So... Page going to jail then?

I smell someone gearing up for a 2020 run

Franken is a pretty good candidate for both the HRC and Bernie crowd. He may not be great for either, but he could pull the party together maybe.

lol ok

if trump DID say this, he meant it like, "you successfully flew chemtrails over christian neighborhoods to turn the frogs gay"

Franken is or is near the strongest potential candidate imo. Think he would bring the party together. He's also very smart (Harvard math major) and a celebrity.

Political Science according to wikipedia.

I like the Franken idea.

big fan of franken

In a better world than this one it'd be best if Franken stayed put in the senate. Few others pull off the facepalm statements from others in those hearings than he does.

Just recently facebook's lawyer made a statement that clearly didn't deny they wouldn't take payments in rubles for american political ads. Nobody else would've gotten that.

https://twitter.com/RawStory/status/926243801127182336


edit: meh, seems like a pretty terrible click-baity headline... unfortunately.

Just read Frankens policy positions.

Definitely on board. Dude's a fantastic candidate.

Or asking for 30k emails to be released. He knew what was going on.

This woman is the contemporary US everyman. She personifies the typical American.

http://thehill.com/policy/internatio...ruption-effort

The problem is that each of these can be explained not as collusion but CHARITABLY, due to Trump and his circle's information diet of Fox News and right wing chain emails and more likely, their open admiration for Putin. Putin worship on the right in their garbage media has been a thing for a long time.

So your posts here are sort of correct, you guys just reached the wrong conclusion: he wasn't tricked into overtly praising Putin, and not passing the sanctions. These guys are ideologically sympathetic: loot your country, the rich control everything, and beat up and silence the critics and losers. No tricks or crimes needed!

From 2014, from John Podhortz rag as one of his writers looks around and notices incredible amounts of Putin worship in the media:

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/f...putin-worship/

*I* even wrote about it in 2015, long before the ostensible collusion was supposed to have went down:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/4...30539/index312



One of the slightly triggering things about Russia RUSSIA RUSSIA! is how many of the #Resistance and whatever else are very, very late arrivers to the party and are basically missing the point.

The point: The right wing of America has been fawning over Putin for an incredibly long time. Perhaps that is not separable from Russian propaganda campaigns, sure. But these people clearly share an ideology. How to separate that from collusion?

Long pointed out: that the right's admiration of Putin was prima facie evidence of the reactionary right's lurch into authoritarianism, and the right wing oligarchs were jealous of Putin's strong-arm wealth seizing tactics, and right wing affiliated lobbyists in the extraction industry were trying desperately to partner with Putin to seize more oil and extract it and share in the profits together. And very little attention is paid, and it's sort of laughed off. Understandably so, to an extent. The right's fixation with shirtless Putin photos is funny stuff.

Now Trump wins and everyone is like, boy, there must have been some rank quid pro quo funny business in the summer of 2016. And sure, I can sincerely believe there was. But the problem is, this is going to be kind of hard to prove because you can explain away Trump's praise of Russian interests as part and parcel of the American right-wing transparently growing closer to authoritarian regimes. That is ****ing ghastly but importantly, not a crime.

Somewhere in the bowels of this conspiracy is the notion that True Real Americans forever remain Cold Warriors and genuflect to some kind of 1950s vision of freedom and justice for all and Trump and his cronies are betraying it, doing Russia's bidding in exchange for penny ante scams and Hillary's emails.

A far more likely, accurate narrative: the American right wing, the entire political movement, INCLUDING Donald Trump, most symbolic of its deep degeneracy, SHARE NONE OF THE 'TRADITIONAL AMERICAN' VALUES.

Then you have a far, far simpler and frankly wholly damning story, it's just not criminal: Trump and the movement he leads praises Putin *not* because they collude with him in secret but BECAUSE THEY OPENLY AGREE WITH HIM. He doesn't ignore the sanctions because he's been corrupted, but because he doesn't believe Russia should be penalized for aggressively invading their neighbor, for strongly defending Assad in Syria, whatever. Look around the right-wing fever swamp stuff and these people ****ing LOVE Putin for that. He's crushing the gays and the Muslims and the press and he's shirtless and so manly, and the big problem in America is we're pussified political correctness slaves who won't do that stuff. That conclusion is right in front of our faces guys: the far right loves Putin and they want to ally with him. Making that conclusion means you have to disabuse yourselves of some long-standing fictions we tell ourselves that are usually cribbed from Superman comics or whatever.

Once you realize Trump and the far right share an ideology with Putin and don't want to sanction him for military aggression because THEY want America to be far more aggressive, and praise him for authoritarian tactics because they are desperate to import it. Then you realize the reality is that it's going to be hard to prove Trump criminally colluded with Russia by praising him and trying to overturn sanctions because the American right wing, the Fox News pundit class, the garbage swamp gonzo journalists like Breitbart et al, the vibrant white people chain email trade networks, etc. etc. have long been trending toward simply wanting a close with relationship with Russia and Putin because they prize his putting the boots to the throats of the press, liberals, racial and religious minorities, his aggressive foreign policy.

I'm confident Trump and Russia did all sorts of crimes together but they are going to be hard to prove because Russia probably really didn't need to work that hard to grease the skids. A long propaganda campaign by right-wing media to make lots of Americans susceptible to the notion that actually, Putin style authoritarianism is a good idea.

I never meant to get into the whys. Only that he is in cahoots. Whether he is a puppet or an admirer is meh.

If he's an admirer rather than a puppet, the crimes become harder to explain if only in the court of public opinion but also perhaps legally too. If Trump merely indifferently sits idly by while Russia spreads propaganda to help him and then Trump does a bunch of openly Russian-favorable stuff as President because he's appreciative of how manly and authoritarian Putin is, the criminal collusion stuff becomes harder to prove. Collusion isn't even a federal crime. The crime stuff is introduced if instead the Trump campaign aided and abetted the Russian hack of Clinton emails, or helped release them, that's pretty clearly criminal. If the Trump campaign merely cheers it on and then does Putin-favorable stuff later, it's not criminal. "Doing the Putin favorable stuff later" can be explained by their mutual admiration rather than a quid-pro-quo "you hack the emails, we'll give you favorable treatment."

It seems like there is enough smoke around the "Trump campaign actively actually aided and abetted the hack/release of DNC emails" that there might be fire. Just a question of how much gets to Trump. If Trump can play dumb or literally be dumb to it, and explain away his warming up to Putin as what he wants to do anyway -- then there's no crime. For Trump personally. My point is the latter half of that, the "Trump, his inner circle of insane far right fellow travelers and the chain email armies they represent actually admire and want to emulate Putin" is ENTIRELY PLAUSIBLE, in fact, it's true! Therefore there were no tricks necessary to get Trump to soft-peddle the sanctions or praise Putin; he's an idiot who consumes far right nonsense all the time, he very believably could have read all those Putin chain emails and fawning Putin coverage 40% of America jerks off to, ergo you can't say that's Putin praise and doing stuff Putin would do are proof he knew of the quid pro quo crimes.

Alright.

I think he may be complicit too.
If being complicit is wanting to be a force for good and to make a positive impact,
then he is complicit.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...03023861141504
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...04584456773632
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...06490763784194

WHY CAN'T I HAVE PUTIN POWERS?


Useless **** doesn't seem to realise that democracies are organised in this way to protect themselves from people like him.

Why don't I have a personal law enforcement goon squad to threaten and harass my political opponents to the delight of the angry mobs that follow me, the President of the greatest and freest country on Earth wonders aloud on AM talk radio.

Really sounds like he's trying to make a case for firing Muller, which is terrifying.