Trump’s confidence: The kiss of death?

39 comments on “Trump’s confidence: The kiss of death? ”

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1. joe90 1

   3 March 2017 at 12:11 pm

   We’re going to deny so much, you’re going to be so sick and tired of denials, you’re going to come to me and go ‘Please, please, we can’t deny anymore.’.

   President Trump, and his presidential campaign, have issued at least 20 denials of campaign officials’ communications with and connections with Russian officials. Here’s a listing of their denials beginning over the summer:

   http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/03/02/trump-teams-many-many-denials-contacts-russia/98625780/
2. tony 2

   3 March 2017 at 12:17 pm

   You are totally FAKE NEWS when it comes to Trump! take off your blinders and read the real news, not the crap that comes from the NY Times, CNN and the fake news from Washington post. Your bias is obvious, please try and balance the stories you write. So Trump is Bannon’s alter ego, show me one piece of evidence for that statement please?
   • Andre 2.1

     3 March 2017 at 12:45 pm

     Well that’s a persuasive argument. Think I’ll just stick to Breitbart and Infowars from now on. Y’know, the Trump-approved outlets.
   • mickysavage 2.2

     3 March 2017 at 12:46 pm

     You mean that unless it is in Breitbart it is not true?
     • mauī 2.2.1

       3 March 2017 at 2:47 pm

       He’s questioning the established media which surprisingly or not so surprisingly run anti-Trump, anti-Russia, anti-small agriculture, anti public transport, anti alternate medicine lines because of obvious vested interests.
   • Skeptic 2.3

     3 March 2017 at 3:48 pm

     There’s no room for right wing trolls on this website. Take your opinions to a Trump supporting site please. We don’t need or want your kind here.
   • lprent 2.4

     3 March 2017 at 5:08 pm

     Yeah right tony…

     I suspect that you are simply too incompetent and rather too stupid to disagree with. Certainly you read just like pathetic parrot of Breitbart. Ignorant and unable to form your own opinions.

     FYI the main weekly source that I rely upon is The Economist. That is because while I frequently disagree with their interpretations, over 30 years I seldom find any facts I can fault. Whereas Trump, Breitbart, Infowards, Wattsup, and you just look like simple minded liars who make up facts.
     • tony 2.4.1

       4 March 2017 at 12:14 pm

       You display your arrogance and ignorance for all to read I prent, why do you suspect that I am simply too incompetent and rather too stupid to disagree with? where in my words do I display those insults you hurl? simply because I disagreed and questioned your article, tch tch! such tactics display your ignorance not mine. Again I ask where is there any evidence of Trump being Bannons alter ego? Another rubbish point you made was saying Trump and company are shit scared of the FREE PRESS, what free press are you referring to?
       You and others on this site have an inability to unlock your prejudice and be open minded, another commenter attacking me and calling me a right wing troll who has no place here, gee! no facts to support his rudeness? Im not pro trump but I sure am Anti Clinton who turned Libya into a terrorist wasteland and promised her faithful she would take them to war with Russia, China and Iran, your mass murdering candidate got crunched, get over it and stop your venomous attack columns, read some real analysis from Counterpunch, Consortium news, information clearing house, the Duran among other real news sites, you might just get enlightened. I have never read Breitbart, infowars, wattsup so please dont include me as a simple minded liar who makes up facts. your attack displays your inability to debate the issues I asked about.
       • lprent 2.4.1.1

         9 March 2017 at 7:30 pm

         I have never read Breitbart, infowars, wattsup…

         And yet you parrot them so well.

         … from Counterpunch, Consortium news, information clearing house, the Duran …

         Ah – parrot sites. Tell me do you ever get off your arse long enough to actually track back to the sources. Nor do you look at sites that are critical of the ‘analysis’ you are referring to. Whenever I read them what I find are idiots lying to each other then parroting others to make ‘real news’.
   • Matthew Whitehead 2.5

     3 March 2017 at 5:29 pm

     Sure, there are problems with CNN. And NY times and WaPo, while generally reliable, can get things wrong.

