Pretty simple. Both were wrong, lock them up.

So it is not in violation of law but it might be a violation of the President’s oath of office.

Bombshell: Initial Thoughts on the Washington Post’s Game-Changing Story - Lawfare

I know it wasn't posted here so Chief will think I'm just making it up, because apparently if it isn't discussed here it can't possibly be true, but I've greatly enjoyed watching the people throwing McMasters' statement around going into full turtle mode since Trump confirmed what he did.

Watching twitter, for some reason the Russian bots are trying to flood the trends with "Seth Rich", I guess to make it all about Hillary again.

Some day there will be a tragic story to tell about the man that made his reputation writing a book criticizing the uniformed leadership for dereliction by not standing up to the political leaders, who then destroyed his reputation by refusing to stand up to the political leaders.

He basically just went "when the president does it, it is not illegal".

There is some truth to that statement, in some contexts. You can't really be accused of trying to overthrow the government when you are the leader of the government. And you can't be accused of illegally disclosing classified information when you get to decide what information is classified. The president DOES have a lot of legal leeway that others do not - that's why this whole President Trump experience is so scary.

I'm sure there have been times when other presidents have shared classified information with allies. But of course with Trump, 0% of people, including his supporters, think he did so with any genuine purpose. Nobody, or almost nobody, is saying, "hey, he's the president, he's intelligently acting in our best interests here with a genuine purpose and we don't know the whole story" - because only a sociopath could say that without laughing.

Or, you know, the "Lock him up" post wasn't made in any seriousness, just as a response to how certain folks responded to the tweets that were brought back up.

The meeting wasn't open to U.S peess, just Russian press.

Erickson was a vocal #NeverTrump guy, but has defended him from media attacks at times (and to some degree does in this story.)

That said, I've never known him to post a flat-out lie, either. The way he phrases things here doesn't leave much room for interpretation or wiggle-room.

http://theresurgent.com/i-know-one-of-the-sources/

Honestly, I'd rather the Russians know whatever than the (D)s. I know which one I trust farther to get something right / in the best interest of the U.S.

If the options -- and that's where we seem to be -- are Trump or capitulating RINOs and pseudocons, I'll take my chances with Trump. That's all we've got left.

That's my favorite little detail of the story. Maybe Trump will eventually cancel the white house press briefings, like he's been threatening, and exclusively brief the Russian press. Hell, maybe it'd be easier if he just did his work from Moscow, there has to be a resort near there he has some money in.

The party of Reagan now trusting the Russians with American interests.

Bozhe, khrani ameriku

I'm getting a little fatigued from all these articles about how every Trump blunder is "the last straw". How "this time" EVEN some Republicans are turning on him! There's always been some Republicans speaking against him, and I think we're getting so used to incompetence that it will be impossible to have that one big mistake that rids us of him. All of it is just ordinary stuff in Trump's presidency. The peak of the actual resistance against him came back in October after he got the nomination, when a handful of Republicans did actually call on him to withdraw after that video came out. Now though, it looks like we'll just get blunder after blunder, with some Republicans expressing "concern" (and probably trying to limit the damage behind the scenes), but no real momentum towards making a change or promoting investigations for impeachable wrongs. This all won't end until 2020 - we just have to hope that the intelligence fuck-ups don't cause a big terrorist attack.

Well of course not, it's the Russian gals he likes to watch.

I wish that the media would stop reporting when some GOPer "expresses concern" about Trump. It is meaningless. The only story at this point is if Congress is going to take action to remove him. If so, that's the story. If not, that's the story. Everything else is meaningless.

Jon, I hope that when this is all over, you have a big enough bowl for all the crow we're going to forcefeed you, and I hope you choke down every last bit of it, and feel it burning in your stomach like hot lava.

Can't think why I'd feel this way, mind you.

I agree, once you cut through all the BS it comes down to this. There might, eventually be enough that get sick of him, but it's not going to happen anytime soon, and it's not going to happen because of Trump's hubris. It'll happen because the party starts legitimately losing vast chunks of real estate, of which they have a lot, right now. Until then, it's mostly overblown hype.

McMaster just said the real problem is the media reporting on the conversations.

I honestly can't imagine any scenario where Jon would eat crow.

Maybe when all his ideologies are proven beyond the shadow of a doubt to be ineffective and harmful to him, his friends and family.

Right about the time the definitive answer on God's existence is proven.

I'd hope to see the country reduced to ash before the liberals finish destroying it.

It may already be too late for that (which I've often opined) so let's just say Trump having the football isn't something that bothers me in the slightest.

