BipolarFuk
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President Trump Thread...
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Smitty
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The patsy in the White House
Matt Bai National Political Columnist
Yahoo News
We now live in a bizarre land of dueling realities, as if the entire country were a series on the Syfy channel. So if you’re not one of those people who hears everything from right-wingers on Facebook or talk radio, or one who only follows the leftists on Twitter or MSNBC, you might have a hard time figuring out what to make of the latest turn in our political drama.
According to one narrative, echoed by conspiracist voices on the right, the special prosecutor looking into Russia is on a politically motivated trawling expedition, and what he’s finally reeled in amounts to a couple of scrawny carp: a short-lived campaign manager and his protégé, both of whom are being charged with crimes unconnected to last year’s campaign, along with a know-nothing volunteer who acted on his own pointless delusions when he cultivated Russian emissaries.
The real scandal, according to this version of events, is that Democrats were the ones who funded all this muckraking research into Donald Trump’s Russia ties in the first place, and it was Hillary Clinton who took money from Russians in exchange for giving away a chunk of America’s precious uranium, but of course the liberal media doesn’t want to talk about any of that.
If you buy the other narrative, though, which permeates social media and the op-ed pages of the liberal intelligentsia, we’re now months — even weeks — away from the end of the Trump presidency. Robert Mueller has executed only the first in what will be a steady rain of indictments, each one contributing to rising waters around the president himself, who clearly brokered a deal with a foreign government to help him win.
In truth, neither of these narratives really reflects what we know to this point; the rightist reality is pure illusion, and the leftist reality is well ahead of the facts.
But if you ask me, the week’s events are already confirming a third, important narrative about this president — and one that’s just as damning as any criminal conspiracy.
Let’s first examine what’s real and not real in the parallel narratives around Mueller’s investigation. To you Trump backers who’ve emailed me to say this is all about media duplicity and Clinton cover-ups, I have to break it to you: You’re getting duped.
That’s not to say the media isn’t liberal or anti-Trump; I’ll grant you all that. But in a desperate effort to dismiss what Mueller has unearthed, conservative media has purposely conflated a bunch of things that, taken in context, aren’t terribly relevant at the moment.
Yes, it does appear that Democrats funded some of the sleazy research into Trump and his ties to Russians, along with rival Republicans. Yes, some Democratic lobbyists — including the brother of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman — appear to have done some of the same lobbying for pro-Russian interests that Paul Manafort, Trump’s onetime campaign manager, did.
Yes, there was a pretty arcane deal under the Obama administration to sell some American plutonium to a company with Russian investors, and one former investor had given money to the Clinton Foundation.
But we already knew that our politics — on both sides, and always where the Clintons are concerned — is distorted by unseemly greed and influence-mongering, from interests both domestic and foreign.
None of this detracts from the gravity of what Trump’s campaign is accused of doing, which is actively colluding with another government to install an American president.
As for my Trump-hating friends who say the truth is out and justice is at hand, I’d caution against over-extrapolating. The charges against Manafort, to this point, are charges a diligent prosecutor probably could bring against a lot of lobbyists in Washington. They have nothing to do with collusion.
And it really isn’t certain at this point that George Papadopoulos, one of the less-than-impressive names on Trump’s less-than-impressive roster of so-called foreign policy experts during the campaign, had any real impact when it came to fostering cooperation between his Russian contacts and the candidate.
That’s the thing about hastily adding random “advisers” to a campaign, all because you wake up one day and realize that you really have no campaign to speak of and you want to sound more substantive than you are. Those advisers can then run around doing anything they want on your behalf.
The only thing for sure right now is that Mueller has his talons into some Trump associates who would probably throw the president off a plane before they’d spend a single day in jail, so it’s fair to assume that whatever they know will be known to all of us before long.
Is it at least plausible that Manafort and Papadopoulos and others in their orbit could have been acting as de facto Russian agents without Trump or his coterie of little Trumps really being aware of it? Or that the Trumps were vaguely aware of what was happening but didn’t think it was such a big deal?
I actually do think that’s plausible. And it’s a version of events I find just as disconcerting as any other.
Because the picture that emerges here is of a president who turns out to be an easy mark for every spy and con man who walks through the door.
