I am going to be physically aroused by the video of these motherfuckers being perp-walked in their orange Armani jumpers:
President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton before agreeing to meet with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign, according to three advisers to the White House briefed on the meeting and two others with knowledge of it.
The meeting was also attended by his campaign chairman at the time, Paul J. Manafort, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kushner only recently disclosed the meeting, though not its content, in confidential government documents described to The New York Times.
The Times reported the existence of the meeting on Saturday. But in subsequent interviews, the advisers and others revealed the motivation behind it.
The meeting — at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, two weeks after Donald J. Trump clinched the Republican nomination — points to the central question in federal investigations of the Kremlin’s meddling in the presidential election: whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. The accounts of the meeting represent the first public indication that at least some in the campaign were willing to accept Russian help.
How are the VERY SERIOUS PEOPLE going to talk this away?
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
Easy peasy. By not talking about it.
Smiling Mortician
Obligatory: Is it over? Did we get ’em?
ArchTeryx
By ignoring it. Because one of the hallmarks of Very Serious People is that it is always IOKIYAR.
Because Democrats stand up for dirty hippies and poor people, they are always held to a vastly higher standard then Republicans, who stand up for Very Serious Rich People. The 2016 elections should have clued everyone in on that if nothing else did.
MisterForkbeard
As I stated in the other thread, this is particularly rich. Nice that FTFNYT got this information out, but the willingness to hedge here is still infuriating:
1. The first public indication, other than Trump literally fucking asking for Russians to hack Hillary in a campaign speech… which happened AFTER this episode, I might add.
2. “some in the campaign” apparently means Trump’s son, his son-in-law who is currently very highly placed in the administration and considered his highest advisor, and his goddamned campaign manager. How is this “some in the campaign” and not “the campaign”, you worthless twits?
jimmiraybob
Ah yes, work up the ol’ Number 6. They’ll be a whompin’ and a whoopin’ and a walin’……
Suzanne
QFT. I already get a little tingle when I think of Melania slapping Agent Orange’s hand away.
Thinking of right-wingers being denied freedom and sex is a potent aphrodisiac.
Smiling Mortician
@MisterForkbeard: “willing to accept Russian help” also too.
Yarrow
Glad to see you use the word traitor. We should all start using it often. Get people used to hearing it.
Yarrow
Orange is the new orange.
gene108
I think the edgy contrarian “hot take” will be Hillary should’ve thought of it, because if she did, she would’ve won.
Winning at all costs seems to be considered the norm by our political “journalists”.
Villago Delenda Est
I am going to be so delighted when this smarmy little shit is frog marched into a cell.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Suzanne: Lock Him Up!
After being convicted in a court of law and given a fair, impartial trial
MisterForkbeard
@jimmiraybob: Build the “wal”, right? :)
MattF
“But the Russians were offering information about Clinton. We had to look into it.”
Ruckus
Nothing is too good for them.
Roger Moore
They’re going to rediscover the importance of not relying exclusively on anonymous leaks. That, and Trump Sr. was an innocent dupe of men he trusted implicitly.
Suzanne
@Suzanne: To say nothing of the, uh, temperature rise I may have experienced while watching videos of Richard Spencer getting punched in the face over and over and over.
MattF
@Roger Moore: I vote for ‘ignore it’. It’s about Clinton, so it’s irrelevant.
Roger Moore
@gene108:
Only when Republicans do it. If it’s Democrats, it’s proof of corruption. See Emails, DNC.
Yarrow
I’m glad to see the intelligence community has decided to remove the ban on leaking what they have on Trump’s kids. I guess the G-20 antics made it clear what’s really going on.
Will Ivanka cut Jared loose when the truth comes out about his collusion with the Russians? Will Donald throw Ivanka under the bus to save himself? I guess yes on both.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
I just noticed John Cole bigfooted John Cole. Will wonders never cease?
Yoda Dog
Book’em, Danno.
MattF
@Yarrow: I expect Jared will have a close encounter with a bus. Ivanka… ? Not so clear.
PhoenixRising
I’d really like to hear from the US official who could shed some light on the possible topics of this meeting. Does anyone know where former Undersecretary for Children’s Issues Susan Jacobs–whose job at the time would certainly have covered the purported subject of US families adopting Russian orphans–is hanging? I’m sure her responses to their cover story would be illuminating.
dmsilev
Glad to see that the knives are coming out for Goneril and Regan as well as dad.
