It's not a completely over-the-top get-Trump effort. Notice that last headline: "Trump Jr. could be in legal jeopardy, but analysts say more would be required for a criminal case."
Further down on the page, there's "This is the mother of all tipping points" and "This is no ‘rookie mistake.’ The Trump team shouldn’t even be on the field," but also "President says Donald Trump Jr. is ‘open, transparent and innocent’" and "Is Donald Trump Jr.’s ‘I love it’ email a smoking gun or a distraction?"
And there are still plenty of other stories making it onto the website's front page, including the one I personally find most interesting: "A Chinese umbrella-sharing start-up just lost nearly all of its 300,000 umbrellas." I also like "Three Americans who thwarted 2015 Paris train attack to play selves in Clint Eastwood movie."
Anyway, I wonder what scheming is going on behind the scenes at The Washington Post. I'm imagining that they are thinking This is it, we have him now. But how to play the hand? Over-eagerness could backfire, but if this thing is going to work, this is the moment, we must go all-in. And yet if we show that's what we are doing, it may put off some people whose support we need. We may look bloodthirsty and weird to them. How far, exactly, do we go? And what, exactly, do we want?
AND: On that last question — what, exactly, do we want? — I don't think it should be clear to a Trump-hater that the goal should be impeachment/resignation. Look at Mike Pence. He's ready to go, clean and untouched by these Trump troubles. Why give the Republicans a fresh start? I suspect that the goal is to immobilize Trump. Keep him, but freeze him. But how can we get by with an incapacitated President?
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«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 218 of 218Here is another way to get at my point.
If, two weeks before the election, an agent of the Russian government had gone to the NYTs, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, etc., and offered independently verifiable proof that Trump had hacked the DNC and Clinton campaign servers, would any of those organizations have hesitated for a microsecond to publish that information?
Would any of the people accusing Trump Jr. of attempting to collude with the Russians to hack/disrupt/interfere with the election be making the same complaints about the media?
Trump Jr's REAL crime was that he released the relevant emails before the papers could print their "specially edited versions" of them. He had the audacity to just dump them all out there without giving any of the media time to "set expectations" so folks would understand how to interpret the information. Makes it MUCH harder to spin that way!
"Junior's meeting (with Kushner) IS substantiation! He went to the meeting in order to get info from an adversarial foreign nation in order to effect (interfere with)
our election. What about that are you not getting? He was trying to, with the help of another country advantage himself in an election"
-- Just like Hillary did with the Ukranians, Obama did by asking Putin to give him some space before the election, Germany did for Obama by giving him access to the Bradenburg Gate... so... which of those are crimes?
sunsong said...
And he lied about the meeting...
Do you happen to have the quote of him lying? I'm interested in the exact phrasing. I've heard lots of accusation, but prefer to rely on original sources when possible.
Collusion is not a crime. The media is very interested in it.
Unmasking the names of American citizens for political purposes is a crime. The media is very uninterested in it.
The verifiable part is the issue.
This part s just my opinion, but DJT Jr's gleeful reaction didn't inspire confidence that he had a plan in place to thoroughly vet the information that he expected to receive. I also can't help but doubt his judgment since he responded favorably to an email that reads like the political equivalent of a Nigerian Prince scam
But even if I put that aside and assume I'm misjudging him he was planning to vet it, what resources did he have to do so?
I realize this is problematic particularly now that it seems out intel agencies are corrupt and colluding with Democrats, but really the only right thing to do with an offer of information like that would be to notify the FBI. the events of June were before Russia fever (which partly exculpates DJT Jr for not having a higher level of suspicion or concern) but they were also before anyone on Trumps team would have had reason to suspect that the FBI wouldn't have handled the information properly.
"analysts say more would be required for a criminal case." Yeah. They would need actual evidence of a crime.
"In what way is informing the American public about the criminal behavior of one of its presidential candidates disrupting the election?"
It isn't, but to a certain group of people, anything that prevented Hillary's coronation was a disruption.
