Sometimes I get so bogged down in the minutiae of the Trump-Russia investigation that I lose sight of the scandal’s scope. This Twitter thread by David Rothkopf puts it in perspective. It’s long, but that’s because the list of misdeeds is so extensive, and reading a brief reference to each one is instructive and devastating:
So we know this, Russian government representatives reached out to the Trump campaign in 2015 and undertook multiple initiatives and had multiple points and series of contacts with Team Trump for the next couple years.
It’s not just the Trump Tower meeting. It’s not just the interactions with Wikileaks. It’s not just the Russian ties to Cambridge Analytica. It’s not just Konstantin Kiliminik, a Russian agent working hand in hand with campaign chair Paul Manafort.
It’s not just the ties between Flynn and the Russians. it’s not just the links between the Russians and Eric Prince through the meeting in the Seychelles and beyond that. It’s not just the ties of Wilbur Ross. It’s not just the Trump Organization dealings with Russia.
It’s not just Jared Kushner’s dealings with Russia. It’s not just Kushner and Flynn’s dealing with Kislyak during the campaign. It’s not just the candidate Trump asking for Russian help. It’s not just the GRU hacking for which indictments have already taken place.
We can go on. But let’s not stop before we discuss the many benefits the Russians delivered to Trump via hacking, the dumping of files, the manipulation of social media and other avenues…all to support Trump over Clinton. Nor should we fail to discuss the benefits Trump…
…offered the Russians since he gained power. There was his covering up their hacking and his efforts to slow investigations of it. There was his denying the conclusions of the intelligence community about the Russians. There were the talks between Flynn and the Russians…
…about waiving sanctions. There were the meetings with Trump when he was president when he handed over classified information to the Russians. There were whatever promises or concessions were made in Helsinki. There was a pattern of placating the Russians or…
…failing to enforce sanctions for months and months. In other words, there was plenty of quid and plenty of quo ($50 million penthouse apartments and the promise of big deals or financing benefits aside).
From the outreach to Cohen to just the first mos of the admin we can count more than a dozen separate avenues of connection at the highest level. In any normal campaign or administration, just one would set off alarm bells and have the president calling the FBI into action.
But instead, in addition to those dozen avenues, the offers that were explicitly or tacitly accepted, benefits to both sides & the overt betrayal of the U.S. to advance the political or economic interests of Trump and those close to him, we have the president obstructing justice.
Actively obstructing. Threatening to fire all those getting closer to the truth. Lying and lying and lying some more and urging staff to lie and witness tampering and so on.
This is not a case of possible collusion. This is sweeping, multi-layered, high level conspiracy led by Vladimir Putin and the Russian intelligence community and involving the active cooperation and complicity of a man who was a candidate for president and then president…
…as well as his entire team. This is the biggest scandal in the history of the American presidency and there is not another that is close to it. But that is not all we know.
The DoJ believes the president of the United States directed the commission of campaign finance felonies as a candidate. The NYT produced extensive and compelling evidence of serial tax fraud by the Trump family. The state of NY is investigate fraud in their charities.
The House will soon begin investigation of Trump money laundering. A case involving his violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause is under way. In other words, as massive as the Russia scandal is, it might not be the biggest Trump scandal.
It might not even be the scandal that brings Trump down. But what we know is that all of these or any of these scandals must bring him down. This criminal has no business being the White House. He has no business walking freely among us.
2019 is going to be the worst year of Donald Trump’s life except for all those that will follow it. These cases will be investigated further and then proven. Some may be prosecuted while he is in office. Some may wait until he leaves office.
But someday this is already certain, no senior American public official–not Richard Nixon, not Andrew Johnson–will go down in more disgrace or be more reviled by history than Donald Trump. And that is as it should be.
My only quibble is with Rothkopf’s suggestion that the emoluments and money-laundering aspects of the Trump Omniscandal might eclipse the collusion with a hostile foreign power part. The latter is an unprecedented betrayal, but hell, it’s all unprecedented, and honestly, I don’t care which set of misdeeds brings Trump down.
But here’s what matters: If Trump isn’t brought to justice, the United States of America will cease to exist as a sovereign nation. It’s frightening to face that fact, but face it we must because a criminal gang has seized the executive branch. We and our fellow citizens will either root them out, or we’ll pretend accept that this is just how things are now.
To paraphrase someone else on Twitter: What a time to be alive. It’s like the fall of Rome, but with WiFi.
Open thread.
hueyplong
It’s like the scene in The Birds in which the camera rises up to the sky and looks way down on all the chaos below. Nice, perspective-focusing summaries by both Rothkopf and Cracker.
JPL
Trump’s tweet about being cleared gave Fox News all they needed to state nothing new was released by Mueller. They are complicit and must be brought down as well.
It’s becoming apparent that Jared is next, and what will Individual 1 do to protect him. Jared was seen boarding Marine 1 yesterday with the pretend atty. gen.
Trump just tweeted that the Paris accords are responsible for the riots. He also said that those rioting are chanting We want Trump..
Cheryl Rofer
Emphasis mine.
I’m wondering how the Trumpies are taking this. Of course, the first response will be to close ranks: “FAKE NEWS”. But we’re seeing Tucker Carlson turn away, the mysterious Fox News Twitter silence, the congressional calls for accountability of Mohammed bin Salman, and probably other things I’m not thinking of at the moment.
I’ve posted some “aren’t you ashamed?” pieces on Facebook, which have led to losing some Trumpie friends. I hoped that seeing something like that from a friend might shake them a little, and maybe it did. I think I won’t post on this. There are still a few sticking with me, but I want them to contemplate this without my beating on their heads about it.
Raven
Sitting in the Ft Myers airport waiting on my flight. MSNBC I the tube, Neil Young and Ronstadt I the intercom! 10,000 Islands was spectacular, my man caught a big snook and redfish and all three of us did well. Sanibel is not what it was 40 years ago but it was a great trip!
JPL
@Cheryl Rofer: How will they know? Fox is reporting it as a big nothing burger, and right wing radio will be discussing Comey and Hillary.
Cermet
Sorry, but when you added this part:
p.a.
Scandal? Scandal =/= treason. Treason = treason.
No Archibald Cox in this admin. Borks all the way down.
Frankensteinbeck
@Cheryl Rofer:
The vast majority of Republicans will embrace this, although they won’t want to say so purely because of Cleek’s Law. They have known this is an existential war for white supremacy for at least ten years. We’re the ones slow to catch on. Any corruption in the service of maintaining white Christian men’s hold on power is a clever victory, not a crime.
Trump is a symptom, not the disease. The only cure is our getting mad enough to drown the Republican Party in votes.
Lapassionara
All of the times Trump met with Putin alone stand out for me. He was meeting with his handler, getting instructions. BC is right, this is a question of national sovereignty.
Betty Cracker
@Cermet: What part of “the country is being run by a foreign autocrat’s stooge” don’t you understand? That goes to the question of sovereignty. It’s not a question of who was/is the shittiest president.
Lapassionara
@Raven: Good to hear.
Platonailedit
And the open corruption keeps on going.
Cermet
@Betty Cracker: My issue is with the part that we as a country will cease to exist as a sovereign nation. Putin doesn’t control the US even if he can influence the orange fart cloud. Are his crimes great? Yes, but still aren’t as bad as bush the shrub. But that does not change the basics of what you were saying. I just don’t feel it is anywhere as bad as that Iraq disaster that we will continue to pay for in blood and treasure for decades. Sorry for the f’d up quoting. Thanks for removing that.
TS (the original)
This is what is so unbelievable – he lies, his staff lie and most of the media repeat these lies as if they are truth.
B.B.A.
I’m going to rank this bigger than Watergate, not as big as Iran-Contra (which wasn’t strictly a presidential scandal). I still have a hard time wrapping my head around how that blatant violation of constitutional authority could happen and the American public wasn’t just okay with it, they rewarded the chief architect with a landslide victory a couple of years later.
debbie
Exactly what was said during Nixon. I could have done without it then, and I could do without it now. How could such a monster be permitted to ascend to the presidency? (I know exactly how, thank you very much.)
JPL
@Cermet: Bush was terrible, but I never felt that our democracy was at risk while he was president.
Ramiah Ariya
More than anything, as a citizen of a foreign democracy, what scares me is that this can happen anywhere. At this point, the Republican party voters are really ok with not having a democracy – that is key in this. But, in the USA, the opposing side, the Democrats still insist on democracy.
