Following up on Adam’s excellent post yesterday about the DNC server hack, it looks like the story is indeed gaining legs, with an assist from the president.
CNN:
President Barack Obama won’t rule out the possibility that Russian President Vladimir Putin could be attempting to tip the US presidential election toward Donald Trump.
His comments came after US officials said this week that there is strong evidence that the Democratic National Committee data breach was carried out by hackers working on behalf of Russian intelligence.
“Anything’s possible,” Obama responded when asked during an interview whether Russians could be working to influence the contest between Republican nominee Trump and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
“Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin,” Obama said during the sit-down with NBC News that aired Tuesday. “And I think that Trump’s gotten pretty favorable coverage back in Russia.”
WaPo:
President Obama on Tuesday waded into the controversy over the leak of Democratic National Committee emails, saying the hack of party records was characteristic of Russian government behavior and suggesting a potential motive for that country to meddle in the U.S. presidential election.
“What we do know is that the Russians hack our systems, not just government systems but private systems,” Obama told NBC. “What the motives were in terms of the leaks, all that — I can’t say directly. What I do know is that Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin.”
Obama’s comments align with those made Sunday by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, who said the Russian government was behind last week’s release of DNC documents on the website WikiLeaks as a way to help Trump.
American intelligence agencies have told the White House they now have “high confidence” that the Russian government was behind the theft of emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee, according to federal officials who have been briefed on the evidence.
But intelligence officials have cautioned that they are uncertain whether the electronic breakin at the committee’s computer systems was intended as fairly routine cyberespionage — of the kind the United States also conducts around the world — or as part of an effort to manipulate the 2016 presidential election.
The emails were released by WikiLeaks, whose founder, Julian Assange, has made it clear that he hoped to harm Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the presidency. It is unclear how the documents made their way to the group. But a large sampling was published before the WikiLeaks release by several news organizations and someone who called himself “Guccifer 2.0,” who investigators now believe was an agent of the G.R.U., Russia’s military intelligence service.
Even the Trumpenführer felt moved to address it today, though of course he filtered it through his narcissistic prism and missed the point entirely:
Funny how the failing @nytimes is pushing Dems narrative that Russia is working for me because Putin said "Trump is a genius." America 1st!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 27, 2016
For the record, Putin never called Trump a “genius” — that description is rarely bestowed on the critter at the business end of the leash. Now release your tax returns like a good boy, Deadbeat Don.
PS: This episode removes all doubt (as if there were any) that Julian Assange is an unmitigated douchebag.
Fuzz
What is amazing to me is that the Republicans were in hysterics about Obama not standing up to Russia in Ukraine, and yet they’re completely silent over this. If I were cynical I’d be tempted to say they care more about Obama looking bad and harming Democrats than the security issues they feign concern over.
Trentrunner
Holy crap, this Trump press conference…I can’t believe we are where we are.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
MattF
Well, Putin and company are opportunists. If you’re in a hotel and try to get into the wrong room, it’s just a mistake. If you try all the doorknobs on your floor– it’s something else.
Trentrunner
So far: He’s said Americans shouldn’t go to France because “it’s not France” anymore.
He looked in the camera and told Russia to hack the US to find Hillary’s “30,000” lost emails and publish them.
Iowa Old Lady
@Trentrunner: The man is now getting security briefings. I can’t process this.
Gin & Tonic
@Fuzz: What has mystified me is the complete silence on the part of the Richard Perle wing of the GOP, the Reagan-era Committee on the Present Danger crowd. While some of those folks have passed on, many have not, and if they’ve said or written a word anywhere on this topic I’ve not seen it.
Trentrunner
Trump now says the Freddie Gray prosecutor should now “prosecute herself” for going after the police.
cmorenc
IMHO team democrat’s approach to this whole issue should copy Neil Cavuto – phrase a damning accusation in the form of a question reasonable minds would ask.
bystander
I can’t bear to watch Trump’s press conference. It’s like a free commercial for his stupidity and hate. The press sucks.
Darn! I was hoping for a lively debate, “Julian Assange: Ass or Angel?”
Trentrunner
Trump: Geneva Convention is “out of date.”
Gin & Tonic
@Iowa Old Lady: 1) I don’t think he is getting them yet, and 2) I’m going to trust that our spooks will give him only very carefully edited material.
Humdog
So have I completely missed all the Republican foreign policy experts denouncing Russian intrusion into our political system? Even if they cannot bring themselves to castigate their party’s nominee, surely a few of them love their country enough to speak out over a foreign government getting involved, right?
I’m gonna hunt me up some Daniel Larison now.
dmsilev
@Trentrunner: What sort of gibberish is being emitted from his mouth-hole?
Edit: Or is this one of these Lovecraftian things where looking too closely at the horror will drain your sanity? In that case, stay safe.
Emma
The Telegraph, the flipping Telegraph, is doing our media work for them.
(link in thread below)
Trentrunner
Trump: “I believe in enhanced interrogation. It works.”
The Golux
“Putin’s Poodle.” Heh. That very nickname occurred to me yesterday, but Googling for it produced no hits for it then.
