According to many smart people, Donald Trump is a security threat to the United States.
Former CIA Director John Brennan is very disturbed by a new report from The New York Times, which says last week, members of the House Intelligence Committee were warned by an aide to Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire that Russia is actively meddling in the 2020 campaign in order to get President Trump re-elected.
“We are now in a full-blown national security crisis,” Brennan said. “By trying to prevent the flow of intelligence to Congress, Trump is abetting a Russian covert operation to keep him in office for Moscow’s interests, not America’s.” Brennan served as CIA director from 2013 to 2017.
Of course, it’s not just Donald Trump; it’s the Republican Party protecting him. Do read Don’t mince words. Trump is abetting an attack on our country by Greg Sargent. You’ve probably heard the backstory:
Trump is angry because our intelligence officials followed the law and informed members of both parties about what the intel indicated about new Russian efforts. Trump “berated” his acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, for allowing this heresy.
Trump was particularly angered by the presence at the briefing of Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif), who led the impeachment. Trump says Schiff and Democrats will “weaponize” these revelations.
And, of course, he didn’t just berate Maquire; he fired Maguire and is replacing Maguire with “U.S. Ambassador to Germany and Trump International Hotel ‘gold-level’ member Richard Grenell,” it says here. The point is that Trump is corrupting our national security to be sure nobody can find out what Russia might be up to in this year’s elections, or about anything else going on in the world that makes Trump look bad.
Mr. Grenell has no experience as an intelligence officer at any level, nor has he overseen a large government bureaucracy. He has served in government only as communications director for the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. during the George W. Bush administration, and since May 2018 as ambassador to Germany. (In the interim, he founded and ran a public affairs consultancy, advising and commenting on Fox News.)
The National Intellligence Director servies as the head of the entire U.S. intelligence community, among other things. Grenell won’t be able to do that job. And, also, this is a cabinet-level position that requjires Senate confirmation. Grenell will be the fourth person to hold the position in Trump’s three years as POTUS. Only one of those directors, Dan Coats, was confirmed. The rest have been “acting.”
So, wait. We will now have a career Internet troll running the intelligence community because the guy who was running it before held a meeting with the proper constitutional officers and warned them that the Volga Bagmen were at it again, which we all knew because none of us are stupid, and because Bob Mueller warned us about it months ago, and the president* went batshit crazy at the whole notion of it’s being discussed with people he doesn’t like?
Yep. Back to Greg Sargent:
The larger context here, spelled out by Adam Serwer, is the entrenchment of Trump’s GOP as a “regime party” committed to holding power through maximal manipulation of government. Trump’s Ukraine shakedown and his subsequent coverup are the most recent conspicuous examples — and his acquittal is hastening this process.
And the Republian Party is officially aiding and abetting this. That the chief threat is coming from Russia is especially damning. Poor Max Boot is apoplectic; the Republicans have become the party of Russia, he wrote. Better to let Russia subvert our democracy and our security than lose an election.
This administration is a pack of corrupt traitors abetted by moral cowards.
Where is our generations Mark Felt? Daniel Ellsberg? Hey Robert Mueller, you yellow backed sniveling coward, you quivering bowl of jello, where is your spine? Your whole team is being hung out to dry, Trumps goon squad is coming after them, and what are you doing about it? You pussy! I guess if your wife and Bob Barrs wife are such best buddies its OK for Bob to trash your work?
You know Robert, you know what this traitor is doing, and you sit on your hands and say nothing…
Apart from all the deepening corruption (significant in itself), I read today that Sanders found out the Russians are trying to help him. I've told others: Sanders is one of the Republican dream candidates. They'd love him to win. Apparently the Russians agree.
This belongs on the earlier thread, but it’s an interview of Bloomberg’s biographer. What I get from it, is that Bloomberg is like a nerdy engineer, wants to solve problems, but scores low in charisma.
Herbert Hoover was the last president who'd been an engineer, and no one would accuse him of working out well.
Bloomberg is smart and is good on some issues, especially gun control. But we can't lose sight of Bloomberg's well-documented racism and insensitivity, shall we say, to women. He's also a dyed-in-the-wool plutocrat who would do nothing to reduce income inequality. For those reasons, he's on the bottom of my nominee preference list along with the increasingly annoying Pete Buttigieg. And if Bloomberg is well short of votes but somehow mysteriously ends up with the nomination at the convention, a generation of left-leaning voters will know from then on that the Dems are thoroughly corrupt and cannot be trusted. I am hoping the Dems really aren't that stupid, because I doubt Bloomberg is going to get the votes he needs to make a serious challenge for the nomination. But we'll see.
Russia wants Sanders to be nominee so he will be defeated. That is obvious.
We are in a dark time with no good end in sight. Just this month the republican party has proved its willingness to support the agenda Putin. Traitorous bastards.
AJ is right. I saw this and said it here months ago. Trump put the hit on Biden because Biden can draw from people who are repulsed by Trump's vulgarity but won't vote for a liberal. Biden was killing Trump in popular vote AND in swing states. Trump has written off the popular vote – he's picked the candidate he wants to run against. I prefer Warren but Bernie will cut Trump up in an open debate.
PS – I don't think Trump will debate Bernie unless it's Fox with Hannity moderating.
