Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

He really is that stupid.

This fight is for everything.

“woke” is the new caravan.

I really should read my own blog.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

T R E 4 5 O N

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Dolt 45 / Interesting Fella, That Papadopoulos Kid…

Interesting Fella, That Papadopoulos Kid…

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Supplementary to Adam’s latest post…


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Speaking of “doofus and fool”…

Reader Interactions

100Comments

  1. 1.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    wasn’t it back when Spicey was still in the White House, there were rumors that he and Reicne were already paranoid about staffers wearing wires? Even if Allahpundit (do we know a real name or credentials?) is off base, I imagine this is making those weasels snap and snarl at each other even more

  2. 2.

    Jeffro

    Can’t wait to ask RWNJ friends and relatives what they think of the “he was only 29, fer Pete’s sake!” defense

  6. 6.

    Cacti

    Have I mentioned to anyone how much I LOVE that Manafort got house arrest as a condition of bail?

    No skipping off to the Russian embassy for “asylum” for you, Paulie.

  7. 7.

    lamh36

    I’m going to bed soon but wanted to share some exciting news.

    A friend called me this evening to tell me that Priceline had a sale ticket for travel to Australia for next May!!!

    She saw it when she was looking for another trip and recalled that I had said I wanted to go to Australia!!!

    Round trip ticket from DFW to Melbourne, AUS for $292!!!!!!

    I am almost DEAD broke, cause of having to renew my license and car registration today.

    When I told my friend that, she said, she could charge it to her account and then I could pay her back later this week.

    I was thinking Sydney, but shiiid for that price Australia is Autstralia…doesn’t matter to me!!!

    https://media.giphy.com/media/Sa1xEnaWKjpLO/giphy.gif

  8. 8.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @lollipopguild: Little Fredo was callow, blameless youth of 39 when he declared his love for the Putin gov’t’s interest in helping “Mr Trump” win the election

  13. 13.

    Adam L Silverman

    And then there’s this piece of the puzzle:

  19. 19.

    cmorenc

    The more Trump feels the heat growing from Mueller, the less the GOP propaganda counter-attack against Mueller seems to be gaining traction…the more likely Trump is to actually plunge the US into a war as a means to create a distraction big enough to make it difficult to dislodge his administration from power.

  20. 20.

    Nicole

    @lamh36: Equal parts envious of and very happy for you! I look forward to seeing the pictures on Alain’s daily travel post down the road a ways.

  22. 22.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Cacti: He might actually be good with this, as he’s a marked man now for the FSB. No illusions about who wants him dead.

  24. 24.

    jl

    @cmorenc: The fact that the GOP propaganda counter-attack is fabricated BS about stuff that no one cares about anymore is a big flaw. Maybe a sign that they are still drinking their own kool-aide. Who outside their base cares much about HRC anymore? Maybe Dems plugged into current intra-party power struggle do. Nobody else.

    The big uranium non-scandal is such BS, it can be completely debunked in a soundbite that will easily fit in a corporate media news spot, if it ever gains traction.

  26. 26.

    Cacti

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    He might actually be good with this, as he’s a marked man now for the FSB. No illusions about who wants him dead.

    Hadn’t thought about that.

    Watch out you don’t “accidentally” go flying through any closed 20th floor windows, Paulie.

  30. 30.

    Mnemosyne

    @lamh36:

    Nice! I’ve been told that any of the large cities in Australia are pretty cool, so if you end up in, say, Melbourne, you should still have a great time.

    Just make sure to stay out of the ocean. Between the copper sharks, the poisonous octopuses, and the fatal jellyfish, it’s just not worth it.

  31. 31.

    Wag

    I have felt today like I’m witnessing the beginning of the denouement of a Le Carre novel withe every seemingly disparate thread coalesces into a seamless tapestry.

    It also brings to mind one of my favorite verses from Paul Simon:

    sometimes when I’m falling, flying
    Or tumbling in turmoil I say
    Whoa, so this is what she means

    I’m digging this tumbling turmoil. I hope that trump is feeling it as well.

  33. 33.

    lamh36

    SCOOP – Bannon talked to Trump today, encouraged him to get new lawyers thedailybeast.com/steve-bannon-t… via @swin24

  35. 35.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @rikyrah: Things to see in Sydney: The Opera House (of course!), The Harbour Bridge, The Zoo!
    Try to spend at least one clear night away from the cities and check out the Southern Sky.
    Perth is pleasant enough, reminded me a lot of a 60’s Southern California.

  36. 36.

    SFAW

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Sounds like he’s saying the “panicked” call Papadopoulos made to (whomever) in the WH was some bait, and the WH contact (hypothetically) talked about destroying evidence.

