The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: No smocking guns. - Page 1032 - Politics and Economics

Not sure if it was posted ITT but Trump told Bartiromo tonight that they still plan to do healthcare reform before tax reform because it makes it easier deficit wise.

Is that them being actually attempting to be responsible or does that have to do with passing it through budget reconciliation?

I think it's more likely that they are realizing taxes is not going to be easy either, and this buys them more time to try to put together a proposal that will pass (from what I've read the border-adjustment tax is DOA).

04-12-2017 , 08:28 AM

#25777

fatkid

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**** Bill O'Reilly with a huge penis in his mouth. Penis gonna penis.

Welcome to the no-job zone ass.

04-12-2017 , 08:39 AM

#25778

Our House

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https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...38509355933697

04-12-2017 , 08:41 AM

#25779

Fatal Checkraise

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Whats the maximum number of falsehoods one can put into 140 characters? 3 is already pretty good. Has he had four already?

04-12-2017 , 08:46 AM

#25780

sofocused978

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Quote:

Trump said former President Obama should have taken action during his tenure in the White House.

“What I did should have been done by the Obama administration a long time before I did it,” said Trump. “I think Syria would be a lot better off right now than it has been.”

http://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/...nto-syria.html

L O L

04-12-2017 , 08:46 AM

#25781

Our House

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What's the maximum number of people you can piss off with 1 tweet? 50 million? He is so bitter and spiteful.

04-12-2017 , 08:46 AM

#25782

JonnyA

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Our House

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...38509355933697

The good thing about this situation, is that all the people that actually care about this (i.e. other Congressmen) know the truth. So while Trump supporters may buy his narrative, assuming we see a similar D swing in Georgia, Trump's political capital should take a decent hit.

04-12-2017 , 08:51 AM

#25783

Our House

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Quote:

Originally Posted by sofocused978

http://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/...nto-syria.html

L O L

Yea, I saw the previews to that Maria Bartiromo interview. It's the first time I've seen him criticize Putin. Even at that, it was more of a criticism of Assad.

04-12-2017 , 08:55 AM

#25784

sofocused978

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I try not to read many FOX news stories but they have got to have the worst web developers on the planet.

04-12-2017 , 09:19 AM

#25785

Our House

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Spicey being interviewed by Greta right now. He actually sounds reasonable.

04-12-2017 , 09:31 AM

#25786

Our House

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Our House

Spicey being interviewed by Greta right now. He actually sounds reasonable.

04-12-2017 , 09:31 AM

#25787

lycosid

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Quote:

Originally Posted by AllTheCheese

They gave millions to Ossoff. Pretty clear their strategy is to write off "unwinnable" districts and to pour money into competitive races. I was listening to the latest Chapo, and they cited a study that showed Dem politicians vastly overestimate their constituents' conservatism. Winning or even coming close in Kansas was probably unfathomable to them.

I don't the relevance of that study here. They didn't need to estimate the conservatism of KS-04, they could just look at Trump's 30 point win. The thing they likely underestimated was the degree to which conservatives there were pissed off at Trump directly.

04-12-2017 , 09:35 AM

#25788

master3004

Revisionist Historian

Join Date: Mar 2010 Posts: 56,419

Quote:

Originally Posted by Our House

Spicey being interviewed by Greta right now. He actually sounds reasonable.

Its easy to sound reasonable when you are prepared. When you have to answer questions from the press on the fly, your true feelings about stuff come out.

04-12-2017 , 09:35 AM

#25789

lycosid

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Quote:

Originally Posted by FlyWf

Some Perez apologists are saying that national Dem help would've mobilized Rs(the bulk of Thompson's gain was in cratered R turnout while getting most of the 2016 Ds out) instead of flipping people, which, OK, that's a legitimate argument.

But then what is it that you people ****ing do with the money you're constantly emailing me about?

Yea, like, it's a legitimate argument, but not one you should be making when your organization is hanging on the cusp of relevance already. You'd think the DNC would be doing their goddamn best to convince people they actually matter, rather than sort of shrugging off to the side like a depressed teen at a party who thinks no one likes them.

04-12-2017 , 09:36 AM

#25790

einbert

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Of Course There’s Evidence Trump Colluded with Russian Intelligence
https://www.lawfareblog.com/course-t...n-intelligence

Quote:

It has become a kind of mantra in the defense of Donald Trump on matters related to L’Affaire Russe that there’s no evidence, at least not yet, of “collusion” between the Trump campaign and the Russian active measures operation with respect to the 2016 election.

During the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s open hearing on Russian election interference on March 20th, for example, Representative Chris Stewart (R-UT) read out a statement by former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper that he was aware of no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. When asked by Stewart whether Clapper’s comments were accurate, FBI Director James Comey answered that Clapper had correctly characterized the contents of the intelligence community’s report on the subject. President Trump’s official Twitter feed, @POTUS, promptly tweeted out a clip of the exchange—implying that Comey’s statement was exonerating of any wrongdoing:

Similarly, on April 2, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Ranking Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Adam Schiff, “The big issue … is whether or not there was collusion among members of the Trump campaign or surrounding the Trump campaign. Can you say definitively that there was collusion?” Schiff responded, “I don’t think we can say anything definitively at this point.” The clip was picked up by the conservative website The Washington Free Beacon, which marshalled the exchange to Trump’s defense: “So far no one has been able to point to any solid evidence of collusion, despite investigations from the House Intelligence Committee, Senate Intelligence Committee and the FBI.” It was also trumpeted by Breitbart and other right-wing outlets that have lent their support to the President, which presented Schiff’s inability to “definitively” determine collusion as a conclusive defense of President Trump’s campaign.

