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Jul. 13th, 2017
No, colluding with a hostile foreign power is not normal "opposition research":
justinspoliticalcorner:
Matt Gertz at MMFA:
President Donald Trump and members of his administration have spent months describing as fake news reports on his ties to Russia and the allegations that the Russian government acted to aid his presidential campaign. They have remained steadfast amid a drumbeat of stories and even U.S. intelligence community findings about Russia, the election, and Trump’s staff. His right-wing media allies have been a key force in this endeavor, consistently finding ways to minimize or explain away damning new revelations and blaming them not on Trump, but on a shadowy nexus of Democrats, the “deep state,” and the press. This aid is essential to maintaining the president’s political position: The vast majority of Republicans have continued to support Trump in part because of the efforts of his loyal propagandists.
Over the last week, new information has emerged that should change the trajectory of the Russia story. As The New York Times reported, the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., as well as top Trump campaign aides Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, met during the 2016 presidential campaign with a Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer. Emails that Trump Jr. released reveal that the meeting came about after Trump Jr. was told the lawyer had damaging information about Hillary Clinton that was provided by a Russian government effort to help his father’s campaign. Trump Jr. has effectively admitted to trying to collude with a hostile government. The debate should now move to how deep that collusion went, and who was involved.
But this damning new information has moved few minds among the president’s core media supporters. Instead, faced with the devastating revelation that the president’s campaign was trying to collude with the Russian government, they have followed the president’s lead by offering the risible argument that anyone would have done the same thing if given the opportunity. Faced with evidence that the president’s team serves no morality but that which benefits itself, they have declared that everyone else shares this twisted worldview.
As Newt Gingrich put it to The Atlantic, “If somebody in the middle of the campaign walks in the door and says ‘I have information that will harm your opponent,’ virtually every campaign in the world will say show me, what do you have.” “Let me tell you, if my father was running for president of the United States,” Kimberly Guilfoyle said on Fox, “I would sit down and take a meeting and find out if there was information against an opponent.” Yesterday, the president himself adopted this argument, telling Reuters, “Many people, and many political pros, said everybody would do” what his son did; he reiterated the point this afternoon.
It is obviously, flagrantly false that Trump Jr.’s actions were typical and proper. The media has said so: As The New York Times put it, “while opposition research is part of modern presidential campaigns, it normally does not come from representatives of a hostile foreign power.” Top Republican campaign operatives have said so, claiming that the incident was extremely unusual, that they wouldn’t have taken the meeting, and that the Trump team should have reported it to law enforcement. Christopher Wray, Trump’s nominee to become FBI director, has said so, stating that politicians in that situation should call the bureau. And history says so: When a top aide to Al Gore’s presidential campaign received George W. Bush’s debate preparation materials in the mail, he turned them over to the FBI. (And Trump ally claims that Clinton’s campaign similarly colluded with Ukraine are specious nonsense.)
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justinspoliticalcorner:
Matt Gertz at MMFA:
President Donald Trump and members of his administration have spent months describing as fake news reports on his ties to Russia and the allegations that the Russian government acted to aid his presidential campaign. They have remained steadfast amid a drumbeat of stories and even U.S. intelligence community findings about Russia, the election, and Trump’s staff. His right-wing media allies have been a key force in this endeavor, consistently finding ways to minimize or explain away damning new revelations and blaming them not on Trump, but on a shadowy nexus of Democrats, the “deep state,” and the press. This aid is essential to maintaining the president’s political position: The vast majority of Republicans have continued to support Trump in part because of the efforts of his loyal propagandists.
Over the last week, new information has emerged that should change the trajectory of the Russia story. As The New York Times reported, the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., as well as top Trump campaign aides Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, met during the 2016 presidential campaign with a Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer. Emails that Trump Jr. released reveal that the meeting came about after Trump Jr. was told the lawyer had damaging information about Hillary Clinton that was provided by a Russian government effort to help his father’s campaign. Trump Jr. has effectively admitted to trying to collude with a hostile government. The debate should now move to how deep that collusion went, and who was involved.
But this damning new information has moved few minds among the president’s core media supporters. Instead, faced with the devastating revelation that the president’s campaign was trying to collude with the Russian government, they have followed the president’s lead by offering the risible argument that anyone would have done the same thing if given the opportunity. Faced with evidence that the president’s team serves no morality but that which benefits itself, they have declared that everyone else shares this twisted worldview.
As Newt Gingrich put it to The Atlantic, “If somebody in the middle of the campaign walks in the door and says ‘I have information that will harm your opponent,’ virtually every campaign in the world will say show me, what do you have.” “Let me tell you, if my father was running for president of the United States,” Kimberly Guilfoyle said on Fox, “I would sit down and take a meeting and find out if there was information against an opponent.” Yesterday, the president himself adopted this argument, telling Reuters, “Many people, and many political pros, said everybody would do” what his son did; he reiterated the point this afternoon.
