I have no idea why we're talking about expanding NATO here in the first place. Unless I missed a news story, that isn't on the table anytime soon.

Plus I believe I read that Cohen has a penchant for recording pretty much every conversation he can.

Because Kaids, why else?

Can't wait for the Chelsea Clinton vs Moscow Don Jr Presidential Election of 2024.

Trump just dissed Montenegro who just joined after Russia literally tried to assasinate their prime minister. Key to appease Trump is to not have 'negro' in the name of your country.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/20/o...ump-russia.htm

The NRA stuff may not even matter at this point. Imagine if a Trumper came up to you and told you that they had evidence that Planned Parenthood was in cahoots with China to violate American election laws and help elect Hillary in 2020 so that she could institute pro-China policy.

Given the bubble the majority of right wing voters now live in, the NRA being in bed with Russia will sound just as bat**** crazy to them. Do you think Fox News has been covering this at all? Breitbart? Me either, so they're going to find it so shocking, so out of left field and so outlandish that they will throw it back at the left as an amazing example of the absurd political smears of the elitist left-wing liberal mainstream media machine.

When the GOP and NRA realize they can get away with it without holding the NRA accountable, they will. I mean, ****, they already are by changing those disclosure laws/regulations.

Best case scenario, the NRA fires a few people at the top and says it was an isolated plot by a few people, blah blah blah, they're still here fighting the good fight against the gun grabbing liberals.

Flowers By Irene

could one of you Putin conspiracy theory experts explain why Putin made Trump do this?

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/20/polit...ine/index.html

A Theory of Trump Kompromat

Alena Ledeneva, a professor of politics at University College London and an expert on Russia’s political and business practices, describes kompromat as being more than a single powerful figure weaponizing damning evidence to blackmail a target. She explained that to make sense of kompromat it is essential to understand the weakness of formal legal institutions in Russia and other former Soviet states. Ledeneva argued that wealth and power are distributed through networks of political figures and businesspeople who follow unspoken rules, in an informal hierarchy that she calls sistema, or system. Sistema has a few clear rules—do not defy Putin being the most obvious one—and a toolkit for controlling potentially errant members. It is primarily a system of ambiguity. Each person in sistema wonders where he stands and monitors the relative positions of friends and rivals.

...

Ledeneva said that the key to understanding Trump’s interaction with sistema is to look at the people with whom he did business. “Trump never dealt with anybody close to the Kremlin, close to Putin,” she said. “Or even many Russians.” Trump’s business deals, she told me, were with tertiary figures. Sistema is rooted in local, often familial, trust, so it is common to see networks rooted in ethnic or national identity. My own reporting has shown that Trump has worked with many ethnic Turks from Central Asia, such as the Mammadov family, in Azerbaijan; Tevfik Arif, in New York; and Aras and Emin Agalarov, in Moscow. Trump also worked with large numbers of émigrés from the former Soviet Union.

...

Ledeneva is skeptical that Putin, years ago, ordered an effort to collect kompromat on Trump. Instead, it is possible that there is kompromat in the hands of several different business groups in the former Soviet Union. Each would have bits and pieces of damaging information and might have found subtle (or not so subtle) ways to communicate that fact to both Trump and Putin. Putin would likely have gathered some of that material, but he would have known that he couldn’t get everything.

Ledeneva told me that each actor in sistema faces near-constant uncertainty about his status, aware that others could well destroy him. Each actor also knows how to use kompromat to destroy rivals but fears that using such material might provoke an explosive response. While each person in sistema feels near-constant uncertainty, the over-all sistema is remarkably robust. Kompromat is most powerful when it isn’t used, and when its targets aren’t quite clear about how much destructive information there is out there. If everyone sees potential land mines everywhere, it dramatically increases the price for anybody stepping out of line.

The scenario that, to my mind, makes the most sense of the given facts and requires the fewest fantastical leaps is that, a decade or so ago, Trump, naïve, covetous, and struggling for cash, may have laundered money for a business partner from the former Soviet Union or engaged in some other financial crime. This placed him, unawares, squarely within sistema, where he remained, conducting business with other members of a handful of overlapping Central Asian networks. Had he never sought the Presidency, he may never have had to come to terms with these decisions. But now he is much like everyone else in sistema. He fears there is kompromat out there—maybe a lot of it—but he doesn’t know precisely what it is, who has it, or what might set them off.

...

Ledeneva explained to me that, in sistema, when faced with uncertainty, every member knows that the best move is to maintain whatever alliances he has, and to avoid grand steps that could antagonize powerful figures; in such times, the most one can hope for is simply to survive.

What a surprise. In Keeed's world, no administration, not even this clown car of an administration, could ever work at cross purposes. And there is no possible scenario other than (i) Trump is 100% independent and uncompromised; or (ii) Trump is a Manchurian candidate.

Lulz Rudy

No politician is 100% independent and uncompromised. They're influenced by donors, party, voters, countries, interests, whatever.

But of course, there are many folks ITT who are constantly braying about how Trump is literally a Manchurian candidate of Putin. That he's being actively blackmailed.

Just because you don't believe nonsense like Trump is a Manchurian Candidate doesn't mean other folks ITT don't:

if the pentagon was directed by trump’s will, they would have banned transgender people from service. they didn’t because they’re not.

therefore: trump is a puppet of putin who has been personally blackmailing him and has been working secretly as an asset of the fsb for many years

Davidson publishing that article about sistema shortly before we found out that Cohen was taping conversations discussing hush payments with his boss is divine.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...25741664751616

i stand by my assertion that potus announcing, “[the dprk] will be met with fire and fury the likes of which the world has never seen” was too tough

How about you actually make an argument. Is it your contention that any action facially contrary to Putin's interest is proof that that Trump cannot be compromised by embarrassing material?

Paying off women has 0 effect. Probably ends up helping him, or have you forgotten that Bill had an affair while President and lied about it, which is way worse.

My observation is that many of Trump's actual policies are contrary to Russia's interests and undo more dovish Obama policies. Revoking the Iran deal, bombing Assad forces in Syria, providing lethal arms to Ukraine. Why would Trump do these things that are contrary to Putin's interests if he was being controlled by Putin?

the thing i can’t figure out is: who’s blackmailing keed to force him to post so ****ily?

Any chance this keeping donors secret stuff backfires and China unloads huge amounts of money to the dems to stop the trade war stuff?

I guess you genuinely are unable to come up with anything.

Because they aren't as contrary to Putin's interest as you think.
Because he doesn't want to be so obvious as to get Trump ousted by the 25th Amendment.
Because Trump is a lazy, disinterested president who either delegated explicitly or implicitly to someone who did something contrary to Putin.
Because the plan all along was for a public show and then a private reversal.

Just a few things to throw out there and blow your unimaginative mind.