The Trump Presidency

[Runnin]

Kevin M. Kruse‏Verified account @KevinMKruse 19m19 minutes ago

At 33% approval, Trump has now sunk down to a low that only *three* other presidents ever hit in the last 60 years: Nixon, Bush & Bush.

Still so depressing the percentage of support is so high.

[57Brave]

Still so depressing the percentage of support is so high.

33% of Americans still believe Sadaam Hussein was behind 9/11.
Even today, that same contingent believes Hillary Clinton is President

As the Beastie Boys sang, "where you get your information fromm"
It is called will full ignorance

[57Brave]

Craig Boo!gawa��‏ @BYU_craiggers 7h7 hours ago

��Craig Boo!gawa

�� Retweeted Christina Wilkie

America, where it’s “disrespectful” to kneel for the anthem, but “honorable” to lead a civil war against it

John Kelly: "Robert E. Lee was an honorable man who gave up his country to fight for his state."

Tom Bonier‏Verified account @tbonier 1h1 hour ago

The WH Chief of Staff goes on TV and says that the Confederates were taking a "conscientious stand" and it will barely make news. 2017.
..............................

33% still approve.
Count of five I bet there is a discussion here that Kelly has a point.

You know who you are

[57Brave]

The Rude Pundit‏ @rudepundit 7m7 minutes ago

The Rude Pundit Retweeted Noah Rothman

At the end of the day, one side wanted to keep humans as slaves. Any compromise (and there were many) is undone by that fact.

[Super]

conscientious stand against people not being slaves? honorable!

[57Brave]

But, it wasn't about slavery --- 33% of the people believe that too


https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...-Jeers-Tuesday

[Krgrecw]

conscientious stand against people not being slaves? honorable!

If slavery is so immoral what are you doing to stop the slavery that still exists to this day in Africa?


Nothing. I guess you really don’t have a problem with it then.

[Super]

have a feeling Mueller is gonna get these guys on the Rosneft deal. Carter Page is a moron.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefi...mpaign-staffer

-In April, Papadopoulos went to London and discussed the hacked e-mails with the professor, a month before anyone else knew about them

-He tries to get the campaign to send someone there to deal with Putin. Manafort says that it will have to be someone low-level, not Trump.

In July, they send Carter Page to Moscow. He makes a deal with Putin: sanctions relief and a 19% stake in Rosneft for election help. Putin says he wants a personal confirmation from Trump that the deal is a go.

-On July 27, Trump looks into the camera and says, "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find Hillary Clinton's 30,000 e-mails." That was the 'yes.'

-December: 19.5% of Rosneft vanishes in a sell-off to a group of anonymous shell corporations.

corrupt AF

[57Brave]

what a stupid argument, "well if ABC is so bad in XYZ what are you doing about it" ?

[cajunrevenge]

What you don't realize is the south won the war. First thing the South did when the troops left was to make laws the cops could use to arrest blacks and try them with all white jurors. Then they used convict leading which coincidentally exploded in popularity all over the south right after the civil war. Alabama was getting 73% of its revenue from convict leasing in 1898. This was eventually banned in 1941 but it's just the same ever evolving scheme. I don't know at what point the cops became the good guys in history but if we are going to use today's standards to people of the past we can't leave out the long history police have of enforcing slavery long after the civil war ended.

[Julio3000]

have a feeling Mueller is gonna get these guys on the Rosneft deal. Carter Page is a moron.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefi...mpaign-staffer

-In April, Papadopoulos went to London and discussed the hacked e-mails with the professor, a month before anyone else knew about them

-He tries to get the campaign to send someone there to deal with Putin. Manafort says that it will have to be someone low-level, not Trump.

In July, they send Carter Page to Moscow. He makes a deal with Putin: sanctions relief and a 19% stake in Rosneft for election help. Putin says he wants a personal confirmation from Trump that the deal is a go.

-On July 27, Trump looks into the camera and says, "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find Hillary Clinton's 30,000 e-mails." That was the 'yes.'

-December: 19.5% of Rosneft vanishes in a sell-off to a group of anonymous shell corporations.

corrupt AF

Couple of things here:

First, Putin uses the state-owned conglomerates as patronage vehicles. One really common scheme is for Gazprom/Rosneft, et al sell a commodity to a middleman company controlled by the beneficiary of the patronage. The middlemen get super-cheap natural gas or oil, etc, then sell it at market prices and reap a profit, some of which gets kicked back up to the patron. There are other schemes, and they're all similarly corrupt and mafia-esque. Selling a direct chunk of the company looks a little different to me. Supposedly it was sold to provide liquidity to Russia's spluttering economy in advance of the 2018 elections.

If there were any US-related kickback, it wouldn't be 19% of Rosneft. The allegation in the Steele Dossier is that Page and unknown individuals were offered essentially a brokerage fee on the sale of 19% of Rosneft. The buyer ended up being various Qatari entities, and the byzantine structure of the deal is explained as measures to avoid western sanctions. Putin's ruling coterie is corrupt as hell. Trump's crowd is known for cupidity and shady dealing. The timeline is tantalizing. But there isn't any meat on those particular bones, IMO.