I'd like to see Trump impeached just as much as the next guy, but I think this incident of Trump talking to the Russian is overblown

In a vacuum, spilling classified intel to another country isn't the worst thing imaginable. It probably happens on a semi-frequent basis although it probably happens in a bit more of an organized manner. It's the potential consequences of doing so that could make it bad and actually hurt our country.

If Trump was in this meeting and heard something that triggered a piece of info he previously received, which caused him to make a calculated decision about sharing that either for our, Russia's, or another country's security, as he weighed the pros and cons of doing so, that would be one thing. It would be the job of the President and one I would certainly understand given the appropriate context.

Or he could have shared it because he wanted his Russian guests to know about this very special thing he knew and he just blurted it out without thinking of the ramifications.

Which do you think is the more likely scenario?

The main damage is, once again, another week is taken up with damage control rather than legislation to make America great again.

My guess is if this continues through the summer, voters and congress will resign themselves that this is new normal and Trump's agenda will never get off the ground. At that point, congress may be faced with a save the party/majority or save the president at the mid term.

I don't think this congress is going to produce any legislation "to make America great again". That's with or without Trump's distractions.

I'm unclear on why this would be a bad thing?

It would be bad to Trump and the party if they have the majority and nothing gets done. If Trump loses the confidence of his base because of his largely self inflicted blunders, then mid terms are going to be a shellacking.

I mean, what is going to happen when his supporters realize he is not the White Knight they desperately wanted?

The GOP will point out that the other side is the Democrats, and they will still get 95%+ of the Trump voters to stay GOP. People are motivated by the letter next to your name. D or R is all that matters.

We need more parties, which in turn get us more connected to issues than being on the winning or losing side. When either side of a two party political system says they trust a foreign dictator that clearly and regularly has people murdered to suppress free speech, more than they trust the other party of Americans, then you know our political mindsets are broken.

I've read game theory (which I'm too lazy to look up right now) that shows why the American system must always default to two major parties. Parliamentary systems can and do support multiple parties.

If we want multiple parties, we would need to fundamentally change the manner in which we govern ourselves.

I'm all for multiple parties, but not under our current electoral system where someone would be able to win 34-33-32 or a third party would be able to get 10-15% of the vote and get 0% of the seats.

Had to double-check this to make sure it wasn't in the Onion, but no the Republicans are actually suggesting to Trump that Garland, who they successfully blocked from the Supreme Court, should now be nominated to head the FBI.

McConnell backs Merrick Garland for FBI director | TheHill

edit; He has come forward since to say he is not interested.

Is Sean Spicer next to go?

Fox News host in talks to replace Sean Spicer: report

The economy is doing really well.
There are no Iran-Hostage-style quagmire foreign issues going on.
Clinton was going to lose that election.

Had the GOP nominated Jeb or Rubio or Kasich, it would be sitting so pretty right now. The talk would be of gaining seats in the midterm and getting a filibuster proof margin in the Senate.

To what purpose? To have someone that will accomplish nothing meaningful in office, just so a hollow victory could be claimed?

I thought the whole "but my side won" thing was a bad way of thinking.

Garland was only brought up so that the GOP could label Dem's hypocrites for not falling all over themselves to confirm him given their pledge not to support anyone until a special prosecutor was named. Plus, once he left the bench for a political appointment, they could replace him with a conservative on the appeals court and get him out of Washington completely at their leisure. Good for Garland for not wanting to be a political football twice in one year.

https://twitter.com/evilsharkey/stat...48377660317696

.

The Trump administration reportedly revealed information to Russians that CNN was asked not to report https://t.co/FPq6finPDa pic.twitter.com/mGmRMOUqgr

— The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) May 16, 2017

And now NYT reporting that Trump asked Comey to "shut down" the Flynn probe after Trump fired him. If only this were USC football and Pat Hayden could be waiting for the plane to land.

And if my mom had balls she'd be my dad.

This is the GOP. The GOP is Trump and Trump is the GOP. Maybe that will change in time, but they elected Trump because they are the same.

Leaks are going to come out on a daily basis. He's pissed off the FBI and intelligence agencies. The quote from LBJ on Hoover seems to fit.

"It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in."

I think the issue is that other countries will be skeptical about giving us intelligence in the future. Israel clearly didn't want this passed to even our allies, let alone Russia. So if your goal is to prevent terrorist attacks as Trump has claimed, he just made it harder for his own country to do so.

