US Politics, February 2018: Our country was founded by geniuses, but it’s being run by idiots

I don’t really have a point except that Trump might not have been wrong that people had it out for him. That’s why it’s weird when ostensible liberals act surprised thst he would dare — dare! — question the integrity of the FBI. Like come on these people are used to pulling the strings in ways that subvert democracy. That part isn’t wrong.

For brutally pragmatic reasons I hope the worst possible happens to Trump but the swirl of discourse around this Russia investigation makes me uncomfortable. Kind of misses the point about why Trump’s presidency is a catastrophe in the first place, which has nothing to do with Russia and everything to do with his resurrection of nativism.

xps

“If I were a betting man, I’d bet against the president,” said one of the lawyers.

The second attorney, who represents a senior Trump official, speculated that Mueller could try to bring an indictment against Trump even if he expects the move to draw fierce procedural challenges from the president’s lawyers – if only to demonstrate the gravity of his findings.

“It’s entirely possible that Mueller may go that route on the theory that, as an open question, it should be for the courts to decide,” the attorney said. “Even if the indictment is dismissed, it puts maximum pressure on Congress to treat this with the independence and intellectual honesty that it will never, ever get."

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/02/trump-russia-indictment-mueller-probe-384969

Here's a controversial take on Trump's assertion that people are out to get him: how about, rather, he spent decades getting away with shit and now the chickens are finally coming home to roost? It's like a dude who spent decades on the FBI most wanted list coming out of hiding and complaining because people are all the time chasing him now. Unfair! Sad!

I agree with reggie. The 'financial crimes' are part and parcel to how he became a Russian asset in the first place.

I don’t think he’s a russian asset. I think it just feels better. To people to see him as an alien invader than the monstrous product of our own democracy—thats why the story is so appealing. Maybe i’m wrong.

No, you're absolutely otm

Trump is an authoritarian, which has everything to do with him subverting law and trying to make a law agency do his bidding and nothing more.

There is a billboard in Fresno of Trump and Nunes on leashes held by Putin—some independent group’s ad to get out the vote. This kind of thing bothers me. It’s the imagery of conspiracy theories.

i think he's a monstrous product of voodoo economics, and the russians -- who know full well that reagan's amping up the arms race bankrupted the soviet union -- are laughing their asses off at this posterchild for american hypocrisy whom they've propped up financially for years now

xppst

treesh junior is emphatically OTM again.

Of COURSE federal employees are not robots; they are humans with opinions and when they see something horrid coming it's understandable that they would be alarmed.

And yeah, if Russia stuff is what hobbles Trump I won't be upset. But really the racism and sexism (and antipathy toward the downtrodden generally) are bigger problems for me than who met with who when and then lied about it.

Literally everything in the Mueller investigation (that we know of) is directly related to Russia, from loans to laundering to obstruction to cooperation/collusion to interference. I don't think Trump is an "asset," not formally. But that doesn't mean Russia doesn't have influence. And even if Trump himself is not an asset, clearly Manafort, Page, Flynn et al. have deep, close ties to Russia.

FWIW, every branch of the Starr investigation was related to Clinton, but not to each other. That was a real turn-over-every-rock witch hunt.

Trump but the swirl of discourse around this Russia investigation makes me uncomfortable. Kind of misses the point about why Trump’s presidency is a catastrophe in the first place, which has nothing to do with Russia and everything to do with his resurrection of nativism.

If you accept that the catastrophe central to Trump's presidency is an egregious compromise of national interests—domestically and abroad—in order to benefit a handful of supranational billionaires, Russia has everything to with it. Fomenting nativism is merely a lever toward that end (cf. Putin). It's entirely about money.

idk most conspiracies hinge on people doing in secret the sort of things that Trump is just doing out in the open

you can draw a pretty straight line from "accepts help of a foreign power to win an election" to trump's general baseline m.o. of "willing to screw over anyone to get what he wants" and yes that includes activating a white racist base to push him over the hump in swing states, just as it included breaking contracts he didn't feel like honouring, just as it included moving on them like a bitch and grabbing them by the pussy.

