StrangeSox

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ May 16, 2017 -> 09:12 AM) I'm not even talking about that. There are a bunch of people on Facebook who didn't even notice that Trump defending it this morning so they're still saying it never happened, right next to the people who say it was good. Politics is 100% a team sport now and our political system isn't equipped to handle it. Regardless of whether this "matters" for Trump directly or not, this is already having very real and damaging consequences for US security interests.

Mitch McConnell tells Bloomberg News he's recommending Merrick Garland for FBI director. This would give Trump a vacancy to fill on the DC circuit court and flip control of the court back to Republicans. McConnell is an evil man.

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ May 16, 2017 -> 09:06 AM) Lol, the story is shifting too fast for Trump supporters to keep up and now they're all contradicting one another Republicans, last night: If Trump did this thing, it is very troubling! NatSec, Sos: Let us make a very carefully worded statement that sort of implies Trump didn't do 'a' thing but not necessarily 'this' thing Rightwing Media: AHA! More FAKE NEWS! Real story is Susan Rice and Clinton EMAILS! Trump: I did the thing bigly! Republicans, RWM today: Actually it's very good that Trump did the thing!

edit: this statement from Rather was on 5/12, before the world found out Trump shared classified information with the Russians

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 16, 2017 -> 06:46 AM) 32m Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump ...to terrorism and airline flight safety. Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against ISIS & terrorism. 41m Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining.... Openly scheduled, but only covered by TASS. Weird how the White House has still never acknowledged that suspected Russian spy Kislyak was at this meeting and we only know thanks to Russian state media photographs as the official White House readout of the meeting doesn't mention him and he's not in the official White House photos and, of course, there was no US press present.

QUOTE (bmags @ May 16, 2017 -> 06:38 AM) Trump admits story is true, after staff including McMaster and Tillerson gave forceful non denial denials last night. Dignity wraiths indeed. well he did tell us last week that there's no reason to believe anything any of his staff says! this is such an epic disaster, and tens of millions of us saw it coming. Trump sure is doing a great job of making his own staff that he sends out to lie for him look like big idiots, as well as the sycophant rightwing media who was shouting "FAKE NEWS!" all night.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ May 16, 2017 -> 08:09 AM) My wife and I have talked for years about doing a trip to Glacier National Park (which I haven't been to yet), and as a grand retirement party (in like 15-20 years) to rent one of those private train cars and take the train from Chicago to the park. Given the rate at which the glaciers are disappearing from Glacier, we are now dropping the train thing (which is expensive as hell) and just road tripping to Glacier next summer to get there much sooner. Legitimately concerned most or all will be gone by the time 20 years rolls around. That's the expectation, I think. "Naturally" they'd be gone in a 100 years, but global warming has really accelerated it. 100% do the hike up to Grinnell Glacier. Also hike the Highline--definitely in my top five hikes of all time. There's an overlook about 2/3's of the way in. We only got about half way up before turning around because we were gassed (not in the best shape before that trip), but it's supposed to be an amazing view back down on Grinnell. The whole area around Many Glacier is fantastic, but it's also full of Grizzlies. If you get the chance, take a day trip down to Two Medicine and up to Waterton in Canada. I'm sure it's sold out since they usually book up within a couple of hours for the entire season, but if you could get a reservation at Sperry Chalet, I've heard it's an amazing place to stay. I had a coworker who gave me all sorts of great information before I went, and he stayed there multiple times. Hike in via Gunsight Pass. Reservations for the following season typically open up in October, so if you're going in 2018, keep that in mind. Could always just backpack it up there, too, if you're comfortable camping in grizzly country. It'll always be hard to top Yosemite for me since that was our first NP trip, but I really do think Glacier is the most beautiful place I've ever been. One Soxtalker spent every summer growing up heading to Glacier with his parents (maybe farmteam? it'd be in one of the vacation or hiking/outdoor threads in SLaM) and could probably give much better info. ughhhh so pretty

The rest of the NATO countries are limiting their talks at the upcoming meeting to two to four minutes because they don't believe Trump had the attention span to understand anything longer than that.

CNN and MSNBC both had experts on who said that the compromised source is most likely dead by now.

That denial of things not alleged in the WP story was a confirmation of its accuracy.

Whole​ bunch of yelling going on in the White House right now in a closed door meeting with bannon, preibus, Sanders and another advisor

From tpm

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ May 15, 2017 -> 06:55 PM) For any Republican congressperson defending this, I'd love to see a reporter ask, on air, if they'd react the same way if it was President Hillary Clinton who did this. Excuse me did Trump leak any emails?

Re: Trump staff denials, remember that less than a week ago Trump did his spokespeople don't always have accurate information! https://twitter.com/rebeccaballhaus/status/...253303940665345

White House and nsc issuing denials, but pretty notably they're worded much more as limited damage control and aren't outright denials of the story. https://twitter.com/JessicaHuseman/status/864257027660537856 Putin was the one that convinced Trump to meet with the Russian FM, and the White House has never acknowledged that kislyak was even there. That's only come from Russian state media.

Somebody embed this and note the date https://twitter.com/ditzkoff/status/623541014976962560

Flynn was such a concern because it was possible that he was or could be compromised and would leak information to kislyak. Trump just cut out the middle man.

QUOTE (bmags @ May 15, 2017 -> 05:10 PM) Worse, think of how his own staff feeds him crap news sources that align with what they want to see done. We are going to be fed B.S. from other intel sources that they may hope to get out. Now, our intel services are probably good enough to weed that out, except Trump takes loads of info from terrilbe sources like Roger stone (STILL) that could be used to manipulate him, because Stone and Flynn are complete idiots. K.T. MacFarland was presenting him with fake internet memes of Time Magazine news covers allegedly from 1970 about "how will we survive global cooling?!?" and from 2008 about global warming. We're governed by a foxnews.com article comment section right now.

I think the McCain thing was a joke that either the reporter made up or it was McCain poking fun at the justifications for firing Comey less than a week ago. Not 100% sure on that yet though.

At the very least, whichever country was the source of this info is definitely going to be a lot more hesitant to share with the US going forward, and it'll probably cause our other allies to think twice on what they're sharing as well. Gotta wonder how true those rumors at the start of his term were about the intel community not fully sharing info with the White House.

QUOTE (bmags @ May 15, 2017 -> 04:59 PM) I think there is no doubt it was unwittingly. The man wanted to boast and impress his friends about how smart he is. This may end up with small fall out this time, but we will continue to see the chemical reaction of when the most banal of government activities is mixed with the absurdity of his personality ego and ignorance. edit: edited a lot A lot of the commentary flowing in is already saying "this sort of leak can get sources killed or entire intel-gathering operations dismantled."

(buzzfeed has legitimate political reporting that's financed by their clickbait garbage)

WaPo newsroom celebrated a little bit ago as this story just broke the Access Hollywood "p**** Graber" story for most readers per minute ever.

to be honest I'm leaning more towards "disclosed unwittingly because he's an incompetent dumbass with the never-ending need for validation from anyone he's around" at this point to bolster my point: