Donald Trump Jr. just posted the e-mails

[Breccia]

If you're a smart man

you'd take this as a warning any fully cooperate with the investigation to move past all of this ASAP before your legacy is irreparably tarnished.

Only if you were innocent. Yeah, I know, that's the standard "pleading the fifth" thing, but in this case it has merit. Trump's Russia problems are choking his agenda and image even faster than leaving the Paris Accord and throwing 32 million people off health care. Somehow. The appearance of guilt is making things worse. You're right, anyone else would be working with the investigation to clear this up. But Trump isn't, despite the obvious worsening damage it's doing to that legacy you're talking about.

Basically, it's like the difference between losing a criminal case, and a civil case. The threshhold of doubt is different. Trump doesn't need to get impeached or go to jail for the damage this does to him to be irreversible. He just has to be a lame duck for 3 1/2 years. And he's choosing not to do anything about it.

[Cthulhu 2020]

The fact Russia likes Trump over Hillary isn't a crime or collusion.

Of course not. But the cooperation with Russian officials to sway campaign is a crime and is collusion.

[Mormolyce]

Trump probably thinks seppuku is the game where each row, each column, and each square adds up to something.

I occasionally wish there was an upvote system on these forums.

[mvaliz]

The fact Russia likes Trump over Hillary isn't a crime or collusion. Junior listened to what the person had to say and it was a nothing burger. If there was something there he could have reported it to the FBI afterward. They thought Hillary had illegal dealings with Russia. Obviously Russia would have that information if there was. What is wrong with listening to what someone has to say? He didn't even know what the person would tell them. The email was very vague and came from a friend. He trusted a friend he knew and took a meeting.. I don't think it is as bad as people are saying.

Also, this meeting was disclosed on Kushner's form..

Holy Christ, even Mr. Fantastic would've been impressed by the size of that stretch! >_<

Wow, you're spinning and rewriting the actions and intents of this greedy little fuckwit, who was willing to treasonously collude with a hostile foreign government in order to get his Dumbass Daddy to win the election... into a FUCKING POTENTIAL FBI HERO!?! Are you fucking kidding me!?

Well, thankfully you're not part of the FBI investigation, so your unbelievably ludicrous spin of a yarn is moot - they will get to decide, and not you. All I can say is, with this absolute closed minded form of zealotry - putting your pride before your friends, family and country... I welcome you to join my ignore list with the rest of the deplorables. Congratulations.

[Mormolyce]

I wonder if this is why Trump was so adamant to make the whole thing go away? Protecting his son and all would make sense.

He appears to understand one thing and only one thing in life: loyalty. He fought tooth and nail for Flynn long after the fight was over, and apparently still thinks he'll be able to bring him back once "this Russia thing" gets "cleared up". I think even his closest allies must be looking at him askance over that.

Tickle his pickle and he's your friend for life, apparently.

[Celista]

This made me think: can that power be rescinded? I mean, suppose for a minute that everyone except Trump is convicted as a result of Trump-Russia. I mean Jr, Kushner, Flynn, Manfort, Ryan - everyone. Then Trump pardons everyone that was just convicted, or even just his family. Basically, he abuses this power in a way that is entirely inexcusable and almost demands action.

Then what?

1) I suppose nothing could happen, but in the case, it seems like it would act as a precedent that this type of abuse was "okay."
2) Does this act go through and then a new bill put in place to prevent it from ever happening again? If so, how the hell do you word that in legalese?
3) Or does congress slap that shit down (what kind of precedent does this set, and do they even have this power?) and then write a bill to prevent it from ever happening again. Again, same legalese problem.

That would be one gigantic mess.

From a legal standpoint I think the current powers of the president are hard to defend. Pardons to my knowledge aren't subject to checks and balances by design. I truly believe that if Trump tried to pardon that many people tied to his administration that there would be some sort of legal reform.

[Breccia]

In case you were waiting for the GOP to blame the Democrats...who am I kidding, they've already done that. But here's more!

Key GOP senator: Why was Russian lawyer tied to Trump Jr. scandal in US?

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is asking top Trump administration officials to explain why a Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. last year was allowed in the country.

Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asking why Natalia Veselnitskaya was allowed to stay in the country when, according to court documents, she had to leave in early 2016.

"It is unclear how she was still in the country for that meeting despite being denied a visa beforehand and her parole purportedly expiring on January 7, 2016. This raises serious questions about whether the Obama administration authorized her to remain in the country, and if so, why?" Grassley wrote.

Please, sip your favorite covfefe and read that back. The Kremlin agent was supposed to leave early 2016. There are open court documents -- here they are -- that say this. And the question is somehow "did Obama authorize her to stay?" instead of the far more obvious "why was she in Trump Tower?"

