Omnibus Politics Thread: Campaign 2016 EditionFollow

Gods, that IS written at a fifth-grade level.

But her emails!...

Eh. Been stuck in Shanghai for the last couple weeks (virtually, anyway). I'm sure the conversation has moved on, but I'm going to respond to this anyway:



You have no evidence of this.



Unlikely methodology, and dependent on your starting, unsupported assumption above that Putin would prefer Trump in office versus Clinton, but let's pretend you're correct anyway. Where's the collusion?




Does he? Let's be clear here, by "contacts" you really just mean "someone I, or someone in my government, or someone living in my country has ever spoken to or done business with". The label is literally being used that broadly when speaking of these connections. Oh. And having such "contacts" doesn't mean anything by itself. Lots of folks in Clinton's camp, including Clinton herself, had/have similar "contacts" with Putin's government and other prominent people in Russia. It's a meaningless statement IMO. If no one in Trumps campaign, transition team, or administration had "contacts" with people in Russia, it would be seen as a gross gap in their knowledge of Russia and ability to conduct rational foreign policy with said country. Somewhat by definition, anyone in your campaign who is there to fill in knowledge about Russia will have to have "contacts" with Russia.

It's BS rhetoric, and you really ought to know it, at least at some honest level somewhere inside yourself. Clinton herself had far more "contact" with Putin on both a personal and professional level than Trump did.



How? Is there *any* evidence of such information sharing? You'd think that would be the first thing that would be looked for, and the easiest thing to spot, and it's pretty ridiculous to assume, in an environment where a completely benign conversation between Flynn and the Russian ambassador got leaked, that if there was any actual evidence of this, it would not have been leaked ages ago. The fact that we're still spinning around speculating about stuff is the strongest evidence that there is nothing there (well, except the speculation).

And that also fails to address the core issue that this would require coordination, not just between two parties, but three. That massively complicates things, and makes it even less likely that there would not have been massive evidence of this (which is somehow magically not getting leaked, and wasn't back when Obama had all the power to do so and strong motivation to smash the Trump campaign). This is what I mean by it being overly convoluted. If you stopped at the whole "Putin preferred Trump and did some stuff to try to make that happen", it would be debatable, but at least in the realm of reasonable possibility. But the sheer volume of incredibly unlikely things that have to happen for the theory you're spinning to work put us squarely in tin foil hat territory.

What makes it a crazy conspiracy theory is that the only reason to speculate this silly series of things is out of a desire for the theory to "be true". You're starting with what you want to believe, and then basically fabricating a possible way in which it could have happened.

I'll ask again: How does Putin hand information to Trump about what's going to be leaked by Wikileaks? I already made the point that by handing it to Assange, Putin lost any control he may have had. You just responded with an argument that completely ignores that point. You'd have to argue that Assange gave Trump's people a heads up about what and when he was going to release information. Which cuts the Russians out of the whole business entirely (and which doesn't match the narrative, hence why that's not what's being argued in public). There's a pretty large logical gap in the whole "Russian collusion" claim.




What conversations though? And how were they in any way coordinated with the releases of leaked info? That's the next big problem. If this were true, we should have been able to easily see narrative patterns in the Trump campaign that alined with releases of hacked data. Was there any? I was watching the same election unfold that you did, but I don't recall any case where the Trump's campaign messaging seemed to be in any way synced with the releases from Wiki. The two were pretty well disconnected. Occasionally, something was leaked that the Trump campaign would comment on or respond to, but there was no sign of coordinated messaging at all.




Except for the part where you try to make a case for collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. You know, the central part of the accusation being made? You kinda drift off into the weeds in the last couple steps there.

For collusion to happen both parties have to have some kind of agreement and quid pro quo going on. One party doing something for the other, even in the hopes of getting something back, doesn't count. But we can't even find evidence of that, outside of sheer speculation that Putin would prefer Trump over Clinton (which, frankly, I find laughable).



That's a hell of a stretch. The counter claim would be that Putin wold not have had to go through that with Clinton. She would have just handed him control from day one. She's saddled with Obama's foreign policy, a good part of which she personally had a direct hand in implementing, and which has massively benefited Putin over the last 8 years. Why would he want Trump in office? A guy he'd have to hope would react the way he wants? A guy who is notoriously bull headed, and unpredictable?

Clinton is a known entity. More importantly, an entity he knows will act in ways that benefit him. Why on earth would he want or need someone else in office? The whole thing makes zero sense. Your entire claim rests on the idea that someone would expend serious effort and risk just to have a slim chance of changing the US election results from someone with a record of benefiting Russian interests to someone who is an unknown? Even if he had a fair idea that Trump might benefit him, it's still a hard call. Bang for buck alone, it makes no sense.

And let's face it, the "buck" in this case is based on pure speculation and circular logic. So yeah, I'm going to stick with "folks on the left desperate for an explanation for the election results other than that their platform and candidate just didn't resonate nearly as well as they thought they did". Cause that makes perfect sense and, you know, actually matches the facts we have.


Edited, May 16th 2017 2:56pm by gbaji

It is almost as if T was trying to get fired. He is such an odd duck.

He's a Public Affairs Officer so we already know how good at that job he is.

I'm pretty sure just thinking about messaging him has started an avalanche of Article 15s down my way.

Edited, May 16th 2017 9:45am by lolgaxe

Or press secretary!


Edited, May 16th 2017 12:33pm by Jophiel

Standing at a podium and trying to sell government talking points is patriotic?

In your face, Soldier Boy. I'd give him a discounted meal at the Golden Corral long before you'd be seated.

In other news, the secrets Trump blabbed to his Russian comrades were of Israeli Intelligence origin.

We sure showed them!

Every neighborhood has a crazy cat woman. Or, as the case may be:


Edited, May 16th 2017 3:57pm by lolgaxe

Oh, but hey, the White House is denying it! Boy, that means something these days, right? When the White House denies something? I wonder which formally respected figure they'll send out tonight to humiliate him or herself by insisting that it's all false.