I was watching this unfold live yesterday and it was glorious. He didn’t respond for over an hour after making the initial post while the thread just trashed him.
The accusations in the document that are most damning are the ties back to Russian government and financial interests. I get the feeling that the golden shower stuff is in the document specifically to incite a social media frenzy and insure the whole document gets published, shared and dissected by media outlets and critics world wide. The details of that particular segment, down to the slight against the Obamas, are tailor made to insure the document gets maximum visibility so the rest of it cannot be ignored.
And oh man, is the rest of it damning. As others have said, given everything we already know about the Trump family’s and cabinet’s ties back to Russia, the information in the document is essentially the bow on the package of “Trump in Russia’s pocket”. Even if the document’s accusations can’t be immediately verified, the mere fact that they exist and that the intelligence community of the United States is taking them seriously means that every two-bit journalist looking for a Pulitzer will be out there digging and digging and digging…and it won’t take long to prove the boring, non-prostitute containing parts of the document as true.
When that happens, not even his rural American base is going to be able to save Trump from impeachment. A sitting United States President simply cannot have the cloud of possible control by a foreign regime hanging over his head. He will be asked to resign. He will decline in the most explosive and ridiculous manner possible of course, and then the impeachment circus will begin. How long until all those spineless GOP sycophants turn on him? Will McCain, Kasich and other moderate GOP leaders who have been anti-Trump be able to reign the party in at that point, or will it be a Tea Party free-for-all with Mike Pence leading the charge?
I find it ironic and more than a little suspicious that this all comes to light in the days prior to the inauguration in the same manner the Comey FBI “reopened” investigation into Clinton did in the days leading up to the election. It’s almost as if someone is using the agencies of government to influence the outcomes of elections with an end game of putting their preferred candidate in power (hint, it’s not Russia).
Watch.
Apparently he made the brilliant decision to structure the AMA in a way so that he didn’t respond in the Reddit thread, but rather through video responses, which an employee later transcribing those answers back to Reddit. This gave everyone the impression that he wasn’t answering any questions, which just stoked the fires.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy!
https://twitter.com/chocobohomo/status/819228205030789121
So I guess Trump’s law firm won Russia Law Firm of the Year.
lol?
How is this real life?
The press conference is a complete shit show. Starts off with the complaints that the CNN/Buzzfeed report is an outrageous, irresponsible, salacious, sad and pathetic attempt to get clicks.
Are they hearing themselves?!? Is this not the EXACT SAME THING that Republicans and conservative media did in 2008 when Obama was elected. How is “pissing prostitutes” and “Russian lackey” any different from “Born in Kenya” and “Terrorist in Chief”? The hypocrisy is astounding.
This is followed by a brief refutation of some of the points in the papers. Why? Why would you spend time defending this after literally just claiming it was ridiculous fake news?
Then Mike Pence comes up and lambasts Fake News and how sick and tired the American people are of it. The FUCK YOU SAY Mr. Pence? Pizzagate? Emails? You bet your lily white ass we’re sick of it, and it’s about fucking time some if it came back to bite you and your party where it hurts.
I’ll save my comments on the ridiculous “Press Conference” from Mr. Trump himself for another thread. Suffice to say it’s everything we would expect from him, and so much more.
I can’t stand the way this guy talks. It’s just so flippant, dismissive, and arrogant. We joke all the time about the worst kind of pilot and we are in movies and comics and books about society breaking down. But to see it in real life is chilling to me. He thinks he’s performing for TV ratings all the time. Did you see the theatrical way they laid out all those stacks of paper behind them when refering to his transfer of power? It’s all show for him. I fear what lies behind the facade of fake hair, fake wife, fake gold leaf apartments. Something insecure and dangerous, I’d bet.
I simply feel bad for writers of dystopic fiction. How can you write one that is not either beyond parody, or simply a dry recounting of reality under Trump. It would be impossible to write a version of him that is exaggeration, in any way. Simply writing him as he is would draw rolling eyes over how ridiculous the character is.
I merely hope we survive long enough to dance on his grave one day, and give it the yellow river salute it deserves.
I fear this is not a certainty at this point.
I mean… at this point, does it matter what they think? The biggest threat that can be conjured up is voting representatives out in two years and that only works with the assumptions that 1) The district isn’t gerrymandered hard enough that it would make an impact 2) Some Republican candidates run that are willing to go against what is the new party line and barring that 3) Those people would vote for someone without an R next to their name, ever.
Also the writers of the Onion, Veep, etc.
The guys whose reputations are looking up (retrospectively) are the chroniclers in history who wrote terrible, terrible things about Caligula, Nero, the Medicis, Richard III etc. etc. For the last hundred years or so historians have tended to pooh-pooh these accounts with, “These are clearly politically motivated exaggerations. It’s quite implausible to think any real sovereign would act this way. Appointing a horse to the Senate - obviously that can’t have actually happened. The sensible people in the ruling classes would never have allowed it!”
Yeah, sorry, unfortunately that argument rests on an assumption that doesn’t turn out to be true in real life.
This. 100% this. If Comey knew anything about this and instead went with his “we don’t know jack shit, but we’re investigating Clinton again bs.”, it actually borders on treason to me.
Maybe they have kompromat on Comey.
I suspect they have a lot of shit on a lot of folks.
This is actually related to some of Obama’s weaknesses. He was not a strong leader when it came to international politics. I don’t think he really ever fully grasped how there are a lot of other state actors who are really not just friendly competitors, but rather are seriously intent on fucking our shit up.
Putin is really just owning on all levels when it comes to the information game. He’s playing 3 dimensional chess while everyone else appears to be playing checkers.
I mean, it’s almost like he’s ex-KGB or something.
I tend to agree. That was Carter’s greatest weakness (in foreign policy) as well. He always believed that everyone was, at heart, a decent person.
I think he (Obama) was fairly pragmatic. Going in maybe not so much, but once he started getting briefings you’ll notice how quickly all the stuff he was so against during the campaign became stuff we quietly needed to keep doing.
That’s true, but I just think he still had some naive idealism in terms of his dealings with other nations. And he made some significant missteps.
It highlighted itself with the Syrian red line thing… He just wasn’t willing to back up his own threats, and it ultimately betrayed an unwillingness to engage in that kind of committed engagement. Now, it could be argued that following up would have been a mess… but if that were the case, then you can’t make the threat. International politics isn’t the place for bluffing.
I think Obama was a good man, and he didn’t want people to die in his name. But the world is often a shitty place, and sometimes the battle’s taking place in the gutter.
Make no mistake, I prefer his relative weakness to whatever insane bullshit Trump is going to be giving us in the next 4 years. But I would have preferred a stronger hand when it came to foreign policy.
Honestly, this is kind of what I expected from Clinton. I had thought she would have been able to execute a pretty hard nosed foreign policy well.