The Chinese military obviously being big fans of Taiwan.
I think it’s all wrapped up in the various dealing with Google trying to expand in China.
It must be so weird for these kind of people, who are of above average intelligence and strategic competence, to have to deal with the near child-level intellect of the POTUS.
I wonder if they coach them before meeting him, the way people used to be coached before they met royalty. “Keep your shake firm, but not too firm. Only speak when spoken to. And whatever you do, DON’T MENTION THE WALL!”
I’m pretty sure they all walk into it with attitude of, “how can I manipulate this moron for my benefit?” I think they’re largely successful.
They always underestimate how dumb he is though.
Poisonous gas would be even more effective.
To stop Trump from saying stupid things?
“He doesn’t give you questions, he doesn’t give you orders, he speaks in a code. And I understand the code, because I’ve been around him for a decade,” testified Cohen, Trump’s former longtime personal attorney.
Which is likely why Mueller couldn’t prove collusion or obstruction… even though we all know he did it.
Sigh.
Evidence suggests Mueller could prove obstruction, but refrained from coming to a conclusion on the matter because that is what special counsels do. It’s what Starr did, what Walsh did, and what Jaworski did. You find the evidence, package it up, present it to Congress and let them decide how to proceed.
On collusion, the question Mueller was tasked with answering was so narrow that the evidence he found of collusion simply doesn’t apply. If you read the footnote in Barr’s letter, they defined the collusion question as whether there was an agreement between the Trump campaign and the Russian government to influence the election. That ignores all the campaign activities not directly involving Russian officials, which means e.g. the Trump Tower meeting and associated communications don’t count (because not with Russian government officials), the Stone interactions with WikiLeaks don’t count (because not with Russian government officials), and Manafort giving detailed polling data to a Russian cut-out don’t count (because not with Russian government officials). Put another way, he almost certainly found evidence of collusion — some of which we have seen or know about — but could not tie it to an agreement between the campaign and the government.
So Trump is here in Grand Rapids tonight, with a rally at the arena downtown. One of the local stations is covering it live so I have it on my TV in the background. I’ve never actually watched one of these rallies before. I knew in theory that it was pretty much a cult-of-personality thing, but watching it in person really drives it home. I’m not sure he’s said one completely true thing yet; everything is either a straight up lie, or exaggerated to the point that it might as well be. But it doesn’t matter, everyone cheers at every line. No wonder he’s constantly holding these rallies, if I had thousands of people cheering at anything I said, I’d want to keep it going too.
You probably thought you’d never get the full “Germany in 1933” experience!
Like Nuremberg only dumber and tackier.
Overheard a handful of old white male asshats at the coffee shop today make reference to “the terrorist from Minnesota”. Took me a second to realize that they meant Rep. Ilhan Omar.
Trump supporters.
Obviously not a hipster coffee shop. Or was it?
It’s quite near an Air Force research base, so it gets a lot of business from there, but I suspect (from the conversation) that these old guys drive heavy equipment and such. But I think a hipster would feel comfortable there as well.
These guys really hate that their taxes pay for things like brown people having four babies each. Nearly a quote.
Is this a reference to Jacob Wohl? iunderstoodthatreference.gif
What makes me laugh about that attitude (about the four babies) is who (in the absence of more immigration by young people who would start families) these guys think will be wiping their asses in the nursing home when they’re 90? Apparently they think they’ll never grow that old, and that even if they do, it’ll be corn-fed young blonde women from Iowa or something.