US Politics

[Tracker]

27 minutes ago, bustamente said:

So what did we learn about Trump this weekend, that he never heard something that he retweeted, and that he was to busy tweeting when intel was briefing him on the Russian pay to slay program, oh and his buddy "I like beer" is back in the news and not in a good way.

This weekend, if we needed any further cofirmation, confirmed that there are no depths to which Trump is willing to go to in order to feed his ego. To Trump, it is all about dominance and submission. His ego is so fragile and brittle that he has can brook no criticism or any form of dissent that challenges his fantasy of total strength and wisdom. 

[Tracker]

Busted: Trump engaged in 3-Week ‘flurry of communication’ with Putin this tear — and the White House hid some of the calls

President Donald Trump engaged in an unprecedented – and previously unknown – “flurry of communication” with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a three-week period earlier this year, according to a sister-network of Voice of America.

“On March 30, Russian leader Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump spoke by telephone, the first of five calls between the two over a period of three weeks, a flurry of communication unprecedented during Trump’s 3 1/2 years in office,” reports Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFERL).

Only one of those five calls, according to research from NCRM, was shared with the press. None were posted to the White House website, a serious deviation from prior practice.

“For many Russia watchers, the flurry of behind-the-scenes phone calls and other communications is a clear indication that something’s going on,” RFERL’s Mike Eckel adds. He notes, “the two countries’ diplomats have spoken at least three times over that same period, which also coincided with an unusual shipment of Russian coronavirus-related humanitarian aid to the United States.”

NCRM reviewed titles of over 800 news briefings on the White House website, where the Press Office used to post details of all telephone calls between the President and foreign leaders, known as “readouts.”

The White House appears to be hiding readouts from calls between President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin. In fact, in a serious deviation, there are no readouts of any calls between President Trump and any foreign leader that took place this year, posted to the White House’s website for the public to access.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/busted-trump-engaged-in-3-week-flurry-of-communication-with-putin-this-tear-and-the-white-house-hid-some-of-the-calls/

[17to85]

Russian asset.

Imagine going back in time and telling republicans back then that their party and their party supporters would be totally OK with the president bending over backwards for Russia...

[itchy]

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/sacha-baron-cohen-far-right-rally-prank-1021609/

Wasn't really a fan of his before, but this one is hilarious. 

 

[Brandon]

16 minutes ago, itchy said:

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/sacha-baron-cohen-far-right-rally-prank-1021609/

Wasn't really a fan of his before, but this one is hilarious. 

 

I wish that he would of continued his previous show where he dressed up as a bunch of different funny characters and made fun of the Americans.   He could of had so much more fun with everything going on in the last year. 

[Mr Dee]

From pandering to Putin to abusing allies and ignoring his own advisers, Trump's phone calls alarm US officials

In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, President Donald Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America's principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials -- including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff -- that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States, according to White House and intelligence officials intimately familiar with the contents of the conversations.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/29/politics/trump-phone-calls-national-security-concerns/index.html

It’s becoming clearer and clearer that that guy is becoming fuzzier and fuzzier.

[Tracker]

Here are 7 bombshell details from CNN’s new exposé on Trump’s disturbing calls with foreign leaders

A new blockbuster CNN report from famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein published Monday documented his extensive findings about President Donald Trump’s disturbing conversations with foreign leaders.

Though the nature of Trump’s interactions with many foreign leaders has been explored before — his call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky led to his impeachment — Bernstein’s reporting expands the scope of past reporting and fills in new details. It also reveals that an apparently wide circle of Trump’s aides has been and remains deeply troubled by Trump’s conduct in international relations. These worries, presumably, are what prompted officials to speak anonymously to Bernstein about what they’ve seen and heard.

Here are seven details from the report:

1. “[The] calls helped convince some senior US officials — including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff — that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States.”

This is the main takeaway from the piece. Of course, many outside critics of the administration have argued — even long before Trump was elected — that the president’s character poses a unique danger in the Oval Office.

Bernstein also found that many former top officials concluded Trump was “delusional” based on the way he talks to foreign leaders. On the other hand, much of Trump’s public behavior also indicates that he’s deeply delusional.

