Well, yeah. I’d be pretty angry about someone putting the imagery of Hillary peeing on prostitutes into my head. Speaking of which… thanks, @BadSport.
I still remain skeptical about any of the specific claims, because many of these things would be impossible to verify. Or rather impossible, barring the video evidence that apparently Putin has (if it exists).
That said there are several factors that make it likely that at least some, if not the entirety, of these documents are true:
This was in the official briefing.
The Trump and Trump surrogate ties to Russia are well documented and verified.
That Trump and his campaign exercised influence to alter stances towards Russia, and in no other manner modified the GOP platform is established fact.
Trump has repeatedly and consistently praised Putin, without reservation. He has criticized damn near everyone else.
Though we can not know the full extent and nature of them, we can be quite certain that Trump has financial ties to Russian oligarchs. How deep, how shady? No way to know currently.
Trump is an unhinged megolomanical ego tripping asshole.
Trump is using Russian sources to try and claim these are false rumors.
Trumps response has been uniquely unhinged. It is certainly not the response of an innocent man.
Again, do I think every claim is true? Eh, quite possibly no. Do we know if any specific claims are true? That is hard to determine, though certainly some would be easier than others. And as far as claims go?
This is honestly the least damning, but by far funniest, claim there. I honestly don’t personally care if it is true or not, on the list of bad Trump things, this wouldn’t register. It is, however, a comedy gold show… mine. Gold. Mine. Peese excuse me, this is a weird situation urine. That was a typographical pisstake. They’ve been leaking out lately.
Perhaps. But also Trump getting a taste of his own medicine. I am sure no lessons are learned by him but there is a satisfaction in seeing him squirm.
The fact that it is being taken seriously by US intelligence agencies and is kinda plausible, tbh, puts it on a different level than, say, pizzagate (to name one of maaaaaany completely fabricated stories about Clinton).
If the allegations are untrue, great… but it seems worthy of investigation, certainly more worthy than the President’s birth certificate.
I mean, lets step back for a minute and examine this in the most favorable light for Trump. Let us consider the implications of this report being as false as the conspiracy theories places like InfoWars handed out about Jade Helm, or whatever. A complete fabrication, with no basis in reality. Let us then consider the individual response of Barack Obama to that of Donald Trump.
Contrast the two.
Consider that if Obama replied at all, it was usually in direct response to a specific question.
Consider that Obama’s response would be articulate, thought out, measured, and classy.
Consider that Trump smears poop on his keyboard, then hits send.
Now consider that one has accusations unhinged from reality, while Trump’s are things being seriously considered by every major intelligence agency, and viewed as a serious matter worth investigation by the highest members of government.
Whether this report is 100% true or not, this is something that deserves at least as much reporting, investigation, and congressional hearings as Benghazi. The American people deserve to know the truth of this, or at least as much of the truth as we can prove. Can you not agree to this much @BadSport?
This is actually less bad than some of the things which were provably false which were floated about Clinton.
But the thing here is that this stuff is actually within the realm of possibility for Trump, because he’s such a scumbag. Like, we can all imagine him actually doing this. And it’s not just some totally made up thing by the internet… it was in an official intel briefing.
I mean, it’s so over the top in terms of what we expect of our president, that it seems like it must be fake… but it’s possibly real.
It doesn’t matter if it’s real, the meme is here. Obama is a Kenyan Muslin, and Trump’s obsession with golden everything is known.
I would argue that, if true, this is far far worse. this report implies that our President Elect is a thrall to Moscow. A man so deeply compromised that he would sacrifice American security, interests, and the stability of the global economy and political orders in order to please his Russian benefactors.
That Manafort, Tillerson, and others in the Trump orbit have demonstrable ties to Russian oligarchs is not even in dispute. That Trump’s team has made repeated moves to create an atmosphere of acquiescence to Russian interests is provable fact.
Which, sadly, makes the likelihood that they have some dirt on Trump an almost certainty. That dirt could be no more than the deep financial ties to some of the seedier elements of Russian society, or it cold be something more scandalous.
So while the claim that he gets his rocks off to some kinky stuff is certainly far less serious than the insane Pizzagate conspiracy theory. The fact it could represent that a sitting President would act in the interests of a hostile foreign power though? That is the far more serious claim. That’s what needs investigating.
This is my opinion as well. It’s salacious and funny, and will certainly get all the Twitter play, but I couldn’t care less what Trump does in the bedroom. Frankly, Trump not having sex with prostitutes while he was in Russia would be more shocking.
