Also (more?) relevant to the Trump tweet above:
There maybe some truth to this interpretation but I suspect the reality was more complex:
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Trump is a narcissist with no moral compass. The prospect of having to keep promises is likely not something that would have kept him ifrom at night
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Trump is a criminal and has been engaged in criminal activity his whole life. He has almost certainly been laundering money for the Russian mob for years. I’m guessing he sees himself having more in common with them than with American politicians. He may not have wanted to win the Presidency but, having won it, he tried his best to rget n the whole thIng as yet another criminal grift. Conspiring with the Russians comes more naturally to him than behaving ethically and placing the interests of the country above his own.
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I don’t think that Trump expected to win and probably didn’t really want to be President but I think that would sometimes get clouded in his mind by his narcissism which couldn’t stand the thought of losing (to a woman no less!) and fantasized about the prestige and glory winning would bring upon him.
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There may or may not be literal pee tapes but kompromat is generally more nuanced than that. Trump has a long history of working closely with Russian oligarchs and I’m sure there’s a ton of kompromat from that alone, plus he is naive and easily manipulated so I’m sure the Kremlin just kept building larger and larger files on him. Hell, every meeting he toook with them, every exchange of information was new kompromat.
I missed this earlier (sorry vyshka!!) but this is a fantastic point and could be the key to how BuzzFeed broke this – and also key to the the “discrepancy” noted by Marcy Wheeler.
I think her discrepancy note that kerzain posted is based upon information that to date we have no knowledge that Mueller & company have pursued much – if anything – on Trump Tower dealings. The only super specific mention we know of is that there was a passage in the questions provided to Trump to answer (remember his written take-home test?) that was worded thusly:
https://twitter.com/KenDilanianNBC/status/1086288568371286016
But it is entirely possible that the SDNY has been investigating this, in loose conjunction with the SCO. In fact, in Anthony Cormier’s interview on CNN, he mentions that these sources with “law enforcement” had been investigating the Trump Tower dealings during the campaign before the special counsel was appointed. Which likely points directly at the SDNY.
A fuckin men to that.
A good long read and analysis of last night’s story from Ben Wittes at Lawfare.
He also suggests the possibility that the “Law enforcement” sources could be from the SDNY – or also from the NY AG’s office. It seems more and more likely to me that this story came from law enforcement investigating Trump and Trump Tower stuff in Russia going back a ways, and the whole suborning perjury thing ended up as the tail that wags the dog in that.
That makes a crapton of sense to me. It sounds so like Trump to promise things he never intended to do, but when he actually won, they had him over a barrel for working with a foreign government to subvert the election. I always wondered why the hotel deal fell through. Well, by this logic, it was actually Russia that made a bunch of promises they didn’t have to actually deliver. The idea that Trump was played so completely…I buy that.
Just to round things out, here’s your Crazy Conspiracy Theory for the day - the sources are from NY FBI, because Rudy wants to get out in front of the Mueller report.
Better to muddy the waters up front with “Michael Cohen is a liar and Buzzfeed is a joke!” than to have the first report of it be Mueller spelling out multiple sources with receipts.
(There’s no proof at all for this, I admit, other than the fact that most of the major leaks about the investigation so far have come from Team Trump.)
I’m sure that nice young man Sean Hannity will sort this out for us later tonight.
The oddest thing to me about that front page is: an article about Squeaky Fromm?!
An excuse to listen to some Otis Ball? Sure, its hyper-relevant!
I think your interpretation makes more than sense the guy Triggercut posted.
In particular, I believe that Trump ego is such he genuinely believe he would have been/is a great president, even if the polls were saying he was going to lose.
He has actually been involved in money laundering for a long time, and knows that those charges alone could sink the presidency. Which is why he has fought against the tax returns.
I wonder if, in addition to the alleged paper trail, if one of these conversations is among the ones Cohen allegedly recorded.
Oh my god, stop. I hadn’t considered that and I can only take so much desperate hope.
Agree with you about Trump’s ego, but that doesn’t mean he wanted the job.
Does keeping the government shut down prevent the House from obtaining his tax returns? Wonder if that’s a big factor in his strategy right now.
Trump’s plan was to launch Trump TV to compete with Fox and pocket a bunch of money in the process.
Then he won, so now he has to actually work. So instead he delegates everything and watches TV while occasionally doing random shit without telling anyone. Which works when you run a company you own, which is basically a monarchy. Not so much when you’re running a Republic with rules.
Or Rightbug’s theory. I suspect it’s a combination of both.
I don’t buy it, it gives him too much credit, and I don’t think he’s a good enough businessman and I still believe he has been in debt to the Russians since at least the 2008 crisis, if not much longer.
Poor journalism will give Trump more ammunition.
Awesome, I can’t wait to hear their explanation.
Hmmm