Of course the Russians were trying to work sources in both parties to their own advantage — that’s what the Russians do, everywhere. I’m sure the American electoral system is a door they’ve been pushing on for decades, every four years, in the vaguest hopes of finding a path to influence.
Imagine how surprised they must have been when that door suddenly swung open, with their American recruits sitting at the top levels of the campaign and even delivering them a meeting in Trump Tower with the candidate’s son. It must have felt like Christmas in the Kremlin.
No wonder Vladimir Putin set out to help elect Trump. Wouldn’t you have, too, if you were the strongman of a rival power? He didn’t need some explicit deal.
It must have been clear as Russian crystal that this was a potential first family he could manipulate and outmaneuver, unlike all the more sophisticated political operations over the years that never would have given his agents the time of day.
The same holds true, in a sense, for Manafort. It’s pretty clear now that one of the party’s shadier operatives came out of a long retirement from electoral politics because he saw a rare opening — no one else wanted to help Trump then — and thought he could profit from his proximity to power.
Manafort materialized from nowhere, bent on using the Trumps as a bodybuilding supplement for his off-books lobbying business, so he could buy himself more custom suits. And what did Trump, the streetwise mogul who’s always going on about his fancy degree from Wharton, say?
You seem like a credible guy. You’re hired! Let me introduce you to Jared!
I don’t know right now what Trump did or didn’t do, knowingly, to compromise the democracy, and unless your name is Mueller, you’re probably not qualified to say, either. We’ll find out in time.
What we do know — and it may well be the most charitable interpretation of the facts we have — is that Trump and his entire family were hopelessly out of their depth and dangerously credulous when it came to running for president, and now they’re running the country.
There’s no narrative here in which we don’t have a patsy for a president, in a dangerous and confusing world. If that doesn’t scare you, it should.
Matt Bai National Political Columnist
Yahoo News
We now live in a bizarre land of dueling realities, as if the entire country were a series on the Syfy channel. So if you’re not one of those people who hears everything from right-wingers on Facebook or talk radio, or one who only follows the leftists on Twitter or MSNBC, you might have a hard time figuring out what to make of the latest turn in our political drama.
According to one narrative, echoed by conspiracist voices on the right, the special prosecutor looking into Russia is on a politically motivated trawling expedition, and what he’s finally reeled in amounts to a couple of scrawny carp: a short-lived campaign manager and his protégé, both of whom are being charged with crimes unconnected to last year’s campaign, along with a know-nothing volunteer who acted on his own pointless delusions when he cultivated Russian emissaries.
The real scandal, according to this version of events, is that Democrats were the ones who funded all this muckraking research into Donald Trump’s Russia ties in the first place, and it was Hillary Clinton who took money from Russians in exchange for giving away a chunk of America’s precious uranium, but of course the liberal media doesn’t want to talk about any of that.
If you buy the other narrative, though, which permeates social media and the op-ed pages of the liberal intelligentsia, we’re now months — even weeks — away from the end of the Trump presidency. Robert Mueller has executed only the first in what will be a steady rain of indictments, each one contributing to rising waters around the president himself, who clearly brokered a deal with a foreign government to help him win.
In truth, neither of these narratives really reflects what we know to this point; the rightist reality is pure illusion, and the leftist reality is well ahead of the facts.
But if you ask me, the week’s events are already confirming a third, important narrative about this president — and one that’s just as damning as any criminal conspiracy.
Let’s first examine what’s real and not real in the parallel narratives around Mueller’s investigation. To you Trump backers who’ve emailed me to say this is all about media duplicity and Clinton cover-ups, I have to break it to you: You’re getting duped.
That’s not to say the media isn’t liberal or anti-Trump; I’ll grant you all that. But in a desperate effort to dismiss what Mueller has unearthed, conservative media has purposely conflated a bunch of things that, taken in context, aren’t terribly relevant at the moment.
Yes, it does appear that Democrats funded some of the sleazy research into Trump and his ties to Russians, along with rival Republicans. Yes, some Democratic lobbyists — including the brother of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman — appear to have done some of the same lobbying for pro-Russian interests that Paul Manafort, Trump’s onetime campaign manager, did.
Yes, there was a pretty arcane deal under the Obama administration to sell some American plutonium to a company with Russian investors, and one former investor had given money to the Clinton Foundation.