It is obviously, flagrantly false that Trump Jr.’s actions were typical and proper. The media has said so: As The New York Times put it, “while opposition research is part of modern presidential campaigns, it normally does not come from representatives of a hostile foreign power.” Top Republican campaign operatives have said so, claiming that the incident was extremely unusual, that they wouldn’t have taken the meeting, and that the Trump team should have reported it to law enforcement. Christopher Wray, Trump’s nominee to become FBI director, has said so, stating that politicians in that situation should call the bureau. And history says so: When a top aide to Al Gore’s presidential campaign received George W. Bush’s debate preparation materials in the mail, he turned them over to the FBI. (And Trump ally claims that Clinton’s campaign similarly colluded with Ukraine are specious nonsense.)
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gay-blue-space-rock:
mhalachai:
jenniferrpovey:
deadmomjokes:
A story for all you Jurassic Park loving peeps out there. I learned about this in my Disaster Response and Emergency Preparedness course that I just started.
In 1992, Jurassic Park was finishing filming on the island of Kaua'i in Hawai'i. The final day was scheduled for September 11. However, brewing out in the Pacific and headed straight for Hawai'i was Category 4 Hurricane Iniki. The crew had been keeping an eye on it, but it was expected that Iniki would turn its course slightly. The afternoon of September 10, however they were informed that it was going to make landfall in a few hours, impacting Kaua'i with the main brunt of it. The crew of hundreds was ordered into the basement of the hotel they were staying in, and they waited it out that night. (Rather hilariously, Richard Attenborough slept through the whole ordeal where others were awake, huddled together and fearing for their lives. When Spielberg asked him about it, he answered, “My dear boy, I survived the blitz!” I guess after that, a little hurricane is just pleasant white noise.)
The next day, after the storm had passed, the whole island was in shambles. Infrastructure was totally destroyed, electricity was entirely knocked out, and radio service was down. The crew had escaped harm, luckily, though the sets were totally destroyed. That’s actually why we don’t see any of Ray Arnold’s journey to the power shed, because that set was ruined during the storm. Anyway, I digress.
The crew comes out of their basement shelter to find total devastation and a city in disarray. Even though help would be arriving soon, since the National Weather Service had been monitoring the storm and knew the island was hit, there would be no way for the relief efforts to begin with the infrastructure so heavily damaged. Airstrips and landing pads had also been demolished in the storm, and hospitals were without power. There was also no (rather, just severely limited) way to move the debris that was keeping citizens from aid.
EXCEPT a gigantic, highly skilled and intelligent film crew with lots of industrial equipment and literally nothing better to do.
Within hours of the storm’s passing, the film crew personnel had dug out their bulldozers and cranes, jury rigged up whatever else they needed from the animatronics, and began blazing a path through the wreckage to the air strip where they cleared the whole landing site, then began working on major city streets. They also used their set generators to help restore power to critical city functions, and their satellite phones to call for extra assistance from the mainland (after they had evacuated their cast, of course).
Even though the ships and helicopters arrived to take the crew home that day, as planned, many (if not most) of the crew stayed on Kaua'i to assist in cleanup and relief efforts.
It’s estimated by Emergency Management officials and experts that if the crew had not been there, the recovery efforts would have been delayed by as much as 3 weeks, as little as 3 days, and several hundred people would have died in the aftermath of Hurricane Iniki.
Hollywood gets a bad rep for being selfish, but they can save lives and I think that’s really cool.
Crew guys are awesome.
the folks in a tv/movie crew are probably the most creative, innovative and resourceful people you’ll find - they can make miracles happen with a roll of duct tape, a bit of wire, and a 9-volt battery.
Okay but ‘jury rigged up whatever else they needed from the animatronics’ honestly just gives me the metal image of that giant fuckin t-rex animatronic pushing a plow to move debris
and thats an amazing mental image
Never mess with the grips. Believe it.
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mhalachai:
jenniferrpovey:
deadmomjokes:
A story for all you Jurassic Park loving peeps out there. I learned about this in my Disaster Response and Emergency Preparedness course that I just started.
In 1992, Jurassic Park was finishing filming on the island of Kaua'i in Hawai'i. The final day was scheduled for September 11. However, brewing out in the Pacific and headed straight for Hawai'i was Category 4 Hurricane Iniki. The crew had been keeping an eye on it, but it was expected that Iniki would turn its course slightly. The afternoon of September 10, however they were informed that it was going to make landfall in a few hours, impacting Kaua'i with the main brunt of it. The crew of hundreds was ordered into the basement of the hotel they were staying in, and they waited it out that night. (Rather hilariously, Richard Attenborough slept through the whole ordeal where others were awake, huddled together and fearing for their lives. When Spielberg asked him about it, he answered, “My dear boy, I survived the blitz!” I guess after that, a little hurricane is just pleasant white noise.)
