Remember that at the end of the day, Trump is a very low intellect individual. He's impulsive and shortsighted. I think he did this whole presidency thing to make a buck. He's making money off it from his resorts and other shit. And he didn't care/wasn't aware of the legal stranglehold on him by becoming a public servant at the highest level. Now his world is collapsing around him and he could be facing some serious legal trouble. Trouble that probably wouldn't have happened had he not run. He wants to be the king. Think about how he speaks about the military leaders. "My generals" or how he looks up to dictators around the world. Or how he has treated countless women. He thinks he owns everything, including this country.
I don't think he's quite as dumb as some of you think. I think it's more that his personality disorders are so profound that it makes him oblivious to a lot of things. At the least, I'm going to give him credit for the way he played the media during the campaign. If nothing else, it was quite original and effective. I also doubt his intentions are so terrible, although I'm not sure I would say the same about his execution. In his own mind he's the greatest ever and thinks he has so much more to offer than he really does, and knowing his ego I think he wants to remembered as a great president and as a result wants to improve things, even though he's too intellectually lazy divisive to pull it off.
He might be good at finding ways to manipulate people and play into their emotions to get their support. He plays the culture war superbly. It doesn't matter if he is actually right or wrong. His base identifies with him emotionally and that is what matters. His intelligence is depleted where it counts in his current job. He doesn't know anything about government or how it works. He is a piss poor statesman. And he represents us on the world stage atrociously. Even presidents you don't like politically should at least try to make us look decent internationally.
This is literally the main reason why tens of millions of Americans, if not more, see him unfit to be president. I couldn't have said it better myself if I tried.
I would argue that Trump wouldn't even need to have been aware of it for him to be impeached. Running a campaign in which there was an organized effort to collude with a hostile foreign government shows such a lack of leadership that I think he could be impeached for that alone. Having said that, it would depend on the mood of the Congress and the country at large. If he was aware, I don't think the country would survive him not being impeached, at least in the long run. It would codify the idea that our domestic political opposition is a greater enemy than our actual enemies, and it would fracture the country in a totally irreparable way. Ultimately an impeachable offense is largely whatever the Congress says it is, and there would be more than enough here to provide whatever coat of paint they want to put on it. As far as legal ramifications, the first thing is that a sitting president cannot be criminally prosecuted until he or she leaves office (either by ending a term or being impeached), so impeachment would be a prerequisite to any sort of legal action. Mueller can't just roll up to the White House and put him in cuffs. Were he to be impeached, the legal consequences would depend on what the collusion entailed, how the assistance was rendered/acquired, and what, if anything exchanged hands. In the majority of scenarios, he would be guilty of an FEC violation regarding improper campaign contributions at most. The emails being hacked might add an element of conspiracy after the fact or similar regarding the intrusion, depending on the specifics. If money changed hands, especially if it was laundered money, you could see a host of financial crimes, or perhaps a Foreign Corrupt Practices prosecution. If a quid pro quo was offered, you might get all the way up to treason depending on what was offered.
I would argue the quid pro quo might have been arranged through at least the one meeting we know happened in Trump tower. Where they discussed sanctions relief in exchange for help from the Russians regarding Hillary’s emails and whatnot. There was also other meetings with Trump campaign people and Russian intermediaries that may or may not have surveilled audio.
Wait wasn’t Manafort the one who got trump to take pence instead of Christie?? Yeah it may be time to get some popcorn now.... pence is gonna very literally get what’s coming to him in prison. Cuming?
This was my problem with candidate Trump from the moment he threw his hat in the ring. His motivation isn't the greatness of the nation, it's about furthering the greatness of "Trump".
"He's a liar...a low level volunteer". He's also been cooperating with the Feds for months, and some say he might've been wired. I wonder what it would actually take for Congress to take action.
It's been kind of interesting listening to fox news and co only talking about Manafort and completely dodging the Papadopoulos story. I guess you could say the same with the left media dodging the uranium and dossier stories, but you know, she's not the one sitting in the white house right now.
What dodging are you referring to? If anything they've been very aggressive about disproving the bullshit. I mean the dossier was always a non-story since it was GOP that funded it to start, but Uranium One? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ercent-of-our-uranium/?utm_term=.3fd3010fc727
They're disputing the percentage. That hardly puts the scandal to bed. Yeah, they're dodging the actual issue. And I really disagree about the dossier being a non-story considering the way people have flipped out about Trump Jr taking a meeting and the DNC was PAYING for info. It's just funny the info they bought is so ridiculous (or at least part of it was).
I let those who like to deep dive into this stuff do so but this seems like a pretty straightforward discussion of the uranium deal: [Media] [/Media]
Everything I've read indicates Uranium One is no where near a scandal. Russia purchased a Canadian owned company that held mining leases in the US for a resource we don't consider scarce to begin with. The purchaser is largely uninterested in these leases to anyway, having purchased Uranium One for its other assets. This does not threaten US production of uranium nor its reserves. The purchase was approved via the proper channels, and no one in the approval process indicates there was or is anything wrong with the purchase. This is a Republican deflection tactic to muddy the waters on Russia.
Of course the republicans are harping about it as a deflection tactic. The uranium deal was 6 years ago. Given the number of people involved it might be nothing, but then again I really doubt Bill took a $500k speaking fee in Moscow around that time just because they wanted to hear him talk (some of the donations to the foundation fit the timeline as well). I'll be honest too, it's not like I just write off CNN/WP/NYT, etc or even distrust them more than I do any right wing media outlet, but I've seen people at these organizations outright lie about what was in the wikileaks, and completely obfuscate other Clinton scandals. CNN even tried to tell people not to read the wikileaks because it was 'illegal' to do so. So them saying, "Hey we looked into this and there's nothing there" means fuck all to me. For what it's worth the FBI was/is investigating bribes and kickbacks into the whole deal. Something many left wing media outlets are leaving out. Might be nothing, but compared to other Clinton scandals it's not even very big so I'm not going to spend a shitload of time delving into it either. A gag order got lifted on an FBI informant who supplied information on companies/Russia regarding the deal so we'll see what comes of it when he testifies.
I don't know if the democrats can actually lose the Virginia governor race, but I'll be damned if they're not trying.
The Virginia race is ugly ads all the way down. Gillespie voters are Charlottesville terrorists and Northam voters are MS-13 members. So it goes.
Never thought I'd see this in real life. Never thought politics could sink lower than they did in 2012.