Papadopoulos was in contact with senior members of Trump's campaign staff

Yeah, Papa and Page.

 

But that is not what he said. He said something to the effect, "If the Russians hacked, maybe they have Hillary's 33,000 lost emails. Russia, if you are listening,I hope so. The press would be most grateful." To get some nefarious collaboration out of that you really have to scrape the bottom of the barrel.

 

"To the effect" is the least egregious way of phrasing what he said.

Why not simply QUOTE him?

 

Would it make any difference to you?
(The answer I'm confident is no.)

 

"Sandra The Butthurt" is on a roll tonight. Trickle down economics............from the POTUS to forum members.

 

It would....be honest...try it some time

 

I'm curious. Why would a direct quote be convincing but a paraphrase that carried the meaning, intent, and context (different from the statement that Trump asked Russia "to find and reveal the emails of an opponent"), but left a couple of articles and adjectives out not be convincing?

 

He said, "Russian, if you are listening ..."

I am not going to debate semantics with you. He wanted the Russians to help him with his campaign. If you can't see that, you have a real problem.

End of story.

 

No, I can't see that. No problem.

 

“I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” the Republican nominee said at a news conference in Florida. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

This was said months after Trump KNEW that Russia had the e-mails

 

The first, IIRC, is accurate. The second statement, IIRC, has a problem: Trump knew that the DNC and Podesta had been hacked because of the emails leaked by Wikileaks. (They swore that Russia was not their source, but I'll play along since it's not relevant to the issue here.) The 33,000 missing emails are different. They are the ones that Hillary said she either lost or were destroyed, presumably not hacked by the Russians at all. Trump did not know that the Russians had any of the 33,000 emails, and in fact had no proof that the Russians had anything. (Nobody had such proof, just strong conjecture. We are positive that Russia did some hacking, but not for what. And recall the DNC did not let the FBI in to verify their computer systems.)

 

He was clearly asking for Russia to expose hacked e-mails (and according to Papadoofus he already knew that Russia had hacked the DNC) regardless of which particular e-mails he was asking Russia to release.

 

With every new revelation that another person involved in the Trump campaign communicated with Russian representatives it becomes more and more difficult for Trump to claim ignorance of their activities. At what point does his claim of ignorance of Russian involvement become a lie ? 4 people ? 5 people ? 10 people ? Once that threshold is met, the question will become, why didn’t he order it stopped ? If he didn’t, and can’t prove it, it becomes tacit approval. This might not be important in court, yet, but it will cripple any Republican in a general election. If it ever gets to court, the odds are getting worse with ever indictment that gets unsealed.

 

This is a hoot. This is hard to believe, even for Trump.

Steve Benen writes:

Donald Trump’s years-long affinity for conspiracy theories has long alarmed his critics, raising questions about his judgment and ability to understand evidence. Yesterday’s reporting, however, takes those questions to a very different level.

At the urging of President Donald Trump, CIA Director Mike Pompeo met last month with a former U.S. intelligence official who advocates a fringe theory that the hack of the Democrats during the election was an inside job and not the work of Russian intelligence, the former official told NBC News.

“He’s trying to find some factual evidence,” said Bill Binney, a former code-breaker at the National Security Agency.

Binney left the agency in 2000 and has become a self-styled whistleblower, making unsupported claims that the NSA is collecting and storing nearly every U.S. communication. His meeting with Pompeo was first reported by The Intercept, an internet news site.

NBC News confirmed with Binney, a frequent guest on Fox News and the Kremlin’s RT, that he met with the CIA director, and Pompeo told him that he took the meeting at the urging of the President.

Pompeo and everyone else in the U.S. intelligence community knows, Russian agents, not DNC officials, were responsible for the attack on the American elections last year. It might make Trump feel better to believe nonsense, but taking this a step further, though, if the President embraced conspiratorial silliness and used it to publish strange tweets, it would merely be annoying. The fact that Trump told the director of the Central Intelligence Agency to have a conversation with someone peddling a discredited conspiracy theory is something else entirely. Fact is, it is downright funny.

It is possible Trump learned about Binney and his analysis by watching Fox News, where Binney has been a frequent guest, appearing at least 10 times since September 2016.

Can anyone take Trump seriously anymore?

 

Yes, if we are to believe that Trump was oblivious to what was going on around him, then it is painfully obvious that he is an incompetent leader. There are only two choices. Either he knew about the activities with the Russians and that amounts to collaboration. Or he is so incompetent that his ability to handle the duties of the office is in serious question.

In other words, impeachment or Section Four of the 25th Amendment.

 

You are being very patient. There are times Trump supporters want to stress the trivial so that the important details become overlooked. Arguing semantics can waste a lot of time and energy.

 

I had a good post but either my computer or PF ate it.......

And a post cannot be deleted, and it must have some words......

 

You're mumbling.

What are you talking about? It has been my experience that when a person is working on a computer and something goes wrong, it is generally due to operator error.

 

There are times one wonders how some people got elected. One such example is Congressman Matt Gaetz.