     But compared with Fox News, they’re not so biased. And compared with Brietbart, infowars, and other alt-right loonies, they’re paragons of journalism.

     Stop preaching your alternative facts.
     • tony 2.5.1

       4 March 2017 at 5:41 pm

       What alternative facts did I preach? NYT, CNN and WAPO really aren’t the standard of journalism to be holding up as generally reliable, they have been proven time and again to tell outright lies, are you so young or enjoy such a short memory that you don’t remember those illustrious edifices of truth LYING straight out to get the support for the Gulf WAR , remember the weapons of mass destruction and the ability to hit Europe in 28 minutes .. yes or no? It was those Companies that bullhorned the lies into your mind. As far as fox etc go, I’ve never watched them, but obviously you do seeing as you make informed comments about them. Try watching and reading the likes of the Intercept, Counterpunch, Information clearing House, The Duran, that will be a good start.
       • Andre 2.5.1.1

         4 March 2017 at 7:32 pm

         Global Research, ZeroHedge, RT and Sputnik will be devastated by your lack of regard for them.

         Meanwhile, you got any more recent examples of NYT grossly failing to meet reasonable journalistic standards? Yes, the WMD stories were a big blot on their record, but there was a previous Pulitzer Prize giving Judith Miller serious credibility, and it was 14 years ago and they seem to learned a bit from their shame since then.

         Yes, WaPo covered themselves in compost recently with their PropOrNot credulousness. Any other gross failures you want to mention?

         But all of those outlets retain a commitment to fact-checking, trying to be fair and balanced, not publishing until they’re confident in their story, correcting the record when they get it wrong. They’re not perfect, but they do make an effort to get it right. Or is your problem with them that they were insufficiently critical of Clinton and insufficiently fawning towards Sanders in their opinion pieces?

         Meanwhile, a cursory check of your last three shows them to be at best early pointers to interesting stories, to be confirmed by more reliable journalists. Greenwald seems to have developed a fondness for straw-man arguments recently so I’m losing confidence in The Intercept.
       • Matthew Whitehead 2.5.1.2

         4 March 2017 at 7:46 pm

         I didn’t say they weren’t wrong from time to time. I said that unlike Breitbart, they aren’t entirely fake news. On Trump, they’ve largely been correct, if anything, CNN was too friendly to him pre-election, in fact. On corporate America and warmongering, yeah, they’re fake as fuck, those large corporations building bombs are their buddies, but most US MSM is that way.

         I do read the Intercept, FYI. I also watch TYT, and follow several independent journalists. Just because corporate media (especially in the US) is sometimes wrong doesn’t mean they’re categorically wrong on Trump, or that every story is wrong, in fact, corporate media will frequently surprise you if you have low standards for them, because there are occassional people who care about journalism employed by them, and those people work hard.

         Trump’s a protofascist who’s co-opting some issues that do legitimately need more attention, but he’s not the way to get that done, as it’s already clear he’s a miserable failure as a President. Glenn is very careful not to report things he doesn’ know about Trump and to shut down lines of attack that are fake, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a supremely bad guy who you should hope fails his way into something impeachable without getting anyone hurt. (And I say this knowing that means fucking President Pence, who would be a disaster for queers and feminists of all types, which are basically the two issues closest to my heart)
         • Poission 2.5.1.2.1

           4 March 2017 at 7:59 pm

           Cnn is citing mad albright.

           Albright: Trump’s rhetoric is a ‘great recruiting tool for ISIS’

           “If this … anti-immigrant rhetoric and the executive order that came out was supposed to protect us, it has done the opposite,” Albright told David Axelrod on “The Axe Files,” a podcast from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN. “Frankly, it’s a great recruiting tool for ISIS.”