The FBI is not just 'pulling the strings in ways that subvert democracy', they have throughout their history pulled strings especially to harm left wing groups and help the right. And as a matter of fact, that is what they did in 2016 as well. What Trump and the Republicans are doing are trying to make them even more right wing, with even less regard for basic constitutional rules, and there's no reason to not fight that.

like the fact that the Trump's campaign's *only* change to the RNC platform was weakening support for Ukraine. or just deciding to not enforce sanctions that were unanimously approved by Congress. or his phonecalls with Putin "mysteriously" going undocumented. or Junior meeting w/ Russians who seem to explicitly offer a quid pro quo, followed by everyone in the admin lying off their ass about it. or Trump firing and/or attacking every single person who isn't "on his side". like, imagine what a fever dream it would be for the GOP if *any* of this stuff involved a Clinton. imagine if Congressional Dems had a quarter of the enthusiasm for this that the Republicans did over the tarmac meeting.

Y'all are frisky this morning!

I mean there's practically a bombshell on this story on a daily basis! I get the concern and all but I think we can stop being worried about Pizzagating ourselves at this point

otm The question of a financially private quid pro quo, in which one citizen's financial interests and history of money laundering are protected in exchange (for example) for a shift in U.S. posture toward Ukraine, is not "business as usual." It is alarming.

idk most conspiracies hinge on people doing in secret the sort of things that Trump is just doing out in the open

Seriously. It's neither conspiracy nor theory, it's all right there! The conspiracy theory is the unfathomable realization that there is probably a lot more we don't know.

xpost And again, whether or not Trump himself directly participated, if those around him and hired by him (and not fired by him!) were up to no good and he either encouraged or enabled that, that's criminal.

Yes. If people are seeing the Russia business strictly through the lens of "corruption" I guess I understand guarding against sanctimony as our govt is inherently corrupt. But that's not the big problem. The big problem is that the President is compromised.

"willing to screw over anyone to get what he wants" and yes that includes activating a white racist base to push him over the hump in swing states

GAH. Didn't we already cover this months ago?

It does not matter if you're just "activating" racists for electoral gains. If you practice racist politics you are a racist. If you benefit from racist politics you are a racist. If you even just kinda sorta like that racists vote for you, you are a racist.

Oh but please, let's talk more about who probably rode up in an elevator with a Russian and must surely have discussed something Russiany.

and yeah - the crazy thing about this, as Fredrik alluded to, is that the FBI *is* right wing; they 100% threw the election to Trump in the final weeks, as alerting the public that they had Clinton emails that they **already had copies of** was apparently more important than letting people know that Trump and many of the people in his campaign were under a far wider-reaching investigation - Michael Flynn was still working for him! the same people who Trump and 99% of GOP Congress are now accusing of being Deep State anti-Trump operatives are the ones who drafted that Clinton memo in the first place! it's infuriating - like an NBA team blatantly getting every foul call, then loudly complaining that the refs were biased against them because they missed a travel in the first quarter.

hey y'all i think everybody's made their points, let's let our president say the last word on this

The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans - something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Rank & File are great people!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2018

the comedy duo of Rank & File

not as good as Allen & Burns, better than Martin & Lewis

It does not matter if you're just "activating" racists for electoral gains. If you practice racist politics you are a racist.

agree 100% i didn't mean to suggest otherwise!

Trump using the word 'sacred' makes me want to vomit. Can't wait until he starts ending his tweets with a hearty 'Namaste!'

the sacred investigative process (which I am actively attempting to subvert)

Have a blessed day! MAGA!

I get what you're saying YMP, but racist politics are not illegal, but rather handsomely rewarded in this country. We spend two-thirds of these threads calling him a piece of shit for it. This is a big deal too. As is his crusade against the environment, the massive transfer of wealth to the 1%, the daily assault on the notion of 'truth', the blatantly un-constitutional conflicts of interest, the normalization of white nationalist talking points, the fact that the GOP is nearly unanimously selling out their values to protect this guy, and the fact that major, major decisions in this country are being made by the likes of Jared Kushner. We should be talking about all of it.

God damnit, I'm just so mad about this Donald Trump !!!!!!!!!

BTW, a year+ of non-stop leaks the dummy and his supporters have derided as illegal, and then we have weeks of preamble about a memo that actually *is* classified that he *wants* released, and that's the one thing that *doesn't* leak.

the GOP is nearly unanimously selling out their values to protect this guy

Question that the GOP is selling out any values here

okay good point

You're cool, Tracer and frogbs.