2. Trump was consistently deferential to Putin

Unsurprisingly, the report found that Trump shows extreme deference to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Again, this is another detail that confirms Trump acts privately as he does in public. This is, nevertheless, an important and revealing finding, since it shows that Trump’s public persona is not a mere act and that there’s no clever scheme going on behind the scenes. It’s also particularly relevant now, as questioned have emerged about Trump’s knowledge of and response to reports of a Russian government plot to place bounties on the heads of American soldiers.

The report explained: In numerous calls with Putin that were described to CNN, Trump left top national security aides and his chiefs of staff flabbergasted, less because of specific concessions he made than because of his manner — inordinately solicitous of Putin’s admiration and seemingly seeking his approval — while usually ignoring substantive policy expertise and important matters on the standing bilateral agenda, including human rights; and an arms control agreement, which never got dealt with in a way that advanced shared Russian and American goals that both Putin and Trump professed to favor, CNN’s sources said.

3. Trump spoke most with Erdogan

While Trump’s relationship with Putin has drawn most attention during his presidency, Bernstein refocuses some of that scrutiny toward the president’s relations with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He found that Trump is apparently absurdly accommodative of Erdogan, sometimes taking his calls “at least twice a week”:

According to one high-level source, there are also existing summaries and conversation-readouts of the President’s discussions with Erdogan that might reinforce Bolton’s allegations against Trump in the so-called “Halkbank case,” involving a major Turkish bank with suspected ties to Erdogan and his family. That source said the matter was raised in more than one telephone conversation between Erdogan and Trump.

4. “[If] members of Congress heard from witnesses to the actual conversations or read the texts and contemporaneous notes, even many senior Republican members would no longer be able to retain confidence in the President.”

This passage drew swift criticism of Twitter, with many observers pointing out that there seems to be nothing that could dissuade Republican lawmakers from supporting Trump. Maybe so. But the fact that such a claim would be made speaks to the seriousness of the behavior in question. The report also found:

Elements of that testimony by [Fiona] Hill, if re-examined by Congressional investigators, might provide a detailed road-map of the President’s extensively-documented conversations, the sources said. White House and intelligence officials familiar with the voice-generated transcriptions and underlying documents agreed that their contents could be devastating to the President’s standing with members of the Congress of both parties — and the public — if revealed in great detail. (There is little doubt that Trump would invoke executive privilege to keep the conversations private. However, some former officials with detailed knowledge of many of the conversations might be willing to testify about them, sources said.)

5. Trump “regularly bullied and demeaned the leaders of America’s principal allies, especially two women: telling Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom she was weak and lacked courage; and telling German Chancellor Angela Merkel that she was “stupid.”

Trump is well-known to be a misogynist, and he seems to boil with antipathy for American allies. The report explained:

But his most vicious attacks, said the sources, were aimed at women heads of state. In conversations with both May and Merkel, the President demeaned and denigrated them in diatribes described as “near-sadistic” by one of the sources and confirmed by others. “Some of the things he said to Angela Merkel are just unbelievable: he called her ‘stupid,’ and accused her of being in the pocket of the Russians … He’s toughest [in the phone calls] with those he looks at as weaklings and weakest with the ones he ought to be tough with.”

6. Trump’s lack of knowledge puts him at a disadvantage.

The report said that those around Trump believed he was unable to learn or grow in his interactions with foreign leaders. And his wide-ranging ignorance could be used against him: Two sources described the President as woefully uninformed about the history of the Syrian conflict and the Middle East generally, and said he was often caught off guard, and lacked sufficient knowledge to engage on equal terms in nuanced policy discussion with Erdogan. “Erdogan took him to the cleaners,” said one of the sources.

7. Trump acted in his own self-interest, rather than the national interest

This was the central charge in the impeachment case against Trump: he’s unable or unwilling to differentiate between the national interest and his own personal interest. 
This has always been a clear defect in Trump’s character; it’s patently obvious in the way he speaks publicly. Behind the scenes, it seems, he’s no different. The CNN piece concluded:

“There was no sense of ‘Team America’ in the conversations,” or of the United States as an historic force with certain democratic principles and leadership of the free world, said the official. “The opposite. It was like the United States had disappeared. It was always ‘Just me’.”