The next day, after the storm had passed, the whole island was in shambles. Infrastructure was totally destroyed, electricity was entirely knocked out, and radio service was down. The crew had escaped harm, luckily, though the sets were totally destroyed. That’s actually why we don’t see any of Ray Arnold’s journey to the power shed, because that set was ruined during the storm. Anyway, I digress.
The crew comes out of their basement shelter to find total devastation and a city in disarray. Even though help would be arriving soon, since the National Weather Service had been monitoring the storm and knew the island was hit, there would be no way for the relief efforts to begin with the infrastructure so heavily damaged. Airstrips and landing pads had also been demolished in the storm, and hospitals were without power. There was also no (rather, just severely limited) way to move the debris that was keeping citizens from aid.
EXCEPT a gigantic, highly skilled and intelligent film crew with lots of industrial equipment and literally nothing better to do.
Within hours of the storm’s passing, the film crew personnel had dug out their bulldozers and cranes, jury rigged up whatever else they needed from the animatronics, and began blazing a path through the wreckage to the air strip where they cleared the whole landing site, then began working on major city streets. They also used their set generators to help restore power to critical city functions, and their satellite phones to call for extra assistance from the mainland (after they had evacuated their cast, of course).
Even though the ships and helicopters arrived to take the crew home that day, as planned, many (if not most) of the crew stayed on Kaua'i to assist in cleanup and relief efforts.
It’s estimated by Emergency Management officials and experts that if the crew had not been there, the recovery efforts would have been delayed by as much as 3 weeks, as little as 3 days, and several hundred people would have died in the aftermath of Hurricane Iniki.
Hollywood gets a bad rep for being selfish, but they can save lives and I think that’s really cool.
Crew guys are awesome.
the folks in a tv/movie crew are probably the most creative, innovative and resourceful people you’ll find - they can make miracles happen with a roll of duct tape, a bit of wire, and a 9-volt battery.
Okay but ‘jury rigged up whatever else they needed from the animatronics’ honestly just gives me the metal image of that giant fuckin t-rex animatronic pushing a plow to move debris
and thats an amazing mental image
Never mess with the grips. Believe it.
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liberalsarecool:
There is nothing normal about Trump.
America is not beholden to the President. We do not work for him. Our institutions are not there to protect and enable Trump crimes.
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There is nothing normal about Trump.
America is not beholden to the President. We do not work for him. Our institutions are not there to protect and enable Trump crimes.
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mediamattersforamerica:
Chris Hayes breaks it down.
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Chris Hayes breaks it down.
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liberalsarecool:
“The Russian [David Botagin] plunked down $6 million to buy not one or two, but five luxury [Trump Tower] condos. The big check apparently caught the attention of the owner. According to Wayne Barrett, who investigated the deal for the Village Voice, Trump personally attended the closing, along with Bogatin.
If the transaction seemed suspicious—multiple apartments for a single buyer who appeared to have no legitimate way to put his hands on that much money—there may have been a reason. At the time, Russian mobsters were beginning to invest in high-end real estate, which offered an ideal vehicle to launder money from their criminal enterprises…
In 1987, just three years after he attended the closing with Trump, Bogatin pleaded guilty to taking part in a massive gasoline-bootlegging scheme with Russian mobsters. After he fled the country, the government seized his five condos at Trump Tower, saying that he had purchased them to “launder money, to shelter and hide assets.” A Senate investigation into organized crime later revealed that Bogatin was a leading figure in the Russian mob in New York.”
Just imagine if Republicans forced Trump to show his taxes like every other candidate of the past 40 years.
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“The Russian [David Botagin] plunked down $6 million to buy not one or two, but five luxury [Trump Tower] condos. The big check apparently caught the attention of the owner. According to Wayne Barrett, who investigated the deal for the Village Voice, Trump personally attended the closing, along with Bogatin.
If the transaction seemed suspicious—multiple apartments for a single buyer who appeared to have no legitimate way to put his hands on that much money—there may have been a reason. At the time, Russian mobsters were beginning to invest in high-end real estate, which offered an ideal vehicle to launder money from their criminal enterprises…
In 1987, just three years after he attended the closing with Trump, Bogatin pleaded guilty to taking part in a massive gasoline-bootlegging scheme with Russian mobsters. After he fled the country, the government seized his five condos at Trump Tower, saying that he had purchased them to “launder money, to shelter and hide assets.” A Senate investigation into organized crime later revealed that Bogatin was a leading figure in the Russian mob in New York.”
Just imagine if Republicans forced Trump to show his taxes like every other candidate of the past 40 years.
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karadin:
So, a Russian operative appears at Chump tower, wanting to deal to pull back the Magnitsky Act , something that keeps Putin from accessing the billions he and his oligarchs have stolen from the Russian people, and she had nothing to offer? Only the Chumps say so, and Chumps lie.
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So, a Russian operative appears at Chump tower, wanting to deal to pull back the Magnitsky Act , something that keeps Putin from accessing the billions he and his oligarchs have stolen from the Russian people, and she had nothing to offer? Only the Chumps say so, and Chumps lie.
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