President Donald Trump: The Thread

[southsider2k5]

They were anti-republican when the republicans were in office and then anti-democrat when the democrats were in office. Funny how that works, right?

 

I honestly think it is just an anti-American thing, and not so much a partisan thing.

[Soxbadger]

I honestly think it is just an anti-American thing, and not so much a partisan thing.

 

Definitely anti-American, which is why they likely were pro-Trump.

 

Enemy of my enemy is my friend.

[illinilaw08]

I honestly think it is just an anti-American thing, and not so much a partisan thing.

 

Right. Rabbit keeps trying to show that Wikileaks doesn't have a bias as compared to the traditional American media. But Wikileaks actions historically show an anti-American bias, and over the last several years, Wikileaks has appeared flat out unwilling to go after Russia (Assange went as far as asserting that the Russian press is more open than the US press which is pretty laughable).

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archiv...he-news/512243/

[StrangeSox]

Assange also tried to downplay the Panama papers because they made Putin look bad despite being the largest "transparency" document dump reporting ever.

 

Trump flunkey Roger Stone also claimed recently that he had back channel communications with WikiLeaks during the campaign.

[Quin]

I honestly think it is just an anti-American thing, and not so much a partisan thing.

 

 

Definitely anti-American, which is why they likely were pro-Trump.

 

Enemy of my enemy is my friend.

 

Easily anti-American. Trump (and Bannon) in power serves WikiLeaks/Russia's interests.

 

As for unnamed sources form the Post, I'll trust Bob Woodward's​ judgement over basically anyone's when it comes to that.

[illinilaw08]

Whatever motive you attribute to them is irrelevant. The information is real. That's all that matters. The left will split hairs when the leaks paint their people in a bad light but that doesn't change the cold, hard facts.

 

Michael Hastings, a liberal who would have laughed at the idea of Trump being president, was reporting on the CIA's surveillance at the time of his death. If he never died would his leak have been partisan? Would he be considered a friend of Putin? This stuff isn't new, it's been happening for years. I was called a right wing conspiracy theorist when I have talked about it in the past. The world is better off that WL has shed light on the truth.

 

The motive is extremely relevant. Wikileaks' information is undoubtedly true. But if they are intentionally only telling one side of the story, then the information is biased and that impacts their overall credibility.

 

If all that matters is that the info is real, then why do you think lies from the President of the United States don't matter? I don't have time at the moment to get into your lengthy response, but I will say that the President of the United States enacts policies that impact the entire country. If his administration starts enforcing federal marijuana laws in states where it's legal based on a falsehood that marijuana use leads to opiate use, that's tens of thousands of lost jobs because of a falsehood. If the President uses the falsehood the 3-5M people illegally voted to make it harder for low income minorities to vote, that's impacting people's lives based on a falsehood. If the President uses a false statistic that the murder rate is the highest it's been in 47 years to increase the militarization of the police, that's policy impacting people's lives that's based on a falsehood.

 

If you care about truth, care about the whole truth. Not selective bits of the truth. If you care about facts, then don't handwave away policy based on falsehoods. Politics isn't gossip - it has a tangible impact - positive or negative - on millions of people's lives.

 

[illinilaw08]

So Trump said 2-3 million illegals voted for HRC or whatever. What happens if he's right? What happens if he's wrong? What is the endgame?

 

He isn't right. That's the point. Every study ever done on illegal voting shows that it's statistically insignificant. The endgame is to continue to make it harder for lower income minorities to vote.

[StrangeSox]

Wapo didn't selectively edit sessions testimony.

[StrangeSox]

So Trump said 2-3 million illegals voted for HRC or whatever. What happens if he's right? What happens if he's wrong? What is the endgame?

What if Obama was a secret Kenyan Muslim??? Note that this is an equally ridiculous thing that our president has claimed!

Edited March 13, 2017 by StrangeSox

[RockRaines]

So Trump said 2-3 million illegals voted for HRC or whatever. What happens if he's right? What happens if he's wrong? What is the endgame?

