i think the rest of that post mitigates the first part.
media optics.
2021 American Civil War
- Thread starter Pexbo
- Start date
What? You literally said it was a partisan trial when:
1. It was not partisan (Mueller was/is a registered Republican who was appointed to positions by presidents from both parties)
2. It was not a trial.
it was pretty partisan in terms of the way it was reported. you're right though, not literally a trial.
He’s not trying to whitewash himself like Luntz, but Rasmussen still looks through a certain prism.
It was not even close to a trial. It was an investigation by an independent special council who was repeatedly interfered with by Trump, who had witnesses withheld by Trump, and was threatened with being fired, by Trump. The report definitively found election interference by Russia. He presented that report to congress AFTER Barrs shitstorm of a synopsis that bore little resemblance to the actual report findings. It was up to congress and the DOJ (
) to proceed from there.but it stuggles to transate that into quantifiable terms. it also states that the trump campaign was not directly involved in this effort by russia. it's the second part that the media never sought to clarify. if you were just skimming cnn or the nyt back in the day you'd have got the impression that trump himself was collaborating with russia. maybe it drove user engagement. it wasn't true at any rate.It was not even close to a trial. It was an investigation by an independent special council who was repeatedly interfered with by Trump, who had witnesses withheld by Trump, and was threatened with being fired, by Trump. The report definitively found election interference by Russia. He presented that report to congress AFTER Barrs shitstorm of a synopsis that bore little resemblance to the actual report findings. It was up to congress and the DOJ (
Ballotpedia is cool.
It stated that while there was contact between the sides there was not sufficient evidence to prove collaboration. It also stated that a major reason for this lack of sufficient evidence was witnesses pleasing the fifth or invoking executive privilege.
it also states that russian attempts insofar as they were made were characterised by russians representing themselves as non-russian actors for obvious reasons. having read a lot of that report there is no good reason to suggest any of the campaign people were aware that russian intel were amplifying campaign messages.
it's an interesting one because there's a fringe school which does point out very good counterpoints which are factual. but they themselves equate the idea that russia wasn't involved in the exfiltration of data, or hacking, of the dnc with the notion that there was no russian interference at all. there's some evidence to suggest that the primary email exfiltration was not a result of russian hacking, as the company charged with ascertaining whether this was or wasn't true has said they cannot confirm that it happened, and that company was crowdstrike, but there's also very solid evidence to suggest that russia obviously did interfere with botnets and campaigns in the us. and it's this last part which those who push back on some aspects of the russiagate event always neglect to mention.
You think they never looked at social media?
No one actually saw Trump actively on Twitter, so how do we know he actually used it? Just asking questions.
the accounts weren't advertised as russian. there was no real reason to suspect that they were. the only thing mueller points to is a request by one of those accounts for campaign stuff for a rally. but they used an american organizer who himself wasn't aware that it was a russian influence campaign as intermediary. so yeah there's just no direct evidence of collaboration and never really was.
So the bipartisan Senate committee was completely wrong in its assessment?
it never stated there was direct evidence of trump-russia collaboration. the mueller report i've just read doesn't say that at all. so it might not have been wrong.
that's basically the finding mueller makes over 450 pages.
Well, how about that.
“It says the Trump campaign chairman had regular contact with a Russian intelligence officer and says other Trump associates were eager to exploit the Kremlin's aid, particularly by maximizing the impact of the disclosure of Democratic emails hacked by Russian intelligence officers”
“The findings, including unflinching characterizations of furtive interactions between Trump associates and Russian operatives, echo to a large degree those of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation”
having just read that report, i don't see the echo. not keen to read another 1000 page report but will skim it.
Those are additional submissions to the report by those on the panel. It’s not the panel’s main assertion that there was collusion.
It’s never been just about Trump. If the campaign colluded, which they did, it really doesn’t matter if trump knew or not.
