monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Here is a good rule of thumb for dealing with Donald Trump: Everyone who gives him the benefit of the doubt eventually regrets it.

This was true of clients and contractors and creditors throughout his business career. It was true of the sycophants and opportunists before whom he dangled cabinet appointments during the campaign and then, oh, never mind. It has been true of his cabinet members and spokesmen, whose attempts to defend and explain their boss’s conduct are gleefully undercut by the boss himself. And it should be true — for the sake of their souls, I sincerely hope it’s true — of the Republican leaders whose reputations for probity and principle he has stomped all over since winning their party’s nomination.

And now it’s true of me.

How manly. What the hell is up with his hair, he looks like Michael Douglas's character in 'Greed'. Every girl's crazy bout a sharp dressed man holding a butchered elephant's tail.

This is no ‘rookie mistake.’ The Trump team shouldn’t even be on the field

“I love it.”

That’s how Donald Trump Jr. responded, we now know, to an email last year offering dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government.

What I love is the defense of this attempt by senior Trump campaign officials to receive Russian help in the election. As my colleagues John Wagner and Rosalind Helderman report, presidential advisers are explaining away the meeting with the Russian lawyer as a “rookie mistake” by an “unsophisticated” campaign.

Rookie mistake”: the all-purpose defense of the Trump White House.

When President Trump failed to support NATO’s collective-defense promise, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called it “a rookie mistake.” After revelations of Trump’s meddling in the FBI’s Russia probe, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) explained that Trump is “new at this.” The rookie-error explanation has been employed to describe Trump’s firing of FBI Director James B. Comey, his handling of health care and his legislative approach.

There have been enough rookie errors to send this whole team back to Double-A ball. The longer this goes on — we’re now six months into Trump’s term — the less it looks like growing pains than incompetence and mismanagement aggravated by nepotism and dishonesty.

Returning from three weeks abroad, I’ve been catching up on developments at home. These weeks, though highly abnormal by usual standards, were fairly typical of the Trump presidency. Mistakes and outrages are so common that we become numb to them. But stack three weeks of the embarrassments together and the cumulative effect makes it plain that this is amateur hour for the greatest nation on Earth:

The president, representing the United States at the Group of 20 summit in Germany, tweets that “everyone” at the world conference is talking about why Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta wouldn’t give DNC servers to law enforcement. Trump erroneously claims the CIA sought the server. Podesta, who had no authority over the DNC, urges “our whack job” president to “get a grip.”

Trump gives a speech in Warsaw contradicting an earlier speech he gave in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. While in Poland, he publicly disparages U.S. intelligence agencies.

The president meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping and the White House press release identifies his country as “the Republic of China” — that is, China’s foe Taiwan.

Trump meets with Vladimir Putin and tweets that he “discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit” with Putin. Twelve hours later, Trump tweets that such a “Cyber Security unit” can’t happen.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson tells reporters that Trump discussed sanctions with Putin. Trump tweets the next day: “Sanctions were not discussed.” (The previous month, Tillerson called for the end to a blockade of Qatar; hours later, Trump touted the Qatar blockade.)

Trump’s voter-fraud commission requests voter files and is roundly rejected by Democratic and Republican state officials alike; the Mississippi secretary of state, a Republican, tells the commission to “go jump in the Gulf of Mexico.”

In spite of Trump’s vow that a North Korean missile capable of reaching the United States “won’t happen,” North Korea tests an ICBM. Trump calls this “very, very bad behavior.” After the missile test, Trump’s U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, complains on Twitter on Independence Day: “Spending my 4th in meetings all day. #ThanksNorthKorea.”

Trump gives a speech at the Kennedy Center, in July, vowing, “We’re going to start saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again.”

The president tweets that a cable-news host, Mika Brzezinski, was “bleeding badly from a face-lift” when he met her. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) responds: “Please just stop.”

Trump follows this by tweeting a mock professional wrestling video of him pummeling “Fraud News CNN.”

The Post’s David Fahrenthold reports that fake Time magazine covers featuring Trump were on display in at least five of Trump’s clubs.

The president, who had implied he had tapes of his talks with Comey, tweets that there are no such tapes. Lawmakers, calling the president’s word insufficient, threaten to subpoena the tapes.

Former CIA director David Petraeus, asked in a panel discussion whether Trump is fit to serve, replies: “It’s immaterial.”

Trump claims the Senate health-care bill “is working along very well.” Republican leaders soon abandon plans to have a vote on the bill.

The White House issues a statement threatening to bomb the Syrian regime. Both the intelligence community and the Pentagon appear to be caught off guard.

Eight months after the election, Trump tweets: “Hillary Clinton colluded with the Democratic Party in order to beat Crazy Bernie Sanders.”

