Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

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

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

This chaos was totally avoidable.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Late Night Open Thread: Mueller Trial, Day One

Late Night Open Thread: Mueller Trial, Day One

by | 40 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,

Per TPM:

… The opening day of trial took off like a shot, with jury selection done by early afternoon, opening statements over in an hour and the first witness called and cross examined, all before 6 p.m. ET.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis made a point to move the proceedings along as quickly as possible, appearing frustrated with the lawyers if it seemed that they were taking too long…

During his testimony, Devine revealed that he earned $500,000 as part of a 2009 consulting agreement for his work on Viktor Yanukovych’s 2010 presidential run in Ukraine. Devine also revealed that he earned an additional $100,000 after Yanukovych won the election in 2010. Devine said that his firm was paid by Manafort’s company via wire transfer but that he was unsure whether it was from a foreign bank account…

Extremely comprehensive coverage at the link below:


Reader Interactions

40Comments

  4. 4.

    SenyorDave

    I have this feeling that we are truly living an alternate reality. At this point there is no possible reason that a person could support and BELIEVE Trump unless you buy into his fake news 100%. And 40% of the population approves of his job. If he is president one year from now I have to think we have failed as a nation.

  6. 6.

    Sister Golden Bear

    Checking in, as requested in a thread downstairs….

    Little harder posting than expected due to the time difference here in Thailand.

    First couple days after being released from the hospital have been tough. Not quite enough painkillers— long story — which has taken longer to resolve because it’s been a four-day holiday weekend here. So dilation has been an extra pain.

    But had an official check up and apparently I’m healing well. Was judged healthy enough to be invited to a field trip today to the surgeon’s beachhouse (mansion). Had some lunch and waiting for a Thai massage later on. If nothing else, it’s a nice psychological break from being stuck around the hotel recovering.

    BTW, for those who want to know more (including TMI details, I’ve been blogging at the site linked to my nym).

  7. 7.

    West of the Rockies

    @SenyorDave:

    I often feel similarly…

    The people who still support this disgrace of a human being are some mix of the following:

    Mentally incompetent, willfully ignorant, genuinely stupid, racist, bigoted, greedy, and/or so utterly invested that they refuse to see they were duped, refuse to admit they were wrong.

    It’s quite disheartening.

  13. 13.

    Platonailedit

    Trump is headed to Tampa for one of his toxic rallies.Expect him to say inflammatory and terrible thingsAnd lie.While you'll want to react…DON'T FORGET HIS CAMPAIGN CHAIRMAN'S TRIAL STARTS THE SAME DAY.He's trying to eat the news cycle.Don't let him.#ManafortTrial— Steve Marmel (@Marmel) July 30, 2018

  14. 14.

    hervevillechaizelounge

    @M. Bouffant:

    If Tad Devine worked for Manafort, propping up Yanukovych, can we assume that the Sanders campaign was a Russian operation as well?

    Sorry, our media only projectile vomits both-sides talking points; there are never any conclusions drawn or investigations conducted. Whichever pundit shouts the loudest wins.

    I was watching a Watergate documentary last night (my personal pornography) and Bernstein mentioned “triangulating” information—the current press won’t even draw the most obvious conclusion unless they can spin it into a both-sides narrative.

    I’m glad journalists get showered with hate at Trump rallies; let them reap the ignorance and vapidity they’ve sown.

  15. 15.

    Amir Khalid

    Chris Cillizza maintains at the CNN site that Trump and Giuliani are in a PR battle with Robert Mueller, not a legal one. Cillizza argues that they will win this battle, because (1) they are saying many many words in public, laying out the case for Trump’s innocence not-guilt; and (2) cleverly pushing the buttons on Trump’s fan base, whereas Mueller is (1) silent, ceding to them the war of words; (2) not convinced he has authority to prosecute POTUS; and (3) has no fan base.
    I leave analysis of Cillizza’s claim to the experts among the jackals.

  18. 18.

    Cermet

    Remember Jackals, there are two sides on the opinion of criminal justice in this country: liberal where we believe the system needs to work to its end before we pass judgement and Conservative where if you are charged then you are guilty unless one is a white male who is wealthy enough to have “Plausible deniability” in which case, you are of course, falsely charged and innocent.

  19. 19.

