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US PoliEra 2019 |OT8| WHITE HOUSE ADMITS TO QUID PRO QUO WITH UKRAINE

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Gotchaye

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Oct 27, 2017
702
plagiarize said:
Uhh, no.

I mean, obviously the cover up is additional crimes so without it, things wouldn't be worse... But of course it would have gained traction had Trump gone on TV and told Ukraine they had to investigate Biden, days after he froze their already approved aid.

His 'Russia if you are listening' comments got plenty of traction.
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I'm not sure I'd say that got traction in the sense of creating a national political moment. People who hate Trump got really mad about it but it didn't seem to be taken by the mainstream media as clear proof of collusion and Republicans barely even seemed "troubled".

Especially with that precedent surely he could have just said "Ukraine if you're listening..." on national TV and it would barely have caused a stir.

Edit: And that was even during the campaign when Republicans thought they wouldn't have to suck up to him for four years.
 
plagiarize

plagiarize

It's not a loop. It's a spiral.
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Oct 25, 2017
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Gotchaye said:
I'm not sure I'd say that got traction in the sense of creating a national political moment. People who hate Trump got really mad about it but it didn't seem to be taken by the mainstream media as clear proof of collusion and Republicans barely even seemed "troubled".

Especially with that precedent surely he could have just said "Ukraine if you're listening..." on national TV and it would barely have caused a stir.
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It was part of what got us the Mueller investigation. The open comments.

Republicans don't seem any more or less troubled by recent events than any of the other shit Trump has done or said. That's a bizarre barometer to use for anything these days, surely.

Did Trump's public racist comments go unnoticed compared to the ones that came from leaks?

Hell no they didn't. He was equally, if not more so, condemned for the 'go back to your own country' than the leaked 'people from shit hole countries' line.
 
shiba5

shiba5

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Oct 25, 2017
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If Trump really wants to reclaim the media cycle, he should just blurt out how there are really aliens at Area 51.
 
MarioW

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IggyChooChoo said:
It's easier to march in unison when you're basically a white nationalist party with a thin veneer of tax cuts/deregulation. The Democratic Party is a relatively much more fragile and fractious coalition, for good and for worse. But the point is that it's a common mistake to see the left and right as mirror images, when they're quite different from each other.
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I don't personally see both sides as the same (my post suggests they explicitly aren't). Indeed, the main skill of the Republicans arises from the difference you point out - their ability to boil down anything to a singular, repeatable catchphrase used by any politician, spokeperson, or layperson to overwhelm any nuanced or complex rebuttal is amazing in it's ability to sway public opinion and influence media reporting. The Democrats situation makes it much more challenging to respond in kind.

The current scandal might be an exception here given Republicans are on the back foot (and busy throwing each other under the bus), and most Liberals can see the problem given the issue itself is pretty clear cut and it involves screwing with a foreign entity rather than US citizens or institutions where policy opinion might matter.

Will be interesting to see if Republicans can pull things back by finding something to rally behind.
 
plagiarize

plagiarize

It's not a loop. It's a spiral.
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Listen, acting in a way that shows awareness that what you are doing is wrong, isn't some insignificant factor in events like this.

We are here as much because of the public comments as the leaked ones. I know it's incredibly frustrating that he hasn't been held accountable for all the shit he has done, but that is no reason to think he gets a pass for everything. He hasn't. He doesn't. The base are the base. The GOP are complicit and have been able to protect him.

Winning the house, removing some of that curtain of protection has got us this far. In less than a year. The high probability of failure is no reason not to fight harder than ever now to remove this man from office. Not just because he deserves to go, but because now more than ever it is harder to pretend that he hasn't been hurting the country deeply in ways that get right to the heart of what this country stands for since his first day in office.

He is poison. Just like Mitch. Both must be removed. That was true a week ago when we didn't have the evidence of that we have now. But every piece of evidence we get, gets us closer to getting rid of him and the party who willingly put him there.

