We’re just going to leave this here today pic.twitter.com/WkFVQ4BzIf
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) July 13, 2018
Have been out of pocket all day and have just finished reading the indictment and I can’t believe Trump is still going to meet Putin afterwards. The message to Putin is clear: I believe you, not my own judicial system.
— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) July 14, 2018
Trump on his summit with Putin: "I’m not going in with high expectations but we may come out with some very surprising things."
— Paul Danahar (@pdanahar) July 13, 2018
Intel gathered by US officials captured some of the Russians accused in today’s indictments congratulating each other and celebrating the success of their operation during the campaign. They were also captured celebrating Trump's victory, source tells CNN https://t.co/xi9M1K7R35 pic.twitter.com/Mhg0xp4BT8
— The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) July 13, 2018
And that was the test. Moscow wanted to see if he really was the scummy, nothing sacred, cut every corner gangster he seemed to be, or if it was just an act. If their quasi-deniable lawyer left the building without handcuffs, they knew Trump would play ball.
— zeddy (@Zeddary) July 13, 2018
Not getting enough attention. Trump criticized the Russia investigation today for hurting our relationship with Russia. Soon after, Rosenstein made it clear that Trump was briefed on the new indictments of Russians for attacking the US "earlier this week" pic.twitter.com/hi32fK5RvQ
— Josh Schwerin (@JoshSchwerin) July 13, 2018
They’ll be alone. Trump probably won’t even bring it up. If trump knew earlier in the week, he relayed it to Putin.
— Gilda Stahl (@StahlGilda) July 13, 2018
I asked 16 different former US officials who have dealt with Russia summits for every president since Reagan about this Putin – Trump summit. They are pretty terrified… https://t.co/9kKOr4OigZ
— Susan Glasser (@sbg1) July 13, 2018
… On Monday, in Helsinki, Trump will have his long-awaited summit with the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, a meeting he has personally pursued over the cautions of his advisers and despite the long political shadow of alleged Russian influence over his 2016 campaign. Beyond the allure of aggrandizement and President Trump’s affinity for the Russian strongman, why the meeting is taking place now remains a mystery. Is the purpose to discuss arms control? Syria? Ukraine? To rehash the 2016 election? Remarkably, it’s not clear, and that in and of itself marks this as a most unusual summit…
There is no agreed-upon substantive agenda for the meeting, as Trump himself confirmed on Thursday, and the session will take place only a couple weeks after the date was finalized. The sum total of the preparation was a single trip by Trump’s national-security adviser, John Bolton, to Moscow. He came out of the trip with none of the “deliverables” typically determined in advance of such high-level summits. (“The meeting is the deliverable,” the Russians apparently told Bolton.) Few details about the summit have been released by the White House, given Trump’s penchant for last-minute changes, but as of now it appears that it will be a four-hour affair (rather than the seven hours requested by the Kremlin), with a lengthy one-on-one between Trump and Putin first, followed by an expanded meeting to include Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman. Fiona Hill, the top National Security Council adviser for Russia, isn’t going to be in the meeting, though a White House official told me she was going to be on the ground in Finland, and even a talked-about preparatory session between Pompeo and the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, is not going to happen. According to current and former officials, Bolton’s N.S.C. has not had a single principals-level meeting to discuss Russia policy or the plans for the summit in advance of what will certainly be one of the most important sessions of Trump’s Presidency.… During the past few days, I’ve asked sixteen former U.S. government officials who have worked with every American President going back to Ronald Reagan, including a former national-security adviser, four U.S. Ambassadors to Russia, the former top U.S. national intelligence officer for Russia, and two Deputy Secretaries of State, about summit preparation. The former officials, who often disagree about Russia, do not now: they are as united as I’ve ever heard them, in nearly two decades of Russia-watching, that there is no historical precedent for Trump’s meeting with Putin. Especially concerning is the fact that the U.S. government is headed into such a summit with a degraded and disregarded policy apparatus that has been systematically marginalized and excluded from the President’s actual foreign policy. Many of the former officials told me they were genuinely alarmed at the hostile state of relations between Russia and the United States, a state of affairs almost invariably described these days as the worst since the Cold War, and said they would welcome a productive face-to-face meeting between the two leaders. But few expect that to be the case…
All of which is why, in the end, even those most supportive of talking with Putin right now seem to be hoping that not much of anything will come out of the meeting. Strobe Talbott, Bill Clinton’s Deputy Secretary of State, who was there for Putin’s very first meeting as President with his U.S. counterpart, wondered if Bolton can rein Trump in from “buddy-buddy stuff with Putin” or stop him “from even hinting that Crimea annexation is O.K.” Stephen Hadley, George W. Bush’s national-security adviser during his second term, put the “best” case this way: “There is no blowup or love fest, there are no major concessions, and the two leaders agree on a few very modest steps to restore relations between the two countries.” Sarah Mendelson, a senior Obama appointee with extensive Russia experience, was even more succinct. Her best case: “Nothing of significance is said or done.”…
You know what I think our best hope is, right now? Putin could suddenly refuse to meet with his puppet — tell the world that he and Mother Russia feel disrespected by Lord Smallgloves’ inability to rein in his unruly American subjects and ‘fake news’ media. (Not at all the way these things are done under Putin’s regime!)