Just get somewhat frustrated with this because so much of it is about who met with who and where a hotel was/wasn't and whether a sanction is this or that and most people (to be honest) are like zzzzz.

Is there a poisoned umbrella-tip? Boxes of Pennsylvanian ballots being fed into a woodchipper? Trunkloads of rubles? A literal or even figurative smoking gun? No? Okay, back to zzzzz for most people.

Meanwhile if your politics is based on who is doing what to the downtrodden, especially those of color, Russia is only interesting inasmuch as it brings down these mousefuckers.

It looks like Manafort and Gates are mostly on the hook for things that have little to do with Russia, though that could just be the opening shot.

Manafort / Gates deserve to be behind bars and a prosecutor uncovering tax evasion, fraud, etc, in the course of a wider investigation has every right to put them there. The same applies to Trump.

Politically, the worst case scenario, imo, would be Mueller failing to demonstrate either financial crimes or illegal collusion but trying to nail Trump and key members of the team on obstruction - which would be perfectly valid as a legal strategy in a criminal case but likely to fuel the right-wing perception that the whole process has been a stitch-up.

it's perverse but the Russia stuff is like the dessert in the five-course meal of shit we're eating every day from this administration. there are lots of ridiculous characters, a mystery, international subterfuge...it's a hell of a lot more fun to think about than ICE rounding up schoolchildren or Puerto Rico still be in shambles.

xpost Given the stated expertise of a fair amount of his team involves money laundering, seems likely that's the main target.

xp But YMP I care deeply about all those things and see how erosion of our democracy at the hands of private interests is exacerbating these problems. Human rights suffer in an oligarchy.

actually what we should really be talking about is the fact that Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women and barging into underage girls' locker rooms, then was accused by over a dozen women of sexual assault and suffered no repercussions whatever for it

meanwhile the DNC had to spend a month apologizing because Harvey Weinstein gave them money

and the DNC is too "professional" to raise a fuss over steve wynn. the mind boggles at the fruits of our meritocracy

GOP isn't selling out their values, but they're pretty decisively laying their 'we have no values' cards on the table. I don't know how significant a long-term impact that will have on the affiliates who still unaccountably maintain that the party actually stands for things.

A literal or even figurative smoking gun?

Tbf, people related to the investigation have already died under mysterious circumstances, so ...

Also worth keeping in mind that the non-stop controversy and investigation has likely kept the worst potential shit from even happening. The impetus for all this stuff was not to take down Trump, but to prevent a bad actor (Russia) from doing worse. Trump unbound would likely further enable their international chicanery, which had and has a direct impact on elections and therefore politics and certainly democracy. It just so happens that Trump himself, through ignorance or evil or ineptitude, happens to be effect as well as cause of democracy's accelerated weakening/demise.

Is there a poisoned umbrella-tip? Boxes of Pennsylvanian ballots being fed into a woodchipper? Trunkloads of rubles? A literal or even figurative smoking gun?

How about a blackmail piss tape and a leaked* email where Trump Jr. directly attempts to engage in a quid pro quo with people connected to Putin?

*leaked, for whatever reason, by Junior himself**

**who also let it slip yesterday that McCabe was actually *fired*, another bombshell story that somehow didn't make headlines because things are so incredibly nuts right now

...it's a hell of a lot more fun to think about than ICE rounding up schoolchildren or Puerto Rico still be in shambles.

Again, I'm only interested insofar as it embarrasses and discredits and (one hopes) ultimately defeats these horrible people.

And as Josh says, the issue hampers their efforts to do yet more evil, so okay.

One thing for sure: one day this will end without a catharsis commensurate to the anger we have all built up. It will be a shame if so much indignation dies on the vine and doesn't manifest in longer-term electoral/legislative change.

It looks like Manafort and Gates are mostly on the hook for things that have little to do with Russia, though that could just be the opening shot.

I mean, in so far as Ukraine is not literally Russia (yet), but we're not talking six degrees of Vladimir Putin here. Even if the Manafort/Gates stuff was not directly related to Russia, it's not like a complete investigative non sequitur.