(There is no Cordelia)
gene108
@Roger Moore:
That’s not winning at all costs. That’s tripping over your dick.
I think the political press would respect Democrats more, if they impeach a Republican President, suppress Republican voters ability to vote, have sipupporters set-up blatantly biased news sources, etc.
Our national political reporters did not get where they are by being nice and kind to their co-workers. They probably engaged in a good bit of backstabbing and office politics, so they view that as the way things should be.
MisterForkbeard
@Yarrow: No. This would imply that someone in the Trump family would have to admit they were wrong and it wasn’t all a setup by loser democrats.
trollhattan
@MattF:
Ivanka will move to North Korea where she will be worshiped as a demi-goddess and appear at Arirang festivals atop giant human pyramids. And also design uniforms and pour Hennessy shots for Dear Leader.
MattF
@trollhattan: As long as it’s not a pyramid of skulls. That would cross the line. Possibly.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@gene108:
Or alternatively they view all of this as just a game. Not a potentially life or death situation for those vulnerable and not yet born
Butthurt Jordan Trombone
@dmsilev: Maybe Tiffany or Barron, but even that’s a bit of a stretch.
jeffreyw
Fuck a buncha perp walks. I am hoping for a “Top ‘o the world, Ma!” moment.
Keith P.
This is great news…for Eric and Tiffany Trump.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Keith P.: This is also great news for Mike Pence. Unless he gets further implicated.
Yarrow
@MisterForkbeard: They won’t admit anything yet but at some point it’ll be worth it for them to turn on each other to save themselves. Donald will throw everyone under the bus with the possible exception of Ivanka. But if he tosses Jared to the wolves, what does Ivanka do?
MisterForkbeard
@gene108: The DNC thing is still so dumb. ALL of their email and communications were hacked, and the worst anyone could come up with is “Donna Brazile probably leaked two obvious debate questions to the Hillary team, and people in the DNC didn’t like Bernie but didn’t take any action against him.”
The fact that I still see this brought up as evidence of perfidy is just damned mind-blowing.
Starfish
@Yarrow: “according to three advisers to the White House briefed on the meeting and two others with knowledge of it”
This is more damning than intelligence leaks. These are people who either are or were in the White House who were briefed on the meeting.
Jeffro
On Twitter, Dick Nixon is telling Donald Trump Jr that if he gets hit in the leg with an umbrella “get to a hospital immediately”
Everyone in this bar is wondering what I’m laughing out loud about …
?
Yarrow
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Pence is a guilty traitor as well. As are Ryan and McConnell. You can tell from what they say and what they do. They’re hoping to slow walk all the investigations and keep themselves out of it all. Isn’t going to work, but what’s what they want. If, for instance, Ryan was a patriot, he’d know that Trump and Pence are traitors and he’d be busy cooperating with the IC to toss them out so he can step in as president. He’s not. There’s a reason for that. They go down and he goes down too.
Once you get your head around them all being traitors and colluding with Russia it makes their actions so much easier to understand. They’re behaving very sanely and sensibly when viewed that way. I mean, sanely and sensibly for traitors desperate to protect themselves.
efgoldman
@jeffreyw:
Nah, they’re all quisling cowards. If this were 1943, they’d all be collaborators.
Baud
@MisterForkbeard: All part of the plan.
Smiling Mortician
@Jeffro: That’s awesome.
PPCLI
@dmsilev: Jared is a hybrid of Goneril’s husband and lover. Albany’s strength and charisma, Edmund’s moral character.
Jeffro
@Smiling Mortician: it’s at least two levels of inside baseball, and I love that
Jeffro
@Yarrow:
This is the thing, right? If you ask a right winger to justify all of the constant contact between Trump/Russia and all of the Putin-loving, they have to go to some pretty interesting lengths… lengths they don’t even seem to believe them selves.
Well, some of them don’t, anyway…
No Drought No More
If memory serves it was Llowell Weicker that gave vent to his anger when he asked a Nixon administration official testifying before the senate committee (in essence): “Why didn’t the attorney general of the United States (John Mitchell) toss Gordon Liddy out of his office and onto his ear before alerting the proper authorities of his criminal proposals”?
The question was rhetorical, as Weicker damn well knew the answer..
