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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

BearyScary Since: Sep, 2010 Relationship Status: You spin me right round, baby
#238126: Apr 9th 2018 at 6:59:39 PM

Isn't Trump screwed even if he fires Mueller?

Do not obey in advance.
Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#238127: Apr 9th 2018 at 7:04:01 PM

Our best case options are basically:

A) The Republicans show that they have an ounce of decency among themselves and (mostly out of self-preservation reinstate Mueller/the investigation as a Special Prosecutor (who Trump can't touch).

B) The American people react overwhelmingly negatively to Mueller's firing/the GOP failing to protect him, and back up their rage by ushering in a Blue Wave. The Dems reinstate an investigation of some sort once they retake a Chamber.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#238128: Apr 9th 2018 at 7:09:40 PM

[up] The GOP recently started campaigning for the midterms on protecting Trump from impeachment. They're not going to show an ounce of decency.

Disgusted, but not surprised
BearyScary Since: Sep, 2010 Relationship Status: You spin me right round, baby
#238129: Apr 9th 2018 at 7:11:15 PM

I don't think they will, either.

Do not obey in advance.
pwiegle Cape Malleum Majorem from Nowhere Special Since: Sep, 2015 Relationship Status: Singularity
Cape Malleum Majorem
#238130: Apr 9th 2018 at 7:16:56 PM

Vote straight-line Democrat. To hell with the GOP.

Or, as George Takei said: "Vote Blue, no matter who."

edited 9th Apr '18 7:17:44 PM by pwiegle

This Space Intentionally Left Blank.
sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#238131: Apr 9th 2018 at 7:20:53 PM

I personally loathe that type of thinking, but the current Republicans make it impossible to be willing to consider them objectively.

Imca (Veteran)
#238132: Apr 9th 2018 at 7:22:09 PM

I worry that that line of thinking could end up in exactly the same place that the republicians ended up, where they are now "Better dead then not red" and as a result got Trump.

But at the same time..... None of them are currently decent human beings soooo. :/

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#238133: Apr 9th 2018 at 7:22:41 PM

I've been doing some thinking. Y'all know I've been pretty...vitriolic in my posts about the GOP and Trump. I've been doing some self-reflection about why I'm so angry at the GOP in particular (Trump is obvious). Yes, there's the very real damage they are doing to the world, the bigotry, the anti-intellectualism, the blatant hypocrisy...but I think it's more than that for me personally.

For me, it's also a bit of Broken Pedestal. I've mentioned before that I consider myself, or used to consider myself, a (economically at least) rightwing conservative. I'm slow to accept change and I'm a capitalist. In my youth I used to admire the GOP. I had bought into the image of them being the Party of Lincoln, the party of family values and responsibility.

I'm not sure when exactly my views on the GOP and the Democratic Party started to shift, but the wool was definitely lifted from my eyes during the Dubya administration. The absolutely shameful behavior of the GOP during Obama's administration was what made me start to feel genuine contempt for the GOP. The current behavior of the GOP in the Trump administration was the final nail in the coffin.

Disgusted, but not surprised
Steven (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
#238134: Apr 9th 2018 at 7:23:50 PM

There really doesn't seem to be any other choice. When you give people so many chances to prove you wrong and they keep living up to their group's stereotype, why would anyone give another chance?

Remember, these idiots drive, fuck, and vote. Not always in that order.
fruitpork Since: Oct, 2010
#238135: Apr 9th 2018 at 7:25:32 PM

Will Trump start making actively dangerous decisions that warrant staff overruling his orders?

ironballs16 Since: Jul, 2009 Relationship Status: Owner of a lonely heart
#238136: Apr 9th 2018 at 7:32:47 PM

RE: "Repercussions" threat - unfortunately, it is oblique enough (and from the wrong source) to count as Presidential malfeasance in that case.

"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"
DingoWalley1 Asgore Adopts Noelle Since: Feb, 2014 Relationship Status: Can't buy me love
Asgore Adopts Noelle
#238137: Apr 9th 2018 at 7:44:06 PM

[up][up] Staff can't overrule him. Maybe Secretaries can, but staff literally can't. And Trump is apparently learning their 'tricks' and going around them.