    Papadopoulos was indicted three months ago, the (hypothetical) call to campaign staff was two months ago, enough time for Mueller’s Minions to say “OK, here’s how you play it.”

  37. 37.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    David Jolly, getting in a little both-sides after predicting the end of the trump presidency and the death of the GOP, just said “the [Meuller] investigation has moved to Podesta”

    Brian Williams just lets it ride

  38. 38.

    jl

    After thinking about it, I think announcements of several months old guilty pleas really make the indictments special.
    Like a really good wine pairing with a gourmet dish (and since I know very little about wine or gourmet dishes, they mean a lot to me);

    I hope for more of those on the Mueller tasting menu, as we head for the play-offs.

  40. 40.

    Millard Filmore

    @lamh36: Melbourne is a nice city. Their streetcar system is nice. Try to go off to the St Kilda neighborhood. When I was there a few decades ago they had a restaurant in one of the trolleys. Some of their older generation trolley cars have been saved and run on San Francisco’s Market Street line.

    http://tramrestaurant.com.au/

  42. 42.

    opiejeanne

    @lamh36: For that price??? What airline? The deals I’m seeing on Priceline are all within the US. Obviously I’m not looking correctly.

  43. 43.

    Jack Canuck

    @lamh36: I’ve been living in Melbourne for 11 years now. Not as fancy as Sydney with the bridge and opera house, but arguably Australia’s best city in cultural and artistic terms. And with some beautiful countryside nearby too. May should be good – bring some warmer clothes, but it’s a good time to be here.

  45. 45.

    randy khan

    Hillary seems to be having some fun with this. I’m really glad to see she’s worked through what happened enough that she can do this.*

    She’s willing to trade.

    *This is not to say that I think she’s past what happened – I wouldn’t be – just that she can take this kind of light-hearted (but with a shiv) approach in public.

  46. 46.

    lamh36

    @opiejeanne: it wa some of those flash sales. My friend called and booked it hours ago…and they go quick.

    Delta for the US flights and Virgin for the Australia leg. The price is cause of the weird route taken. DFW-ATL-LAX-MEL…and vice versa. So while lot of flying but a10 night trip…so still a great deal.

    Flights from NOLA to DFW are pretty cheap

    ETA: It will be me, my friend and probably her husband!

  49. 49.

    Cacti

    From now on, Dotard’s staff will all be giving each other the side eye and wondering who’s already squealed.

    I heart.

  53. 53.

    sukabi

    @(((CassandraLeo))): that won’t leak until there’s no way Drumpf remains in office… If they were going to leak it to do damage it would already have leaked. It’ll be part of a pile on of every horrible thing he’s ever said or done.

  54. 54.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Mnemosyne:

    Just make sure to stay out of the ocean. Between the copper sharks, the poisonous octopuses, and the fatal jellyfish, it’s just not worth it.

    Great point. Also, stay off land. Between the giant spiders, venomous snakes, and rabid dingos, it’s just not worth it.

  59. 59.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @sukabi: Sadly, I suspect you’re probably right. I still think there’s an outside chance that at some point some enterprising hacker will get fed up and obtains a copy shall we say, outside methods. But of course, that depends upon them being able to locate a source.

  60. 60.

    Petorado

    If things keep heading in the right direction, I’m thinking the solution to all the Civil War monuments is that they be converted to Robert Mueller monuments for the guy who worked to save the nation from destruction – again. He can even be on a horse and waving a sword for those heritage buffs.

  61. 61.

    CaseyL

    @lamh36: That is an amazing deal, and what a good friend she is, to do that quickie loan!

    I went to AU back in 2010, and loved every moment of it. Fell in love with Melbourne: just the right size of city, with wonderful funky neighborhoods, great wineries, and mind-bogglingly clean streets. Sydney – I tried hard not to fall in love with Sydney, because everyone loves Sydney, but it was no use. I fell for Sydney. The Opera House is so gorgeous that, no exaggeration, I burst into tears looking at it.

    You mentioned Perth… are you going to West Australia, too? How long will your whole trip be? Will you have time to check out the Outback/Ularu?

    Have a GREAT time!

  62. 62.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @Major Major Major Major: you forgot the toads.

    No toads in Melbourne, too bloody cold.

    No risk of going in the water in May either, unless you are part polar bear.

    @Omnes Omnibus: Drop bears. And Aussie ruggers.

    No ruggers either, it’s all aerial ping pong.

    The drop bears are a real problem though. Since they hunt by scent, the best way to avoid them is to smear yourself with vegemite so that they can’t detect your odour.

