The Mueller Report

kps88 said:
:lol:

You always react in extremes.
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Watch the reaction of conservative independents this week after the right wing PR machines start chugging along. This is going to be a big wave for him to ride and is going to knock confidence in any negative reporting of him.

Here’s a theory that can be verified quite quickly (@Brwned) - he will see at least a 10% spike in polls this week.
 
I know there were so many legal issues for trump going around, it’s difficult to keep pace.But there was this”individual 1” fiasco that I seem to vaguely remember. Is that all part of this report or can someone remind me on what exactly it was about?
 
Rado_N said:
Nobody associated with the campaign coordinated with Russia? We already know that's bollocks based on the indictments against Cohen and Stone.
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Cohen has been found guilty of lying about hush payments not Russia. Stone on the other had is supposed to have conspired with Wikileaks.
 
They should release the whole report. The AG exonerating him on obstruction of justice sounds very smelly to me. Is there any law by which this whole investigation report shouldn't be released?

The Russia thing although seems a dead end.
 
It sounds like Barr and Rosenstein made the definitive call on obstruction.
 
Pexbo said:
Watch the reaction of conservative independents this week after the right wing PR machines start chugging along. This is going to be a big wave for him to ride and is going to knock confidence in any negative reporting of him.

Here’s a theory that can be verified quite quickly (@Brwned) - he will see at least a 10% spike in polls this week.
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How many times in the past have you said he's in big trouble? And now, all of a sudden, he's a lock for 2020? It is more than a year away! So much can happen between now and then. A spike in the polls next week means absolutely nothing for 2020.
 
If there is any hope left it’s this:

Mueller was never in a position to prosecute the President, he always handed these things up to Rosenstein (now Barr).

With that in mind, there is likely still a lot of stuff in the full report that Barr left out.

The house Democrats will get their hands on it and make it public.
 
As nuance isn't allowed, it's worth noting Trump is still an un-indicted criminal in the Cohen case, not to mention the reams of money laundering cases which are kicking off.

But, this will be labelled as exoneration from all crimes - Russia or not - by Fox news and the rest of the GOP.
 
bleedred said:
I know there were so many legal issues for trump going around, it’s difficult to keep pace.But there was this”individual 1” fiasco that I seem to vaguely remember. Is that all part of this report or can someone remind me on what exactly it was about?
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That was another crime, the hush money payments made by Cohen
 
The only positive is that it's still 1.5 years away. Plenty of time for his actual crimes to have more light shone upon them.

This, again, was only related to Russia. Nothing on porn stars, corruption, violation of emoluments and so forth.
 
Jan 26 2017:
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/the-trump-presidency.423603/page-349#post-20379994

A Game of Russian Roulette
BY
CHIP GIBBONS

Couching opposition to Trump in anti-Russia language will only end up benefiting the Right.


Trump enters the White House after running a campaign infused with bigotry and fear mongering, while promising to bring back torture, surveil Muslims, and undermine what little progress has been made in restraining police brutality. Meanwhile, the Republicans in Congress have made it clear that they want defund Planned Parenthood, repeal the Affordable Care Act, and go after Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. All of these are very pressing dangers.

Yet earlier this month, at Donald Trump’s first press conference in six months, he was not asked a single question about Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid.

Worse yet, in some cases it appears the Russia fixation is not merely a distraction, but a deliberate cudgel to use against those who oppose attacks on the welfare state or civil liberties.

Eric Garland, the Twitter game theorist who dazzled some in the media, praisedSanders’s opposition to “economic inequality, ” but argued that such a problem would take years to fix. In the immediate future, he insisted, Sanders needed to weigh in on the “greatest crisis”: Russian interference.

In a similar vein, after Trump came under fire for nominating former Goldman Sachs partner Steven Mnuchin to his cabinet, the neoconservative David Frum took to Twitter to complain that many “patriotic” people worked at Goldman Sachs and it was “[w]eird to be more alarmed by [Goldman Sach’s] influence than, say, Vladimir Putin’s.”

Thus, not only are wide sectors of the media and political class focusing on Russia to the exclusion of actual issues, those who do focus on actual issues are chastised for not forming a popular front with people like Senator John McCain and Senator Lindsey Graham — two men who have yet to locate a country on a map they didn’t wish to bomb.

For the “never Trump” conservative crowd, Russia plays a convenient role. It lets them cling to the delusion that Trump is somehow not truly conservative or the outgrowth of the Republican Party’s decades-long strategy of exploiting racism. Castigating Trump as tantamount to a foreign adversary is one way they can argue Trump isn’t one of them.

