Progressives (Liberals)

It is inconceivable that anyone with a sense of humor or intelligence (in any amounts) could interpret this as a sincere and intentional entreaty to Russia to collude on a campaign.

I realize you consider Trump something less than a moron, but do you really think someone who was colluding with a foreign government would so blatantly and publicly draw attention to it?

What other rock-solid evidence to you have that Trump colluded with Russia?

During Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and transition period, he and his associates had over 100 contacts with Russian-linked officials, and lied about and tried to cover up every one of them.

This bombshell information comes from a new report from the Moscow Project and Center for American Progress.

The original report said there were 100 documented contacts, but the number was increased to 101 this week following new reports that Paul Manafort and Rick Gates shared polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, who had ties to Russian intelligence.

The documented 101 contacts between Trump’s campaign and transition teams and Russia linked operatives included at least 28 in-person meetings. It also provides evidence of at least 28 high-ranking Trump campaign officials and advisors who were involved in and/or aware of contacts with Russia-linked operatives during the campaign and transition.

The contact count includes meetings with people who had direct ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Also included were high ranking Russian government officials, bankers, and intelligence operatives.

Each meeting, call, message or correspondence was counted as a separate contact in the report.

According to the report, this information supports reporting from U.S. intelligence agencies:

“On January 6, 2017, the U.S. intelligence community issued a report that showed there were two campaigns to elect Donald Trump: one run by Trump and one run by the Russian government. Trump and many of his senior advisors and close associates have repeatedly denied any connections between the two campaigns, despite the fact that they were working towards the same goal, at the same time, and utilizing the same tactics.”

Of course, for any U.S. presidential campaign to have over 100 Russia contacts is shocking.

Just as shocking, the Moscow Project points out that team Trump tried to cover up every single one of those Russia contacts. The report describes over 15 different cases where people in the Trump campaign issued false denials about its contacts with Russia.

As every prosecutor knows, such attempts to lie and cover up the truth establish “consciousness of guilt.” Trump and his people knew what they were doing was wrong, and they knew that if the information became public during the campaign he would probably lose the election.

There’s really no reason for a presidential campaign to have contacts with Russia. What was going on?

That’s what the FBI wanted to know when they found out about the contacts. As we reported on Friday, they opened up an investigation into Trump shortly after James Comey was fired. They wanted to know if Trump was working as a Russian intelligence asset.

We haven’t seen the results of the FBI investigation yet. We haven’t seen the information gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies either. And we’re still waiting for Bob Mueller’s report on collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Despite this, enough information has been made public for us to form some conclusions. First and foremost, we can conclude that Donald Trump received assistance from Russia in his campaign for the presidency. It is likely he would not have been elected president without Russia’s help.

In addition, we have enough information to conclude that Donald Trump is probably guilty of treason and espionage, which are capital offenses.

Yesterday counterterrorism expert Malcolm Nance was on MSNBC, explaining that this new reporting from the New York Times establishes that Trump committed treason.

“I used to say that Trump was treason adjacent,” Nance said. “Now I say that he’s just neck-deep in treachery.”

There is more than enough evidence of not just “collusion” but also illegal conspiracy, espionage and treason. It is time for Donald Trump to leave the White House and take up residence in a federal prison, where he belongs.

On April 18, 2019, a redacted copy of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election” (Mueller Report) was released to the public. The Mueller report builds on the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that there were two campaigns to elect Donald Trump— one run by Trump and one run by the Russian government. The Mueller report clearly identified collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, despite repeated denials from Trump and many of his senior advisers and close associates that there were any connections between the two campaigns.

A total of 272 contacts between Trump’s team and Russia-linked operatives have been identified, including at least 38 meetings. And we know that at least 33 high-ranking campaign officials and Trump advisers were aware of contacts with Russia-linked operatives during the campaign and transition, including Trump himself. None of these contacts were ever reported to the proper authorities. Instead, the Trump team tried to cover up every single one of them.

Beyond the many lies the Trump team told to the American people, Mueller himself repeatedly remarked on how far the Trump team was willing to go to hide their Russian contacts, stating, “the investigation established that several individuals affiliated with the Trump Campaign lied to the Office, and to Congress, about their interactions with Russian-affiliated individuals and related matters. Those lies materially impaired the investigation of Russian election interference.”

