Can we please cool it on the heaping helping of ego driven AIDS which is ruminating itt like a fart in a hot car?

Trump hasn't fired anyone for 12 hours - what do you expect? Slow news half-day.

LOL'd

Pony? Trump personally dictated Don Jr.'s initial bs "adoptions" explanation of the meeting with the Russian lawyer et al.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...304_story.html

RUSE.

https://twitter.com/MeetThePress/sta...32384271314944

Check mate (on the liberals).

Jeff Flake does not like Trump.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/sto...d-trump-215442

No1curr, I know, I know, but relevantly, he does state that preserving the fillibuster is a high priority for him.

Yes. You had to miss Democrats and their line of questioning, reactions, frustrations, by Hirono, Whitehouse, Durbin, and I forgot one other guy's name but he went after Durbin. That, and Browser's answers, were an awesome 1,2,3,4 punch against the Trump excuses surrounding the Don Jr meeting, and in response to the BS that GOP was trying to pull, especially related to the FARA, Magnisky and that other legislation (started with an O) with loopholes that aren't being addressed.

It's really hard to describe each "ah-ha" that pops up without context. There were so many little things that painted a broad picture by the end. Cornyn's effort to pretend he was being tough on a Magnisky repeal comes to mind as one example that struck me later on when the Dems and Browder showed that the POTUS had access to his own loophole as well...one that Putin is aware of because he's been exploiting it for a while. As Browder pointed out, Magnisky sanctions are Putin's top concern out of all, so when Trump said he and Putin privately discussed "adoptions" during their secret 1 hour 2nd meeting, this hearing showed that Trump should easily be aware of it too. Dems knew. Hirono looked like she was visually upset that GOP tried to cover up for this earlier.

I'm gonna check out some of your reaction suggestions because I haven't seen/heard them yet. There may be some other eye opening moments that I missed in 2 viewings of the hearing.

The thing about the whole situation is that it needs public attention or else GOP accountability and incentive to close the 3 or 4 flaws in various legislation that are allowing sanctioned Russian oligarchs to operate through shell companies and real estate purchases that Trump, Jared, Manafort and others. Direct financial links are either part of the classified info Whitehouse was referring to or with Mueller's team. We don't know how much has been uncovered so far, but Dems clearly showed that IS something and they knew where to probe.

The other big-ish issue that requires public attention is the Jr meeting. The needle got moved forward quite a bit after this. Having ANY of the Trump guys testify publicly last week would have been extra devastating in conjunction with the hearing. Miraculously all 3 escaped their subpoenas. Learning that the same group of Russians who approached Team Trump in the "adoptions" meeting also approached Congress was a pretty interesting reveal too.

Everyone is fixated on smoking guns all the time. We're not going to see those unless something exceptional happens. Mueller would almost definitely have the guns tightly under his hat. But staying focused on those makes someone miss many other pieces of the puzzle. For example, suppose Trump has 4 meetings, all with the same MO. Later, we learn that 2 of those meetings had compromising, blackmailable, and/or illegal activity. This is evidence that the other 2 meetings require follow-up scrutiny, no? I know this post has been all over the place. It's really really difficult to describe to people who haven't seen what you saw, just like it's really really difficult to justify your decisions in a live game based on mannerisms of other players...to people who weren't at the table watching.

My complaints about MSM is they have the tools and staff to be able to grab clips, add context, rinse/repeat, and get the messages across to the people in a 5 minute segment. They're busy showing way less relevant and less interesting Russia stories (some that even show Trump favorably, like whether or not he will sign the new veto-proof sanctions) and I don't know why.

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kelly's a warmongering nut so why is anyone heaping praise here or believing this stupid narrative of will keep trump in check? (typically generals are there to enforce and historically, people aren't kept in check)

We have some sickness where we have to heap praise on awful people just because they don't seem to be as awful as others. (ie bush) Or "someone save us" we're already down to that someone being us.

It's a step in the right direction, but he's still in major denial.

