The one where Trump just can't stop being Trump

[TheClaws]

Time for a new 'un.

Old thread here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2958743-Its-too-hot-for-high-drama-but-nonetheless-we-persist-Trump-cont

Donald Jr doesn't come across like someone with a brain. Numpty!

Marco Rubio‏Verified account @marcorubio 10h10 hours ago
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We have no quarrel with Russia or the Russian people. Problem is with Putin & his oppression, war crimes & interference in our elections 1/3
1,174 replies 1,653 retweets 6,007 likes
Reply 1.2K Retweet 1.7K Like 6.0K Direct message

You said it, illegitimate.

Jeez!!! Trump is such a fucking dumbass when it comes to the internet and cyber-security. I just hope someone stops him before he starts wiring Treasury funds to a 'Prince' in Nigeria as part of his 'budget' plan to reduce the deficit!!!

He's a snake oil salesman who's never been anything but the public 'face' for the deals his underlings have made in his name. Now he's in the position of actually having to 'deal' himself and he sends in Ivanka and Donald Jr in his place. Fuck me, Marietta!!!

He will buckle when he is asked a few questions by someone trained in the art of information retrieval.

So, the defence is that they thought they'd go and get some dirt on Clinton but walked into a trap instead.

nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/donald-trump-jr-s-russia-denials-are-actually-confessions.html

There is a satisfying neatness about this statement.

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump 11m11 minutes ago
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The fact that President Putin and I discussed a Cyber Security unit doesn't mean I think it can happen. It can't-but a ceasefire can,& did!

Meaning...because everyone made fun of me, I'm taking back what I said. I didn't really mean it, you know.

What's this ceasefire? No more election hacking?

(The Hill) Comey's memos may contained classified information. Does this mark him as "reckless" - a term used to describe Clinton's email server saga he was embroiled in - or a patriot, willing to risk charges in order to unseat a rogue President? Did what I just write sound like the blurb of a paperback book?

thehill.com/policy/national-security/341225-comeys-private-memos-on-trump-conversations-contained-classified

Lweji, the 'ceasefire' is his equivalent of "look over there, a fish!" He's referring to the fact he supposedly negotiated with Putin a ceasefire in Syria - re: a few tweets earlier:

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump 5h5 hours ago
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Syrian ceasefire seems to be holding. Many lives can be saved. Came out of meeting. Good!

The ceasefire has been in action for 2 days (apparently). And remember, Russia supports Assad - so what are the terms of this ceasefire? And let's not forget that recently Trump sold an awful lot of weaponry to the Saudis.

Rosalind Helderman @PostRoz
Manager for Russian pop star whose family brought Miss Universe to Moscow, confirms he set up Trump Jr. meeting.

www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/politics/presidents-son-met-with-russian-lawyer-during-presidential-campaign-after-being-promised-information-helpful-to-fathers-effort/2017/07/09/90c0e3e8-64e9-11e7-8eb5-cbccc2e7bfbf_story.html

Caroline O. @RVAwonk
Carter Page feels forgotten 👉 In a reversal, frmr Trump adviser Carter Page now says he did have contact w/ Russia t.co/edb7ZfWKVQ?amp=1

The carter page article is
From march but is to show that all these people have lied under oath about meeting Russians

Pence
Flynn
Sessions
Kushner
Donald Jr
Carter page

Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1
·
6h

FLASHBACK: Don Jr. July 24, 2016. On the Clinton campaign's claims that the Russians were helping Trump: "It's disgusitng. It's so phony." mobile.twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/884206457843068928/video/1

@SethAbramson

(MEGA-THREAD) Here's everything we learned today about the June 9, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Trump's campaign and a Russian agent.

(It's got over 40 tweets so Here's the link: mobile.twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/884260128928800768 )

Trump - "so even though I said we'd be working with Russia on cyber security, it probably won't happen because I blooped a bit tweeting that in the first place"

Tweet Jr - "Yes I met with a russian woman who I didn't know, and whose name I didn't know and I had no idea what the meeting was about but I took along Jared and Mantafort to this meeting with this stranger just in case it was interesting. It wasn't. Course it wasnt. I never told Dad about this either."

The answer to that one is "we were promised collusion but it never happened so we left".

