Trump Thread

[Husar]

I think the last three years will be taught alongside the episodes of the gracchi brothers and cataline as examples of how nation's political classes can work themselves into frenzy and debasement in the face of an agent of change they do not wish to succeed.

Well, there are good changes and then there are bad changes. I do agree though, that the "Russian collusion" was overhyped by quite a few "leftists", including ones I respect otherwise. Still doesn't mean that I see Trump as an agent of positive change, most of his ideas are terrible ideas and, I assume, some of them are good ideas.

[rory_20_uk]

I think that having every new President investigated by a Special Council routinely would be a good idea - at the very least it would discourage the hangers on. And the cost is negligible compared to what is at stake.

[Pannonian]

I think that having every new President investigated by a Special Council routinely would be a good idea - at the very least it would discourage the hangers on. And the cost is negligible compared to what is at stake.

You need a common value set first. Trumpists will freely admit to all the wrongdoings of their guy, but they deny they are wrongdoings, and deny all the evidential arguments at the same time. It is not a matter of whether Trump did this or that. It is a matter of Trump having done all this, and he has enough of a popular base that this does not matter a whit. It's the historical definition of a tyranny, an autocracy with popular and security backing. See Pesistratos of Athens, or Dionysios of Syracuse.

[Montmorency]

What's remarkable to me is that the best case available from the evidence is that Trump and team colluded for nothing. That they were so essentially venal that they immediately moved to act favorably toward Russia from early 2016, after becoming aware of Russia's intent and efforts, in vague hope of ingratiating themselves to the Russian government and not by any specific plan. Even if for some reason you refuse to entertain the worse case, 5 years ago the very idea of what we know would have been obviously discrediting. Now we are taught that relentless malicious conduct triggers some kind of human glitch - continual transgression resets evaluation to the baseline.

[Greyblades]

Are you excusing Trump's activities?

Dumb question. Might as well ask if you are excusing the dems activities; it's about as cheap a deflection as the one you imagine I was making.

By underhandedness, are you talking about Dem activities or Reps?

Dems, if sanders gets cheated a second time you will see at minimum mass defection if not outright schism.

Well, there are good changes and then there are bad changes. I do agree though, that the "Russian collusion" was overhyped by quite a few "leftists", including ones I respect otherwise. Still doesn't mean that I see Trump as an agent of positive change, most of his ideas are terrible ideas and, I assume, some of them are good ideas.

That was a mildly impressive attempt to portray the situation as less dire than it actually is. Now allow me to refute in what will inevitably be accused of doing the exact opposite.

The reality is that many vital government institutions that are supposed to be impartial went partisan; bought into fake op research, spent millions of dollars investigating a president for three years only to find nothing to substantiate the original claim while uncovering a level of unrelated corruption remarkably small compared to what could expected from the average presidential campaign. As the iraq WMDs were to the left a decade ago this is to the right in terms of destroying trust in the better judgement of thier security services.

The political class were worsely effected, the republicans were somewhat spared due to being host to Trump, being in effect neutered save for an increasingly irrelevant never-trump wing, the democrats however publically evacuated the moral high ground and shown themselves to be even worse than the admittedly low standards trump holds, both in terms of morals, credibility and even self control.

They pinned thier colours to the collusion mast, pushed it far beyond what was reasonable and had to watch said mast sink agonisingly slowly in full focus of the public eye. They nurtured the #metoo moral panic and tried to set it against a purposely inoffensive supreme court pick only to see it slip the leash; the dems lost control as the initial semi-credible accusation was swamped in fakery brought foward by cluless opportunists the party failed to hold back. Lies so blatant and foul against a candidate so milktoast; even the slowest of bystanders could see it for the farce it was and the attempted injustice served to break a oft-predicted blue wave upon the face of a republican base energized by righteous outrage.

Now the animal they raised in #metoo has turned to bite the hand that fed it; the greatest hope of the party now poised to become Creepy-Uncle Joe in the eyes of the same easily offended demographic he must win over. As for the runner ups the democrats have been forced into a particularly poor selection: we have the party outcast, an Obama wannabe tapping a questionably filled well and the national joke. If Bernie wins the neolibs dems are demoralized, Biden wins fairly the oft race baited segment of the dems will balk at electing a WASP and the pearl clutchers at a creep, an unfair win he loses the working class whites along with them, Harris wins and they have a handicap on regaining most of the rust belt and Warren winning is outright suicide.