So, Carter Page. He's explicitly named in the dossier as some kind of go-between for a (allegedly failed) earlier iteration of the Rosneft deal. The most specific allegations against him outside of that are from Michael Isikoff, who has a solid track record on the Russia issue (he broke most of the stories about Michael Flynn's lobbying and financial entanglements). He attributes to an "American intelligence official" statements that Page met with Igor Sechin (the Rosneft chair) and various other Russian officials in a couple of separate trips to Moscow. The problem with that is that it's unclear if the source had direct knowledge of that or if it were based on unverified info from the dossier. IMO I think it's best to treat that allegation with some skepticism.

There was a profile on Page in (I think) The Atlantic a few months ago, which cast him as kind of a pathetic figure, a guy with big aspirations of being a player and no real connections or tangible results, who'd managed to kinda fail upward into his situation with the Trump campaign. I remember that someone quoted in the article just laughed when asked if a guy like him would get face time with Igor Sechin. On one hand, maybe there's a specific effort to discredit the guy (and on that score, he's done pretty well on his own) but on the other hand, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

I think that the Trump crew's early and vehement distancing of themselves from Page probably means that he's compromised somewhere along the line (remember that he was extensively scrutinized by the FBI after he was abortively recruited as part of a Russian espionage ring broken up a few years ago), but I don't think it's likely that the Rosneft/Page stuff is legit. Now, I DO think that he's probably screwed himself at some point, since he's apparently done a lot of talking to investigators without legal representation but one way or the other, it seems like he's rather more a bait fish (in the context of Russia, Trump, OR the FBI) than a trophy.

So even though I'm skeptical of the splashy allegations about him, I still see a lot of sketchiness. Why did the Trump campaign let him in the door in the first place?

[cajunrevenge]

Papadopolous is such a fake name. None of you knew he existed before this. I am going full Alex Jones on this one. I dont think he is real. This is clearly the work of the globalist alien pirate conspiracy to shrink our penises.

[nsacpi]

Why did the Trump campaign let him in the door in the first place?

Trump doesn't do vetting or due diligence. Which has created lots of problems for him over the years, both as a businessman and now as a politician.

[Runnin]

Trump doesn't do vetting or due diligence. Which has created lots of problems for him over the years, both as a businessman and now as a politician.

The only thing he seems to be good at is making money through dubious means. No matter your stripe you have to admit it's amateur hour in the WH. I don't think anyone there has a clue what they are doing.

[Julio3000]

Trump doesn't do vetting or due diligence. Which has created lots of problems for him over the years, both as a businessman and now as a politician.

Anyone who wants a perfect illustration of Trumpian "due diligence" should read Adam Davidson's piece in the New Yorker from a few months ago about the Trump Tower project in Baku, Azerbaijan. It's amazingly detailed and well-sourced. Bottom line: the Trump Organization signed onto a project that was nominally run by the wife and children of a phenomenally corrupt government minister, in a place that is notable for official corruption. It appears that a substantial portion of the money for the project may have come from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Council, which is about as radioactive as it gets, as far as American businesses are concerned. The reporter interviewed TO lawyers who were nominally in charge of due diligence, and they more or less wanly shrugged and said "eh...what can you do?"

[57Brave]

and this:
....................

John Sipher‏Verified account @john_sipher

Why didn't a single person in the campaign over all those months say seeking stolen documents from a hostile power is wrong, and tell FBI?

Susan Hennessey‏Verified account @Susan_Hennessey 37m37 minutes ago

Susan Hennessey Retweeted John Sipher

Reminder that when Gore was anonymously mailed Bush debate prep materials, he immediately gave them to the FBI

. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/14/us...ot-potato.html …

[jpx7]

Anyone who wants a perfect illustration of Trumpian "due diligence" should read Adam Davidson's piece in the New Yorker from a few months ago about the Trump Tower project in Baku, Azerbaijan. It's amazingly detailed and well-sourced. Bottom line: the Trump Organization signed onto a project that was nominally run by the wife and children of a phenomenally corrupt government minister, in a place that is notable for official corruption. It appears that a substantial portion of the money for the project may have come from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Council, which is about as radioactive as it gets, as far as American businesses are concerned. The reporter interviewed TO lawyers who were nominally in charge of due diligence, and they more or less wanly shrugged and said "eh...what can you do?"

I'd get in on that due diligence if I could spend a couple months in Baku on Trump's dime.

[Runnin]

Nobody knew tax reform could be so hard.

[goldfly]

If slavery is so immoral what are you doing to stop the slavery that still exists to this day in Africa?


Nothing. I guess you really don’t have a problem with it then.

Lol

I love replies like this

Like, how far gone do you have to be to think replying with that is a good idea?

[goldfly]

I'd get in on that due diligence if I could spend a couple months in Baku on Trump's dime.

I'm down with that

Will do it cheaper than he could ever dream of doing it to