    Ruckus

    @Amir Khalid:
    Well Chris, shitgibbon and rude may be in a PR campaign, but that really only works in elections. In a court PR is most likely less than useless. Especially if the PR geniuses are the ones here. What their PR campaign seems to be doing is pissing off more and more people as the days go by. That’s not in their favor. And their stupidity is just getting them in more jeopardy, simply because they are sooooo good at it.

  20. 20.

    Cermet

    @SenyorDave: what part of electing ray-gun by union democrats doesn’t make you realize we ‘failed as a nation’ long ago and this is just the obvious result? That LBJ didn’t call out the treason of Nixon and Kissinger was certainly a missed opportunity to have head off the failure.

  23. 23.

    joel hanes

    I’m on firefox 61.0.1 on Win 10
    After I post a comment, the next thing I see is a black-dominated version of what I suppose is the mobile site.
    If I refresh, I get back to the desktop computer version

  24. 24.

    joel hanes

    @SenyorDave:

    Much of real-world politics is accurately depicted in the waterhole conflict scenes in the first half hour of 2001, A Space Odyssey. The utterances achieve their desired effect without any claims to truth, or indeed without any semantic content at all.

  27. 27.

    SFAW

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Damn. Just realised I haven’t slept since July.

    I saw you in that X-Files episode. The makeup job was really good — you looked just like Tony Todd.

  29. 29.

    Montanareddog

    Devine said that his firm was paid by Manafort’s company via wire transfer but that he was unsure whether it was from a foreign bank account…

    I am surprised at and unnerved by this answer. It is not clear from the quote if the question was put by the prosecution or the defense. But, Mueller’s team would surely have been able to find this out. And it seems like an important point whether Manafort was paying his minions from foreign or domestic funds.

  30. 30.

    Anne Laurie

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Damn. Just realised I haven’t slept since July.

    And here I was thinking that was just me (and the Spousal Unit, although not for the same reasons)…

  32. 32.

    Anne Laurie

    @Montanareddog:

    I am surprised at and unnerved by this answer. It is not clear from the quote if the question was put by the prosecution or the defense. But, Mueller’s team would surely have been able to find this out. And it seems like an important point whether Manafort was paying his minions from foreign or domestic funds.

    I believe this falls under the old legal proverb ‘Never ask a question where you don’t already know the answer.’

    From everything we’ve been told, by experts, Mueller most surely knows what account Manafort used to pay Devine. Asking the question on the record, however, means Devine has to admit or pretend he didn’t know. If this turns out to be true, Devine was… not paying enough attention to his bookkeeping, which is a mistake for a cross-national political professional. But if it turns out Mueller already has evidence that Devine did know, well…

  34. 34.

    NYCMT

    @Montanareddog: I wouldn’t worry about the wire transfer question. There will be a forensic examiner who will testify to the origin of the transfer later.

  36. 36.

    Bobby Thomson

    @Amir Khalid: the grain of truth is that because of presidential immunity, this is a PR battle for impeachment votes. Cillizza is assuming, and not without cause, that masses will respond to repeated themes better than the facts and logic relevant in court. Putting out a marker that Mueller will fail is both lazy CW at this point and costless. If Mueller succeeds, most people will be so relieved they won’t care what predictions were made. If he fails, Cillizza can claim prescience.

  37. 37.

    dimmsdale

    @M. Bouffant: Not too long ago, when Marcy Wheeler broke the news about her outing a duplicitous source to the FBI, she in effect warned not to expect heroes, as the Mueller investigation unwinds. I’m doubtful that the GRU is so dumb that they didn’t realize the value of reeling in Democrats as well as Repubs. I’m steeling myself for what I think is an inevitable bombshell of bad news about one, or several, of our guys. I hope I’m wrong, but every time I read a comment like yours I go “Hmmmmm.” Fingers crossed!!

  39. 39.

    MomSense

    @M. Bouffant:

    Sanders admitted in a television interview, after the inauguration of shit for brains, that of course he knew that his campaign was benefiting from Russian meddling.

  40. 40.

    hugely

    @dimmsdale:

    I’m steeling myself for what I think is an inevitable bombshell of bad news about one, or several, of our guys.

    St Bernard is NOT one of ours

Comments are closed.