The information was obviously serious enough that it sent the WH into a panic as they rushed to inform the NSA and CIA about it. And they have asked news agencies not to report on what the information was.


State media here is doing the same thing. Sadly the Seth Rich story gets propped up whenever Trump needs a distraction. Feel bad for his family who has to go through this.

They have him on obstruction of justice. Start the impeachment hearings. That seems to be where this is headed.

I'm buying stock in Orville Redenbacher. If the first hundred days are any indication, the next few years are going to be a glorious political entertainment television.

I mean, what I see on my (anecdotal) daily Facebook feed is "Trump does X. Trump supporters give zero fucks and find reasons to cheer about how it pisses off the boogeyman democrats of their imagination." Which appears to be about as far into the future as they can prognosticate.

And eventually, the tide is going to turn again. A Democrat is going to sit in the White House...and I think Dems are going to get tired of taking the high road and playing compromise games and go after some real sacred cows just to fuck with Republicans and their supporters. Four+ years of revenge politics where everything is on the table.

I'm down with this. I'm down with a bare-fisted political feud where everybody goes for short-term bloodletting over actual policy. Where everybody gets pissed off enough to stop pretending like we're all Americans in this together and starts actively trying to kill off the other side, whether through bar fights, pistol volleys, or congressionally approved death panels that force people who can't pay their share of the wealth distribution to abort their unborn fetuses or sell them into Mexican white slavery to pay for Mexico's share of the Wall.

I think we need this. I think we've become a country of complete dumbasses who have forgotten how fragile the social contract is and why compromise is so necessary. And I hope the corporate leaders of Facebook and Fox News and about a thousand other media outlets are the first ones up against the wall (though they won't be, because oligarchs stick together.)

If Trump isn't careful, SEVERAL Republicans may express guarded concern over this.

Though it is nice that maybe there's a guy in the middle of this now who doesn't need an immunity agreement to talk about what happened.

Also, I've got Obama in the pool of "Most Likely Former President to Thwart His Own Assassination Attempt by Whipping Out a Concealed Glock and Executing the Motherfucker Gangsta Style".

And no, not just because he's black.

This assumes the Dems will put forth a competent candidate and that they'll do anything more than jack themselves off when they get into power.


2008 should tell you exactly how Democrats govern when in full control.

This is fair. The problem with building a party out of increasingly atomized interest groups and coalitions of potential victims is that all of your solid idealogues (I mean that in a good way) are going to piss somebody off.

Shit, I've got to keep a spreadsheet of non-offensive positions I'm allowed to take that's pivot tabled against the demographics of my likely audience just to hang out at the water cooler at work as it is.

Working on a college campus is tough as fuck, yo.

(That's facetious. I work in IT. What I do is magic. So I'm allowed to say whatever I want as long as my beard is long enough.)

I'm very happy to work at a job where expressing any political opinions at work would be considered very rude, and where I'm expected not to express any political opinions publicly through social media. It's just so nice not to have that division with anyone in my life. I mean, I'd never express a political opinion on facebook anyway, but this way I have an official reason why I actually can't.

John McCain is going to say something scathing about how awful all of this is before falling in line with everyone else and doing absolutely nothing. What a maverick!

Or in Twitterese:

#NeverTrump #WithFewExceptions

Guaranteed!

PredictIt


Will Donald Trump be president at year-end 2017?
.68 cents

Will Donald Trump be president at year-end 2018?
.55

Michael Moore has promised his new film will end the Trump Presidency:

Michael Moore: Fahrenheit 11/9 to dissolve Trump presidency

I think he's doing a good job of it all by himself Michael.

I'm finishing up a book on the end of the Roman Republic, and it's amazing how many parallels my mind keeps forming between what's going on in the US right now and what happened in Rome in the last century of the BCs. The amount of 'formerly unthinkable acts' that are committed by people in power that then go on to become the norm...

I think Trump is a life-long buffoon who, judging him solely on what he says and is quoted as saying since becoming president, appears to be mentally infirm if nothing else. The real danger is the precedents being set here in his presidency, IMO.

Trump has to be Sulla - or maybe Crassus.

McCain, at IRI dinner panel being moderated by Schiefer, said the Trump scandals have become nearly "Watergate-size," per attendee.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 17, 2017

Also said he was against a special prosecutor, per the attendee.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 17, 2017

+1 I just finished the historical fiction book Roma and kept bothering my wife with comparisons

I think Crassus is a really good comparison. 2017 Trump aligns pretty well with Crassus around the time he got Syria and looked towards Parthia...