He is doing this shit from the oval office. Not just from campaign stages and on Twitter.

That is as fundamental to this story as it was to the Lewinski scandal.
 

Gotchaye

Member
Oct 27, 2017
702
plagiarize said:
It was part of what got us the Mueller investigation. The open comments.

Republicans don't seem any more or less troubled by recent events than any of the other shit Trump has done or said. That's a bizarre barometer to use for anything these days, surely.

Did Trump's public racist comments go unnoticed compared to the ones that came from leaks?

Hell no they didn't. He was equally, if not more so, condemned for the 'go back to your own country' than the leaked 'people from shit hole countries' line.
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I'm not sure what you could mean by traction either, then, since liberals have been outraged since the campaign. Like, yeah, we pay attention to all the bad stuff he does and we get mad about it but I'm not sure that anything he's done since early 2016 has mattered much here except that his actually winning the election shocked a lot of people who realized they had to actually go vote next time. It seems to me that it matters a lot whether the media is treating something as a major scandal or a "Democrats mad, Republicans say it's no big deal" thing. And it's also going to matter a lot whether Republicans are willing to break with him, as with appointing Mueller then or supporting investigations now. And with Mueller, I thought that had more to do with Comey's firing than what he said during the campaign -- "Russia, if you're listening" was July of 2016, Mueller was May 2017, and I never got the sense that being a Russian puppet was a big liability for him in the campaign in the way I could imagine it being if it were instead video of him secretly asking Putin for help.

I'm not sure that any of the racism has mattered much.
plagiarize said:
Listen, acting in a way that shows awareness that what you are doing is wrong, isn't some insignificant factor in events like this.
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I think it goes beyond this. I think acting in a way that shows awareness that what you're doing is wrong also gives people in the middle and the media an excuse to take a side. If both sides at least implicitly agree that this is a scandal, then it's easier to just treat it matter of factly as a scandal.
 
Teggy

Teggy

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Oct 25, 2017
14,892
What's really amazing is that after all this time, everything Louise Mensch said...oh wait it's still all bullshit.
 
plagiarize

plagiarize

It's not a loop. It's a spiral.
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Gotchaye said:
I'm not sure what you could mean by traction either, then, since liberals have been outraged since the campaign. Like, yeah, we pay attention to all the bad stuff he does and we get mad about it but I'm not sure that anything he's done since early 2016 has mattered much here except that his actually winning the election shocked a lot of people who realized they had to actually go vote next time. It seems to me that it matters a lot whether the media is treating something as a major scandal or a "Democrats mad, Republicans say it's no big deal" thing. And it's also going to matter a lot whether Republicans are willing to break with him, as with appointing Mueller then or supporting investigations now. And with Mueller, I thought that had more to do with Comey's firing than what he said during the campaign -- "Russia, if you're listening" was July of 2016 Mueller was May 2017, and I never got the sense that being a Russian puppet was a big liability for him in the campaign in the way I could imagine it being if it were instead video of him secretly asking Putin for help.

I'm not sure that any of the racism has mattered much.

I think it goes beyond this. I think acting in a way that shows awareness that what you're doing is wrong also gives people in the middle and the media an excuse to take a side. If both sides at least implicitly agree that this is a scandal, then it's easier to just treat it matter of factly as a scandal.
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There's two things here, on one hand I disagree that his public statements aren't a key part of where we are today, but on the other hand, I also don't quite understand why directly saying something to a foreign leader or their envoy isn't naturally a bigger deal.

'if you are listening' is harder to characterize as pressuring than directly asking the person for a favor. Of course it is. Even if you ignore the white house trying and failing to keep things quiet.

Public posturing for the camera is implicitly not the same as telling someone something to their face in a private conversation in the oval office.

I think we all expect our leaders to act differently in public in key ways. When Trump speaks off camera behind closed doors it isn't the same at all so I have no idea why it would be treated the same.