This is not the case in every country. In India, for example, there has not been a binary left-wing vs right-wing split forever; and partisanship is much less – BUT, social media promotes binary thinking, and at some point BOTH sides (by this I mean the normal voters), egged on by unscrupulous politicians may actually not be in favor of democracy. And there is no strong institutions to save such a developing country.
Believe me when I say that peoples around the world are closely watching this scary situation in the United States.
debbie
@Raven:
Nice! Did the surf behave this trip?
debbie
Colbert last night was talking about Trump having meetings with his advisors about maybe dropping Pence in 2020. I can’t imagine this would be a good move. Wouldn’t he lose Evangelicals?
cope
@Raven: This will be the first year in about 20 that we don’t make the 4 hour drive to Sanibel at least once. Until last year, mrs. cope and I would spend Thanksgiving down there, refreshingly free of family drama. In those 20 some years, we haven’t seen a lot of changes other than more people, steeper costs, the new causeway bridge and your occasional devastating hurricane damage. As my wife continues to improve since her transplant, she and I look forward to getting back there.
azlib
This goes beyond just Trump. The whole Republican apparatus is dirty. But as long as Trump holds on to his 40% approval there is no way an impeachment conviction will happen. Let’s see what else Mueller has. His team clearly knows more than we know. The criminality runs very deep.
MattF
Putting all the Russian stuff together causes a shock-to-the-system. We’re well past cognitive dissonance and well into indictment-trial-conviction.
Raven
@cope: yea, 40 years ago we stayed in a funky motel right on the beach. They might still be there but I didn’t see em.
JPL
@debbie: The evangelicals realize that individual 1 will do what he is told. They don’t need pence.
rikyrah
Thread
Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) Tweeted:
BREAKING: Vice Chair of the Bladen County (North Carolina) Election Board abruptly resigns
Why?
No one knows for sure but I think I have a pretty good idea and it’s a wild story.
https://t.co/dtiSYH2oNn https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1071254293024509952?s=17
Betty Cracker
@Cermet: I didn’t remove anything. Not sure what happened. Weird! I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree; I think it’s crystal clear Putin is influencing the orange fart cloud.
debbie
@JPL:
I doubt Pence would go quietly.
Tenar Arha
@debbie: Trump thinks he has them with all the white patriarchal supremacy & the judges. I wonder more whether most evangelicals all realize that Pence must be the one orchestrating this behind the scenes. Because ?Julius doesn’t have enough sustained attention to have been filling the necessary positions with their kind of true believers.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: Putin’s influence in determining our foreign policy is global changing.
I’m horrified and what is happening is worse than watergate.
Princess
We need to demand that Trump resign.
We need to push Dems to call for his resignation.
We need to demand the senate refuse to confirm any of his choices for AG.
We need to make that the narrative, so far as we can.
cope
@Raven: We always stay at either the Blue Dolphin or Mitchell’s Sandcastles. They are both on the gulf and a bit bijou but we love bijou.
Edited to add: bijou but not cheap. Nothing on Sanibel is cheap any more.
JPL
@debbie: It depends on what mother says. I imaging the game mother may I when I think of pence except it’s rated adult.
Wapiti
@debbie: I think that it might depend on who he replaces Pence with. But… anyone who voted for Trump and is still with Trump today is already corrupted; they’ve bought in, and the ones that publicly bought in are more likely to insist that they were right – they won’t budge. I think it’s more likely Trump loses 17 Republican Senators as the details of his crimes are made public than he lose 10% of his base.
Percysowner
The real irony of all this may be that if Hillary had won, none of Trump’s illegal activities would have come out. The Republicans would have screamed it was a political prosecution and witch hunt of an opponent and retaliation for having run against Hillary. Heck, the country probably would have seen it that way as well, since the news wouldn’t have covered the crimes, but would have used as proof that Hillary is a she devil. Trump may skate, by finding asylum in another country, but his associates, Manafort, et al., must be ruing the day that he won the election.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie:
Pence can’t lose what is already gone from him. Wait a minute… You mean trump? trump is a gift from Gawd, the savior who has been promised.
@debbie: Pence would then become trump’s Judis or maybe Peter if he later saw the error of his ways.
Amir Khalid
In the English Premier League’s lunchtime kickoff, Bournemouth defender Steve Cook has scored to give visitors Liverpool a 0-3 lead.
cope
@Amir Khalid: And Salah gets the hat trick with still more gas in his tank.
ET
It has Wi-Fi and Twitter.
Amir Khalid
And Mo Salah gets his hattrick. Bournemouth 0-4 Liverpool.
Baud
@Percysowner: This is correct. The one thing we can do to try to bring some measure of justice to how she was treated is to make sure that what has come to light is never again allowed to slither back into the shadows.
Cermet
@Betty Cracker: Well, still glad it is gone since the quoting was all messed up.
steppy
I don’t imagine that Individual 1 will be at the Army-Navy game today.
Amir Khalid
Five minutes injury time, the injury being a nasty cut to Adam Lallana’s scalp.
Platonailedit
The totus thug will ultimately cost the real murkans.
Amir Khalid
Damn. Ref blew the final whistle just as Mo was shaping up to shoot.
Barbara
@Cermet: The problem I have with comparing disasters is that it implies –even if very subtly — that we shouldn’t do anything. It is like saying HIV wasn’t as bad as the Influenza epidemic in 1918 or the medieval Bubonic Plague, so humans will survive and no need to do anything special. Things can be uniquely horrible, horrible in their own way, with different disastrous effects for different people. There is no doubt that Bush was a much bigger disaster for Iraq than Trump has been, but one of the effects of having Putin lead Trump by the nose is that it allows Putin to influct mayhem without using the U.S. military. The story of its disastrous potential hasn’t been fully written yet, but clearly, addressing global warming is one of its short-term casualties. Others are sure to be in the works.
NotMax
Paging Mr. Seldon. Mr. Hari Seldon, interface with the courtesy communicator, please.
The Dangerman
Yeah, the markets had a great week with tariffs and China and Trump. And the Markets were closed when the memos dropped yesterday, right? Let’s see how the markets react Monday to the president being an unindicted co-conspirator.
Lotta shoes yet to drop. Russia, Trump Tower, DeutscheBank … we’tr just getting going.
Buckle up.
Frankensteinbeck
@debbie:
No. He needed Pence in the first election because they weren’t sure of him. Now they know what kind of president he is, and they adore him. He fucks over the poor, encourages the police to brutalize blacks, strips government protection from everyone who isn’t a straight white cismale, and commits blatant human rights violations in his treatment of immigrants, with the stated goal of stopping the browning of America. He has lived up to all of their dreams and then some, and they don’t need Pence anymore.
Pence hasn’t organized shit behind the scenes. First, he’s famously stupid, ‘the dumbest man in congress.’ Second, there is no shortage of other white supremacists ready to offer the names of judges and suggestions for how Trump can fulfill his Nazi dreams. Third, Trump himself is a hardcore white supremacist and very possibly considers himself a Nazi. Certainly he thinks Nazis are very fine people. Pence is totally unnecessary for Trump to push for the degradation or murder of every minority, including women. He hates women.
TomatoQueen
I just checked to be sure & am pleased to see Tween Waters Inn, Captiva, is still going; I honeymooned there in 1981, stayed in Ding Darling’s cottage. In those days the place was overrun with friendly cats and was lovely and funky.
Poor old Bo’mo. And well done Liverpool, esp Mr Salah. We’ve got Wolves tomorrow,ugh.
Bruuuuce
@steppy: He’ll be home spraining his thumb, eating McD’s, and rooting against both teams.
Frankensteinbeck
@Bruuuuce:
The game isn’t about him, so he doesn’t care.
NotMax
@Frankensteinbeck
“Needs more busty cheerleaders. I mean really stacked. Expect to see an executive order for that on my desk within an hour. Also get hold of that guy whose job is to show me where my desk is.”
chris
Q: why did the fall of Rome take 300 years?
A: They didn’t have Twitter.
PPCLI
@The Dangerman: There are just so many crimes it’s hard to keep up with all of them. For example, recall the fraudulent condo sales that Don Jr. and Ivanka were about to be charged for in 2012, before the Trump attorney/fixer Kasowitz dropped by to chat, and make a big campaign donation. Sadly, I assume the statute of limitations has run out on that one.
cain
@Cermet:
Objectively, there is no single event than the Iraq War in terms of a U.S. action for hubris and horrible consequences in the history of the U.S. $3 Trillion dollars down the drain millions of lives lost and nothing to show for it other than a new threat in the form of ISIS. I agree with you that was a singularly horrible situation.