Now, after months of Trump denials of Russia contacts, comes proof of a Russia meeting with Donald Jr., Jared Kushner and then-campaign chairman Paul J. Manafort during the campaign. Among Junior’s conflicting explanations: It was okay because the Russian didn’t produce good dirt on Clinton.

And these are just some of the misfires.

They aren’t rookie mistakes. This is a team that never should have taken the field.

Journalists at Trump-supporting news sites and rightwing commentators had their work cut out as they attempted to spin the story of Trump Jr and an apparent Russian government attempt to damage Hillary Clinton’s election campaign.

Quote oralloy:

Quote:

Can you cite any law against it [colluding with the Russians to affect the Presidential election]?

Certainly. The Federal Election Campaign Act forbids it:


Source: Page 85

PS: It's already been established that a contribution does not have to be money.

oralloy wrote:

The only thing they are trying to do is prosecute people for disagreeing with the Democrats. None of them care about collusion and none of them care about the integrity of our elections.

Clearly untrue.

But the thing is, even if what you said was true and they were not interested in finding collusion or violations of election integrity, you have to admit that evidence of both are gushing up like Ol' Faithful.

oralloy wrote:

Absent any law against it,

There is a law against it. See the Federal Election Campaign Act above.

oralloy wrote:

If this witch hunt tries to put innocent people in prison, mass pardons will take care of that problem.

What about all the guilty people?

The evidence is pointing to a whole host of them.

Ahem. Mueller and the committees are investigating collusion between the Trump campaign and Russians to affect the election. Well, they just got it. Sorry, but no amount of "Really dahling, surely you aren't serious about this amounting to anything" is going to change that.

Journalists at Trump-supporting news sites and rightwing commentators had their work cut out as they attempted to spin the story of Trump Jr and an apparent Russian government attempt to damage Hillary Clinton’s election campaign.

Quote:

Ahem. Mueller and the committees are investigating collusion between the Trump campaign and Russians to affect the election. Well, they just got it. Sorry, but no amount of "Really dahling, surely you aren't serious about this amounting to anything" is going to change that.

You had this same feeling about Hillary winning the election and then felt the very same way about some sort of election fraud by Trump and company when you supported Jill Steins silly recount efforts. I wonder what she did with all that extra money she made on that scam...

This is going to amount to nothing just like the rest of the election scams you have supported.

There are few more perilous lines of work than being an ally of Donald Trump. Vouch for him one minute, usually by insisting that the latest accusation against him is bogus, and the next you’ll be left looking like a fool – as he or his family confirm that the very charge you dismissed as fake is, in fact, true.

It’s happened again, this time via the Fredo Corleone of the Trump saga, Donald Trump Jr.

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus dutifully went on TV on Sunday calling Donny’s meeting with a Russian lawyer “a big nothing-burger”, a harmless chat about adoption. But then along came the boy prince himself, releasing an email chain showing that in fact he took the meeting in anticipation of receiving dirt on Hillary Clinton, and on the explicit understanding that this was part of a Russian government effort to tilt the election towards his father. Rather a lot of meat in that nothing-burger.

So, as Priebus and dozens of others in Trumpworld have learned, there’s danger in defending these discount-store Corleones, whose shadiness is matched only by their gormless ineptitude. (Imagine the IQ of Trump Jr, who not only handled this negotiation with the Russian lawyer by email but declared in writing, of the offer of intel on Clinton: “If it’s what you say, I love it.”)

Embedded in Jr.’s emails is a step-by-step guide to how the Kremlin could contact Trump himself.
A straight line from the Russian government to Donald Trump.

In an apparent effort to preempt the New York Times, Donald Trump Jr. released a series of emails on Tuesday detailing his meeting with a Russian attorney who claimed to have damaging information on Hillary Clinton.

According to the emails, the information was “very high level and sensitive” and part of “Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

But the full emails also detail a possible communications channel from the Kremlin directly to President Donald Trump.

Step 1: The Kremlin
The emails say the information on Clinton originated from the Russian government. They also refer to a meeting with the “Crown prosecutor of Russia,” which is believed to be a reference to Yury Chaika, one of Russia’s most powerful people.

Step 2: Aras Agalarov
The emails reveal that the “Crown prosecutor” communicated the offer of damaging information about Hillary Clinton to Aras Agalarov, the Russian billionaire who sponsored Trump’s 2013 Miss Universe competition in Moscow. He is also closely connected to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who presented the elder Agalarov with the Order of Honour.

Step 3: Emin Agalarov
Emin Agalarov is Aras’ son and a pop singer in Russia. According to the emails, Aras passed the information from the Russian government to Emin. In an interview with Forbes, Emin claims to maintain regular contact with the Trump family.

Trump appeared in a music video with Emin.

Step 4: Rod Goldstone
Rod Goldstone is Emin’s publicist and also was involved in the 2013 Miss Universe competition. It was Goldstone who emailed Trump Jr. with the information from Emin.

