Trump's America, March 2017: Using His Inside VOICE

Xpost

why is everyone being so mean to poor carter page?

https://i.imgur.com/0DGaRPu.jpg

He just wants you to hug him

Vladimir Harrelson

rick scott doubling down on a gollum impression

uhhhhhhhh....

https://twitter.com/th3j35t3r/status/833735448186990593

https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/838180635923595264

yeah.

something strange is afoot.

how many Russian diplomats have died in the past few months?

4, I gather.

Corey, meanwhile, has some things to claim

https://twitter.com/yashar/status/838215994149593089

I saw somewhere the count was closer to 8

I think I saw 6 but that it was 4 since the start of the year.

is anyone besides TPM reporting Oronov's death?

Yeah, looks like 7-8 in the past 4 months from a quick google scan.

poor baby

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/04/politics/donald-trump-jeff-sessions-reince-priebus/index.html

"Nobody has seen him that upset," one source said.

Trump continuing his tradition of being unable to look ridiculously suspicious.

"I WAS A GOOD BOY FOR A WHOLE HOUR! NO FAIR!"

narrative there is he's upset cuz it makes him look bad but that's one of a million things that have made him look bad. flipping out like apparently he's never flipped out before reads to me as he's legit scared that he lost a seemingly important defense structure against the russian probes, but maybe i'm looking too hard at a guy who's dumb and erratic.

Looks like Roger Stone has taken a page from the Trump book of petulant flame outs.

https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/838248860044623874

It's quite remarkable how little happened yesterday. The leader of the Republican party, who is also the President with privileged access to a lot of information, informed the nation that his predecessor illegally spied on him. And even in his own party, the response was mostly just tired disbelief. Nearly nobody is believing a word he says about anything at this point.

https://www.justsecurity.org/38347/tapping-trump/

not sure if this has been posted yet but v much worth reading

louise mensch's articles aren't worth parsing in that level of detail imo. she's a crank.

A failed politician, sad.

Good mourning!

is anyone besides TPM reporting Oronov's death?

Not really but http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/name/alex-oronov-obituary?pid=1000000184312511 lol?

Still think that Trump Inc's. Russia connections and possible tomfoolery are real but separate from Russian interference in the election, but the Russian interference in the election and in particular Trump's surprise win have inextricably connected the two. Hence Trump's frustration. He and his circle have been up to no good for decades, but a commonplace no good - like offshore accounts or not paying taxes - that surely many shady businessmen have been up to, and get away with, all the time, because there has never been an incentive to dig deep and investigate. But that's just what the Russian interference in the election has provided, which explains the suspicious and contradictory defenses we've been getting from Trump Inc. They had no connection with the Russians re: election interference, but they did have ongoing business connections with the Russians. Which may indeed be sketchy and illegal, but which have been magnified now that he has ported all those connections and connectors over with him to the fucking White House, probably the hardest place to be sneaky in America, especially if you start out your administration under a cloud of suspicion.

It'd be like if I worked at a candy shop for 10 years, and every week I stole a dollar from the till. That's $520, no small change but nothing anyone would notice. But then it's revealed the owner of the candy shop has been laundering money for the mob and the entire operation is audited, and that $520 over 10 years is suddenly noticed. After a decade of thinking I got away with it, and convincing myself it was barely a crime, suddenly I'm in the spotlight, and the potential punishment is magnitudes higher than it was.

Of course it's possible one or more of Trump's chumps did collude with the Russians re: the election, but who knows.

The FBI

Maybe! Or we may never find out.

LOL"

Although Trump provided no information that he may have been monitored, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) stated that the president may want to lawyer up.

“Mr. President: If there was a wiretap at Trump Tower, that means a fed judge found probable cause of crime which means you are in deep shit,” Lieu wrote. After providing a link to a Washington Post article on Trump’s tweets and the fallout, Lieu took it a step further.

“Either @realDonaldTrump is paranoid like Nixon, or judge found probable cause of crime for #wiretap. Either way our President is in trouble,” he wrote.

More LOL:

Author Stephen King on Saturday jokingly turned President Trump's tweets accusing his predecessor Barack Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower into a short story using a series of tweets.

"Not only did Obama tap Trump's phones, he stole the strawberry ice cream out of the mess locker," King tweeted.