But what is happening now is worse because America’s institutions are under threat. We have an entire party and assisting institutions like Fox News and the NRA flushed with russian money corrupting the entire process. You can’t look at it from a deeds point of view. Trump represents a large swath of the American people who want white christian men in charge, and is willing to destroy democracy to do it. Have you ever seen a political party put in poison pills on the way out? Not seat a Supreme Court justice? At some point maybe we could have had justice for Iraq, but not if these assholes are in charge. It’s forced minority rule on the majority. We’re facing systemic failure of our Republic. The sword with into Iraq, but now the sword is heading into our heart.
cain
@JPL:
If you’re non-white you started looking at your fellow white folks with suspicion and fear as well.
cain
@cope:
Best wishes to your wife and a speedy recovery.
NotMax
@JPL
It was touch and go. People’s exhibit #1: the so-called PATRIOT Act.
schrodingers_cat
@cain: I have never been as aware as I am now about my differences compared to what the MSM dubs as “real Americans”.
ETA: As a physics major, and then a grad student I had become used to being the “only woman”, only person of Indian origin etc in the room. And frankly it never bothered me until now.
NotMax
@PPCLI
And more we yet know not. Count on it.
Dorothy Ann Winsor
One problem with this is that it’s complicated. You have to concentrate to follow the multi-person, multi-directional threads. The American public isn’t good at that. We need a clear narrative that can be put in a chyron.
rikyrah
Aretha Franklin Documentary ‘Amazing Grace’ Acquired by Neon
https://www.thewrap.com/aretha-franklin-documentary-amazing-grace-picked-up-by-neon/
patrick II
What is kind of sadly amusing is how open the Russians are about it. The pop star, son of Russian plutocrat, made a music video about Trump and hookers at the motel, their national news anchor bragged about owning Trump on their national news, members of the Russian Parliament have bragged and laughed about it on the floor of the Parliament. Putin high fives Mohammed bin Salman in Argentina.
Meanwhile, 40% of our citizens think its a witch hunt while they laugh in our face. We are in deep trouble.
Wakeshift
Are we playing “Spot the Asimov reference” in this thread? ?
Dorothy A. Winsor
Good lord. I apparently posted using my middle name rather than just my initial. I don’t even know how I did that.
My comment is in moderation. Help!
rikyrah
@cain: 2016 was a pivot point for White America.
On the whole, they chose a completely Unqualified White Man, who didn’t hide that he was a disgusting human being….
Because he promised to make America WHITE again.
When I say that everything that happens is on them, I mean it.
They will be judged for choosing WHITENESS over everything else.
rikyrah
@cope:
Sending you both positive thoughts. May she make a complete recovery.
JPL
@Barbara: That’s a great comment. Thanks!
cope
@cain: Thanks for the kind words. It’s been over a year and a half but because of non-transplant related complications, it is just the last few months that she has started to get back to her old self.
JPL
https://twitter.com/HoarseWisperer?lang=en
cope
@rikyrah: Thank you, I appreciate your thoughts, it has been quite the experience for sure.
Elie
@cain:
This.
Villago Delenda Est
The GOP’s failure to act is damning. They are officially the party of treason now.
All of them need to hang from the same gallows as Donald.
Frank Wilhoit
@Platonailedit: It is the nearest thing to positive cash flow that he has ever had.
germy
And I wish I lived in less interesting times.
I wish in my older years I could sit here reading about a quietly competent Democratic president steering this ship of state on a wise course. Instead of … this shitshow.
Yarrow
This is a very good Twitter thread but my quibble is that this whole thing is not a “presidential scandal.” It’s a wholesale attack on our country and our democracy. As Adam has said, many levels of our society have been attacked and infiltrated. Just in our government alone it’s not just the executive office; many of our elected representatives are compromised, and not just at the federal level but at many levels. It goes far beyond government into media, organizations like the NRA, and even religious organizations.
We need a full scale investigation into what has happened and we need to clean house.
Dorothy A. Winsor
In a screwed up post that’s vanished, I said one problem with this criminality is that it’s complicated and the American public doesn’t do well with complicated. We need a simple narrative, one that will fit on a chyron.
Frank Wilhoit
@Cermet: In retrospect, our entire descent into faction, and therefore into chaos and paralysis, may have been down to Russia. “We” cannot control our destiny when agreement as to who “we” even are is off the table.
Frankensteinbeck
@rikyrah:
This is absolutely true, but I do think you underestimate how much they also wanted him to be horrible. They WANTED a pig-ignorant, sadistic, ranting asshole. This is about defending the curve for unqualified white men, so they wanted the least qualified white man to vindicate their superiority.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Platonailedit: Remember how mad Trump was at Christie for spending money on the transition? “That’s my money!” he reportedly said. “I want my money.” If he’s transferring it into his organization, no wonder he was screaming.
rikyrah
Ok folks…
We got a lot of information yesterday. The OSC and the SDNY….
Did that!!!
One point that might have been looked over in Paulie Walnuts’ papers .
A point that was non-redacted for a reason…
The OSC KNOWS that Paulie Walnuts had contact with the WHite House.
But….more important….that person or persons now know that Bobby Three Sticks knows….
And, they are now in the crosshairs….
Who could the White House contact be???
Hmmmm ??? ?
The Little Baby Jesus doesn’t love me enough for the contact to have been Race Bannon…but, maaannnnnnnn
schrodingers_cat
@Frankensteinbeck: So true. The current occupant of the WH is the polar opposite of President Obama in every way. Another difference between W era and now. I had many R friends in the W era though we did not always agree on stuff and now I instinctively recoil from anyone who voted for T and still votes R or votes for the Greens and makes excuses for T. This has transcended politics, its personal.
ETA: Most of my R friends then, have either become Ds or are no longer my friends.
rikyrah
@Yarrow:
You and Silverman are absolutely right and on the money.
schrodingers_cat
@Yarrow: You forgot our esteemed news organizations like NYT and PBS Newshour.
Yarrow
@steppy: I thought he was going as he said he was making some announcement about about a staff shakeup while there.
Yarrow
@cain:
They were but not much anymore. There’s stuff happening that we don’t pay much attention to that has meant Russian money isn’t flowing to the NRA. They’re laying off people and cutting programs, like on their NRA TV channel. It’s so obvious it was Russian money making all that possible.
One thing we must do is cut down on the flow of foreign money into organizations like that. I’m not sure exactly how to do it but we need to find a way. If they are going to influence politics, at the very least by donating to candidates, then they can’t accept foreign money.
JPL
@cain: Although I don’t think the Bushes are racists, they don’t mind using race baiting to get what they want. In some ways that’s worse. W.’s appt of Roberts changed voting rights and opened the door to what is happening all over the country.
There is no doubt in my mind that trump is a white nationalist.
feebog
@Cermet:
The problem is that we don’t know the extent of Trump’s culpability in all this. My opinion is that he is too dumb to have orchestrated this entire conspiracy. It took folks like Manafort, Gates, Clovis, Prince, Bannon and others to actually pull it all together. But Trumpov and his spawn were willing dupes. And they should be run out of office, indicted, tried, convicted and sent to prison for a long long time.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Are we ever going to know everything about Trump’s crimes? I fear it’s all going to be smothered.
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat: I mentioned the media. I meant it to encompass all aspects of media–news, entertainment, etc. The lines are blurred there anyway and only a few companies control most all of that.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@rikyrah: NC-09 feels like the initial stages of Watergate and Iran-Contra. An odd, small anomaly at first with players nobody’s heard of. And as you pull on it, it keeps growing and growing.
germy
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Yarrow: I think it was here at BJ where somebody juxtaposed two tweets. One was about the NRA, declaring that their “membership revenue” was down $35 million. The other was that about $35 million in Russian money had been traced as being laundered through the NRA in 2016.
Ella in New Mexico
@Cermet:
@B.B.A.:
I respectfully disagree. Those times may have been stepping stones to this time, but we are absolutely in America’s “worst time ever”.
This situation, and all its tentacles, is the worst, most dangerous situation we’ve ever faced as a country and a Democracy. We’ve never seen any level of the criminality, corruption, collusion between dark interests, and the willingness to side with our enemies, against our allies simply to win we’ve seen in Trump and the Republicans.
It’s not just one guy, although that should be enough. its a coup by multiple attackers, from both inside and outside our government, and its why we have absolutely no idea just how this is gonna play out.
I’m trying to have faith in our institutions and our people, but I’m still quietly terrified and prepping my passport. Just in case.