Trumps and Russia

Didn't claims of a record breaking arms deal with Saudi Arabia turn out to be a tad exaggerated? And somewhat imaginary?

As pointed out in the article, we'll know it's true when the Israelis buy the same package.

www.google.pt/amp/s/www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2017/06/05/the-110-billion-arms-deal-to-saudi-arabia-is-fake-news/amp/

I had missed there was a cease fire in Turkey.
Another one.

I expect the cease fire will hold as much as Israel not building on occupied territory and NK not firing any missiles.

So it's not a 'ceasefire' but a partial ceasefire

www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-ceasefire-idUSKBN19S2DG

The Syrian government and the Southern Front, the main grouping of Western-backed rebel groups in southwest Syria, did not immediately react to the ceasefire deal.

It was not immediately clear exactly which areas of southwestern Syria would be covered by the ceasefire but earlier talks between the United States and Russia about a “de-escalation zone” covered Deraa province, on the border with Jordan, and Quneitra, which borders the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon welcomed any ceasefire in Syria but wanted to see results on the ground.

"The recent history of the Syrian civil war is littered with ceasefires and it would be nice ... one day to have a ceasefire," Fallon said at an event in Washington

Speaking of Saudi Arabia:

The Spectator Index @spectatorindex
BREAKING: Saudi Arabia will host the G20 summit in 2020
2:49 pm · 8 Jul 2017

David Sirota @davidsirota
This is what normalizing authoritarianism looks like in practice

Here's that Seth Abramson thread linked by Pain (in two parts).

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson
(MEGA-THREAD) Here's everything we learned today about the June 9, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Trump's campaign and a Russian agent.

(1) Don Jr. was there. He first lied and said there was no meeting, then he said there was and lied about its content, then he "came clean."

(2) His "confession" was that an acquaintance he wouldn't name set up a meeting with a person whose name his acquaintance wouldn't give him.

(3) He now says that he was told this unknown person had anti-HRC intel. When she arrived, he says, she had nothing and changed the subject.

(4) Don Jr. admits this person was a Russian attorney and admits she did give him anti-HRC intel but he now claims it made no sense to him.

(5) Instead of ending the meeting then, Don Jr. let this Russian attorney go on for nearly 30 minutes talking about U.S.-Russian sanctions.

(6) Those sanctions were the result of The Magnitsky Act, a U.S. effort to punish Putin cronies who stole hundreds of millions from Russia.

(7) Putin's enraged by the Act; he wants Trump to end it. (That won't happen because the affected individuals are human rights abusers too.)

(8) Don Jr. admits another Trump son, Kushner, and Trump's campaign manager, Manafort, were also at the meeting with this Russian attorney.

(9) This is a good time to note that this attorney—Natalia Veselnitskaya—is an agent of the Kremlin. She represents government interests.

(10) Don Jr. now claims that he refused to tell his brother Jared or his dad's campaign manager what the Trump Tower meeting was about.

(11) Despite not knowing who they were meeting—allegedly—both Kushner and Manafort showed up to this meeting with an agent of the Kremlin.

(12) This is a good time to note that by this time in 2016 both Kushner and Manafort had had undisclosed conversations with Russian agents.

(13) Kushner had spoken with Sergey Kislyak by phone in April. Manafort had spoken in person with Kislyak at the Mayflower Hotel that month.

(14) Kushner would go on to have another call with Kislyak, a meeting with him and a meeting with Putin's banker. He disclosed none of them.

(15) Manafort at this point was just weeks away from lying on TV about whether he met with Russians at the RNC to change the GOP platform.

(16) Manafort would later be fired from the campaign for his dealings with Russian allies in Ukraine. He's now a target of the Russia probe.

(17) Soon after the June 9 meeting with a Russian agent at Trump Tower Manafort met twice with an ex-Russian solder. He did not disclose it.

(18) A week before the inauguration, Manafort was still advising Trump. He told him to use the anti-HRC intel Don Jr. says they got June 9.

(19) Despite this, Don Jr. says he never told Kushner and Manafort they would be meeting with a Russian and they never pressed him for info.

(20) Veselnitskaya says the meeting went 20-30 minutes and one of the men—Kushner or Manafort—left halfway through. She can't recall which.

Not much chance of protests in Saudi Arabia...