It is less clear what liberal Democrats have to gain from hopping on this bandwagon, other than a talking point against Trump. One possibility: as Doug Henwood has pointed out, fixating on Russia allows establishment Democrats to avoid asking any hard questions about why Hillary Clinton lost. Not only can they ascribe Clinton’s loss to Russian hacking — instead of her ties to Wall Street or her tone deafness to populist outrage — they can argue that focusing on anything but Russia distracts us from the most pressing issue: the Kremlin’s hijacking of our democracy.

The Russia framing helps them justify staying the course rather than finding fault with the party. Sanders, though now formally independent, is currently leading the only meaningful opposition to Trump among federally elected Democrats. He is doing so by hitting Trump on the same themes that drew millions to his campaign in the first place.

But while defending the most popular pillars of the actually existing US welfare state is one of the best ways for the Democrats to attack Trump, the party is fundamentally a capitalist one with deep ties to Wall Street. Populist mobilizations are anathema to its class interest.

So expect more histrionics about Russia.
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Tarrou said:
I wonder if the Dems will knuckle down now and try to win 2020 by actually focusing on their own platform, as opposed to just moaning about Trump. Probably not.
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They just ran a very effective mid-terms campaign centred around policy and avoiding Trump.
 
I feel empty. Honestly I don't believe anyone should obviously be accused or punished for things they didn't do but the Barr letter seems very much in contrast with everything that has come out so far, especially if you look at the line about it not exonerating Trump. Considering everyone knows that this is in essence about the survival of the republican party - it's difficult not to take the summary by a Trump pick with a massive grain of salt.
 
kps88 said:
How many times in the past have you said he's in big trouble? And now, all of a sudden, he's a lock for 2020? It is more than a year away! So much can happen between now and then. A spike in the polls next week means absolutely nothing for 2020.
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He is still in big trouble. The scope of this is “direct evidence of conspiring with Russia” and “obstruction of justice relating to said investigation”.

There is over 30 serious criminal investigations currently farmed out to other federal and state courts and the comments we have made in the past have mostly been related to them rather than the topics released in the report today.

The trouble though is that most Americans aren’t aware that those investigations are now independent of Mueller. They think it’s all over and Trump and the GOP are going to squeeze that narrative and will be successful in doing so.
 
matherto said:
So it's a complete bust?

All of this for two years and feck all?
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No. Cohen said that other matters related to Trump have been referred to the SDNY. We have no clue what those matters are. Likely related to his finances.
 
Ubik said:
They just ran a very effective mid-terms campaign centred around policy and avoiding Trump.
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Yeah, anyone saying they can't win in 2020 because of this is being a bit over the top I reckon. Still a long time between now and then, and since it seems obvious Mueller isn't going to be the one who's responsible for Trump's downfall, it's on the Dems to make sure they are.
 
bleedred said:
I know there were so many legal issues for trump going around, it’s difficult to keep pace.But there was this”individual 1” fiasco that I seem to vaguely remember. Is that all part of this report or can someone remind me on what exactly it was about?
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That's a different investigation that Mueller farmed out.
 
2016 was a good opportunity for introspection in the Democratic party establishment after a catastrophic failure on their part.

They instead went all in on Russiagate, with Clinton herself still saying it was the primary reason she lost. They have chosen to die on this hill - mass hysteria without any hard evidence. Trump and supporters now have legitimate reason to ridicule the “fake news” media, the “witch hunt” etc. We’ll never hear the f*cking end of this during the 2020 campaign. That ghoul Lindsey Graham, once hailed by the media as “the resistance”, just called it a great day. Great job.
 
Tarrou said:
I wonder if the Dems will knuckle down now and try to win 2020 by actually focusing on their own platform, as opposed to just moaning about Trump. Probably not.
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This. Trump is the perfect example of “no such thing as bad publicity”. The amount of time he is on the media is always going to help him. His fan base wouldn’t care even if the report found collusion or obstruction.
 
shabadu84 said:
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BY VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
NOVEMBER 15, 2016

Hillary Clinton Is More Than a President
She is an idea, a world-historical heroine, light itself.

When people told me they hated Hillary Clinton or (far worse) that they were "not fans," I wish I had said in no uncertain terms: "I love Hillary Clinton. I am in awe of her. I am set free by her. She will be the finest world leader our galaxy has ever seen."

I wish, in those exchanges, I had not asked gentle, tolerant questions about a hater's ridiculous allergy to her, or Clinton's fictional misdeeds and imagined character flaws. More deeply still, I wish I had not reasoned with anyone, patiently countered their ludicrous emotionalism and psychologically disturbed theories. I wish I had said, flatly, "I love her." As if I had been asked about my mother or daughter. No defensiveness or polemics; not dignifying the crazy allegations with so much as a Snopes link.

Maybe "I love her" seemed too womany, too sentimental, too un-pragmatic. Not coalition-building, kind of culty. But people say with impunity they love Obama, the state of Israel, their churches, Kurt Cobain. In the end, I wish I'd said it because it's true.