           By targeting Iraqis on whose help American troops are relying in the battle against ISIS, Albright said, Trump has created a disincentive to cooperate. And the ban will make it more difficult to collect intelligence from all of targeted countries, she said.

           http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/02/politics/madeleine-albright-axe-files/

           The same bitch who said the price of 500000 Iraqi childrens death was worth it.
   • North 2.6

     3 March 2017 at 9:39 pm

     Thank you FAKE PERSON and GENUINE TROLL.
     • tony 2.6.1

       4 March 2017 at 4:40 pm

       Thank you FAKE PERSON and GENUINE TROLL .. care to elaborate and explain anything I said as being fake or that indicates me as being a troll? You hurl insults without substance. Your comments make you appear like a closed minded unthinking person. Is this site so biased as to not allow inquiry and criticism of a badly written piece of propaganda?
3. grumpy 3

   3 March 2017 at 12:27 pm

   Don’t be surprised if Trump is scapgoated by the media in the near future for some enormous failure, only to find out it wasn’t him at all but his so called trusted advisers or his enemies. It seems too easy to point the finger at him at the moment, you gotta wonder whats coming soon.. Another 9/11?
   • marty mars 3.1

     3 March 2017 at 12:41 pm

     there are still questions around trump and the previous 911

     “Immediately after the attacks, the lifelong New Yorker spoke with a local news anchor who asked whether, given his property in the financial district, he had learned anything about the devastation. Trump’s mind turned to his buildings.

     “It was an amazing phone call,” Trump replied. “I mean 40 Wall Street actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan. And it was actually before the World Trade Center was the tallest. And then when they built the World Trade Center it became known as the second tallest. And now it’s the tallest.””

     https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/11/donald-trump-9-11-comments-since-2001

     and now he is the tallest building politically – funny how the world works sometimes…
4. marty mars 4

   3 March 2017 at 12:35 pm

   Good spotting – yep the press have to go!!! the lies and crap from don and steve cannot stick if anyone scrutinises them. The dirty duo will probably be on the blower to overseas now – “what’ll we do?” “Fill the jails fools” “da sir”

   Can’t wait for don to express total confidence in kellyanne and sean 🙂
5. joe90 5

   3 March 2017 at 12:41 pm

   This is a very, very scared man.

   Here's Jeff Sessions describing his conversation with the Russian ambassador, details of which he now seems to remember a lot better pic.twitter.com/QXSSD61Ejn— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) March 2, 2017

   https://twitter.com/BraddJaffy/status/837412691409055744
6. Poission 6

   3 March 2017 at 12:45 pm

   Mckaskill statement.

   I’ve been on the Armed Services Com for 10 years.No call or meeting w/Russian ambassador. Ever (2/3/17)

   https://twitter.com/clairecmc/status/837272862432104448?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

   Well except for 2013.

   Off to meeting w/Russian Ambassador. Upset about the arbitrary/cruel decision to end all US adoptions,even those in process.
   4:25 AM – 31 Jan 2013

   https://twitter.com/clairecmc/status/296640293229457409?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

   Hilarious.
7. Andre 7

   3 March 2017 at 12:48 pm

   Meanwhile, what’s he’s actually achieving in behind the brushfires and smoke…significant rollbacks on environmental protection.

   http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump-epa-environmntal-regulations-235596
   • lprent 7.1

     3 March 2017 at 5:09 pm

     Agreed. However until he manages to get a rollback of the legislative program, what he can do as a regulator is limited.
8. adam 8

   3 March 2017 at 1:18 pm

   I’m confused what is the real issue?

   Because this just looks more of the same shit we been getting for a while, to start a cold or hot war with Russia. Sorry but that scares the shit out of me more than trump, you know all of us dying in a nuclear war, or winter.
   • marty mars 8.1

     3 March 2017 at 1:24 pm

     we all die adam – how we live is the important bit imo

     trump is ramping up the armed forces and the armed rhetoric – the war is here already they just haven’t fired any guns yet – but maybe we’ll be lucky and die from pollution and dirty water before we get shot… //sarc
     • adam 8.1.1

       3 March 2017 at 1:40 pm

       Yes we all die, but I have mokopuna who have not even had a life yet.

