“Unrelated to specific presidential campaigns,” Erickson wrote in an October 2016 email to an acquaintance that was later obtained by the FBI, “I’ve been involved in securing a VERY private line of communication between the Kremlin and key [unnamed political party] leaders through, of all conduits, the [unnamed gun-rights organization].”
And during an FBI raid of Erickson’s South Dakota home, investigators discovered a handwritten note suggesting Erickson may have been aware of a possible job offer from Russian intelligence services: “How to respond to FSB offer of employment?” Erickson scratched, an apparent reference to the Russian equivalent of the CIA.
Also, who are these "unnamed gun-rights organization" and "unnamed political party" people? It's impossible to parse this law-enforcementease.
It’s not the kind of thing I’d stick on my fridge.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
It’s not the kind of thing I’d stick on my fridge.
I'll be interested to see about all of Butina's contacts within the NRA. This is sort of a left-wing holy grail orgasm moment: The Russians using the NRA to funnel support for Trump, in order to weaken our country. Evidently if you support the Second Amendment it's okay to sell out the rest of the Constitution.
"The great problem of any civilization is how to rejuvenate itself without rebarbarization." - Will Durant "We've kept more promises than we've even made" - Donald Trump "Of what meaning is the world without mind? The question cannot exist." - Edwin Land
Gravelly-voiced Napolitano says things that I would never have expected to hear on Fox. The interviewer makes a couple of weak (and clearly half-hearted) attempts to suggest that all this is just politics, but Napolitano meets those attempts head on and crushes them with facts. He flat contradicts Trump: "Do not say that these indictments exonerate you. They don't", and a lot else besides.
I think many Fox viewers will have been shocked by this segment, and questions will open up in their minds as a result (Hey subgenius - what do you think of it?).
But more importantly: Trump watches Fox, and he saw this too. God knows what effect it will have on him.. And there appears to be no grownup left in the White House to get him down from the inevitably ensuing attack of rage.
I wonder what we can expect from him now?
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Pelosi put Maxine Waters in charge of the financial services committee, so we're getting Donald Trump's taxes with a giant heaping dose of media circus and racism I take it.
EAllusion wrote:It doesn't make me feel great that some of the most powerful people in politics are operating at a level of Veep crossed with Burn after Reading.
Burn After Reading. Great movie.
My favorite Malkovich scene:
The Russians?
The Russians?
Why would they go to the Russians?
Why the fuuuuck?
Veep, BaR, and I'd throw in Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
Res Ipsa wrote:It’s not the kind of thing I’d stick on my fridge.
It doesn't make me feel great that some of the most powerful people in politics are operating at a level of Veep crossed with Burn after Reading.
Oh my god that's great.
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
Eli Stokols, a White House reporter for the Los Angeles Times said on air that Republican lawmakers “are starting to tell me privately—some of them—if there’s obvious evidence, the bottom’s going to fall out. They’re not going to be able to stand by this White House and that’s a looming problem for the president.” and “private conversations people there are having with Republicans on the Hill who are starting to be concerned.”
That's a pretty ballsy thing to state outright if there's no merit to it.
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
DarkHelmet wrote: Clearly Napolitano has not spoken to subgenius about this.
I get why his opinion on this seems devastating to Trump. It is FOX News, after all. But after reading this transcript interview with Rick Hasen, I think Napolitano is wrong. Richard L. Hasen is an American legal scholar and expert in legislation, election law and campaign finance.
The thing is, though, that in order to prove a criminal violation, you have to prove that each person involved in a conspiracy willfully violated the law. So that goes very much to Trump's state of mind. So if we ever got to a point where there would be a trial or some kind of investigation into this, the question would be, what do we know about what President Trump was thinking?
We have a pretty good idea of what Michael Cohen was thinking. It is pretty good circumstantial evidence of what Trump was thinking. But just the fact that Cohen has agreed to plead guilty to this alone doesn't prove that Trump is necessarily guilty of this crime.