So, not only did Trump Jr. now meet with a Kremlin agent, he met one that was supposed to be deported, and it's Obama's fault. Maybe this is why Trump wants to deport all the illegals -- they keep making his family break ethics laws!

[mvaliz]

Quote of the night goes to Stephen Colbert: "Donald Trump Jr just Deep Throated himself!"

[Jamesb24]

This whole family is scummy and bunch of pathological liars. They've been nothing short of an embarrassment to the presidency and USA.

Thanks deplorables

[Shadowmelded]

Buttery Males! (just learned this one recently! :P)

My favourite is one I saw on Reddit "But re: Son emails"

[Breccia]

Quote of the night goes to Stephen Colbert: "Donald Trump Jr just Deep Throated himself!"

I mean...I'd say the jokes write themselves, but Colbert never settles for anything less than his A-game.

[NYC17]

Trevor Noah summed it up pretty well (paraphrasing):

We have been suffocating in smoke for months, wandering around asking if there is a fire.
Today we find we are on fire, now we have a whole separate problem.

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Pence doesn't need to be fit to lead the county, he just has to be fit not to destroy it.

In the era of Trump, that is the low bar we are setting to find a replacement.

As I've said multiple times, he is either complicit or incompetent. After the disaster that is Trump, the idea that Pence simply not being as awful as Trump is enough for him to lead, is a fucking joke.

SO no, he doesn't need to not destroy it. He needs to be gone.

[cubby]

I seriously think Trump is trying to speedrun the Nixon presidency. I heard a quote on here a couple months ago - can't remember who said it, and it was done as humor, but it's still pretty accurate.

"If you tweet enough times, you clip through the floor of the Oval Office and fall under the map, and spawn right at the impeachment hearing."

That's a god damn good quote. It almost seems like he actually is trying to do just that.

[Breccia]

Krauthammer: Incompetence 'not a very good defense' for Trump Jr.

Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer blasted Republicans defending President Trump's eldest son on Tuesday, comparing Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer to attempting to receive stolen goods.

"They were saying for six months, we didn't do it, there's no evidence that we did it ... Now they're saying, yeah we did it, but it wasn't so bad and we were incompetent at it. That's not a very good defense," Krauthammer, a Fox News contributor, said on the network.

"If you get in a car to go to a certain place in the middle of the night to pick up stolen goods, and it turns out the stolen goods don't show up but the cops show up, I think you're going to have a very weak story saying 'I got swindled here,'" he said.

"Look, this is incompetence, they got swindled and he admits 'If I had known, I wouldn't have done this,'" Krauthammer added. "But to say 'I love it,' to be informed that the Russians are working on their behalf, contradicts six months of stories."

Krauthammer indicated that newly revealed correspondence showing Trump Jr. setting up a meeting with a Russian lawyer changed his view of Trump's team amid probes into possible ties between his campaign and Russia.

"I defended them, because up until today there was no 'there' there," he said.

"Well now there is a 'there.'"

"The denial of collusion is very weak right now because it looks as if Don Jr. was receptive to receiving this information," he concluded.

On Tuesday, Trump Jr. released a series of emails between himself and publicist Rob Goldstone, who was offering to set up a meeting with a Russian lawyer in the hopes of obtaining damaging information about his father’s campaign rival, Hillary Clinton.

“This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump,” Goldstone wrote.

“If it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer," Trump Jr. replied.

President Trump issued a brief statement defending his eldest son through White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Tuesday.

“My son is a high-quality person and I applaud his transparency,” Trump said in the statement delivered to reporters during an off-camera briefing

FOX News is not monolithic, it seems, but when they say there's a problem, there's a problem.

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That's a god damn good quote.

Is this better?

Max Boot, a lifelong Republican and Romney 2012 adviser, says he doesn't recognize his party, which is acting like "complicit" Trump enablers:
"The Republican Party has gone from 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall' to 'Mr. Putin, tear down this political opponent.'"

[Ripster42]

This made me think: can that power be rescinded? I mean, suppose for a minute that everyone except Trump is convicted as a result of Trump-Russia. I mean Jr, Kushner, Flynn, Manfort, Ryan - everyone. Then Trump pardons everyone that was just convicted, or even just his family. Basically, he abuses this power in a way that is entirely inexcusable and almost demands action.

Then what?

1) I suppose nothing could happen, but in the case, it seems like it would act as a precedent that this type of abuse was "okay."
2) Does this act go through and then a new bill put in place to prevent it from ever happening again? If so, how the hell do you word that in legalese?
3) Or does congress slap that shit down (what kind of precedent does this set, and do they even have this power?) and then write a bill to prevent it from ever happening again. Again, same legalese problem.