Twitter bots out in full force right now. #ComeyMemo

This gem from Rush Limbaugh is getting a ton of play on my FB feed:


So...it's the reporting of vague secret information handed off to a potential adversary in the region that is the threat to Americans, not the actual secret information that might get Americans or allied assets killed.

It's shit like this that got covert death squads dispatched to end Tom Clancy. That's the real crime here.

Straight talk express is coming!

I'm not a gambler at all, so can you explain this?

I have been asking Director Comey & others, from the beginning of my administration, to find the LEAKERS in the intelligence community.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2017

He tweeted this yesterday, then never finished his thought.

Also, why do the Russians have a transcript of his meeting with Lavrov in the oval office, but we don't?

PredictIt works like a stock market with Yes or No shares for each question. The prices I posted are for the yes shares. So it costs .68 cents for each share of "Will Donald Trump be president at year-end 2017?". If 2017 passes and Trump is still president, then every share you own is now worth $1. If he resigns before then, then all shares you own are worth 0$.

In effect, it works like a percentage. PredictIt users are predicting that there's only a 68% chance Trump is still President by the end of the year.

I think that the most revealing thing about the Comey memos about his meetings with Trump will be how many times he scrawled "Holy Shit, this fucking guy" in the margins.

dola:

And I am still in the Trump isn't going anywhere camp. But I have started to notice some folks in the right wing and mainstream media start the preliminary stages of distancing Pence from the administration. I don't think that these folks have any inside information. But I do think that it shows that they are at least starting to consider Trump leaving as a possibility.

So the walk back this morning is that this is just the way Trump talks. He wasn't seriously asking for the investigation to be dropped. That's fine and all, but I'm getting so confused about when I'm supposed to take him seriously and when I'm supposed to take him literally. And now when I'm not supposed to do either.

maybe he should stop joking around and actually be a President

As implausible as this is, it would at least be an answer to the one memo they know exists.

But Comey clearly kept lots and lots of notes. The WH needs to shut up because their ad hoc defenses will end up contradicting whatever other evidence is out there. They need to wait and see what else is there before formulating a response.

Saying only what he means would help.

Thanks - so basically wager $.68 to win $1. I couldn't tell if it was that or wager $1 to win $.68.

How easy is it to hack into Mar-a-Lago? SUPER EASY.

We went there and tested it.

Our story, with @gizmodo.

https://t.co/UWGKY6XhQs pic.twitter.com/nm0820wB2G

— Eric Umansky (@ericuman) May 17, 2017

He would have to figure that out first, though. He doesn't have time for that, that's Pence's job. :banghead:

Kind of. It's kind of like craps tables that say 6 to 1 vs ones that say 6 for 1.

You are wagering $0.68 to get $1 if he resigns/impeached. So you are winning $0.32.

I had an interesting conversation last night with a friend who I consider a conservative Republican. He was saying at this point it might be better for the party to get Trump out and move on quickly to Pence to get something done before 2018 and get this behind them. I found that an interesting idea although we both knew it would never happen.

The opposite. You're wagering .68 to get $1 if he is still President at the beginning of 2018.

If Pence is your guy, I'm not sure whether you just try to survive midterms and then move on trump so Pence can serve 2 years and 2 full terms. Or if you just move on Trump immediately-ish and hope that the voters are angry about something else in a year and a half when you gotta face them.

Yes. I'm sure that Mike Pence can win 2 presidential elections.

The joking would be more believable if Trump hadn't first asked Pence and Sessions to leave the room.

Deputy AG appoints Robert Mueller to lead Special Counsel of Russia investigation.

I've absolutely had the same thought, from the other side. There's no point in the impeachment process that takes the presidency out of Republican hands, and getting rid of Trump would give the GOP a fine excuse to throw away all of Trump's baggage and re-start passing all the same legislation again, with a new face, and a refined chance of connecting to their base. At this point the best thing that could happen from a liberal standpoint is keeping the most incompetent and ineffective option in power for as long as possible.

So even after all this, team politics is still the most important thing? Is there any line that Trump could cross that would change that?

I know I've had this argument a million times here, pre-trump, where Dems got giddy when the worst Republicans won elections. I don't get it. This isn't a text sim, real lives are as stake. Have we learned nothing? Maybe Dems can double down and we can get an even crazier Republican elected in 2020.

Edit: And I think we've learned that having a bad and/or unpopular president or other elected official doesn't necessarily mean smooth sailing for the other side forever. If you're a liberal, far-right politicians doing crazy shit should no bet a good thing. If you're a liberal or a conservative, a reckless incompetent president should not be a good thing. Any Dems or further-left liberals who are giddy about the Trump administration (and I've heard very little of that sentiment until this post) are as big a danger as Trump going forward.

