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Forums › Politics › Donald Trump, US President #47, US President #45, convicted felon, twice impeached, four times indicted, liable of rape, convicted for financial fraud, guilty of hiding hush money payments to porn actress in attempt to influence 2016 elections
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Fred99
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  #2205408 26-Mar-2019 22:35
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NZGamingIcon:

 

I've read the 4 page pdf. It seemed pretty conclusive that there was no Russian collusion by Trump or his team.

 

 

You need to read more closely.  It doesn't say that at all.

 

 

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  #2205425 26-Mar-2019 23:29
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Trump is an utter a$$hole. There is no dispute about that. He is a pathological liar. That has been demonstrated many times over. He is a narcissistic, with a grossly inflated opinion of his own abilities. He is incapable of recognising his own failings. He is convinced he is smarter than anyone else, which leaves him wide open to being played by those who really are smarter, which is nearly everyone. He mocks those with disabilities and those he does not approve of. He is vindictive, nasty, and petty. These are his better qualities.

 

Trump is vain, self-absorbed, lazy and incompetent. He has no values. He is the worst possible person to be in commend of American military power. He is unintelligent, easily swayed, quick to take offence and seek vengeance, unstable and definitely not a genius, very possibly mentally ill to the point of incarceration if he was anyone else. He is a user and an opportunist. He cares about nothing but himself. All of these things are well-documented.

 

Trump is all this and much, much less. The only thing he is good at is being an utter jerk. But this does not mean it can be demonstrated that he 'colluded' with Russia to win the election, whatever colluded means in this context. That is not to say he could not have been peripherally involved in all kinds of underhanded back-room dealings. It is also not to say that he was. It says only that there is no certainty that he was involved in any collusion.

 

It is the preliminary opinion of the Attorney General that the special counsel has not provided incontrovertible evidence of obstruction of justice that would satisfy legal prosecution standards and convince a jury to return a guilty verdict. That does not say that no such thing occurred, or that there might not have been transgressions that, while not technically illegal, or not felonious, did at a minimum violate the spirit of the law. There is a lot of wiggle room here. As any lawyer will tell you, there is a world of difference between being found not guilty and being innocent. There is nothing innocent about Donald Trump.

 

Naturally Trump's minions are shouting from the rooftops that he has been exonerated. He has not. He has only been found not prosecutable, at least so far. This is by no means over. Trump is not just an a$$hole. Unleashed, he is a danger to himself and the world. Hubris will bring him down. We can only hope it does not sweep the rest of us into the pit with him.

 

 




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  #2205517 27-Mar-2019 10:24
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The New York Times - Who Is William Barr?

 

March 22, 2019

 

(severely condensed)

 

  • This is not Mr. Barr’s first stint as attorney general. He was attorney general under President George H.W. Bush.

  • Mr. Barr’s views on executive power leave Mr. Trump with a nearly free hand.

    The Constitution, according to Mr. Barr’s interpretation, does not consider it a crime for the president to wield his executive powers corruptly, for instance by firing a subordinate or by pardoning a loyal aide.
    It is an interpretation favorable to Mr. Trump.
    “He alone is the executive branch,” Mr. Barr wrote in an unsolicited June 8, 2018 memo. [see 19 pages of controversial legal argument]

  • Mr. Barr was considered for Mr. Trump’s legal defense team.

  • Mr. Barr and Mr. Mueller have been good friends for 30 years.

  • Mr. Barr once defended Mr. Trump’s calls for new investigations into Clinton.

  • He thought Trump was right to fire James B. Comey as FBI director.

  • Barr is an avid player of the bagpipes.

 




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  #2205779 27-Mar-2019 17:21
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The New York Times - Mueller’s Investigation Erases a Line Drawn After Watergate

 

March 26, 2019

 


WASHINGTON — After Watergate, it was unthinkable that a president would fire an F.B.I. director who was investigating him or his associates.

Or force out an attorney general for failing to protect him from an investigation.

Or dangle pardons before potential witnesses against him.