Trentrunner
Even by Trump standards, he seems especially unbalanced and unstable in this press conference.
Trentrunner
“I’ve been doing well with the Hispanic Community…35 or 36%”
GOP convention gave me “biggest bounce in history.”
Major Major Major Major
Fuck Assange, that antisemitic rapist.
Mark B
That’s a pretty sick triumvirate, Putin, Assange, and Trump. Each one is a shitweasel.
dmsilev
@Mark B: Weasel AntiDefamation League holding for you on line two.
Quinerly
It’s dogging him right now in this press conference. He’ll never make it through the first debate.He keeps going back to his convention bounce. And,yes, I’ll say it again…he’s doing the weird snorting/breathing thing. And, oh, wow, I think he just said Putin doesn’t respect Obama and Putin has used the “N word.”
Jeffro
Kaisch and Cruz will call for Trump to resign/rescind his own nomination before the day is out. Believe it.
Probably Romney and the Bushes too.
Amir Khalid
Douchebag? Julian Assange is something far worse than a douchebag.
The Golux
@Iowa Old Lady:
If I were responsible for preparing those briefings, I’d be sorely tempted to plant some false information in there, so it will be obvious when he inevitably spills the beans.
AnonPhenom
What seems to bother a lot of people about the Putin-Trumpsocket thing is: “because, Russia!”
What bothers me most about the Putin-Trumpsocket bromance is the same thing that bothers me about Citizens United.
It turns our political representatives into tools.*
At the risk of lighting a fire under the Bernie haters, it was the thing I liked most about Bernie. Or at the very least how he conducted and represented himself to the public during his campaign. Someone who spoke to the interests, needs and desires of the public as a whole. but also a person who could tell those same people that in his judgement that ‘this time, this is as far as we can get’.
Not a tool.
But back to Putin-Trumpsocket, I’ll grant you that on the spectrum of ‘toolishness’ being the tool of a Foreign Dictator is marginally more offensive and dangerous than being the tool of just any random American Billionaire. Even among allies who have a ‘special relationship’ this would be/is a BFD. ’The Chilcot Report is a BFD in the U.K. but not here, because there’s the issue of national pride in the mix. The report was the definitive word on whether Blair was Bush’s bitch (and by extension Britain was America’s bitch). Over here we see the Chilcot Report and think “yeah, of course we own you”. It drives people over there, Right, Left and Center, up a wall.
So it’s not just because “Russia!”
Being perceived as someone’s tool sucks. Who could respect that?
I don’t want the President of the United States to be anybody’s tool.
(*And I’ll add that you are not a tool simply because you may take money from the donor class today. And definitely not, if you’re working to reverse Citizens United and reform election financing with some form of public financing of elections while you take that money. While the game is being played, you play to win according to the rule as they are today. This doesn’t preclude you from criticizing the rules. The Designated Hitter Rule is a shitty rule. But if I’m a National league manager playing in your American league ballpark, I’m not sending my pitcher up to bat in the 9th slot on general principle while you slip your shortstop into the 9th, and insert a second ‘clean-up’ batter into the 3rd. I’ll use the rules as they stand today, to win today. But I’ll never stop telling you baseball is hurt by the Designated Hitter Rule.)
Iowa Old Lady
Trump is losing it over this Russian stuff, right down to inviting a hostile foreign government to commit espionage against a former Secretary of State. Hey, country first.
Matt McIrvin
Nixon should have said “Damn right I had them break into the Watergate, and they’ll break into your house and smack you around, too, and I’ll be proud of it.” Third term!
schrodinger's cat
Has Paul Ryan been asked about this?
sigaba
@Humdog: Larison has written some things against him but it’s pretty vanilla. Frankly given the overall cant of his website I suspect TAC gets more than a little money from Russian “cultural charities.” TACs generally been beating the drum for NATO disbandment and white nationalism for some time so you won’t get much complaining there.
And there are a bunch of neocons who hate trump, Lindsey Graham had a big dump on him after the NATO interview. They just won’t take the big step and do a press conference, or endorse Clinton.
bluehill
Corporations have figured out that repubs can be useful idiots so it was only a matter of time before foreign governments figured it as well. Putin apparently is into judo and this is political judo on a frightening level.
Fuzz
@Gin & Tonic:
I think Trump may be in a position to combat anything they say by discrediting them as the old guard/out of touch elite. To his supporters he’s immune to criticism by anyone with credentials to do so because of the whole wave of populism he’s riding.
It’s just funny to see conservatives I know who just a year ago were saying troops should go to Ukraine as a trip wire and that we should go to the brink of war with Russia to protect a non-treaty ally now being ok with the idea of selling out actual treaty allies.
Keep in mind these same Republicans often want to invade Iraq and/or Syria to fight ISIS, where everyone hates us, and will let Russia stomp out places like the Balts and Poland, where American soldiers are welcomed and their governments sent troops to fight alongside us in Iraq and A’stan. Their reward for loyalty is betrayal, the Iraqi reward for telling us to F-off in 2011 is never ending help.