       I agree trump has brought the whole turn east, and is amping it with China, but should we not be opposed to war, any war, no matter who is pushing it?
       • marty mars 8.1.1.1

         3 March 2017 at 1:47 pm

         war is fucked I agree and I can hardly believe in 2017 we are still killing people – absolutely sickens me to my stomach. And yep my kids are 9 and 2 so I have a very vested interest in making the world the best place possible for them.

         but I’m not worried about an american war with russia or china

         I’m worried about the sick river down the road and the sick puppy running this country.

         I know you care, and I do too. Kia kaha!

         sorry for being a bit too much of a smart arse further up 🙂
         • adam 8.1.1.1.1

           3 March 2017 at 2:05 pm

           No need for apologies, I get your style of writing, and know it’s not personal.

           I just find some of the rhetoric out of the democrats in particular, frightening. I’m not sure the military industrial complex agrees with you, the fears/warning of Ike seem to be playing out. This lot love, war, it makes them money, and don’t you find this is a similar narrative to the one before gulf war two?

           Americans, are fed a lot of shit, on a almost daily basis – and inside all that crap a march to war, cold or hot with Russia seems a common thread.

           As for here and our crappy government, they keep making asses of themselves. They have no talent, no clues, and no direction. I said to weka we vote governments out, we don’t elect them.

           And this government is done, just go out and ask people how bad they are. I know the trolls here say they doing OK, but they are deluded. Look at the empty food banks, the homeless, the poor wages, the failing environment, and a dairy industry destroying the land for short term profit.

           Do I need to mention the fact they have failed in the Canterbury rebuild, and now the utter disdain they are treating the people of North Canterbury and Marlborough. They are, Done.
   • lprent 8.2

     3 March 2017 at 5:14 pm

     Has bugger all too do with Russia. What I am saying is that when Trump states that he has total confidence in someone, they are as likely as not to be guilty of whatever people thought that they were up to.

     It is a talent that I haven’t seen quite so starkly since I read the statement “I am not a liar”
9. Andre 9

   3 March 2017 at 1:59 pm

   Will Trump now express full confidence in his son?

   http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/03/02/donald_trump_jr_possibly_paid_50_000_from_russia_connected_group.html
10. Sabine 10

    3 March 2017 at 2:22 pm

    i actually don’t care much about the ‘red scare’ and shit, but really, it is the lying that gets me.

    So many lies, that are so easily proven to be lies. I did not say that, i mis-spoke, i was misquoted, this was taken out of context, take his words figuratively but not literally, but do take his words literally – figuratively speaking and such.

    I don’t think that speaking to a ‘now dead russian guy’ is that bad per se, after all they all pretend to be diplomats. Its the lying. Why lie about it. Why not say, yep we did discuss this, this is what we said, and yeah, we stand by it. After all arent these guys to be the straight shooters that are going to prevent ww3 and only need more weapons and shit cause America needs to be great again?
    • Andre 10.1

      3 March 2017 at 2:41 pm

      Yep. All Sessions needed to say in his confirmation hearings when he was under oath was something like “in my role in the Senate I had reasons to meet with Russian officials on US government business. We may have exchanged banal pleasantries about the campaign during those meetings, but nothing of substance beyond government business was discussed” and this all would have been a non-issue. Or at the very least, much much harder to pin anything on him.

      But now, if he survives, he’s proven he happily uses the lowest kind weasel-lawyer semantics to mislead on a topic that he could have addressed truthfully at no cost. So his future credibility is zero.
    • lprent 10.2

      3 March 2017 at 5:43 pm

      Yes the sheep issue…
11. joe90 11

    3 March 2017 at 2:45 pm

    Threatening the press for asking questions, that’ll end well.

