Trump’s Russia smoking gun

39 comments on “Trump’s Russia smoking gun ”

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1. Andre 1

   12 July 2017 at 12:18 pm

   Trying to be as skeptical as possible about this, it still falls a tiny bit short of proof of actual successful collusion.

   But it definitely proves 1) they were gaggin’ for it 2) they would’ve if they could’ve 3) if they didn’t actually collude, they were only saved from it because they were too stupid and incompetent to actually pull it off.
2. Bill 2

   12 July 2017 at 12:18 pm

   A pop star’s manager claims to have info damaging to the Democrats that comes from the crown prosecutor of Russia – a non-existent position.

   That’s a scandal and indicative of Russian interference in a US election and “Trump’s in Putin’s pocket!”

   Clutching at straws comes to mind.

   This obsession with getting rid of Trump, as though everything will go back to normal (and as though that normal was good) is maddening nonsense.

   The political culture in the US is deep down in shit. Trump is merely a symptom of that, not a cause.
   • garibaldi 2.1

     12 July 2017 at 12:49 pm

     Yes Bill ,basically the stupid Yanks have got the President they deserve. Hopefully the rest of the world can back away from this dying empire’s hegemony and program of perpetual war.
     A good start would be for us to adopt an independent foreign policy and withdraw from the 5 eyes, which is merely there to encourage the American war machine.
     Notice how this is not an election issue ? It should be. It would beat arguing over who’s got the better budget to maintain neoliberalism!
   • North 2.2

     12 July 2017 at 1:03 pm

     “Clutching at straws comes to mind.” – Bill @ 2.

     Bill…… you do appreciate that if the straws turn into logs (and whom in hell knows)…… you might be obliged to say this…… “Clutching at logs comes to mind.”

     I agree with you that the overall political culture in the US stinks. That said thank God for the presience of those Founding Fathers. We’d already be smack in the middle of something far more vile otherwise.
   • Cemetery Jones 2.3

     12 July 2017 at 1:34 pm

     Indeed, given that we’ve gone from top-level collusion, KGB campaigns personally ordered by Putin, full knowledge of Donald Trump, etc. this is tepid for even the most wishful. And every time they hype it, and every time it duds.

     Like the Comey testimony: it now looks to have more blowback for Comey himself and the Obama administration – and to think CNN had a digital countdown to the event! Honestly, it’s like watching someone quit smack, but with more counterproductive seeking behaviour and less inventive excuses.
   • dukeofurl 2.4

     12 July 2017 at 2:08 pm

     “damaging to the Democrats that comes from the crown prosecutor of Russia – a non-existent position.”

     It was the manager- who has an english background- who used the term ‘crown prosecutor’.
     But Russsia does have a Prosecutor general who does hold the equivalent position of England’s head of the Crown prosecution Service
     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Prosecution_Service

     Just as to us the US different levels of prosecutors, District attorney, States attorney, US Attorney etc can be confusing and likely something that is just a slip of the tongue.
   • RedLogix 2.5

     12 July 2017 at 2:32 pm

     Agreed Bill. The Russophobia is boiling over in Washington.

     Oh and it remains an open question as to exactly what Clinton ‘dirt’ this lawyer had on offer.

     There are plenty of good reasons to want to oppose Trump, but the Dems are running with the most febrile, lazy and stupid one possible here.
     • shakingstick 2.5.1

       12 July 2017 at 3:36 pm

       well, the meeting was well before the wikileaks drop of the podesta emails.

       and hours after Junior confirmed the meeting Trump started promising he’d have dirt on Clinton

       https://twitter.com/yashar/status/884900796957171712

       and y’all can yawn or whatever, but the timeline is being filled in as facts emerge in ways that look bad for for Trump.