That would be one gigantic mess.

One of the drafted articles of impeachment cites offering to pardon someone in exchange for not testifying is obstruction of justice. So, ya. The pardon power of the president can be used in illegal ways. Ways which gets the house judicial committee to draft articles of impeachment.

[Fugus]

The way things are going, I really can't help but wonder sometimes if Trump isn't trying to be president.

Wonder if either he never wanted to be president and is trying to get himself fired instead of just quitting to keep some level of pride. Or maybe if he is doing this just to see and show just how far he can push stuff to insanity and still hold power and have people protect him at which point he is doing a great job of it and making the republican party look like traitors backing him so much when they should have been on his ass long ago if they had any principles. Or if he really is this much of a blithering idiot and honestly believes the stupid stuff he says and tries at which point the republicans still look stupid for backing them and making his policies look as though they are condoned by the republican party, doubly so with some of the fucked in the head shit they have tried to pass since they have power hoping they got through before the public noticed.

[Mormolyce]

Remember the nothingburger? Turns out it has a big no-no patty after all.


https://twitter.com/leezeldin/status/884414651144056834


https://twitter.com/leezeldin/status/884825699865034753

[Floopa]

just so you know, whether or not this is illegal or whether or not this is damaging to the presidency... trump wont get impeached over this, or in fact suffer any punishment as a result of his son's dealings.

i would fully expect trump to remain president until the next election... and if his popularity is as it is now, expect another 4 years.

[Breccia]

The way things are going, I really can't help but wonder sometimes if Trump isn't trying to be president.

Yes, and no.

Trump has every interest in being what he thinks the President is. He wants to fly around on a golden airplane, tell world leaders what to do and they do it, bomb the shit out of terrorists, and be met by thousands upon thousands of cheering Americans telling him they love him. He wants to give speeches in which he's not contradicted, he wants to be the person people say made the economy better and created 25 million jobs, he wants the rest of the world to look at him as the most powerful man on the planet.

Trump has no interest in doing any of the things that make the above actually happen, of course. He has no military plan, and does not talk to the military. He has no health care plan, but wants the GOP to have one before their scheduled break (and yes, he tweeted that from the golf course). And he has been so intent on telling other world leaders what to do, that he's threatening our allies -- even Canada over milk and lumber, like this is just some fucked-up version of Catan -- and isolating us from the rest of the world. He can't fill the posts he needs to, he's arguably losing people faster than he's getting them (who's the head of the FBI, again? Anyone? Anyone? Mueller? Mueller?) and the things he ran on, the things the GOP wanted so badly, are now crumbling to pieces, and he's making no move to help.

And it's somehow the Democrat's' fault.

Which brings me to your specific point. Donald Trump cannot handle the idea that he is a failure. This is a man who will proclaim, when sued, that he will fight it to the bitter end because settling is admission he lost, then he settles, then he proclaims victory. This is a man who is so sure that he should have won the popular vote that he's formed a federal committee to validate his opinion, while his handlers tell people Trump is supposed to meet that they must congratulate his EC victory. This is someone who got in front of thousands of people and live TV and said he would only accept the election results if he won -- pre-emptively dismissing the idea that he could lose fairly. He was born rich, has escaped the law on multiple occasions (see also: Trump's father buying millions in chips and then never playing) and has gone bankrupt so many times that only a Russian money laundering front will touch him, yet still claims to be worth TEN BILLION DOLLARS (a figure nobody can confirm, and has been routinely found to be exaggerated by a factor of three to four). Trump is a sick man. He cannot stomach the idea that he might, somehow, be wrong.

No, he's not looking to get fired. That would mean he lost. I honestly, legitimately, believe he would rather die than become the first president ever successfully impeached.

And, tangentally related, he might. Trump eats overcooked steak, two scoops of ice cream, is medically obese, thinks exercise is pointless, his doctor has clearly been lying to him about his health, and he was the only person at G7 who needed a golf cart to go up a small hill. And he has intentionally put himself in the most stressful job in the known universe.

Trump might very well be in office for the rest of his life.

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and if his popularity is as it is now, expect another 4 years.

...36 percent and falling, with no major victories he can claim? I think you need to review Bush's numbers before you make a claim like that.

[NYC17]

just so you know, whether or not this is illegal or whether or not this is damaging to the presidency... trump wont get impeached over this, or in fact suffer any punishment as a result of his son's dealings.

i would fully expect trump to remain president until the next election... and if his popularity is as it is now, expect another 4 years.

Pretending like this is the high water mark of this situation and that it will be the basis for impeachment or legal proceedings is pretty indicative of just how oblivious Trumpeteers are.

Thanks for the reminder.