Politics Trump - What has he done now???

Federal government cancels costly, decade-long search for a new FBI headquarters

Oh, that IS huge...
Way to piss off the people investigating you even more.
Insult on top of insult.

Why do I get the feeling this guy is going to prison likely for the rest of his life??
He better hope for a pardon.

I guess next, he'll piss off the CIA and NSA even more too.

 

Thinking Trump is going to see the inside of a jail cell as the result of any of this is outright delusional. There will be no jail time. Trump has already flagrantly violated the law on several counts but unless Congress and the Senate are both willing to go forward with impeachment nothing comes of it. The DoJ won't even attempt prosecution on a sitting President so unless or until he's removed for office nothing happens. If he is removed from office there's nothing at all stopping Mike Pence from pulling a Gerald Ford and just preemptively pardoning Trump in order to "just put it all behind us and move forward." Given Pence's close involvement with the campaign, it seems unlikely he'd be unaware of any collusion that occurred, and if Trump is guilty it will thus behoove him not to have anyone look too closely.

If Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell is involved they could be prosecuted. My pet theory is that Ryan knew but played along because having a buffoon in office meant all his pet bills could get rubber-stamped. It always seemed suspicious to me how he did an about-face during the campaign from being a vocal Trump opponent to a supporter after just one closed-door meeting, and how he always decried Trumps actions but refused to withdraw his endorsement. All seems shady as hell to me in light of what we now know. But I remain highly skeptical that anyone will face any serious legal consequences as a result of any of it.

 

@martian I know the realities...but this has so strange extremes, there's so much momentum building, so much hostility
we may see a total round-about that no one ever saw before.
and speaking of delusional, the GOP has set themselves up, so head in the sand like, that they won't see the wave.

This will be ground-breaking, historical.
I see it coming.

I'm not wishing this, not dreaming...but there is a trend.
I can't tell the timeframe, it may even take months...then bam, it happens.
Strange how the federal govt works...it's molasses, then it's a force to be reckoned with.
It's just like that on the inside.

 

As far as I'm concerned, all bets are off.

 

Trump has thus far exhibited a lot of teflon like qualities, as far as nothing sticking. How long can that go on?

Probably until some insider steps outside the circle.

Like John Dean did for (to) Richard Nixon.

 

This seems to be cascading...

And ironically, it's about the emails...
Opinion | Donald Trump Jr. Makes the Russian Connection

 

Trump's ability to dodge consequences exists entirely as a result of the Republican congress refusing to see anything he does as wrong. It's politically expedient for them to keep him where he is for now, and they don't care about the actual laws or rules. What's a little bit of light treason? As long as Obamacare gets repealed. Nobody is able to do anything until Congress is ready to act, and Congress won't lift a finger unless he starts alienating core Republican voters, who have thus far proven that they're very willing to overlook this stuff as long as he continues to Make America Great Again.

Don Jr choosing to tweet incriminating emails directly is an interesting plot twist. The DoJ won't go after a sitting President (or at least it would be a first if they did) but there's nothing stopping them from going after his son. On the other hand Trump is going to lean pretty heavily on DoJ officials to quash any investigation into his family and that could hypothetically endanger any other investigations they have going.

I think there's little chance that there will be any consequences from this but it's interesting to think about at least. I'm utterly unable to figure out why Don Jr thought this was a good idea. Maybe to get it out there and spin it as nothing? Anyone who reads the emails will see clear collusion with Russian officials but maybe he (or whoever directed him to do this) thinks he can downplay it as nothing more than a bunch of boring political maneuvering. And hell, he's probably right.

--- Double Post Merged, Jul 12, 2017, Original Post Date: Jul 12, 2017 ---

Hillary Clinton's emails were about helping Haitian earthquake victims and saving child brides. Clearly damning stuff. Don Jr is just making some Russian friends, which is totally inoffensive in comparison.

 

Analysis | Why did Trump meet with Putin again? Here are three possibilities.

In deed...WHY??
Could be "all of the above".

Now, I've always believed that we judge our politicians too much, expect too much perfection out of them.
And should give them a break.

Then again, they should know better, they're in the public eye and their words even have consequences.
So...DUH!!

This is just getting stranger and stranger.
And like I said before, "we ain't seen anything yet"...

 

His supporters are already shrugging it off, though.

I think a lot of people don't understand that for a sizable portion of Trump's base, facts are irrelevant. These are people who are seeing their world change, sometimes falling apart around them. Factory worker, coal miners, labourers. Trump knows how to appeal to them. Globalization sent your job to Mexico or China. I will stop Globalization. Immigrants took your jobs. Crime is on the rise, immigrants are behind it. I will stop immigration. ISIS wants to kill you and your babies. I will stop ISIS. The Washington Elite is corrupt and wants to tax you so they can give the money to their fatcat buddies. I will stop the Washington elite. All of his campaign rhetoric was built around this stuff, draining the swamp and building the wall. It worked in a way that nobody anticipated because Trump knew a single thing that nobody else seemed to get, which is that for those people who respond emotionally, who feel their lives are in turmoil, whose lives frequently are in turmoil, who are not as educated and don't get exposed to a lot of opposing views, for those kinds of voters facts are basically irrelevant. You can tell them whatever you want. You can lie straight to their faces, and as long as you can string together a narrative that hits the right emotional buttons they'll ignore all the contradictions. And when you add those ones into the people who identify Republican as a core part of their identity, who will grumble and moan but still vote R no matter who the candidate is, you get enough to get Trump into office. Trump is a conman, and conmen know how to play emotion against fact. They know that if you hit the right buttons, emotion wins. People will pick what they want over what they know every goddamn time.