As for the journalists; the long flagging illusion of press impartiality is truly dead, killed by arrogance complacency and a complete lack of control in the face of momentary profit. FOX, the former laughing stock who has never reformed by the way, simply for being the sole partisan in opposition now grows fat off the corpses of those companies that onced admonished them who went on to eclipse them chasing the ever profitable "Trump bump". The entire institution of journalism, a century and a half of built up public trust, spent and wrecked in three years.

So the intelligence agencies are seen as compromised, at best the established political class is regarded as pathetic, at worst outright malevolent, the mainstream press is distrusted if not downright vilified and the chances of there being a legitimate removal of trump next year is already approaching terminal. I have yet to read a more thorough self destruction of a democracy's established class that didnt involve a war.

Save for my own, of course.

What's remarkable to me is that the best case available from the evidence is that Trump and team colluded for nothing. That they were so essentially venal that they immediately moved to act favorably toward Russia from early 2016, after becoming aware of Russia's intent and efforts, in vague hope of ingratiating themselves to the Russian government and not by any specific plan. Even if for some reason you refuse to entertain the worse case, 5 years ago the very idea of what we know would have been obviously discrediting. Now we are taught that relentless malicious conduct triggers some kind of human glitch - continual transgression resets evaluation to the baseline.

What is remarkable is that after all this you still think there was collusion at all.

I fear Trump Derangement Syndrome will be with us for generations, intelligence has been no vaccine.

[Montmorency]

Dumb question. Might as well ask if you are excusing the dems activities; it's about as cheap a deflection as the one you imagine I was making.

What Dem activities do you have in mind?

Dems, if sanders gets cheated a second time you will see at minimum mass defection if not outright schism.

When was Sanders ever cheated?

The reality is that many vital government institutions that are supposed to be impartial went partisan; bought into fake op research, spent millions of dollars investigating a president for three years only to find nothing to substantiate the original claim while uncovering a level of unrelated corruption remarkably small compared to what could expected from the average presidential campaign. As the iraq WMDs were to the left a decade ago this is to the right in terms of destroying trust in the better judgement of thier security services.

The political class were worsely effected, the republicans were somewhat spared due to being host to Trump, being in effect neutered save for an increasingly irrelevant never-trump wing, the democrats however publically evacuated the moral high ground and shown themselves to be even worse than the admittedly low standards trump holds, both in terms of morals, credibility and even self control.

Every proposition in that excerpt is false I'm afraid.

They pinned thier colours to the collusion mast, pushed it far beyond what was reasonable and had to watch said mast sink agonisingly slowly in full focus of the public eye.

Democratic elected officials have tended to comment very little on Russia throughout Trump's presidency.

They nurtured the #metoo moral panic and tried to set it against a purposely inoffensive supreme court pick only to see it slip the leash; the dems lost control as the initial semi-credible accusation was swamped in fakery brought foward by cluless opportunists the party failed to hold back.

What moral panic?

Why do you think the Kavanaugh pick was "purposely inoffensive"?

Why do you think the accusations were not credible, that they were brought by opportunists, or that the party tried to hold them back?

Lies so blatant and foul against a candidate so milktoast; even the slowest of bystanders could see it for the farce it was and the attempted injustice served to break a oft-predicted blue wave upon the face of a republican base energized by righteous outrage.

Again, why do you think the candidate was milquetoast? Did you ever bother to read anything about him?

The 2018 midterm was one of the biggest swings in American history.

Republican women broke with Republican men on Kavanaugh.

Now the animal they raised in #metoo has turned to bite the hand that fed it; the greatest hope of the party now poised to become Creepy-Uncle Joe in the eyes of the same easily offended demographic he must win over. As for the runner ups the democrats have been forced into a particularly poor selection: we have the party outcast, an Obama wannabe tapping a questionably filled well and the national joke. If Bernie wins the neolibs dems are demoralized, Biden wins fairly the oft race baited segment of the dems will balk at electing a WASP and the pearl clutchers at a creep, an unfair win he loses the working class whites along with them, Harris wins and they have a handicap on regaining most of the rust belt and Warren winning is outright suicide.

Why do you think it's bad to hold men to the standard of not abusing women?

Why do you think Joe Biden is the "greatest hope" for Democrats?

It is not clear on what information your judgements of individual candidates are based, or why you think there is not consensus within the Democratic Party satisfied with any of the major candidates.