Rachel Maddow reiterated a simple truth the other day when she noted that people like Trump, Kush-Kush (and Nixon and Mitchell before them) simply don’t care about anything remotely concerned with the general welfare, much less upholding the laws of the United States and their sworn oaths of office. But just as Nixon couldn’t run forever, neither will the contemptible Donald Trump et.al. For all our blind spots, faults, and foibles as a country, the day he’s driven from power will be a proud one in our history.
sublime33
Why don’t the Democrats hold a press conference and say “Since the American public doesn’t seem to have an issue with the Russians interfering with our elections, and since the Chinese have different priorities in the world than the Russians, we hereby invite the Chinese to help us defeat the Republicans in 2018 and 2020.” I’m sure the American voters will be fine with that.
Baud
@sublime33: What part of IOKIYAR confuses you?
Brachiator
@Yarrow:
It would be absolutely delicious, and would raise this farce to literary heights, if Trump were to sacrifice his beloved daughter in a futile attempt to save his own hide.
Oh Lord, please let it happen.
Yarrow
@Jeffro: Yep. They don’t even sound like they believe their own lies but they’ll work as hard as possible to keep themselves out of prison, so lies it is.
Roger Moore
@MattF:
I think they’re going to have to go through the whole series of steps:
1) Ignore. This will be hard given it’s in FTNYT.
2) Dispute. Fake News! Anonymous sources!
3) Minimize. We already see this with the way they talk about some people within the campaign doing this, even though it was the candidate’s son, son-in-law, and campaign manager.
4) Excuse. They haven’t mentioned yet that Trump and family are political novices, but you can bet it’s coming.
5) Praise. Next, they’ll start talking about how Trump sought out unconventional campaign allies, looked into new sources of opposition research, etc.
6) Hillary was worse.
Barney
@MisterForkbeard: I don’t know if this is in the NYT story by now, or already known to everyone here but they really are blaming this on Democrats: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/priebus-suggests-dems-set-up-trump-team-meeting-with-russian-lawyer-may-spin-out-of-control-for-dnc/
Betty Cracker
Oh please, FSM, grant your humble jackals this deliverance!
nycmt
@Barney: Mark Corallo is not an attorney. He is a media relations specialist.
Yarrow
@Brachiator: People who have close personal knowledge of how individuals with NPD act are confident he will.
germy
Turgidson
@Roger Moore: When Democrats fight in a way anywhere within a 50 mile radius of dirty, the Villagers stroke out onto the fainting couches and lament the incivility nonstop. They STILL bring up Harry Reid’s messing with Mittens about his taxes, but the endless fire hose of lies the GOP told about Obama and Hillary is just hard nosed politics.
Assholes.
MomSense
The rumor is that WAPO is sitting on a yuuge story. Hopefully even more will break soon.
JPL
@Barney: Surely Preibus will make a correction tomorrow, now that he knows the truth.
germy
@Turgidson: Was Reid ever proven wrong? I don’t remember. All I remember are the gasps of outrage over his remarks.
Uncle Cosmo
@Jeffro: It’s like getting a free shot of Maker’s Markov…
Roger Moore
@MisterForkbeard:
Yep. The Bernie thing was also, remember, after he had essentially no chance of winning the nomination and had decided to go with a scorched earth campaign rather than graciously concede and publicly support Hillary. They had every reason to be pissed at him. But the dog that didn’t bark was any evidence of coordination with SuperPACs. Does anyone think the RNC emails would be that clean?
Yarrow
@Roger Moore:
If you look at it via the lens that Tad Devine was involved with Russia and Bernie was involved as well, it makes sense that he didn’t graciously concede and support Hillary. Maybe he couldn’t lest his financial involvement be made public.
Gravenstone
@germy: Missed opportunity
4. IT’S A TRAP!
Jeffro
@Uncle Cosmo: oh, ouch!
SgrAstar
According to the NYT’s latest on this, young Don Jr has admitted that they were offered damaging intel on HRC, but that the info didn’t amount to anything. Hahahahahaha.
Roger Moore
@germy:
The thing that gets me is this from Trump Jr. statement today:
This is intended to sound as if he was giving her the brush off, but he’s actually admitting a straightforward quid pro quo: we’ll help you with the Magnitsky Act if you help us win the election.
Barney
@JPL: The kind of correction needed is “I resign, since this is the biggest farce that politics has ever seen, and I can’t keep blaming everyone else for my party’s idiocy and greed”.
germy
from the nyt
Is Junior throwing pocket sand here?
germy
@Roger Moore:
And the fact he agreed to meet with her hoping for info on his dad’s opponent? Does he think this makes him look honorable?
pat
@germy:
BUT if she HAD had some meaningful information, we could have done business…..