The rest of the report is what’s pertinent and troubling.
So what do we think about The Trouble with Publishing the Trump Dossier from The Atlantic?
There is a crucial difference between the Pizzagate story and BuzzFeed’s posting of documents. The Pizzagate story seems to have spread through a network of malicious purveyors of misinformation in the “fake news” universe, as Craig Silverman laid it out in, yes, BuzzFeed. Publishing the Trump dossier, by contrast, wasn’t an attempt to mislead; instead, it was a decision to sidestep that question altogether. But the danger is demonstrated with Trump’s “FAKE NEWS” rebuttal. When serious and conscientious outlets publish information for whose veracity they cannot vouch, they make it easy for critics of the press to brand all reporting with which they disagree as simply “fake news.”
I agree 100%, but I can also see why BuzzFeed did what they did. Frankly, someone was going to post it all sooner or later. (Honestly, I’m surprised it took this long.) Some reporters have had access to the document since October.
I agree with the Atlantic - but with the proviso that I never really considered Buzzfeed to be a “serious and conscientious” news outlet to begin with (though I know they had aspirations.) So it really hasn’t changed my view of the overall news ecosphere that much.
Ah, yeah, from the perspective of impact to the nation, it is worse. I just mean that the stuff that he’d be blackmailed with (peeing on prostitutes) is less bad than the stuff they were saying about Clinton.
To be clear, that’s not the allegation in the report. The allegation is that they did it to each other “in front of him”.
But, I agree with the comments above that the kompromat stuff is far less important, other than that it provides a motive for his bizarre pro-Russian behaviour, than the actual conspiracy alleged.
That’s really the incredible part about this. That the “lying liberal media”, the Democrat POTUS and also the DNC all looked at this thing and sat on it because there was no way to verify it, even though it came from a generally trusted source. Honestly, it rekindles my faith in mainstream news and (at least half of) out political process.
Of course the other way to look at it is to say that the Dems are playing by old, threadworn rules and that they need to get with the times. In this view, they should have set up their own “fake news” outlet and gotten this out there, verifiable or not.
Gotta be more to this than prostitutes peeing on each other in front of Trump. Trump can survive that revelation.
This has to be a money thing. Big money.
What we’ve (I’ve) been saying for months.
I don’t agree with the Atlantic’s conclusions. It is news that there is a report of compromising information about Trump, which is being investigated by the Intelligence Community and by journalists. If that report is available, publishing it with all of the evidence known is better than sitting on it until every claim can be verified. If Buzzfeed had said, “Here are some things we found out about Trump” and then listed the stuff from the report, that would be irresponsible reporting, but it still wouldn’t be fake news in the sense of Pizzagate - reporters cite “news” from a single undisclosed source all the time and this one is clearly credible enough to be taken seriously by the IC. That’s not what they did, though. They said, “here’s the document everyone is talking about, and here’s what we know about its claims.” The idea that somehow hiding that document from the masses was the responsibility of the journalism community is just bizarre. If some Snowden had published it, it would be fair game, but Buzzfeed isn’t allowed to? No, that’s just the other outlets crying foul because they didn’t get the clicks.
The part of this that seems borderline plausible and that also has important implications is the backchannel communications between the Trump campaign and the Russian government (I’m not talking about the ordinary diplomatic stuff that has already been acknowledged). There were clearly backchannel communications between Wikileaks and the Trump campaign-- I think this has been acknowledged even by Trump insiders. But if Trump’s team was getting information or feeding information to the Russians directly as this document alleges, it might be verifiable in a congressional investigation, and would seem to approach being an impeachable offense-- certainly a resignation offense if Trump had any sense of shame (which of course he doesn’t).
This is worth scrolling through to see how reddit treated Assange yesterday:
“I have no dealings in Russia, no loans, nothing. Fake news. Never even been to Russia. Sad!”. The President-Elect wearily replaced his phone on its wireless charger. Defending himself against these unfounded allegations was certainly taking its toll. As healthy as he was, he had to admit he was no longer the young brash businessman that had taken the real estate world by storm many years ago. He slowly walked to the window of his modest hotel room and gazed out at the myriad of colors of Saint Basil’s domes. A walk around the square would feel nice in this brisk weather, he thought. He pondered which fur coat to don but sighed as a loud buzz caught his attention. DemKid2003 was on the attack again and the defense would likely occupy his precious time until lunch.