement.
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Puppycow said:
The hack, remember, came from Russia.
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The claim, remember, comes from a dubious "security" company with ties to the Atlantic Council russophobe "think" tank. They have also "proven" several hacks from China and North Korea and other "rogue states", with similar "evidence".

Didn't read further.
 
Fervent denials <snip>? Who would expect that? :rolleyes:

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Puppycow said:
I think the interesting thing about the latest release of DNC emails by Wikileaks isn't really what's in the emails themselves, but who they come from. The hack, remember, came from Russia. And hacking is still a crime last time I checked.

Who benefits ultimately? Trump. And why would Russia want to do Trump a favor? Well, he seems to be very favorable to Russia and Putin. This is the big picture. Sanders wasn't going to win the nomination anyway. The DNC doesn't have that much influence.

It's actually pretty alarming just how pro-Putin Trump is. In the past Trump has had nice things to say about Putin. More recently he suggested that he might not intervene to defend NATO allies. He questioned whether Putin had anything to do with the killing of journalists and political opponents. It's all very favorable to Putin. Here is a refresher:

Putin’s Puppet
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This isn't the first time WikiLeaks has been caught doing the Kremlin's dirty work to influence an election. It also casts a more sinister motive as to why the only request to change the GOP platform from the nominee was to weaken their traditional support of Ukraine to favor Putin. Donald's campaign manager is a former Putin stooge that worked for Putin's puppet Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine. Donald also has extensive ties to Russia financially and being a poor businessman that likes to negotiate his way out of debt obligations is open to influence to accomplish that.
 
Puppycow said:
“In all fairness to Putin, you’re saying he killed people. I haven’t seen that.” In the event that such killings have transpired, they can be forgiven: “At least he’s a leader.”
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I'd like to see more of the context to get the basis for the bolded part, because if he actually implied that, it is friggin scary. Understandable to kill off political opponents? No, not at all.

Another case where baseless accusations against Clinton actually come real for Trump. Clinton death list? Nonsense, of course, but, while Donald might not have a death list (has anyone tried to create one? Shouldn't be hard, considering his connections to lots of people), he actually thinks that it would be understandable.

The Clinton Foundation is seriously corrupt, despite no one actually having examples of anything that has been wrong (oh, I know - countries are giving donations to her charity in exchange for non-descript favors of some sort). Meanwhile, there are multiple specific examples of Trump illegally using the Trump Foundation as his personal bank account.

It's almost like Trump is the personification of all the things Clinton is accused of being.
 
Plus Putin knows that Donald would severely damage the reputation of the United States. And even drive the US economy to the ground if he is allowed to do what he says. He's also an idiot and would be very easy to manipulate (just flatter him).
 
pgwenthold said:
I'd like to see more of the context to get the basis for the bolded part, because if he actually implied that, it is friggin scary. Understandable to kill off political opponents? No, not at all.
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If you follow the link in the OP, the text I quoted actually contains lots of links to the sources for each claim or quote. The source for that bit is this:

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/trump-praises-putin-216929

Donald Trump hesitated on Friday to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin for allegations the Kremlin has killed high-profile journalists critical of the leader, saying "our country does plenty of killing also."
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Killing journalists, killing terrorists, same thing!

Co-host Joe Scarborough then asked Trump what he thought about the number of high-profile murders of journalists who have been critical of Putin. “He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader, you know unlike what we have in this country,” Trump responded.
Scarborough pressed Trump again on the issue.
“Well I think our country does plenty of killing also, Joe,” Trump said. “So, you know. There’s a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now, Joe. A lot of killing going on, a lot of stupidity.”


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/trump-praises-putin-216929#ixzz4FErmMmfo
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook
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I don't know who Franklin Foer is but this should be (and probably will be) incorporated into the Clinton campaign against Trump:
Donald Trump is like the Kremlin’s favored candidates, only more so. He celebrated the United Kingdom’s exit from the EU. He denounces NATO with feeling. He is also a great admirer of Vladimir Putin...Trump denies that Putin has assassinated his opponents: “In all fairness to Putin, you’re saying he killed people. I haven’t seen that.”
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John McCain said that not only has Putin absolutely ordered various 'enemies' killed but that, "I knew some of them." Of course, McCain is the loser who let himself be captured by the North Vietnamese. Remember,

"I like people who weren't captured." Donald Trump
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What an absolutely shameful candidate Trump is. :(
 
Trump saying that he'd review NATO members obligations to us is rather strange since the first time Article 5 of the NATO Charter was invoked was when the US was attacked on 9/11.
 