       But of course you might also think Nixon’s downfall was lazy and febrile stuff as well.
   • Johan 2.6

     12 July 2017 at 5:38 pm

     “The political culture in the US is deep down in shit. Trump is merely a symptom of that, not a cause.” American politics, has been a joke for a long time, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton…..
     Now they have a president who is infamous for grabbing the vaginas of women and bragging about it afterwards. He was also reported to have taken part in ” golden showers urinating show”, at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Moscow.
3. Sacha 3

   12 July 2017 at 12:26 pm

   The relationships, diagrammed: https://twitter.com/MarisaKabas/status/884539015197806592
4. marty mars 4

   12 July 2017 at 12:30 pm

   Jr has stuffed up and I think the wheels are going to come off – but not before the humiliation of the older trump – looking forward to the Russia stuff coming out even more, the denials, the tears. the truth, the consequences. So good. Sad.
5. Andre 5

   12 July 2017 at 12:36 pm

   A taste of the RW reaction:

   http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/07/11/today_in_conservative_media_ambivalence_over_donald_trump_jr_s_meeting_with.html

   A true gem of whataboutery with a healthy dose of squirrel:

   http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/media/341493-opinion-forget-don-jrs-email-its-hillary-clinton-who-colluded-with
   • Andre 5.1

     12 July 2017 at 3:35 pm

     More RW mental contortions. Alex Jones doesn’t disappoint, Junior was just trying to find Russian spies. Roger Stone thinks Trump should deal with it all by ordering the indictment of Obama.

     https://thinkprogress.org/worst-spin-about-donald-trump-jrs-emails-eb32c813b754
6. D'Esterre 6

   12 July 2017 at 12:44 pm

   Bill: “This obsession with getting rid of Trump, as though everything will go back to normal (and as though that normal was good) is maddening nonsense.

   The political culture in the US is deep down in shit. Trump is merely a symptom of that, not a cause.”

   Amen to that. No wonder the US is sliding into international irrelevance, if this is what the US political class is obsessing about. As usual, Robert Parry nails it:
   https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/10/forgetting-the-dirty-dossier-on-trump

   Bill Clinton was the last POTUS with any political smarts. Which doesn’t, of course, mean that he was a good president. He wasn’t. But his successors have been woefully bad at the political process.

   The only – and admittedly small – consolation for the rest of us, is that the egregious Hillary Clinton was too incompetent to figure out which vote she needed to win the election. She ought to have taken notice of what old Bill was telling her; thank god she didn’t.
   • red-blooded 6.1

     12 July 2017 at 1:27 pm

     Seriously? You’d rather have a Trump presidency than a Clinton one? If she’s “egregious”, what adjective would you apply to him? Atrocious? Deplorable? Gross? Heinous? Preposterous? Incompetent? Corrupt? Misogynist?… Looks like we could add treasonous to the list!
   • Huginn 6.2

     12 July 2017 at 6:32 pm

     In what sense was Hilary Clinton ‘egregious’?

     She was a mainstream candidate who would have called on cross party relationships to get her agenda across the line.

     There was nothing ‘egregious’ about HRC, except of course that she was a woman.
7. Xanthe 7

   12 July 2017 at 1:33 pm

   Thats just about the most ham fisted attempt at entrappment i have seen in a while. The dems and MSM are digging a huge hole here, the significant outcome will be a much increased distrust of their media (and ours here) all of which is the best possible outcome .
   • dukeofurl 7.1

     12 July 2017 at 2:10 pm

     Trust you to be a repeater the alt-right talking points.

     Do tell what was the entrapment ? – LOL
8. D'Esterre 8

   12 July 2017 at 2:25 pm

   Red-blooded: “Looks like we could add treasonous to the list!”

   What on earth are you talking about? Did you read Parry? If not, I advise you to do so.

   This Russia thing is a ludicrous non-story, which the Dems and the neocons are turning into a witch-hunt. Maybe you aren’t old enough to remember Joe McCarthy; but I surely am. The current political brouhaha in the US is McCarthyism revisited. Meanwhile, the US makes itself a laughingstock and slides ever further into irrelevance.

