3579

I mean, it’s also not as if either “Russia” or “The Trump Campaign” consist of one person apiece. Multiple points of contact with different sets of people colluding at different times is perfectly possible.

3580

Donald Trump has told White House aides to come up with possible concessions to offer as bargaining chips in his planned meeting next week with Vladimir Putin, according to two former officials familiar with the preparations.

National security council staff have been tasked with proposing “deliverables” for the first Trump-Putin encounter, including the return of two diplomatic compounds Russians were ordered to vacate by the Obama administration in response to Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election, the former officials said. It is not clear what Putin would be asked to give in return.

There is strong resistance in the NSC and state department to one-sided concessions aimed simply at improving the tone of US-Russian relations. There is also opposition within the administration to Trump’s preference for a formal bilateral meeting with Putin at the G20 summit in Germany, as first reported by the Associated Press.

3581

How on earth will they justify ANY concessions to the nation that undeniably fucked with our election? No way can that be spun into anything but bending over for Trump’s dominatrix.

3582

They don’t even bother with spin. They’ll do it and leave it up to people like Conway to think of an excuse for it.

Probably something about improving relations or something.

3583

If they admit that Russia messed with the election, independently of whether the Trump campaign colluded, it removes a whole dimension in the obfuscation/evasion playbook.

3584

Have you seen how much money the Trump organization and the Kushner owe the Russia mob?
I’m not sure even the Secret Service can keep the President safe. Especially know that the FSB realizes that we probably wouldn’t go to war over a Russian hit on Trump.

3585

Definitely not worth going to war over. Maybe we could airdrop an Alt Right militia over Russia with their weaponized Pepe memes.

3586

LIKE!!!

3587

Yeah! Screw those Ukrainian meddlers!

3588

From your article:

For what it’s worth, though, if anyone in the DNC or Hillary’s campaign were colluding with a foreign government in order to manipulate a US election, especially if it was anything like the Trump/Russia allegations, I’m more than happy to string them up too!

3589
3590

So you are saying it’s totally ok that Russia manipulated the election in a completely unprecedented way with the tacit approval of the Republican party and the probably cooperation and encouragement of the Trump campaign, because Clinton!

What is the limit to your cowardice? Will you still be bending the knee to Trump when he wins his 3rd term with 97% of the vote?

3591

While it’s fair to criticize the Ukraine for exerting influence, I believe that this type of influence is of a dramatically different breed than what Russia did.

The Ukraine essentially just stated their opinion of Trump (which I happen to find a statement of the obvious).

Russia actually performed cyber-espionage in order to find damaging information on candidates and then released it in a strategic manner to influence the campaign.

I suspect you would agree that these are not the same.

3592

Not to mention nobody seems to say boo when Benjamin Netenyahu does it in favor of Republicans. Or the frequency with which 45 opines about other world leaders like Merkel, LePen, or Macron. Even occasionally providing various supports (see Trump and his teams contacts with various Brexiteers like Farage).

3593

It is what we, and they have been doing for decades. No one really cared, even Obama who knew all about it, until the DNC decided to blame the loss on Russia.

3594

Malathor confirmed Russian agent~

3595

Those damned Russian honeytraps and their kompromat!

3596

At least tell us it was from you watching the pee tape. I could respect that ;)

3597

Malathor, I disagree strongly with your worldview in general, but I do appreciate your voicing of contrarian (for this forum) opinions here. Do you really think that above statement is accurate, though? Not that Obama was informed, but that no one cared (including him)? Because that strikes me as a very, very, slanted take on events.

3598

I think you’re going to a bad place, when you start forgetting the Russians are the bad guys.