On Friday, the Washington Post published a blockbuster exclusive in a year full of blockbuster exclusives. I’ll summarize the WaPo story, which you can read in its entirety here. The CIA had evidence showing Vladimir Putin giving the order the disrupt/hack the American election in favor of Donald Trump. Putin literally gave the orders to ensure Trump’s victory. That happened in the summer of 2016. In the months that followed during a heated and increasingly awful national election, President Obama and his team debated what recourse to take: should they punish Russia and how? Do they alert the American people to the extent of Russia’s interference? Should the repercussions towards Russia be merely economic? By December, Obama had chosen a combination of options, including increased sanctions and the expulsion of Russian diplomats. Some people within the Obama White House felt like they “choked” in the middle of an unprecedented cyberattack.
Personally, I feel like Obama did not do enough to speak to the American people as Russia was waging a cyberwar in the middle of the election. If there’s one thing I blame Obama for, it’s for falling into one of Trump’s stupidest traps, which is where Trump kept bitching about the election being “rigged” and how people shouldn’t believe the results if Hillary Clinton won. Obama came out and said that nothing was rigged and that we should all believe in the results of what would be a fair election. That was a trap. The election was rigged – in Donald Trump’s favor, with direct orders from Putin. Obama should have informed the American people about what was happening as it was happening.
As WaPo points out, of course, Obama believed Hillary Clinton would win no matter what and that she would be the one dealing with the aftermath. Obama left several cyber-warfare tools in place for his successor, and at that point, he knew his successor would be Donald Trump. Trump has done literally NOTHING about any of this. You can argue that Obama did not do enough, and I’m right there with you. Obama didn’t do enough. But Trump has done nothing to protect America. Because he doesn’t care. Because he’s still trying to tweet his way out of everything.
Since the Obama Administration was told way before the 2016 Election that the Russians were meddling, why no action? Focus on them, not T!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 24, 2017
Why no action from your administration, T? And this:
Obama Administration official said they "choked" when it came to acting on Russian meddling of election. They didn't want to hurt Hillary?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 24, 2017
I don’t follow Trump’s strained train of logic here – he believes that if Obama had done more to punish Russia, then Hillary Clinton’s chances would have been hurt? That makes no sense. But the worst is this:
Hillary Clinton colluded with the Democratic Party in order to beat Crazy Bernie Sanders. Is she allowed to so collude? Unfair to Bernie!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 25, 2017
He seems to be saying that Hillary Clinton, a Democrat, gets to “collude” with her own party, so he should be allowed to collude with his own party, Russia.
Trump also did an absolutely ridiculous interview on Fox News on Sunday morning. I could honestly only listen to this for a few minutes because of the interviewer and because of Trump’s insanity. Trump does get butthurt about how Obama referred to the GOP healthcare bill as “mean.” Trump says Obama “actually used my term, MEAN. That was my term.” That confirms a story last week that Trump referred to the AHCA as “mean,” something denied by his own people. It also confirms that Bigly will accuse Obama of anything and everything, including using Trump’s WORD.
Photos courtesy of Getty.
Focus on them, not T? Is he referring to himself as T now? I guess it’s better than Easy D?
A high profile Democrat working with her long time party to win is not collusion.
At what point easy Easy T going to stop this insane “but Hillary! But Obama!” Nonsense? Doesn’t he have any actual work to do?
This blame game needs to stop. He looks ridiculous and is now the laughing stock of World. He took power and the baton was handed to him. He needs to deal with it. It his problem now and what is he going to do about it?
…”looks” ridiculous?!
Let him be declared incompetent and wake me up when this is over.
He used to refer to himself as DJT, which my partner and I loved. That’s what we call, hmm how to put it delicately – towels that have been used for post-coital cleanup. (designated j*** towel).
Very appropriate!
Bwhahaha!!!!
Devil his due: the collusion between Clinton and the DNC he’s referring to happened before she was the chosen candidate. There was evidence they were inappropriately playing favourites: Clinton over Sanders when the DNC should’ve been impartial in overseeing the nomination process.