Iowa Old Lady
@Quinerly: I suspect he’s been driven crazy by all the coverage of the DNC this week. He can’t stand the cameras being on anyone other than him.
dmsilev
@The Golux: I’ve been calling for the intelligence community to brief Trump on the ongoing crisis in Freedonia.
Quinerly
@Trentrunner:
Yes. It’s weirder than most. Did you catch the remark about Putin not respecting Obama and has used the “N word.” He now seems like in some sort of manic stage. And the breathing/snorting thing. He sounds coked up. It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
MattF
@The Golux: I’m sure that idea’s occurred to the intel agencies.
schrodinger's cat
@AnonPhenom: You really believe that a CEO of company and the head of repressive foreign government with a nuclear arsenal are the same?
Quinerly
Trump: “I’m like a pollster.” Babble at the presser. “Palm Beach is a very expensive place.”
Matt McIrvin
Tomorrow Assange will release the shocking history of Hillary Clinton’s parking violations, and this will be off the radar.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I believe somebody, ex-gov’t, said the candidates get stuff that is basically a condensed version of the public record.
Jeffro
@schrodinger’s cat:
Just asked that on Twitter myself…also McConnell, Pence…
celticdragonchick
@AnonPhenom:
Um…no.
One is garden variety political glad handing with possible corruption on the side.
The other is quite possibly treason.
Those are not even in the same universe. We have never before had a presidential candidate credibly accused of being influenced by a hostile foreign power.
schrodinger's cat
@Jeffro: Its time to hang this orange albatross around their necks.
hedgehog mobile
@The Golux: Thinking the same thing. The apricot hellbeast couldn’t stop himself.
celticdragonchick
@schrodinger’s cat:
I have been using #TreasonousTrump on twitter. Spread the word and get this to trend.
amk
I caught about 30 seconds (fu, teann intl) of
ted cruz said that, you remember ted cruz said that, ted cruz said that.
so, what exactly did ted cruz say?
gogol's wife
@Jeffro:
From your lips to God’s ear.
Could we please be rid of this embarrassment?
Anyone with friends in other countries knows they are terrified.
Quinerly
@bystander:
I think this press conference should be played on an endless loop. It’s crazier than most.
Trentrunner
Omigod. Katy Tur was pushing back on Trump, both shouting, Trump finally shouts “Be quiet, Katy.”
gogol's wife
@celticdragonchick:
Good for you!
Trentrunner
@Quinerly: The Dems should play this tonight instead of their convention.
AnonPhenom
@celticdragonchick:
So the bankers who created the ’08 meltdown, no BFD?
Bruce K
I’ve got this sneaking suspicion that this may be the Kobayashi Maru moment for a lot of people in the GOP. (For the non-Trekkies: the test isn’t whether you win or lose, but how you handle things when you are categorically, irrevocably doomed.)
Trentrunner
Trump just called John Hinckley “David” Hinckley. Press corrected him.
He earlier said Tim Kaine was from New Jersey. Press corrected.
Quinerly
Flags! David Hinckley! Oops, John Hinckley….babble. Crooked Hillary Clinton. Don’t have good chemistry with John Kasich! Babble…
(and a lot of coked up snorting sounds)
AnonPhenom
@schrodinger’s cat:
On a level of things effecting the daily lives of your average American?
Wages?
Upward mobility?
Yeah.
Quinerly
@Trentrunner:
This a train wreck. Should be replayed on loop for days.
Jeffro
@schrodinger’s cat:
This is their ‘out’, if there ever was going to be one – a candidate for president asking the intelligence service of a hostile country to hack his opponent’s email so that he can win the election. Treason, in other words.
celticdragonchick
@Trentrunner:
Katy Tur has been showing signs of wingnut fatigue. I saw her interview with the retired military Trumpnut who called for Hillary to be shot by firing squad and she was terse and visibly angry at points.
Rasputin's Evil Twin
Looks like nephew Vladimir has his hooks in trump even deeper than I thought.
GregB
Perhaps Putin doesn’t respect Obama because Putin is racist.
Jeffro
@Bruce K: You’re right. I really do expect some of the #NeverTrumps to be calling for him to step down by the end of the day.
Twitter is banging on Reince like you would’t believe…
I may have to take the day off, not a whole lot else is gonna get done…
Trentrunner
After Trump told Katy to “be quiet,” he added “you’re trying save her [Clinton]”
celticdragonchick
@Jeffro:
Not the legal definition of treason…but sure as fuck fits the historical definition in most cases.
trollhattan
@Quinerly:
He’ll go full Sarah ™ and refuse to follow the rules/respond to questions/”debate” in any meaningful sense of the word. “Let Donald be Donald.” He’s not used to performing in front of an audience with cumulative IQ north of 80.