Imagine Dear Leader Donny Dollhand’s impotent flailing at such a turn, especially if Vlad times his announcement until Trump’s already in Helsinki! It would be an epic, history-making troll from this trollish era’s Trollmaster… but, tragically, there’s probably too much Putin and his oligarchs expect to extract from Trump’s flabby trash-nourished carcass for that to actually happen.
Davebo
Not likely. Don will show up for his scheduled annual review and who knows? He could get a big production bonus after NATO meeting.
Platonailedit
Agenda, shmengda.
The corrupt puppet does what the corrupt puppeteer wants.
Mary G
I wish there was one patriot closed enough to the president to drop a bug in his pocket so we could find out what’s going on in there.
SiubhanDuinne
Hillary was a fucking Nostradamus.
Platonailedit
The entire party is treasonous colluders.
oatler.
Let him savor memory of Putin’s hospitality while he stands at the gallows.
Mike J
I saw a really smart and good looking person on twitter say this:
Platonailedit
rk
I wish he falls down the steps of Air force I and cracks his worthless skull.
jl
” Putin could suddenly refuse to meet with his puppet — tell the world that he and Mother Russia feel disrespected by Lord Smallgloves’ inability to rein in his unruly American subjects and ‘fake news’ media. ”
Maybe Putin will cancel and announce that he is very disappointed with the product quality. He’ll meddle in the upcoming presidential election and hope a more competent flunky comes out of it.
sdhays
I am so sick and tired of people worrying about Trump “getting played by X”, especially Putin. He’s not getting played. He’s getting paid. He’s not being tricked into doing what he’s doing because he’s listening to the wrong people or just “misinformed”; he’s doing what he wants to do and doesn’t care about the consequences to other people. Trump doesn’t give one shit about this country. He has no concept of the “nation’s interest”, simply his own, which he views himself as synonymous with the nation, because he’s a (hopefully) delusional fascist and also quite stupid.
So, I wish the media would stop suggesting that he’s being led astray. He’s just horrible and doesn’t care about the things he’s supposed to care about, no matter how much we want him to because he is, in fact, the President.
SiubhanDuinne
I may well be misremembering, but didn’t we see an almost identically-worded warning re North Korea from an experienced DPRK-watcher just days before the Kim-Trump meeting in Singapore? And just look how well that lack of preparation worked out!
Corner Stone
@SiubhanDuinne: HRC had a lot of information. It’s not really debatable that the Obama admin had much more.
Mary G
Pretty horrifying – they are moving the asylum seekers and when RAICES advocates tried to follow the bus, they were pulled over by the police.
West of the Rockies
@Platonailedit:
Diamond and Silk… How about Knucklehead and Dumbass? So many conservative idiots in the world, so few dunce caps.
SiubhanDuinne
@Corner Stone:
Oh, I know. I was thinking more about the timing, the way everything she said in that clip is all coming together in a period of just a few days: sledgehammer to NATO (and individual European allies), private meeting with Putin, and today’s announcement of the Russian indictments.
Yarrow
@SiubhanDuinne: I think she was more Cassandra. No one believed her.
West of the Rockies
@West of the Rockies:
Still, for my money, Hannity has the IQ of a box of rancid lard.
joel hanes
@West of the Rockies:
too kind to Hannity
Yarrow
From the post:
This sort of analysis drives me crazy. Putin wasn’t testing Trump to see if he’d play ball. The Russians already knew he would do what they told him to do because they own him. They were telling him how it was going to work. He wouldn’t turn them in and “foil a foreign plot” because he’d be writing his own death warrant.