JPL
@germy: If trump fears losing his empire, he’ll feign illness and pence will pardon him from future crimes.
I hope that Cohen starts spilling the beans and writes a tell all book on the truth behind the trump empire.
debbie
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
A trade-off I’m happy to make.
@Frankensteinbeck:
They also know how often he changes his mind. That has to make them nervous.
tobie
@rikyrah: I’m beginning to wonder how many Bladen Counties there are out there–not only in North Carolina but also in Florida, Georgia, and Wisconsin. A few days ago, I was wondering whether there couldn’t be some kind of crowd-sourced effort to request all Florida ballots via FOIA and do a hand count. The Republican Party has become so brazen in its cheating. I suspect the repeated shenanigans in Bladen County are just the tip of the iceberg.
Gvg
The thing about Bush was the kind of mistakes he made were bad but all but one (torture) were things our country can and has survived before. We have actually been involved in stupid wasteful wars before and come out ok. I was super enraged at the one new issue of condoning torture and it was easy to remain focused on it and unforgiving.
Trump is screwing up our systems in ways that threaten everything in the future. Screwing with our alliances and world order is really really serious. Threatening the standing of the dollar will cost everyone in indirect ways which will be hard to prove to most people but is real. And money impacts people’s health among other things. Democracy and voting are threatened although that is clearly a lot more GOP than just Trump. Even though he hasn’t started a war, Trump is setting up multiple future wars and I think he is already worse than Bush. Because of how powerful America is in the world, our coming unraveled, will kill more than Iraq.
Yarrow
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yes, but it’s going to take a long time. Some things might not be made public to protect sources and methods but in general we’ll know everything. Just don’t expect that sort of information soon.
Also, it’s important that we reframe how we look at it (per my point upthread) and don’t just refer to “Trump’s crimes.” It’s not just him. He could not do what he’s doing–he would not even have become the nominee–were the Republican party not filled with traitors. The Republican party is just as responsible for what has happened. Their involvement and guilt will come out in Mueller’s investigation because the investigation is into Russian interference into our elections. The Republican party is just as responsible as any entity.
I get frustrated when people just talk about Trump. Sure, he’s the figurehead and he’s awful, but he’s a symptom. Look at the entire venal organization.
I’m not letting Dems off the hook because we’ve got our own problems with this issue, but at this point in time it’s by far Republicans who are more involved.
Yarrow
@JPL:
Pence will not pardon him because that will add obstruction of justice to Pence’s crimes. Pence may be dumb but he’s smart enough to listen to his lawyers.
NotMax
@Gvg
Also establishing indefinite imprisonment without charges and circumventing the extant justice system as policy.
(Before anyone brings it up, internment is indeed awful but any way you slice it imprisonment is worse.)
rikyrah
Phuck this muthaphucka ?? ?
Hillary Warned Us (@HillaryWarnedUs) Tweeted:
Fuck this guy. // Bernie Sanders: Hillary Clinton Could’ve Done More on Russian Meddling
https://t.co/z8yPVBlpKu https://twitter.com/HillaryWarnedUs/status/1071248076218818561?s=17
Baud
@rikyrah:
Jesus H. Christ
NotMax
@NotMax
As well as eroding the Constitution by recasting its protections as applying to only citizens.
gene108
@Princess:
I don’t want Trump to resign. Pence can just pardon hm, like Ford did with Nixon.
I want hm to lose in 2020, so a Democrat is President and Trump and his co-conspirators will not get pardons.
Kay
I think whether we’ll learn anything from Trump’s presidency will depend on whether people are actually held accountable.
Democrats had to win the vote total by a huge margin to win the House. We’ve seen anti-democratic attempts to retain power in North Carolina, Wisconsin and Michigan. We saw blatant voter suppression in Georgia and election fraud in North Carolina.
This is still getting worse. If people aren’t held accountable we won’t be able to check them even thru elections. They’re making it more and more difficult to remove them.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Yarrow: I’m worried that if we don’t know the full extent of Republican corruption (and you’re right, that’s where is lies), then nothing will be change. I’m worried nothing will change even if we do know!
Miss Bianca
@Ella in New Mexico: oh, I dunno…I still think the Civil War counts as the greatest threat to our existence as a country, personally. But I am not particularly psyched about the fact that I think the Trump MalAdministration is probably the second greatest threat we’ve ever faced to our existence as a country – and that its crimes have been enabled by the same white male entitlement grievance that fueled the Civil War. Maybe this time, we can actually do Reconstruction right.
Gelfling 545
@Cermet: “Putin doesn’t control the US even if he can influence the orange fart cloud.”
Yet. The longer Trump is in office, the more judges he appoints, the more underhanded dealing with dictators, the more shredding of constitutional norms the greater the danger becomes. And this is happening today, before our eyes. At this time this is more pressing than the worst president sweepstakes
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah: As my mother used to say, “some people have more nerve than sense”.
Kay
I think it requires an elite consensus that it stops HERE. There needs to be a decision made on “too far”. If there is that kind of elite consensus then people will be held accountable and if there isn’t, they won’t be.
Because it hasn’t stopped yet. I don’t think we’ve hit bottom. Voter suppression is getting worse and now includes election fraud. The power grabs in the states are spreading. I’m really hopeful! But we’re still on the downward slide towards whatever we decide is “the bottom” and Mueller’s inquiry is in many ways separate from that.
NotMax
@gene108 et al.
Some consolation. A presidential pardon
a) when accepted is a legal admission of guilt
b) is no nullification against state charges and crimes
c) removes the invocation of the 5th amendment in any additional related federal proceedings or trials, whether as defendant or as witness.
Yarrow
@rikyrah: Man, hubris must be on discount where he is. He’s sure stocked up on plenty of it. Can’t imagine why he thinks this is going to work. Let’s see your taxes, Wilmer. Let’s talk about Tad Devine. How about Old Towne Media.
Ladyraxterinok
@debbie: He’d maybe pick Franklin Graham? (Strictly sarcastic, I hope, I hope!)
Yarrow
@Dorothy A. Winsor: The tide has turned already. Things are beginning to change. It’s always hard to see the tanker beginning to change directions at first, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.
As an example, people are pushing back on voter suppression all over the country through ballot initiatives and so forth. The NC election fraud–ongoing over several elections, it appears–is going to be the smoking gun for all of this. It began like Watergate–a small story that no one was really paying attention to–and it’s quickly mushrooming into something huge. It is going to result in changes in how elections are done in NC and I expect that will affect the rest of the country.
Martin
@Yarrow: Regardless of whether the money flow has stopped, that was a MAJOR source of direct money to Trump, knowingly received by the NRA. This isn’t manipulation of social media but direct contribution to the campaign, knowingly by a US nonprofit. I’m expecting the NRA will be indicted after Maria Butina’s cooperating agreement is set.
Honest to God its as if that moment in the State of the Union when Obama said “I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests or, worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people. And I urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps correct some of these problems.” and Alito uttered “That’s not true” that Putin was watching and said “Hold my beer”.
JR
@chris: arguably didn’t happen until the Venetians sacked Constantinople
NotMax
@Ladyraxterinok
Liz Cheney is capable of making all the right (and by right I don’t mean correct) noises. (FSM help us.)
Yarrow
@Martin:
RICO, baby!
Matt McIrvin
@Frankensteinbeck: I think it’s peculiar that Trump has such suspicions about Pence’s loyalty, given how amazingly sycophantic Pence has been as Vice-President. I always thought Trump liked suck-ups.
If Trump actually gets forced out somehow and Pence becomes President, there’s a great danger of that being the moment that the Republicans sweep their party-wide collusion under the rug, Watergate-style. Trump will be gone, they’ll all have never liked him anyway, and there’ll be this horrible moment of “national healing”, encomiums for Pence and relief that the adults are in charge again. It probably won’t save Pence’s Presidency in the long run, but it’ll set things up for the next guy who plays Reagan to Trump’s Nixon.
I hope we can do something to forestall or mitigate that, but you can already sense the aching need for it in the political media–look at the Bush funeral and the reactions to it.
joel hanes
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
one problem with this criminality is that it’s complicated and the American public doesn’t do well with complicated.
Exactly.
I watched Rachel lay it out last night, taking ten or fifteen minute to draw the connections.
Devastating only to lovers of chains of logic.
