Obviously you didnt read the indictment. Did you?
Trump wins
- Thread starter whitecockedhubby
- Start date
although with the indictment the way it is......the door is open and just a matter of time until he is in handcuffs! (I wish)..but impeachment anyway...manaforts assistant just cut a deal and his time went to possible 12 years in jail...to a year and a half...he must have gave them some good info....the indictment said nothing in these papers....didn't say there weren't more coming...and we all know...to include trump...there is more coming
nothing said yet about what all papadoplous has said... real quiet on that...and he is talking.....and now with manaforts assistant talking....got to weaken anything manafort is trying to pull
nothing said yet about what all papadoplous has said... real quiet on that...and he is talking.....and now with manaforts assistant talking....got to weaken anything manafort is trying to pull
the guy is going down!
Robert Mueller Has Trump Cornered
Robert Kuttner
,
HuffPost
Special counsel Robert Mueller is methodically, brilliantly filling in pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. When complete, the puzzle will depict a president who is ripe ― overripe ― for impeachment.
Mueller’s indictment on Friday of Russia’s cyberwarfare against the 2016 election was a tactical and investigative masterstroke. President Donald Trump is now cornered. Mueller’s report makes a total liar out of Trump for his repeated claims that he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin when Putin says Russia had nothing to do with it, that the hacking could have been “some guy in New Jersey.”
The indictments do not quite connect the Russian operation to Putin personally, but that’s beside the point. No serious person believes that an operation as sensitive as deliberate disruption of the U.S. election could go forward without Putin’s full knowledge and support in a state as authoritarian as his.
Trump, having repeatedly denied Russian involvement, has now shifted gears and is insisting that the proper test of wrongdoing is “collusion.” But this is a straw man.
During the campaign, Trump repeatedly and publicly urged the Russians to come forward with dirt on Hillary Clinton. His top advisers met with Russian operatives to see what they had. That part of Mueller’s investigation is still open.
What we already know is plenty damning. A conspiracy of interest does not have to include an explicit tit-for-tat deal. It can be based on signaling.
In this case, Trump and his family relied on massive bailouts of his failing business enterprises from Russian oligarchs close to the Kremlin. When he became a presidential candidate, the Russians treated him as an asset ― a useful idiot, as Stalinists used to put it. And when the campaign finalists turned out to be Trump versus the hard-line Clinton, the Russians sought to destroy her and elect Trump. Trump, meanwhile, became the most pro-Russia president in U.S. history, refusing to breathe a word of criticism of Putin, behaving like the head of a client state. This much of the story is hidden in plain view.
The details ― of Russian financing of Trump’s businesses, and of more campaign contacts ― are likely to be spelled out in further indictments, almost surely including members of Trump’s family, and in Mueller’s final report, which will look very much like a bill of impeachment.
What’s astonishing ― and devastating ― is that this detailed report on Russian manipulation of a U.S. presidential election had to come from a special counsel. Under a normal administration, evidence of a foreign power meddling in a U.S. election would have prompted a presidential order for a full investigation. Instead, Trump mocked the whole idea and used his influence to block such inquiries by House and Senate panels.
Rather than looking deeply into Russian interference, the president appointed a commission on election integrity, headed by Vice President Mike Pence and Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state best known for voter suppression, based on the premise that massive voter fraud by immigrants and others not qualified to vote had helped Clinton win the national popular vote. This was so preposterous that the commission collapsed of its own weight.
So where does Mueller’s latest set of indictments leave us?
First, these disclosures end Trump’s intermittent efforts to fire Mueller. If he were to try that now, it would be an open-and-shut case of obstruction of justice. Congressional Republicans would have no choice but to begin the impeachment process.
Second, they drive a further wedge between Trump and the Republican leadership in the House and Senate. All key Republicans, whatever their marriage of convenience with Trump on other issues, have expressed outrage at the Russian operations and praised Mueller. Trump, by contrast, has only proclaimed his own lack of complicity, and has said nothing about what documented Russian interference means for American democracy, much less vowed to resist it and punish Putin.
We also see a further wedge between Trump and the entire intelligence community. Last week, on the eve of the Mueller indictments, the leaders of every major intelligence agency, including Trump appointees, testified unanimously before Congress that there was no doubt that Russia meddled in the 2016 election. Unlike Trump, they are alarmed that Putin tipped a U.S. election to a pro-Kremlin stooge.