What happens if the moon is made of cheese? Crazy hypotheticals are super fun!!

[StrangeSox]

Rabbit I honestly don't know why you think that the allegations that Russia influenced the election via the hacking has been disproven despite being the overwhelming consensus of the intelligence community, because it hasn't, and I also don't get why you think that's the extent of the Russian allegations against Trump and his campaign and administration.

 

E: does WikiLeaks "impeccable track record" include the time they doxxed teenage rape victims or when they leaked the names of all of the females in a political party in Turkey?

Edited March 13, 2017 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

Thanks for the evidence.

 

Pull up an article where WaPo offers the full transcript or the full video of his hearing. You won't. Why haven't they focused on any of the other double digit amount of countries Sessions spoke with both formally and incidentally in his role on the Armed Services Committees? Why just Russia? I am outraged that he had multiple conversations with ambassadors from Poland! Without knowing what these conversations were about, I have to assume it was to undermine the Clinton campaign!

 

I'll give you a headstart on your googling: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrom...+sessions&*

 

Within that google search you can see how fair and objective their reporting on Sessions as been.

 

Wapo reported on the attorney general voluntarily perjuring himself because that's a big story. Him meeting with random ambassadors isn't, and it wouldn't have been much of a story if sessions hadn't explicitly lied about it. The full transcript does not put his response in any better light.

 

Here's a link to a wapo story that quotes the relevant part of the testimony.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politic...m=.ccee63bfedaa

 

Explain how they've taken this out of context and how the full context changes the answer.

Edited March 13, 2017 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

Are you actually equating a prediction being wrong with making outright false claims about voter fraud and the president being an illegal usurper?

 

E: the GOP has been engaged in voter suppression for a while now, and the president of the united States is now leading that charge with completely unsubstantiated claims. Do you think that makes no difference?

 

Trump, in his battle with the media, has called for opening up libel laws and has more or less threatened to destroy the independent press. Does that make no difference?

 

 

Edited March 13, 2017 by StrangeSox

[RockRaines]

I don't know the answer to that, which is very scary.

 

The rate at which the bar has been lowered in terms of "professionalism" as President of the United States in such a short time is remarkable. I really don't know what the end game is of Trump not really caring about facts or figures, but I don't like it.

He's easily the most inept president in our lifetime, and its not really that close. Dude cant even put a staff together.

[StrangeSox]

You said WaPo didn't selectively edit his testimony. I didn't make any points on Sessions or any ramifications. You don't need to expand your argument. Back up your claim.

If you are using a pedantically literal definition of "selectively edit" to mean they didn't just post the entire raw transcript from an hours long confirmation hearing and not actually insinuating that they misleadingly edited it to mean something sessions didn't say, then I will concede that you are correct on this irrelevant point.

 

Otherwise, you're the one who made the initial claim against wapo, so the burden is on you.

 

 

[StrangeSox]

Are you still not backing your claim?

Hey man I'm not the one trying to say Obama being wrong about Trump's ability to be elected is equivalent to Trump claiming Obama was a Kenyan usurper or that millions of people voted illegally for Clinton. That's a pretty big category error.

[NorthSideSox72]

There you go with the ad hominem. You can't ever keep it civil. You don't have to call names when you can't back your own posts up. I'm going to go eat this steak now. I'll talk to you three minutes after the next time I post in the filibuster.

 

There was no ad hominem in his post you quoted.

 

Anyway, I wanted to just reply to you on one general point. You keep saying that what Trump says is irrelevant. History, and the basic functionality of foreign AND domestic policy, makes it abundantly clear that the President's words matter. A lot. You'd have to be ignoring all kinds of basic history to think otherwise.

 

If you want to argue that his bluster shouldn't all be taken to extreme reaction, sure, I'll go with that. To say they are irrelevant though? You have to know better than that.

 

[NorthSideSox72]

What Trump says on policy is relevant. I used an example about healthcare to say exactly that. What Trump says on Obama's birth certificate, quibbles about the election, etc. This stuff doesn't matter. If it's unsubstantiated, he'll look dumb. Regardless, no lives are affected by the things he said that are unrelated to policy and his job.