Step 5: Rhona Graff
Graff is Trump’s longtime assistant.

“When longtime friends and associates of President Donald Trump want to reach him, they don’t go directly to the White House. Instead, they call the woman who’s been the gatekeeper at Trump Tower for a quarter century: Rhona Graff,” Politico reported in March.

In his emails to Trump Jr, Goldstone offered to pass the information to directly to Trump Sr. through Graff.

“I can also send this info to your father via Rhona,” Goldstone wrote.

Step 6: Donald Trump

Trump has attempted to distance himself from Trump Jr.’s meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. A spokesman for Trump’s personal lawyer said he “was unaware of the meeting and did not attend it.”

But whether or not he knew about this particular meeting, the emails released by his son firmly establish that there was a relatively straightforward way for top officials in the Russian government to pass information to Trump.

This is significant in light of Trump’s repeated denials that he had any active connections to Russia or the Russian government. (bolded added by me)

hawkeye10 wrote:

This is not about you or other A2K members, this is about the Washington Elite.....they had a choice to make, either try to govern through Trump which in part means to try to help him out because do the best they count for America given the situation was the most important thing, or they could "RESIST!" and get Trump out of town ASAP. They had made their choice by the first of Feb. But they have been unable to get the job done.

1) If by Washington elite you mean the MSM, then I'm sure their primary goal is selling papers, advertisements, and getting internet clicks. That's about all that matters and that's why literally everything that can be a scandal or implied scandal is blown up, no matter who is president.

2) Who do you think isn't trying to govern through Trump where they can? Do you expect the democrats to vote to repeal Obamacare? They've been completely locked out of all the healthcare deliberations by both the house and the senate. This is in STARK contrast to when Obamacare was written and debated for over a year. I will agree with you (if I can assume your position) that the filibuster of Neil Gorsuch was a pretty bold and largely un-defendable position....had it not been preceded by the Merrick Garland largely un-defendable position taken by the Republicans.

3) I see a few politicians calling for a Trump impeachment. I don't think they'd actually go through with this if they had the power. It's kinda what the minority party does all the time though isn't it? When you don't have the power to do anything in congress, you ramp up your rhetoric and then when you get power, and your votes and talk actually matter...you usually act more restrained. See the Obamacare repeal vote for a recent example. The house voted to straight-repeal the bill something like 50 times when the knew that their vote would go absolutely nowhere. Once they had power and their votes and words meant something...well, we have the flawed bills we see now.

I have a bit of time so:

1) The corporate Class Propaganda Machine sells all of the interests of the corporate class, and yes, one of those interests is currently to off-load The People's Choice, because he was never on the approved list of candidates, as they made clear over and over last year.

2) I dont think there is any significant segment of the elite who are trying to govern through Trump, they are either waiting till he is off loaded (AKA are on strike) or they are actively working to get him gone. Getting ObamaCare out of the ICU, that is fixing it enough that we dont need to deal with it till we get Washington fixed enough that we can come back and actually start reforming our deeply broken bankrupting this nation medical system, would have been a good move had these useless clods wanted to make an effort for America, but that is not what they decided to do. Instead we Get the D Branch of the DC ELITE giving the nation the finger refusing to do anything, and we get the R Branch pretending that they are in the effort to give tax breaks to the wrong people (and seriously we need to be increasing taxes not decreasing taxes) and so far not being able to get anything accomplished. Not that I am shocked, as I said months ago that they are unlikely to, because they suck and because they over all these years never bothered to come up with a plan to fix the medical system in general or ObamaCare in particular even as they bitch and moaned and claimed that they were going to do it as soon as they had power. But see they were sure that Trump was going to lose, they spent half of 2015 getting ready to make Hilary look bad, and they most of them were doing their best to help Hilary along because Trump was never an approved candidate, he was allowed into the primary for comedic value, he was never supposed to last more than a couple of months, he was never supposed to get even one vote.

3) You have from the beginning never seen R's support Trump either, nor have you seen them getting anything done since Trump came to down, and yes a lot of that is shear incompetence but it is also them waiting till Trumps numbers come down enough to get him gone and thus get to Pence, who will do as he is told because he is very very lucky to be in the POTUS chair and he is none too bright and he has rarely shown to be interested or capable of generating and then accomplishing an agenda. The idea is that if Washington stays broken and all anyone ever talks about is Trump and his drama then eventually the little people will be willing to let him go, and once that happens Trump is gone, because the only support he has is the little people, the Elite Class is almost completely united against him. And this should not shock anyone, the D Division has been arguing that Trump cant be allowed in Washington because he is morally from the jump, and the R Division over the last many years has rarely refused to comply with guilt trips generated by liberalism, they always fold lying as they do, which is why Trump beat all of their candidates in the first place.