Donald Trump Presidency-Day One

[bluesoul]

Republicans also seem to be mathematically challenged.

i noticed this as well when i read the donald's tweet after hearing the news about those results. confusing at first until i realized it's the republican zero sum mentality: you didn't get the results we said you wanted, therefore you lose.

if ossoff holds onto his own voters she needs to not only keep her own but also win over all 60% of republican voters who didn't choose her

also, does anyone think this tweet might have something to do with milkshakes?

[sukumvit boy]

"How Trump Could Get Fired " article in the current issue of The New Yorker describes the forces that could end this presidency before 2020 .
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...ould-get-fired

[broncofan]

I watched some of the Clapper and Sally Yates hearings today conducted by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee. Unless they have revealed something later on, they mostly confirmed what we already know. Michael Flynn spoke to the Russian ambassador and indicated that the sanctions against the Russians for their interference in our election might be lifted, that Yates warned the W.H when Pence began telling the public otherwise. Specifically, she told them that she had information that Flynn misled Pence and that this gave the Russians compromat on Flynn, the former NSA. The white house fired Sally Yates four days later for not defending their executive order on immigration, and did not seek Flynn's resignation until about 20 days after Yates' disclosure to white house counsel when the post covered the story. In that twenty day period he continued to be involved in sensitive national security matters.

The Republicans in the hearing did their best to pretend the hearing was really about leaks, the process of unmasking, and Yates' decision not to defend Trump's executive order. Yates and Clapper were asked whether they had ever unmasked any Trump associates, to which Yates said no and Clapper said yes. Clapper explained that the process of unmasking is done in a legal way, pursuant to federal law, in which a request is made to provide the name of a U.S person who is talking to a foreign subject being surveilled. The person requesting the name of the U.S person then provides the reason they want the name unmasked and how that unmasking helps them understand the nature of the foreign agent's actions.

They were both asked whether they leaked information and both answered no.

Yates was grilled with a series of question about why she did not defend Trump's executive order. The stupidest questions were asked by Senator Kennedy, who argued that because the order is not unconstitutional until the court rules it is, she had no right to opine on its constitutionality. He is right that it is the judiciary whose judgment is binding, but if she cannot defend the order in good faith on the merits, then she did the appropriate thing. She is not allowed to provide a defense that distorts the facts or the law, so if she believes any defense of the order requires that, she was right to make her views known. Anyhow, she did a great job of fending off the partisan attempts to smear her conduct.

Disappointingly, the questions of Senators Cruz, Cornyn, and Grassley indicate that the investigation is really not being conducted in a bipartisan manner. Yates' judgment on the executive order, which was later borne out to be sound, was not the subject of the investigation, and the Republicans feigning outrage over unmasking is equally dishonest. There is no indication the unmasking process was misused. There were leaks which are the proper subject of questions but they only established that neither Clapper nor Yates leaked classified information nor authorized anyone else to do so.

[Stavros]

Message to all you bad hombres-don't mess with the Commandante!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/u...-fbi.html?_r=0

[flabbybody]

Comey reopened the FBI Hillary email investigation 10 days before the election. Without that, she might've won. He GAVE ELECTION to Trump
Is this about Comey getting some new shit on the Russian-Trump thing?
Stavros, tonight's cable news coverage is making no sense. They were totally blindsided.
Need your insight

[broncofan]

Anyone who believes the explanation provided by Rosenstein, Trump, and Sessions is an idiot. The handling of Hillary's emails had nothing to do with Comey's firing as it occurred BEFORE Trump decided to keep Comey on. Whether he fired Comey because Comey had the temerity to continue investigating him or because he really thinks Comey would find something is tough to say.

The rational person would say that such a guilty looking act would only be taken by someone who is about to be found out, but Trump isn't rational and has the mind of a dictator. He would object to simply being investigated. But it doesn't look good for the rule of law, that someone can be fired simply for doing their job and investigating other executive branch officials.

Not only was media blindsided, but a lot of fbi staff were blindsided I've read. It was up to Sessions and his deputy to concoct reasons to fire Comey.

[broncofan]

Firing the head of the fbi for investigating your associates should be an impeachable offense, whether it was necessary to protect his interests or not. The reasons provided by Trump are not genuine, as he supported the inappropriate actions of Comey and was gracious in their meeting when he decided to keep him on. Without going into too much detail, even people Rosenstein cited in his memo have said that they think the reasons provided by Team Trump are pretextual (see Donald Ayer's public statements). It does not matter whether the firing was necessary to protect Trump or simply a response to Comey's perceived disloyalty for continuing to investigate Trump, it is obstruction of justice.

[filghy2]

People are making comparisons with the Saturday night massacre in which Nixon had the Watergate special prosecutor dismissed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre

At least in that case the AG and deputy AG had the integrity to resign rather than do Nixon's bidding. What are chances that any prominent Republican will take a similar stand in this case?