 

He said the stuff about illegal immigrants voting for HRC. The media spent a full week on it. People in here are still talking about it. Absolutely nothing happened as a result. No policy, no lives changed, no liberties taken, etc. If we were in an argument about his character, then yes, I suppose that would be relevant to that one fruitless, irrelevant conversation.

 

That being said, nobody in this subforum other than maybe brad have ever spoken highly of Trump's character. We have people here who honestly believe he's Hitler reincarnate with some rape mixed in. We had people say Trump being elected was the worst day of their life based off of things he had said. These things are not relevant to the real, serious problems in this country. The whole TMZ politics stuff is a big problem because all it does is distract from the real problems.

 

The fact that the corporate media will spend days covering some dumb comment Trump made that is totally irrelevant to anything meaningful is a problem. They will never broach the debt in any meaningful way, they will never cover the way the military is murdering civilians in an accurate way, they will never cover how the government spies on the whole country without maligning the character of Snowden/WL/Assange first (why?) and they will never cover the Federal Reserve, but they will spend day after day dissecting some sub 140 character comment that Trump made on Twitter that has no effect on anything that matters. Nobody sees this as a problem.

 

The Presidency is not a software program. It is, more than anything else, about influence and thought leadership. What a President says has enormous effect. It causes others to act. Words of Presidents create policy, but they also point his administration, and the party he leads, and everyday Americans in a direction. He signals what is OK and what isn't, and people act accordingly - some of whom have enormous power to effect people's lives. Frankly I find it stunning that you don't see that.

 

As for your last graf, most of that read like conspiratorial nonsense to me. Never broach the debt? I've seen that topic discussed in WSJ and WaPo at the least, and I'd guess the NYT has too (though I don't know off hand). And talking heads on TV discuss it regularly. Military murders not covered? You can't be serious here, that stuff is splashed all over the news all the time, as soon as something happens. Government spies on the whole country? What evidence do you have they have been spying outside the bounds of the laws on Americans? I am sure it happens but the idea that it's rampant is not supported by any facts I have seen. The Federal Reserve? That's a huge topic of conversation all over the media, especially when they have their meetings (maybe I'm seeing that one more in financial sections, but that's of course where it belongs).

 

Does the media ALSO waste a bunch of time on garbage? Yeah, especially the CNN's of the world.

 

[Quin]

Does the media ALSO waste a bunch of time on garbage? Yeah, especially the CNN's of the world.

 

Completely a side note but man, I liked CNN until they went bats*** crazy with the Malaysian plane.

[StrangeSox]

There you go with the ad hominem. You can't ever keep it civil. You don't have to call names when you can't back your own posts up. I'm going to go eat this steak now. I'll talk to you three minutes after the next time I post in the filibuster.

 

Point out the ad hominem.

 

Point out the support for your claims against wapo.

 

[StrangeSox]

What Trump says on policy is relevant. I used an example about healthcare to say exactly that. What Trump says on Obama's birth certificate, quibbles about the election, etc. This stuff doesn't matter. If it's unsubstantiated, he'll look dumb. Regardless, no lives are affected by the things he said that are unrelated to policy and his job.

 

He said the stuff about illegal immigrants voting for HRC. The media spent a full week on it. People in here are still talking about it. Absolutely nothing happened as a result. No policy, no lives changed, no liberties taken, etc. If we were in an argument about his character, then yes, I suppose that would be relevant to that one fruitless, irrelevant conversation.

 

That being said, nobody in this subforum other than maybe brad have ever spoken highly of Trump's character. We have people here who honestly believe he's Hitler reincarnate with some rape mixed in. We had people say Trump being elected was the worst day of their life based off of things he had said. These things are not relevant to the real, serious problems in this country. The whole TMZ politics stuff is a big problem because all it does is distract from the real problems.