I've seen many assertions that "Trump has written off the popular vote." I don't think that he can do that. The 2016 fiasco was due to the Clinton campaign team's refusal to listen to it's own people on the ground in the midwest. It seems to have relied far too much on the highly paid consultants that pretty well control the DNC. Normally, the Electoral College aligns with the popular vote, even though the Democrats are most concentrated in coastal big cities. The 2016 fluke was the result of a few thousand voters. Michigan seems unlikely to go for Trump this year. Wisconsin may, and I don't know about Pennsylvania or Ohio. If Trump simply ignores the popular vote, he's really rolling the dice.
It's clear the Republicans will do anything to win. Maha is absolutely right. It's not about the Democratic candidate anymore. As long as I live I'll get to the polls to vote against Republicans.
The above needs filling out. Left thinkers do have tendencies that work against us. There are others, but mainly, it's relatively easy to set us against each other. Bernie was right to suggest "Bernie Bros" could be Russian trolls. It's been known as fact since shortly after the 2016 election.
Bots have become much more sophisticated since then and have grown in number. Here's a recent example. It's best not to completely trust anything on social media.
Bloomberg is one of my least favorite candidates, in large part for the reasons Maha names above. However, at this point there's much less distance between me and Bloomberg than between me and any Republican. The best, and maybe only, winning strategy is to vote against Republicans, period. As the saying goes, 90% of life is showing up.
Bette Midler?@BetteMidler
At his rally, #Trump complained about #Parasite winning the Oscar. I’m more upset that a parasite won the White House.
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9:28 AM – Feb 21, 2020
Trump is a big bag of shit. It turns my stomach to think that he awarded the Medal of Freedom to another big bag of shit, Rush Limp-pud, and he did it during a State of the Union address. That kinda gives you a picture of what the state of our union really is. We're talking about the light hearted and jovial Rush who thought it was just fun to spread his birther conspiracy and play Barrack the magic negro over the airwaves. Yeah, it's all good fun.. if you're a bloated racist bag of shit.
Trump is a spiritual canker on the soul of America. We have to get rid of him come November.
So, Sanders is Putin's pick for the Democrats because he thinks Trump will beat Sanders. If only republicans cared about our country rather than their own selfish power grabs. A Vote for Republicans is a vote for Russian Oligarchs! A Vote for Trump is a vote for Putin. Bill Maher thinks that Trump will not leave the White House when voted out; however, I think he will move out after he sells America to Putin and the other Russian Oligarchs.
I wish someone would provide a link to a detailed explanation of how Trump would "refuse to leave" if he loses the election. Is Vice President Pence simply not going to read the votes from the Electoral College on 4 January 2021? I don't see how that works.
I'm not saying I subscribe to the refuse to leave theory, but knowing Trump and his propensity to use the court system to tie up and frustrate his adversaries through protracted legal battles. It wouldn't come as a surprise if Trump launched a recount challenge in every electoral precinct in the nation based on the notion of voter fraud if the the election doesn't go his way.
One thing we can be absolutely sure of is the fact that if Trump is defeated he won't bow out graciously. He'll scream to high heaven that he was cheated…and he'll probably blame Adam Schiff for orchestrating the fraud upon the American people.
Always expect the unexpected when you're dealing with a big bag shit like Trump.
Frank Rich linked to this article, The 5 Lessons from 2016 Democrats Need to Understand If They Want to Stop Bernie, subtitled History is repeating itself. Democrats can learn how to save their party from seeing how the Republicans lost theirs., by a GOP operative who says he went through the loss of his party to Trump in 2016.
Whether you want to stop Bernie or not (I personally am not up for fighting tsunamis), his insights are useful and scary. He says that unless something changes, Bernie will effectively be the Democratic nomineee in 11 days, after Super Tuesday. Lesson 1: It’s much later than you think.
Bernie will be a disaster. And we cannot afford that.
Trump won primaries in 2016 with about 35 %. I thought it terrible that 65 % then did not get who they wanted. The same is happening now with Bernie. And he will be painted a communist and he will likely lose. He makes ridiculous promises he can't keep. I think Boris Johnson who just won . it will happen here. This is crazy. We have lost our constitution this past month. No more separation of powers. The media and blogs say Trump doesn't understand how our government works. BULLSHIT. He knows he is creating a dictatorship. When the senate failed to impeach and no protest took place, when Barr puts on the ridiculous show and nothing happened. No one is going to save us.
The arguments against Bernie may or may not be valid. Conventional wisdom is always a lesson from the past, where we no longer live. He's not my favorite candidate either, but he has strong points:
He's the only politician who really addresses that fact the post-WWII economy took its last gasp sometime during 2007-2008. People 45 and below face headwinds the 65+ crowd, the only one Biden easily takes, did not.
He's not Donald Trump, who pundits also said couldn't win.
The Nevada results show he's made real progress with minority voters.
His message has been consistent for decades. It might have been to Liz Warren's benefit not to reverse course on healthcare and super pacs, but here we are. We'll see what cutting Bloomberg to ribbons has done for her in SC.
It's hard to rebut many of his arguments. Everyone knows the present economy favors the rich and corporations. Everyone knows our healthcare system is a disaster, even if it's working for them at the moment.
The "socialist" tag could actually work for him. The vast majority of voters are not ideologues. It makes him a novel, shiny object of the type media can't resist. Trump got billions in free media for a similar reason.
The pundits love to raise the ghost of huge disappointment over Bernie's failure to turn the U.S. into Denmark in 4 years. It's likely most voters are not that unsophisticated.