And I'm not alone in my commitment. Millions of Clinton's supporters — we were thanked by Clinton as the "secret, private Facebook sites" — expressed it among themselves, all the time, in raptures or happy tears with each new display of our heroine's ferocious intelligence, depth, and courage. We were frankly bewildered by the idea that anyone would hedge their commitment to her ("You don't have to be her friend"; "Yes, she's made mistakes"; "lesser of two evils"). We didn't remember anyone turning to this stock ambivalence when discussing Obama, Babe Ruth, FDR. If only one reporter — they knew about us — could have published a headline like "Clinton Inspires Historic Levels of Adoration From Her Supporters" about the people who have had their lives transformed by the power of her brilliant campaign, unrivaled effectiveness, and extraordinary career. Just one headline like that, like the ones Bill Clinton got.


Usually a legend is made by men and media — the legend of Kennedy, say, or Jim Morrison — and then, much later, a biopic, pretending to evenhandedness, reveals the legend's shortcomings, his "human" side. The shortcomings are almost always something exactly no one actually believes compromises his heroism. His problem drinking. His mistreatment of women. Well, takedowns of Hillary were always already written. She has somehow made the time to hear out each dead-end line of reasoning about her fake mortal sins, and often she has also thanked everyone for sparing her further moral lashings, as if that were a kindness. Under cover of "humanizing" the intimidating valedictorian, reports and investigations and media clichés vilified her. But the feminist hero never got to be a legend first. And yet she is one, easily surpassing Ben Franklin, Henry Ford, Steve Jobs.

I want to reverse the usual schedule of things, then. We don't have to wait until she dies to act. Hillary Clinton's name belongs on ships, and airports, and tattoos. She deserves straight-up hagiographies and a sold-out Broadway show called RODHAM. Yes, this cultural canonization is going to come after the chronic, constant, nonstop "On the other hand" sexist hedging around her legacy. But such is the courage of Hillary Clinton and her supporters; we reverse patriarchal orders. Maybe she is more than a president. Maybe she is an idea, a world-historical heroine, light itself. The presidency is too small for her. She belongs to a much more elite class of Americans, the more-than-presidents. Neil Armstrong, Martin Luther King Jr., Alexander fecking Hamilton.

Hillary Clinton did everything right in this campaign, and she won more votes than her opponent did. She won. She cannot be faulted, criticized, or analyzed for even one more second. Instead, she will be decorated as an epochal heroine far too extraordinary to be contained by the mere White House. Let that revolting president-elect be Millard Fillmore or Herbert Hoover or whatever. Hillary is Athena.
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Irish Jet said:
2016 was a good opportunity for introspection in the Democratic party establishment after a catastrophic failure on their part.

They instead went all in on Russiagate, with Clinton herself still saying it was the primary reason she lost. They have chosen to die on this hill - mass hysteria without any hard evidence. Trump and supporters now have legitimate reason to ridicule the “fake news” media, the “witch hunt” etc. We’ll never hear the f*cking end of this during the 2020 campaign. That ghoul Lindsey Graham, once hailed by the media as “the resistance”, just called it a great day. Great job.
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I mean, the Dems have perhaps gone over the top at times, but it's not as if their reaction has been unified in that respect - as has been made increasingly clear Hilary's view don't always represent those of the wider party. Especially now.

I don't think there was anything wrong with the Dems focusing quite heavily on the collusion angle. When Trump was first elected it gave them a good way to highlight his corruption and the investigation has undoubtedly had Trump worried - Dems wouldn't have been privy to what Mueller was investigating either, and so were obviously trying to amp up the importance of the report. I do suspect they underestimated the extent to which a typically Russia-hostile Republican base would stick with Trump all the same. A couple of decades ago this sort of thing would've surely been hellish for a GOP President to deal with.
 
Pexbo said:
He is still in big trouble. The scope of this is “direct evidence of conspiring with Russia” and “obstruction of justice relating to said investigation”.

There is over 30 serious criminal investigations currently farmed out to other federal and state courts and the comments we have made in the past have mostly been related to them rather than the topics released in the report today.

The trouble though is that most Americans aren’t aware that those investigations are now independent of Mueller. They think it’s all over and Trump and the GOP are going to squeeze that narrative and will be successful in doing so.
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If the elections were in a couple of months, I'd have agreed with you. But there is still more than a year for those other investigations to make progress and get attention. There will be plenty more developments for you to get excited about.
 
Ubik said:
They just ran a very effective mid-terms campaign centred around policy and avoiding Trump.
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Here is the one candidate who spent the least amount of time on this theory (and got called a Russian agent for that), making a fool of himself:


For Bernie and for every other candidate, tweets and statements* like this are going to be replayed for ever.

*the video is ok but the tweet text is damning.
 
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