"Obama tapped Trump's phones IN PERSON! Went in wearing a Con Ed coverall. Michelle stood guard while O spliced the lines. SAD!" King continued.

"Trump should know OBAMA NEVER LEFT THE WHITE HOUSE! He's in the closet! HE HAS SCISSORS!" King wrote.

Gannon, Griebus & Grump.

Revising party platform seems to be weirdly beyond mere interference in the election itself, though it is an action within the election process. It's so strange as a procedural step I'm not sure what the objective of that step even was. Why bother to do it? To curry favor with Russian "investors"? To demonstrate allegiance to Putin? It wasn't to sway voters. Is that really the kind of tomfoolery Russian "investors" request, though? Xp

The platform was revised to match that of Obama - that the US would provide intelligence and non-lethal military hardware but stop short of lethal aid.

I don't think it's remotely implausible that someone from the Russian government discussed it with someone from the Trump team but the nature of that discussion could quite easily have been along the lines of 'if you come into power promising to give weapons to Ukrainian militias, Russia won't cooperate with you in Syria' or something similar. It is hard to see Trump being so wedded to the idea of being more actively involved in Ukraine than Obama it would take bribery or corruption to get him to change the platform.

He was running as a Republican. It was the only platform issue his campaign took a strong interest in. You make it sound as if it wasn't even newsworthy at the time:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/trump-campaign-guts-gops-anti-russia-stance-on-ukraine/2016/07/18/98adb3b0-4cf3-11e6-a7d8-13d06b37f256_story.html

The point isn't that it couldn't have been changed with the influence of the Russian government, or pro-Russia Trump insiders like Flynn - more that whatever notional quid pro quo that might have been offered wouldn't have to have been illegal or directly related to the election.

it'd be kinda hilarious if the reason Trump is acting like this is not because Russia leads anywhere but because he did this other unrelated horrible thing nobody knows about yet and he doesn't want anybody to find out about THAT

"would you quit focusing on Russia, guys? I actually am running a Ponzi scheme, nobody is talking about this!"

i would not be surprised if we eventually find out that the russians hacking into the DNC informed the trump campaign about email secrets like the clinton campaign's monumentally stupid decision to take wisconsin and michigan for granted. the deftness of the trump campaign has thus far been nowhere evident in the trump administration

it'd be kinda hilarious if the reason Trump is acting like this is not because Russia leads anywhere but because he did this other unrelated horrible thing nobody knows about yet and he doesn't want anybody to find out about THAT

This is what my mom thinks is going on.

he probably runs a child slavery ring out of Mar-a-Lago

Jeff Sessions just looks like a baby-faced child, he's actually adult-aged

baby-faced child w/ Perot ears

He and Flynn both look like leprechauns, Flynn a demonic one and Sessions a seemingly more benign one

so Trump really wants an investigation of Obama based on something he read in Breitbart with no supporting evidence, and doesn't want an investigation of Russia despite there actually being evidence of meddling in that case.

idiots like Ben Sasse taking up this cause make me want to put my shoe through a window.

just so fucking tired of feeling angry, scared, and exasperated

not to defend him, but I don't think that's what Sasse is doing

I spoke too soon on Sasse because the way it was framed in the news report was misleading until I played the video clip.

what he said was more similar to Lindsey Graham which to be honest was reasonable.

actually the most reassuring thing to me is that there aren't more Republicans yelling OMG INVESTIGATE more than "ooooooooook, uhh, wanna give us some details or something"

yeah benghazi-ing obama on this would be such a base win for trump, i don't see how they _don't_ really try to make it happen. until aliens attack earth and unify humanity, i don't anything that can stop that as the new primary beetbort objective.

until aliens attack earth and unify humanity

oh for Ozymandias right now

Still think that Trump Inc's. Russia connections and possible tomfoolery are real but separate from Russian interference in the election, but the Russian interference in the election and in particular Trump's surprise win have inextricably connected the two. Hence Trump's frustration.

I'd buy this and until recently I was sure this was the case, but then why all these weird little communications between his administration/campaign and the Russians, and why does the admin continue to lie about it until they can't anymore?

I don't believe that Trump's frustration is a result of him knowing he's been treated unfairly - he reacted like this when people kept attacking the obvious scam that was Trump University. I honestly don't think he knows the difference between right and wrong, legal and illegal.