One question is the degree to which Mueller’s 37-page indictment relied on materials from those U.S. intelligence agencies, and what else the government has that it isn’t revealing out of concern for disclosing “sources and methods.” Mueller’s indictment goes into far more detail than anything else that has been made public.
Two other questions remain. First is Mueller’s timing. When will other indictments come? He could wrap things up in a matter of weeks, or the investigation could drag out beyond November’s midterm elections.
Second is how the U.S. should punish and deter Russia. The Russian actions to undermine American democracy and tip the election amounted to an act of war. And if those actions were as effective as much reporting and now Mueller’s indictments have suggested they were, it means Trump literally became president in a Russia-sponsored coup d'état.
The U.S. and the Russians surely have the capacity to knock out each other’s vital defense and infrastructure systems that rely on the internet. But unlike the nuclear deterrence of Mutually Assured Destruction, there are no bright lines when it comes to self-restraint in cyberwar. If there were, Russia surely crossed one in 2015 and 2016.
What sort of retaliation makes sense? Mutually assured cyberdestruction would be a catastrophe; that’s why Russia gets away with these incursions. But slaps on the wrist like banning the travel or freezing the bank accounts of a few Russian individuals just makes America look pitiful.
This is the serious question America needs to take up, once Trump is gone. Thanks to Mueller’s latest revelations and those still to come, that day may not be far off.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. His forthcoming book is Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism?
Robert Mueller Has Trump Cornered
Robert Kuttner
,
HuffPost
Special counsel Robert Mueller is methodically, brilliantly filling in pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. When complete, the puzzle will depict a president who is ripe ― overripe ― for impeachment.
Mueller’s indictment on Friday of Russia’s cyberwarfare against the 2016 election was a tactical and investigative masterstroke. President Donald Trump is now cornered. Mueller’s report makes a total liar out of Trump for his repeated claims that he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin when Putin says Russia had nothing to do with it, that the hacking could have been “some guy in New Jersey.”
The indictments do not quite connect the Russian operation to Putin personally, but that’s beside the point. No serious person believes that an operation as sensitive as deliberate disruption of the U.S. election could go forward without Putin’s full knowledge and support in a state as authoritarian as his.
Trump, having repeatedly denied Russian involvement, has now shifted gears and is insisting that the proper test of wrongdoing is “collusion.” But this is a straw man.
During the campaign, Trump repeatedly and publicly urged the Russians to come forward with dirt on Hillary Clinton. His top advisers met with Russian operatives to see what they had. That part of Mueller’s investigation is still open.
What we already know is plenty damning. A conspiracy of interest does not have to include an explicit tit-for-tat deal. It can be based on signaling.
In this case, Trump and his family relied on massive bailouts of his failing business enterprises from Russian oligarchs close to the Kremlin. When he became a presidential candidate, the Russians treated him as an asset ― a useful idiot, as Stalinists used to put it. And when the campaign finalists turned out to be Trump versus the hard-line Clinton, the Russians sought to destroy her and elect Trump. Trump, meanwhile, became the most pro-Russia president in U.S. history, refusing to breathe a word of criticism of Putin, behaving like the head of a client state. This much of the story is hidden in plain view.
The details ― of Russian financing of Trump’s businesses, and of more campaign contacts ― are likely to be spelled out in further indictments, almost surely including members of Trump’s family, and in Mueller’s final report, which will look very much like a bill of impeachment.
What’s astonishing ― and devastating ― is that this detailed report on Russian manipulation of a U.S. presidential election had to come from a special counsel. Under a normal administration, evidence of a foreign power meddling in a U.S. election would have prompted a presidential order for a full investigation. Instead, Trump mocked the whole idea and used his influence to block such inquiries by House and Senate panels.
Rather than looking deeply into Russian interference, the president appointed a commission on election integrity, headed by Vice President Mike Pence and Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state best known for voter suppression, based on the premise that massive voter fraud by immigrants and others not qualified to vote had helped Clinton win the national popular vote. This was so preposterous that the commission collapsed of its own weight.
So where does Mueller’s latest set of indictments leave us?
