The Trump Presidency

Hawk said:
I'm just going to stick to copy and pasting Glen Greenwald:

It’s hard to put into words how strange it is to watch the very same people — from both parties, across the ideological spectrum — who called for the heads of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Tom Drake, and so many other Obama-era leakers today heap praise on those who leaked the highly sensitive, classified SIGINT information that brought down Gen. Flynn.

It’s even more surreal to watch Democrats act as though lying to the public is some grave firing offense when President Obama’s top national security official, James Clapper, got caught red-handed not only lying to the public but also to Congress — about a domestic surveillance program that courts ruled was illegal. And despite the fact that lying to Congress is a felony, he kept his job until the very last day of the Obama presidency.
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Yeah, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning were both on the National Security Council under Obama. I like Greenwald, but that's a pretty weak analogy. Like Julio, I think Obama's aversion to leaks and penchant for secrecy are extremely relevant to the conversation.
 
Hawk said:
I thought so, but I don't see how the analogy is weak ... unless I'm missing something obvious (which is really possible these days).
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Hawk said:
I thought so, but I don't see how the analogy is weak ... unless I'm missing something obvious (which is really possible these days).
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Comparing Snowden and Manning to Flynn is a terrible analogy because they weren't on the President's staff and if you put the arrow in the other direction, their actions could not be traced to any one actor within the Bush and Obama administrations but were aimed at an overall policy. Clapper is a good analogy because he was. If there's anything odd here, it's that many who decried Snowden's antics seem agnostic on Flynn's.
 
Here's the next drip.

Same story, uses some different qualifiers (i.e. "constant communication). Names Flynn specifically in addition to Manafort.

Speaking of Manafort, he gets the silver medal for unintentionally funny statements about serious matters (gold being "inadvertently briefed with incomplete information").

Mr. Manafort, who has not been charged with any crimes, dismissed the officials’ accounts in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “This is absurd,” he said. “I have no idea what this is referring to. I have never knowingly spoken to Russian intelligence officers, and I have never been involved with anything to do with the Russian government or the Putin administration or any other issues under investigation today.”

He added, “It’s not like these people wear badges that say, ‘I’m a Russian intelligence officer.’”

I mean, the last part is the laugh line, but it's also sort of grim-funny to see Paul Manafort say that he's "never been involved with anything to do with the Russian government or the Putin administration."
 
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Hawk said:
It’s even more surreal to watch Democrats act as though lying to the public is some grave firing offense when President Obama’s top national security official, James Clapper, got caught red-handed not only lying to the public but also to Congress — about a domestic surveillance program that courts ruled was illegal. And despite the fact that lying to Congress is a felony, he kept his job until the very last day of the Obama presidency.[/I]
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I wonder if there is a different dynamic when when you have an administration that has been seen openly lying about everything.
 
Julio3000 said:
I mean, the last part is the laugh line, but it's also sort of grim-funny to see Paul Manafort say that he's "never been involved with anything to do with the Russian government or the Putin administration."
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Hasn't DT said pretty much the same thing?
 
Julio3000 said:
Here's the next drip.

Same story, uses some different qualifiers (i.e. "constant communication). Names Flynn specifically in addition to Manafort.

Speaking of Manafort, he gets the silver medal for unintentionally funny statements about serious matters (gold being "inadvertently briefed with incomplete information").

Mr. Manafort, who has not been charged with any crimes, dismissed the officials’ accounts in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “This is absurd,” he said. “I have no idea what this is referring to. I have never knowingly spoken to Russian intelligence officers, and I have never been involved with anything to do with the Russian government or the Putin administration or any other issues under investigation today.”

He added, “It’s not like these people wear badges that say, ‘I’m a Russian intelligence officer.’”

I mean, the last part is the laugh line, but it's also sort of grim-funny to see Paul Manafort say that he's "never been involved with anything to do with the Russian government or the Putin administration."
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So far so meh. Still just indicts Flynn and Manafort who are the two most obvious players in the Russian scandal since forever. Trump will survive if it's just these two guys.
 
50PoundHead said:
Comparing Snowden and Manning to Flynn is a terrible analogy because they weren't on the President's staff and if you put the arrow in the other direction, their actions could not be traced to any one actor within the Bush and Obama administrations but were aimed at an overall policy. Clapper is a good analogy because he was. If there's anything odd here, it's that many who decried Snowden's antics seem agnostic on Flynn's.
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He's not comparing Snowden and Manning to Flynn beyond the fact that all three cases involved illegally leaked intel. The public has chosen to consider the legality of each leak at whatever length they find valuable to a political cause.

If anything, the information leaked about Flynn is particularly disturbing precisely because it targets one individual.
 
A part of me can't help but be conspiratorial. Is this a play by Bannon to expose the intelligence community as a shadow state? Bannon seeks to break the system.
 
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