As for the journalists; the long flagging illusion of press impartiality is truly dead, killed by arrogance complacency and a complete lack of control in the face of momentary profit. FOX, the former laughing stock who has never reformed by the way, simply for being the sole partisan in opposition now grows fat off the corpses of those companies that onced admonished them who went on to eclipse them chasing the ever profitable "Trump bump". The entire institution of journalism, a century and a half of built up public trust, spent and wrecked in three years.

Why do you think the press is less "impartial" now than in the past?

CNN and MSNBC have demonstrably profited off the Trump presidency.

So the intelligence agencies are seen as compromised,

By who?

at best the established political class is regarded as pathetic, at worst outright malevolent,

That's been appreciated for many years.

the mainstream press is distrusted if not downright vilified

By Trump and his base, sure.

the chances of there being a legitimate removal of trump next year is already approaching terminal.

What strikes me is that, aside from being apparently baseless, it is not even connected to all the preceding. If Greyblades were somehow accurate in all his observations, these would still not contribute to a theory of electoral performance in 2020.

I fear Trump Derangement Syndrome will be with us for generations, intelligence has been no vaccine.

Why do you think there was no collusion?

Trump Derangement is Trump apologism.

I have yet to read a more thorough self destruction of a democracy's established class that didnt involve a war.

It's disturbing how little understanding you show of current events.

[Husar]

That was a mildly impressive attempt to portray the situation as less dire than it actually is. Now allow me to refute in what will inevitably be accused of doing the exact opposite.

I'm not attempting anything, I'm giving you my point of view.

The reality is that many vital government institutions that are supposed to be impartial went partisan; bought into fake op research, spent millions of dollars investigating a president for three years only to find nothing to substantiate the original claim while uncovering a level of unrelated corruption remarkably small compared to what could expected from the average presidential campaign.

Well, hinsight is 20/20 as they say. That an investigation (partially) clears the person that was being investigated doesn't mean the investigation wasn't warranted when it started. And IIRC Mueller was appointed by Rod Rosenstein, who was himself appointed by Trump...

They pinned thier colours to the collusion mast, pushed it far beyond what was reasonable and had to watch said mast sink agonisingly slowly in full focus of the public eye.

Yes, it was so stupid to have one investigation that didn't lead anywhere, the other party would never do that 7 times over: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...probes-so-far/

They nurtured the #metoo moral panic

You really seem to have some weird problem with the metoo thing, just because some prominent cases went too far. I don't believe it went too far with the Supreme Court guy, he seems like an entitled butthole to me given how he acted during his questioning sessions.
A few mistakes don't invalidate an entire movement, otherwise a few 4chan Anonymous hackers should result in everyone who ever looked at the site getting arrested.

As for the press impartiality, I never really believed that a privately owned press would be impartial. They will always lean towards what generates more money or is wanted by the owner. For impartiality, your best hope is the publicly owned press. The private ones can and do get some things right, but when in doubt I tend to go with the public ones.

[Montmorency]

Well, hinsight is 20/20 as they say. That an investigation (partially) clears the person that was being investigated doesn't mean the investigation wasn't warranted when it started. And IIRC Mueller was appointed by Rod Rosenstein, who was himself appointed by Trump...


Yes, it was so stupid to have one investigation that didn't lead anywhere, the other party would never do that 7 times over: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...probes-so-far/

Would the thread like me to run down the highlights of the Mueller Report? I suspect most, in particular non-American patrons, have sufficed with the headlines to save time.

Mueller was careful to note that Trump could not be cleared in any particular respect, only that Mueller could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that any of Trump's or his campaign's activities in 2016 were criminal. I would go further in-depth on this point in a summary post, but here let's just indulge in an analogy to "money in politics". Many of you here I know are of the opinion that special interests, lobbying groups, big business and the wealthy have undue influence over our lawmakers. How does this influence manifest? Aside from supporting challengers to unfriendly politicians, or affording opportunities for sinecure post-government, the most obvious mechanism is campaign finance. If Industry X has its representatives give $50K to a politician's campaign, and that politician then affords special treatment to those representatives, takes the industry's advocacy materials and disseminates them on the record in Congress, adopts a regulatory posture friendly to that industry, brings industry associates to consult with or work for her office, and corresponds with industry representatives for feedback on performance and to solicit future contributions... we understand enough to be aware of the possibility that there is undue influence in the lawmaking process. BUT it is highly unlikely that any of these interactions in concrete form could be judged to rise to the level of illegality. Perhaps some of you find that unacceptable; regardless of how many politicians go to jail pursuant to their official conduct, we can get the big picture. Similarly, we can assess the public evidence on Trump for ourselves and try to determine what likelihood or what degree of corruption is too much.