Jeffro
@celticdragonchick:
Kind of hard to keep staring into the orange abyss without it looking back into you…and pi$$ing you off to no end…
Quinerly
@Trentrunner:
You can type faster than me.? I’m on my tiny keyboard on my smarty pants phone. Take over. Let it rip. This should be an entire thread. He just mixed up fire bomb and carpet bomb. Biden’s under his skin from the morning. “I have a big….microphone.”
hovercraft
@Iowa Old Lady:
I’m thinking his security briefings consist of this is a map, this is Europe, here’s Israel and these are the countries it borders Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. And then they might begin to educate him on what a parliamentary system is and how it works, beginning with the fact that in the UK the Queen doesn’t run the government.
Calouste
@AnonPhenom: We don’t know in whose pocket Sanders is because he refused to release his tax returns, and repeatedly lied that he would.
Quinerly
@trollhattan:
This is more of a train wreck than usual.He’s cracking.
schrodinger's cat
@AnonPhenom: Either you are incredibly dense or you are trolling.
Gin & Tonic
@schrodinger’s cat: Could be both, of course.
schrodinger's cat
@Trentrunner: He belongs in a padded cell not the White House.
peach flavored shampoo
Um….what’s going on with Nate Silver’s model? He has every single swing state of importance going to the GOP. PA, OH, FL, IA….I dont see how this is possible, but it’s what he’s showing. If Trump can really take every one of these formerly Obama states, I will have lost all faith in my fellow Americans.
Jeffro
@celticdragonchick: Fair enough. Can’t wait to see the wing nuts try and explain this away…I’m sure it will be nothing but “but Hillary did X!” where X = fiction
Trentrunner
“President Obama has been the most ignorant president in our history.”
celticdragonchick
@schrodinger’s cat:
Not sure which…but dishonest either way.
trollhattan
@Quinerly:
Eeeexxxelent! [finger tent]
I’ll wait and watch the distilled highlights. How will Fox handle it. “Donald Trump has lunch; we’ll tell you about his amazing sandwich at the top of the hour–stay tuned!”
Major Major Major Major
@Bruce K: nice analogy! Haha dork. ??
Iowa Old Lady
This story is one that reporters like because it could vault them into prominence the way Watergate did Woodward and Bernstein.
hovercraft
@Trentrunner:
There is no Trump standard, short of pulling his pants down and pissing all over the press, everything he does is being normalized. He just encouraged a foreign government to hack a presidential candidate, and the press says this is highly unusual. It’s f**king sedition, and last time I checked that was not only not the act of a patriot, it’s also a crime.
Quinerly
@Jeffro:
I have watched a lot of rallies. This though is SURREAL. “Obama is ignorant.” And “As he would say, something don’t jive.” Yes, he just said this about our Black President.
Jeffro
@Quinerly:
I think two-day bombardment from the DNC – to include Sanders NOT dividing the party, but instead endorsing Clinton – has taken its toll. He’s been holding an awful lot of ‘impolite’ things in, I’m sure, and the strain must be killing him.
Couple that with all of the Russia stuff coming to light, and trying to keep track of all his own lies, he’s overdue for something like this.
Stay in the race, Donald – let America see all this crazy right up there on the surface!
trollhattan
@peach flavored shampoo:
Give it two weeks, minimum, to settle. Also, too, Sam Wang.
AnonPhenom
@Calouste:
Really? That’s what you got out of that?
If I ring a bell, do you salivate?
gogol's wife
Everybody ignore the troll.
On Russia threads we can expect an infestation.
Matt McIrvin
@peach flavored shampoo: His model tries to use the national trend to extrapolate from existing state poll results. So Trump’s national convention bounce gets reflected in all these swing states flipping, even if the balance of state poll results doesn’t show them flipping.
Anyway, those states are definitely all winnable by Trump, if current polling is any guide. But if you want to see where the current state polling really is, you’re probably better off looking at election.princeton.edu or electoral-vote.com, which don’t make all these theory-laden adjustments.
celticdragonchick
@Jeffro:
Asking a foreign power to engage in espionage on your political behalf would have had you broken on the wheel and hanged 300 years ago.
bemused
@Quinerly:
It’s noticeable that he is breathing fast, sucking air.
MattF
@Trentrunner: …and Obama is the most [something-else] President too.
gogol's wife
@gogol’s wife:
Or just answer them in Russian, that seems to quiet them down for a while (e.g. Kwame).
celticdragonchick
@hovercraft:
I am wondering if he is actually going to talk himself into federal charges at this rate.
Seth Owen
@AnonPhenom: Cheap shot. No one is saying that the bankers are not a BFD. Still not in the same universe as treasonous influence due to being a tool of a foreign power.
Emma
@peach flavored shampoo: Good advice once given me by a pollster: In a presidential election, stay away from polls until at least October.
celticdragonchick
@Seth Owen: This.
Quinerly
@bemused:
He certainly is taking all the “air” out of any problems with Bill’s speech.
Caravelle
@peach flavored shampoo: Is it their “nowcast” ? They frequently talk about how it’s not really a prediction tool, it very heavily emphasizes the latest poll in an attempt to be like “how would things go if the election happened right now”. And considering 538 has Trump getting a 3-4 points convention bump and having caught up with Clinton in the polls (which is what they would have expected to happen if he got the kind of convention bump they were expecting, which he did), it would make sense that the “now-cast” would have him getting weird results.