 

The fact that the corporate media will spend days covering some dumb comment Trump made that is totally irrelevant to anything meaningful is a problem. They will never broach the debt in any meaningful way, they will never cover the way the military is murdering civilians in an accurate way, they will never cover how the government spies on the whole country without maligning the character of Snowden/WL/Assange first (why?) and they will never cover the Federal Reserve, but they will spend day after day dissecting some sub 140 character comment that Trump made on Twitter that has no effect on anything that matters. Nobody sees this as a problem.

 

Trump launched a voter fraud investigation that is under way. Just because something didn't happen immediately doesn't mean it has no effect.

[StrangeSox]

The Presidency is not a software program. It is, more than anything else, about influence and thought leadership. What a President says has enormous effect. It causes others to act. Words of Presidents create policy, but they also point his administration, and the party he leads, and everyday Americans in a direction. He signals what is OK and what isn't, and people act accordingly - some of whom have enormous power to effect people's lives. Frankly I find it stunning that you don't see that.

 

As for your last graf, most of that read like conspiratorial nonsense to me. Never broach the debt? I've seen that topic discussed in WSJ and WaPo at the least, and I'd guess the NYT has too (though I don't know off hand). And talking heads on TV discuss it regularly. Military murders not covered? You can't be serious here, that stuff is splashed all over the news all the time, as soon as something happens. Government spies on the whole country? What evidence do you have they have been spying outside the bounds of the laws on Americans? I am sure it happens but the idea that it's rampant is not supported by any facts I have seen. The Federal Reserve? That's a huge topic of conversation all over the media, especially when they have their meetings (maybe I'm seeing that one more in financial sections, but that's of course where it belongs).

 

Does the media ALSO waste a bunch of time on garbage? Yeah, especially the CNN's of the world.

 

The whole political conversation in this country centered around the debt and deficits for years during the middle of Obama's presidency.

 

The mainstream media also covers fed meetings and announcements on what they're going to do with rate hikes, and back when it was a bigger issue quantitative easing was covered as well.

Edited March 14, 2017 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

Rabbit you also keep misusing the word "bipartisan." It's clear what you mean from context, but the word you're looking for is partisan. Bipartisan would be used to describe a collaborative effort, eg "the Patriot act passed with bipartisan support."

[caulfield12]

https://www.yahoo.com/style/ivanka-trump-ex...-032823047.html

 

Ivanka Trump a notable exception to the Buy American Rule

 

Same with American steel for the pipelines.

Edited March 14, 2017 by caulfield12

[NorthSideSox72]

I am talking about television. Obviously respected outlets like the WSJ cater to a different crowd. I'm talking CNN/Fox/MSNBC.

 

Talking heads do not talk about debt in any meaningful way. They are far more concerned with Trump and bipartisan bs to talk about a real issue. Do you think the spend more time talking about Trump's tweets or this country's insurmountable debt? That's not conspiracy.

 

I don't know how much you covered the Obama administration's drone war but if you think the media was covering it fairly and often I'd love you to share the links.

 

The US government got caught spying on leaders in Brazil, Germany and others. If you're saying that's not happening, you're the one touting conspiracy theory.

 

The mainstream media does not cover the Federal Reserve. Unless, there's a new chair or a new policy, it's not covered. To call it a huge topic all over the media... I don't know.

 

CNN Federal Reserve coverage: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_quer...federal+reserve

 

Fox Federal Reserve coverage: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_quer...federal+reserve

 

MSNBC Federal Reserve coverage:https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=msnbc+federal+reserve

 

It's all stuff on Ron Paul and MSNBC has some interest rate stuff. There's no coverage of it.

 

So now we're focused just on talking heads on TV? That's a whole different topic. Earlier this was about NYT, WaPo, WSJ - high quality media outlets. Obviously your Fox/CNN/MSNBC's of the world spend a lot of time on fluff. But they also cover the Fed, the debt, drone attacks, etc. Maybe not at the level of balance you'd prefer?

 

I said it was conspiratorial to think the US is regularly spying on it's citizens outside the law. You curved it to be about foreign countries - that is a whole different matter, and ALL countries do that to each other to varying degrees according to ability.