Right off the bat he hits Dems for their "many sins" and then goes on to pretend the big problem is Trump's governing.

Trump's biggest problems are a hit against American values, norms, institutions and he's a giant national security threat. These are NOT partisan issues, so he and the other Rs can take their partisan jabs and shove 'em.

It's called normalization, and it's spreading through the whole population like cancer.

EDIT: Something else about Kelly. He's been out in the public arena defending some pathetic activities from the Trump team. Lawrence showed a clip last night from one of the Sunday shows a while ago. Does anyone remember when the news broke about Jared trying to work with Kislyak on a secret backchannel to the Kremlin that would evade American IC and work out of Russia? Kelly was one of the surrogates saying that anytime communications can be set up with a foreign government, friend or foe, it's a good thing.

Did Trump say he's applying sanctions on Venezuela for becoming a dictatorship? I got to the press briefing late and kinda heard a piece of it, but HOLY LOL if true.

Right. I just meant the bolded part is obviously true. The Venn diagram of Republicans are Trump style populists -- transparent, boisterously bigoted policy positions on immigration, voting rights, Muslim bans, etc. And then the other circle are the old establishment -- super polite and Presidential bigoted policy positions on immigration, voting rights, Muslim bans, etc.

The only difference is basically a stylistic one. I can concede that on the merits, Trump is perhaps worse, but I am forced to point out for our younger readers upset about the creeping authoritarianism of Trump's twitter feed that noted Republican President and oil painting enthusiast George W. Bush installed a lawless domestic surveillance and torture regime.

Whoever used the 'Trump sacks his own cuck' line ten days ago really should have waited.

Did Trump construct Jr's story on the way HOME from meeting Putin? Because he claimed to have discussed "adoptions" in the 2nd Putin meeting, THEN went on AF1 to "learn" about the Jr story and construct a narrative about Jr's "adoption" meeting. What an amazing coincidence that the topic got brought up to Trump twice in 2 days, and that he immediately knew to narrate using the adoption code word that the boys at home agreed on using.

**** his alibis. At 70/30, it's just easier to assume he's lying all the time. More like 95/5 if it's something that would make him look bad.

I realize I am quoting these out of sequence but if ridding the world of President Trump is a top priority, cooperating with the Jeff Flakes of the world is a necessity, and we should still probably cheer on Flake's article (which I think is actually just an excerpt from his book) to an extent, but be very very vigilant about being triggered (in a game theory sense, where our cooperation is violated with a defection).

That is, people deeply interested in defeating Trump and make that a top priority both have to praise and reward and aggrandize his criticism of Trump, but also criticize his votes that are servile to the Trumpian agenda.

Put aside for the moment Flake is basically the Senate's Ron Paul and so punishing poors is part of his joie de vivre. That is, his voting for that horse**** Senate bill is probably not so much fealty to Trump as it his principle that poor people should suffer. Let's ignore that for a moment and assume his vote is just more along the lines of being a good party soldier.

The path to taking down Trump in the short to mid term time horizon (e.g., before 2020) is necessarily through the Flakes and McCains and Grahams and others in the Deeply Concerned crowd. They're the people that will ultimately cast the decisive votes and/or provide each other the political cover to do it. The prospects for 2018 in the Senate aren't that great for Democrats, and you're going to need a few GOPers to break ranks. But similarly, offering the hand of cooperation ("way to go! great take, sharing this with all my friends to show what a principled Senator you are!") can't allowed to be triggered into letting the establishment GOP types play both sides of it -- offering mealy mouthed sympathies for democratic virtues but then lining up behind Trump when it's time for action.

The problem is that if you don't provide the incentive for Flakes and McCains to break ranks (e.g., shower them with praise or whatever) then it becomes almost fait accompli that they won't break ranks. If removing Trump is a top priority, genuflecting to these sorts of articles and communication and tossing flowers at the Jeff Flakes of the world is almost a necessity. Otherwise they have precious little incentive to cooperate with an agenda to really neuter or remove Trump.