But we already knew that our politics — on both sides, and always where the Clintons are concerned — is distorted by unseemly greed and influence-mongering, from interests both domestic and foreign.
None of this detracts from the gravity of what Trump’s campaign is accused of doing, which is actively colluding with another government to install an American president.
As for my Trump-hating friends who say the truth is out and justice is at hand, I’d caution against over-extrapolating. The charges against Manafort, to this point, are charges a diligent prosecutor probably could bring against a lot of lobbyists in Washington. They have nothing to do with collusion.
And it really isn’t certain at this point that George Papadopoulos, one of the less-than-impressive names on Trump’s less-than-impressive roster of so-called foreign policy experts during the campaign, had any real impact when it came to fostering cooperation between his Russian contacts and the candidate.
That’s the thing about hastily adding random “advisers” to a campaign, all because you wake up one day and realize that you really have no campaign to speak of and you want to sound more substantive than you are. Those advisers can then run around doing anything they want on your behalf.
The only thing for sure right now is that Mueller has his talons into some Trump associates who would probably throw the president off a plane before they’d spend a single day in jail, so it’s fair to assume that whatever they know will be known to all of us before long.
Is it at least plausible that Manafort and Papadopoulos and others in their orbit could have been acting as de facto Russian agents without Trump or his coterie of little Trumps really being aware of it? Or that the Trumps were vaguely aware of what was happening but didn’t think it was such a big deal?
I actually do think that’s plausible. And it’s a version of events I find just as disconcerting as any other.
Because the picture that emerges here is of a president who turns out to be an easy mark for every spy and con man who walks through the door.
Of course the Russians were trying to work sources in both parties to their own advantage — that’s what the Russians do, everywhere. I’m sure the American electoral system is a door they’ve been pushing on for decades, every four years, in the vaguest hopes of finding a path to influence.
Imagine how surprised they must have been when that door suddenly swung open, with their American recruits sitting at the top levels of the campaign and even delivering them a meeting in Trump Tower with the candidate’s son. It must have felt like Christmas in the Kremlin.
No wonder Vladimir Putin set out to help elect Trump. Wouldn’t you have, too, if you were the strongman of a rival power? He didn’t need some explicit deal.
It must have been clear as Russian crystal that this was a potential first family he could manipulate and outmaneuver, unlike all the more sophisticated political operations over the years that never would have given his agents the time of day.
The same holds true, in a sense, for Manafort. It’s pretty clear now that one of the party’s shadier operatives came out of a long retirement from electoral politics because he saw a rare opening — no one else wanted to help Trump then — and thought he could profit from his proximity to power.
Manafort materialized from nowhere, bent on using the Trumps as a bodybuilding supplement for his off-books lobbying business, so he could buy himself more custom suits. And what did Trump, the streetwise mogul who’s always going on about his fancy degree from Wharton, say?
You seem like a credible guy. You’re hired! Let me introduce you to Jared!
I don’t know right now what Trump did or didn’t do, knowingly, to compromise the democracy, and unless your name is Mueller, you’re probably not qualified to say, either. We’ll find out in time.
What we do know — and it may well be the most charitable interpretation of the facts we have — is that Trump and his entire family were hopelessly out of their depth and dangerously credulous when it came to running for president, and now they’re running the country.
There’s no narrative here in which we don’t have a patsy for a president, in a dangerous and confusing world. If that doesn’t scare you, it should.
Simpleton
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Great article smitty, every Trump fanboy that believes whatever pile of shit Fox News shovels down their throat needs to read it.
I'm not really a liberal in any sense except socially, I don't give two fucks about abortion or gays, and out of all the candidates on both sides Kasich probably was my first choice, and perhaps Rubio would've been second, and maybe only then would I have said Sanders or Clinton third.
But I surely come off as a liberal when I talk about Trump because instead of burying my head in the sand in the name of partisan politics I call it like I see, and what I see is a guy that is a fucking idiot that should never even be close to something as important as the Presidency. The fact that he astoundingly won the Presidency is nothing but an indictment of the country as a whole, from the lack of really self-respect and respect for our democracy by our populous, to the corrupt bullshit from the left to make sure Clinton got the nomination, to Clinton's idiotic campaign strategy, and on and on.
Long story short, dude is a fucking idiot, the fact that he's President is one of the most shameful things in this country's history and anybody who mindlessly defends him would probably be A-OK with an authoritarian form of government if they felt comfortable that they were on the winning side.
