Very, very true.
But if Barr’s attitude on this speaks toward his general mindset on executive power and privilege, that to me is worrisome when it inevitably intersects with Mueller’s report and the DoJ’s approach.
Yet…
I just get the feeling that there are two distinct groups of folks in Trump’s administration. There are folks who are working with him, but still believe in America. They may have ideals that differ dramatically from those of folks here, but they still love the country, and believe in fundamental concepts like freedom and democracy. Someone like Kelly probably falls into this category. Someone like Mattis certainly does.
But then there are folks like Steven Miller, or Trump himself, who literally have zero regard for anything we would traditionally consider as an American value, or really values at all. They are motivated entirely by really terrible things. They don’t simply have ideas about how to make the world better that differ from yours, but they actually want bad stuff to happen. Like, for Trump, he would love it if he could just be king and get away with any level of corruption, and it literally doesn’t matter what happens after that. The whole world could be destroyed. He doesn’t care.
Those two groups are very different in my mind. The former might be doing stuff that’s bad, but it’s a different kind of bad, at least to me. I think that Barr would fall into the former, rather than the latter. I just don’t see him totally casting aside everything to support Trump’s corruption.
An effing AOL account by a National Security Advisor? You gotta be effing kidding me.
Cummings also told Cipollone that the committee obtained a document showing that McFarland was using an AOL.com account to conduct official White House business. Cummings said the document shows that McFarland was in communication with Tom Barrack, a longtime Trump confidant and the chairman of the president’s Inaugural Committee, about transferring “sensitive U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.”
My favorite “word cloud”, regarding coverage of the 2016 presidential election…
Main, mainstream media certainly take information security best practices seriously, don’t they?
Narrator: They don’t.
Looks to me like Trump wants to “Make People support Obama”
Looking at that makes me angry. Again. I wish we could print out a copy and tape it in every cubicle at the NYT, CNN and NBC as they approach 2020.
Wait, why make it easier them by giving them a nice printed list of what to type? Make them dredge up their old crap on their own if they’re going to just repeat it. I’m getting really worried we’re definitely getting Trump 2.0 next year if the Mueller report doesn’t come up with anything 100% conclusive.
Sadly, it’s not Mueller’s job to preserve the American electorate from its own idiocy.
Yeah, it wouldn’t surprise me if Trump didn’t collude, at least actively. I suspect he’s guilty of many financial crimes but like any crime boss he has his lackeys do things so he’s somewhat shielded.
The sad thing is Mueller may show that there was collusion, that the Russians did try (and succeed) in swinging the election, but if the evidence falls short of harming Trump, people will see it as an exoneration of Trump and the Republicans and move past it.
Except he colluded openly in a nationally televised speech. If I went on TV and said Jimmy the Toucan and Louis the Weasel if you’re listening, I hope you whack Lucky DeVitti and Lucky DeVitti ends up with two in the head, I think I’m probably in some trouble.
This is a terrible analogy. For one thing, DeVitti never got whacked (Russia never got Hillary’s emails). For another, outside a provable relationship with Jimmy or Louis, what you say about them on TV wouldn’t be evidence of a conspiracy.
If there was actually no willful collusion somehow then a lot of people have done an awful lot of lying for no reason.
You have to remember that for the people involved, lying is akin to breathing. They don’t need a reason to do it, and often don’t realize they are doing it.
Yet they tried, and they tried immediately after he asked them to.
The relationship is proven, isn’t it?
The relatiionship between who and who? Some Russians A) did illegal things to advance Trump’s campaign. Some Russians B) had communications with people in the campaign, and some Russians C) had ties to Trump businesses. Mueller has to show that not only is A) connected to B) or C), but that Trump or people in the campaign knew about the connection. Who would the Russians trust with information about their activities? Who’s the mastermind within the Trump camp who saw how all the pieces fit together?
Between Trump and people in authority in Russia. That relationship is effectively proven, e.g.:
- Trump hoped to make a ton of money off of a real estate project which he denied and lied about during the campaign;
- and to that end he sought the cooperation of those Russian officials while campaigning on a platform of improving relations with them;
- and in the process he solicited their help in aiding his campaign, in a form that would be a violation of several laws;
- and they tried to give him that help.
These are all facts, aren’t they?
These are only facts if you blindly conflate a lot of very different Russians-- and you had some reason to believe that Trump would think that the Russians would act on what was presented as a rhetorical flourish.
It’s possible that these things could be proven, but it would demand a lot of additional evidence to what we know now. Try to put aside the wishful thinking. If you were betting money, what do you think Mueller is going to come up with? Do you honestly think the Russians would trust any of the dunderheads in Trump’s coterie with their election disruption plans or capabilities?