  65. 65.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Viva BrisVegas: Oh bullshit, I have seen your team get rolled by the All-Blacks.*

    *Unless you are talking about teams’ unwillingness to run with the ball and instead rely on someone’s boot.

  67. 67.

    Suzanne

    So I checked out Breitbart today. Their main page is staggering in its level of denial. I am tempted to go hate-read the comments.

  68. 68.

    Major Major Major Major

    So I was just at a game night that bummed me out because a few of the people there were doing like performative Hillary-bashing in front of what they thought was a like-minded crowd but turned out not to be. I see this with some of my peripheral friends, and I guess they must only talk to other assholes about politics. One of them was surprised to learn that in the primary Bernie did not win San Francisco (everybody he knew voted for Bernie of course, though I pointed out that maybe the Hillary voters just weren’t very loud about it).

    Anyway, that sucked. I left early.

    ETA: As Baud! likes to say, how you treat Hillary is a good litmus test. I knew I didn’t have a lot of respect for them going into the evening, so…

  70. 70.

    Mai.naem.mobile

    I dont know much about wire technology but wouldn’t Papadopolus be patted down or have the wand waved around his body and catch the wire when he went to the WH? I am imagining movie type wires so whatevs. I would think he would have to wear the wire in social settings or at restaurants/bars/Starbucks’ meetings with colleagues outside the WH.

  71. 71.

    Pete Downunder

    @lamh36:
    I’m an ex pat living in Brisbane and have some notes about Australia for visiting Americans which I would be happy to share with you. Have a front pager give you my email and I’ll send them. In the meantime read Bill Bryson’s “In a Sunburned Country”. Great fun and good intro to the land Downunder.

  74. 74.

    smintheus

    @Major Major Major Major: Based on a confused premise. It assumes that the WaPo story this summer involved Trumplings leaking Papadopoulos’ emails to the press in order to discredit him. But I believe the emails became public because a Congressional committee received them.

  76. 76.

    Pete Downunder

    AL – I see Iamh36 went off line, can you send her my comment at 71 and my email addy. Thanks

  77. 77.

    Chet Murthy

    @Mai.naem.mobile: *cough* everybody carries a smartphone, and it takes serious tech chops to deduce that a phone is recording “all the time”. And it don’t take much memory to hold days’ worth of audio recordings ….. and I haven’t even gotten into the possibilities of bluetooth mics in a propitious location for good audio reception.

    ETA: I’m sure all of us have experienced the difference in quality between “shitty earbuds+mic” and “the phone’s mic”. I can attest that there’s another leap up to “excellent earbuds+mic”. And I gotta believe that there are even better microphones out there, as well, as simple signal-processing tech to remove background noise. So yeah, it’s as simple as “everybody carries a smartphone”. I mean, Mana-fucker & Co use FB Messenger — not like they were thinkin’ about Faraday cages and such.

  79. 79.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @lamh36:
    My impression, from watching Kelly vs what I’ve heard about him, is that he hid his racism really well because the military required it. Now that he’s been given a job where it can frolic freely, people who only saw his good side are finding out something repulsive was under the lid.

  80. 80.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et Al.)

    Am I the only one who thinks that Sean Hannity is looking more and more like Rush Limbaugh with more hair?

  81. 81.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Frankensteinbeck: I’m somewhat encouraged by the broad and negative reaction to Kelly’s comments I’m seeing on twitter. Stuart Stevens links to Adam Serwer’s piece from a year or so ago about he myth of Robert E Lee

  82. 82.

    bluehill

    Kind of related to all this Russia stuff. I remember in the closing days of the election, the Trump campaign openly talking about their “major voter suppression” effort. I think I was struck by how brazen they were in openly admitting what they were doing (as well being undemocratic). It seemed at the time to go beyond their normal negative campaign tactics. Of course now we have some more insight into how they were able to be so effective. However, I found this article from back then and was amazed how much the campaign revealed at the time it was occurring.

    Senior Trump campaign officials told Bloomberg News they are using targeted radio spots, social media posts, and campaign events in neighborhoods of color to push messages they think will discourage voting in those demographics. Namely, they hope that invoking the machinations described in the Clinton campaigns leaked e-mails will turn off progressives, that dredging up decades-old sexual assault accusations against Bill Clinton will turn off women, and reminders that Hillary Clinton referred to some black teenagers as “superpredators” in the 1990s will turn off African Americans.

    The latter strategy, reportedly led by Breitbart’s Steve Bannon, is “a below-the-radar effort to discourage infrequent black voters from showing up at the polls — particularly in Florida.” The campaign is planning a barrage of Facebook “dark posts” with the “superpredators” message targeted at likely Clinton voters.

