There are 17 investigations going on involving Donald Trump.
17
I’m assuming most of you have read the WaPo story about how the Russians manipulated social media. But I think large news media might have overlooked where they themselves were manipulated. Specifically in the comments sections of the articles they ran on the candidates in 2016. I’m convinced that those sections were swarmed regularly by Russian or Republican infiltrators. The narrative in the comments sections could be shaped within minutes, the swarmers liking and promoting that narrative, leaving readers thinking that they were outliers in their support of Clinton.
People don’t like feeling like they don’t belong. It makes them uncomfortable. It even happens to me. Oh heck yeah. I read those sections and started to think I had BO and bad breath and was an ugly old post menopausal unfuckable who couldn’t string two thoughts together in any rational manner. Not true, BTW, but so what if I am? Am I not a citizen with a vote, entitled to representation?
I mean, there we were, characterized by the NYTimes and it’s readers as unenthusiastic supporters who could barely gather the energy to shake our Geritol bottles at Hillary’s rallies.
Then I realized that that’s exactly what the swarmers have in mind. If they can make you feel bad about yourself, you project that onto your candidate and start to question your fealty. It’s not so much to get you to vote for the stale orange marshmallow peanut as to make you feel embarrassed to align yourself with the good guy.
It worked brilliantly. Being an outcast, an irrelevant outcast, is too painful for many people. They don’t want to broadcast their support.
It just made me dig in.
Anyway, he’s a crook. It was clear from the beginning that he doesn’t even see his supporters as human beings. He’s spent his life doing what he wanted, taking what he wanted, and getting away with it.
But Mueller has checkmated him. He’s spun out investigations to the southern district of New York, northern Virginia and DC. The New York AG is pursuing an investigation into his charity and business practices. Maryland is doing emoluments. There won’t be anywhere for him to hide. No amount of money will make it go away. His whole underwear drawer is about to be sorted through publicly.
17
He’s not getting away with it this time.
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I disagree with Rudy Giuliani that no one was robbed by the illegal payments to Daniels and McDougal that were intended to prevent Trump’s affairs from coming out days before the election.
We all were robbed of competence in government. We were robbed of our reputation, standing and influence in the world. Even the Trumpers were robbed. If they don’t know it yet, they soon will.
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Walk to work music:
We ain’t dead yet:
Filed under: General |
The Confluence 
Who can forget those both sides panels on CNN where trumpies could scream at the shocked and silenced Dems or where one Michael Cohen rose to fame with his “says who?” or Anderson mumbling his way weakly through what aboutism … on and on? Media was and is still a problem. Republicans do “crook” well on TV and elsewhere. I hope trump and all his enablers get caught and the party gets decimated.
On Morning Joe right now: GOP launches effort to expand trump’s base.
OHH… OHH..ohh 17, obviously this information comes from Q
emptywheel is peeling the stinky onion peel by peel…
I am not an empty wheel fan. During the 2016 campaign season, she went out of her way to make HRC sound like a criminal over that damn email server. No, seriously, I was majorly pissed off to the point that I unfollowed her on Twitter. There was no reasoning with her. She had no sense of perspective or relevance. As far as she was concerned, Hillary was as bad and corrupt as Trump. I got sick of reading her cheer on the NYTimes for their email obsession.
I think that investigations are emptywheel’s gimmick. She obviously has more time to spend on this than most of us have. But there are other people who are just as good or better.
RD, thanks for letting me know. I don’t know the history of some of these characters. As you know, I value loyalty and perspective more when it comes to Hillary and avoid the people who have betrayed her. I will avoid emptywheel from now on. Related to that, I used to think Southpaw was a good guy until I got wind of his fealty toward Obama and some antipathy toward Hillary. I don’t like it at all.
Please feel free to delete my comment (seriously).
You shouldn’t unfollow her because of what I tell you. Use your own judgement. Like I said, she’s got time and experience so she might be useful. Just keep in mind that she lacks good judgment sometimes. She sees her self as a internet crusader for justice. Think of a virtual Javert. To her, every pecadillo looks like an international incident that requires prosecution. She doesn’t have a sense of restraint. She can’t discriminate between a parking ticket and a bank robbery. They’re all the same to her.