Dems need to run on something instead of "We're not as awful as them."

While maybe true, it doesn't get people energized.

I don't particularly think of that as team politics (especially since I don't vote Dem), as I imagine that anyone-but-Trump would actually be better at effective legislation at this point, whereas Trump is seemingly building up resentment and resistance that is starting to cross party lines. The Russia stuff certainly crosses my line of acceptable presidential behavior, but it's not going to affect my daily life relative to shit like Iowa's GOP douchebags reducing wages by 30%.

I completely disagree. Trump is a threat to the entire world in this position. Yes, with Pence (or Hatch or wherever your currently conspiracy theory may have us ending up) perhaps the right pushes through some things from an agenda that the left dislikes, probably even some social shit that I'd find reprehensible. But no way am I willing to risk the damage that can come from Trump staying in office for a full 4 years against that.

Fair enough. Personally, I feel like Trump is much more likely to pass something progressive, either accidentally or out of spite, than anybody else wearing an R. Regarding the idea of world conflict I feel like Trump has shown plenty of evidence that he's a bully, and while I don't particularly like that personality trait, I do think that even the stupidest bully has an almost preternatural ability to know who and when he should be bullying, and as such he will always pick fights that he can win decisively, and will kiss up to anyone that poses any kind of threat, and he's not as entirely loose a cannon as folks (or even himself) would have us believe.

Trump, like the tea party before him, create the momentum that far-right conservatives use to roll into power at the state and local level. And from your perspective, isn't that a good thing, under this theory that the worst the right gets, the better? Why aren't these Iowa GOP douchebags a part of that same grand plan?

Or would it be better for everyone to have reasonable, intelligent, responsible conservatives in power, who, even if you disagreed with them, were capable of grown-up discourse and compromise in matters of governance, and who gave more voters real choices come election day?

Trump would have to have someone in the Executive Branch that knows how to write and push a bill to accidentally pass anything. He doesn't. Remember his first budget that cut everything except military and border control? They passed the stopgap thing because they didn't have time to rewrite his fantasies.

The problem Pence would have is that the GOP agenda is terrifically unpopular. The ACHA isn't as extreme as many of them would like and it's polling around 30%. If Trump weren't so damned incompetent and dangerous he'd probably be more likely to win reelection than would Pence. Trump figured out that a whole lot of GOP voters want government benefits, as long as they don't go to THOSE people.

My feelings aren't based any kind of grand plan or consistent theory, they're very particular to Trump, and in your analysis of my assumed plan you've substituted 'worst' for 'ineffective and incompetent', which is the exact opposite of what I expressed. For whatever it's worth, I think you're filtering my words through assumptions that I'm a Dem who is just waiting for his team to get their next shot (which is an easy assumption to make these days), whereas I identify more as a disenfranchised liberal whose team doesn't even exist and will never get its shot. At this point my political choice always comes down to the person least likely to fuck me & my concerns, which seems to be entirely based on the individual in question, rather than the two major party lines.


Sure? I honestly feel like I've been waiting my entire life for a real liberal political choice, so discussing offering GoP constituents better options to push the long-established conservative agenda feels completely ridiculous to me, but I can totally understand how even career politicians could seem preferable to this kind of chaos.

...and with that said, I maintain my personal feelings, but have now made far too many posts verging on defending Trump than I am comfortable with. I don't think I've got it all figured out, or that anybody else should share my feelings, I'm just more frightened of the alternative unknown at this moment.

WH counsel was notified as soon as order naming Mueller was signed I'm told. Not sooner. Less than one hour notice, official estimates

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) May 17, 2017

It's almost more interesting that Sessions was informed after Rosenstein signed Mueller order.

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) May 17, 2017

Someone doesn't seem to be happy about being used as the justification for Comey's firing.

From last summer, the GOP Majority leader on tape saying he believes the Russians pay Trump:


Clearly someone needs to ask if he stills believes that.

He said it was just a joke.

You know, the kind of joke a family member tells before you warn everyone present that it doesn't leave this room.

Based on what I have read recently from the fans of both teams ...


Yes.


No, there is not


Finally, no.

Which part? The paying or the family?

Actually they said it never happened. Then they said it was a joke after the Post said they had it on tape.

I'd maybe buy the joke excuse if they didn't mention Rohrabacher who I think everyone knows has been getting paid by Russians for some time.