As Ignorance is Bliss has pointed out repeatedly in the last 50 comments- the lack of evidence that any dirt was passed to the Trumps at the meeting is the only relevant thing. That Trump Jr. was eager to get dirt on Clinton is irrelevant if no dirt was actually offered. And had dirt on Clinton been offered, whether or not it is an unethical act to accept it does depend on the veracity of the information and the willingness of the Trumps to use it without verification.
All the evidence available suggests there never was any information on offer, and the meeting itself isn't any interference with the election since the meeting, according to all the parties present at it, had nothing to do with the election itself. That Ms. McArdle didn't seem to want to understand that fact was disappointing to me, one of her long term readers, but it doesn't surprise me any longer since she is a hard-core Never Trumper.
That the Trump Campaign might have gleefully accepted any help from the Russians isn't the point- what is need is evidence that they did gleefully accept helf from the Russians. This is why the lack of actual dirt on Clinton being passed at the meeting is the only relevant detail, and even worse for the Collusion Conspiracists is that even if dirt was passed it was apparently never used by the Trump Campaign.
In short, dirt on Clinton from the Russian government could be true or it could be false- receiving it isn't a crime. Spreading it without a good faith basis for believing its accuracy also isn't a crime, but unethical. However, by all accounts, neither of the latter occurred.
I am still not saying it is a crime :-), I am saying it has reached the icky level now. It stinks to high heaven. Krauthammer weighs in:
”A columnist and longtime defender of President Donald Trump’s innocence regarding Russia blasted Donald Trump Jr. on Tuesday, saying it’s not a good defense that the President’s son’s meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton wasn’t fruitful…
“…“I’d say it’s a hell of a defense to say your collusion was incompetent and that it didn’t work out,” Charles Krauthammer said, appearing on Fox News Tuesday. “The fact is, this is not just opposition research. This is not just somebody coming out of the woodwork in Indiana, where the story about the Clintons — this is a foreign power. Not just any foreign power. … This is our most serious foreign adversary, one could argue, in the world.”…
“…Krauthammer said that Trump Jr. claiming he didn’t get any useful information out of the meeting with a Russian lawyer is “not a very good defense.”
“If you get a call to go to a certain place in the middle of the night to pick up stolen goods and it turns out the stolen goods don’t show up, but the cops show up, I think you’re going to have a very weak story saying, ‘Well, I got swindled here,’” he said. “Look this is incompetence, they got swindled.”
“When you get information that the Russians want to dig dirt on your opponent and give it to you and support you in your election, you go to the FBI. You don’t go to the meeting,”Krauthammer said…”
talking points
"He was trying to, with the help of another country, advantage himself in an election. McCardle explains why she believes that (as do I and millions of others) is simply NOT okay!"
But you (and millions of others) believe that Obama deliberately disabling the default basic credit card verification routines for donations to his campaign, allowing foreigners to dump millions into his coffers in both his elections, is SIMPLY OK!
You (and millipns of others) completely ignore irrefutable hard evidence that Hillary colluded with the Ukranians because that is SIMPLY OK!
You (and millions of others) ignore the blatant quid pro quo of Hillary selling our uranium to the Russians for donations to her foundation because that is SIMPLY OK!
So you see, it's not that we find your point "hard to understand". It's that you're so obviously blatantly arguing in bad faith. If you really cared about this supposed principle, you'd care about all those (and many more, too many to list) far worse instances of "collusion" with far far more evidence backing them up. But you only care when Trump. So, we understand just fine. We just know you're utterly and completely full of shit.
So Quinn, what about those of us who do care about the ethical deficiencies of the Democrats but don't want the GOP to emulate them?
I think it's unlikely that Trump will be impeached because his floor of support is something like 38% and the Democrats don't really want to impeach him anyway. But Trump supporters would do well IMO to think farther ahead. Can Trump get reelected? Even if so, what's next in 2024?