[17to85]

None of these are shocking revelations to anyone paying attention... and all those shiefs of staff so upset... maybe they should have spoken up sooner. Let's face it, people were happy to enable trump as long as they were benefiting from it, but now that it's all falling apart, as it was always bound to do everyone is trying to distance themselves. 

 

They're all guilty and they all need to own this on their permanent records. 

[HardCoreBlue]

22 minutes ago, Tracker said:

Here are 7 bombshell details from CNN’s new exposé on Trump’s disturbing calls with foreign leaders

A new blockbuster CNN report from famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein published Monday documented his extensive findings about President Donald Trump’s disturbing conversations with foreign leaders.

Though the nature of Trump’s interactions with many foreign leaders has been explored before — his call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky led to his impeachment — Bernstein’s reporting expands the scope of past reporting and fills in new details. It also reveals that an apparently wide circle of Trump’s aides has been and remains deeply troubled by Trump’s conduct in international relations. These worries, presumably, are what prompted officials to speak anonymously to Bernstein about what they’ve seen and heard.

Here are seven details from the report:

1. “[The] calls helped convince some senior US officials — including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff — that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States.”

This is the main takeaway from the piece. Of course, many outside critics of the administration have argued — even long before Trump was elected — that the president’s character poses a unique danger in the Oval Office.

Bernstein also found that many former top officials concluded Trump was “delusional” based on the way he talks to foreign leaders. On the other hand, much of Trump’s public behavior also indicates that he’s deeply delusional.

2. Trump was consistently deferential to Putin

Unsurprisingly, the report found that Trump shows extreme deference to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Again, this is another detail that confirms Trump acts privately as he does in public. This is, nevertheless, an important and revealing finding, since it shows that Trump’s public persona is not a mere act and that there’s no clever scheme going on behind the scenes. It’s also particularly relevant now, as questioned have emerged about Trump’s knowledge of and response to reports of a Russian government plot to place bounties on the heads of American soldiers.

The report explained: In numerous calls with Putin that were described to CNN, Trump left top national security aides and his chiefs of staff flabbergasted, less because of specific concessions he made than because of his manner — inordinately solicitous of Putin’s admiration and seemingly seeking his approval — while usually ignoring substantive policy expertise and important matters on the standing bilateral agenda, including human rights; and an arms control agreement, which never got dealt with in a way that advanced shared Russian and American goals that both Putin and Trump professed to favor, CNN’s sources said.

3. Trump spoke most with Erdogan

While Trump’s relationship with Putin has drawn most attention during his presidency, Bernstein refocuses some of that scrutiny toward the president’s relations with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He found that Trump is apparently absurdly accommodative of Erdogan, sometimes taking his calls “at least twice a week”:

According to one high-level source, there are also existing summaries and conversation-readouts of the President’s discussions with Erdogan that might reinforce Bolton’s allegations against Trump in the so-called “Halkbank case,” involving a major Turkish bank with suspected ties to Erdogan and his family. That source said the matter was raised in more than one telephone conversation between Erdogan and Trump.

4. “[If] members of Congress heard from witnesses to the actual conversations or read the texts and contemporaneous notes, even many senior Republican members would no longer be able to retain confidence in the President.”

This passage drew swift criticism of Twitter, with many observers pointing out that there seems to be nothing that could dissuade Republican lawmakers from supporting Trump. Maybe so. But the fact that such a claim would be made speaks to the seriousness of the behavior in question. The report also found:

Elements of that testimony by [Fiona] Hill, if re-examined by Congressional investigators, might provide a detailed road-map of the President’s extensively-documented conversations, the sources said. White House and intelligence officials familiar with the voice-generated transcriptions and underlying documents agreed that their contents could be devastating to the President’s standing with members of the Congress of both parties — and the public — if revealed in great detail. (There is little doubt that Trump would invoke executive privilege to keep the conversations private. However, some former officials with detailed knowledge of many of the conversations might be willing to testify about them, sources said.)

5. Trump “regularly bullied and demeaned the leaders of America’s principal allies, especially two women: telling Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom she was weak and lacked courage; and telling German Chancellor Angela Merkel that she was “stupid.”