Anybody who can’t put Hillary’s email thing in perspective lacks good judgement. When I first heard of it, I was annoyed that she didn’t know better and deeply disappointed that she gave this on a platter to her enemies. But as more details came out, I came around. In fact, on Althouse, I was fighting off other commenters when I said her email server was perhaps more secure and that it was better than to put your government emails on AOL servers like Powell/Rice did. And of course, now the crooks in the WH have no restraint at all.
pm317k
Here is the irony of ironies with regard to those “damn emails”…Hillary’s server was the ONLY one which was not hacked! The DNC, RNC, Panetta’s e-mails were hacked but not hers, but as usual, she was the one they attacked and vilified. I have yet to hear the media mention that her e-mails were never hacked.
Anyone or any entity which still brings up her emails is an “empty wheel”. Now they have Pelosi to kick around for the next 2 years. Leave Hillary alone. Why not take note of how enthusiasticly she is received everywhere she goes. The people know that she was robbed of the presidency and that she is the legitimate president. Despite having the presidency literally taken away from her from the Russians, trump, the republicans AND even the democrats, she still persists in speaking out and inspiring people young and old.
Yeah, her mail server was not hacked and was more secure, that is what I was telling people on Althouse. She as usual was more responsible than others and was honest also about all the emails she gave up.
And the Media, Comey and Bernie.
His whole underwear drawer is about to be sorted through publicly. Ha, I got that reference!
RD, this is such a significant point. One doesn’t have to be any kind of social psychologist to intuit that people mostly like to feel that they are on the popular side of things. There are a few who relish outsider status, but most want the comfort that goes with feeling that they are part of the “Pepsi Generation,” to cite one of the most effective advertising themes. And that technique of relentlessly trying to make Hillary supporters feel as if they were outmoded, neoliberal (whatever that means), behind the curve, unquestionably had effects. For anyone who says, “Well, we can’t know what kind of effect all this had” just consider how many billions Madison Avenue spends on advertising; do you think that they wouldn’t do so if it didn’t mostly pay off for them? And while with products, one might get influenced and buy something, if you didn’t like it, you could change; whereas you only have one vote or non-vote, if you are persuaded to stay home. The story not absolutely confirmed, was thati in Michigan, 25,000 turned in ballots left the presidential line blank.
And absolutely, while the all-out hate from the far Right people might have had some influence, the fake liberal posters who would sententiously write about how they just couldn’t support Hillary because she said “superpredators” (that idiot Jason Johnson of The Root said that yesterday), or because she gave a speech to Wall Street, or because she was not against every single instance of fracking, had much more effect, Think about what was done to Dukakis (he polluted Boston Harbor, he doesn’t revere the flag); Gore (he said he invented the internet, he can’ even pick out his own suit color); Kerry (he said he was for it before he was against it!), and multiply that about 25 million times because of social media which was either not there or very small in those other years. The effect was enormous. I have to figure that Hillary lost at least 2 million votes because of it, and that, along with rampant voter suppression, is why she lost MI, WI, PA, all states where she led in the polls. Blaming this on Hillary is not only vastly stupid and unfair, it is a desperate rationalization on the part of so many people whose psychological makeup would never allow them to admit that they were duped, were the successful targets of an advertising scam. They still write the same thing today in support of their folly.
Hillary was clearly one of the most capable and intelligent people ever to run for President. Any look at her background, Senate record, Cabinet record, how well she did in debates, would show that. But trying to get that message through to people in the face of their fake social media friends telling them that their honest impression was wrong, felt like pushing the mythological rock up the hill during the campaign. We all felt it. Even so, she got 66 million votes. What an absolute tragedy this election was, for so many reasons.
I saw Jason Johnston on MSNBC, last night and, yes, he is a certifiable idiot.
William,
It doesn’t matter that she lost 2 million votes, she still won by almost 3 million votes (more than any white man in history) AND did this despite the overwhelming conspiracy unleashed upon her campaign by the russians, trump, the media and even sanders and his bunch. In fact, I bet both sanders and stein who showed a propensity for NEVER criticising Russia before, during and after the campaign were also supported by the russian social media campaign in order to undermine Hillary. She took them all on and won. The great tragedy is that no one in the media nor the government is willing to point this out all because it happened to Hillary. Get over it and move on….
