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EvC Forum Side Orders Coffee House The Trump Presidency

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Author Topic:   The Trump Presidency
jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 1966 of 4573 (829032)
02-28-2018 7:00 PM
Reply to: Message 1965 by NoNukes
02-28-2018 6:32 PM


Re: Kushner’s Security Clearance Downgraded
NoNukes writes:
Kushner's loss of security clearance will have ramifications. Many of them will be political.
I don't think anyone in the Trump Administration or Trump Inc is very much worried about political ramifications until and unless they become financial ramifications.
If people, particularly foreign money, decide that Lil' Trump is no longer a profit center or Congress starts looking into Trump Inc finances, then, and only then will anyone worry about political ramifications.

My Sister's Website: Rose Hill Studios My Website: My Website

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 1967 of 4573 (829042)
03-01-2018 9:31 AM
Reply to: Message 1957 by Percy
02-27-2018 8:27 PM


Re: Collusion by the Trump Campaign Proven Six Months Ago?
And now we have more evidence of a direct connection between the Trump Campaign and the Russians though the person of Roger Stone, advisor to the Trump campaign in 2016. Stone is suspected of coordinating the WikiLeaks release of Podesta and DNC emails public during the 2016 presidential campaign. Sources for this post:
The events implicating Roger Stone are:
  • On Wednesday, July 22, 2016, Wikileaks begins the release of DNC emails, just after the Trump campaign fired campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and was in tumult over Trump's tweets about the Orlando nightclub massacre and his earlier racial attacks on U.S. district judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is Hispanic, and just days before the Democratic National Convention. During this period Roger Stone is in contact with DNC email hacker Guccifer 2. He also alludes publicly to an upcoming October Surprise.
  • On Sunday, October 2, 2016, five days before the WikiLeaks release of the Podesta emails, Roger Stone tweeted, "Wednesday Hillary Clinton is done. #Wikileaks." He was off by only two days. The release of Podesta emails actually began on Friday, October 7, 2016, the day the Access Hollywood tape was revealed by the Washington Post.
Roger Stone's accounts of his involvement in the release of the DNC and Podesta emails are so full of lies and contradictions and changing stories that one cannot rely upon him as a source. What we do know is this:
  • Guccifer 2 is a fictional character created by the Russians to hide their involvement in the hacking of the DNC emails. So when Roger Stone was in contact with Guccifer 2, he was actually in contact with Russian operatives while he was an advisor to the Trump campaign.
  • Roger Stone said he was only in indirect contact with Wikileaks, but it was later discovered that he was in direct contact with them (see The Atlantic account) while he was an advisor to the Trump campaign.
Both Stone and Wikileaks deny having direct contact with each other, but The Atlantic's documentation reveals this to be a falsehood. While the smoking gun of direct coordination between Stone and Wikileaks of the email releases does not exist publicly, unless one believes in incredible consecutive coincidences (read the Atlantic article) coordination must have been a factor in the timing.
That is, Roger Stone, an advisor to the Trump Campaign, engaged in a conspiracy with Russian operatives to defraud the United States by coordinating the release of hacked emails by Wikileaks to do maximum damage to the Clinton campaign. Just by what we know publicly it is already apparent that Mueller has multiple avenues for pursuing conspiracy charges against members of the Trump campaign and, I believe, Trump himself.
I'm aware that there's a "wishful thinking" aspect to my views, but again, think Nixon, whose detractors saw their fondest wishes come true, at least until Gerald Ford issued a "full, free and absolute pardon".
--Percy

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 Message 1957 by Percy, posted 02-27-2018 8:27 PM Percy has replied

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 Message 1970 by Percy, posted 03-02-2018 3:09 PM Percy has replied

  
jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


(2)
Message 1968 of 4573 (829043)
03-01-2018 9:53 AM
Reply to: Message 1967 by Percy
03-01-2018 9:31 AM


On fondest wishes.
Be careful what you wish for. Trump in office can only do limited damage. A Trump mid term replacement might be evil AND not totally incompetent like il Donald.

My Sister's Website: Rose Hill Studios My Website: My Website

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NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 1969 of 4573 (829045)
03-01-2018 12:11 PM
Reply to: Message 1967 by Percy
03-01-2018 9:31 AM


Re: Collusion by the Trump Campaign Proven Six Months Ago?
Both Stone and Wikileaks deny having direct contact with each other, but The Atlantic's documentation reveals this to be a falsehood. While the smoking gun of direct coordination between Stone and Wikileaks of the email releases does not exist publicly, unless one believes in incredible consecutive coincidences (read the Atlantic article) coordination must have been a factor in the timing.
The problem with trying to link things to Trump's campaign doing something stupid and needing a distraction is that Trump did or said stupid crap on something close to a weekly basis. The timelines you have put forward are intriguing, but I imagine that I could string together a narrative for just about any pattern of leaks, given that the leaks were designed with a fairly rational (for Russia) objective.
Edited by NoNukes, : change links to leaks