But unlike colluding with a foreign nation to disrupt free elections, what the DNC discussed doing, but did not actually do, is not a crime and it definitely isn’t treason. It wasn’t even inappropriate. A political party has the right to determine how to select its nominee and Sanders was not a member of the party. The “evidence” was an email discussion, which the Russians provided us with Trump’s encouragement. By the time those emails were released, the party had long since decided to leave it up to the primary system and the primary voters chose the democrat over the non-democrat for the democratic nomination.
Exactly, Lightpurple. Trump seems to want to apply the word “collusion” to Hillary simply because it’s been applied to him. Once again he demonstrates a lack of even basic understanding of the political process. I can’t anymore with this madness.
I’m actually having a lot of trouble making sense of his rational. It’s words… in a certain order… but… it doesn’t form any logic or cohesive statement/thought… I’m very lost.
@ FLORC : You are lost because you are attempting to make sense of what “T” says. And there is NO logic there. I used to represent women from shelters who had fled their abusive spouses. And the “beaters” would try to “explain” things to me to (a) make their wife look crazy and (b) make themselves look like the victim. It was always the same script and it never made sense. So sadly I have to advise you to give up. You are lost because “T” is lost all alone in his own shallow mind.
What Kaiser fails to acknowledge in this post, is that Sen. Mitch McConnell told Obama that he would look partisan if he came forward.
McConnell is complicit. Obama went to Republicans with Russia interference. Obama was shut down by Mitch McConnell. Warned Putin before expelling diplomats.
House Speaker Paul Ryan. Nunes, Chaffetz, and Sen. Burr are all part of the coverup. They are deliberately trying to slow or stonewall hearings about Trump-Russia. Burr and Nunes tried to go to the press at Trump’s insistence, and tell the press “there’s nothing to see here”. Then there was Chaffetz’ stunt.
As yourselves, what those five men have to gain from the status quo, and what they stand to lose if Trump is caught. McConnell is already dangerously close to treason or misprision of treason, at the very least. McConnell’s wife has a cabinet job now. That was no coincidence.
It’s time for him to forget the election. He’s the president, time to do his job
Dream on.
That’s what a sane person would do. So….
“T” (which stands for tiny fists) will never forget the election because it’s now written in stone that the only reason he won is because of Russian hackers. He’ll go to his grave trying to prove otherwise.
It more likely stands for tiny d1ck, which explains his lifelong defensiveness and overcompensating braggadocio.
But that’s the thing….his being president hinged/hinges on the legitimacy of that election. Even if there was no collusion, he is scared that they will eventually find that his win wasn’t clean and clear and he will be seen as illegitimate. It’s like he has a severe case of Imposter Syndrome.
Obama was screwed either way. He comes out with the hack and he’s an HRC shill. He leaves it alone and believes the people will overcome the hacking and he didn’t do enough. He was never going to win this.
In the end Comey should have released info on the hack at the same time of the email release. That’s on him. Obama should’ve just taken the hit but he probably had too much faith in this country. That’s probably his biggest mistake
Nicole, I completely agree with everything you said.
Damned if he did; damned if he didn’t. It was a no-win situation for Obama.
Yes, no win situation for Obama, but maybe he should have picked the option would protect the country, instead of having faith in the assumption that the electorate wouldn’t F up – he was going to be damned either way.
It really was. Releasing that information would have undermined Hilary had she won. Putin would have essentially won. We know that Putins goal at the time was to undermine the electoral process and Obama speaking on this would have set half the country questioning whatever the result was.
“Obama should’ve just taken the hit but he probably had too much faith in this country. That’s probably his biggest mistake ”
I agree with this 1000%. Maybe in the long term he will be right; most of the time he has been.
But it is going to take us a long time to get there and a lot of people are going to get hurt in the long run.
Putins goal was to undermine the democracy. Obama publicly declaring Russian interference would have created doubt for either winner. Plus it would have been worse for Hilarys votes because Obamas actions would have been interpreted as “another” attempt to hand her the White House. The only correct thing was to allow leaks of the interference (which he did), institute sanctions (which he did) and stump for Hilary to win (which he did).