(Fun side note: The SCOTUS, especially the Roberts Court, has consistently ruled to weaken campaign finance regulations - most notoriously Citizens United - and even bribery laws. So it's pretty hard these days to convict anyone of much. Fun!)


Just a couple other notes:

Trump was being investigated before Mueller, and Russian interference was being investigated before Mueller. These were just partially consolidated under the Special Counsel. Since the Special Counsel ceased operations, prior investigations have continued, others have popped up in the meantime, and IIRC Mueller identified ~14 ongoing investigations that arose from material the Special Counsel directly referred to DOJ and elsewhere (almost all redacted).

When evidence of wrongdoing presents itself, especially by state actors, to investigate is just the government doing its job properly. Thanks to these, we have learned a great deal about Trump and about Russian interference - the appropriate and desired outcome. Failure to investigate would be a scandal. It is more than suspicious to condemn the normal operation of government while excusing pretentious partisan subversions (e.g. Republican Congressional investigators colluding with the White House on their activities, White House messaging, and confidential FBI/DOJ materials).


BTW, here's an instance of #Me Too going too far:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

A teenage Bangladeshi girl who reported being sexually harassed has died after being set on fire at school. Police and school authorities had ignored her complaints.

In the ambulance, fearing she might not survive, she recorded a statement on her brother’s mobile phone.

“The teacher touched me. I will fight this crime till my last breath,” you can hear her say.

[Those Muslims and their martyrdoms smh!]

Two young men have confessed to involvement in Nusrat’s killing. They include a man who admitted to having a grudge against her for refusing his own advances.

The results of an inquiry by the National Human Rights Commission, published on Tuesday, disclosed that the headteacher involved had been accused of sexual harassment before, and blamed police for their handling of her complaint.

[Husar]

Next Wek Yesterday has also summarized the Müller report:

[Montmorency]

Next Wek Yesterday has also summarized the Müller report:

Ok. I'll make mine even more streamlined and opinionated. By tonight or tomorrow.

Here are some useful references meanwhile:

Searchable report pdf (the original was delivered by Barr on CD, non-searchable lol)
Lawfare overview
Lawfare obstruction analysis
NYT excerpts and analysis
Thumbnail view of report showing scale of redactions (seemingly mostly related to Manafort, Roger Stone and Wikileaks)



In other (slightly stale?) news about dangerous collusion:

Strike, this one seems up your alley.

NYT headline: Militia in New Mexico Detains Asylum Seekers at Gunpoint
Alternative headline: Freikorps activity in the borderlands, families held hostage, escalation to pogroms feared

A right-wing militia group operating in southern New Mexico has begun stopping groups of migrant families and detaining them at gunpoint before handing them over to Border Patrol agents, raising tension over the tactics of armed vigilantes along the
border between the United States and Mexico. Members of the group, which calls itself the United Constitutional Patriots, filmed several of their actions in recent days, including the detention this week of a group of about 200 migrants who had recently crossed the border near Sunland Park, N.M., with the intention of seeking asylum. They uploaded videos to social media of exhausted looking migrant families, blinking in the darkness in the glare of what appeared to be the militia’s spotlights.

[Strike For The South]

Strike, this one seems up your alley.

NYT headline: Militia in New Mexico Detains Asylum Seekers at Gunpoint
Alternative headline: Freikorps activity in the borderlands, families held hostage, escalation to pogroms feared

A literal illegal militia (terrorist group) and the federal government doesn't care. Part of their duty on the border is to secure, that goes both ways. Dissapointed but not surprised.

It's insane and in a just world there would be a swift federal response to these terroristic exercises of power(to put it mildly). From the article it seems like the New Mexico state government has a very restrained response. That's pretty standard issue with these types of groups, typically they fizzle out and go home. Granted, no one has ever inflamed them like this before, maybe their deranged moral mission will sustain them. I would hope not.

They have crossed the Rubicon. The people crossing the border are the Hegelian other. They are not a group of people but rather a philosophical threat. They represent tiny tears at these peoples identity. We are witnessing an othering in real time. The scariest part is that we have an administration feeding this from the bottom up.

These groups in the interior are often more numerous and much better armed than the local and state LEOs that they are often pitted against. What kind of polity can hope to sustain itself when it can not enforce itself? What do you do as an LEO when you are the weaker party and the citizens won't listen to the literal rule of law?

Just a total humanitarian disaster.