Trump is well-known to be a misogynist, and he seems to boil with antipathy for American allies. The report explained:

But his most vicious attacks, said the sources, were aimed at women heads of state. In conversations with both May and Merkel, the President demeaned and denigrated them in diatribes described as “near-sadistic” by one of the sources and confirmed by others. “Some of the things he said to Angela Merkel are just unbelievable: he called her ‘stupid,’ and accused her of being in the pocket of the Russians … He’s toughest [in the phone calls] with those he looks at as weaklings and weakest with the ones he ought to be tough with.”

6. Trump’s lack of knowledge puts him at a disadvantage.

The report said that those around Trump believed he was unable to learn or grow in his interactions with foreign leaders. And his wide-ranging ignorance could be used against him: Two sources described the President as woefully uninformed about the history of the Syrian conflict and the Middle East generally, and said he was often caught off guard, and lacked sufficient knowledge to engage on equal terms in nuanced policy discussion with Erdogan. “Erdogan took him to the cleaners,” said one of the sources.

7. Trump acted in his own self-interest, rather than the national interest

This was the central charge in the impeachment case against Trump: he’s unable or unwilling to differentiate between the national interest and his own personal interest. 
This has always been a clear defect in Trump’s character; it’s patently obvious in the way he speaks publicly. Behind the scenes, it seems, he’s no different. The CNN piece concluded:

“There was no sense of ‘Team America’ in the conversations,” or of the United States as an historic force with certain democratic principles and leadership of the free world, said the official. “The opposite. It was like the United States had disappeared. It was always ‘Just me’.”

Inappropriate, illegal, immoral behaviour consistently for the last 4 years. When are we going to see actual consequences other than twitter shaming? Without meaningful consequences and Trump and his gang being really punished where it hurts, this all feels empty and frustrating. Are the Democrats that weak and the system so flawed that miscreants can run roughshod over everything? Reading over and over again that history will not be kind to Trump, his administration, the GOP and his hardened supporters means nothing right now.

[Fred C Dobbs]

Well he's still got Fox:

Quote

 

 

[bustamente]

It's getting worse and worse day by day for Trumpidiot and his gang of imbeciles, another term for Trump and Americans will see Putin sitting behind the resolute desk

Edited June 30, 2020 by bustamente

[Tracker]

1 hour ago, HardCoreBlue said:

Inappropriate, illegal, immoral behaviour consistently for the last 4 years. When are we going to see actual consequences other than twitter shaming? Without meaningful consequences and Trump and his gang being really punished where it hurts, this all feels empty and frustrating. Are the Democrats that weak and the system so flawed that miscreants can run roughshod over everything? Reading over and over again that history will not be kind to Trump, his administration, the GOP and his hardened supporters means nothing right now.

There was a point to the war crimes trials conducted in Germany and Japan after the second world war. They were meant to not only punish the guilty, but also to send a message to succeeding generations that there were consequences to crimes. The roots of this current catastrophe are in the Nixon era, where some of the underlings were punished lightly, but Nixon escaped in the name of "national unity" so that the ugly trial that should have followed the impeachment and removal from office would be swept under the rug and out sight.

Reagan and his thralls did all manner of illegal and morally reprehensible things but only Oliver North went to jail but only for a short time, onl to be pardoned. Bush 2 and his miscreants did even worse things but were never called to account. Thus, as diseased as Trump's mind and personality were, he was both a natural extension of GOP acceptable behaviours and he was ferally aware that he could direct his minions to do anything and everything and he could shield who he chose and suffer absolutely no consequences. Had Kissinger, North and the other gone though a public trial, convicted, sentenced harshly and served their time, it would probably have deterred if not Trump, his lackeys. 

[Mr Dee]

 

 

[bustamente]

Can anyone guess whats happening in Tulsa the past few days with testing............................thank you Dear Leader

[Tracker]

Detainees Say ICE Fired on Them During Coronavirus Protest

COVID-19 is spreading in a Virginia ICE detention center. People there want treatment and information. Last week, they received a shocking display of violence instead.
The protest, begun that morning, was entirely peaceful. Then the guard pulled the trigger. 

It was Monday, June 22, and migrants, alarmed at the rapid spread of coronavirus within their Farmville, Virginia, detention center, refused a meal and declined to rise for the late-afternoon attendance count within their crowded dormitory, according to two detainees who directly experienced the frightening situation.

Then the detention-center authorities ordered the 80 or so migrants back to their bunks. Ten or more guards in body armor rushed in. “The first thing they did was fire a shot,” said one of the detainees, whom The Daily Beast will call Johnny. 