Good grief, one nights sleep and a bit of breakfast and I wake to all of this!

(21) This is a good time to note neither Don Jr., Kushner, nor Manafort would ever breathe a word of this meeting to anyone for over a year.

(22) But all that is just the prelude, because we also now know that now-President Trump was in Trump Tower as this meeting was happening.

(23) Moreover, we know from Politico that Trump was "hunkered with his advisers," including Manafort and Kushner, discussing anti-HRC intel.

(24) So Trump was in a building he owns—with his sons and his manager—discussing the very topic (anti-HRC intel) Don Jr's meeting was about.

(25) At some point during the day, Don Jr., Manafort, and Kushner excused themselves from their dad's/boss's company to meet with a Russian.

(26) According to Don Jr., none of the three men told Trump where they were going, or who they met with, and still hadn't as of today.

(27) This despite the fact they were related to and/or working for Trump, in his house, discussing the same topic as their upcoming meeting.

(28) This is a good time to note that when news of the meeting came out, Trump's attorneys called the whole thing a Democratic conspiracy.

(37) Wait! There's more. Remember the fifth meeting participant whose name Jr. initially refused to reveal? We now know it's Rob Goldstone.

(38) Goldstone is a Trump Sr. friend who Don Jr. first met while Goldstone was judging the Miss America pageant—in Moscow—in November 2013.

(39) The week Goldstone was hanging out with Trump Sr. and Don Jr. in Moscow is the week Steele's dossier says Putin got kompromat on Trump.

(40) Goldstone's a publicist who represents "Emin," a singer who's the son of Trump friend Aras Agalarov—a Russian billionaire and oligarch.

(41) According to numerous media outlets, Trump Sr.'s and Goldstone's good friend Aras Agalarov is a close associate of... Vladimir Putin.

(42) Agalarov is the most powerful Russian contact Goldstone has, and Goldstone set up the meeting with Kremlin agent Natalia Veselnitskaya.

(43) This leads to an inevitable—and reasonable—speculation Agalarov is the one who asked Goldstone to set up the meeting for Veselnitskaya.

(44) But since Veselnitskaya—a Kremlin agent—wouldn't dare meet with Trump aides without Putin's approval, Putin almost certainly set it up.

(45) Trump's friendship with the men who set up the meeting—Goldstone and Agalarov—makes it unthinkable Don Jr. hid the meeting from him.

(46) The ethics attorney for Republican POTUS George W. Bush told the media tonight that Don Jr.'s conduct on June 9 was "close to treason."

(47) That means if now-President Trump was really at the June 9 meeting—or on speaker-phone during it—he also committed "close to treason."

(48) This may explain Trump's attorneys—before Jr.'s "confession"—bizarrely alleging it was Democrats who sent Veselnitskaya to Trump Tower.

(49) Social media data from Goldstone confirms the Trump Tower meeting was in the afternoon on June 9, when Trump Sr. was in the building.

(50) And this may be a good time to note that just 72 hours after this June 9 meeting, WikiLeaks began to dump huge blocs of anti-HRC intel.

(CONCLUSION) This meeting—whether Trump attended or knew of it or not—is HARD EVIDENCE of Team Trump-Russia COLLUSION at the highest levels.

(CONCLUSION2) But as anyone reading this thread—even a child—could see Trump DID know of the meeting, and POSSIBLY attended, it's far worse.

(CONCLUSION3) Today is a turning point in the Russia probe: we will no longer ask "WAS there collusion?" but "How MUCH collusion WAS there?"

(CONCLUSION4) Now is a good time to note that we are only 10% to 20% of the way through ex-FBI Director Bob Mueller's FBI-led Russia probe.

(CONCLUSION5) If THIS is what we're learning NOW, it's impossible to see Trump still being POTUS in 24 months—EVEN with a GOP Congress. /end

(PS) @ DrDenaGrayson notes that this is what Donald Trump tweeted out around the time a Kremlin agent was at Trump Tower with anti-HRC intel:
Embedded:
Donald J. Trump @ realDonaldTrump
How long did it take your staff of 823 people to think that up--and where are your 33,000 emails that you deleted?
[embedded in Tump tweet is tweet by Hillary Clinton saying: "Delete your account. twitter.com/realDonaldTrum..."]
6/9/16, 4:40 PM