I'm not really a liberal in any sense except socially, I don't give two fucks about abortion or gays, and out of all the candidates on both sides Kasich probably was my first choice, and perhaps Rubio would've been second, and maybe only then would I have said Sanders or Clinton third.
But I surely come off as a liberal when I talk about Trump because instead of burying my head in the sand in the name of partisan politics I call it like I see, and what I see is a guy that is a fucking idiot that should never even be close to something as important as the Presidency. The fact that he astoundingly won the Presidency is nothing but an indictment of the country as a whole, from the lack of really self-respect and respect for our democracy by our populous, to the corrupt bullshit from the left to make sure Clinton got the nomination, to Clinton's idiotic campaign strategy, and on and on.
Long story short, dude is a fucking idiot, the fact that he's President is one of the most shameful things in this country's history and anybody who mindlessly defends him would probably be A-OK with an authoritarian form of government if they felt comfortable that they were on the winning side.
Smitty
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Yeah, I don't think Trump was actively doing anything knowingly illegal.
I think he's a moron, politically speaking, who is way out of his depth and has no ability to navigate today's political climate, thus making him hopelessly and possibly dangerously unqualified. I say "possibly" dangerously unqualified because what this comes down to, so far, is that *maybe* there was "knowing collusion" to work with a foreign government -- to do what exactly? Spread fake news? And I say Fake News because it seems really more like "BIASED" news rather than outright fake.
Is that actually illegal? I don't know the answer. Serious question.
But even if the guy can be duped into getting into bed with foreign spies, do we know that he is making decisions to harm the security of the country because of this relationship?
I mean, "collusion" is a nasty sounding word, it sounds illegal, but in essense Americans from the Republicans or Democrats "conspire" and "collude" against each other in every single election. Everyone is always teaming up to spread propaganda and hyperbole about the other side. In this instance it's just that the Russians were lending a hand, right? That's my understanding.
I am not sure what is outright illegal about any of that, and I'm not sure it's been proven that there's been any harm to the Nation's security other than the implication that the guy is a risk to be manipulated. But what are the actual, real implications of him being manipulated by Russians? If he signs a tax overhaul, was that because the Russians told him to? If he withdraws from Syria, is it because the Russians said so? But who is to say it wasn't in our best interest to withdraw from Syria anyway? Rand Paul would decidedly say yes.
I completely agree it's obviously disconcerting that this clown is in the White House, but I'm not sure there's anything illegal that has happened from Trump's perspective, and I'm not sure that we could even show that having a President whose ear is held by the Russians would be treasonous or even dangerous to our security. Hell, you could argue that for a long time we obviously were in Great Britain's back pocket. We entered wars for pretty much their benefit only, no questions asked. World War I, for instance, which was not exactly stopping the Nazis from taking over the world and killing all non Germans... it was the same old European continental bullshit, but Great Britain was losing and we didn't think we wanted that. So who cares if our foreign policy becomes Russian-friendly? Where is the line between being influenced because of pre-existing biases (ie, what if Trump had ran openly on a "we should work with Russia and partner with them on these issues" platform?), and being bought/bribed? If your vision and objectives line up, is it wrong to accept help from foreign sources? Again, serious questions.
I think he's a moron, politically speaking, who is way out of his depth and has no ability to navigate today's political climate, thus making him hopelessly and possibly dangerously unqualified. I say "possibly" dangerously unqualified because what this comes down to, so far, is that *maybe* there was "knowing collusion" to work with a foreign government -- to do what exactly? Spread fake news? And I say Fake News because it seems really more like "BIASED" news rather than outright fake.
Is that actually illegal? I don't know the answer. Serious question.
But even if the guy can be duped into getting into bed with foreign spies, do we know that he is making decisions to harm the security of the country because of this relationship?
I mean, "collusion" is a nasty sounding word, it sounds illegal, but in essense Americans from the Republicans or Democrats "conspire" and "collude" against each other in every single election. Everyone is always teaming up to spread propaganda and hyperbole about the other side. In this instance it's just that the Russians were lending a hand, right? That's my understanding.