First, these disclosures end Trump’s intermittent efforts to fire Mueller. If he were to try that now, it would be an open-and-shut case of obstruction of justice. Congressional Republicans would have no choice but to begin the impeachment process.
Second, they drive a further wedge between Trump and the Republican leadership in the House and Senate. All key Republicans, whatever their marriage of convenience with Trump on other issues, have expressed outrage at the Russian operations and praised Mueller. Trump, by contrast, has only proclaimed his own lack of complicity, and has said nothing about what documented Russian interference means for American democracy, much less vowed to resist it and punish Putin.
We also see a further wedge between Trump and the entire intelligence community. Last week, on the eve of the Mueller indictments, the leaders of every major intelligence agency, including Trump appointees, testified unanimously before Congress that there was no doubt that Russia meddled in the 2016 election. Unlike Trump, they are alarmed that Putin tipped a U.S. election to a pro-Kremlin stooge.
One question is the degree to which Mueller’s 37-page indictment relied on materials from those U.S. intelligence agencies, and what else the government has that it isn’t revealing out of concern for disclosing “sources and methods.” Mueller’s indictment goes into far more detail than anything else that has been made public.
Two other questions remain. First is Mueller’s timing. When will other indictments come? He could wrap things up in a matter of weeks, or the investigation could drag out beyond November’s midterm elections.
Second is how the U.S. should punish and deter Russia. The Russian actions to undermine American democracy and tip the election amounted to an act of war. And if those actions were as effective as much reporting and now Mueller’s indictments have suggested they were, it means Trump literally became president in a Russia-sponsored coup d'état.
The U.S. and the Russians surely have the capacity to knock out each other’s vital defense and infrastructure systems that rely on the internet. But unlike the nuclear deterrence of Mutually Assured Destruction, there are no bright lines when it comes to self-restraint in cyberwar. If there were, Russia surely crossed one in 2015 and 2016.
What sort of retaliation makes sense? Mutually assured cyberdestruction would be a catastrophe; that’s why Russia gets away with these incursions. But slaps on the wrist like banning the travel or freezing the bank accounts of a few Russian individuals just makes America look pitiful.
This is the serious question America needs to take up, once Trump is gone. Thanks to Mueller’s latest revelations and those still to come, that day may not be far off.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. His forthcoming book is Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism?
- This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
I did actually. Lol Im sure you think that it somehow vindicates the ******* in chief but it doesnt! Their will be plenty more indictments and witnesses flipping on each other for a better deal. Sad (trump voice)
I did ... and the reference to Trump and the indictment said "this indictment does not imply anyone in the Trump administration".
You can read into it what you wish BUT, the indictment was referencing the Russians I believe. Trump and his renegades aren't even close to being excused from this, in fact, they are neck deep in it and its getting worse every day. After being warned of the Russian involvement in the election he's had no meetings with his staff regarding it AND has relaxed the Obama penalties. He's broken the constitution so many times it isn't even funny anymore. Mueller is setting his case up quite soundly ... when the hammer falls, there'll be no defense for Trump and his family of hordes.
If anything, Donald Trump's expected indictments/charges are growing by the day. Once his birds start singing, it'll be all over for him.
And I don't want to EVER hear anything about Hillary Clinton's e-mails ever again ... there is no comparison to what Trump & staff have done with highly confidential government information.
2018 is going to be a "very, very" bad year for Trump.
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/ro...f-13-russian-officials-for-election-meddling/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...eller-charges-fbi-investigation-what-are-they
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Well, too bad, you're going to hear about them. Yesterday's indictment of Van Der Zwaan brings it right back to the forefront....at least for anyone not ridiculously hypocritical. One of Mueller's indictment counts against Van Der Zwaan was that he deleted emails being sought by the Special Council's office. Muller's stated evidence of that was ONE email by Van Der Zwaan in Sept 2016. Well Hillary and her personal IT guy Paul Combetta purposely and admittedly deleted thousands of her emails that were under subpoena and then used bleach bit to make sure they were unrecoverable from the drive. You know because any normal person would use bleach bit to destroy all evidence of their emails regarding her *******'s wedding and yoga...right!!!!