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
We got a thousand points of light for the homeless man. We've got a kinder, gentler, machine gun hand. Neil Young, Rockin' in the Free World.
Worrying about the "browning of America" is not racism. -- Faith
I hate you all, you hate me -- Faith

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 1970 of 4573 (829076)
03-02-2018 3:09 PM
Reply to: Message 1967 by Percy
03-01-2018 9:31 AM


Re: Collusion by the Trump Campaign Proven Six Months Ago?
Jennifer Rubin, op-ed columnist for the Washington Post, writes a mean editorial. Here she is in today's Post sort of summarizing where things stand in the Trump administration. Some excerpts (all the links work):
quote:
In the course of a week, President Trump convulsed the markets and American business with a protectionist initiative which, if carried out, risks setting off a trade war; he scrambled Republicans by promising to back a bunch of gun measures he probably doesn’t intend to back once his aides explain that the National Rifle Association and his base oppose most of what he embraced; and he refused to empower his national security team to protect our election system against future manipulation by Russia.
...
Even more alarming given Trump’s invitation for Russia to hack into Hillary Clinton’s emails, and the attendees of the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower designed to get dirt on her one source suggested that a new indictment could include unnamed American co-conspirators as part of a strategy to pressure those involved to cooperate. Collusion, in other words, may begin to show up in indictments.
Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner (who attended that Trump Tower meeting with Russians) lost his top-secret-level interim security clearance, and was found to have received hundreds of millions of dollars ($184 million from Apollo Global Management and $325 million from Citigroup) in business loans after meeting with top executives at the White House.
We also learned that Israel, United Arab Emirates, Mexico and China are plotting to manipulate Kushner, using his finances as leverage. Speaking of which, the supposedly successful real-estate mogul is in debt to the tune of $1.2 billion. In no other administration would such a character...be let in the door, let alone invested with such a mammoth portfolio.
...
Now Ivanka is potentially in hot water as well. CNN reports:...
...
Hope Hicks, Trump’s longtime aide, is leaving and H.R. McMaster, the national security adviser, is reportedly on his way out. Senior economic adviser Gary Cohn, distressed by Trump’s plunge into protectionism, might now go as well.
...
Now, anyone who is surprised by the utter chaos, the ethical sleaze, the policy incoherence and the nepotism/cronyism was not paying attention during Trump’s career in real estate or during his campaign. This is how Trump ran his family operation, stumbling through one failed venture after another. This is how Trump wound up declaring bankruptcy multiple times. No one...can keep him on task. Trump is still indifferent to learning policy and is prone to prattle in public about subjects he doesn’t bother to study. No one else can make up for his lack of diligence, ethics and decency. This is not so much as an administration as a weird fusion of the court of Louis XIV and the Mafia, all built around a cult of personality that lacks any self-restraint or awareness.
...
Trump will either be compelled to leave office or will continue to spin out of control. Aides tell the press this is a new level of chaos. Don’t worry it’ll get worse. It always does.
--Percy

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 1971 of 4573 (829077)
03-02-2018 3:46 PM
Reply to: Message 1970 by Percy
03-02-2018 3:09 PM


Re: Collusion by the Trump Campaign Proven Six Months Ago?
Another good opinion piece appears in today's Washington Post: Mueller’s net is tightening around Trump’s inner circle and maybe Trump himself by Randall D. Eliason who teaches white-collar criminal law at George Washington University Law School. Instead of quoting from it I'll just summarize his points. I'll may occasionally use his language without quotes:
  • Mueller is turning up the heat on Trump
  • There are three tracks to Mueller's investigation (we already knew this, but just to make sure it's clear):
    1. Russian interference with the 2016 election and any involvement by the Trump campaign.
    2. Obstruction of justice of the Mueller investigation.
    3. Ancillary crimes uncovered during the investigation (e.g., Manafort/Gates money laundering)
  • Mueller may now be focusing on Trump campaign involvement with the stolen Podesta/DNC emails with an eye on potential conspiracy (what did the president know and when did he know it).
  • CNN reports that Mueller is also investigating Trump's business ties to Russian before the 2016 presidential campaign, and whether a quid pro quo was involved (a possible quid pro quo came up earlier in this thread). Recall that Trump has declared this area out of bounds.
  • "As Watergate taught us, sometimes it’s the coverup that gets you."
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Formatting.

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NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 1972 of 4573 (829731)
03-12-2018 8:06 PM


Betsy Devos Interview
In another thread, Percy points us to the CBS interview on Confederate Monuments. The interview he pointed to is up, available at the link he provided, which I will repeat here.
60 Minutes - Full Episodes Video - CBS News
You can also find a 60 minutes interview with Betsy Devos at the same link. Ms. Devos is the current Secretary of Education. As is the case for several of Trump's cabinet picks, (Scott Pruitt being the best example), Devos appears to be diametrically opposed to the mission of the agency.
You can find the entire interview at the above link. During the interview, Devos admits to never having visited a troubled school, and to having no knowledge of how her policies on school choice have turned out in Michigan, her home state.
quote:
I don’t know. Overall, I I can’t say overall that they have all gotten better, DeVos responded.
Well here are some facts about what Devos' policies have done for Michigan Schools
Besty DeVos grilled over Michigan school struggles on '60 Minutes'
quote:
Overall student performance in Michigan has declined dramatically compared with other states since the early 2000s, said Amber Arellano, executive director of Education Trust-Midwest, which does not advocate for or against charter schools.
Michigan students ranked 41st in the nation for fourth-grade reading performance in 2015, down from 38th in 2013 and 28th in 2003, according to the group’s recent analysis of National Assessment of Educational Progress standardized test scores