Yes I knew he didn't care if Russia interfered. Telling them directly that same thing is clearly worse than his public statements. Not because of how we found out. But because it's clearly worse.
 
No Depth

No Depth

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Oct 27, 2017
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Oh lordy, I break from thread a couple hours ago and get home only to find like 20 pages and a new thread happened.

What is up now???!!
 
Ogodei

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plagiarize said:
There's two things here, on one hand I disagree that his public statements aren't a key part of where we are today, but on the other hand, I also don't quite understand why directly saying something to a foreign leader or their envoy isn't naturally a bigger deal.

'if you are listening' is harder to characterize as pressuring than directly asking the person for a favor. Of course it is. Even if you ignore the white house trying and failing to keep things quiet.

Public posturing for the camera is implicitly not the same as telling someone something to their face in a private conversation in the oval office.

I think we all expect our leaders to act differently in public in key ways. When Trump speaks off camera behind closed doors it isn't the same at all so I have no idea why it would be treated the same.

Yes I knew he didn't care if Russia interfered. Telling them directly that same thing is clearly worse than his public statements. Not because of how we found out. But because it's clearly worse.
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That's the main thing about this. This incident proves that all the bluster and wishing he could do crimes and twitter lunacy isn't just a showman putting on a front, like some of his more respectable followers probably like to believe. He's like this when the cameras are off and he thinks no-one's listening. Like, working the Hunter Biden angle is one thing, but this idiot *still* thinks that we need to find the proverbial "real killers" behind the DNC hack in 2016. Privately!

It's removing a key element in mental tricks that some Trump supporters use, either in their own heads or among others to justify their support.
 
plagiarize

plagiarize

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Ogodei said:
That's the main thing about this. This incident proves that all the bluster and wishing he could do crimes and twitter lunacy isn't just a showman putting on a front, like some of his more respectable followers probably like to believe. He's like this when the cameras are off and he thinks no-one's listening. Like, working the Hunter Biden angle is one thing, but this idiot *still* thinks that we need to find the proverbial "real killers" behind the DNC hack in 2016. Privately!

It's removing a key element in mental tricks that some Trump supporters use, either in their own heads or among others to justify their support.
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That's a great point.

'But her emails' isn't red meat for the base when he's privately talking to Zelensky.
 
BWoog

BWoog

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Oct 27, 2017
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When Trump is out of office, never make those rat fuckers forget the hell they put this country through.
 
RoKKeR

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PantherLotus said:
Yeah I'd say this is big.

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But is it as easy to grasp as an "impeachable offense"? That's the thing about the Ukraine story and why I think it blew up - easy to grasp, easily verified, and blatantly an illegal abuse of power.

This story, while just as (if not more) disturbing, feels like the 134th of its kind in the Trump presidency that caused a limited spark of outrage but ultimately didn't go anywhere. Maybe I'm just cynical. Maybe now that we are in impeachment mode things like this will bubble to the top and get more scrutiny.
 
PantherLotus

PantherLotus

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Oct 27, 2017
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BWoog said:
When Trump is out of office, never make those rat fuckers forget the hell they put this country through.
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we can't even hold GWB and Cheney accountable for war crimes. A couple heads will roll but the rest will resurface in the Don Jr. admin and y'all know it.

Edit: removing a word not directed at bwoog
 
plagiarize

plagiarize

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RoKKeR said:
But is it as easy to grasp as an "impeachable offense"? That's the thing about the Ukraine story and why I think it blew up - easy to grasp, easily verified, and blatantly an illegal abuse of power.

This story, while just as (if not more) disturbing, feels like the 134th of its kind in the Trump presidency that caused a limited spark of outrage but ultimately didn't go anywhere. Maybe I'm just cynical. Maybe now that we are in impeachment mode things like this will bubble to the top and get more scrutiny.
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Denying we were attacked is one thing.