[trish]

Comey’s fumbling public speculations during the election, although despicable, were applauded by Trump, his campaign and his supporters. Had Trump and his administration actually thought Comey’s conduct unprofessional, proving him unfit to direct the FBI, then why did Trump praise his conduct at the time and why did his administration not move to displace Comey when Trump took office in January?

In addition to this three and one-half month delay, the timing of Comey’s ousting is intriguing: 1) One day after Sally Yates made mince-meat out of Trump’s allies at her Senate hearing. 2) The very day subpoenas are to be issued in the FBI investigation into possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia.

If not an attempt to stall and divert the FBI investigation, at the very least Comey’s firing is another attempt to steer the media and dominate the headlines. Not sure, however, that it was well thought through.

Because of Comey’s conduct during the campaign, Trump thought Comey was in his pocket. But Comey was embarrassed by his behavior, wanted to restore his reputation, and was therefore under public pressure to conduct the current investigation with a degree of bipartisanship, if not objectivity. I think Trump just recently realized that Comey never was in his pocket.

The firing may hurt Trump temporarily in the media, but it will kill the independence of the FBI and pre-determine the results of its investigation in favor of Trump.

[Stavros]

Comey reopened the FBI Hillary email investigation 10 days before the election. Without that, she might've won. He GAVE ELECTION to Trump
Is this about Comey getting some new shit on the Russian-Trump thing?
Stavros, tonight's cable news coverage is making no sense. They were totally blindsided.
Need your insight

The keywords to use: Data Laundering and the connections between the Alfa Bank in Moscow, Cambridge Analytica (based in Cambridge, UK) and SCL with the additional claims of (illegal) Russian funding in the US election campaign.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCL_Group

The claim is that elections can be swayed if you have as minute a degree of information on voters as you can get -in particular targeting the undecided -data miining is Cambridge Analytica's role; while SCL provides the 'fake news' stories that pump up the waverers to make them choose, and although admittedly a weak strategy consider the margins of victory in the swing states that defeated Hillary Clinton: for example in Michigan she lost by 10,704 votes, in Wisconsin she lost by 22,177 votes, in Pennsylvania 67,416 votes (see link from The Hill below). However, at least one source, without any backup argues that it is too odd that the swing states were won by margins of 1% or less, and claims
it points to some hacker having nudged these four states into Trump’s column by no more and no less than the one percent he needed, so as not to arouse suspicion by giving him too large of a win in any of the states he was supposed to lose. But if so, it’s the pattern of all of these states being won by the same one percent that stands out as suspicious, because that’s just not how numbers work to begin with
http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/...-1-margin/118/
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefi...s-in-all-three

The FBI has been investigating 'unusual' activity between the Alfa Bank and the Trump Campaign:
The FBI is examining why a computer server for a Russian bank led by oligarchs with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin had a disproportionate interest in reaching a server used by the Trump Organization during the US presidential campaign.
-The Alfa Bank in fact is not that close to Putin, but this may be because it is one of the richest in Russia and thus has been able to evade even his grubby fingers, or it could be that this 'distant' relationship is an ideal one when the Russian President wants to use their assets for foreign adventures. Thus:
Heat Street reported last November that the FBI had sought and obtained a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court after presenting evidence "of a server, possibly related to the Trump campaign, and its alleged links to two banks; SVB Bank and Russia's Alfa Bank."

Two months later, the BBC reported that the FBI — part of a counterintelligence task force led by the CIA — requested the FISC warrant to investigate the banks after former CIA Director John Brennan received a recording of a conversation about Kremlin money potentially going into Trump campaign coffers.

McClatchy then followed up less than week later, reporting that investigators were "examining how money may have moved from the Kremlin to covertly help Trump win." McClatchy didn't mention Alfa Bank or computer servers and couldn't independently confirm the existence of a FISC warrant.
http://uk.businessinsider.com/fbi-al...servers-2017-3

It has also been alleged that Cambridge Analytica was heavily involved in the Brexit campaign in the UK and that there are links between it and the Republican campaign against Hillary Clinton -CA initially backed Ted Cruz before switching to the eventual Republican nominee. (Warning: this is a very long article)
https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...cked-democracy

There is clearly enough here to warrant the FBI investigation that began before the November 2016 election, and if it can be proved that money was passed from Russia to the Trump Campaign, that illegal data mining was used to enable the Trump campaign to target undecided voters -the assumption is that data mining in some circumstances is illegal -for example, how did Cambridge Analytica obtain Facebook data?- impeachment would surely be on the cards. However, that would depend on how the Republicans in Congress view these developments, and whether they are ready to throw their Commander-in-Chief under the bus.

And of course, there may be a lot of smoke here, but no fire. But when Comey re-opened the investigation into Hillary Clinton's email traffic, there were no complaints from the Republicans, so their sudden conversion to political morality rings hollow. The Commander-in-Chief didn't even have the balls to call Comey and speak man-to-man to tell him he was fired.