    Rather than attempting to win their votes for Donald Trump, the campaign hopes these voters will not vote all.

  83. 83.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @Omnes Omnibus: Talking about Melbourne. Down there they don’t know Rugby from Jai alai. They are obsessed with aerial ping pong, aka Australian Rules Football. Nothing else matters.

    As for the Wallabies, they are basically in crisis because they are the number four football code in the country and shrinking by the day.

    If you want to see some ball running, try the NSW vs Queensland State of Origin Rugby League.

  85. 85.

    Aleta

    Will Manafort be able to delay and drag his case out in court? Or is this type of prosecution immune to those shenanegains ? Will he have access to all his money in the US (to get and keep the best lawyers) or can they try to freeze it early on by starting out with evidence of laundering? Was he prevented from leaving the country before today? If not, did he stick around so he wouldn’t lose his assets here? I wonder if he feels confident of his chances or trapped right now.

  87. 87.

    bluehill

    @Aleta: I also wonder what kind of pressure he’s feeling on the other side. The Russians have made it pretty clear that they are willing to silence potential leaks.

  90. 90.

    Anne Laurie

    @Aleta:

    Will he have access to all his money in the US (to get and keep the best lawyers) or can they try to freeze it early on by starting out with evidence of laundering?

    What I’m seeing — and I’m sure we’ll hear much more about this — is that Manafort & his wife are actually pretty broke right now. Most of those millions being discussed was money they (are said to have) laundered, and whatever cut they got seems to have been… not invested wisely.

    So… current narrative: They’re broke, they’ve got a lot of “investment property” that’s underwater / needs expensive renovation, and the Feds have taken away Paul’s passport. Plus, if he (they) did make a break for the border, they’d need to find someplace Putin’s assassins couldn’t follow. Some lawyer folks are guessing that Paul has been told that the degree of his cooperation will be weighed when it comes to considering charges against his wife — ditto, the degree to which he’s protected.

    Kinda like Javanka, only Manafort’s an experienced professional, not an overconfident amateur.

  91. 91.

    jl

    @Aleta: Might be a case of ‘who cares?’ in terms of practical effects, if not justice being done to Manafort. We have a guilty plea that seems much more germane to the main issue, and in concentrating attention on Congress of vital issue of keeping it from happening again.

    It would almost be too good to be true if a lot the case was wrapped in plea deals that take place weeks before they are made public. But that seems to be what happened today. I think the plea deal announced today is making the Trumpsters more panicky than the indictment.

  92. 92.

    jl

    @bluehill: GOP has tried to do that kind of voter suppression for a long time. I think that tactic is here to stay, and Dems have to learn how effectively counter it. Mueller could put the whole raft of Trumpsters and Pence and a chunk of GOP establishment out of business, and that kind of voter suppression would still happen.

  95. 95.

    moops

    I’m pretty sure Manafort is under house arrest as a condition of his bail. The bail probably cleaned out the families liquid assets.

  96. 96.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @Chet Murthy: And storage is only even a question if the recordings aren’t just uploaded straight into the cloud, also, too. Given how thorough Bobby Three Sticks has been throughout this investigation, I’m actually almost certain that’s what was happening if they were using a smartphone to record – that way, even if it’s physically destroyed, they still have the recordings.

  97. 97.

    opiejeanne

    @lamh36: That is awesome. Sorry this is so late but I was transfixed by Rachel Maddow and then Lawrence O’Donnell. The only thing I didn’t like tonight on The Last Word was the Republican from The Daily Beast, who got the last word. Partisan and in denial to the end. Ugh. I doubt that Lawrence has him on again very soon. The other guests on both shows, both Republicans and Democrats were very good. Steve Schmidt was adamant that no Republican that he’d ever worked for nor any Democrat that he’d worked against would ever have allowed this stuff on their teams. He was pretty forceful about how disgusted he was with the Trump organization.

  99. 99.

    bjacques

    @lamh36: That’s fantastic! Congrats! The missus is from there, so now I’ve been there 4 times. We ususally stay in Carlton. Only went to Sydney once, but I’m liking Melbourne better. Lots to do there, great museum (NGA). Great parks. There’s an antique tram that does a circle through the Central Business District, and that’s free. North Melbourne (Fitzroy) is the hipster district, though they’ve been mostly priced out because real estate is insane. But have a coffee at Mario’s (Brunswick, above Johnston St.).

    Royal Exhibition Building, from 1880. The largest freestanding wooden building in the world I think, patterned somewhat after the Crystal Palace. Sydney had one, but it burned down.

    City Basement Books, great used bookstore along the train station, Spencer St near Bond Street.

    I thought Glenn Greenwald was Lord Haw Haw.

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