Martin
@Cermet:
Putin isn’t trying to control the US. He’s trying to destroy it internally. We weren’t a sovereign nation in 1862 either, not entirely. Putin can’t elevate Russia’s power to match that of the US – that’s effectively impossible. But he can tear down the US’s power to that of Russia, and that’s not necessarily that hard. In fact, he saw that happen first hand when the USSR imploded. All it requires is internal dissent and undermining a few key institutions and we’ll do it to ourselves. Once the the US hits that tipping point, he enters the vacuum left behind. He’s already working on that part – see the high five he gave MBS. See how Russia is looking to become a trade partner with China behind Trumps trade war.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@NotMax: Does that include pardoning himself?
germy
Yarrow
I just went and had a look and the Fox News Twitter account still hasn’t tweeted since November 8. That’s one month as of today. There’s something going on there that has shut down that account. Something legal.
Matt McIrvin
@Dorothy A. Winsor: That’s always the problem with the really big crimes, isn’t it? There are powerful people in trouble, so they push back using all the legal and political resources they’ve got, and that makes the crime seem more complicated, and sometimes makes the prosecution seem to be about picayune procedural matters nobody cares about… because those are the obstacles in the way. It’s why Watergate was more about the cover-up: the cover-up was what prevented prosecuting the main crimes all the way to the top. It’s very easy to just drop the public into a thicket of complicated and confusing accusations and counter-accusations and hope they’ll just tune out from frustration.
Ladyraxterinok
@rikyrah: Incredible!
This is another support to my belief that nearly any voting result (see also FL 2000), if examined even just a little bit,will reveal illegal activities.
What I really fear is that any decent investigation will reveal massive irregularities.
I think after sElection 2000 and then OH 2004, many are scared to investigate because of the corruption that might be found. And that it would become clear to too many that there are serious problems in ‘voting and counting as usual’ and that we the public would have to actually TAKE ACTION TO PRESERVE DEMOCRACY!!
joel hanes
@Kay:
and now includes election fraud.
Honestly, I think that Bladen County thing, or its near relative, has been going on in one place or another for over a century. Not to mention non-functional voting equipment, reduced numbers of polling places, reduced polling hours, blah blah they’ve been playing the same suppression game for a long time, although the opportune strategy of the moment changes.
And until 1968 or so, the people doing some of it were nominally Democrats.
Frankly, I think Rahm Emmanuel still fantasizes about suppressing inconvenient voters.
Corner Stone
@JR:
How did they get their gondolas across all that land mass?
germy
NotMax
@Dorothy A. Winsor
Without getting into the maze that any discussion of self-pardon (or if such a thing is even permissible or whether by itself constitutes an impeachable offense), yes.
Chris T.
It’s interesting that Russia’s power system is essentially the same as that of the Mafia, and Trump’s power system is … well. The point is, it no longer matters whether Trump is literally one of Putin’s capos, or merely acting as one. The President is not only a crook, he’s quite definitely a traitor as well.
tobie
@rikyrah: What price has he, or his movement, had to pay for dividing the Democratic party? None, as far as I can tell. And everyday, I see the new face of his movement AOC virtue-signaling about things that, when you dig into them, end up having been taken up long ago by the party she loves to hate. Unpaid Internships? Well, it ends up that Chris Van Hollen took the lead on this in 2017, and Brian Schatz and Lisa Murkowski got a bill passed in September 2018 that created a fund to pay interns. Holy smokes! It was even bipartisan. Green infrastructure? Well, it ends up that the Energy and Commerce Committee has done a lot of work on a smart grid and had already laid the groundwork for a bill to be introduced this session. Bernie never learned to work with his colleagues and that hasn’t served his agenda well in terms of actual legislation.
Ladyraxterinok
@NotMax: But, but Hari just predicted; hr didn’t DO anything.
And when he ‘appeared’ to tell them what to do (or so they thought!) he would just state in general terms what they had already experienced and then say ‘So it is now obvious what you must do!’
They then were fortunate that there was someone around who already had a good idea what to do.
A Ghost To Most
@Frankensteinbeck:
Don’t focus to obsession on Trump. The support system that enabled him must be dismantled, or another like him will arise.
JPL
@Yarrow: Isn’t that a win, win ? If he doesn’t pardon individual 1 will make sure that pence goes down in flames. The one thing we know about individual 1 is he’s a vindictive old man.
PPCLI
@Martin:
Yes, yes 100% yes. Another point that is swamped by the tsunami of corruption and deceit. It can’t be emphasized enough that what Obama was warning about, and what Alito disgracefully scoffed at, has (entirely predictably) come true. In large measure thanks to the Supreme Court decision Obama criticized.
Ladyraxterinok
@NotMax: Patriot Act already written and ready to go,,
Part of suspicious events going on in US/WBush govt pre and during 9/11.
Lulymay
@JPL:
Very much agree with you. As long as the evangelicals get Roe v Wade reversed as well as the current Supreme Court mandating prayers in ALL schools being reinstituted, they don’t need Pence or any illusion of a democracy. It is already clear that serial philanders don’t bother them one bit either.
WereBear
@Dorothy A. Winsor: DONALD TRUMP SOLD OUT THE NATION FOR MONEY.
NotMax
@Ladyraxterinok
Hey, he laid the foundation. Even bought it a nice dinner first.
:)
stinger
Donald J. Trump is a criminal. The sitting President of the United States is a traitor. One of these is worse than the other.
Although I’ll be glad to see him behind bars, it does matter which one of these sets of misdeeds does it. If it’s not the latter, then there is something more deeply wrong with this country than I think I can bear to contemplate.
Karen
@Platonailedit: Is that even legal? Isn’t that embezzling?
Gin & Tonic
Here’s one for you: two “yellow vest” guys in France holding up the flag of the Russian-backed separatist “Donetsk People’s Republic.”
What, was anybody betting on Russian agents *not* being part of those protests?
Ladyraxterinok
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Interesting interpretation.
Ruckus
What gets me is if you look at conservative presidents going back to Nixon, none of them is any good. They had major issues in governance, in foreign affairs, in warfare, democracy, choice of running mates, people to run the country, unions, race, basic competency, legality……..and that’s very highly likely not a complete list. Some dabbled in all of those areas and worse. Here we are debating which has been worse and they all were horrible. Probably, off the top of my head, GHWB was maybe not the worst of the lot.
This democracy stuff shouldn’t be this hard, that we can even nominate anyone who is this bad, let alone he actually sits in the office. What is it about most of the people who want to be president? Should wanting that be a disqualifier? Look at the entire list of republicans that ran in 2016, was any of them qualified in any way to do the work, let alone not be a disaster?
A Ghost To Most
@Karen:
I’m so old, I remember when questions like that mattered. Good times.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@WereBear: Ooh. Good one.
Yarrow
@Martin:
Yes, this. Your whole comment is spot on. It’s frustrating to me how this concept seems to elude so many people. It’s so obvious what’s happening.
@WereBear: Not just Trump; the entire Republican party. The investigation hasn’t quite hit the RNC yet. It will. Hello, Reince Priebus. We see you.
Yarrow
@Gin & Tonic: I sure wasn’t. Macron is not a traitor to France so he’s a target for Russia. Just like in the US and the UK and elsewhere, Russia uses already existing differences and cracks in the social fabric to push their agenda. Turn people in those countries against each other and create unrest.
So frustrating how people aren’t seeing this. The entire West is being attacked in this manner.
jeffreyw
@Martin:
I wonder if Ollie can still get into his marine uniform. Interesting that he may be be the fall guy, again.
Suzanne
@gene108:
I am increasingly convinced that this is likely the best way forward, as much as I hate the traitor and want him to be humiliated and imprisoned and to flame out in a historic fashion. And more than any other concern, I don’t want him to be in the White House for even ten more minutes.
But impeachment will come back and bite us in the asses, and won’t succeed anyway, not with this Senate. Any early exit that sticks us with Pence means pardons for everyone. And Pence could then run as an incumbent in 2020, extending this shitshow. And being well and truly beaten would also prevent the martyr narrative.
God. How TF did we get here.
A Ghost To Most
@Yarrow: Yep. And he succeeded. But he has made a powerful enemy. He has our full attention.
He chose poorly.
Lulymay
@Gvg:
Don’t forget that the guy who “wrote the book” on torture, so to speak, is the latest addition to the Supreme Court! “Keg” Kavanaugh will be an active part of the cabal that decides all things legal or not for the next generation of Americans. This is serious stuff and has serious implications for millions of Americans as those hoping to gain American citizenship in the future.
Yarrow
@A Ghost To Most: He certainly did. I do not think he expected Trump to win. He’s the dog that caught the car. It will not end well for him.