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
We got a thousand points of light for the homeless man. We've got a kinder, gentler, machine gun hand. Neil Young, Rockin' in the Free World.
Worrying about the "browning of America" is not racism. -- Faith
I hate you all, you hate me -- Faith

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 1973 of 4573 (829747)
03-13-2018 9:00 AM


Tillerson is out
And Pompeo is put in his place. Whether that is good or bad news for the demoralised State department I don’t know.

Replies to this message:
 Message 1974 by jar, posted 03-13-2018 9:14 AM PaulK has replied
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jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 1974 of 4573 (829748)
03-13-2018 9:14 AM
Reply to: Message 1973 by PaulK
03-13-2018 9:00 AM


Re: Tillerson is out
And Gina Haspel will replace Pompeo at CIA. The dark side just got even darker with that move.

My Sister's Website: Rose Hill Studios My Website: My Website

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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Diomedes
Member
Posts: 995
From: Central Florida, USA
Joined: 09-13-2013


Message 1975 of 4573 (829749)
03-13-2018 9:36 AM
Reply to: Message 1973 by PaulK
03-13-2018 9:00 AM


Re: Tillerson is out
I am no conspiracy theorist. But yesterday, Tillerson spoke out against Russia and the poisoning of that spy in the UK. And today, he is fired. Hmmmm......

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Tangle
Member
Posts: 9489
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.9


Message 1976 of 4573 (829750)
03-13-2018 9:43 AM
Reply to: Message 1975 by Diomedes
03-13-2018 9:36 AM


Re: Tillerson is out
It wasn't just poisoning, the Russians used a nerve agent - a weapon of mass destruction. This action amounts to an unlawful use of force against the UK. This threatens to become a UN incident, Article 2, paragraph 4. Almost an act of war.
Really disapointed with the US reaction to this. Virtual silence.

Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona
"Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
- Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.

This message is a reply to:
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PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 1977 of 4573 (829751)
03-13-2018 9:50 AM
Reply to: Message 1974 by jar
03-13-2018 9:14 AM


Re: Tillerson is out
She has experience of destroying evidence of illegal activity and getting away with it. Trump may be looking for some pointers.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1974 by jar, posted 03-13-2018 9:14 AM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
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jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 1978 of 4573 (829752)
03-13-2018 10:09 AM
Reply to: Message 1977 by PaulK
03-13-2018 9:50 AM


Re: Tillerson is out
As well as running secret prisons.

My Sister's Website: Rose Hill Studios My Website: My Website

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Diomedes
Member
Posts: 995
From: Central Florida, USA
Joined: 09-13-2013


Message 1979 of 4573 (829771)
03-13-2018 2:58 PM
Reply to: Message 1976 by Tangle
03-13-2018 9:43 AM


Re: Tillerson is out
It wasn't just poisoning, the Russians used a nerve agent - a weapon of mass destruction. This action amounts to an unlawful use of force against the UK. This threatens to become a UN incident, Article 2, paragraph 4. Almost an act of war.
I think the Russian's modus operandi is 'go big or go home'. Remember the last time something similar happened, they used a radioactive isotope. So I don't think they have too many qualms about pesky 'treaties' or UN violations.

This message is a reply to:
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NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 1980 of 4573 (829772)
03-13-2018 3:09 PM
Reply to: Message 1973 by PaulK
03-13-2018 9:00 AM


Re: Tillerson is out
Trump is an asshat of a boss...
quote:
The only mention of Trump came at the top of the statement when Tillerson mentioned that the President has called him a little after noontime from Air Force One to talk about his ouster. That call came hours after Trump told the world he was fired on Twitter.
Trump couldn't be bothered to tell Tillerson that he was fired before tweeting about it. Who wouldn't know that such lack of decorum is not just unpresidential, but totally unacceptable?
Tillerson is probably gone because he did not agree with Trump often enough and because those disagreements were very public. It could not have helped that Trump is a moron and that Tillerson said so.
Tillerson was presiding over a period of destruction of the state department. I would welcome his leaving if there were any hope that that destruction was not mandated from above. However, Trump does not seem to value the state department. We still don't even have an ambassador to South Korea.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
We got a thousand points of light for the homeless man. We've got a kinder, gentler, machine gun hand. Neil Young, Rockin' in the Free World.
Worrying about the "browning of America" is not racism. -- Faith
I hate you all, you hate me -- Faith

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1973 by PaulK, posted 03-13-2018 9:00 AM PaulK has not replied

  
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