Fox News shows a Manmouth Poll that shows people trust their news sources more then Trump, but they trust Fox News the least. Howard Kurtz, the host that ordered the graphic up, immediately ordered it down when he saw the results, and only showed it briefly again to show how the Media is more trusted then Trump. He then complained about it on Twitter, like Trump would.

Embarrassing for both Trump and Fox News, I'm 100% sure.

BearyScary Since: Sep, 2010 Relationship Status: You spin me right round, baby
#238138: Apr 9th 2018 at 7:47:06 PM

The GOP has become America's ultimate toxic False Friend.

That was a hilarious accident on Fox News' part. [lol]

edited 9th Apr '18 7:48:41 PM by BearyScary

Do not obey in advance.
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#238139: Apr 9th 2018 at 7:48:34 PM

One could make the argument that they are a Poisonous Friend. Some of them genuinely think they're doing what's good for the USA...but they're not. At all.

And others are like [up] said. False friends only in it for themselves.

As for that poll...[lol]

edited 9th Apr '18 7:51:41 PM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
tclittle Professional Forum Ninja from Somewhere Down in Texas Since: Apr, 2010
Professional Forum Ninja
#238140: Apr 9th 2018 at 7:55:02 PM

Facebook is turning its cosumer info for academic purposes over to the Charles Koch Foundation, among others.

"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."
sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#238141: Apr 9th 2018 at 8:02:48 PM

Am I reading that story about the Fox Poll correctly when I think it sounds like they ran the poll graphic twice?

DingoWalley1 Asgore Adopts Noelle Since: Feb, 2014 Relationship Status: Can't buy me love
Asgore Adopts Noelle
#238142: Apr 9th 2018 at 8:05:14 PM

[up] Yes; the Host showed it the first time without realizing what it said, and quickly ordered it down. He then showed it later, albeit only briefly, to make the point that people trust News Sources more then Trump.

I don't know if that Host is new or not (I haven't ever heard of him until now), but either way it's comedic how ill prepared he was, and how he made himself, Trump and Fox News looks foolish with this Graphic.

PushoverMediaCritic I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out. from the Italy of America Since: Jul, 2015 Relationship Status: watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out.
#238143: Apr 9th 2018 at 8:12:40 PM

I would be shocked if Trump didn't throw a temper tantrum about that poll, potentially stabbing Fox News in the back and making himself look awful in the process. I CAN'T WAIT.

megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#238144: Apr 9th 2018 at 8:32:22 PM

Another Renato shortie Thread:

1/ This is the most important paragraph of today’s @nytimes article about the search warrant of Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s office.

  • The seized records include communications between Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen, which would likely require a special team of agents to review because conversations between lawyers and clients are protected from scrutiny in most instances.

2/ Every search warrant has a list of “items to be seized,” and a warrant for a lawyer’s office has to be carefully written. Communications between Trump and Cohen were within the narrow categories of documents listed in the “items to be seized.”

3/ That suggests that the communications between Trump and Cohen related in some way to the federal crime for which Cohen is under investigation. A “taint team” will review these communications to determine which are privileged.

4/ Communications that aren’t related to legal advice aren’t privileged. Neither are communications that are part of an ongoing crime. I discuss this at length in this thread

edited 9th Apr '18 8:33:05 PM by megaeliz

Demongodofchaos2 Face me now, bitch! from In a Cultivation World (Ancient one) Relationship Status: 700 wives and 300 concubines
Face me now, bitch!
#238145: Apr 9th 2018 at 8:39:10 PM

Fox news just f'd up so bad, Winston Payne could prosecute them successfully. [lol]

Watch Symphogear
megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#238146: Apr 9th 2018 at 8:40:54 PM

This got barried under everything else that happened today.

Mueller Investigating Ukrainian’s $150,000 Payment for a Trump Appearance

WASHINGTON — The special counsel is investigating a payment made to President Trump’s foundation by a Ukrainian steel magnate for a talk during the campaign, according to three people briefed on the matter, as part of a broader examination of streams of foreign money to Mr. Trump and his associates in the years leading up to the election.