 

But the end of the inquiry by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, made clear that President Trump had successfully thrown out the unwritten rules that had bound other chief executives in the 45 years since President Richard M. Nixon resigned under fire, effectively expanding presidential power in a dramatic way.

 

Mr. Mueller’s decision to not take a position on whether Mr. Trump’s many norm-shattering interventions in the law enforcement system constituted obstruction of justice means that future occupants of the White House will feel entitled to take similar actions.

 

More than perhaps any other outcome of the Mueller investigation, this may become its most enduring legacy. ...

 


To Mr. Trump’s critics, this development represents a dangerous degradation of the rule of law, handing a president almost complete leeway to thwart any effort by federal law enforcement authorities to scrutinize his actions almost as if he were a king. ...

 



 




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NZGamingIcon
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  #2205856 27-Mar-2019 19:44
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As I mentioned in the previous page, people don't care about the Russia investigation. 

Trump is guilty for those that hate him. Trump is innocent for those that support him. Nobody cares for the truth as it doesn't affect their opinions, no one's mind is being changed.

CNN poll found that 0% of people considered Russia investigation the most important issue for the 2020 vote.

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  #2205889 27-Mar-2019 20:54
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NZGamingIcon: As I mentioned in the previous page, people don't care about the Russia investigation.

Incorrect. Everyone seems to care about it. For die hard Trump supporters they care because for them it's a witch-hunt designed to get their man. Imo there are few of those.

Trump is guilty for those that hate him. Trump is innocent for those that support him.

Clearly that's a reason why both extremes care.

Nobody cares for the truth as it doesn't affect their opinions, no one's mind is being changed.

At this point I'll point to Trump's quote about shooting people on fifth avenue. That's a serious issue.

CNN poll found that 0% of people considered Russia investigation the most important issue for the 2020 vote.

That's a little misleading. Americans expect that whole thing to be sorted out prior to the election and voting on things that matter to them personally like health, education, the usual stuff:

CNN: In a CNN poll conducted by SSRS and released last week, 87% of Americans said that regardless of what the investigation found, Mueller's team should produce a full, public report on their findings. That agreement goes across partisan lines: 95% of Democrats, 88% of independents and 80% of Republicans want a public report.

Clearly the truth is something that Americans care about.

Personally I don't think there's much in the whole Russia topic but who knows.

Rikkitic
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  #2206006 27-Mar-2019 23:30
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NZGamingIcon:

 

As I mentioned in the previous page, people don't care about the Russia investigation. 

Trump is guilty for those that hate him. Trump is innocent for those that support him. Nobody cares for the truth as it doesn't affect their opinions, no one's mind is being changed.

CNN poll found that 0% of people considered Russia investigation the most important issue for the 2020 vote.

 

 

I care very much. I care whether he stole the election or won it legitimately. In view of his history I think this is a very big deal indeed.

 

 

 

 




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geekIT
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  #2206132 28-Mar-2019 10:36
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Rikkitic: I care very much. I care whether he stole the election or won it legitimately. In view of his history I think this is a very big deal indeed.

 

As do I.

 

And every contributor to this thread who respects dignity, decency and the rule of law.




'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.' Voltaire

 

'A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government President.' Edward Abbey

 

 

 

 

 

 

kingdragonfly
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  #2206224 28-Mar-2019 13:23
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/russia-or-no-russia-trump-is-still-a-lousy-president/2019/03/27/26da21de-50aa-11e9-a3f7-78b7525a8d5f_story.html

Washington Post - Opinions
By Max Boot

Russia or no Russia, Trump is still a lousy president

So President Trump is not guilty of criminally conspiring with Russia to win the 2016 election. But he is guilty of being a lousy president.

He made that clear after the completion of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation. Instead of following Winston Churchill’s advice (“In victory: magnanimity”), Trump was venomous and vengeful. He repeated his Stalinist assertion that the media are the “Enemy of the People” and vowed to exact revenge against the assorted traitors and evil-doers who had probed his connections with Russia. Trump is reminding us that he lacks even an iota of the dignity or decorum that we used to take for granted in the Oval Office.