The FBI ultimately recovered over 17,000 emails Hillary/Combetta deleted without turning over. In this case, what's bad for the goose is good 17,000 times over for the gander....if the gander is a politically connected democrat.
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4382158/2-16-18-Van-Der-Zwaan-Information.pdf
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hill...3000-emails-secretary-state/story?id=42389308
Yes, Russia Likely Did Swing Votes For Donald Trump
S.V. Date,HuffPost
WASHINGTON ― As John Bentley waited in line to see President Barack Obama campaign for Hillary Clinton just days before the 2016 election, he worried that he’d been unable to persuade his ******* to cast a ballot for Clinton, too.
The 24-year-old believed Clinton was untrustworthy, with new emails released by WikiLeaks providing fresh proof on a daily basis.
“Can you believe it?” wondered Bentley, a 70-year-old African-American man and a lifelong Democrat.
Fifteen months later, special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has found that the skepticism that afflicted people like Bentley’s ******* was no fluke. It was the result of deliberate efforts by the Russian government to hurt Clinton and help Donald Trump win the presidency ― efforts that included the targeting of young African-Americans like Bentley’s *******.
“Defendants and their co-conspirators began to encourage U.S. minority groups not to vote in the 2016 U.S. presidential election or to vote for a third-party U.S. presidential candidate,” according to a Feb. 16 grand jury indictment obtained by Mueller.
In fact, the day before Obama visited Jacksonville, Florida, to support Clinton, Russians purchased an ad for the Instagram account of a fake group called Blacktivist. It urged African-Americans to vote for a third-party candidate. “Choose peace and vote for Jill Stein. Trust me, it’s not a wasted vote,” the ad read, according to Mueller’s indictment.
It is impossible to know precisely how many voters nationally stayed home or voted for a third-party candidate because of the Russians’ social media campaign. Nevertheless, the details from the indictment raise new questions about the legitimacy of Trump’s victory.
While Trump maintains there is no proof that the Russian assistance affected the election, the contours of that final month of campaigning and the closeness of the tally suggest that the opposite is true: that it is highly unlikely the Russian efforts did not affect the outcome.
“There’s no question that it mattered,” said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman. “There’s no question that they thought it mattered. There’s no question that the Hillary Clinton folks thought it mattered.”
Over the entire final month of the race, Trump essentially centered his campaign on talking about the emails stolen by Russian intelligence and then released through its allied group WikiLeaks. The messages, which were sent to and from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, cast Clinton in a bad light. “We love WikiLeaks!” Trump would tell his rally crowds and live TV audiences, urging them to go to the website and read the emails for themselves. “Boy, do we love WikiLeaks.”
Democrats and even some Republican consultants said the Trump campaign would not have based its closing strategy on that theme if it were not working.
“You clearly wouldn’t do that if you didn’t think that was effective,” said Rick Tyler, a GOP consultant who worked for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign during the primaries.
Although Trump lost the popular tally by nearly 3 million votes nationally, he won three states that most observers expected to go to Clinton by a total margin of 77,744. Were the Russian efforts enough to have moved 77,744 votes in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania?
Clinton supporters argue that when an election is that close, every factor is potentially a game-changer. For example, shifts in polling numbers suggest that former FBI Director James Comey’s letters reopening, and then reclosing, the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state could also have cost her the election ― an argument Clinton herself has made.
One Republican-leaning pollster, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the question is impossible to quantify with any certainty. To move that many votes in those three states, the pollster said, would mean moving about 600,000 votes nationally ― or about half a percentage point. That said, he added that Trump’s success in using WikiLeaks to hammer on about emails and thereby remind voters of Clinton’s biggest vulnerability ― the FBI probe into her emails ― clearly makes that kind of vote shift plausible.
“I’m much more open to the notion that it mattered,” he said.
Exit polling suggests that voters’ concern about Clinton and emails — and Trump’s pounding on that theme with the help of WikiLeaks in the final weeks — indeed made a difference.
In Michigan, for instance, 60 percent of the electorate was bothered by the email issue, and 75 percent of those voters supported Trump. Relatedly, a quarter of Michigan voters settled on a candidate in the final month. That group broke for Trump 52 to 37 percent, while those who decided earlier voted for Clinton 50 to 47 percent.