I’m not sure it’s a great idea for them to feature something that’s so easy to misinterpret, and isn’t a very useful tool if you do interpret it correctly. Seems like clickbait for people who need to be constantly refreshing for the latest tidbit. Speaking as one of those people I can appreciate why they’d want that, but it still doesn’t seem like a great idea substantively.
Jeffro
@Quinerly:
What are the tremors called, just before a major earthquake hits? ‘Cause this guy is crack-ing…
Emma
All I can say, tonight Uncle Joe and BHO will be epic. And Trump’s twitter will stroke out.
Iowa Old Lady
If he thought the email hack was going to sink Clinton, he must be really frustrated to have it turned back on him.
Gin & Tonic
@Quinerly: Among normal English speakers, “doesn’t jibe” is common usage (it comes from sailing.) Add this to the list of things Il Donaldo is unaware of.
gogol's wife
@Emma:
Kaine also has a sharp tongue on him, which he deploys with a smile. It’s going to be a thing of beauty.
Kay
Freedom! Their nominee openly hopes a foreign government goes after his political opponent and he has his followers chanting “lock her up!” about a woman who hasn’t even been charged with anything.
They were always authoritarians, the GOP base. Always. Fundamentally anti-democratic.
Quinerly
@Trentrunner:
And as Obama “would say, something don’t jive.” Did you catch that?
gogol's wife
@Kay:
Oh, but Bill called Hillary a girl!
MomSense
@bemused:
Also too he snorts a lot. Yuuge snorts. Tremendous snorts. Not classy. Sad!
Jeffro
@celticdragonchick:
Civilization does have its drawbacks.
gogol's wife
@Quinerly:
I think he’s seen Barbara Billingsley in Airplane! one too many times.
Trentrunner
On CNN, to his credit, David Gregory is reaming Trump “beyond the pale” “running out of words.” Describing it accurately.
gogol's wife
@Jeffro:
Could we bring back quartering?
FlipYrWhig
@Trentrunner:
For fuck’s sake, he’s thinking of Tom Kean.
Quinerly
@Gin & Tonic: It was the context. Maybe I’m dwelling but it was like he wanted to say “Obama and his kind/people.”Excuse the typos. I’m on the phone.
eric
@gogol’s wife: quartering is too small. go yuge with 16ths. or is that going small. classy either way
Kay
@gogol’s wife:
Hey, we can all look forward to what Trump would do with his own huge state law enforcement apparatus. The Freedom Fighters want to give this delusional clown the FBI and the CIA and the IRS.
“lock her up!” the mob will chant as Trump seeks revenge on his enemies.
eric
@FlipYrWhig: “thinking” assumes facts now in evidence.
sidhra
Calling for foreign intelligence services to actively steal US Government records is a very treasonous thing, especially if actions are taken in support of that statement.
Gin & Tonic
@FlipYrWhig: Close enough, right?
Quinerly
I’m on overload. He’s encouraged foreign governments to hack us.
sigaba
@Jeffro: If he cracked, how would we know? As far as I can tell he cracked sometime in the 1990s.
Gin & Tonic
@Quinerly: Well, I’m not listening, so you are made of sterner stuff and I salute you.
eric
@Quinerly: well, It is run by non-ignorant, non-jiving whites — there is that.
geg6
Jesus. Just…Jesus.
Quinerly
@Trentrunner:
Why did they let him do this? Clearly, he is in some sort of manic phase. Was this announced earlier? Planned? Rob Reiner giving good commentary.
Uncle Cosmo
@srv: Blowing smoke, throwing sand, spouting shit as usual. FOAD. Why your sorry arse hasn’t been banned is beyond me.
gogol's wife
John Cole has made the definitive statement on the press conference — see thread up top.
Calouste
@peach flavored shampoo: Nate Silver is the guy who said in November that Trump had less chance of winning the nomination than some other candidates even though Trump had been leading all the national and New Hampshire polls, and most of the Iowa polls for 4 months straight at that point. And basically kept up that line of thought until January, maybe even February. Silver doesn’t have any credibility left as an unbiased numbers guy.
Amir Khalid
@sidhra:
One hopes the sitting President will point this out.
b1narys3rf
Folks, if you have reddit accounts, please ask the most uncomfortable but substantive questions you can during Vladimir Drumpf’s AMA tonight. And if you don’t have an account yet, create an account and give yourself a crash course.
The shitshow will happen here at 7pm: reddit.com/r/IAmA
Reddit account creation here: reddit.com/login
Reddit FAQ here: reddit.com/wiki/faq
Since reddit is infamous for being a nest of Bernie dead-enders and Trump “Alt-Right” basement dwellers, I recommend you screenshot your questions after submittal along with The Donald’s likely ignoring you/any nasty replies from other users, if for no other reason than you can prove later just how authoritarian and disgusting these boys are…and use such material as you wish.
Thank you.