Also Obama clearly used the word “mean” BECAUSE of the rumours Trump said it (which, as usual, the WH denied right before Trump confirmed it). Trump can’t even see Obama is mocking him.
Agree, Nicole, and there’s also a pretty important detail that Kaiser left out. If I interpreted this correctly as I listened to Rachel Maddow’s analysis, Obama also knew that there was a possibility of more damage should he come out and tell the American people what Russia was doing. As in, he knew that Russia was capable of melting down actual voting systems on Election Day, and he was afraid they would if he went public with this info. I, personally, don’t blame him. He was in a horrible situation, and that’s exactly what Putin wanted
@Shambles
+1
Russia had the capacity to do more if openly challenged. So Obama had a one-to-one talk with Putin himself and let him know to knock it off. Obama also planned computer cyber bombs for Russia in the future if they tried a second time.
Yes. Maddow made a point that I haven’t seen a lot of the press making: Obama thought the Russians would create havoc within voting precincts. Think about the ramifications of the now know fact that the Russians had successfully hacked into some form of our voting system in 39 states. Obama was in a no-win situation.
Exactly. Also, the information Obama was getting was considered “raw” intelligence and hadn’t been vetted. Releasing what they knew also could have tipped Putin off about our resources hidden inside the Kremlin.
Finally, you can’t have a President tell citizens before an election that their vote won’t count because we are getting hacked. That would have lead to anarchy.
Agreed. He had too much faith in voters and he was trying to play by actual rules and be diplomatic in a tricky political situation. I think he and all other sane people had no idea how quickly, easily and thoroughly “T” and the GOP would disregard truth, integrity, protocol and decorum and descend into lies and corruption.
One thing I remember BO saying (cannot remember which month – probably last summer) not to assume that Dems would win, despite the heavy slant in polls at the time. I noted at the time how serious he sounded about never assuming anything until it was over.
Of course, his interview was buried by whatever dumb tweet or rally cry was being covered at that moment.
@Christin. As I said below Access Hollywood, Podesta emails happened. Also, Pizzagate, Benghazi, and of course, Hillary’s emails.😱😱😱All drowned out Obama’s warnings.
Obama did a lot, he just wasn’t public about it to avoid influencing the election. They did not know for sure that the Trump
Campaign was cooperating with the Russians (that is still under investigation), just that the Russians were trying to get Trump elected for their own purposes. It definitely would have been interpreted as an attempt to unfairly swing the election to Hillary based on info he had simply because he was President. Mitch McConnell told him point blank that if he said anything, that’s precisely how the Republicans would spin it and they would hit hard. I don’t think it was Obama’s place to do more in public. He obviously made sure that the proper people in each state knew about it. What exactly could the rest of us do about it anyway? He also protected evidence after the election from attempts by Trump to destroy it.
I don’t know if they realized the extent of the Russian disinformation campaign at that point, but publicizing that (regardless of source) would seem to be more properly the role of the Democrats since they were the targets. Did Congess know? The appropriate bipartisan committee should have dealt with it and informed the public. The President was campaigning for Hillary Clinton and so was in the wrong position to use that information, but there were others who could have and should have done it.
President Tweeter wants FBI investigation of what Obama did or didn’t do? I say bring it on. I want McConnell and Ryan to be subpoenaed to testify under oath about what they knew, when they knew it, and what they said to Obama. Likewise for bipartisan members of relevant committees. If they knew and said nothing, they are the ones who should be blamed. But the Republicans were in control, and if they pushed to keep it all under wraps (classified) – make them accountable.
“Mitch McConnell told him point blank that if he said anything, that’s precisely how the Republicans would spin it and they would hit hard.”
^^^THIS!!!!!
The Obama Administration took the intelligence to Congressional leaders and they did NOTHING.
….and Obama should have expected them to do nothing. Mitch McConnell is a POS senator period and Obama should have for one moment believed he would do the right ting. Should Obama had presented it to Congress, yes, should he had believed they would have done the right thing, heck no. I love Obama but he put his hope in the wrong people.