That same message was reinforced by Trump’s never-ending vendetta against the late senator John McCain. It now seems as though it were a lifetime ago, but Trump spent most of last week attacking a dead man. “He was horrible,” Trump said. “I’m not a fan of John McCain.” And also: “I’ve never liked him much.”

Trump complained that McCain had voted against repealing the Affordable Care Act and had sent the Steele dossier alleging that Trump was compromised by the Russians “to the FBI and Media hoping to have it printed BEFORE the election.” In fact, McCain quietly provided the dossier to the FBI after the election — as any patriot would have done. Drawing on inexhaustible wellsprings of self-pity, Trump complained that he was never thanked for providing McCain “the kind of funeral that he wanted” — even though all Trump did was provide a military plane to carry McCain’s body from Arizona to Washington. We all know the real reason the draft-dodger president holds a grudge against the war hero senator: Trump knows he will never receive the kind of respect and adulation from the establishment that McCain did — and that he secretly craves.

Trump stands out among our presidents not just for being so petty, bitter and mean-spirited but also for being so incompetent. He came to office promising to eliminate the budget deficit and the trade deficit. Both are now bigger than ever. The federal budget deficit in February — $234 billion — was the largest on record. The trade deficit in 2018 set its own record: $891.3 billion.

Trump also promised to boost economic growth as high as 6 percent per year. In 2018, despite a massive tax cut, the economy grew at only 2.9 percent — the same level it reached under President Barack Obama in 2015. Trump is wrongly blaming this strong but not spectacular growth on his own appointee to chair the Federal Reserve, Jerome H. Powell.

Last week, Trump struck back against Powell by saying he’ll nominate Stephen Moore, a supply-side polemicist and acerbic critic of the Fed, to join its board. Moore was not selected for his monetary expertise. As he admitted, “I’m going to be on a steep learning curve myself about how the Fed operates.” He was chosen because he has become an ardent proponent of lower interest rates after having warned under Obama, when the economy was in much greater need of stimulus, that lower rates would produce hyperinflation. Moore’s policy recommendations appear to be tailored to whatever the Republican Party requires at the moment. Greg Mankiw, a Harvard University professor who was chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, recommended against his confirmation because “he does not have the intellectual gravitas for this important job.”

Of course, the president who nominated Moore lacks the necessary gravitas for his even more important job. Trump demonstrated that again last Friday when he posted a baffling tweet: “It was announced today by the U.S. Treasury that additional large scale Sanctions would be added to those already existing Sanctions on North Korea. I have today ordered the withdrawal of those additional Sanctions!” This was an extraordinary and puzzling rebuke of Trump’s own advisers. In fact, no sanctions had been announced that day.

At first, it appeared that Trump was rescinding sanctions that had been announced the previous day. But the White House claimed he was actually canceling unspecified future sanctions — an explanation that was apparently false — because he “likes Chairman Kim, and he doesn’t think these sanctions will be necessary.” So Trump hates an American war hero but loves the North Korean dictator. That’s how twisted his worldview is.

The same day Trump canceled further sanctions on North Korea, which is producing nuclear weapons as fast as it can, he slapped new sanctions on Iran, which has stopped its own nuclear program. David Sanger of the New York Times summed up the disconnect: “If you are building nuclear weapons and the President likes you, no sanctions necessary. If you want to build nuclear weapons but there is no evidence you are currently doing so, and [the] President dislikes you, sanctions are appropriate.”

Whatever Mueller found (and we still know very little) will not change the fact that Trump simply lacks the intellect and integrity — the gravitas — for the most important job in the world.

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  #2206354 28-Mar-2019 15:14
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Announced in March 2017, brain-computer interface company Neuralink is Elon Musk’s latest venture.

It's rumored to attempt to download a human mind into a computer, thus achieving immorality.

He's starting with a reptilian brain, of the simplest brain he could find. It's code-named "Trump" :)

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  #2206450 28-Mar-2019 17:50
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The Washington Post - Attorney general expected to miss deadline for giving Mueller report to Congress, will not commit to releasing it in full

 

March 27 at 7:11 PM

 


Attorney General William P. Barr is expected to miss House Democrats’ deadline to provide Congress the full report documenting special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, increasing the likelihood lawmakers will subpoena the Justice Department.