Matt McIrvin
@gogol’s wife:
Just read a long essay on Medium about how all the marginalized people of the global South are terrified of the apocalyptic reign of terror and death that Hillary will unleash on their families. I’m wondering if there really is any kind of international sentiment like this.
pseudonymous in nc
He’s a bona fide psychopath, and I worry that if he gets cornered it will get more dangerous, not less. He’s starting to come across as someone who’d tell his true believers to rise up against the corrupt government.
It may be up to the institutional GOP to snuff this out, and they’ve already shown their lack of will and capacity.
Kay
@Quinerly:
Because Clinton is guilty of something but the Obama Administration will never prosecute. The authoritarian sleazebags have covered all their bases- if she’s indicted it’s evidence and if she isn’t indicted it’s even stronger evidence.
Meanwhile, their candidate releases nothing so there’s absolutely no transparency on their end.
Quinerly
Pence trying to walk everything back in a statement just released.
Gelfling 545
@Quinerly: Trump has spent his life in a world where everything has been arranged for his convenience and liking. Now there are people who not only won’t hop to it at his beck but actually try to thwart his wishes. Must be quite a shock.
EBT
@dmsilev: how any of these shitbirds could ever hold a candle to Ozzy or a ferret is beyond my glean.
hovercraft
@Iowa Old Lady:
And he’s losing the ratings war so far, if only someone had asked him about that, it might have been enough to push him over the edge. Who am I kidding he’s been over the edge and the gop just eats it up.
msdc
@Major Major Major Major:
To be fair, he is backing the candidate who best reflects his values.
mkro
The Assange / Snowden supporters are pretty much 90% connected with the Sanders dead-enders, so it’s all one in the same.
mkro
I’m sure Snowden living in Russia has absolutely nothing to do with the email server hacking originating in Russia, or that Assange got the emails from Russia. Pure coincidence, I’m sure.
FlipYrWhig
@Matt McIrvin: That’s utterly fucking ridiculous. Who in the world considers Hillary Clinton to be a bloodthirsty monster? Only the Jacobin crowd, the Greenwald crowd, and trolls. Seems like projection mixed with ventriloquism and a soupçon of wishful thinking.
mkro
I’m pretty sure Snowden just lost any last hope of receiving a presidential pardon now at this point
Matt McIrvin
@mkro: A lot of them are libertarians who were always for Gary Johnson.
Percysowner
Let me say that this doesn’t upset me because Russia! I’d be upset if any foreign country tried to influence our election, especially if they were owed money by the candidate they wanted in the White House. If Canada was trying to swing this election, by more than writing cutting editorials, I’d be unhappy. Russia is a bad player and they are a force I don’t want influencing our country because they do not represent our values and they want to take over the world, but no nation should be taking over our country, even if they don’t want to rule the world.
gogol's wife
@Percysowner:
It upsets me because Russia!
You obviously know next to nothing about Russia.
Jeffro
Starting to see the “T” word get bandied about on major news sites…good! About time.
I just had to explain to my right-leaning, Trump-justifying father why ‘asking hackers around the world to look for her emails’ is NOT ‘fair game’. It was easy. I asked him to picture Clinton up there asking them to do the same to Trump – what would his reaction be? Hmm…as you might guess, THAT qualifies as ‘treason’.
Jeffro
@Kay:
“If she drowns, she’s a witch; and if she floats, she’s a really evil witch!”
[paraphrasing Monty Python of course]
Same mentality.
hovercraft
@Quinerly:
He’s been under wraps since his convention ended, apart from the VFW speech yesterday, and Clinton has been getting all the media attention, and they keep hiding his phone, so he put his foot down and declared that America deserves to hear his pearls of wisdom, not all this claptrap about equality and kumbaya. And now everyone is accusing him of being Putin’s bitch and the rating are beating his, DAMMIT he will NOT BE SILENCED.
Jeffro
@gogol’s wife: Just sentence him to a month without a TV camera on him…a fate worse than death…
msdc
@FlipYrWhig:
But you repeat yourself.
O. Felix Culpa
From the NYT. It’s starting to get noticed.
Bobby Thomson
@Amir Khalid: Assange is a god damn rapist. Among other things.
bemused
@MomSense:
Loud snorts! That and the fast breathing indicates anxiety to me. He’s not as sure of himself as he would like to appear.
liberal
@MattF: LOL. US intelligence services try to penetrate everything they can, including phones of leaders of allied governments. All governments do this, or try to.
You can try to claim about different governments having more or less nefarious intents, but the idea that we don’t try all the doorknobs is risible, and anyone making such a claim should be laughed out of the room.
Miss Bianca
@Jeffro: OK, so did the light bulb go on for your dad at that point?
b1narys3rf
@Bobby Thomson: We need to be a bit self-aware if not careful on the rape allegations. Remember, this for instance still carries a lot of weight on the other side, wrong or right: twitter.com/atensnut/status/684822324227379200?lang=en Follow
Juanita Broaddrick
@atensnut
I was 35 years old when Bill Clinton, Ark. Attorney General raped me and Hillary tried to silence me. I am now 73….it never goes away.
