Rococo, Cuepee, all, please don’t reply to mindless trolls.

Describing it as working really good is kind of a mis-characterization--it had no need to be anything anywhere near good--just minimally sufficient/effective. In races that are effectively dead heats--convincing 1person in ~100/200 to not vote/vote 3rd party is enough to carry the day by the kinds of numbers that decided those races. Any tiny edge is worth pushing.

Hell--think back to 08. Online it seemed like ronpaul had massive support. But in real life people would set up 'rallys' and 9 people would show up

There is very little reason to think this. The economy wasn't great under Trump, slower growth than the last 4 years of Obama even before Covid, and his disapproval ratings were high the entire time. He needed his opponent to be as unpopular as him to have a chance and that never happened with Biden who was + favorability the whole election cycle.

Maybe he is smart enough to treat bipartisan Congressional reports differently from off the cuff opinions of partisan actors during an election?

False.

The Investigation was justified by Trump's hand chosen staunchly Republican AG and Mueller who acted upon the info coming in from the UK being something they could not ignore.

Trump aside, there is no administration, at any point, past or present, who could not act upon such Intel coming in from a foreign Intelligence agency that they had info that someone within one campaign was saying that a Foreign Country had an ongoing campaign underway to influence the outcome of the election.


So regardless of what you think the other issues may or may not have culminating in eventually ONCE THAT REPORT came in there was no way there was not going to be an investigation of Trump and his campaign and that Investigation was 100% justified.


Even if we grant, for sake of argument, nothing prior justified an investigation and nothing came of any of it, the second the UK intel came in about George's statement an Investigation was fully warranted.

Cuepee called Deuces a "Trumper" when he is extremely obviously not that. Who's trolling? I don't agree with Deuces on this thing, but he is neither mindless nor a troll.

I don't understand the passion on either side. The following things seem trivially true:

- Russia and its troll farms posted disinformation that would indirectly interfere in the US Presidential election
- the US, and other powerful nations, routinely interfere in other state's elections (often much more directly than having troll farms posting disinformation)

So, the only unique question here is to what degree Trump overtly colluded with Putin and Russia. We probably will never have the answer, but there's some circumstantial stuff we can examine.

Trump has stayed at numerous Russian-owned properties and is known as a horny weirdo pervert, so it seems likely that Putin has some type of kompromat here. On the other hand, it's not necessary for any of the above to be true for Putin to prefer a POTUS Trump over a POTUS Hillary and take efforts to make that result happen.

Long story short, this is all super standard election chicanery and the endless paragraphs about memos and Mueller and pee tapes are totally unimportant.

None of that matters really. What ultimately is being discussed is whether mention of Russian interference in the election is analogous to any mention of the election rigging discussions.

It is a trolls position or that of one who has gobbled up serious misinformation to equate them.

The election rigging investigations have been pure partisan garbage with zero foundation. Not one iota.

The Russian Collusion investigation had the strongest predication imaginable and had to take place.

This is what I am I am talking about, the damaging effects of the media constantly making insinuations to the point where a lot of people just take the insinuation as fact.

Can you acknowledge the fact, acknowledged by at least one poster who doesn't agree with me, that there is no evidence tying the troll farms to the Russian government? So you can't say Russia there. They look like click-bait operations and there is no evidence saying otherwise. If there is please cite the actual evidence.


Mueller gave us an answer to that question, a question which probably should have never been asked in the first place. Mueller said there was no evidence of collusion. He didn't say there was evidence but not enough to act on. He said, after 20 months and 40 million dollars and subpoena power that there was no evidence of collusion. So we do know there was no collusion insofar as we can know any social information.

No pee tape or any other compromising info was leaked from Russia the whole time Trump was attacking them on every foreign policy front. That is just not sound reasoning there.


We are discussing domestic election chicanery, the kind that falsely claims chicanery where there is none. The deep state did their version, and now the Trumpers are doing theirs. We are pretty much in a state of open disinformation warfare. How far are we going to take this as a society? Is just everything said going to be a damn lie when it comes to politics? There is an obvious connection here with the anti vaccine movement, the deep distrust of authority, which is really killing people.

Think about it from a Trumper's perspective. You see your guy being lied about constantly, lies which, for the sake of the charade, actually are often retracted (with some major exceptions). You see pundits on TV characterizing juvenile click bait as, literally, acts of war. The trumpers saw you lie in order to impeach their guy, lie for 3 years and then keep lying. Then you tell them to inject untested chemicals into their bodies for public health reasons. Of course they are going to distrust those same sources now. We can't function when everyone is going around lying constantly.

Can you answer the question of whether you think you need to know what was actually in those cables to make that determination? We haven't actually seen them. We are going in circles on this point. Let's agree to disagree. You say it is ok to trust the intelligence community when they assert that the cables contained information they assert to be worthy of mandating an investigation into an active major political campaign. I say the actual content needs to be seen to make that judgement.

Can I just get you to say the phrase "I trust the CIA all the way!"? It was the FBI in this case but CIA rhymes and what's the difference anyway.

Also, even if an investigation was warranted there are proper ways to conduct an investigation. Withholding information, doctoring emails, using suspect political opposition research, and maintaining the investigation even though no evidence is accumulating, leaking salacious and false information to the media are just a few of the violations of the investigation itself that occurred.

Why even bother trying to fight this fight Deuces?

The only people who are going to argue with you on this are going to be the worst sorts of partisans, and nothing you can say is going to cause them to budge here.