 

... the attorney general said it would be “weeks, not months” before lawmakers can see the report, making it “apparent that the department will not meet the April 2 deadline that we set” earlier this week.

 

Barr would not promise that “an unredacted full report with the underlying documents, evidence, would be provided to Congress and to the American people” ...

 

 


The report is rumored to be several hundred pages long - but less than 1,000 pages.

 




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  #2206812 29-Mar-2019 08:28
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and the Times version ...

 

The New York Times - Mueller Report Exceeds 300 Pages, Raising Questions About Four-Page Summary

 

March 28, 2019

 

 

WASHINGTON — The still-secret report on Russian interference in the 2016 election submitted by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, last week was more than 300 pages long, according to the Justice Department, a length that raises new questions about Attorney General William P. Barr’s four-page summary. ...

 

The total of 300-plus pages suggests that Mr. Mueller went well beyond the kind of bare-bones summary required by the Justice Department regulation governing his appointment and detailed his conclusions at length.

 

And it raises questions about what Mr. Barr might have left out of the four dense pages he sent Congress. ...

 

Members of Mr. Barr and Mr. Mueller’s teams are currently reviewing the full report to redact information that they do not believe should be made public for intelligence or other reasons.

 

Mr. Barr has told lawmakers in recent days that it will take weeks to make more of Mr. Mueller’s findings public.

 



 

 




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geekIT
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  #2206943 29-Mar-2019 12:05
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kingdragonfly: Announced in March 2017, brain-computer interface company Neuralink is Elon Musk’s latest venture.

It's rumored to attempt to download a human mind into a computer, thus achieving immorality.

He's starting with a reptilian brain, of the simplest brain he could find. It's code-named "Trump" :)

 

I assume they meant 'achieving immortality'?

 

Although downloading Trump's mind into a computer would definitely achieve immorality. The mind boggles...




'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.' Voltaire

 

'A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government President.' Edward Abbey

 

 

 

 

 

 

geekIT
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  #2206971 29-Mar-2019 12:51
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Light at the end of the tunnel? Interesting read. https://www.vox.com/first-person/2019/3/27/18282887/putin-mueller-investigation-trump-russia

 

YOUNG PEOPLE DON’T CARE THAT MUCH ABOUT THE MUELLER INVESTIGATION. WE’VE GOT BIGGER PROBLEMS.

 

By Aaron Freedman Mar 27, 2019, 12:10pm EDT

 

Every time I’ve visited my dad and stepmother over the past couple of years, our conversation has turned toward venting about the latest horrors of the Trump administration. We all fall on the progressive end of the spectrum and tend to agree on the issues. But there has always been one topic that made me groan and shift my attention to the home-cooked food on the table: the Mueller investigation.

 

My dad and stepmother have been following the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election very, very closely. Nearly every time I enter their apartment, the TV is playing MSNBC, the cable news channel that has given the Russia probe the most attention, with Mueller coming up one in every three times Trump is mentioned. I know not to try to reach my dad on the phone between 9 and 10 o’clock on weeknights, when he’s normally in bed watching The Rachel Maddow Show, the program that has perhaps been the most generous in lending its time to covering the Russia probe.

 

It’s not just my dad and stepmother. For the past two years, Mueller has been nearly omnipresent in cable news coverage. A study found that 55 percent of all broadcast news coverage of Trump centered on the Russia probe. Even the most casual newshounds can easily get sucked into the adrenaline-pumping intrigue around collusion and foreign espionage. And for the baby boomers like my parents who make up a substantial share of the cable news audience — the median age of MSNBC viewers is 65 — the Mueller frenzy is all the greater. One recent NPR story interviewed elderly Americans in a retirement home praying to live a little longer so they could see the special counsel’s final report.

 

But for younger Americans, the Mueller story might not be quite as riveting. In a poll taken last year by Vanity Fair, less than a third of all millennials said they were very closely following the Russia probe. This relative disinterest is markedly generational — the share of millennial Democrats who were closely following the investigation, 38 percent, was lower than the share for those 35 years and older of all political stripes, 45 percent.