Jeezus, if you rob a bank and all you get is a handful of nickels, you still robbed the bank!
Baud
@germy: What does that have to do with adoptions?
germy
@Baud: At this point, the offspring have to be wondering why dad had to go out on a limb and run for president. I mean, they had a good thing going with the steaks and the vodka and the hotels and golf courses. Why fly so close to the sun? His wings are melting off.
sukabi
@germy: My guess is yes. Major deflection. Turns it back on dems and Clinton…and why not, it will get picked up by FOX and broadcast as fact. Buys a bit of time, until daddy’s next twitfit where he admits that yes, they were seeking help.?
Idiots all the way down.
Baud
@sukabi: “What secret information did the Russians have on Hillary that was too toxic for even Donald Trump?”
Turgidson
@germy: I think he eventually admitted that he was just making it up. But not sure where I read that.
germy
@Baud: Fox Headline: Hillary Campaign Funded By Russian Spy Ring According To Bombshell Report From Someone Close To President Trump
Yarrow
@Roger Moore: They really are a bunch of incompetent dumbshits.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@germy: Pizzagate 2.0: Russian Edition
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Yarrow: You know what would be worse? Ryan and McConnell et. al aren’t involved in the Russian stuff. They’re just that partisan; the CIA is full of liberal plants level of crazy
Frankensteinbeck
@Yarrow:
A piece of wisdom that stays ever-green: “They’re not evil masterminds. They’re shitlords.”
Uncle Cosmo
@Yarrow:
@No Drought No More:
Things become even clearer when you understand that all of this is just the endgame for the Global Oligopoly Putsch. The richer-than-God plutocrats behind the GOP see Putin as just another oligarch (CEO & majority stockholder of Rossiya-Bratva LLC) who’s helping them accomplish what they’ve been aiming to create for decades: A world of national governments powerless to tax them, powerless to bring them to justice for any crime, & empowered only to squeeze value out of their subjects & hand it over to the super-rich.
As of 2016, the last two economically-significant places remaining where the people had a chance to resist further concentration of wealth were the USA and the EU. IMO before last November 8 the game plan was to support neofascist nationalists & Herrenvolksocialismus in the EU nations to catalyze its breakup, while marking time in the US – continuing to obstruct the Federal government under a Democratic White House & preparing to turn its occupant out of office in 2020. After Brexit this made sense, but the gift of a Grifter-In-Chief courtesy of Putin’s hackers provides an unforseen opportunity to accelerate the process, & they intend to go “pedal to the metal.”
The problem for the plutocrats is that Putin is only loosely one of them – he is in effect a Mafia capo di tutti capi with weapons of mass destruction who assassinates opponents as a standard tool of statecraft. By the time they understand Vlad’s murderous methods they may not be able to oppose him effectively. Or they may not think they have to – look at how many of the German industrialists who boosted Hitler into the Chancellory survived the war to prosper in the Cold War aftermath. IMO they will find out they’re wrong only when it’s too late – for all of us.
Just my CZK0.457 (roughly $0.02 at current exchange rates).
John Revolta
@germy: Well if Fox doesn’t run with it the Natl Enquirer surely will. Then Fox can report on the report on the report.
sukabi
@Baud: I expect that will be the FOX ‘spin’ at some point.
?
Roger Moore
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
They ran interference for him during the election, threatening to claim partisan bias if Obama went public with what the IC knew. That makes them accomplices even if they weren’t directly involved.
Frankensteinbeck
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Whether or not they’re involved, they are that partisan. McConnell is saving the US from another black president. Ryan is on a holy quest to destroy altruism. If Russia interferes with our democracy in their favor, there are few or no downsides there.
smintheus
Looks like the Times played Trump jr. et al. for suckers. First they report a bare bones story and allow Trump and Kushner to lie about the purpose of the meeting (adoptions). Then they come back saying that “subsequent” interviews revealed the actual purpose (treason).
Subsequent to what? Ah ha ha ha.
WaterGirl
@Smiling Mortician: I have been away from the news for a few days, and I didn’t understand that comment. You obviously did, can you explain?
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Roger Moore: @Frankensteinbeck: I hope this completely destroys them
polyorchnid octopunch
@Roger Moore: I’m willing to bet that the RNC emails are far dirtier. Let me tell you my thinking on what’s going down here.
You’re Russia, and you’re working on disrupting US democracy. You break in to the RNC and DNC mail systems. One set of email archives contains a shit-ton of inside baseball, partisan bickering, attempts to shade out from what’s strictly legit, etc. The other one has obvious criminality in it. Which emails do you release to the public, and which ones do you send carefully selected excerpts from to their original authors with a note saying “we have all of it, so do what we tell you”?