Why would anyone trust the CIA, FBI or DOJ over Luckbox, Deuces And their merry band of YT content creators? Deuces admits doesn't even need to see the contents of the cables to conclude the investigation was wholly unwarranted.

There was an article in wired several years back(pre-trump iirc) about a guy going to interview a chick who worked at one of those places. He goes to meet her and she brought a couple guy/girl one was supposedly her brother but he sat off to the side. The guy said after the interview he's flying back home--and before his plane even touched down there were already stories floating around the internet about how he was a spy/meeting subversives iirc I imagine it was surreal to see how quickly it all came together. The guy that came with the girl was in photos with him(taken from angles to include both of them even though they weren't seated together). I mean I guess it could've been a really organized private entity--but it sure sounded like some russian intelligence type **** to me.

So you think that none of those guys are operating with a connection to the govt?

How many people do you remember drawing a hardline distinction between the russian mob/oligarchs and their govt say prior to 2016?

NO.

And you should not either.

There can be 10 possible paths to an Investigation being launched and if 9 of them fizzle out and/or go no where but 1 of them provides something concrete, then the investigation must take place.

There is no disputing that once George Papadopoulos' comments about Russian interference got to US intelligence they HAD to investigate.

Even if you say the 9 other threads were not going anywhere or may have been poorly predicated that does not change that this one comment by George Papadopoulos MUST BE investigated.

Do you agree?


If you don't, you have no business commenting on this matter as there is simply no way US intelligence could ever get Intelligence from an ally agency like this (Brit Intelligence) and then the US Intelligence say 'we don't care. Nope not even going to check if there is any merit. We will just ASSUME it is meritless.'

That is not how Intelligence Agencies work nor should they work. They need to open a file, pull on that thread and if it goes no where put in the file 'closed, due to nothing burger'.

In this case however when they started pulling on that thread they got back a lot of substantiation.

FLOL.

You actually think Deuces is on the right side of this?

Because me and (presumably Deuces) don't have a history of lying to the masses?

I would trust you over any of those groups too.

If I'm here trying to tell Deuces that he shouldn't bother with this topic, you think I want to be sucked in?

I've barely read his posts on this topic. But I presume he has a much better clue than you do.

Is anyone pushing any the claims listed here? Master List Of Official Russia Claims That Proved To Be Bogus

Lb, I lumped you in with deuces because of your post supporting him. With your last post, I hope to God you were being ironic.

I mean I barely have read any of this-- but yeah a lot of or most of the Russiagate stuff was bullshit and has been shown to have been bullshit. If you don't want to see that then that's on you, but I doubt any amount of posting will change that-- which is why I think it's a silly topic to engage people with-- because the people who are going to argue about it are going to be worst sorts of partisan sappies, where Russiagate was basically like religion to them for a couple years. And we all know that you can't argue with fanatics.

Not sure what post was supposed to be ironic but none have been.

Unemployment was low and, after a bizarre lag, wages had started to increase in response. That's how I am judging the economy. If you look at the exit polls you can clearly see that Biden got a lot of votes based on the expectation his regime would handle covid better.

Trump was exonerated by the Mueller report. The strategy of confronting Trump with a bunch of damn lies was forced by Trumps populist rhetoric for which the Democrats had no substantive reply. Then Trump's tax cuts and neocon foreign policy passed with little judgement.

Similarly, carrying on the the riggie conspiracies is hurting the Republican brand, revealing how crazy and highly suggestible their base is. So we will all be in a situation where we feel more captive to these parties because the prospect of the dishonest villainy of the respective other sides just gives more reasons to vote against them instead of for any positive politics.

I think if the contents warranted the investigation they wouldn't be redacted.

I'm not saying trust me. I'm just saying don't trust the intelligence agencies here. They saw Trump as a real threat because they had no way of knowing that he was bluffing with his isolationist foreign policy rhetoric. Why not show us everything? Why did this investigation drag on when it was never driven by any hard evidence we can see? Who was leaking all the leaks which the news media reported as if they were facts?

How do you suppose the intelligence agencies would react if there was a candidate with popular support saying the would slash the Pentagon budget in half, for example? The last president to threaten the CIA was Kennedy.

I'm pretty meh on this idea.

I think your clickbait idea is closer to the truth-- although I think it goes a bit deeper than that. The whole "deep state vs Trump" stuff was more likely just fodder for the GOP base.

What if they fizzle from the beginning, continuing on fizzling, but just keep going? What if they involve doctoring emails in order to get wiretaps? Why do you keep dodging the issue of how the investigation was conducted as if all the matters was whether one was warranted at all?

That's not a given. We don't know what was said. If he said the Russians had dirt on Hillary and they were going to release it to the U.S. press I don't see how that makes necessary an investigation into the whole Trump campaign. Russia can say what it wants about Hillary. Where is the crime? Notice the investigation was into colluding, about helping Russia interfere, not about Russia just saying things.

But, again, we don't know what was in those cables. We know 100 lies about Trump and his associates which were leaked and spread. Yet, the one piece of evidence which is supposed to be some kind of lynchpin legitimizing this whole shitshow's inception is mysteriously kept a secret. I really wish citizens weren't like you, people who just volunteer to be lied to and led around by the nose like a neutered bovine.

Haha. Well to be honest this perfectly encapsulates you. A person who offers strong opinions with zero knowledge no the subject matter and zero research.

No. No one is offering any of the stuff on that article. That is not what the discussion with him is about.

But you be you. FLOL