The Russia bounty scandal shows how close Trump is to destroying America altogether
By Thom Hartmann A...
It appears there is at least one branch of the federal government that Donald Trump has been unable to corrupt. So far.He put loyal toadies who would lie and cheat for him over at the Department of Justice with William Barr, at EPA and Interior with a couple of fossil fuel lobbyists, at the FCC with a Verizon lawyer, at the Department of Education with a billionaire hack who hates public schools, and he even a former defense lobbyist in charge of the Pentagon.
But the intelligence community, or at least people in it, appear to have resisted.
Word that Donald Trump has known for months, and possibly for over a year, that Russia was paying the Taliban for killing American soldiers has rocked Americans.
But the bigger question, yet to be confronted in public, is whether Trump will use this as an opportunity to crush our intelligence services the way he has our agencies responsible for legal, labor, and environmental protections. Whether this could signal the final death of our form of government.
Trump has already begun the process of corrupting America's intelligence agencies.
He moved a hardcore, rightwing Tea Party crackpot from Congress, John Ratcliffe, into the position of Director of National Security after Ratcliffe did such a spectacular job defending Trump's attempted treason with Ukraine during the impeachment hearings.
Ratcliffe, predictably, is saying that Trump didn't know about all this, although multiple sources are reporting that it was included in the Presidential Daily Briefing and that Trump was explicitly informed last year.
The intelligence community is both broad and deep, and it's entirely possible that Trump hasn't had enough time or doesn't have enough toadies in that world to bring it to its knees.
This will get particularly explosive if the intelligence community decides to follow up by offering an answer to the question of why Donald Trump would be OK with Russia doing this, or at least why he would ignore it.
Watch this space.
-Thom
Comments
#2
POMPEO-that's the part missing from this equation! Is he still laying low playing CYA over his last debacle?
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph with Trump, Barr & Pompeo and their evil screw-ups you could get whip-lash!
Not to insult the 3 Stooges, but......
#3
Think about it this way. A disgruntled federal employee doesn't get to start up a new hot war with Russia. Goes to the NYTs to get them to run a hit piece that bemoans that the US didn't instantly pull the trigger and start a war with Russia, and here you are crying about it. No new war with Russia. That's bad. Nancy got on the steps of the congress to cry about it even. Democrats need a distraction again. We get it.
Your fake distress here is both obvious, and apparent. So when you roil around in the slop flinging arrows at others in the hope that you can wound or damage a president that frankly, you have zero knowledge of either what or when a response was created. And in the absence of that knowledge, you'd sling arrows anyway. You have no idea if Trump either did or did not "punish" Russia. You cannot and will not take up arms yourself, so your emotional response here is both feckless and amusing. Simple thing here. You put full faith in a story that likely cannot ever be verified. Doesn't that seem to be a huge waste of both your energy and time? If it turns out that Russia did do this, I'm all for a limited military response. I don't doubt that the president wouldn't also given his historic responses. So other than you flailing about here, what again do you really want? Oh, yeah... nothing.
#4
Whatabutt, A pessimist is an optimist with experience.
#5
As usual, whatajoke has absolutely nothing to back up, by definition, a worthless opinion. "Make America Great Again Trumpee" (MAGAT)
#6
Gullible Republicans who believe what Trump says are goddamn fools following a goddamn fool. Their Great White Savior has lied to them over 19,000 times in 1,226 days. "Trump's mountain of lies is unprecedented. It must not become precedent." -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "Trump Is Lying More Than Ever: Just Look At The Data" -- David Markowitz
Lying is the air they breathe. And liars on that scale will always go to great lengths to hide the truth from as many people as possible. That is the one-line description of the Trump fake presidency that history will remember the most.
- Trump Stirs New Alarm Over Russia by Dismissing Bounty Claims
- National security experts accuse White House of ‘politicizing intelligence’ as Trump bans Dems from Russia briefing
- Trump Got Written Briefing in February on Possible Russian Bounties, Officials Say
- Bolton personally briefed Trump on Russian bounties one year earlier than previously known: report
- Democrats hit Trump for handling of Russian bounty allegations after White House briefing
#7
Moderator, one of our "guests" cannot contain themselves and is at it again.
***********************************************************deepspace • 1 hour 59 min ago#5
As usual, whatajoke has absolutely nothing to back up, by definition, a worthless opinion. "Make America Great Again Trumpee" (MAGAT)
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I believe you said personal attacks are forbidden. I assume you will follow through with your previous warning to the offender.
Thank you.
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No, it's not OK.
Please keep it civil, everyone. If not, you will be booted. You have been warned!
#8
If whatabout is now commandeering the moniker "whatajoke" he still doesn't have a legitimate complaint, as I was attacking what was said, which is fair game, not a specific person who might have said it. And why does he think that what was said was referring to what he said in particular? Guilt by association? Any MAGAT is the butt of the joke.
Again, an opinion that is not sourced is by definition a worthless opinion ...in my opinion.
And in my opinion, flaming liars and those who spread the lies are as bad as flaming racists when their lies and hate cause people to die. Trump's lies, and those promulgated by his blind followers, have now led to almost 130,000 dead Americans, not just the hidden deaths of American soldiers in Afganistan. MAGATs are disgusting liars and deserve all the ridicule and scorn that can be heaped upon them. They are tearing this country apart.
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Here's how Thom handled a flaming racist (6-24-2020; hour 2; min 24:07):
caller: I want segregation. I don't want black peoples in our schools. Um, they...
Thom: Yeah, Markus, that is, you know, ah... You're a fool, an ass, a disgrace! As an American, you are spitting, Markus, in the face of people who have fought and died for this country for hundreds of years, or at least the ideals that they expressed or said that they embraced, even if they did it imperfectly or even badly or even not at all.
That kind of rhetoric, Markus, is what people who hate America say. That kind of rhetoric is the stuff that you hear out of the white supremacists' fever swamps in Poland and Hungary. That kind of rhetoric is poison. That kind of rhetoric is the stuff that gets people killed -- and is getting people killed right now! We've had a number of white supremacists expressing the opinions that you just said, Markus, kill people in the United States.
Markus, you're disgusting!
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Lying MAGATs are disgusting. So are sniveling cowards and tattletales who can't defend what they say.
#9
Bounties on troops? Even if true, did we(USA), not hire and supply Osama to kill Russian troops in Afghanistan? "What goes around, comes around", no whining please!!
Currently, our biggest problem is COVID-45!!
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Trump the retarded manboy psychopath couldn't care less that 128,000 Americans have died of COVID other than how it affects his re-election. So why the hell would he fret over a few U.S. troops in faraway Afghanistan murdered by his beloved Putin, who is helping him get elected, as always, by spreading disinformation on social media, sowing chaos, and God knows what else, as Robert Mueller warned during his testimony?
The only thing shocking about this story is that anyone would be shocked. It all seems pretty normal, soon to be replaced by the next "shocking" story.