Bizarre that you would think the opposite.
he was called a russian asset. so it does sort of matter whether he actually engaged with a foreign state knowingly or he didn't. bizarre not to want to know that.
If the campaign colluded, then the campaign colluded. Which it did. And was showcased by multiple investigations. Certainly doesn’t matter if the top dog knew or participated, it’s still collusion.
It’s the way Mafioso dons were taken down, even when they were ignorant of their subordinates actions.
You’re not from here, are you?
so by that logic clinton should be on trial for misleading the fbi intentionally despite her campaign people saying they did it by themselves. that would be the consistent approach right?
Not sure to what you are referring here? Send a link.
Sure.
not sure i agree with that. we're saying that even if clinton didn't have knowledge that her campaign managers and operatives misled the fbi over the steele dossier and a lot of other things around russiagate that clinton herself should face trial? that she'd be guilty by association? it's an interesting idea. would potentially see trump and clinton in prison.
Completely off topic but I'm curious: why don't you use capital letters?
i dont keep tabs on it
The Steele Dossier info which was initially funded by Republicans & was a raw intelligence document whose large swaths of which haven’t been disproven?
One person lying?
Sure, Clinton deserves some of the blame.
There’s also degrees of criminality / illegality & systemic issues.
it was a clinton campaign exercise. and two of those officials were accused of misleading the fbi. sussman just most high profile. they manupulated false information and pretended when they gave it to the fbi that they weren't acting on behalf of the campaign. as for the republican part, yeah as opposition dirt during the primary stage. it was never credible. the irony is the interlinkage between the gop and the clinton campaign. people in dc just gather info, make info up, and sell to highest bidder. which is probably not a new phenomenon.
i agree on the systemic point. which i said on the previous page. since 2016 at least there's been an uptick in each party trying to weaponize institutions which are supposed to be independent. now it might read as naive to anyone who studies political campaigns because almost all of them are dirty but 2016 was a kind of watershed in dirty tricks being played by each side.
for example, trump's dealings with comey are classic attempts to try and subordinate the fbi to the presidency. but then comey was in a bad spot because he had led an investigation against trump as candidate based on clinton campaign propaganda. it's one big gargantuan fecking mess.
I honestly don’t care, I just wanted to see where you went with that since it seemed like deflection on your part from the fact that the Trump campaign knew about Russian interference with the election.
yeah i didn't get the sense that you cared which is typical tbh.
Like how I don’t get the sense that you actually believe half of what you’ve said in here today?
Would take an exceptional amount of willful ignorance to do so.
No, it began as a republican funded project by Fusion who then sold the initial report to the Clinton campaign. Only then was Steel brought on to add to it and he claims he did not know who was getting the report till much later.
i believe the russians interfered. i believe that trump had no knowledge or direct participation of that interference. i believe that clinton's campaign willingly misled the fbi for political reasons and led a media campaign in the aftermath to continue to do so but on a public scale because they were bitter about losing and maybe even nervous about having potentially incriminated themselves along the way. i believe that the dems weaponize institutions the same way the republicans do but that the denialism is more of an institutionalized fact on the extremist gop side. i believe i've probably read more into this affair in the past two days alone than you have in the past four years and i believe i'm less ideologically inclined to want to see one side tarred and feathered while ignoring the wider context.
take that as you want.
i acknowledge that.
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And his campaign?
We do agree on your final statement. I can only shudder at the fallout from 2022 & 2024. We might look back upon this current ‘gargantuan fecking mess’ as a quaint time in our lives.
i don't see proof for direct campaign dealings with russian intel as of yet. highly possible though. manafort and the rest aren't squeeky clean. the mueller report details stone having a meeting with potential sources but declining the information bceause he judged it was either false or dangerous. i do see proof of intermediary dealings where russian intel disguises itself and passes on info direct to the campaign. which is not collusion in the strict sense because you have to prove that the campaign knew they were colluding with russian intel not that they were the beneficiaries of it by proxy.
So you believe they had no clue who they were dealing with that whole time?