4163
4164

There’s a huge gulf between an hour-long meeting and a “brief conversation”. The problem with the constant lies from the WH is there’s no reason to take their word for it, though their version could well be true.

4165


4166

Even if you believe Donnie talked about nothing but golf and chocolate cake, chatting with Putin for an hour without your own translator would be incredibly stupid for a normal president. (Now Putin can claim Trump said whatever Putin wants during that conversation, and there’s no way for Trump to disprove it.)

For someone in Trump’s position to do it is … well, the words to express how stupid it was simply do not exist. The only thing he could do that would look more suspicious is to ask the Russians to collude on national TV. Oh wait, he did that already.

4167

Exactly my thought. Particularly since, as noted above, Trump and the WH lie routinely.

4168

While the leaders-and-spouses dinner was on Mr. Trump’s public schedule, the news media was not allowed to witness any part of it, nor were reporters provided with an account of what transpired. Mr. Trump’s traveling press contingent did note, however, that his motorcade left the dinner four minutes after Mr. Putin’s did.

The dinner at which the private conversation took place stretched for more than three hours after a concert for the leaders and their spouses at the Elbphilharmonie, a concert hall on the banks of the Elbe River.
[…]
There is no official United States government record of the intimate dinner conversation, because no American official other than the president was involved.

“Pretty much everyone at the dinner thought this was really weird, that here is the president of the United States, who clearly wants to display that he has a better relationship personally with President Putin than any of us, or simply doesn’t care,” said Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, a New York-based research and consulting firm, who said he had heard directly from attendees. “They were flummoxed, they were confused and they were startled.”

The encounter occurred more than midway through the lengthy dinner, when Mr. Trump left his chair and approached Mr. Putin, who had been seated next to the first lady, Melania Trump. It was described to Mr. Bremmer by other guests as lasting roughly an hour and not initially disputed by a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

But Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, disputed that account. He said Mr. Trump had described the exchange with Mr. Putin as purely social, and as lasting far less than an hour. “It was pleasantries and small talk,” Mr. Spicer said. In a separate statement, the White House said the two presidents had spoken through the Kremlin’s interpreter because the American translator with Mr. Trump did not speak Russian.

Experts in United States-Russia relations said such an encounter — even on an informal basis at a social event — was a concern because of its length, which suggested a substantive exchange, and because there was no note taker or national security or foreign policy aide present.

4169

Except that Trump’s behavior always has been ‘double down, don’t apologize’ and it brought him from borough landlord to the Oval Office. Why stop now? At the rate he’s going, I figure he’ll be Emperor of the Universe just as soon as the alien spaceships can show up with a crown.

4170

Yeah, Spicer should know better than to take Trump’s word on it. Spicer must have about the lowest self esteem of anyone in the world.

4171

… I mean, of course he’s not going to change. He’s 71 years old. The cake is already baked.

And yes, he’s been “successful.”* But “successful” and “stupid” aren’t antonyms. The fact that Donnie was born with a fortune and then successfully threw heads more often than not doesn’t change the fact that he’s a fucking moron. He may die with a gold-played spoon shoved up his nose and a crowd of bought and paid for sycophants around him, but he’ll still be a dumbshit.

Perhaps the worst belief the Republicans have fostered over the last 40 years is that if a person has more money than other people, it must also mean that they’re smarter and more capable; their actions must have more moral authority than others’; and that because they’re clearly superior they’re also above criticism. It’s not just bullshit, it’s toxic bullshit, and it’s destroying the country.

*But is he really? He clearly hates his job, he’s terrible at it, it’s destroying the value of his brand and possibly his children’s careers, and he’s going to go down in history as the biggest dumbshit to ever be President. If that’s success, he’s welcome to it.

4172

Turns out this could be more important than thought. Something brought up in this article is that if someone like Flynn were pardoned, it might remove his Fifth amendment protection from testifying (since he couldn’t effectively implicate himself for a crime he’d already been pardoned for).

4173

He knew the job was dangerous when he took it.

4174

I wouldn’t get your hopes up. Iran-Contra showed that the smart strategy when someone is given immunity is for that person to throw themselves on their sword, claim they were behind everything, say that the higher-ups knew nothing, and then rely on those higher-ups to reward them for their loyalty. Or to put it another way - if I’m already off the hook, what’s my incentive to rat someone out?

The best prosecution bet is to get people on both Federal and State charges so they can’t count on Donnie’s get-out-of-jail-free card. Which is doubtless why Mueller’s team has so many people knowledgeable about financial crime - I suspect they intend to build cases based on, say, money laundering, and then hand them over to New York State if Trump pulls out the pardon power.

4175

Fair point. I just found it interesting. And yes, one would certainly hope that Schneiderman is quietly advancing on Rico charges.

4176

Former campaign aide Michael Caputo is also having trouble paying former New York state attorney general Dennis Vacco to represent him in congressional probes, he told the Associated Press this week. Noting with irritation that the Trump campaign was footing the legal bill for Donald Trump, Jr., who met with a Kremlin-linked lawyer and others with ties to Russia at Trump Tower last year, Caputo told the AP he was using his children’s college funds to cover his own legal bills.

“Lucky for them,” Caputo said of those whose legal fees were covered by the campaign. “And unlucky for me. And unlucky for my children who are now going to community college.”

4177

Poor children. Guess they should have had the foresight to not be born to idiot parents.

4178

4179

It would have been so much easier if they hadn’t spent time meeting with the Russians! Then again, would they be where they are now if they hadn’t?

4180

The good news for Mueller is that Trump is a) incredibly cheap and b) completely lacking in social intelligence.

He’ll happily refuse to pay for his minor underling’s legal bills. Then he’ll be completely baffled when the small fry rat him out to make the financial bleeding stop.

4181

I do have a bit of faith that Mueller, et al, will be able to (and follow through with) making such a strong case that these types of shenanigans will be impossible, as will pardons in the face of the evidence.

And if he can’t/won’t, well we’re pretty screwed anyways.

4182

Hey, maybe if we had a more sane method of allocating higher education that didn’t require going 6 figures in debt it wouldn’t be so bad for him.

Can’t be done though. No country has managed that ever. Not even the Germans can do it. Nope. Life crippling debt is the way god intended.