The fact of Russian interference in the election and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s preference for Trump was detailed in a Jan. 6, 2017, report released by the U.S. intelligence agencies. That conclusion was reinforced by Mueller’s Feb. 16, 2018, indictment.
“They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump,” the indictment states.
For over a year, Trump questioned the conclusion of U.S. intelligence, as he continued to play up the possibility that the culprit in the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails was someone other than Russia. At various times, he suggested it might have been China, a 400-pound guy in his bed or someone from New Jersey.
At last, he appears to have abandoned that argument in the wake of Mueller’s indictment against 13 actual Russians and a Russian government-run group that employs hundreds of internet “trolls” who create and disseminate propaganda to influence foreign elections. Instead, the president turned to claiming that the Russian assistance did not have any effect.
“The results of the election were not impacted,” Trump wrote the afternoon the indictment was released.
The following day, he chided his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, for not making that assertion at a conference in Europe where McMaster acknowledged that it was now “incontrovertible” that Russia had interfered in the election. “General McMaster forgot to say that the results of the 2016 election were not impacted or changed by the Russians,” Trump tweeted ― and then proceeded to cite a string of conspiracy theories promoted by Fox News that he believed McMaster also should have mentioned.
And former Trump campaign aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, said neither Trump nor campaign officials were measuring the effect of his WikiLeaks speeches.
“Just trolling,” said one aide. “What we know worked was ‘Crooked Hillary.’ ‘Clinton Cash’ had impact on Dems ― Bernie ‘Bros’ ― and independents.” The aide added that the only emails WikiLeaks had were “BS Podesta and DNC.”
But Mellman, the Democratic pollster, said it is disingenuous to draw distinctions between the DNC emails released by WikiLeaks and the separate State Department emails when the average voter was aware only that Clinton had been under investigation for something to do with emails.
“There’s no question that the whole email controversy did damage Hillary Clinton,” he said, adding that many voters found the issue confusing and that Trump took advantage of that confusion. “If the press was talking about emails, it was bad for Hillary Clinton.”
Tyler, the Republican consultant, wonders how Trump supporters can argue that the social media ads and fake stories had no impact, when it was exactly the sort of thing the Trump campaign was doing itself. “You can’t say that what you were doing was effective, but what the Russians were doing wasn’t effective,” he said.
blkdlaur would be a good example of this!....and a few others on here....suckers!
S.V. Date,HuffPostWASHINGTON ― As John Bentley waited in line to see President Barack Obama campaign for Hillary Clinton just days before the 2016 election, he worried that he’d been unable to persuade his ******* to cast a ballot for Clinton, too.
The 24-year-old believed Clinton was untrustworthy, with new emails released by WikiLeaks providing fresh proof on a daily basis.
“Can you believe it?” wondered Bentley, a 70-year-old African-American man and a lifelong Democrat.
Fifteen months later, special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has found that the skepticism that afflicted people like Bentley’s ******* was no fluke. It was the result of deliberate efforts by the Russian government to hurt Clinton and help Donald Trump win the presidency ― efforts that included the targeting of young African-Americans like Bentley’s *******.
“Defendants and their co-conspirators began to encourage U.S. minority groups not to vote in the 2016 U.S. presidential election or to vote for a third-party U.S. presidential candidate,” according to a Feb. 16 grand jury indictment obtained by Mueller.
In fact, the day before Obama visited Jacksonville, Florida, to support Clinton, Russians purchased an ad for the Instagram account of a fake group called Blacktivist. It urged African-Americans to vote for a third-party candidate. “Choose peace and vote for Jill Stein. Trust me, it’s not a wasted vote,” the ad read, according to Mueller’s indictment.
It is impossible to know precisely how many voters nationally stayed home or voted for a third-party candidate because of the Russians’ social media campaign. Nevertheless, the details from the indictment raise new questions about the legitimacy of Trump’s victory.
There’s no question that it mattered. There’s no question that they thought it mattered.
Democratic pollster Mark Mellman
While Trump maintains there is no proof that the Russian assistance affected the election, the contours of that final month of campaigning and the closeness of the tally suggest that the opposite is true: that it is highly unlikely the Russian efforts did not affect the outcome.