While their conduct might be shameful, I've written before how the Deeply Concerned crowd is playing a very effective strategy. They are essentially semi-bluffing and giving themselves multiple ways to win with some equity regardless of how their political opponents play them: if you get too critical, and they can safely threaten to rubber stamp Trump's agenda which harms you and still might allow them to preserve their power. Give them praise for words and not deeds, and they can aggrandize themselves without having to cast costly votes against the Trump style agenda.

Personally, I think this is a fools' errand and I suggest forgetting these people, moving on to building a movement of committed leftists while simply trying to both obstruct Trump on our own terms, and/or basically run out the clock on Trump -- rather than court NeverTrumpers and other assorted 'moderate' Republicans.

But people very, very interested in impeachment or formal Congressional censure or whatever, or bipartisan opposition to Trump -- who still want to maintain some dignity and not simply be pawns for Flake/McCain/Graham freerolls -- you're going to have to master the fine art of tit-for-tat game theory strategies where cooperation is lauded and rewarded but defections are punished harshly. Since I think the Flake/McCain/Graham players have the natural upper hand here, I think it's a waste of time. But I'd just observed these two posts here are the sort of needle that has to be threaded: boy that Jeff Flake sure is a total douchebag for his violation of our sacred principles, but praise be his name for his defense of our other sacred principles.

If Trump gets impeached or 25th'd out of office, do the investigations continue?

Legally, there's nothing compelling Rosenstein/Mueller to stop the investigation if Trump is impeached, removed, or resigned.

Politically and practically, you can assume a large chorus of Republicans and pliable/dumb Democrats would say bygones should be bygones, let's move on, look forward not backwards, America simply can't afford an investigation due to the crippling national debt, let's move onto entitlement reform, etc. etc.

I wonder if they would support the same investigation, with Trump being off limits. Obviously we can't leave all the strings hanging in the government, with no idea which ones are Trojan Horses. It's like urging officials to continue using Kaspersky anti-virus on their government computers.

Don't think "Trump being off limits" is a thing that can be bargained. Pretty sure Article II Section 2 leaves pardoning power only with the President, so presumably Pence would pardon Trump (preemptively or in response to charges) in such a scenario. Congress doesn't really have a role, and can't bargain with the Justice Department or whatever. My glib take about the political atmosphere is that President Pence could point to some grand real or imagined consensus of people demanding the investigation conclude if Trump leaves office willingly or unwillingly, and either have Rosenstein end the investigation or fire Rosenstein, etc., and that might "get over" with the public and Congress without much scrutiny.

That would just end the Special Counsel. Presumably the FBI would or could still pursue cases against all the people in Trump's orbit, so Pence may have to pardon a bunch of people to get the FBI to stop caring. And even then I'm not so sure that would do it.

Also Congress has their own separate investigations which may or may not continue.

IDK if Trump being pardoned can end the investigation, because Trump wouldn't be indicted unless the investigation were over anyway.

And if Trump gets nabbed on State crimes, Pence can't save him.

Whatever happens, I think it's of incredible importance that other Russian links are discovered and purged from our government, cyber systems, voting, whatever.

https://twitter.com/evanperez/status/892182718594895874

Everyone in the room with Trump for that false Jr statement is on the hook for obstruction and running a cover-up? This guy's a reliable CNN reporter, but the typo and poor grammar & spelling are throwing me off.

The President can preemptively pardon per longstanding SCOTUS decision:

http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/71/333.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_parte_Garland

So Pence can just wave his magic pen and grant Trump a pardon even without charges, before the investigation is over.

But since Trump isn't the only one under investigation then I agree simply pardoning Trump wouldn't end it.

I still don't understand how pardons work. Two weeks ago I asked the thread if a President can tell someone to commit crimes in exchange for a guaranteed pardon, but didn't get a reply.

EDIT: Though we've seen Trump use Twitter and other means to advocate crimes, or claim certain illegal behavior is no problem for others. Statements like that need to be more than just "deemed irresponsible" before carrying on with life.