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liberal
@Trentrunner: NYTimes has a full article encouraging the Russian State to go after Hillary’s emails.
Dude’s a loon. Still not convinced he’s not a Clinton plant, even if that’s very unlikely.
IMHO the most interesting thing about this whole episode is the lengths to which the press can’t get past its “he said she said” mode. AFAICT a conservative could call for the nuking of all major American cities, and the press would bend over backwards to maintain their “objectivity”.
liberal
@FlipYrWhig: Well, it’s certainly easier not to take that perspective if you applauded the destruction of the Libyan state in real time…like you did.
Brent
@mkro: Well Russia is a big country with a lot of varied interests that have nothing at all to do with Snowden. I honestly doubt he has any connection to it at all. He has also made some good points about this regarding the need for more transparency among intelligence agencies:
Business Insider Link
celticdragonchick
@Quinerly:
He called for a foreign government to hack actual US government documents possessed by the State Department.
Treason. Fucking treason. It may fall short of the constitutional standard, but fuck him.
I want to see charges of some sort brought on this bastard.
liberal
@mkro: Yeppers! If Snowden weren’t living in Russian, there’d be no cyberespionage originating from Russia. Nor would there be all these nasty cyber criminals operating from Eastern Europe as a whole.
And I’m sure Snowden is personally responsible for helping Trump link up with Putin.
Jesus Christ, do you even begin to realize how fucking stupid you sound?
liberal
@Brent:
Sorry, you have to have an IQ above about 75 to understand that, and your interlocutor doesn’t, so….
liberal
@Percysowner:
Just a check—so you’re not OK with it when the US tries to influence elections in other countries?
El Caganer
@srv: Both sides do it!
liberal
@celticdragonchick: It really calls into question whether he’s actually trying to win at all, or whether he’s deliberately trying to throw the election.
There’s been speculation that the hackers might be holding the juiciest stuff till October. Trump making statements like this just poisons the entire enterprise. Now, I’m not upset that the enterprise might stand a better chance of being thwarted; rather, I don’t understand why he’d do it. Apart from the possibility that he suffers from adult ADHD. Which is another reason to keep him out of office.
Eric U.
Reports were that snowden wasn’t particularly skilled at computers, all social engineering. Because his coworkers trusted him. Unless I missed something, quite possible.
Quinerly
@celticdragonchick:
Yes. Let’s hope Obama addresses it in his speech tonight. Pence just released a statement saying the exact opposite. Heads exploding at the RNC.
liberal
@El Caganer: Yes, both sides don’t do it, because “it” is not the same or equivalent, in this faulty comparison.
But, that aside, that kind of thing does make the fools here who claim that these payments to the Clinton Foundation couldn’t possibly be due to influence buying look stupid.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@peach flavored shampoo: With Nate, scroll down to the expected margin of victory per state. On the polls-only forecast, every one of those should be within error bars.
And don’t forget that we don’t have the Dem convention bounce yet. This looks like Sam Wang’s “Trump +2” map from before the RNC.
Joel
@AnonPhenom:
Stop right there. Degree matters. First, in the sense that Trump is literally indebted to his political backers. Second, in the sense that the Kochs, or whomever you choose, are still lawful citizens, regardless of how repugnant their views may be. Yes, that matters.
El Caganer
The Donald: “Why is the title of my security briefing book ‘Where”s Waldo?'”
liberal
@Percysowner:
Yes, absolutely, Russia is a bad player. But a country that goes halfway around the world, invades another country, kills hundreds of thousands of people in the process, and smashes the state resulting in anarchy, is a good player?
liberal
@Gelfling 545:
Not really. He’s had a lot of agency in making sure that people at the other end of his business deals get screwed.
liberal
@Calouste: Agreed. Though I’m pretty sure Kasich at least polled better than Trump in comparisons against Hillary.
For poll aggregation I look at Sam Wang, not Silver.
Joel
@Calouste: Silver fell in love with his demo model and forgot that it was the polls that were doing the heavy lifting.
Cckids
@gogol’s wife:
Last night, Trevor Noah had Podesta on (I can’t remember his job with Hillary’s campaign). At the end of the interview, Noah leaned in & said, in all seriousness, ” You all know the whole worlds counting on you, don’t you?”
Truer words never spoken.
Denali
Before feeding into this, we must remember that for Donald, its all about attention. Even bad press takes the spotlight off the nomination of Hilliary Clinton, the first woman ever nominated by a major party as their candidate for President. This is what we should be celebrating. We should ignore the other candidate. His week was last week.
mkro
@liberal: Right , so there was absolutely NO quid pro quo between Snowden and the Russian government in order to provide Snowden with protection and asylum? You really believe nothing nefarious is occurring? Puhleeze …
Comrade Scrutinizer
@liberal: Go fuck yourself.
Villago Delenda Est
@Trentrunner: This encapsulates Drumpf’s military expertise.
PghMike4
We really need to see who are the investors in Donald’s projects — if Russian oligarchs are funding him, that pretty much means that Putin has Trump on the payroll. After all, no one wealthy in Russia gets to keep their money if Putin doesn’t approve.