“There’s no question that it mattered,” said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman. “There’s no question that they thought it mattered. There’s no question that the Hillary Clinton folks thought it mattered.”
Over the entire final month of the race, Trump essentially centered his campaign on talking about the emails stolen by Russian intelligence and then released through its allied group WikiLeaks. The messages, which were sent to and from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, cast Clinton in a bad light. “We love WikiLeaks!” Trump would tell his rally crowds and live TV audiences, urging them to go to the website and read the emails for themselves. “Boy, do we love WikiLeaks.”
Democrats and even some Republican consultants said the Trump campaign would not have based its closing strategy on that theme if it were not working.
“You clearly wouldn’t do that if you didn’t think that was effective,” said Rick Tyler, a GOP consultant who worked for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign during the primaries.
Although Trump lost the popular tally by nearly 3 million votes nationally, he won three states that most observers expected to go to Clinton by a total margin of 77,744. Were the Russian efforts enough to have moved 77,744 votes in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania?
Clinton supporters argue that when an election is that close, every factor is potentially a game-changer. For example, shifts in polling numbers suggest that former FBI Director James Comey’s letters reopening, and then reclosing, the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state could also have cost her the election ― an argument Clinton herself has made.
One Republican-leaning pollster, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the question is impossible to quantify with any certainty. To move that many votes in those three states, the pollster said, would mean moving about 600,000 votes nationally ― or about half a percentage point. That said, he added that Trump’s success in using WikiLeaks to hammer on about emails and thereby remind voters of Clinton’s biggest vulnerability ― the FBI probe into her emails ― clearly makes that kind of vote shift plausible.
“I’m much more open to the notion that it mattered,” he said.
Exit polling suggests that voters’ concern about Clinton and emails — and Trump’s pounding on that theme with the help of WikiLeaks in the final weeks — indeed made a difference.
In Michigan, for instance, 60 percent of the electorate was bothered by the email issue, and 75 percent of those voters supported Trump. Relatedly, a quarter of Michigan voters settled on a candidate in the final month. That group broke for Trump 52 to 37 percent, while those who decided earlier voted for Clinton 50 to 47 percent.
They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump.
Special counsel Robert Mueller's indictment against multiple Russians
Trump has been deeply sensitive to the appearance that he did not earn the presidency on his own. That’s one of the reasons, according to those close to him, why he has repeatedly pushed the false claim that he lost the popular vote because “millions” of undocumented immigrants supposedly cast ballots for Clinton. It is also why Trump has resisted admitting that Russians interfered in the election at all, let alone tried to boost his candidacy, sources close to him told HuffPost on condition of anonymity.The fact of Russian interference in the election and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s preference for Trump was detailed in a Jan. 6, 2017, report released by the U.S. intelligence agencies. That conclusion was reinforced by Mueller’s Feb. 16, 2018, indictment.
“They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump,” the indictment states.
For over a year, Trump questioned the conclusion of U.S. intelligence, as he continued to play up the possibility that the culprit in the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails was someone other than Russia. At various times, he suggested it might have been China, a 400-pound guy in his bed or someone from New Jersey.
At last, he appears to have abandoned that argument in the wake of Mueller’s indictment against 13 actual Russians and a Russian government-run group that employs hundreds of internet “trolls” who create and disseminate propaganda to influence foreign elections. Instead, the president turned to claiming that the Russian assistance did not have any effect.
“The results of the election were not impacted,” Trump wrote the afternoon the indictment was released.
The following day, he chided his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, for not making that assertion at a conference in Europe where McMaster acknowledged that it was now “incontrovertible” that Russia had interfered in the election. “General McMaster forgot to say that the results of the 2016 election were not impacted or changed by the Russians,” Trump tweeted ― and then proceeded to cite a string of conspiracy theories promoted by Fox News that he believed McMaster also should have mentioned.
You can’t say that what you were doing was effective, but what the Russians were doing wasn’t effective.
Republican consultant Rick Tyler
Some Trump supporters argue that the value of the ads the Russians bought on Facebook and other social media platforms was a pittance compared to the total amount of money spent on the race, so they couldn’t have mattered at all. Others simply insist there is no proof that American voters were affected by the thousands of fake news posts written by Russians and then spread via fake accounts and computer programs.And former Trump campaign aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, said neither Trump nor campaign officials were measuring the effect of his WikiLeaks speeches.