Investigators subpoenaed the Trump Organization this year for an array of records about business with foreign nationals. In response, the company handed over documents about a $150,000 donation that the Ukrainian billionaire, Victor Pinchuk, made in September 2015 to the Donald J. Trump Foundation in exchange for a 20-minute appearance by Mr. Trump that month through a video link to a conference in Kiev.

Michael D. Cohen, the president’s personal lawyer whose office and hotel room were raided on Monday in an apparently unrelated case, solicited the donation. The contribution from Mr. Pinchuk, who has sought closer ties for Ukraine to the West, was the largest the foundation received in 2015 from anyone besides Mr. Trump himself.

The subpoena is among signs in recent months that the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, is interested in interactions that Mr. Trump or his associates had with countries beyond Russia, though it is not clear what other payments he is scrutinizing.

Mr. Mueller also ordered the Trump Organization to turn over documents, emails and other communications about several Russians, including some whose names have not been publicly tied to Mr. Trump, according to the three people, who would not be named discussing the ongoing investigation. The identities of the Russians were unclear.

The payment from Mr. Pinchuk “is curious because it comes during a campaign and is from a foreigner and looks like an effort to buy influence,” said Marcus S. Owens, a former head of the Internal Revenue Service division that oversees tax-exempt organizations. He called the donation “an unusual amount of money for such a short speech.”

Mr. Cohen did not respond to a request for comment. Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for the president, did not return several messages seeking comment, nor did a lawyer for the Trump Organization. When The New York Times revealed the existence of the subpoena in March, Mr. Trump’s associates played it down as a routine court order to ensure the Trump Organization had handed over all the documents Mr. Mueller had demanded.

Mr. Trump assailed the special counsel investigation on Monday as a “witch hunt,” reaching for a favored insult in response to the seizure of Mr. Cohen’s records. He complained that he had cooperated with the inquiry and viewed the warrant for the raid, obtained by federal prosecutors in Manhattan after a referral from Mr. Mueller, as an extreme step.

“It’s a disgraceful situation,” he told reporters at the White House. “It’s a total witch hunt. I’ve been saying it for a long time. I’ve wanted to keep it down. I’ve given over a million pages in documents to the special counsel.”

Mr. Mueller has also examined a deal Mr. Cohen was putting together with Mr. Trump to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Mr. Trump said last summer that Mr. Mueller should not look at his or his family’s finances beyond issues related directly to Russia.

But the special counsel’s investigators have questioned witnesses about whether money from the Persian Gulf had been used to finance Mr. Trump’s political efforts and asked for information on Mr. Pinchuk.

The inquiry into the Trump Organization’s payments from foreign nationals underscores how diffuse Mr. Trump’s sources of income have been over many years. And the destination of Mr. Pinchuk’s donation — the Trump Foundation instead of the president’s personal coffers — raised fresh questions about how the president handled the entity he set up to deal with charitable giving.

Mr. Trump’s foundation attracted scrutiny during the 2016 campaign over revelations about his lack of financial support for it and his use of it to pay legal settlements rather than fulfill pledges he made to give to charity. In 2007, Mr. Trump used $20,000 from the foundation to buy a six-foot-tall portrait of himself.

Two weeks after he was elected president, the foundation acknowledged in a tax form that it might have broken federal rules designed to prohibit self-dealing, when charities use their money to benefit principals in their organization.

In the same filing, the foundation disclosed the donation from Mr. Pinchuk for Mr. Trump’s video appearance.

Mr. Pinchuk is the son-in-law of a former president of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, who from 1994 to 2005 led a government criticized for corruption, nepotism and the murder of dissident journalists. Mr. Pinchuk, who has been accused by steel makers in the United States of illegally dumping steel on the American market at artificially low prices, drew more scrutiny during the campaign for his ties to Hillary Clinton and her family foundation. He has donated more than $13 million to that organization since 2006.

Mr. Trump’s appearance was broadcast at the Yalta European Strategy conference, which promotes pro-European Union policies for Ukraine. Through his own foundation, Mr. Pinchuk sponsors the affair, which typically attracts well-known former Western leaders like former Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and former President Bill Clinton. It was moved to Kiev after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

In a statement, the Victor Pinchuk Foundation said it reached out to Mr. Trump and other world leaders to help “promote strengthened and enduring ties between Ukraine and the West.”