It’s frustrating how limited people’s understanding of this issue is. It’s not like Trump’s relationship with Russia just started during the campaign. It’s all out there in public documents and goes back to 1987 and really picks up steam in the early 1990’s. It’s not even that hard to find. I fail to understand why this is so hard for people to grasp.
Major Major Major Major
@Mike J: “really smart and good looking person”
And such a clever emoji pun in his handle!
sdhays
@Yarrow: There was plenty in the public record at that point for anyone paying attention to know that she wasn’t making things up, but the media just wouldn’t go there. They still won’t. After all, she had a personal email server, which is just as bad.
The mainstream media report Trump’s thinly-veiled calls for people to beat and kill them as “Trump says media bad, Republicans agree, Democrats cluck their tongues”. They can’t even be bothered to worry about their own personal survival, let alone the Republic’s!
tobie
@Yarrow: I will go to my grave bitter Hillary’s integrity was impugned from all sides, left and right. Kay said in an earlier thread that Assange was first enlisted to turn leftists against HRC. It worked. Wikileaks release of cherry picked emails on the eve of the convention in Philadelphia ensured the party didn’t come together.
sdhays
@Yarrow: Yes, they knew that Trump (and Manafort) was on board. At most, they were testing how much the other people in the campaign would go along. The answer turned out to be: everyone was super stoked by the opportunity to commit treason.
SiubhanDuinne
@Yarrow:
You are right. Cassandra it is.
West of the Rockies
@joel hanes:
Why I gotta be so mean to lard?
Major Major Major Major
@SiubhanDuinne: Cassandra was shrill, you see.
EBT
I have made it safely to Colorado!
An ER visit turned a 17 hour trip in to a 29 hour trip.
Fucking Reno.
Plaonailedit
Yup. That’s where the entire rethugs party is.
Platonailedit
Retry
Yup. That’s where the entire rethugs party is.
Major Major Major Major
@EBT: ack! But yay!
Yarrow
@tobie: Assange is a Russian asset and has been from the beginning. Same with Snowden. They definitely got leftists on board with their supposed goals and then were useful to convince leftists that HRC wasn’t trustworthy.
@sdhays: I’d guess the more accurate answer is that everyone in the campaign was super concerned about their illegal and ethically and morally questionable activities being splashed all over the news. Also, concerned for their own personal safety and that of their families. Russians don’t mess around. So treason seemed like a better option.
Platonailedit
Villago Delenda Est
@tobie: This is why when Ecuador finally kicks Assange’s ass out, I hope MI6 grabs him and we never hear from him again.
SiubhanDuinne
@EBT:
Oh no! Hope everything’s okay now.
The Dangerman
@sdhays:
It was all a big “Pay Me” thing; Trump would lose and go and start a Television station. Everyone would have gotten paid.
I wonder what would have happened in the Alternate Universe if HRC had won; sure, Trump would a screamed rigged, but nothing would have come of it. Not even a Mueller investigation as Comey wouldn’t have been fired. Or maybe HRC is so pissed at Comey she fires him; I don’t think so, but maybe.
The Trumps and their sick sycophants would have had their payday and no one would have known about this shit.
EBT
Hahaha rip Maryland
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1017895277884305408?s=19
Yarrow
@The Dangerman: Mueller is so far along in the investigation because Comey was well into it before he was fired. I don’t think nothing would have come out.
Yarrow
@EBT: Hope you are okay now.
YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S)
OT rant. I have a problem with the current labeling of Fox as State TV. It is not. If the powers that be change parties it will be anti-state instantly. They are pro-State today, pro-Trump today, pro-GOP most of the time (save Never Trump or other RINO heretics) They are Cult-tv for the ConservaCult always in service to the Oligarchs.
Major Major Major Major
@YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S): right, but it’s best understood as “state tv” for the imaginary state republicans want everybody to think they live in.
EBT
@SiubhanDuinne: yes, an infected tooth cropped up and between ER, sleeping by the road and stress tax to time, was just very long.
Yarrow
This made me laugh. i can just imagine it going down like this.
Archon
Trump is going to a performance review with his supervisor, plain and simple.
