Man I thought russia was good now? I'm lost again.

Mueller investigation is ‘close to being completed,’ acting attorney general says

Acting attorney general Matthew G. Whitaker said Monday that he has been “fully briefed” on special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election and that, “right now, the investigation is close to being completed.”

Russia is good now, it was only bad when it was being run by Soviets and we all know Putin hated the USSR.

Some dude on Jr podcast said that Muller was head of the FBI when the Whitey Bulger fiasco was on......whatever that means.

Next Tuesday's gonna be fun.

Sometimes a position is a negotiating tactic.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/...Gov?ocid=ientp

Raise your hand if you criticized Trump for supposedly weakening Nato.

trump has been trying to do putin a favor by threatening to dismantle nato because he sees personal profit in doing business with moscow. you think he was lying the whole time about wanting better relations with russia? you think actually this whole time he was pretending to be pro-russia in order to improve nato? you really think that? i don't think that

I’m just glad his SOTU is no longer on my birthday, that was some rungood

I suspect he really wants better relations with Russia. That doesn't mean he wants a weaker NATO.

I think he strengthened NATO by threatening it.

Back to your issue of Russia, I think it is a third rate country, with a weak economy. Much less of a threat than many people tend to express. They used to be a world threat. Now they're a somewhat dictatorial country without much power to spread dictatorship, Ukraine, etc., notwithstanding. Willing to be convinced otherwise on this, but either way, it doesn't take away from Trump's improvement of NATO.

They literally invaded and stole the Crimea in the last couple of years.

Oh, nevermind, just a little light annexation.

matthew whitaker is a very sweaty man

How has Trump strengthened NATO?

i'll agree with this insofar as "strengthened nato" means our relative contribution will be lower than it used to be. but i don't think improving nato was his intention from the start of his anti-nato crusade which began before he was elected

businessman donald trump who wants to build a trump tower in moscow and wants to be friends with putin has no rational reason to want to strengthen nato, whether he's being personally blackmailed by putin or not

agree with this. If Trump has strengthened NATO, it wasn't his intention. To attribute a stronger NATO to Trump's actions is naive at the least

Not surprised that our conservative foreign policy wonk is doing mental gymnastics re: Trump’s foreign policy and the facts that Trump was seeking to build a massive project in Moscow that needed Putin’s approval throughout the election, repeatedly lied about it and covered it up both before and after election, that we only learned the true level of Trump’s deceit years later after his attorney was thrown in jail for lying about it and the blaring and obvious connection between these facts, and Trump’s constant and gratuitous compliments of and conciliatory posture towards Putin.

Look, I get you are happy with your deal with the devil for your tax cuts, deregulation, judges, etc, but don’t insult our intelligence by pissing on our head and telling us it’s raining re: Trump’s Russia malfeasance.

Sudetenland flashback.

Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General:
"We agreed to do more to step up – and now we see the results. By the end of next year, NATO allies will add $100 billion extra toward defense," he said. "So we see some real money and some real results. And we see that the clear message from President Donald Trump is having an impact."
From the USA Today article I cited above.

@ScreaminAsian, I read "NATO allies will add $100 billion" as allies other than the U.S. Now I see that could be U.S. and others combined. Not sure, but it appears to be a big deal to Stoltenberg.

You think the world spending 100billion extra dollars on the military is a good thing? What a great way to invest the worlds finite resources.

Bolton trying to get his own SNL skit this week.

If Donald Trump's motivations for improving NATO were at least 51% noble and if in repeatedly threatening to dismantle NATO he increased NATO's effectiveness at least 1% then that means many posters on this board, if they're intellectually honest, will have to give a hearty apology to Awval999 and pokerodox for being wrong about the Russia Hoax all along.

As I said, a position can be a negotiating tactic.

Similarly, I said originally when the China tariffs question arose that it was likely a tactic to end up at lower tariffs by China. That is TBD as far as I know, but this NATO thing is conclusive.

Basically, it is just unrealistic (dare I say, unfair - no, I won't go that far) to ignore the spectacularly successful result of Trump's negotiating tactics. Especially considering this type of tactic is fairly common in negotiating.

Your gimmick account is funnier imo.

A clear-eyed conservative foreign policy wonk interested in discussing this article would credit the NATO Secretary for making some lemonade out of the bucket of **** dumped on him by Trump.

Pokerdox, do you also think Mattis was just unaware of this brilliant Trump strategy to strengthen our alliances that you claim worked brilliantly when Mattis resigned clearly and explicitly over a disagreement re: the importance of US alliances. That would have been pretty ****ing stupid of Mattis, I think.

Or was Mattis resigning part of the bluff?