@Suzanne: Pence will go first. He’s up to his eyeballs in this whole thing and it will be made clear to him that he must resign or risk even greater problems. So he will.
Wapiti
@Yarrow:
I think we need to get rid of the millionaire green cards. We don’t need Russian and Chinese and Saudi rich becoming “permanent residents” while retaining their original citizenship. Permanent residents are not considered foreign nationals, and can make political donations.
Ruckus
@Gvg:
A problem is that the presidency is not an equality test. Times are different, situations are different and there are always multiple ways of handling them, with all of them not so good and some worse.
People, including me are arguing which has been worse, but they are all bad in their own ways. Nobody can do this job untarnished, nobody. That’s why it ages people so much. So many of the people trying to get elected have no idea how difficult it is, none at all. Most of us don’t have one. The trick of course is to do the job in the best way possible, not the worst way possible. As I stated above all the republicans of the last 60 yrs have been bad. And even then some did some things right. Not the big things, but you may be correct, drumpf can’t even fake being reasonable, he’s just bad in every single way. It isn’t that he has gone to war, we are already doing that. It’s that he can’t even fake being sincere, let alone hire decent people to lead the various departments, in his absence of any leadership, in his absence of any non criminal activity, in his inability to basic math and understanding of words, and in his inability to just actually act like a semi normal human being.
PJ
@Barbara: Someone else (like me) would reach the opposite conclusion, that comparing political (or natural) disasters shows that you must always do something to prevent bad people from obtaining power and to root them out and punish them and make sure it doesn’t happen again, because they sure as hell aren’t going to leave on anyone else’s terms but their own, and that’s after they have utterly destroyed their country. It always requires active vigilance. Unfortunately, we have been handicapped by a news media which is complicit in undemocratic Republican rule.
Yarrow
@Wapiti: I think that’s small potatoes compared to laundering foreign money through organizations like the NRA that in turn donate to politicians.
Ella in New Mexico
@Miss Bianca:
Maybe, so, but I think even that could be argued as less of a threat to the spirit of our Constitutional Democracy than what we’re seeing right now…
…and between you and me, sometimes I wish we’d actually lost that war. Judged by the people and places in this country that continue to suck the worst, keeping those traitors in the Union may not have been worth it. I’ve pretty much decided they’re not fixable, and I’d be fine if they just GTFO.
Would it have been so bad if they’d been left to their own little poverty ridden, angry, stank-filled country? After we repatriated all the free labor they depended on of course. I;-)
PJ
@Dorothy Ann Winsor: It’s not actually that complicated if you lay it out chronologically, it’s that the corruption is so extensive in the GOP. But getting the media to actually tell the story is going to be the hard part, because they are so stuck on “both sides” and “here with an opposing point of view” rather than reporting the facts, which, as we know, have a liberal bias.
Ruckus
@Yarrow:
You know, his own party didn’t nickname him dense for no good reason. I’m not sure he has the ability to understand his position. He made VP, even if for all the wrong reasons and in all the wrong ways. Do people who do that level of thinking ever really make good decisions, or do they keep going down the road they are on till someone else makes it for them?
IOW, I don’t see Pence having the whatever to make that call, in his head he’s VP damnit and he by gum he’s going to be the VP as long as he can. His history is to ride the ride till the lights go off.
PJ
@Frank Wilhoit: Did Russia influence the 2000 election, and the Supreme Court handing it to Bush? The Russians have just been leveraging corruption in the GOP that has been there a long time.
piratedan
for me the key to how all of this unfolds is if there’s any evidence of wrong doing by the Senate Majority Leader McConnell…. while we all know Mitch to be an odious piece of filth, he’s always been a great one for twisting the rules to suit his needs and ignoring them when they served his purpose. My question is in regards to breaking the law itself. If there is concrete evidence showing that McConnell broke the law (and hey lets be honest, we’re pretty fucking sure that not doing any damn thing when evidence of treason is presented is most likely illegal, as well as coordinating with the Russians in spreading illegal cash contributions and coordinating social media attacks with illegally obtained information is not exactly lawful behavior either) then you can remove him. Trump could shoot Senator Warren on the floor of the chamber and Mitchy would proclaim that no only did she have it coming, its a great new way to implement executive orders.
IMHO McConnell is the lynchpin to all of this, you remove him, all of the underpinnings that allow the GOP to paint this with a patina of authority goes away and you get to start to undo the damage done to the institutions, until he’s gone, Trump has no reason to abdicate because The Turtle is there running interference for him, gleefully lying his ass off and being the hypocritical roadkill he’s famous for. Who would the GOP replace him with? Cotton? Burr? chances are we’d get someone who could read the writing on the wall and allow justice to finally be implemented.
Yarrow
@Ruckus: He’s smart enough to take care of himself. His lawyers will make it clear to him what the situation is and he’ll listen to them. He’s not that smart himself, but unlike Trump he’s not a toxic narcissist. When it becomes obvious that things he prefers to keep hidden will be made more and more public, he’ll resign.
How ’bout those highly redacted emails from when you were governor, Mikey boy? What about your family’s Russian connections? Why did Manafort want you to be VP so badly? So many questions.
PJ
@Ella in New Mexico: With all due respect, I think the Civil War was this country’s worst time ever. We aren’t there yet, but there are people here who would be glad to see it happen again as long as it keeps them in power and the money rolling into their coffers.
Chris T.
@Yarrow: I’m not sure why it’s not obvious to everyone.
Putin wants to have more power in relative terms. One way to do that is to reduce the power of other countries and organizations, such as the US, NATO, France, Ukraine, …
FelonyGovt
This may be wishing for a unicorn- But I’d love to see just one item come out which illustrates the treason and criminality in such a simple and obvious manner that even the stupidest, most oblivious American gets it. Like @Dorothy Ann Winsor: said, I worry that a lot of what has come out is too complicated for folks with low attention spans to understand.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@PJ: I used to say there are people who would bring back slavery but I didn’t mean it. I believe it now whole-heartedly.
I used to say I didn’t understand how political differences could get so bad that you’d be willing to march against and shoot an army of your fellow citizens. I still don’t understand in my own mind how you can get there but I do believe 27-40% of my fellow citizens are already there. And armed. And not on the Union side.
germy
Yarrow
@piratedan:
McConnell is in trouble. As I said in December, 2016 right here on this blog, he knows he’s in trouble. You could see it all over his face. I’m sure he’s working hard behind the scenes to keep things together but his past is going to catch up with him.
I agree he’s a lynchpin, at least in Congress. The Senate is protecting Trump. If McConnell goes the whole thing starts to fall apart.
Ruckus
@patrick II:
All of that is aimed at us, the people who do see it.
Trying to discourage us, to make us see that the destruction of our country and values is nothing, because we have no values.
If you are anything like me you believe that the values espoused as our guiding principles are good and we should work towards making them more of a reality. They aren’t necessary to have a country and are not desired by a not insignificant percentage of the population. They are of course better for all of us, but that’s a relatively new idea in governance. Look at Russia. It has never had a real time in it’s history when it was an actual free country, with the kind of freedoms we are supposed to have.
Yarrow
@germy: The odds are he was told to call on her. Who told him to do that?
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Yarrow: I think the actual word is “linchpin” but this spelling gives it an additional and apt double meaning.
PJ
@Yarrow: As I remarked on this here blog a while ago, if the Communists had realized all they needed to do was to ally themselves with white supremacists and John Birchers, the Cold War would have gone very differently. Luckily, they were blinded by ideology, but Putin’s only ideology is what makes him richer and more powerful, and which makes his enemies poorer and weaker.
Yarrow
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: LOL. You’re right. I like the alternate spelling that was presented, though. So evocative.
germy
@Yarrow: Manafort?
Hoodie
@Suzanne: If Mueller doesn’t indict, I don’t see how the new House will be able to avoid drawing up articles of impeachment, particularly if, in addition to the campaign finance felonies for which Trump is clearly implicated, Mueller ultimately reports clear evidence of conspiracy with a foreign government to manipulate the election. That simply cannot go unaddressed and, if it isn’t, the consequences would be awful. Yes, the Republicans will paint it as a partisan witch hunt, but the Democrats’ supporters have to see that they have the guts to go forward in spite of that. Yes, the Senate probably would not convict, but they would still have to sit through a very public impeachment trial with that evidence cited chapter and verse. I would’t compare to the Clinton impeachment, because everybody knew that was a bunch of contrived outrage about a blowjob.
Barry
@Cermet: Because at this point the question is *how many* countries have the President in their pockets, while the rest of the GOP happily goes along.