The foundation said the donation was “a specific request of Mr. Trump Foundation in September of 2015 when there were multiple candidates for the Republican nomination for president and it was by no means assured that Mr. Trump would be the Republican nominee in 2016.”

At the time, Mr. Trump occupied an unusual position in the presidential race. Though he was the Republican front-runner, the primary field was crowded and he was being vetted or seriously considered by few, if any, in the news media or the Republican establishment.

The event, his first foray into global politics during the campaign, was set up by Doug Schoen, a veteran political consultant and pollster who works with Mr. Pinchuk, according to a person familiar with how the speech was arranged. Mr. Schoen, a frequent Fox News guest, has known Mr. Trump for years and contacted him personally to set it up at the end of August 2015, according to the person.

Mr. Trump did not raise the prospect of any payment. But the next day, Mr. Cohen called Mr. Schoen to solicit the $150,000 as an honorarium, the person briefed on the matter said. Mr. Schoen, who had gotten to know Mr. Cohen by running into him in the green room at Fox News, dealt with him and not Mr. Trump directly, according to another person briefed on the exchange.

The Kiev talk received little attention, with the scant coverage focused on the awkward nature of Mr. Trump’s delivery. He repeatedly stopped speaking, apparently believing he had to pause to give translators time to relay what he was saying.

“You need not wait for any translation,” Mr. Schoen finally told him.

Mr. Trump continued to pause and said he was having trouble hearing. “The sound system is terrible because there is a huge delay and feedback,” he said.

Mr. Trump used the appearance to criticize President Barack Obama amid deteriorating relations between the United States and Russia over its incursions into Ukraine, which had begun a year earlier. “Our president is not strong and he is not doing what he should be doing for the Ukraine,” Mr. Trump said, using the article before Ukraine, which is seen as insulting by some Ukrainians.

“Putin does not respect our president whatsoever,” he said of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Ukraine, once a part of the Soviet Union, has been at the center of another part of Mr. Mueller’s inquiry. He is investigating the consulting work done in Kiev by Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, for the country’s pro-Russian former president, Viktor F. Yanukovych. Mr. Manafort has pleaded not guilty to charges of tax fraud and other financial crimes.

He resigned from Mr. Trump’s campaign in August 2016 after handwritten ledgers were made public showing that he received $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012.

Demongodofchaos2 Face me now, bitch! from In a Cultivation World (Ancient one) Relationship Status: 700 wives and 300 concubines
Face me now, bitch!
#238147: Apr 9th 2018 at 8:43:32 PM

I swear, Mueller really is a real life Miles Edgeworth at this point.

All he needs to do is waggle his finger at people behind the russian meddling while exposing them in a Chess Dimension. tongue

edited 9th Apr '18 8:43:44 PM by Demongodofchaos2

Watch Symphogear
Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#238148: Apr 9th 2018 at 8:43:41 PM

Yeah, I'm nearly positive that Trump will attempt to fire Mueller in the coming days/weeks, and I doubt that the GOP will take meaningful steps to stop it.

Its all up to the voters now.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#238149: Apr 9th 2018 at 8:56:53 PM

[up] based on everything we know,there has to be failsafes already in place. I already talked about one, with the head Prosecutor of the Manafort investigation can continue to investigate it even if they are fired, and I'm sure their are others. (Likely including the the New York FBI, and Attorney General Schneiderman.)

And this is actually hilarious. A Fox News host made a Twitter poll asking:

  1. LDT Poll: Do you believe the corrupt leadership and actions of the DOJ and FBI are now so outrageous and overwhelming that President Trump should fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein?

What he wasn't expecting was the to be currently at 73 percent no, 27 percent yes!

edited 9th Apr '18 9:11:10 PM by megaeliz

ITNW1989 a from Big Meat, USA Since: Nov, 2012 Relationship Status: GAR for Archer
a
#238150: Apr 9th 2018 at 9:11:51 PM

From between January and May 2017, Trump had already fired 3 people and had one resign. I wouldn't be surprised if Mueller already had safeguards and failsafes up and ready the moment he took on the reigns of the investigation. He's too intelligent and shrewd not to think that Trump would eventually attempt to fire him or talk about firing him.

Hitokiri in the streets, daishouri in the sheets.

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