I am not sure what is outright illegal about any of that, and I'm not sure it's been proven that there's been any harm to the Nation's security other than the implication that the guy is a risk to be manipulated. But what are the actual, real implications of him being manipulated by Russians? If he signs a tax overhaul, was that because the Russians told him to? If he withdraws from Syria, is it because the Russians said so? But who is to say it wasn't in our best interest to withdraw from Syria anyway? Rand Paul would decidedly say yes.
I completely agree it's obviously disconcerting that this clown is in the White House, but I'm not sure there's anything illegal that has happened from Trump's perspective, and I'm not sure that we could even show that having a President whose ear is held by the Russians would be treasonous or even dangerous to our security. Hell, you could argue that for a long time we obviously were in Great Britain's back pocket. We entered wars for pretty much their benefit only, no questions asked. World War I, for instance, which was not exactly stopping the Nazis from taking over the world and killing all non Germans... it was the same old European continental bullshit, but Great Britain was losing and we didn't think we wanted that. So who cares if our foreign policy becomes Russian-friendly? Where is the line between being influenced because of pre-existing biases (ie, what if Trump had ran openly on a "we should work with Russia and partner with them on these issues" platform?), and being bought/bribed? If your vision and objectives line up, is it wrong to accept help from foreign sources? Again, serious questions.
BipolarFuk
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Absolutely they would.
At least Clinton didn't win, millions of mouth breathers would blather......
Smitty
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Uh, duh. Yes.
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Ayuh although I haven't read all the details of the proposed plan.
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I haven't read all of it, but it keeps in place the transportation tax incentive, so that's a good thing for me and my industry.
Smitty
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I think we need to vastly strip down and eliminate all these incentives and loopholes both for corporations and individuals.
And then make the tax rate like a flat 10%. I'm just making that number up off the top of my head, but enough favoritism for industries over others, and then having to give other breaks to other groups to even it out. Everyone should pay the same rate, no exceptions, if your industry isn't robust enough to survive on a flat, low rate, TFB.
Easy.
No offense, Iamtdg.
And then make the tax rate like a flat 10%. I'm just making that number up off the top of my head, but enough favoritism for industries over others, and then having to give other breaks to other groups to even it out. Everyone should pay the same rate, no exceptions, if your industry isn't robust enough to survive on a flat, low rate, TFB.
Easy.
No offense, Iamtdg.
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Works for me. Because that takes down the parking tax incentive, as well. What we have been battling for years is a disparity between the two benefits, and then finally about 3 years ago achieved parity. As long as the two are even, we are okay with it.
L.T. Fan
I'm Easy If You Are
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What a pious statement. As if you have special insights that make your opinions the only valid position in the assessment of how things really are or should be. You can’t possibly take the statements you just made and say “Im not really a liberal”. You have just laid out the classic diatribe that comes out of mouths of the most liberal folks around. Except for the fact that this came under the heading of a Simpleton post, who can really distinguish it from a post that Townsend or 2233 boys would have made.
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I'm glad that the taxes are going to ease up on small businesses. It's good for me and for our economy.
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Texas easing up on small business is always good for the economy.
Smitty
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It's great for me because my boss stands to get a huge boost from his taxes being cut, and he has never shown reluctance to give raises to his attorneys. I truly do believe that the limit is generally him being able to regularly make payroll after whatever profit he has been taking (which is healthy, but certainly not undeserved). In bankruptcy world, fees are set in certain chapters to a maximum you can charge, and those fees were recently increased substantially after a loooooong time of no increases (so it was warranted). My boss essentially said that our top end salaries will all go up relative to the percent that the fees are going up. I can only assume if his business taxes drop 15% that we see some of that action too.
BipolarFuk
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Energy Secretary Rick Perry says fossil fuels can help prevent sexual assault because they keep the lights on. 
Simpleton
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We've been through this before but you make my point for me when you say that my complaints are "classic liberal diatribe".
It's because you take any attack on Trump as an attack on the Republican party, so the person making the attack must be a liberal and that's the only prism through which you see the political landscape, because to you politics might as well be the Cowboys vs. Redskins.
The difference between you and I is that my opinion wouldn't change whether Trump were a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Independent, or a Sudanese warlord. You only defend him because he had an R next to his name last November and you go through such mental gymnastics to do so because you want to preserve your myopic worldview.
It's ok to have independent opinions beyond whatever party you're registered for and whatever Hannity is saying on any given day.
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