The Dangerman
@Yarrow:
OK, Comey continues to investigate, but there is no Special Counsel. HRC would have done the same thing Obama did (look forward, not back, which, BTW was , by far, the worst thing Obama ever did). We would be in our 3rd or 4th Benghazi hearing by now so that would be one monster distraction. It may have come out, but it would have elicited mostly yawns. I think.
YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S)
@Major Major Major Major:
This is the problem. It feeds into the idea the the party is the state. It reinforces the very concept that Fox wants to foist on us.
Yarrow
We’re living in bizarro world.
NotMax
And when Putin says, “Of course I did it, dummy. What do you think all that Russian money was for? Apartments? Hah! You’re bought and paid for, sluga.” – what then?
efgoldman
@Yarrow:
It, like always wrong Bill, is beyond redemption
YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S)
@The Dangerman: If Hillary had won and the congress was roughly the same R controlled number, it would have been gridlock at best but more likely Bill Clinton impeachment fever on steroids. No conviction likely but not much progress either. Perhaps the FBI would have gone on with the investigation, but on a lower priority if it didn’t overturn the election.
ETA and I suspect Comey would be fine with that outcome.
Platonailedit
@The Dangerman:
In a way the traitorous thug’s ‘election’ has shown how hollowed out the whole ‘checks and balances’ shtick really is.
The Dangerman
@YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S):
Agree on gridlock; not sure about impeachment. Hillary would have been investigated for everything, including using too many squares of toilet paper when she wiped, but actual impeachment would have boomeranged. No chance she would have got her USSC pick seated. Assuming roughly similar Congressional outcome.
efgoldman
@YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S):
Likely McTurtle would have refused to confirm any judges, from the district courts up to SCOTUS; the entire cabinet would probably be acting secretaries, same reason. There would have been no legislating at all – they wouldn’t have “reformed” ACA or taxes. Well they would have, she’d have veto’d them. The big difference would be in the agencies (EPA, etc) which wouldn’t be dismantling anything with Obama’s fingerprints.
OTOH, people wouldn’t be so pissed off and we might not be looking at the electoral outcomes we want in November.
Hitlesswonder
@Major Major Major Major: Comment rec’d. Thumbed up. Liked. Works on multiple levels, as it evokes the Greek tragedy of the current circumstances.
NotMax
So the Queen has now survived both an Annus Horribilus and a Manus Horribilus.
NotMax
@NotMax
Alternative, without the fractured Latin.
So the Queen has now survived both an Annus Horribilus and an Anus Horribilus.
Yarrow
@NotMax: Trump will fold like he always does. He knows who’s boss.
NotMax
FYI.
Thrifty? Prefer to view it as a deliberate and a finespun, oh so subtle snub.
NotMax
@Yarrow
Would like to see Putin standing side by side with Dolt 45 at the press/photo thing, attired under his jacket in a T-shirt with “I’m With Stupid” (in Cyrillic) and the arrow on it.
:)
JGabriel
Susan B. Glasser @ The New Yorker:
It’s taking place now because Putin wants it to. He wants to show the world, especially Europe and especially Americans, that Trump will reliably choose to serve Putin’s agenda over America’s interests.
Major Major Major Major
@Hitlesswonder: well thanks, I’m pretty chuffed somebody liked it.
Yarrow
@Major Major Major Major: Do I get partial credit for the Cassandra part?
I said Hillary was like Cassandra once before here and people told me I was wrong. Curious why it’s different now.
@NotMax: Oh, the photo op with the flags. I hadn’t thought of that. Of course that will happen. I doubt Putin will wear a shirt like that, but I’d expect that people who know about Russia will pick up on certain things that the rest of us will miss.
sukabi
@Mary G: you can bet the CIA, NSA, and all the international alphabet agencies will be listening.
NotMax
Pillow talk tonight in the palace.
PHILIP: So, Lizziekins, how was it today?
ELIZABETH: Shut up and pour me another drink. Make it a double.
Hitlesswonder
@Yarrow: if it’s up to me, I absolutely think you should get credit. Whomever said you were wrong must have lacked the liberal education to appreciate the observation. This truly is a first as tragedy second as farce situation.
Yarrow
@Hitlesswonder: I was kind of surprised people told me I was wrong. They had reasons but I can’t remember what they were. I thought it was pretty accurate. Hillary must have felt like she was screaming into the wind. No one listened to her. No one believed her. I get angry just thinking about it.
