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Re: US Politics Thread
Someone on Quora asked "Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?" Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote this magnificent response.
A few things spring to mind.
Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem.
For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace - all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed.
So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing - not once, ever.
I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility - for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman.
But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is - his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers.
And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults - he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.
There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface.
Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront.
Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul.
And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist.
Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that.
He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat.
He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully.
That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead.
There are unspoken rules to this stuff - the Queensberry rules of basic decency - and he breaks them all. He punches downwards - which a gentleman should, would, could never do - and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless - and he kicks them when they are down.
So the fact that a significant minority - perhaps a third - of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think 'Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
* Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
* You don't need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss.
After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.
God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid.
He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart.
In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws - he would make a Trump.
And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish:
'My God… what… have… I… created?
If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.
- Randall Flagg
- Rep: 139
Re: US Politics Thread
Maybe someone can point me to the obstruction?
Me thinks you’re going to wait a long time before you get a solid answer on this. If it were that concise, there’d be politicians making the argument for the specified reasons you’re asking for. But something like less than 1% of living federal prosecutors expressed an opinion, so that’s good enough for the partisans.
Re: US Politics Thread
misterID wrote:Maybe someone can point me to the obstruction?
Me thinks you’re going to wait a long time before you get a solid answer on this. If it were that concise, there’d be politicians making the argument for the specified reasons you’re asking for. But something like less than 1% of living federal prosecutors expressed an opinion, so that’s good enough for the partisans.
But a full 100% of Randall Flaggs know everything about partisanship.
Re: US Politics Thread
1. The first instance of possible obstruction detailed in the report occurred during the 2016 campaign, when questions first "arose about the Russian government's apparent support for candidate Trump."
The report states that while Mr. Trump was publicly skeptical Russia had released emails from Democratic officials, he and his aides were also trying to get information about "any further Wikileaks releases." The report also notes that despite Mr. Trump's insistence he had no business connections to Russia, his namesake company was trying to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. And once the election was over, Mr. Trump "expressed concerns to advisers that reports of Russia's election interference might lead the public to question the legitimacy of his election."
2. The second instance involves Mr. Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who left the administration just weeks into Mr. Trump's presidency after he misled FBI agents and top administration officials — including Vice President Mike Pence — about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Flynn had said he had not discussed sanctions on Russia with Kislyak, a lie that Pence and others then repeated.
The day that Mr. Trump found out Flynn had lied to Pence and the FBI, he had dinner with Comey, whom he asked for "loyalty." Mr. Trump then secured Flynn's resignation on Feb. 13, 2017. "Now that we fired Flynn, the Russia thing is over," he told an outside adviser, who disagreed with the president's assessment.
That same day, Mr. Trump had another meeting with Comey and encouraged him to stop investigating Flynn. "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go," Mr. Trump said.
The president then asked Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarland to draft an internal memo "stating that the president had not directed Flynn to discuss sanctions with Kislyak. McFarland declined because she did not know whether that was true, and a White House Counsel's Office attorney thought that the request would look like a quid pro quo for an ambassadorship she had been offered."
3. The third instance involves then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was debating whether to recuse himself from the Russia investigation in February 2017, as well as Comey. Mr. Trump asked White House Counsel Don McGahn to talk Sessions out of recusal, and became angry when Sessions announced he would recuse himself on March 2. The president then asked Sessions to "unrecuse" himself.
After Comey testified to Congress that there was an FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Mr. Trump reached out to his CIA and NSA directors to help "dispel the suggestion that the President had any connection to the Russian election-interference effort." Comey had told Mr. Trump he wasn't under investigation and, against McGahn's advice, the president twice called the FBI director to ask him to say that publicly.
4. The fourth instance stems from Mr. Trump's decision to fire Comey, which directly led to Mueller's appointment. Mr. Trump decided to fire Comey in May 2017 — days after the FBI director declined to tell Congress that Mr. Trump wasn't under investigation.
After Mr. Trump dismissed Comey, the White House insisted he had done so at the recommendation of the Department of Justice. In reality, Mr. Trump had not consulted with the Justice Department before deciding to fire Comey.
In conversations that followed, Mr. Trump indicated the Russia investigation was the real reason he had let Comey go: "The day after firing Comey, the president told Russian officials that he had 'faced great pressure because of Russia,' which had been 'taken off' by Comey's firing. The next day, the president acknowledged in a television interview that he was going to fire Comey regardless of the Department of Justice's recommendation and that when he 'decided to just do it,' he was thinking that 'this thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.'"
5. The fifth instance revolves around Mr. Trump's reaction to Mueller's appointment. Upon hearing the news that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had tasked Mueller with investigating the Russia matter in May 2017, the president privately declared it was "the end of his presidency." Mr. Trump then demanded Sessions' resignation, although he did not accept it at the time, and told aides Mueller had conflicts of interest that should preclude him from acting as the special counsel.
It was then reported in June that Mueller was investigating Mr. Trump for obstruction of justice, prompting the president to publicly attack Mueller and the Justice Department. Within days of the first report, he told McGahn to tell Rosenstein that Mueller had conflicts of interest and must be removed.
McGahn ignored the request, explaining that he would rather resign.
6. The sixth instance stems from the June 2016 meeting between top campaign aides and "a Russian lawyer who was said to be offering damaging information about Hillary Clinton as 'part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump.'"