According to Vanity Fair, "a group of conservative Republicans lawmakers has taken the Russian collusion counter-narrative embraced by Donald Trump and run with it, turning the conspiracy theory born out of the far-right fringe into a clarion call for congressional action. On Wednesday, Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz took the House floor to emphatically call for the resignation of Robert Mueller, arguing that the former F.B.I. director has “indisputable conflicts of interest” that prevent him from objectively leading the rapidly escalating Justice Department investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government."

“We are at risk of a coup d’état in this country if we allow an unaccountable person with no oversight to undermine the duly elected president of the United States,” Gaetz said, according to The Hill. “That is precisely what is happening right now with the indisputable conflicts of interest that are present with Mr. Mueller and others at the Department of Justice.”

Apparently, Mueller is doing a good job. Trump lackeys in Congress want to fire his ass.

At one end of the political spectrum we have an idiot talking about a coup d’état in America. At the other end of the political spectrum we have an idiot talking about impeachment. The former is ludicrous. The latter a possibility sometime in the future.

 

Then I don't think you are looking at the evidence squarely and fairly.

I do think Mueller is doing exactly that.

 

Mike Flynn was once my favorite target. For those interested in the Russian probe and the collaboration of Trump's staff with the Russians, Flynn was a prosecutor's dream.



As a private citizen he interfered with the policies of the President in relation to a hostile foreign power, Russia. Later, Trump appointed him his national security advisor. Later still, Flynn lied about his phone call to the Russian ambassador and was fired. Russia has paid Flynn thousands of dollars for services rendered. He didn't bother telling his boss he was an agent for a foreign government.

There has been so much other evidence against Trump and his staff, Flynn was temporarily forgotten.

Now he is back, and if Trump is afraid of what Papa knows, he will scared out of his wits with Flynn. Unlike Papa, Flynn was a senior very active member of Trump's campaign team.

The Washington Post writes:

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his team are no strangers to the practice of prosecutorial hardball. That skill may be coming into play once again if, as news reports indicate, the special counsel is turning his attention to former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn and Flynn’s son Michael G. Flynn, who worked with his father’s lobbying firm and was also involved in the Trump transition. The elder Flynn has long been thought to be in Mueller’s sights, and CNN reported Wednesday that Flynn and his wife are worried about their son’s legal exposure as well.


If in fact prosecutors have built cases against both men, they now have a huge, juicy carrot to dangle in front of the elder Flynn: Plead guilty and testify against others, and we’ll go easy on your son. Given the former national security adviser’s prior positions with the Trump campaign and administration, that prospect has to make other potential targets of Mueller’s inquiry extremely uneasy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...e285c7f4512_story.html?utm_term=.77977e4cd152

 

Was Papadopolous, or the London professor he met with also employed by Glenn Simpson?

 

Huh? A dumb question, a non sequitur having absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand.

You are a Trump supporter. Try defending Trump for a change instead of bringing up the extraneous.

You can't, can you. Trump and his close associates and relatives are guilty as hell, and Mueller is closing in.

You are a bright boy. You know that.

 

Sorry ... Papadopolous is the subject. Natalia's "dirt" was proffered by Simpson. Natalia then contacted Goldstone, and the email chain, and meeting followed. The same scenario may be uncovered in the communications initiated by Mifsud. Trump needs no defense. It's becoming obvious that his campaign was being politically "spammed" by Russian lobbyists in the employ of Simpson.

 

Trump recently tweeted, "When will all the haters and fools out there realize that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. There always playing politics - bad for our country. I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help,"

Once again Trump relies on empty rhetoric absent essential realism that sounds good on paper to provide false promises to his gullible base. No one else will believe him.

First of all, the overall concept is wrong. The U.S. does not need Russia. Russia has a slightly larger GDP then California. Russia's main export is energy. The U.S. is self-sufficient in energy. The fact is, Russia needs us and our markets, not the other way around.

Secondly, with respect to the issues Trump mentioned, apparently he doesn't realize that we are on opposite sides on three of those issues, North Korea, Syria, and Ukraine, and there is very little common ground with the fourth, terrorism.

Worse, far worse, our current President wants us to overlook Russia's aggression, human rights abuses, meaning Putin's habit of killing or imprisoning dissidents who disagree with him, and interfering in our 2016 election with the excellent prospect that Russia will do it again if not stopped.

It should be noted that Trump has done nothing to prevent Russia from interfering in our elections again.

Every American wants better relations with Russia. Pardon me, Mr. President, but that is not the issue although you are trying to make it one. Still another red herring. The issue is, Americans are unwilling to overlook Russia's sins in the vain hope that Russia will stop interfering in our elections, return Crimea to its rightful owner, stop supporting a murderous dictator (Assad), and side with us and against its ally, North Korea. Trump is willing to overlook those indiscretions.

Next, Trump will be asking Americans to forgive Russia for her occupation of Alaska.

What does Putin have on Trump?

Mr. President, who are the "haters and fools?" Are they members of your own party in Congress who are investigating the collaboration of your close associates and relatives with Russia? Are they members of the special prosecutor's team looking into those activities and your connection to Russia? Care to answer that question, Mr. President?

Is Russian interference in our election a hoax?