Guys, I’m starting to think there’s something to this Trump-Russia business…
BREAKING: Russian-linked Facebook ads targeted Wisconsin and Michigan during last year's election https://t.co/91pv3JyGEf pic.twitter.com/eWfSVvWOrG
— CNN (@CNN) October 4, 2017
Anyone want to start a pool on which Trump operative will be busted for collusion first? My money’s on Parscale, the digital director who raked in $90M. Just a hunch.
Open thread!
SiubhanDuinne
Brad Parscale was the professional (he had previously done some web design for Qusay), so that’s a good guess. But Jared was in overall charge of digital media strategy for the Trump campaign. Maybe they could share a cell?
randal sexton
And manafort advised trump to go there — https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/why-is-donald-trump-in-michigan-and-wisconsin
efgoldman
I still think most of the prosecutable felonies Mueller’s crew finds will be financial crimes – RICO violations, money laundering, illegal funds movement, illegal campaign contributions – things that were and are crimes regardless of the Russians or the campaign.
Xenos
Just trying to imagine the incitement to revolution we would be hearing on the right if a winning Clinton campaign had gotten this sort of illegal support from a hostile foreign power.
BBA
I hate to be the guy to say “show me where in the US Code it says colluding with Russia is a crime”…so instead I’ll say show me where in the NY Penal Law it says colluding with Russia is a crime, because we all know His Orangeness has the double secret pardons ready to go, and he can’t pardon state crimes.
RandomMonster
How is it that I–having followed the Russia story since before it was even cool–don’t know this Parscale name?!
Chet Murthy
@RandomMonster: Uh … b/c too many perps to keep track of ’em all? There sure are a lot.
SiubhanDuinne
@Chet Murthy:
Worse than Watergate!
fuckwit
@efgoldman: agreed. The destruction of democracy will have to be left for the media and voters to prosecute.
Mueller is as cop. There are so many straight up felonies here for him to go after
Suzanne
@SiubhanDuinne: I miss your long nym.
Elie
@efgoldman:
Yessirr!!! And hopefully a prosecutable (New York, preferrably) state crime or two just for good measure. I want them IN JAIL…..where they can’t get easily pardoned, etc.
NotMax
Magic 8-ball sez: Felix Sater.
Elie
@Elie:
…and then when the great orange one is in jail, he can’t do his job (whah, whah, whah -) and then he has to be removed from office for practicality’s sake cause he is like, a NO SHOW (I don’t count on the Repub Congress for anything). I know this last is just a sweet fantasy. Would love to have his rotten ass die in jail all zipped up in his orange romper suit to match his skin.
clay
Maybe if Hillary had gone to Wisconsin, she would’ve seen those ads and stopped all this.
Anyway, I wonder if the noble white working class members of America’s midwestern heartland will ever cop to the fact that they were had.
RandomMonster
@Chet Murthy: That’s a possibility to be sure.
clay
@NotMax: Wasn’t it reported that Sater was telling folks that he’d be in prison soon?
Juice Box
@clay: Come on. Didn’t you see Kevin Drum yesterday about campaigning? Not only did HRC fail to go to Wisconsin, but now campaigning doesn’t work either. She’s such a fiend that she broke campaigning.
Gretchen
Sure, Parscale, but he’ll give up Jared Kushner. I can’t wait to see that guy in an orange jumpsuit. And I’m pretty sure it will happen.
Major Major Major Major
@NotMax: Why would the guy who just cut a deal be the first one busted?
Major Major Major Major
@Juice Box: I saw an interview with those folks at Slate, interesting stuff, although everybody seems to be ignoring important caveats like “it is a single paper”.
GregB
The road to this globalist criminal conspiracy goes through Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Chet Murthy
@Major Major Major Major: Sater’s been quoted as saying he knows he’s jail-bound, and that Donnie’s goin’ with him. Even if we don’t credit the second part, maybe we can credit the first part. Idunno.
John Weiss
@clay: I doubt that those suckers will cop to anything. Seems as if that’s just where they’re at.
opiejeanne
@Juice Box: Kevin Drum can eat a bean.
See there? My ability to swear has been destroyed. I can’t even do that right now, thanks to those bastards.
seaboogie
@BBA: Apparently Mueller is investigating pre-emptive pardons, so..,
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
Fingers in too many rancid pies to finagle going totally scot-free. Keep a weather eye out for new names such as Gary Uher and more familiar ones such as that old reprobate Bernard Kerik to be prominently mentioned when Sater indictment(s) reported.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne:
Me too, I just give people this picture instead.
patrick II
@Juice Box: @opiejeanne:
Drum didn’t mention Hillary at all. He did excerpt from a study that reported the same thing others, such as Sam Wang at Princeton, have also reported, and that is in recent elections, especially since FOX News in the middle 90’s, the elections have become more partisan and voters less likely to change their vote based on candidates or campaigns. Have you talked to a Republican lately? Ask them about climate change sometime.
NotMax
Not that I would wish it on any of them but I kind of pine for the days (nights) when more regulars here were wrestling with insomnia.
Has become Tumbleweed City on most overnight threads.
NotMax
The Black Cat just starting on TCM
Hands down my favorite Boris Karloff line delivered in his patented laconic, ominous tone.
“The phone is dead. Even the phone is dead.”
Bonus is Art Deco interior decoration to die for.
Balconesfault
I still hold a deep resentment for pundits and entertainers on the left who thought it cool to talk down Hillary’s popularity last year, for cheap laughs and street cred, instead of pushing the question of why the GOP had spent so much money over the decades trying to tear her image down.
Looking at you Steve Colbert …
Zinsky
I think Jared Kushner is in deep shit. His fingerprints are all over the “back channel communication line to the Kremlin” that should earn him a trip to the gallows for treason, although I know that will never happen. In any case, I think his goose is cooked, as is Manafort’s. I just wish they could get both The Donald and Pence in a dual impeachment proceeding! Two-fer!!
SFAW
Is it too much to hope for “All of them, Betty”?
Although, I’d like Shitgibbon, Uday, and Qusay to be charged with treason, not just collusion. As the saying goes: make them deny it.
ETA: And for the lawyers among you jackals who will intone “But we’re not at war, therefore no treason,” I say: a boy can dream, can’t he?
zhena gogolia
@NotMax:
Edgar G. Ulmer FTW. Probably the first movie that scared me witless.
rikyrah
The data always leads back to Kushner and the Mercers.
john carter
@SFAW:
Just curious. If 45 is Commander in Chief of the Military and can decide what the Military can do or not, would that not imply he could be held to Military Law…and justice?
Woodrow/Asim
@john carter: POTUS is not subject to the UCMJ. It’s part of the civilian/military divide.
The Lodger
@RandomMonster: NPR interviewed Parscale a week or two after the election about the campaign’s cell-phone app based GOT effort. He was the only person connected with the campaign who sounded like a pro, not a connected asshole.
Grung_e_Gene
@clay: No. Propaganda is winning. I’m not the We are doomed doomed doomed but, I don’t see a way out of the current paradigm, there may be one but, the rightwing Wurlitzer is running rampant now.
J R in WV
@SiubhanDuinne:
Better than Watergate, don’t you mean??!!!
beef
@BBA:
Colluding with someone who’s committing crimes on your behalf ain’t legal. It’s called conspiracy. Hacking voter databases and email servers is definitely a crime. It’s also not legal for foreign entities to act on behalf of a US political campaign.