    Devin Nunes, complaining about attention to Flynn/Kislyak calls, threatens to investigate reporters who talk to Russian embassy.— Eric Geller (@ericgeller) March 2, 2017

    https://twitter.com/ericgeller/status/837359474813829121
12. Macro 12

    3 March 2017 at 3:53 pm

    Yep! When I heard that the chump had “total confidence” in Sessions – I thought “well that’s the kiss of death!”
    Two hours later…..
    Sessions recuses.
    Seems he wasn’t the only one – as Joe links to above.

    Kushner and Flynn met with the Russian envoy in December to “establish a line of communication.” The extent and frequency of their contacts remains unclear, and the disclosure of the meeting at Trump Tower adds to the emerging picture of how the relationship between Trump’s incoming team and Moscow was evolving to include some of Trump’s most “trusted advisers”.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/us/politics/kushner-flynn-sessions-russia.html?_r=0

    Trump is donkey deep in Russia
    Almost everything he does has some spin-off for Russian interests.
    Even something as “patriotic” as using US made pipes in US pipelines!
    Who makes the pipes?

    In his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last week, President Donald Trump commemorated the one-month anniversary of his executive orders calling for the approval of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, as well as one calling for U.S. pipelines to get their line pipe steel from U.S. facilities.

    “I said, who makes the pipes for the pipeline?” Trump told the CPAC crowd. “If they want a pipeline in the United States, they’re going to use pipe that’s made in the United States, do we agree?”

    But while the pipe may be made in the U.S., as DeSmog has shown in previous investigations, ownership tells a different story. Enter: TMK IPSCO, a massive producer of steel for U.S. oil country tubular goods (OCTG) and line pipe, and a subsidiary of TMK Group. A DeSmog investigation has found ties between TMK Group’s Board of Directors and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    TMK Group was incorporated in 2001, and in 2008, TMK IPSCO opened its doors as a U.S. subsidiary with a heavy focus on making oilfield pipes on behalf of companies performing hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) techniques in the Marcellus Shale basin located in the northeast U.S. TMK IPSCO, which has said it wants to be a direct competitor of U.S. Steel Corporation in the Marcellus, also makes steel for companies doing fracking in the Bakken Shale basin, located primarily in North Dakota.

    TMK Group also has a subsidiary named TMK Completions, which manufactures “multi-stage completion systems and tools for both uncemented and cemented well completion designs” for the fracking process. TMK did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.

    https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/02/28/trump-american-steel-russia-putin-fracking
13. Matthew Whitehead 13

    3 March 2017 at 5:27 pm

    Republicans have set the standard that any provable lie under oath, no matter how trivial, is an impeachable offense. This was not a trivial lie.

    Sessions should resign, or be fired, or failing that, be removed via impeachment.
    • Graeme 13.1

      3 March 2017 at 7:11 pm

      Wouldn’t this be perjury? In which case up to 5 years in the pokey.
      • Matthew Whitehead 13.1.1

        3 March 2017 at 8:27 pm

        Yes, and all that’s happened is that he’s recused himself from the investigation that will be looking into him.

        It looks like the consensus is that you can face criminal charges while in office as long as you’re not the President, but impeachment seems to be required for removal from office, so yeah, it’s relevant whether Congress will vote to impeach Sessions.
14. Glenn 14

    3 March 2017 at 7:11 pm

    US Senate calls on British spy Christopher Steele to give evidence on explosive Trump-Russia dossier

    “The former MI6 spy who prepared the explosive Trump report, has been approached about testifying before the US Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into the new President’s alleged links with Russia, The Independent can reveal.

    Mr Steele’s friends say it is currently unlikely he would be willing to travel to the US. But it is understood Democrats – as well as some Republicans – in Congress are prepared to facilitate discreet initial meetings in the UK or on other neutral territory.

    John McCain, the former Republican presidential candidate, and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent an intermediary to London in November last year to collect Mr Steele’s dossier, which was subsequently passed personally by the Senator to FBI director James Comey.”

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-russia-christopher-steele-dossier-us-senate-intelligence-hotel-british-spy-mi6-evidence-a7608456.html#commentsDiv

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