The GOP is split but for now most of us are hanging together with a patch. The more Trump supporters refuse to acknowledge the legitimate concerns of the traditional GOP base who voted for Trump despite reservations, the less likely that these two groups will be able to work together to oppose the Democrats.
CStanley, if *you* *actually* cared about the principle of "collusion is bad!", you'd acknowledge that nothing Trump has done, even if the worst accusations were confirmed, comes even close to 10% emulating what the Dems have done openly without any hint of reprisal from the Dems, the media, or LLRs. And that would worry you so much more that Trump wouldn't be an issue, after all, it's obvious *he* can't take a leak in a Russian bar without getting the "Treason!" Treatment.
So, basically, it's obvious you're arguing in bad faith too. But your Concern is appreciated.
I guess we have fundamentally different ideas of what constitutes arguing in bad faith. To me it generally involves making inferences about the motives of the other party, and deflecting discussion about the issues he or she raised by calling him or her a concen troll.
So it's probably worthless to continue but I'll try one more...
I do in fact acknowledge that Trump has not carried out anything nearly as egregious as the Democrats. What this latest incident confirms to me is that it is not for lack of trying (this is not a surprise to me but it is now open and undeniable,)
As you mention, the Dems carry out their unethical activities without reprisal because they control the media's narrative to protect them from public reprisal and also have apparently managed to collude with natsec and corrupt the DOJ to avoid legal jeopardy. In contrast, everything DJT does is aired in public, magnified, and viewed with maximum suspicion. This kind of scrutiny is ridiculous but I'm not going to avert my eyes from what it reveals.
CStanley-
Thank you for your thoughtful responses. I'm still trying to figure out what the rules are here. Maybe this will help me:
What if it had been an agent of the British government who was offering information to Trump. Would that have been okay? How about the U.S. government?
sunsong said...
When you get information that the Russians want to dig dirt on your opponent and give it to you and support you in your election, you go to the FBI. You don’t go to the meeting,”Krauthammer said…
Go to the FBI about what? About Russian interference? In what way is that in FBI matter, since it is not illegal? About Hillary Clinton's crimes? Go to the FBI? The same FBI whose head, just days later, is having a private meeting with Bill Clinton? That FBI?
@ Ignorance is Bliss
If it helps to cut to the chase, I'll concede that I can't give you a list of rules here. I'd even say it's somewhat of a case of "knowing it when I see it."
I'll try this approach instead- I see DJT's response as stupid and unethical. Stupid because in any situation where you're approached with something that seems too good to be true, the smart thing is to recognize that and think through what the other persons motivations might be and the ways you might be walking into a trap.
So leave aside the ethics of oppo research, and the stupidity still matters. Not to mention that the Dems are already connecting the dots to show another way this might have been unethical- Trump firing Preet Bahara and then having his DOJ settle the tax fraud case against the firm that Veselnitskaya represented. Even if it's not the case that this was quid pro quo discussed at the meeting, DJT Jr unnecessarily put himself in position to be suspected of it.
Any "non-progressive" who followed Saint Obama's hectoring regime was gonna get "it".
The liberal base believes winning the Culture War means they no longer need to talk like Centrists long enough to be elected.
Obama didn't tell us what he "really" wanted to do when running against McCain - take over health care despite the newly formed Tea Party opposition, give the atom bomb and $150G to Iranian sponsored terrorists without any approval, ignore laws he didn't support, put transvestites in women's bathrooms, buy up and crush used cars, take over General Motors, greatly expand the number of people on disability, stuff the executive branch with regulatory zealots...
That was all for "our own good", as Ben Rhodes or Jon Gruber would say. We are too stupid to vote our own interests, lost in a false consciousness, just a group of deplorables ignorant of Arcs of History who don't speak French or have any other hip talents.
Amazingly, the Wise Republican Primary Voters selected a Juggernaut who thrives in the briar patch.
Trump knowns, intuits, that he doesn't need "everyone": he just needs a bigger committed base than Kamala Harris will have in 2018.
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