More importantly, I don’t think it was just a matter of people staying home and not voting. We must take into consideration the very real posibility that with all of the “hacking” going on, that russia also hacked those voting systems in WI, MI and PA in order to give the slim margin of electoral victory to trump. It has been proven that voting machines are vulnerable to manipulation without detection especially in small numbers across a spectrum of states. What is even more frightening is our Congress and the media have gone out of their way to discredit and undermine these findings when they were released in 2006. Instead, they both continue to promote these machines as the best and safest way to count our votes. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most Americans are not aware that Congress decided on their own decades ago and without any open debate with the American people as to whether they wanted to spend millions of their taxpayer dollars on these voting systems. Congress simply implemented the machines on their own. Machines which would decide whether they were voted into power and whether and how long they stayed. Talk about a conflict of interest.
Everyone could come out to vote, but you can’t vote them out if you didn’t vote them in, particularly when it comes to who becomes president of the U.S.
😈
I have to admit it gives me a great deal of pleasure to hear people shout “lock him up” as Flynn left the courthouse today. I never said I was nice.
With the things that Flynn has done, having people shout “Lock him up,” was certainly deserved.
Those of us who supported Hillary and the people who never have supported tRump know how much tRump and his supporters have deviated from the normal decorum of campaigning and governing.
Despite all the assistance he has given Mueller’s team, I think that it would be entirely appropriate for Flynn to be given a sentence of at least one month in a federal penitentiary.
Or as my husband sometimes says “Paybacks are hell.”
Clearly, Judge Sullivan is an American hero for not automatically following Mueller’s recommendation to give Flynn a “free pass”. I was appalled when I heard that Mueller was doing this. It didn’t make sense. I don’t care how much Flynn cooperated with his investigation, he still deserved jail time greater than 0-6 months for his very serious crimes against America! Obviously, Judge Sullivan feels the same way as I do with his expression of disdain and disgust towards Flynn. If anyone deserves considerable prison time (other than Manafort), it should be Flynn.
When I first heard that Mueller was giving Flynn a pass, I called the one person who isn’t afraid to speak truth to power, Congresswoman Maxine Waters’ office and complained with passion to her staff that Flynn must serve time, especially since Cohen is at least spending 3 years in jail for his involvement. The standard should be even higher for a military guy like Flynn, not lowered. It looked to me that a military man like Mueller was showing that he, too, could be a good ‘ol boy when it came to punishing someone from his military fraternity.
With all of the media touting Mueller’s infallibility in this investigation, he forgot what was at stake by setting Flynn free and dropped the ball on this one big time. In the Judge’s comments to Flynn and his attorney’s, I think he was also rebuking Mueller as well.
We must be careful not to canonize Mueller as incapable of making a mistake because clearly his recommendation to go easy on Flynn was HUUUGGGE one!
Time to donate to that fine charity called Clinton Foundation which by the way is not shut down by a court order.
Good idea.
Shout out to Zainab Ahmad, Asst. US Atty from EDNY, now on Mueller’s team. She was at the sentence hearing for Flynn yesterday. Of Pakistani origin, she is a knock out, inside and out. This trump crime enterprise involves all international bad actors. The only thing shocking is that they thought they can pull it off. They might still do that because the Republican party is corrupt and amoral and is aiding and abetting this criminal enterprise. Apparently, South Carolina Rs are cancelling the primary there to help trump. They refuse to see the writing on the ‘very (un)cool, very (il)legal’ wall.
Oh, Dick Durbin, do not give Jared Kushner credit for helping to pass the Crime Bill. This does no good. Republicans fought everything Obama put up. This administration is so dangerous to America, that there is no time for comity or a few pleasant words for the opposition. I haven’t studied the history of the bill, but I don’t know why “bipartisan support” was needed for a bill where Republicans control the majority in both Houses; and I don’t know why Trump deserves any credit for legislation which apparently had been floating around for eight years. And even if he did, which he doesn’t, I would not want to give him any. Help Trump get elected again, and you might as well say goodbye to democracy. It is not tea time in WWI.
I agree, William. This is war not tiddlywinks. Van Jones who strikes me as another feckless, middle of the road schmoozer can’t heap enough praise on Trump’s head.
I have been looking at some cybersecurity people’s tweets. Shocked that people in power here in the US are made so helpless by this administration and the Republican party. People better wake up. trump/Kushner/Flynn/Manafort the whole cabal need to be held accountable. This is crazy that it is so difficult to uproot and remove trump and his enablers from the positions they hold.
Erdogan is blackmailing trump now? (in addition to Russia?) What info does he have on Flynn for example that he will release if trump does not sell him missiles and does not leave Syria? Khashoggi blackmail worked so well.