Telling the people that did it that you don't mind is something else. Imo.
 
SpitztheGreat

SpitztheGreat

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May 16, 2019
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If you had asked me 2 weeks ago about impeachment, I would have said that Trump would never resign because of his ego. But, the last 10 days have been filled with haymakers that have been connecting cleanly. The White House is stunned, Republicans are beginning to lose faith, and the public is beginning to get behind impeachment- even some Republicans.

I think, right now, if I had to stagger the bets, I would say there is a 60% chance that he survives, a 40% chance he resigns, and a 10% chance at conviction in the Senate.
 
plagiarize

plagiarize

It's not a loop. It's a spiral.
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PantherLotus said:
Motherfucker we can't even hold GWB and Cheney accountable for war crimes. A couple heads will roll but the rest will resurface in the Don Jr. admin and y'all know it.
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I understand why you and othet people remain pessimistic. We've seen so many hopes dashed.

But Bush and Cheney never got in this much hot water. Trump is already in more trouble than they were, on multiple fronts.
 
Ithil

Ithil

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Oct 25, 2017
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The sheer disdain Trump has for America never fails to amaze. It's always the ones that rely on shallow jingoism as their calling card that despise their countries the most.
 
plagiarize

plagiarize

It's not a loop. It's a spiral.
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Oct 25, 2017
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RoKKeR said:
Yeah, potentially. But hasn't he done effectively the same thing in the past but just out in the open? "Russia, if you're listening..."
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As we learnt from reactions to Mueller, it's a key difference that he did that as a candidate. This was as President in the oval office.

As candidate he has no oath of office to uphold. He isn't acting as president.
 
plagiarize

plagiarize

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devSin said:
Trump is only a symptom. "Those rat fuckers" are the voters.

The country chose this.
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Only after being told lies that fed their fears. Fox and the GOP willingly manipulate people. Most voters aren't rat fuckers. Unfortunately the majority isn't yet large enough to overcome all the gerrymandering and voter surpression, but it will.
 
Arm Van Dam

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I come in and see it was about that fucking oval office meeting, the dumbfuck couldn't help himself that day

Also



Hannity has an "audience panel" to discuss the whistleblower study and it's literally all Trump sycophants including someone who formally works for his campaign
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I literally forgot about Jeffrey Lord after he got fired so it was only a matter of time
 

devSin

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Oct 27, 2017
6,196
plagiarize said:
Only after being told lies that fed their fears. Fox and the GOP willingly manipulate people. Most voters aren't rat fuckers. Unfortunately the majority isn't yet large enough to overcome all the gerrymandering and voter surpression, but it will.
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They got exactly what they wanted. The truth was obvious the entire time. Trump is everything he was said to be.

It's easy to blame everyone else. Remove Trump, and things will be better. Shut down Fox, and things will be better.

They won't. Because Trump isn't the disease. Nor is Fox. They're merely symptoms of it.
 
plagiarize

plagiarize

It's not a loop. It's a spiral.
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Oct 25, 2017
27,559
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devSin said:
They got exactly what they wanted. The truth was obvious the entire time. Trump is everything he said he was.

It's easy to blame everyone else. Remove Trump, and things will be better. Shut down Fox, and things will be better.

They won't. Because Trump isn't the disease. Nor is Fox. They're merely symptoms of it.
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Most voters didn't get what they wanted.
 

Deleted member 8257

Oct 26, 2017
24,586
shiba5 said:
If Trump really wants to reclaim the media cycle, he should just blurt out how there are really aliens at Area 51.
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I dont think Trump is curious about the universe to even care about such. Heck he's probably not even curious about anything beyond his real estate properties on earth. He could care less if there was life elsewhere or other cosmic secrets.

Besides, it's extremely doubtful US Airforce will let Trump in on that big of a secret, knowing full well he will blurt it out his ass to Kremlin as soon as he gets inside his limo.
 
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