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

Is it really necessary to run a "smear campaign" against Manafort? A "smear campaign" is what the FBI and the NYT and Cilizza do to the Clintons. Calling Manafort a crook seems more like "smearing" rain by spreading around stories about how wet it is.

Kind of, but it's not just about Manafort any more. It's about who else gets swept along with him and what the consequences of that would be. The Manafort texts suggest that the anti-corruption MP who accused him yesterday of hiding a $750k payment was seeking payoffs himself - which would be hugely detrimental to the current campaign against domestic graft if true. They also suggest that Yanukovich and Manafort premeditated the killing of protesters in Maidan Nezalezhnosti - which is another hugely contentious domestic point. Allegations that Manafort was involved in Ukrainian politics after 2014 could sway future elections. Hints that two main oligarchs in Donbass - Dmytro Firtash and Rinat Akhmetov are part of a Russian-government-controlled network with Deripaska play into the domestic power struggle between them and Poroshenko / Kolomoisky / Pinchuk, etc.

Even if Manafort is a villain, which we all agree with, the evidence - and the people providing it - still matters.

A lot of that 'evidence' is left aside by sites like AP, right? I'd guess they do a lot of proofing right now.

You'd think so. They have been incredibly vague about where it comes from and what it consists of, but that might be expected. What is kind of interesting is how slow Russia-focused journalists have been to comment on this. I'd guess there's a lot of double and triple checking of their own sources going on at the moment.

Well, they got a response from Manafort, and he apparently didn't deny the explosive memo.

Manafort might want to reallocate his crisis management budget to his legal team.

Did you know President Abraham Lincoln was a Republican? President Trump apparently thinks most people don’t.

“Great president,” Trump said Tuesday night at a fundraising dinner for House Republicans. “Most people don’t even know he was a Republican. Right? Does anyone know? A lot of people don’t know that. We have to build that up a little more.”

Trump then suggested using a political action committee to run advertisements letting people know that Lincoln was a member of his party.

What's it called when you assume that everyone else is as dumb as you are?

Dunning-Kruger?

“Maybe the best outcome is for this to fail in the House so we can move on to tax reform. Which is what we should have done anyway,” said one Republican senator, granted anonymity to make a frank assessment of the party’s political predicament.

can I bet money that this was Sasse

https://media.tenor.co/images/1adc82b4fda387f154f143364c43d6b0/raw

Ha. "Sass."

For some reason I remember that Luke Perry episode better than most.

Good thread https://twitter.com/mattmfm/status/844159094302949376

xp that episode also had a great Sprockets:

https://www.hulu.com/watch/276488

Good lord these fucking people https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/03/22/ex-colo-gop-leader-said-only-democrats-committed-voter-fraud-now-hes-charged-with-voter-fraud/

The 2016 election was just a month away when Steve Curtis, a conservative radio host and former Colorado Republican Party chairman, devoted an entire episode of his morning talk show to the heated topic of voter fraud.

“It seems to me,” Curtis said in the 42-minute segment, “that virtually every case of voter fraud I can remember in my lifetime was committed by Democrats.”

On Tuesday, Colorado prosecutors threw a wrench into that already dubious theory, accusing Curtis of voter fraud for allegedly filling out and mailing in his ex-wife’s 2016 ballot for president, Denver’s Fox affiliate reported.

Curtis, 57, was charged in Weld County District Court with one count of misdemeanor voter fraud and one count of forgery, a Class 5 felony, according to local media.

. . . Officials in Weld County, Colo., said they learned of Curtis’s allegedly fraudulent ballot when his ex-wife, Kelly Curtis, called the local elections office in October asking how she could cast a vote by mail in Colorado from her new home in South Carolina, Fox 31 reported.

An election worker reportedly told her the office had already received her ballot. Per Fox 31:

“I was just completely stunned. I thought there had to be some kind of mistake,” said Kelly Curtis.

That’s when verification judges for the Weld County Clerk and Recorder’s Office got involved. “We compared her (ballot) signature just to the signatures on her registration,” said Weld County Clerk and Recorder Carly Koppes, who quickly determined the signatures didn’t match but noted the ballot was sent from Steve Curtis’s home in Firestone, Colo.