Shrub and Cheney might have been far too cozy with the Saudis, but as allies, not as the buyers of the President and the bought President.
IMHO, that very public high-five which MBS and Putin shared was a public announcement that the President of the United States of America was in their pockets.
BretH
Remember, Pence cannot pardon for crimes prosecuted by a state. Muller has that one figured out – recall has many of the investigations/evidence was handed off so SDNY.
Barry
@Ramiah Ariya: “BUT, social media promotes binary thinking, and at some point BOTH sides (by this I mean the normal voters), egged on by unscrupulous politicians may actually not be in favor of democracy. ”
(if you read a previous version, I screwed up on reading, and thought that you were talking about the USA. Sorry).
steppy
@Yarrow: I had forgotten he had oinked out some such utterance. But, that was then and this is now.
BTW, one bit of good has come from this for me. You see, I avoid saying his name, but I don’t want to resort to calling him “Shitgibbon” or something like it. I feel it’s vulgar and drags me down. I usually call him “the so-called president*” or something similar. But henceforth, his name shall be called “Individual 1!”
steppy
@BretH: The problem is that SDNY is still a US Attorneys’ office, so any charges coming from that organization will be federal and eligible for federal pardons. Now, if he has farmed anything out to the New York State Attorney General, all those bets are off.
Yarrow
@steppy: It’s a very handy alternate name for him, isn’t it! My favorite use so far has been someone photoshopping “Individual 1 Tower” on the NYC building. Heh.
Frankensteinbeck
@PJ:
You vastly underestimate the importance of a black president to drive Republicans rabidly insane. Back during the 80s and before, whites perceived that blacks only had the political power that whites gave them, and were much more comfortable with that. Tactics like this were already Soviet standard, but we hadn’t hit as big a crisis point. On the other hand, the 80s is when whites got just antsy enough to hand the country to plutocrats to spite the n-loving liberals.
Yarrow
@steppy: Ah, the New York State Attorney General, Barbara Underwood. She’s all up in the Trump Org’s business.
Mike in DC
I think it’s the biggest scandal in American history and one of the biggest in the history of Anglophone nations.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
It’s one reason they hate Clinton so much. That’s when the transition began.
Charluckles
It’s the biggest scandal in American history because its bigger than the presidency. The truth about Trump was there for anyone to see. The media failed, the elites failed, Congress failed, the people failed.
germy
This photo:
Another reason for the hatred. And revenge.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@steppy: That word is a perfectly acceptable verb in English usage, meaning “to fart audibly”. We’ve started using that verb in our house.
See last meaning at the bottom of this OED page
SiubhanDuinne
@Yarrow:
So many questions indeed. We may not know the answers, but I’m pretty sure RSM III does.
steppy
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: It’s gotten to the point where I can’t even play pinochle anymore.
trollhattan
@Yarrow:
It even got an LOL out of my kid, who is rather proud of not openly laughing at anything.
trollhattan
Kelly out.
dmsilev
@trollhattan: From FTNYT:
Immanentize
@Baud:
never thought of it that way, but yes. “First black president” referred not to Clinton’s race but the way he was treated.
Immanentize
@dmsilev: Door, meet Kelly’s racist ass.
debbie
@Barry:
The Carlyle Group might want to have a word with you. The Bushes were bought and paid for, both of them. MBS is green with envy.
SiubhanDuinne
@Yarrow:
Lynchpin, bellweather, slight of hand, chaise lounge….
Yutsano
@rikyrah: Did you read the Hill article behind the Buzzfeed aggregator? It gets even worse and he looks like he has no control over his campaign apparatus. Seriously, fuck Wilmer.
dmsilev
@Immanentize: It’s at least fitting that Trump chose to be as rude as normal in making the announcement. I wonder whether Trump asked Kelly to fire Kelly.
Amir Khalid
@dmsilev:
I wonder if Trump sandbagged Kelly by announcing that Kelly was leaving.
JR
@Ella in New Mexico: 1860-1870 were far worse although we were thankfully not alive
NotMax
@Yutsano
Wilmer is much too busy yelling at clouds to be bothered with such quotidian detail.
Constance Reader
@Cermet: The U.S. would cease to exist as a sovereign nation because it will be revealed and demonstrated to all that “rule of law” is an illusion, except as applied by the powerful to the not-powerful per convenience. The Constitution will be held up for what it is – a piece of paper, with no real enforcement mechanism. We would be a Potemkin Republic and the analogy with Rome is apt and instructive. The question is – who would be the Goths in this scenario, China?
Keith P.
Kelly, Kelly, Kelly, Kelly, Kelly, Kelly,Kelly, Kelly, Kelly, Kelly, K-E-L-L-Y, whyyyy?
Because he’s gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, G-O-N-E gone.
(I’ve been binge-watching Cheers on Prime)
NotMax
@Keith P.
Ah, from a time when we still gave a seat of honor to a Norm.
;)
Amir Khalid
It’s been a good weekend at the football. Liverpool are top of the Premier League table by one point after Manchester City lose 2-0 at Chelsea.
joel hanes
@Suzanne:
How TF did we get here.
Rupert Murdoch, the Sinclair family, and the Kochs didn’t like the idea of Democrats governing.
The NYT quietly agreed.
Aleta
James E Powell
@cain:
I will go a little further. What is happening now is worse because several of American’s institutions are enthusiastically aiding and abetting. The senate is more evil and more corrupt than Trump and his cohort. When he goes down, they will still be here. The press/media are protecting and promoting Trump. Sure, they report on Trump, but they do so in the same manner as they report on the Kardashians. It’s all entertainment for the masses and clicks & eyeballs for the press/media. When Trump goes, they will find a new one. They never want to cover politics the old way again.
tobie
@BretH: SDNY is part of the DOJ. What can’t be pardoned are the cases the NY AG is pursuing.
@joel hanes: It’s frightening how true that is.
dmsilev
@Aleta: Yeah, pretty much this. The thing is, Kelly basically was the ideal COS for Trump: a guy who evidently shared a lot of his hard-line views but was disciplined and organized in ways that Trump never had a hope of matching. I’m going to guess that any replacement will keep the hard line views, but will lose the organizational skills and discipline.
Mandalay
@rikyrah:
I assumed that was clickbait but it’s not; it’s accurate! Here’s a link to the actual NPR interview with Sanders: http://digital.vpr.net/post/sen-bernie-sanders-gun-control-russian-meddling-and-congressional-dysfunction#stream/0
The interviewer was polite, but very persistent with Sanders: if you knew about Russian interference why didn’t you bring it up with your supporters? Sanders repeatedly dodged the question, and refused to answer. Instead his response was to blame the Clinton campaign. Listen to the interview between ~16:00 and ~18:00.
What a jackass.
Mike in NC
John Kelly — as Adam pointed out not too long ago — failed to “keep his honor clean” by working for the American Caligula.
tobie
@Yutsano: Unless I’m missing something, the underlying article is from Feb 2018.
Wapiti
@Aleta: And the question for the Marine Corps is: did the Corps keep Kelly’s bigotry in check, or did the Corps cover up the bigotry?
Amir Khalid
@dmsilev:
As more senior people leave Trump’s White House, it will surely get harder to find decent replacements even by Trump’s bigly high standards. The competence of his staff is only going to decline even further.
Matt McIrvin
@Mandalay: It sure wasn’t the Hillary fans I knew who kept complaining about “centrists fucking the Russia chicken”.
dmsilev
@Amir Khalid: Yep. See, as another example, him nominating a former Fox host as UN Ambassador.
Hob
@Ladyraxterinok: Yeah, I always thought that was pretty funny. I suspect Asimov probably didn’t intend it that way, but I like the idea that the real strength of the Foundation is just that people feel much more confident if they think someone understands what’s going on. The one scene from the series that’s really stuck with me is when they start up Seldon’s next recording and he starts babbling about shit that isn’t even close to what’s been going on, and everyone’s looking at each other going ohhhhhhh fuck.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mandalay:
Supporters? How about the FBI.
Aleta
@dmsilev: In the beginning T wanted generals and CEOs. Guys of stature who would bow. Now he wants anyone who’ll jump in front of the train.
steppy
I stand corrected. Individual 1 is on the premises.
Corner Stone
@Aleta: Gen JK’s lying on Rep Wilson was despicable. His then refusal to apologize under clear and damning evidence was an attempt to out-Trump Trumpism. The man is scum. I’m with Cole on this, the first paper to try and hang dignity on Kelly should be firebombed. Cole didn’t say that exactly and I mean rhetorically but you know damn well the hagiography is gonna happen.
