I’m going with offered SA a nuke
ScreaminAsian wouldn’t need a nuke.
4 Likes
Doesn’t matter. Nothing moves the needle. I wonder though if the heat will ever get to be too much for Trump. Maybe reality comes home to roost at some point and he realizes he’s in way over his head. He could easily fake a health problem and bow out somewhat gracefully by Trump standards. Phew…nothing but wishful thinking I suppose.
You’ve just identified the problem with all of the “Teflon Presidency”/ “Unitary Executive” / “whatever you want to call it” infrastructure that the Republican party has built up around Trump. No matter how high the pressure gets, as long as he stays in office, Trump is basically immune from real consequences. When he leaves office, indictments become real possibilities, rich folks stop renting as many rooms in your hotels, people who served in your administration become more willing to speak up. Even if he hates the job, his self-preservation instinct is going to require him to do everything he can to hold on to it.
I just don’t see Trump stepping down willingly. He knows once he’s not POTUS there’s a good chance he’s charged with crimes. Only way he steps down is if he can get a pardon from Pence.
I mean, if you were Trump, would you step down? I wouldn’t.
I guess I’m hoping for a moment of clarity on the issue of resignation even though I know the narcissism probably won’t allow for it. Ford pardoned Nixon pre-emptively. Pence could do that, although I don’t think that saves Trump from state charges. But even with that, the stalling tactic that Trump uses so effectively could be used again. Plus, its just unprecedented that the U.S. would put a former President in jail. I could definitely see “for the good of the country” type reasons for prosecutors to opt out.
Matt Taibbi had a skeptical piece on that spy exfiltration story. In it he points out that the NYT story says that the decision to extract the spy was made in late 2016. The WaPo story the next day says this:
The exfiltration took place sometime after an Oval Office meeting in May 2017, when President Trump revealed highly classified counterterrorism information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador…
That disclosure alarmed U.S. national security officials, but it was not the reason for the decision to remove the CIA asset, who had provided information to the United States for more than a decade, according to the current and former officials.
We want Trump out of office and so, obviously, do US intelligence agencies, but bear in mind that they are also lying scumbags.
2 Likes
Capitalism sucks. Not sure which movie some of you are watching.
5 Likes
This Sharpie nonsense is getting out of control. Guy is not even bothering to print money anymore when he can mark up any existing bill he wants.
1 Like
Bit of info on this whistleblower thing courtesy of this Twitter thread. This will be the nature of the complaint of the whistleblower:
A serious or flagrant problem, abuse, violation of law or Executive order, or deficiency relating to the funding, administration, or operation of an intelligence activity within the responsibility and authority of the Director of National Intelligence involving classified information, but does not include differences of opinions concerning public policy matters.
Note bolded. I’m not sure precisely how this is defined, but I think it would preclude stuff like sanctions quid pro quos, which are public policy. The statute also provides that it must be an “urgent concern”.
Another thing to note is that the Intelligence Community Inspector General, who judged the complaint credible, urgent, and worthy of reporting to Congress, is a Trump appointee. This all adds up to something fairly egregious, you’d think.
This intel douche can’t find a way to leak this very concerning stuff to the press? Or, the horror, go public and face the consequences e.g. full pardon from President Warren.
1 Like
There are lots of promises that could have been made that could have been distasteful or unwise, but that wouldn’t trigger the whistleblowing. In fact, its pretty hard to imagine something that wouldn’t fit in the category of just politically bad or unwise foreign policy. So, if this comes out, its going to be jaw-dropping IMO.
Even if it comes out, the GOP will say it can’t be proven. They will lie like they always do. Nothing will change until Nancy and Nadler start throwing people in prison. And they won’t do that.
1 Like
Her strongly worded letter this time is going to be… IN ALL CAPS!
1 Like
So there are five foreign leaders suggested int he article: Putin, Kim Jong Un, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, and the Emir of Qatar.
Of that list, it would almost have to be Putin - and those possibilities are endless and obvious. I think limiting to that list based on publicly announced conversations is risky, though. Who says he reported the conversation?
Knowing Trump, it’s unlikely he’d promise anyone anything unless they could do something for him personally - either to benefit him financially or boost his election chances. I don’t think North Korea could do anything to that end - does anyone else? So I think you can rule him out. Same for Pakistan, it’s not somewhere he’d want to invest or do business, and I can’t think of anything they could do to benefit him politically.
Okay, the Netherlands could do stuff to benefit him - I’m sure he would love to do some sort of real estate deal in Amsterdam. They’re also the world’s second largest agriculture exporter (to the US), so it’s possible he was trying to talk them out of increasing trade with China in the wake of the Chinese tariffs on US agriculture. He might make some crazy promises to protect himself on the trade war.
Qatar could also offer him investment opportunities, but I can’t come up with much else. It looks like they have close ties to Iran, but I can’t figure out an angle to where Trump would be promising them something.
But some names not on the list would make the most sense - Netanyahu and MBS, in particular. You would think even Trump would realize he should be really careful about what other people are going to see/hear him promising Putin, whereas he probably thinks our friendly relationship with Israel and our strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia would leave him in the clear there, especially if it wasn’t a business deal.
I think there are other possibilities. Trump is a dumbass and might not realise the gravity of what he is promising someone. I think the Emir of Qatar is a definite possibility. Like imagine that the Emir complains about some aspect of US law (sanctions on Iran being the obvious candidate) and Trump is like “Don’t worry about it, you don’t have to follow that stuff, I’ll do some Deals, I’ll take care of it”. That’s conspiracy to break US law - not merely a difference in public policy opinion - but idk about you, I could definitely see Trump just blurting stuff like that out.
Qatar is a very sensitively-positioned player in Middle Eastern affairs - they have no diplomatic relations with several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia - so I can definitely see some intelligence officer lizard losing his shit over something Trump promised them. It’s a good possibility imo, but the frontrunner has to be Putin.