 

It’s not hard to figure out why. First, we’re likely not watching cable news, where the Russia story has dominated the news cycle since 2016; millennials are less likely to pay for cable. But beyond news sources, young people are more concerned with the larger, more structural issues of today: climate change, violent racism, economic inequality. As a 2018 Pew survey on the generation gap found, large majorities of millennials (66 percent) believe that our economic system unfairly favors powerful interests and that more needs to be done for racial equality (68 percent), well in excess of the share from older generations. (For the silent generation, 50 percent said that our economic system unfairly favors powerful interests, while 54 percent said more needs to be done about racial equality.)

 

When my friends and I joke about wanting to enjoy a snow day in New York while we still have them, it’s because our generation will likely see climate catastrophe in our lifetime. When mass famine, rising sea levels, and an economic situation resembling a science fiction dystopia are on the horizon, it seems almost irresponsible for the media not to devote the majority of its resources to that instead of legal proceedings that have yet to personally implicate the president. When neo-Nazis are shooting up synagogues and marching in American cities, Russian social media trolls don’t seem quite like the greatest threat to our democracy.

 

There’s a reason some of the biggest protest movements of the past two years — the Parkland survivor-led March for our Lives, or the students marching for climate change — have been led by young people. But none of these movements have much to do with Russia. The generation gap comes down to fundamental ideas about our country

 

Don’t get me wrong — like more than two-thirds of millennials, I’m very concerned about corruption in government. And my cohort are hardly in the tank for Trump: Nearly all of the anti-Trump protests, rallies, and canvasses I’ve gone to have been led by millennials.

 

It’s just that the attention to the Russia probe simply doesn’t reflect where many people in my generation’s priorities are. With more than half of us supporting a Green New Deal and nearly 70 percent demanding Medicare-for-all, we want our politics to be about the transformational paradigm shifts to safeguard the health and security of our planet, ourselves, and future generations. There’s a reason only a third of millennials view the Russia investigation as a top priority for Congress, while a majority say it should be addressing climate change.

 

This generational gap is really much larger than Russia. For boomer liberals like my father, there is still a belief that Trump is fundamentally un-American in his bigotry, xenophobia, and corruption, and that the combined forces of Congress and the courts can prevail in excising him from a vision that this country ultimately bends toward justice.

 

For many millennials and younger — even those of my cohort who are not avid politicos — this positivism feels naive. In the face of climate catastrophe, rising wealth inequality, and a surge in violent racism, what ails America does not seem curable through the special counsel’s report. It’s no surprise that roughly one in three millennials, like myself, call ourselves socialist. An investigation into one president’s corruption seems almost quaint in the face of the massive political change needed to ensure our very survival.

 

As we head into what could be the most important presidential election in a generation, we need our politics to be focused on large, structural issues, not narrow investigations of connections between Trump and Russia.

 

I have another dinner with my parents coming up soon. I hope that with the Mueller inquiry behind us and Trump himself likely in the clear of donning an orange jumpsuit as “Putin’s puppet,” our conversations will drift instead to the more pressing issues our country faces.

 

Aaron Freedman is a writer based in Brooklyn. Find him on Twitter at @freedaaron.




'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.' Voltaire

 

'A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government President.' Edward Abbey

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rikkitic
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  #2207174 29-Mar-2019 16:50
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This is an interesting viewpoint but I think he (and maybe all those other millennials) misses an important point. The Mueller investigation is about corruption of the political process. If Trump or those serving him cheated, or if Russia swung the election even without his active involvement, then something very serious indeed would have occurred. If Trump himself is corrupt, then he stole the presidency and will probably not be inclined to give it back. 

 

Trump has stripped the Environmental Protection Agency of any meaningful powers and has put the oil industry in charge of environmental policy. He has withdrawn the USA from the Paris Agreement on climate change. He has put a painfully ignorant dumb blond in charge of America's education. One would think this would be the kind of thing that ought to concern millennials. 

 

 

 

 




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