Widespread massive blackmail of the upper echelons of the Republican party has a lot of explanatory power for the behaviour we’re seeing.
efgoldman
@Uncle Cosmo:
Their other problem: Nobody, not the plutocrats, certainly not Pootie Kazootie, lives forever.
GregB
One can assume the Tangerine Touch-hole got some good push-back ideas from his handler in Hamburg this weekend.
Also, if the new moronic spin is that Hillary was funded by the Russians, are they going to now claim that contact with Russians is bad?
Steeplejack (phone)
@WaterGirl:
Years ago a British journalist was assassinated by someone poking him with a poison-tipped umbrella.
Uncle Cosmo
@efgoldman: I wonder how much research into life extension/rejuvenation is taking place in clandestine labs funded by brazillionaires. I wonder how much is hidden in plain sight as too wacko to believe.
A few years back a VC friend opined to me that anybody who lived another 20 years could count on living forever. Even if he’s on the money about the medicine, the killer (so to speak) is the definition of “anybody.” Anybody with a few hundred million in pocket change, p’raps?
Cue Bug Jack Barron…
randy khan
@smintheus:
That’s looking like the best explanation. The next choice is that DJT, Jr.’s lies shook loose some people who hate him or are afraid of being implicated themselves.
J R in WV
@WaterGirl:
A few Russian exiles in London were assassinated by Bulgarian operatives using umbrellas to insert nearly microscopic spheres of metal with poison (ricin-based chemical poison, pre-polonium era) into the ass of the Russian “turncoats”. This was back when it was the USSR, before the Russian Empire separated from the various Soviet States now known as the ‘Stans.
Oh, never mind. I see I have been beaten to the punch….
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack (phone): aah! thank you.
WaterGirl
@J R in WV: No apology! Your details were helpful and interesting!
J R in WV
Obviously the Bulgarians were supposed to have been working for the KGB, but no one knows for sure. People died in hospital, it took a long while to figure out why. Just a tiny zit like place on the back of their thigh.
A tiny metal sphere the size of a grain of sand, with two holes that met at a 90 degree angle to contain the poison. Barely visible to the naked eye, injected by a needle in the umbrella point, in a crowd during rush hour in the Tubes.
LongHairedWeirdo
How will they talk this away?
“But his base continues to hold on; they don’t care, so this isn’t likely to affect the midterm elections. There are additional criminal investigations ongoing, but we find this notion of CRIMINALIZING political differences to be quite UNCOUTH; for example, we’re strongly opposed to political attacks on Bernie Sanders’ wife, and after all, the Russian investigation, and the Sanders’ issues, are the very first time when there was criminalizing of political differences, with minor exceptions during the fiercely fought 2016 election cycle.”
Face it: if a crime doesn’t cause the GOP base to abandon Trump, much of the talking-head social club won’t bother even mentioning it.
Lurking Canadian
@germy: No puppet! No puppet! You’re the puppet!
T S
You won’t see that: 1. The GOP will never impeach, because the GOP voter love for Trump will never fall below 27%. 2. Therefore, Trump will be in charge for 4 more years any charges that are brought will be met with a pardon before conviction. The only way we get perp walk is if he loses in 2020…are you so confident he will? Confident as you were Clinton would win….? Yeah, exactly.
Yes, I know pardoning makes people free to talk and there’s a danger in pardoning…but this is the GOP Trump cult. They are a gang. They won’t talk.
And cue Om telling me I’m giving up before the fight. No, I’m not…i’m just not naive enough to think it’s going to end so beautifully. Our hair will be mussed.
efgoldman
@Uncle Cosmo:
You may or may not remember, when the great HOF ballplayer Ted Williams died, one of his kids sent his head to a cryogenic center (in Arizona?), another sued to stop it.
In the end, I think (from memory) the freezer failed and it didn’t matter.
efgoldman
@J R in WV:
Is that true? I thought Ian Fleming made it up. He always made Bulgarians the bad guys’ stooges.
karensky
Yes, there is nothing here to see except collusion and treason.
Gin & Tonic
@efgoldman: Yes, its true.
rikyrah
I swear that I will learn how to make computer wallpaper in order to have one of all their mugshots.
rikyrah
@Yarrow:
They are all traitors.
TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
And they will all receive the reward a traitor deserves.