I’m sure the good senator would make exactly the same argument in favor of Hillary in the event she were in DJT’s shoes. Of course she wouldn’t be in DJT’s shoes, because she’s not a treasonous clown like DJT and his clan are.
You have to feel for these poor Trumpsters that have to struggle to come up with new and interesting ways of justifying their support, day after day, week after week. Or not, screw these idiots.
That’s pretty much my camp. Camp F.U. We have big F and U cookies and everything.
Dude, you’ve got big cookies and haven’t had a FU cookie party yet for the local folks? Come on now!
Maybe I just read too many LeCarre novels - but I’m pretty sure that ‘ongoing relationship’ is exactly how one cultivates and turns a source.
I am told that “ongoing relationship” probably isn’t something a defense attorney would a client in Manafort’s position to bring to the attention of a judge, jury, or prosecution.
It’s not collusion, it’s just an ongoing relationship with Russian intelligence from the time when he was a paid agent of a Putin stooge.
“But your honor, this certainly isn’t my client’s first offense…”
Yeah, that’s an odd tactic.
If you don’t mind explaining, what are they talking about when they refer to “polling data”? How would this have potentially helped them influence the election?
All campaigns, and especially presidential campaigns, do internal polling that they don’t share. It can and does contain demographic data, as well as data on how various demographics respond to various policy questions or news byte information that’s fed to them. It allows campaigns to target groups by age/race/education/marital status/location/etc.
The kinds of stuff you see in campaign polling data is a lot of different takes on the same question. They may ask, “Is there a problem with illegal immigrants coming across our southern border?” They may ask “Given that [certain statistic], is there a problem with our southern border?” It basically is a huge help for campaigns to frame questions and find their best attack strategies.
It’s incredibly valuable and important stuff. And we know that the Russians had hacked the DNC and likely had access to at least part of Hillary Clinton’s polling data. And Manafort gave them Trump’s. That made the Russian Intel services likely the biggest experts on strategy, tactics, and how the 2016 general election was likely to play out.
Trigger can give more detail, but campaigns use internal polling for many strategic purposes. This polling, both the questions and the results, are typically confidential as both the questions and the answers can affect the tactics and strategies of the campaign. Knowledge of confidential polling information is helpful in influencing a campaign in several ways:
The questions themselves reveal what the campaigns think are important, what they may know and what they may not know. This is similar to the ideas in Le Carre’s Russia House.
Also, the polling data itself is extremely valuable: it shows how the public is responding to the message, what messages do and don’t work; where the campaign is weak or strong, etc.
All of this info is useful in influencing a campaign in that it can help the influencer determine what kind of techniques or messaging to use, when, and where.
It’s like getting access to a sports team’s scouting reports.
Edit: beaten by Trigger.
That’s actually way more succinct than I was, and is a really good analogy.
So, this could have further helped them target, just as an example, Facebook ads purchased by Cambridge Analytica. Edit: and suggest also which messages would be most effective to use in them.
Do you think this (the sharing of the data) will have significant consequences if it can’t be proven the data was used in some explicit way?
I’m sure Jr.'s supreme arrogance and stupidity will serve him well.
Just sharing with foreign intel is really bad. If they can prove that DJT even knew it was happening – regardless of whether he directed it to happen, or approved it – it is, as they say on Mad Men, “Not good, Bob.”
Appreciate the answers. Just trying to understand how significant the revelation is.
If by significant consequences you mean some kind of electoral “do over”, sadly, No, b/c our Constitution just doesn’t have the means to do this; it was considered so outrageously beyond norms that nobody even thought to provide a remedy, other than the next election cycle.
What should happen is that this BS should turn voters off the GOP and make them contribute to a blue meteor strike in 2020. I mean, it could happen…
Nah, I meant more of the legal variety. I know the rabbit ain’t going back into the hat.