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) guard fired his weapon above the migrants’ heads, and didn’t hit anyone. “It was a distraction bullet, the guy with the gun said. But a distraction from what?” Johnny asked. ICE confirmed the discharge of a weapon, but disputed the guard fired any projectile. 

https://www.thedailybeast.com/detainees-say-ice-fired-on-them-during-coronavirus-protest?ref=home

(How can a weapon be discharged but not fire a projectile?)

[Mr Dee]

6 minutes ago, Tracker said:

How can a weapon be discharged but not fire a projectile?)

Well, think of it as comparable to a President firing off a message that has no substance.
Same thing.

[Tracker]

Report: White House Told of Russian Bounties in March 2019

President Trump was briefed as early as March 2019 on intelligence that Russia was offering bounties to the Taliban to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan, according to a new report. The Associated Press, citing U.S. officials with direct knowledge, says then-National Security Adviser John Bolton told colleagues he gave Trump the details of the situation that March, and it was also included in a daily written briefing back then. That timeline would mean the White House was aware of the intelligence a year earlier than others have reported since the story broke—and before an April 2019 car bombing that killed three Marines could be tied to the alleged plot. The White House claims that Trump was never briefed.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-house-reportedly-told-of-russian-bounties-in-march-2019?ref=home

(Reports indicate that during this meeting, Trump was totally focused on an upcoming rally in North Carolina and ignored everything else)

[Tracker]

Just now, Mr Dee said:

Well, think of it as comparable to a President firing off a message that has no substance.
Same thing.

(Or the result of a vasectomy)

[Mr Dee]

I’d be hilarious, and drive a point home, if somebody would blanket the Mount Rushmore Presidents with face masks..

 

[Tracker]

Pro-Trump Retirement Community The Villages Is Descending Into Civil War

When an elderly man was filmed shouting “white power” while driving through America’s largest retirement community on a golf cart, it was the latest installment of a culture war Chris Stanley had watched unfold for years.

“Battle lines are drawn,” Stanley, who serves as president of The Villages Democratic Club in the enormous town geared toward well-kempt retirees in central Florida, told The Daily Beast. 

But the scene—which was amplified when President Donald Trump approvingly tweeted it before deleting the post this weekend—marked a sharp deterioration from just a few years ago, Stanley explained. In fact, political relations were relatively friendly until Trump’s election. 

“We coexisted happily,” she said. “We had our club, they had their club. They had their speakers, we would occasionally get a speaker.”

A massive 55-and-over community in Florida, The Villages is a longtime Republican stronghold. Donald Trump carried 70 percent of the vote in the area in 2016, the expanding town amounting to a sort of baby boomer rebuttal to the much-hyped idea of waning political power among elderly white people in America.

But conversations with residents suggest Trump’s election brought a surge in hostilities that has boiled over in recent months. The president’s tweet this past weekend—of one of his supporters yelling the racist phrase during dueling political rallies at The Villages—showed how far relations have degraded.

“Now anywhere we go, they’re waiting for us,” Stanley told The Daily Beast.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pro-trump-retirement-community-the-villages-is-descending-into-civil-war?ref=home

(

[Mr Dee]

 

 

[Tracker]

The Pentagon leaks an explosive story of Trump’s dereliction of duty — widening the rift between the military and the White House

The news late yesterday was chilling: Russians have been paying Taliban militants to kill Americans in Afghanistan even as peace talks with the Taliban were under way, intelligence sources told The New York Times. And Donald Trump has known about this intelligence since the beginning of March and has done nothing about it.

(The US military has begun to turn on Trump in response to his ignoring their advice and his attacks on and interference with military personnel.)

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/the-pentagon-leaks-an-explosive-story-of-trumps-dereliction-of-duty-widening-the-rift-between-the-military-and-the-white-house/

Edited June 30, 2020 by Tracker

[Mr Dee]

 

 

[do or die]

No, no, the fake media has this all wrong.  It's merely "alternative patriotism"

[HardCoreBlue]

I love how Trump and Trump jr are losing their minds on Biden not engaging them and not holding press conferences. Keep it up, less is better than more right now. When he announces his VP nominee, release her on these creeps.