The News Thread

[HamburgerBoy]

He ruined HRC's chances and now there are millions of ethnic, sexual, and gender minorities dying under Trump.

 

[CiG]

Seems like all the deaths you can read about that are related to WikiLeaks are people working for or with Assange mysteriously dying in close succession to each other. The same Google search brought up this 2010 article which attempts to ask whether WikiLeaks puts lives at risk and it seems to come up with bupkis to substantiate this narrative.

Seems like a meme that only benefits the intelligence community and its toadies.

 

[CiG]

Did anybody see that Trump is cucking on Assange?

 

[CiG]

Hillary Clinton told an event in New York that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's dramatic arrest on Wednesday was not about 'punishing journalism', but holding him to account for the hacking charges against him. The Australian is charged by the US with conspiring to hack into a Pentagon computer network with whistleblower Chelsea Manning. WikiLeaks released a cache of hacked Democratic party emails that embarrassed Clinton's campaign during the 2016 presidential election.

 

[Dak]

I would hardly call what it took to access HRCs and the DNCs servers "hacking."

 

[CiG]

Spoiler

 

[CiG]

The Justice Department plans to release a lightly redacted version of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s 400-page report Thursday, offering a granular look at the ways in which President Trump was suspected of having obstructed justice, people familiar with the matter said.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Congress has given much more leeway to American presidents over much more involved war efforts in the past. They just don't like it when it involves 1) a president they can't control quite as easily and 2) the murder of some dumbfuck establishment journalist that probably deserved it. Three years ago Congress blocked Rand Paul's efforts to send sales of arms to the Saudis, but now suddenly all the "moderate" faghats are concerned about our weapon sales when we're not even active participants in the war. Frankly, it's a win-win. The War Powers Resolution is upheld, now war can get a lot more partisan and inefficient, giving majority parties the right to micromanage the military and all around fuck up our ability to wage war. The War Powers Resolution is ruled unconstitutional, and suddenly there's a new, vast gulf between executive and legislative powers, and Congress will be much more wary in the future about declaring wars knowing the president calls the shots forever until the war has been declared over. Ultimately it's making me like Trump much more than I did before knowing that he's causing Congress to self-destruct and throw away some of its greatest hands that it has maintained for 50 years. At the very least, shit is happening.

I also love how the media is losing its shit over Barr holding a press conference for 90 minutes before the release of the memo. "How DARE you shape the narrative before we have a chance to!"

I took a quick gander at who the Libertarian Party was running for 2020 and I think I'm probably voting Trump this time around.

 

[Einherjar86]

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/18/redacted-mueller-report-released-1280960

The report recounts at least two occasions in June 2017 when Trump asked McGahn to order that DOJ dismiss Mueller.

Trump said firing Mueller was justified because of what the president considered conflicts of interest, like an alleged dispute related to Mueller’s membership in a Virginia golf club Trump acquired and issues raised by Mueller being briefly considered for a Trump nomination as FBI director.

McGahn told Mueller’s office that he viewed those supposed conflicts as “silly” and “not real,” and resolved not to carry out Trump’s directive. After a second phone call from Trump in one day about the issue, McGahn began to take steps to resign, the report says. “McGahn recalled feeling trapped. ... McGahn decided he had to resign,” Mueller’s team wrote. “He then drove to the office to pack his belongings and submit his resignation letter.”

While McGahn was talked out of resigning at that point, he eventually left the administration in October 2018.

The report also said Trump once dressed down McGahn for his note-taking practice. “What about these notes? Why do you take notes? I never had a lawyer who takes notes,” the president declared, according to McGahn.

McGahn said he replied that he keeps notes because he’s a “real lawyer,” the report says.

A glimpse into the comedy of errors that is the current administration. At least the redacted version left in some goodies...

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Yeah the McGahn stuff looks like the worst thing against Trump right now and I could imagine it being enough for Dems to talk more seriously about impeachment. The Comey firing reads more as PR wrangling than actual obstruction; I don't see how it's obstruction to ask your FBI director to repeat supportive privately-said words in public. Same goes for pressuring his people into editing a media statement for his own benefit. Asking his people to reopen the Clinton investigation seems pretty tangential to obstruction as well; the intent would obviously be to make himself look better to the public and to make the public wary of the Trump investigation, but unless it was done in such a way as to siphon Trump investigation resources elsewhere, that seems like nothing. Presidents use false flags and red herrings all the time to distract people from their scandals; if one could produce a single sentence from Bill Clinton indicating that he was aware that NATO bombing in Serbia took some public heat off of his scandals, would that be obstruction of justice?

 

[Dak]

The goodies really are that the entire investigation was an expensive baseless witch-hunt based on collusion by HRC backers with the "intelligence community." So terrible it might have almost maybe been obstructed.

 

[Oblivious Maximus]

 

[Oblivious Maximus]

And seeing as it's been a while since I've been accused of only posting Fox propaganda, here's two more Tucker videos:





He's becoming much more of a smartass in his monologues and it's hilarious.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

The goodies really are that the entire investigation was an expensive baseless witch-hunt based on collusion by HRC backers with the "intelligence community." So terrible it might have almost maybe been obstructed.

The Mueller report doesn't really emphasize that though.

 

[Dak]

The Mueller report doesn't really emphasize that though.

Of course. Why would it?

 

[Einherjar86]

The goodies really are that the entire investigation was an expensive baseless witch-hunt based on collusion by HRC backers with the "intelligence community." So terrible it might have almost maybe been obstructed.

Baseless? If anything, the conversations and details that have emerged show that it wasn't a baseless investigation. They had plenty of reason to suspect Trump and his administration of collusion. Not finding enough to charge =/= "baseless."

 

[Dak]

Baseless? If anything, the conversations and details that have emerged show that it wasn't a baseless investigation. They had plenty of reason to suspect Trump and his administration of collusion. Not finding enough to charge =/= "baseless."

"Conversations" is one of those examples of shifting goalposts which has characterized the coverage of this farce for the last 2-3 years. It was a hitjob from the inside based on a completely bullshit dossier (not the dossier itself but everything surrounding it). The entire operation from the beginning is another example of why HRC should be rotting in jail right now, instead of rotting away in front of microphones. Inferring election interference collusion based on a brief trip by a brief member of a presidential campaign to Russia requires far more torturous mental aerobics than inferring a different sort of collusion based on the brief meeting between Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch. Further tortured logic involves considering getting supposed dirt from Russians on Trump by Steele as "opposition research," but getting supposed dirt from Russians on HRC/the DNC is possible collusion by Papadopoulos.

 

[Einherjar86]

I think you're being unfair. Once it was clear that the Russian government had interfered, meetings between Trump's team and the Russians look far less innocent. There was more than enough reason to investigate. That doesn't mean that people didn't have vindictive motives for doing so; but the questionable motives of certain people doesn't mean the entire investigation was unjustified.

For what it's worth, I don't think Trump deserves to be rotting in a jail cell (for this, at least; I believe he's committed sexual assault, but that's purely based on his comments and behaviors--not something I'm prepared to state with certainty). I just think he doesn't deserve to be president. I believed that before the report was released, and the details just reinforce that position.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Which particular details make you believe that he doesn't deserve to be president?

 

[Einherjar86]

The repeated attempts to have others obstruct justice on his behalf, specifically.