Yarrow
I missed this earlier.
Gingrich has always been such an asshole. Wonder what his Russian connection is. Maybe he’s scared we’ll find out.
Aleta
A possible way investigators might use to connect Kushner to the Russian DNC hacks?
Foreign Policy, November 2017. How Jared Kushner’s Newspaper Became a Favorite Outlet for WikiLeaks Election Hacks by Jenna McLaughlin (TPM also mentions a story in progress related to this subject in its Prime today.)
The Observer’s last print edition was on Nov. 9, 2016. Kurson stepped down as editor in chief in May, and no replacement (was) named or (ever) listed on the masthead.
Major Major Major Major
@Yarrow: couldn’t have done it without you!
Yarrow
@Major Major Major Major: LOL. Thanks!
John Revolta
@Aleta: The Observer was a really good paper way back when.
Another reason to hate this festering boil of a family.
Quinerly
@NotMax: Did you catch where the article listed Trump’s age at 82?
Quinerly
@NotMax: Did you catch where the article listed Trump’s age at 82?
joel hanes
@Yarrow:
Hillary must have felt like she was screaming into the wind. No one listened to her. No one believed her.
Being a woman, she might well be wearily accustomed to that phenomenon.
We’re learning that many of the Me Too victims made complaints, sometimes for years, and were ignored.
Aleta
@Aleta: Surely it’s a coincidental pattern, but
NYT in May 2018
And from Wiki, some of his work before The New York Observer:
Mike G
He’s going to sell Alaska back to Russia at the original price?
Aleta
Wealthy associate of Pence who influenced the pardons for the Hammonds (the Ore. ranchers). Buzzfeed.
Wyatt Derp
@West of the Rockies:
Insult to rancid lard. Remember, at one point rancid lard was just lard, and therefore had some use.
rikyrah
@Mary G:
This is absolutely ridiculous ? ?
Villago Delenda Est
@Platonailedit: Checks and Balances under our Constitution assumes that all parties are operating in good faith.
This, it turns out, was a very poor assumption. It does not take into account a political party devoted to seizing power at all costs for the benefit of a very small fraction of the populace that is consumed by greed…for money, and for power itself.
The GOP must be destroyed, just as the NSDAP was.
jharp
“why the meeting is taking place now remains a mystery”
Maybe Trump will depart Finland with Putin and never return to the U. S.
To be honest I would not be stunned by it.
Ruckus
@jharp:
Why would drumpf’s owner take him away? He’s getting what he paid for, a completely devided opponent, who was far more important/powerful than him and is now far weaker and having to look inward rather than outward. Sure, it may not work in the end but nothing else was either and how many other chances/choices did he have?
Citizen Alan
@Yarrow:
Actually, I would bet good money that shitgibbon check his phone at least once while in the Queen’s presents. I’m still amazed he didn’t tweet something between slurps of tea.
The Midnight Lurker
Guys… please explain to an old man what Putin’s next move is, because it seems to me, that he and Donnie have painted themselves into quite a corner.
No One You Know
@The Dangerman: For some reason, this reminded me of the Kwiesat Hadderach in Dune arriving too early by a generation.
I wonder how ready Putin really was for this. Opportunistic benefit, sure. But surely the trap was meant to be sprung once both parties had been compromised, so that it wouldn’t matter who won any future election. As it stands, the GOP is clearly identifiable as the pro-Russian party.
I’m not being Pollyanna.
Ruckus
@The Midnight Lurker:
Vlad’s next move?
He has painted himself into a corner. But that’s a better place than he was in. This is a world sized 3D chess board. His next move depends on a lot of things that he doesn’t control. He might/probably will fail with all of this, dictators usually do, because while they are powerful in their own country, they usually aren’t at all anywhere else. Vlad is trying here not to only make his enemy look bad, he’s trying to forge a take over of us from within. He’s nowhere near strong enough to do this conventionally, he has to weaken us greatly and from the inside to have any chance of making this work. One piece of the puzzle is to make us wreck our own government. Half of us are doing that, even if they are too stupid to know that. They elected a fucking moron for the job, because a useless failure is a pretty good start to wreck a government.
Think of this from the point of an “ex” KGB officer with an iron grip on his countries government and resources, more money than necessary. Start from there and work forward. You won’t like what you see.