There can be no doubt that Trump and Putin have a secret thing between them that would destroy Trump for good if it came out during his one term as president.

When Bill Clinton became president, his top legislative priority was health care. When Barack Obama became president, he first had to prevent a depression, but then he too turned to health care.

The next Democratic president should choose a different priority.

It’s still true that too many Americans suffer from inadequate or expensive insurance coverage, and the next president should certainly look to make progress on health care. But presidents must make choices. Realistically, they have to pick one or two sweeping bills to try to push through Congress in their first year.

To argue that health care should be atop the list, you can’t simply say that it is important. You need to believe that it’s so much more important than everything else — climate change, voting rights, immigration, education, wage stagnation, the unfair tax system — that health care deserves to be the Democrats’ only top priority over four decades of presidencies. All those other issues would once again take a back seat.

And that would be a mistake, because the both moral and political case for some other issues is now stronger than it is for health care.

Climate change threatens the well-being of the planet and everyone who lives on it. The next president can save more lives and better improve human health by slowing climate change than by improving health insurance.

The wounded state of American democracy is also more pressing. If it doesn’t get fixed, any expansion of health insurance could be reversed in a few years anyway. If the political system can be shored up — by guaranteeing voting rights, regulating campaign donations and granting statehood to Washington, D.C., and potentially Puerto Rico, among other things — every other national problem will become easier to address.

Unfortunately, these other issues are getting pushed to the margins in the 2020 campaign, while media attention has focused obsessively on Medicare. At every one of the six debates so far, Medicare has taken up a big chunk of the first half-hour, when the viewing audience is typically largest. In total, the candidates have spent almost 100 minutes talking about the subject onstage, more than they’ve spent on climate change, voting rights and tax policy, combined.

The good news is that some of the candidates are also frustrated by the Medicare preoccupation, based on conversations I’ve had. At a campaign stop in Iowa last week, Elizabeth Warren resorted to asking reporters if any of them wanted to ask her about education. (She could have added: Research suggests that expanding pre-K and college may do more to improve people’s health than expanding health insurance.)

Obama’s presidency shows why the choice of priorities matters so much. He rightly insisted to his aides that they not only combat the financial crisis, but also try to pass major bills on both health care and the climate. Between the two, something had to go at the front of the legislative line, and Obama picked health care.

Partly as a result, the administration ran out of time on climate. The Senate moved slowly on health care — it’s a complicated subject, as you may have heard — and by the time senators were ready to take up a climate bill, the 2010 midterms were looming. Several senators weren’t willing to take another politically risky vote.

Health care became Obama’s signature accomplishment, extending coverage to some 20 million Americans. Climate was arguably his biggest disappointment. More than a decade later, with seas rising and severe storms causing more destruction, the country can’t afford to overlook climate policy again.

The next president can reasonably expect to have time for two big early priorities (barring another financial crisis). Even without health care — and even if the Democrats retake the Senate, a precondition for almost any ambitious bill — the decision would not be easy.

Michael Linden, who runs the Groundwork Collaborative, a Washington group that advocates for a fairer economy, has a suggestion that seems right to me: One priority should be democratic reform, like voting rights. The other should be a major economic bill that increases taxes on the wealthy and spends the money helping the middle-class and poor and promoting economic growth.

This second bill would include funding for clean energy, as well as limits on pollution. Depending on the politics, it might make sense to call the bill a Green New Deal.

Regardless, the bill should be organized around more tangible, immediate benefits than either the Obama or Clinton health care plan was. Remember, the politics of health care can be miserable. Most voters are insured, and they often focus on what they might lose from a new law. That’s a big reason Democrats fared so poorly in both Obama’s and Clinton’s first midterm elections.

What should the next president do on health care? Start by looking for concrete ways to expand insurance access and reduce costs, through narrower legislation or executive action. Many of these ideas — on prescription drugs, for example — are enormously popular, polls show. A radical transformation, on the other hand, is not.

Popularity isn’t everything, of course, and I understand why the next president may still want to go for radical transformation. It just doesn’t deserve to go at the front of the line. Health care should not be the only area where Democratic presidents are willing to spend political capital.