Craig4 said:
Trump saying that he'd review NATO members obligations to us is rather strange since the first time Article 5 of the NATO Charter was invoked was when the US was attacked on 9/11.
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And every NATO member helped, iirc.

Donald has absolutely no idea what he is talking about.
 
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Of course Russia is trying to influence US elections. Is anyone so naive to believe that the US doesn't do the same thing abroad? And Trump is such a tool that he doesn't care. It's all about him.

His messianic message makes me want to vomit. Trump Jesus has come to save us? Because only he can? The guy can't get any one outside of the Klan, Duck Dynasty and Chachi to show up for a party and yet he's gonna solve all our problems? Even rich people hate this jerk despite the tax cuts.
 
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Yesterday, Donald Trump told the New York Times that he would not necessarily come to the aid of NATO states threatened by Russia and would make his decision to defend them from an attack after reviewing whether they “have fulfilled their obligations to us.”
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  • U.S. "NATO hot line. Colonel Parker here."
  • E.U. "Colonel this is Commander Picard at NATO EU Alliance headquarters. It's finally happened! Russia has launched an air attack on Germany. We need you to activate 'Code Blue.' The sequence authenticator is 9876392271."
  • U.S. ....
  • E.U. "Colonel are you there?"
  • U.S. "Yes but I'm...checking and ummm...you folks have quite a balance. A lot of it overdue, too. Way overdue."
  • E.U. "What are you talking about?"
  • U.S. "Let me pass this up the chain of command and...
  • E.U. "What?!?"
  • U.S. "...someone will get back to you, either by the end of the day or first thing..."
  • E.U. "Do you understand we're under active attack?"
  • U.S. "Commander I'm not hearing you very well."
  • E.U. "That's because this facility IS BEING BOMBED!!!"
  • U.S. "Okay righto. Thanks for calling U.S. NATO and have a nice day."
 
Tony Stark said:
Plus Putin knows that Donald would severely damage the reputation of the United States. And even drive the US economy to the ground if he is allowed to do what he says. He's also an idiot and would be very easy to manipulate (just flatter him).
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To the degree that Putin would even need to manipulate him. Except for the hairpiece and face color, Trump is pretty much what United Russia would want if they ordered a tailor-made US presidential candedate.
 
...snip...

As to the merits of the conspiracy theory itself, I think it is quite plausible. Donald Trump may in fact be favorably disposed to Russia, which, to be honest, might not be a bad thing. At least the Russian government is relatively civilized and is reasonably likely to reciprocate a good faith overture. Contrast that with Iran, to which Obama has been favorably disposed. We have bent over backwards for Iran, and gotten screwed as a result. At least Putin would give us a reach around I bet.

Edited by jsfisher: 
Off-topic part of this post split off into a separate thread in Forum Management Feedback.
 
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sunmaster14 said:
...snip...
As to the merits of the conspiracy theory itself, I think it is quite plausible. Donald Trump may in fact be favorably disposed to Russia, which, to be honest, might not be a bad thing. At least the Russian government is relatively civilized and is reasonably likely to reciprocate a good faith overture. Contrast that with Iran, to which Obama has been favorably disposed. We have bent over backwards for Iran, and gotten screwed as a result. At least Putin would give us a reach around I bet.
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We didn't lose a damn thing in the deal with Iran. And they massively reduced their nuclear program as has been verified by the IAEA. Simply a fact. But you Republicans will never admit it was a successful deal even if Iran never gets nuclear weapons.

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Tony Stark said:
We didn't lose a damn thing in the deal with Iran. And they massively reduced their nuclear program as has been verified by the IAEA. Simply a fact. But you Republicans will never admit it was a successful deal even if Iran never gets nuclear weapons.
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The deal is an absolute disaster. Iran has proceeded apace with its missile development program, and it has violated its heavy water production quotas already (we have offered to buy the excess to help them comply - how nutty is that?). Also, there have been several updates to the information we had about the deal, and it is much worse than I had believed a year ago. Iran will effectively have greater enrichment capacity in less than 10 years' time than it did before the deal. Even according to the letter of the agreement. It's crazy. On top of that, Iran continues to fund terrorism around the Middle East and spread its crazy ideology. The economic deals it is doing with the rest of the world cannot be undone, and the unfreezing of their assets is obviously irreversible too. We had them over a barrel because of low oil prices, and Obama bailed them out. If Obama actually were a Manchurian candidate for Iran, I'm at a loss as to what he would have done differently.
 
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timhau said:
Are we talking about the Russia on planet Earth, or some other Russia?
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I used the word "relatively." My claim is that Russia is relatively civilized compared to, say, an Islamic country. We actually have enemies in common. We were allies once before against a common enemy, and the previous regime was orders of magnitude worse than Putin's.
 
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