I don’t know this is so much about “hope” as having limited abilities in one branch of gov’t. If Obama would have come forward on his own, it wouldn’t have been bipartisan, so it would be seen as a partisan attack. The only way to get legitimate action that wouldn’t (seriously) bring down the entire democracy into anarchy was for action to be bi-partisan.
A president can’t tell his country weeks before an election that their votes won’t matter because our democracy is being hacked. That would ruin our institutions forever.
Our democracy was hacked. I want the Dems for once grow a backbone and be bipartisan. WE aren’t like conservatives, yet we not only try to appease them we try to change so they will side with us. Sick of it and Americans themselves, too dang lazy to cause anarchy. Look how the majority of Americans are yawning at a foreign agent hacking out elections? We have become a an apathetic nations with no passion for voting or electing the deserving candidate. The article says Obama administration has regrets in how they handled it, even he wishes it had be handled it differently but that is all hindsight now. Now we have a Russian puppet in office which in the end will be far more damaging than upsetting “democracy”.
“Now we have a Russian puppet in office which in the end will be far more damaging than upsetting “democracy””
I disagree. Having a Russian puppet that gets removed from office due to checks and balances would be MUCH better than telling people that votes don’t count. Faith in the mechanisms that carry out democracy is so incredibly important.
I don’t think anyone was trying to appease conservatives here, they were asking them to step up and do their jobs. Americans are lazy, you are right. Can you imagine the voter turn out if we told people that the whole thing was rigged? NO ONE WOULD VOTE. That would be the end of us.
I also agree. Can you imagine how Trump would have incited his supporters with the idea that Obama was trying to help HRC? Many of them do not believe even now that Russia attacked our system.
Or they know and don’t give a damn. Winning, ya know.
Agree with this.
If Obama had come out with this information the Republicans would have gone nuclear saying he was interfering in the election. If Hillary had won, her Presidency would be questioned everyday and deemed “illegitimate” by the Republicans and much of the press because Obama “helped” her win.
Obama was truly stuck between a rock and a hard place.
He was trying to prevent chaos and a possible rebellion post election.
President Obama DID want to announce it but without looking like he was trying to give HRC the presidency. He went to congress and asked Republican leaders including Mitch McConnell to do a joint appearance to announce the Russian interference. But they didn’t want to.
Everyone has short term memory. Bernie Sanders voters were all “the DNC rigged the primaries for HRC to win”. Trump voters were all “if HRC wins, it’s rigged”. How many would believe in the results of the election if Obama had said Russia was trying to rig it?
IIRC, Prez Obama made some statement, then the next day the Access Hollywood tape bombshelled and immediately after that Wikileaks released the Podesta emails. And crazy got crazier.
Yeah, convenient timing, huh? I still can’t comprehend that this is real life and not some highly improbable movie plot.
They were saying on CNN this morning that now that Trump finally admitted that Russia intervened in the 2016 election, what is Trump going to do to prevent Russia from continuing to meddle in American elections? My guess is that if the meddling benefits him he will do nothing.
@Betn – He is not capable of doing his job. The dog that caught the car can only chase his tail, barking his head off and hope that it distracts the crowd enough to notice that he can’t drive.
I hope the investigation enrages him so much he has a stroke. No, I don’t apologize for that.
Watching him be perpetually enraged has its appeal, too.
He has been gaining weight at a rapid pace. I don’t think he is healthy and that was why he avoided a proper health evaluation. He looks like orange jellied suet.
This🤢🤢🤢🤢
http://twitter.com/galenawrites/status/878433583110795264
Yes, he has work to do but he doesn’t know what it is! He has no idea what he’s doing, no knowledge of our constitution and not even a general idea of the duties of the President. What’s even worse, if it’s possible, is that he doesn’t care to learn!!
This is the Peter Principle in action. He has risen to his level of incompetence.
God help us all.
One could create a drinking game with how many times 45 mentions former President Obama or Hillary Clinton in tweets
RBC, are you trying to poison us ^^?