Mr. Trump told his aides "not to publicly disclose the emails setting up the June 9 meeting, suggesting that the email would not leak and that the number of lawyers with access to them should be limited." Donald Trump Jr., who had been present at the Trump Tower meeting, wrote a press release saying "the meeting was with 'an individual who [Trump Jr.] was told might have information helpful to the campaign'" — a line that was edited out about the president.
Mr. Trump's personal lawyer then denied to reporters the president had "played any role" in Trump Jr.'s statement.
7. The seventh instance has to do with Mr. Trump's repeated attempts to have Sessions "reverse his recusal." Mr. Trump asked Sessions to do this in the summer of 2017. The following December, Mr. Trump told Sessions he would be a "hero" if he took control of the investigation.
Additionally, in October 2017, the president asked Sessions to "take [a] look" at investigating Hillary Clinton.
8. The eighth instance concerns Mr. Trump's efforts to get McGahn to dispute press accounts that the president had instructed him to try and get rid of Mueller. In early 2018, Mr. Trump told White House officials to tell McGahn to rebut the stories, but McGahn told the officials the stories were true. Mr. Trump then personally appealed to McGahn, telling him in an Oval Office meeting to deny the reports.
"In the same meeting, the president also asked McGahn why he had told the special counsel about the president's efforts to remove the Special Counsel and why McGahn took notes of his conversations with the president," the report states. "McGahn refused to back away from what he remembered happening and perceived the president to be testing his mettle."
9. The ninth instance stems from Mr. Trump's response to the prosecutions of Flynn and Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman, as well as an individual whose identity was redacted.
"After Flynn withdrew from a joint defense agreement with the president and began cooperating with the government, the president's personal counsel left a message for Flynn 's attorneys reminding them of the president's warm feelings towards Flynn, which he said 'still remains,' and asking for a 'heads up' if Flynn knew 'information that implicates the president,'" the report states.
"When Flynn's counsel reiterated that Flynn could no longer share information pursuant to a joint defense agreement, the president's personal counsel said he would make sure that the president knew that Flynn's actions reflected 'hostility' towards the president."
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump praised Manafort during his "prosecution and when the jury in his criminal trial was deliberating." At one point, he praised Manafort as "a brave man" who refused to "break."
10. The tenth and final instance of potential obstruction concerns Mr. Trump's behavior toward Michael Cohen, his onetime personal lawyer. Mr. Trump profusely praised Cohen when he remained loyal to the administration, at one point personally calling to encourage him to "stay strong," only to criticize him viciously when he began cooperating with the government.
"After the FBI searched Cohen's home and office in April 2018, the president publicly asserted that Cohen would not 'flip,' contacted him directly to tell him to 'stay strong,' and privately passed messages of support to him," the report states.
"Cohen also discussed pardons with the president's personal counsel and believed that if he stayed on message he would be taken care of. But after Cohen began cooperating with the government in the summer of 2018, the president publicly criticized him, called him a 'rat,' and suggested that his family members had committed crimes."
source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obstructio … er-report/
Re: US Politics Thread
Absolutely none of that was illegal or obstruction. I can ask you not to investigate me, pitch a fit, cry, bitch, moan and complain, but it's different if I stop you, threaten you or try and to you. And I don't see where he stopped anyone from doing anything. The investigation was completed. There was no money or favors exchanged for emails or anything else. He basically acted like a big baby.
Re: US Politics Thread
1 is probably attributable to Stone.
2 asking Comey to drop charges on Flynn, again DEFINITELY obstruction. It's verbatim.
3 is just a clusterfuck of a president we have.
4 DEFINITE
5 Obstruction, just McGahnn didn't carry it out.
6 Lied to the American Public (again, not the first time this President lied to Americans, look at the Stormy Daniels payment denial)
7 Obstruction.
8 Dumbass president we elected.
9 Witness tampering
10 Witness tampering
Re: US Politics Thread
Comey DESERVED to be fired. Before he became anti Trump, and therefore a hero, everyone agreed the Fucker needed to go. Seeing how his team WERE biased in their investigation, and DID lie, Comey needed to go.
Again, Trump never TOLD or ORDERED him to do anything.
Kennedy was worse.
1. He stole the election from Nixon using the mafia.
2. Was fucking Soviet spies because he was a reckless cooze hound
3. Was a wife abuser and WAS a sexual predator.
4. Attempted to abuse his power against the press using the FCC
5. Made his brother Attorney General who used the position to cover his brothers ass.
6. Lied ALL the time, including how he was going to push a civil rights bill, which he never intended to do.
7. Banned Sammy Davis Jr from the white house because he was dating a white woman
8. Got us into Vietnam and the Bay of Pigs.
Everything Trump is accused of Kennedy actually did. And he's STILL worshipped.
- Randall Flagg
- Rep: 139
Re: US Politics Thread
Anyone care to opine on how Pelosi saying "I want to see Trump in prison" is positive or productive? Anyone want to try to explain how it's any different than "Lock her up"? Congress, whom has a much lower standard of evidence to support a possible impeachment, lacks the desire to do so - allegedly because Pelosi feels she needs something "solid" and that "resonates" with the American people. So how on Earth can she support a punishment only to those who have met the much higher standard of evidence and verdict of guilty in a courtroom?
These are the same people who accuse Trump of obstruction for a "corrupt mind", but think Congress is both legally and in good-faith attempting to investigate the President. Anyone not see that this represents everything the partisan Truthers accuse Trump of having done?