Tax returns are just a first step, they almost certainly won’t enumerate the investors in his companies, nor those who are paying licensing fees to his companies.
Soylent Green
@hovercraft:
Also explain to him that Africa is not a country.
burnspbesq
@bystander:
I’ve said on a number of occasions, with respect to Snowden, that it’s possible to be both a patriot and a felon.
There’s s no longer any room for ambiguity where Assange is concerned. He’s 100 percent bad. He needs to surrender and consent to extradition to Sweden, and yesterday wouldn’t be too soon.
Mnemosyne
Alan Keyes sits by his phone, waiting for it to ring. Because when a Republican goes down in flames and you need a last second fill-in, Keyes is the guy you call.
mkro
@burnspbesq: Should Snowden also stand trial against charges that he’s enabled a huge number of terrorist attacks across the world, resulting in hundreds of murders since he weakened worldwide spy agencies with his careless doc dump?
Mnemosyne
@mkro:
But of course Putin granted asylum to Snowden out of the goodness of his heart and not out of any desire to learn more about the US’s security apparatus. Because Vladimir Vladmirovich is the kindest, nicest, most noble person that liberal has ever met.
Mnemosyne
@liberal:
Define “influence.” If you have proof that the US intelligence services hacked an opposition candidate’s email in another country and publicly released it, yes, I would have a problem with that.
Axe Diesel Palin
NPR did an interview yesterday. The Russian expert they talked to said that the translation was wrong. Putin used a Russian expression that said something like “Trump is colorful” or “Trump is brightly colored”, this got mixed up in translation to “Trump is bright”. Trump then twisted the definition of “bright” into the english “brilliant”, but Putin was originally comparing him to a Peacock, not a genius.
SFAW
@dmsilev:
Re: Fredonia briefings
Were it possible, I would want Margaret Dumont to give him the briefing, with a backup from Grady Sutton (who, although he was not really a Marx Brothers guy, would certainly be whom Deadbeat Donnie deserves).
Darkrose
@AnonPhenom:
Unless your name is Bruce Bochy, and your pitcher is Madison Bumgarner–though in that case it’s not general principle, it’s the fact that Bum’s one of the best right-handed hitters you’ve got.
SFAW
@Axe Diesel Palin:
You related to Hunger Tallest Palin, perchance?
SFAW
@Darkrose:
Right after Bartolo “The Babe Reborn” Colon.
Vhh
@Jeffro: tremblors
Darkrose
@SFAW: Bartolo Colon is the living answer to the question of “Why should the DH never, ever, come to the NL?” Anyone who doesn’t smile watching him hit doesn’t deserve baseball.
SFAW
@Darkrose:
His HR was a thing of beauty, to be sure. But the best thing he ever did may be this.
Partisan Cheese
Is any FPers going to to criticize the DNC for being corrupt and biased? Haha no way. If Obama lost the primary in 2008 and then if similar emails were leaked, you guys would be howling still. Not this time, now lets hate on Julian Assange for making our dear party look bad! Lets not address that the DNC is corrupt and needs to change. Lets just shoot the messenger. Cool.
weaselone
@Partisan Cheese:
Exactly what about these emails is it that you find so damning?
1. They largely took place after super Tuesday when Hillary basically locked the nomination.
2. They’re a handful of emails where some members/workers for the DNC make improper suggestions and in some places questionable remarks among tens of thousands
3. The DNC leadership did not actually act on the stuff in these emails to kneecap Sanders. They did not for example use Bernie’s atheism against him.
You’re basically claiming corruption of the entire organization based on thought crimes by a handful of members.
Omnes Omnibus
@weaselone: 4. There is evidence that some of the emails are faked or altered.
Betty Cracker
@Partisan Cheese: The DNC staffers who floated strategies against Sanders (which were apparently never acted on) should be shit-canned, IMO, if the leaked emails are genuine. But the distinct possibility that a hostile foreign government is trying to swing a US election to a racist, sexist, xenophobic, fascist demagogue is somewhat higher on my list of shit to worry about. YMMV (if you’re a moron).
weaselone
@Betty Cracker:
Why should they be fired? It’s stupid to can someone because they make a stupid suggestion in an internal email.
Omnes Omnibus
@weaselone: The only reason I see that they should be fired would be to avoid the appearance of impropriety.
Betty Cracker
@weaselone: Three reasons: 1) They’re supposed to be impartial. 2) It’s disgusting to try to target someone on the basis of his lack of religion. 3) They were dumb enough to put their idiotic scheme in writing in an environment where hacking and other intrigues are a distinct possibility.
jon
huffingtonpost.com/zeynep-tufekci/wikileaks-erdogan-emails_b_11158792.html
I’m not sure why this happened, but Assange and his WikiHackers could have far more blood on their hands than they’d like to admit if this plays out as badly as they’ve set it up.
Axe Diesel Palin
@SFAW – eight years ago, some web site had a “Palin Family Name Generator”. That site christened me, and I’ve used the name since.
KS in MA
@SFAW: Oh, yes, that was SO sweet!!!