So, y'know, that's what you're dealing with. The narrative is entrenched now. Trump is riding off to Washington to beat those Establishment fat cats. The Establishment hates him, which is what his base wants because the Establishment stands for everything they fear and hate. And since the media is part of the Establishment there is literally nothing Trump can do that will convince them he is unfit. Anything he does, any hint of wrongdoing or malfeasance, any report on it is just a smear piece. It just reinforces their faith in Dear Leader, because it shows that Trump is pissing them off, so he must be doing something right, amirite?

That's it. That's why none of this shit matters. Trump can't be impeached unless Congress and the Senate are on board. Neither house will life a finger unless he starts alienating their supporters. And their supporters don't care because he can literally do no wrong by them. Because they don't respond to facts. That's where we're at. Trump meets Putin, well, world leaders meet all the time. Trump Jr meets with Russian lawyers and state agents, everyone in politics has backroom dealing like that. Trump straight up hands state secrets to Russian diplomats, well, he's just sharing intel with an ally. Donald Trump could murder a man in Times Square on New Year's Eve, and his supporters would find a way to justify it. Nothing he does matters right now. At all.

On the plus side, this government is in all other respects proving so incompetent and dysfunctional that they can't manage to get anything done anyway. I'm amazed that they haven't been able to repeal Obamacare. Like, seven friggin years this has been a core plank for them, and now that they have all the power they can't even do that much. If they just keep tripping over themselves until 2018 (and if they don't just get reelected in the midterms, which is a real possibility) there's hope that the amount of damage they can do will be limited. If both houses swing towards the Democrats Trump can be impeached, and that's when the bill comes due. Fingers crossed.

 

And the net gets wider...
Mueller Expands Probe to Trump Business Transactions

If he did release his taxes...I'm sure they'd find some discrepancies.
There's just too many twists and turns.

I wonder if the FBI is allowed a copy of that, as part of the investigation??
To compare and contrast...

And the rabbit hole is getting deeper.

 

Yeah, I was reading about that too...
Trump team seeks to control, block Mueller’s Russia investigation

 

Two things wrong with this. One, there is no end of the road coming up, at least any time soon. The system wasn't designed to account for a legislative branch that would overlook crimes up to and including treason in the name of political expediency. There's no way to unseat Trump until Ryan turns on him, or is removed as speaker. And second, if there were an end Trump would not see it coming. He's the type that will fight tooth and nail until his last breath. There will be no resignation, no graceful denouement. It's going to be an ugly mess. This is the man who said he would accept the results of the election if and only if he won. He's proven the truth of every other statement he made on the campaign. What would lead you to believe that one was a bluff? Or that he'd be any more willing to concede gracefully now that he has the presidency?

I think trump is worried that Mueller is going to turn up something shady in his past business dealings, but it's a huge leap to think that it's going to have any tangible impact on his presidency. Democrats will be outraged, McCain will say he's very disturbed, everyone else will kind of shuffle their feet and then it will be business as usual.

 

That's a good point @martian
Makes wonder if we have a breaking point.
Or how far will Trump go?
Or how long to fall?
How much damage will be done?
And will we fix it after?
And take steps to prevent it again...

There is reason there is history to read.
"May you live in 'interesting' times"
As the ancient curse goes

We certainly are...

 

The appropriate question is not how far Trump will go, we already know the answer to that. Trump considers men like Erdogan and Putin examples to be followed. He will go as far as he can and his supporters will back him the whole Goddamn way, because he literally can do no wrong by their account. The question you really ought to be asking yourself is how far congress will let Trump go. And the answer to that, I'd wager, is pretty fuckin' far. Like, maybe not full on insurrection, but they've already proven willing to shrug off collusion with hostile states. I don't know what else there is.

The saddest thing is this isn't even some masterful coup. It would be easier to swallow this whole affair if the people in charge were competent. The truth, though, is that these chucklefucks just managed to benefit from state level gerrymandering below them while simultaneously tripping into supporting a grade A shyster who was able to build a cult of personality to ride straight into office, and now that they have control they're the dog who's caught the car. It was just incompetence and a broken system and dumb fucking luck all along, and now the best outcome for everyone is to hope they keep up their Keystone Cops bullshit routine and keep tripping over themeselves too hard to accomplish anything meaningful until the Dems can boot them in 2018. At which point the Dems get to play obstructionist and block further damage until 2020, when they get another shot at restoring sanity. But even then, I don't know how you prevent history from repeating itself without stooping to their level, so the whole thing still seems pretty fucked. And that all assumes that the Democrats can win in 2018 which, honestly, I'm not convinced they can. Talk on /r/the_donald and Breitbart right now leans towards throwing McConnell, Ryan, and other Republicans under the bus for not being able to repeal the ACA. What do you think happens if they show up to Republican primaries in 2018 and bring in people who are willing to just do what Trump says? Nothing fucking good, I'd wager.

This shit is going to get worse before it gets better. If it gets better.