The defense is erroneous. The reason? The premise, at least in a political sense, is actually false.

There is, in fact, copious evidence of at least tacit collaboration between the Russians and the Trump campaign, collaboration in which Trump personally participated on multiple occasions. But we have collectively discounted this cooperation for two related, and quite perverse, reasons: It was overt and public and it was legal. The consequence has been that we largely ignore it in discussing the matter.

Collusion, in this context anyway, is not a legal term. For legal purposes, it matters if Trump or his people conspired with Russian agents to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act or some other criminal law; it matters if they acted as agents of a foreign power within the meaning of FISA or as agents of a foreign principal within the meaning of FARA.

When people say there is no evidence of collusion, they mean, we suppose, that there is no evidence of covert or illegal collaboration with the criminal activity undertaken in the course of this foreign intelligence operation against the United States.

But that is rather a different matter than acquitting Trump and his campaign of collaborating with the Russians. It ignores, after all, the overt and perfectly legal collaboration they plainly engaged in with what they knew to be an ongoing foreign intelligence operation against their country. We don’t need an investigation to show that this overt activity took place, for the Trumpists were caught in flagrante delicto throughout the entire campaign; indeed, caught is even the wrong word here. The cooperation was an open and public feature of the campaign.

It included open encouragement of the Russians to hack Democratic targets; denial that they had done so; encouragement of Wikileaks, which was publicly known to be effectively a publishing arm of the Russian operation, in publishing the fruits of the hacks; and publicly trumpeting the contents of stolen emails.
Most notoriously, on July 27, Trump stated during a news conference: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” He later doubled down on the statement, tweeting:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...n-intelligence

04-12-2017 , 09:36 AM

#25791

AllTheCheese

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Quote:

Originally Posted by lycosid

The relevance is that their mindset would have made them more apt to dismiss any early evidence that this particular race would be close.

ETA: Could be wrong, but I understood the difference in this race to be in Dem turnout rather than conservatives abandoning Trump.

04-12-2017 , 09:45 AM

#25792

fatkid

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Quote:

Originally Posted by ScreaminAsian

lol rachel DEVASTATING spicer rn

Bassad al I Sharted

04-12-2017 , 09:46 AM

#25793

AllTheCheese

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Quote:

Originally Posted by sofocused978

I try not to read many FOX news stories but they have got to have the worst web developers on the planet.

They are trying to keep it consistent with the slapped-together, basement newsletter aesthetic of other online right wing media. Like, have you seen their memes? Just the worst graphic design.

04-12-2017 , 09:49 AM

#25794

markksman

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Quote:

Originally Posted by uDevil

Yeah, Bannon is like 97% responsible for this ****show.

https://twitter.com/TrueFactsStated/...24431438057472

Why are they afraid of the alt-right? Are they going to vote liberal or just become a second obstructionist branch of the Republican Party?

Call their bluff and then enlist moderate democrats. I don't get this fear of the alt-right as a political force. Who exactly are they going to vote for?

04-12-2017 , 09:52 AM

#25795

AllTheCheese

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When you win an election by 100k votes across three states, while losing the popular vote by 3 million, you need every Klansman to turn out.

04-12-2017 , 09:54 AM

#25796

einbert

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Right. Also, working with Democrats isn't really an option for 45*, Ryan, and McConnell. They may throw it around as a bluff every now and then, but they would rather just not pass a single piece of legislation from now until 2020 then actually take input from Democrats. They'll win or lose on that concept.

04-12-2017 , 09:58 AM

#25797

markksman

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To be fair to bill oreilly autoparts there is nothing political going on in the world so obviously this is the perfect time to take a "previously planned" vacation.

Although some might find it suspicious he spends five minutes of air time explaining such instead of just a brief sign off of I'm on vacation for a couple weeks while Glenn Greenwald fills in for me. See you in two weeks.

04-12-2017 , 10:05 AM

#25798

Our House

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Now Jesse Watters and Eric Bolling get to spend 2 weeks auditioning as O'Reilly's replacement.

04-12-2017 , 10:08 AM

#25799

JonnyA

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Quote:

Originally Posted by markksman

Many Congressmen are afraid of the alt-right due to primary concerns. Thus, right now the alt-right is a potential weapon Bannon can use to sway Congressmen (of course, the Freedom Caucus called that bluff so who knows how valuable it really is).

On the other hand, if Trump pisses off the alt-right, it could be used against Trump to push some Congressman farther to the right, leading to Trump having to move his bills that way to get their votes, and thus make them less appealing to moderates/Senators.