   Xanthe: “Thats just about the most ham fisted attempt at entrappment i have seen in a while. The dems and MSM are digging a huge hole here, the significant outcome will be a much increased distrust of their media (and ours here)…”

   Yup, well put. Natural disasters aside, I’ve long given up on getting any nuanced coverage from our msm of what’s going on internationally. Even RNZ – once a bastion of critique – has succumbed to uncritical rebroadcast of the rubbish that comes out of the US media. Before the US election, I repeatedly contacted RNZ, begging them for some scepticism regarding what they were reporting from the US, because it didn’t chime with what I was reading in various places online. To no avail…. So: the day after the election, I contacted Morning Report, wishing them enjoyment of that great big humble pie I was sure that they would have in the studio.

   When the UK election rolled around, I didn’t bother asking RNZ for any analysis: there was no point. I just enjoyed their discomfiture at the outcome they’d utterly failed to see coming. Again.
   • North 8.1

     12 July 2017 at 2:54 pm

     There’s peculiar illogic in the notion that because the US media were wrong about the election and are seen otherwise to peddle rubbish then ipso facto this latest stuff is all bullshit which should be ignored. That’s a conclusion which if uncritically embraced is worthy of ridicule indeed. Just as is the “Fake News” charge when uncritically embraced.
     • dukeofurl 8.1.1

       12 July 2017 at 4:14 pm

       Rubbish ?
       Thats yesterdays talking points

       Donald Jnr has admitted it ( he had no choice) and now calls its ‘opposition research’

       Yeah thats what political parties do , dig for dirt on their opponents via foreign power.

       And from the timelines , Trump himself, started talking about ‘dirt on Clinton’, so he knew .
   • Philj 8.2

     13 July 2017 at 11:25 am

     D’Esterre +1.
     I have also repeatedly contacted RNZ about its standards and gullibility with the constant cut and paste ‘journalism’ coming from the US and the UK. RNZ is becoming dumbed down and increasingly irrelevant – not to be trusted. We need an Alt Media channel on YouTube. RNZ is heading the same way as TVNZ.
   • joe90 8.3

     13 July 2017 at 12:13 pm

     The current political brouhaha in the US is McCarthyism revisited

     If there had been a decades long whispering campaign followed by a House Committee spending more than forty years searching for communists and other suspected subversives, blacklisting hundreds of American citizens and disrupting the lives of thousands more, you’d be right.

     //
     • Andre 8.3.1

       13 July 2017 at 1:55 pm

       I can think of one of the presidential election candidates that actually was the subject of decades of whispering campaigns and baseless congressional investigations.
9. Ad 9

   12 July 2017 at 2:33 pm

   Hang in there Donald … you’re the Dem’s only hope.
10. Andre 10

    12 July 2017 at 2:36 pm

    Pence is trying to distance himself from it.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mike-pence-donald-trump-jr_us_5965054be4b09b587d6278b6
11. peterh 11

    12 July 2017 at 3:03 pm

    What a load of crap, if Russia said they had the goods on our Bill 29% plus of nzders would say yes please
    • Keepcalmcarryon 11.1

      12 July 2017 at 7:50 pm

      And 47 percent would be happy with whatever foreign dealings in exchange for giving away some prime kiwi water, land and swamp kauri.
12. esoteric pineapples 12

    12 July 2017 at 3:58 pm

    While Trump Jnr says he didn’t come away with anything of value about Clinton from the meeting, Keith Olbermann points out that Trump’s tweets about specifically 33,000 deleted emails begin straight after this date.
13. Sanctuary 13

    12 July 2017 at 4:15 pm

    Donald Trump: “Osama, were you behind the attack on the twin towers?”
    Osama: “No.”
    Donald Trump: “I believe you. Let’s set up a joint committee to investigate how to stop terrorism”.
14. dukeofurl 14

    12 July 2017 at 4:39 pm

    Was it a crime to parley with the Russians?

    It is also illegal to solicit a contribution or expenditure–any “thing of value”–from a foreign national
    . 52 U.S.C. 30121(a)(2); 11 C.F.R. § 110.20 (g).