Corner Stone
@dmsilev:
I suspect she will be wearing a lot of dresses and skirts since she’s going to have a pipeline to John Bolton straight up her ass at every meeting.
Mandalay
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I’m sure you are right. Apart from it’s salacious aspect, the Stormy Daniels story resonated because it was so simple to understand: married man has sex with another woman and pays her off with hush money. Only nerds were interested in the illegal campaign contributions side of the story.
And when the story is about meetings with people with foreign names, and shelf companies, and wire transfers, and quid pro quos most people tune out. Try reading any classic Russian novel by (say) Dostoevsky or Tolstoy. However good the story, it’s a bit of a slog simply because the characters have long Russian names which are outside of our frame of reference.
Test yourself: How many Russians can you name who might be involved in all the shenanigans apart from Putin? And how many Ukranians?
We don’t do complicated.
Chetan Murthy
@Betty Cracker:
Thank you, BC! Yes: “sovereignty” has nothing to do with “decency”. Which is not to say that decency is under-rated or undesirable. But … typically, sovereignty is a precondition for decency. Empires typically don’t get there by being decent, and don’t tolerate independent shows of decency by their client-states.
Perhaps Cermet is assuming that America’s system of government will survive, that this isn’t an attack upon us all. Perhaps Cermet is lulled into confidence by the historical fact that we’ve not been attacked on our mainland in two centuries. But then, the Internet (and mass media) has a way of routing around physical barriers.
sukabi
The Meltdown has reached train wreck dimensions...waiting for the final explosions…
Corner Stone
@Mike in NC:
“Not too long ago” being the operative phrase.
Corner Stone
@Mandalay:
It’s also mainly because you could brain a Teamster or chock an 18-wheeler with one tome.
Chetan Murthy
@Betty Cracker: @Cermet: Cermet, are you assuming that whatever level of foreign influence transpires today, is the limit — it can’t get any worse? [Also, it’s not -merely- Putin, but also KSA and others, right?] B/c it can. [Not that I excuse it, but:] When Israel influences our pols, at least it’s all out in the open (that we know of, and it seems reasonable). The dangerous thing here is that our pols are being secretly -bought- and -blackmailed-. You can’t know how far things will go, how bad things will get. There’s a reason campaign contributions are made public (and why so many of us are up in arms about Citizens United): at least, when a pol is “bought” that way, we all know about it. The pol can be held to account for it. When this sort of stuff (and esp. blackmail) happens in secrecy, the people are unaware and unable to become aware.
I mean, this shouldn’t be hard.
A Ghost To Most
@Corner Stone: Hah. Some people like the sound of their own writing too much.
I was taught early at GE: if you can’t write your idea on the back of a business card, you don’t have a clear idea yet.
Chetan Murthy
@patrick II: They’re only doing what we did for decades, no? I’m morbidly curious to see how this whole Meng Wanzhou (Huawei CFO, heir apparent, apprehended in Canada, US is extraditing her) will play out: it might be a sign for the “great power struggle” between China and the US. That is, if Canada accedes to her returning to China, it would be a sign that even Canada can no longer treat the US as the pre-eminent Great Power.
I think Adam’s written about how if you’re a Great Power (US) you co-opt the neighbors of your peer competitors (China, Russia), e.g. Vietnam, Ukraine. because then those clients keep your competitors busy in their own backyard, and unable to dick around with you in yours, or elsewhere. It is for this reason that watching China’s rising influence in Canada is troubling; similarly for Russia’s in Western Europe. Both are “our backyard”.
trollhattan
@sukabi:
Weirder and weirder. Did he hand his phone to Roseanne?
NotMax
@A Ghost To Most
“Idea: create much bigger business cards.”
:)
Corner Stone
@Chetan Murthy:
If Trump actually understands what happened with this issue he has to be furious about it. “His” DoJ messing with all that money China is pouring into the US’ coffers due to tariffs. And now this Deep State betrayal!
Mandalay
@Corner Stone:
Not just for Kelly. It’s already starting in the press this week for Michael Flynn.
He’s being glowingly compared with Manafort and Cohen. He’s being praised for his pleading guilty because it demonstrated his willingness to put his “family first”, completely ignoring that Mueller had him over a barrel.
The guy was trouble in the military. He was fired by Obama. He was a traitor, happily hopping in bed with Russia and Turkey to line his pockets while he chanted “Lock Her Up”. Flynn is complete scum both as an American and as a human being, yet his path to redemption is already being paved by worthless hacks.
I can already see it in 12 months time:
ETA: Ollie North all over again.
catclub
@Mandalay:
Kislyak, Oleg Deripaska
definitely not Sergei Magnitsky
The Lodger
@tobie: I visited a friend in Bladen County about 30 years ago. She was in her first year of practice as an MD and was there to fulfill a commitment to the Public Health Service to pay off medical school. We figured she was one of the three dozen wealthiest people in the county. Bladen County is off the interstate, the tobacco industry was dying, and there’s nothing to keep anybody there after high school. The people who stay either don’t know our from are, or know the difference and don’t give a shit.
zhena gogolia
@Corner Stone:
Hey, now
Litlebritdifrnt
@sukabi: Quick question, has Twitler ever “been” to Vietnam? If not the “next time” tweet is a lie like every other tweet.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Litlebritdifrnt: Yes, November 10-12, 2017. His bone spur prevented an earlier visit.
Chetan Murthy
@Corner Stone: I’m fully expecting that China will find a way to pour some $$ into his pocket, and he’ll just make the extradition go away (for “international peace”). I mean, we all know there’s no way China’s going to go back to buying our soybeans — not when they can buy from Brazil and co-opt their government for a fraction of what it costs to co-opt ours.
Gelfling 545
@Gin & Tonic: The AP reports that they are not, however, chanting that they want Trump.
I thought it might be possible thst they’d like him to make an appearance, there being an abundance of lampposts in Paris.
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
The US has to prove a case for extradition in a Canadian Court.
Canadian Courts have a low tolerance for American fuckery, and that was long before Dolt 45.
http://yastreblyansky.blogspot.com/2018/12/leverage.html?m=1
sukabi
@Litlebritdifrnt: pretty sure he lost the war in his “personal Vietnam”…actually been there? Don’t think so.
Tertiary syphilis is a bitch though…and it’s winning.
Mike in Pasadena
@cain: Poison pills enacted to strip power from the newly-elected, refusing to even have a hearing let alone vote on a nominee, and taking revenge on states that did not vote Republican (by reducing deduction of state and local taxes). The last one really helps unify the country by making revenge-taking on regions the norm. /s
Michael Cain
@Constance Reader:
When I’m depressed on the subject, my bet is on partition. The regional splits are shaping up pretty well. It takes 38 states to agree on a partition, and they don’t all have to have the same reasons for wanting it.
Chetan Murthy
@Jay: Jay, I’m guessing you think this is kinda high-handed on the US’ part, and I agree with you. Both because I don’t give a shit about these Iran sanctions (we should have kept with the JCPOA) and b/c if we really believe it’s about intellectual property and corporate espionage, we have much better things we can do (like block imports from offending companies and their business partners). Even if it were about sanctions-busting, we could go after that company (ZTE, IIRC) that was selling Android gear to Iran, and make it stick. Not slap ’em on the wrist. As someone wrote, every American exec traveling on business in China is checking their travel itinerary right about now.
My (wild-ass) guess is that Shitler will take this oppty to demonstrate that he’s a gangster, by extracting a personal $$ price from China. That will further shit-stain our reputation all around the world. Ah, well.
Frank Wilhoit
@A Ghost To Most: So, clear == trivial. Who knew?
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
Canada doesn’t go around arresting people on a whim.
For Canada to have made the arrest, there must be a US Arrest warrant backed by claims backed by “evidence”.
Now there will be an Extradition hearing at which the US will have to prove:
– Jourisdiction
– that the Defendant will get a fair trial,
– that the charges are lawful, based in criminal law, untainted by politics*
– that there is sufficient evidence to sustain the charges
*( musing and tweeting about the Trade War Hostage ain’t helping the US Case one little bit)
So, we will see what happens.
sherparick
@Frankensteinbeck: I am afraid this is true. For Republican Base, particularly the White Evangelical Christianist Base, Trump’s and the Russians attack on our election was justified to keep the monster Hillary out of the White House and to reassert White Supremacy in the U.S. after a Black man had been president for 8 years. Resentment and loathing drive their politics and their Anti-Christian Religion.
Tehanu
@cain:
Exactly.