The Weld County district attorney’s office opened an investigation, filing a criminal complaint on Feb. 1, the Denver Post reported.

ahahahahahahahahahahahaha ffs

that virtually every case of voter fraud I can remember in my lifetime was committed by Democrats

tbf this guy is probably blackout drunk 70% of the time

Blobfish oozes confidence

Though McConnell guarantees that Neil Gorsuch will be confirmed to the Supreme Court before the April recess, he’s a bit more circumspect when it comes to repealing Obamacare.

“We’ll either pass something that will achieve a goal that we’ve been working on," he said. "Or not.”

https://twitter.com/EliClifton/status/844544466216214529

Eli Clifton‏Verified account @EliClifton

Gorka changes story from "I have never been a member of Vitezi Rend" to "I never swore allegiance formally." http://bit.ly/2o2peOu

dreading Yam's outburst on London killing

same

Anything that makes Trump even more loathed n the UK than he already is is fine by me.

it's not that - it's that he will use this as an opportunity to distract from all his other garbage w some grandstanding

Nunes press gaggle in fifty minutes re Trump/Russia:

https://twitter.com/jamiedupree/status/844573118291197953

Presumably obfuscation but who knows?

(xp) I'm thinking from a UK political perspective, given that May has hitched her wagon to the cretin.

oh yeah, I'm sure he'll put his foot in his mouth and offend some britons

“We’ll either pass something that will achieve a goal that we’ve been working on," he said. "Or not.”

how much does McConnell hate his life right now

GOP POO: supreme court justice gorsuch or ACA repeal

Blobby can actually get the votes for Gorsuch.

Reuters:

BREAKING: House Oversight Committee requests documents from White House, FBI on any communications, payments between Flynn and Russia

So Chaffetz is starting to have second thoughts, is he?

Best of both worlds would be GOP pursuing Russia, etc. and still losing seats. Because assholes.

gorka you fuck, you wore the goddamn uniform to the inauguration

xposts

any GOP investigation into russia is going to be half-assed. chaffetz will do enough to avoid widespread criticism and that's it

Yeah but after all his grandstanding just a few weeks back it's amusing to see him start to cough and look embarrassed, at least metaphorically.

No big deal, just an extra $60 million a year to take care of Trump's scattered family and second homes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/secret-service-asked-for-60-million-extra-for-trump-era-travel-and-protection-documents-show/2017/03/22/0967e7b6-0a85-11e7-a15f-a58d4a988474_story.html

So, has Trump proposed a ban on fast moving cars yet?

xxp yeah the fact that were at the "requests" stage rather than "subpoenas" stage is telling

*we're

marcos is correct

however the longer this bumbles along the more of a cloud is over the administration/the less effective they'll be which should hamstring them long enough (hopefully) to lose the House in 2018 and then shit will get real

Starting to wonder if the persistent cloud of poo enveloping the White House and renders the office toothless is better than outright impeachment.

But then i see what just happened in the UK and would be terrified to have a leader like that in a situation like that

Stuff from Jamie Dupree's feed re Nunes just now:

https://twitter.com/jamiedupree

Nunes tells reporters he believes there was possibly incidental collection of Trump's communications during transition

Nunes on incidental collection of Trump communications: "It looks to me like it was all legally collected"

Nunes says the info was brought to him by a source; he briefed Speaker Ryan this morning. Going to White House

Nunes says Trump communications were caught in "normal incidental collection...normal foreign surveillance"

Nunes says the Trump "incidental collection" was all legally collected under FISA

Nunes won't say who brought it to him, but "there is no question, it is official IC information"

Nunes says he is going to the White House in a few minutes to brief the President on the details

So as Dupree put it along the way:

So then the question would be - who was Trump talking to during the transition that led to incidental collection

(Which given that of course Nunes was on the transition team is...)

why is he announcing this

nothing illegal about transition team talking to foreign governments, remember when Trump took that call from Taiwan lol

So someone ... leaked this?

Shh, you're giving it away!

I don't think someone in IC giving the House Oversight Committee chairman info counts as a "leak". That's a p broad definition of "leak" (ie anything that isn't entered into public record during sworn testimony or whatever)

maybe Nunes deciding to talk about it to the press is tho, lol

why is he announcing this

sounds like he's trying to get in front of something

a BUS, hopefully!!! hahahahaha!!!