    A solicitation also need not be express: it can be implied. It is useful to consider the regulatory definition of “solicitation” adopted by the Federal Election Commission. I have put in italics key portions:

    To solicit means to ask, request, or recommend, explicitly or implicitly, that another person make a contribution, donation, transfer of funds, or otherwise provide anything of value. A solicitation is an oral or written communication that, construed as reasonably understood in the context in which it is made, contains a clear message asking, requesting, or recommending that another person make a contribution, donation, transfer of funds, or otherwise provide anything of value. A solicitation may be made directly or indirectly. The context includes the conduct of persons involved in the communication.
    11 C.F.R. §300.2(m).
    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/7/11/1679787/-Open-thread-for-night-owls-E-mail-revelations-definitely-not-trouble-only-for-Junior-Trump

    It seems to be the case, whether ‘information’ is something of value remains to be seen.
15. Andre 15

    12 July 2017 at 8:58 pm

    Conan gets a tape of the Chump chatting to Pootee.

    https://youtu.be/MFjnNNz4HWE
16. lloyd 16

    12 July 2017 at 9:52 pm

    Does any of this matter if the Donald has dementia?
    • In Vino 16.1

      12 July 2017 at 11:08 pm

      Point. I read Rachel Stewart’s column today (NZ Herald), and found it rang true. (My mother also fell to dementia.) I remember wondering about Reagan in the same way, and later that proved to be true. I would not wish it on anyone, but..
      A week or two ago I heard a speech he did about 15 years ago, and he spoke in long, coherent sentences, which, as the commentator pointed out, we no longer get from him.
      It is quite likely he is close to dementia like Reagan was, or even closer.
      It means that he is not the one who is really running things. (Surprise!)
      • Cemetery Jones 16.1.1

        13 July 2017 at 9:05 am

        Remember when people said Hillary Clinton had Alzheimers and everyone was like, “don’t be stupid, it’s one thing not to like her, but another to start casting nonsense aspersions”?
        • Anne 16.1.1.1

          13 July 2017 at 9:38 am

          No. I have a vague recollection a few rabid Republican supporters made the odd claim but, from where I sat, it didn’t fly except perhaps on Fox News. It was indeed a nonsense aspersion and politically motivated.

          But the Donald… he isn’t right in the head and anyone who declares otherwise is blind, deaf and living in a vacuum. It might be too far to say he’s ‘falling to dementia’, but his state of mind suggests it’s going to happen further down the track.
          • Cemetery Jones 16.1.1.1.1

            14 July 2017 at 10:29 am

            Worth looking into but ultimately not very conclusive. But the point of course is that if people are trying to spin things that way, it’s not hard to get footage of or statements made by people who spend that much time in the public eye and apply negative interpretations to suggest they are in ill physical or mental health.
17. joe90 17

    13 July 2017 at 10:20 am

    Corrupt AF politicians, mobsters, dodgy deals, billion dollar money-go-rounds, dead lawyers, defenestration, meetings with number one son…..straight out of a Mario Puzo yarn.

    .

    Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday asking why the Department of Justice settled a major money-laundering case involving a real-estate company owned by the son of a powerful Russian government official whose lawyer met with Donald Trump Jr. last year.

    Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, on Tuesday tweeted an email chain from June 2016 in which he entertained accepting damaging information from a “Russian government attorney” about Hillary Clinton as part of the Kremlin’s support for his father’s campaign.

    That attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya, represents the family of Pyotr Katsyv, the former vice governor of the Moscow region, whose son, Denis, owns the real-estate company Prevezon. The DOJ had been investigating whether Prevezon laundered millions of dollars through New York City real estate when the case was unexpectedly settled two days before going to trial in May.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/why-was-russian-money-laundering-case-dismissed-house-dems-2017-7/?r=AU&IR=T

    http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/preet-bhararas-russian-money-laundering-case-abruptly-settled-raising-eyebrows
18. Philj 18

    13 July 2017 at 11:28 am

    Welcome to THE ULTIMATE REALITY SHOW.

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