“Just trolling,” said one aide. “What we know worked was ‘Crooked Hillary.’ ‘Clinton Cash’ had impact on Dems ― Bernie ‘Bros’ ― and independents.” The aide added that the only emails WikiLeaks had were “BS Podesta and DNC.”
But Mellman, the Democratic pollster, said it is disingenuous to draw distinctions between the DNC emails released by WikiLeaks and the separate State Department emails when the average voter was aware only that Clinton had been under investigation for something to do with emails.
“There’s no question that the whole email controversy did damage Hillary Clinton,” he said, adding that many voters found the issue confusing and that Trump took advantage of that confusion. “If the press was talking about emails, it was bad for Hillary Clinton.”
Tyler, the Republican consultant, wonders how Trump supporters can argue that the social media ads and fake stories had no impact, when it was exactly the sort of thing the Trump campaign was doing itself. “You can’t say that what you were doing was effective, but what the Russians were doing wasn’t effective,” he said.
- This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
blkdlaur would be a good example of this!....and a few others on here....suckers!
The 21st Century Republican Party ... lie, deny, redirect, discredit, and now espionage & treason!
Yeah, this party is really redefining itself. Their 'win at all cost' is going to start showing results over the next 3 years. It'll be enjoyable to see 'em sweat then go to jail. I'm betting its a lot deeper than anything we've experienced in this country's history since its birth. Too bad public hangings aren't still used.
Yeah, this party is really redefining itself. Their 'win at all cost' is going to start showing results over the next 3 years. It'll be enjoyable to see 'em sweat then go to jail. I'm betting its a lot deeper than anything we've experienced in this country's history since its birth. Too bad public hangings aren't still used.
already looking like it......I bet Mueller knows all about !
His first goal is to get trump.BEFORE he can pardon anyone!
and I see the chumpster's ratings are going up alittle.....I'm sure that's because of him doing a tid bit on guns I'm sure....but give it another ???? and people see where he took health care.....him and his party will be in deep *******
Funny I see what you posted totally in reverse - replacing Republican with Democrat - TDS runs rampant once again!
you just have a problem seeing what doesn't go along with what you WANT to believe
didn't read the above article on how your views got so fucked up?
O contraire - once again- I try to keep a level head - it's you people that have had a rabid response to all the totally left biased reporting - and are completely sucked in by it all. You cannot get over that Trump beat Hillary and it's just GOT to be those nasty Russians - just gotta be - well I hate ta tell wasn't the Russians - was Americans with eyes wide open - when Mitt Romney tried to warn of the Russian menace Obama mocked him - now because it suits the liberal narrative - they are the very worst of bad guys - give it a break - lots of us aren't buying what your selling no matter how crazy ya get !!!
Its not Democrats that are retiring, or changing their party affiliations, or going to jail in bunches, or dropping out of the Trump administration weekly. Even Republicans say the current party isn't the same. Every day we read of new miss-appropriation of funds ... taking plane trips with family on the US taxpayers dime. Sure, you can probably list a few Democrats like that, but its weekly that Republicans are being called out. You can continue to read Fox and far-right lies, if you like ... they certainly have been bragging about the false news lately. You just keep on believing their lies, bro. The dirtiest and most crooked administration in the history of the country ... bar NONE!
.............. Come November this is the Republican party ~> 
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level with what...your ass?
I guess all the pollings are lies too, huh ... daily the polls show Trump & Republicans going in the wrong directions ... and it isn't even close. Look at the elections thus far since Trump's been President ... what, like 37 seats they've lost thus far, and it isn't even mid-terms yet.
trump didn't beat Hillary......you refuse to read anything against your man so you have no idea how corrupt he is!
Hillary won the popular vote.....and Russia gave trump the rest needed to put him in...for one thing by convincing a lot of blacks Hillary was bad...and they/you bought it hook line and sinker!
I have NO party affiliation - being a registered Independent since age 18 - as far as I am concerned they're ALL full of a lot of shite - but the way you raving liberals get off preaching at people that don't agree with your view quoting and spouting left leaning liberal news reports just pushes people in the other direction - jus sayin