Just numb us into a state of unconsciousness.
We’d be dead from alcohol poisoning by the end of the day
I have not had a drink in 30 years, so I might have to use donuts!!
Obama is damned if he didn’t and damned if he did. If he had said something, that bastard McConnell and his cohorts would have come out and politized it in the media saying he was throwing it for Hilary. The media would have spun it as more partisanship within both parties and it would have just been drowned out. He would have been adding to the chaos, not calming it down. Could he have done more behind the scenes, yeah, I’ll admit that he could have done more to hurt Russia.
Trump’s rhetoric was a warning in and of itself. Obama is not responsible for voter apathy, lack of racial awareness, and people not thinking about the bigger picture.
President Obama probably had too high an opinion of the American Electorate. Who realized that at this point in our existence we still had so many ignorant, bigoted and/or apathetic voters? The whole world realizes now.
Sadly we almost deserve a Trump because we have become so dumbas* we don’t deserve an Obama or a good President.
Trump’s rhetoric was a warning in and of itself. Obama is not responsible for voter apathy, lack of racial awareness, and people not thinking about the bigger picture.
Exactly. People voted for a man who wanted to ban Muslims and called Mexicans rapists. But the same people would have listenned to the warmings of the black President. Sure, Jan.
I have said it before and I’ll say it again: Putin owns McConnell. Obama had McConnell briefed; McConnell screamed that Obama was trying to influence the election; McConnell personally benefited from the results by keeping his own job and getting his wife a new one.
Per Keith Olbermann:
The T stands for Treason.
Girl, Bye
Unstable. I have no recollection of any president, other than during campaigning, did this grade school, nah nah nah name calling. He has insulted colleagues, opponents and the way he speaks of President Obama is unforgivable. “…..Crazy” Bernie Sanders, then in the same breath, “unfair to Bernie.” I went to the grocery store and someone was speaking about him and I looked down, the kid bagging my groceries said he’s not my president. He’s not mine either. If this new and improved (gag) health bill goes through, I can’t even bear to think what will happen next.
So, Orange Voldemort is a Bernie Bro now? A party opting to show preference to one of its members over a guy who is trying to hitch a ride to use the party’s money and network is not illegal or even unethical. And in the end, the party let Bernie in the car, the voters tossed him out. But facts don’t matter to Bernie Bros or Trumpets.
Perhaps the White House should release a list of the words Orange Voldemort owns so that others don’t continue to use them. They should also release a glossary with their Trumpian meanings, which often differ from the standard meanings.
He did this during the election. He pretended to be on the side of the “bernie bros” constantly throwing Hillary utb and making Bernie superior to her, saying Bernie actually won, Hillary cheated, and bringing them up as victims of the DNC. Saying stuff like “bernie would never…” “DNC helped elect Hillary” etc. He thinks he is the master manipulator.
I was a Bernie supporter but definitely not a bro. I am also an Independent who is liberal so I vote Dem. No party can win without Independents and when voting was open Bernie did better. Cruz won when only Repubs voted but Trump won the open votes. I don’t think it is helpful to characterize the majority of his supporters as bros. Especially when Russia purposely posed as Bernie bro supporters online and sabotaged him too. Alienating left leaning Independents is a guarantee to lose more elections. He caucuses with Democrats and would have had a Dem as a VP and a liberal platform. Trump is following Russia’s plan to sew discontent between liberals and Democrats and I guess it is working.
When Trump said that the election was rigged, he was telling the truth. Obama and his administration took it to mean that he was talking about it being rigged in Hiliary’s favor, but he was really admitting that the Russians had rigged the 2016 in his favor. Trump was doing some major projection.
Trump is president, so I am not buying that Russians backed off when Obama told them to stop or that actual voting machines weren’t hacked to switch votes. Look at Trump’s approval rating. His approval rating is so low, that the press has to keep switching which polls they use to give him more credit(notice they are not using the Qunnipec one that had his ratings in the upper 30s? Now they are using polls from NBC/ABC that put his ratings in the lower 40s). If Trump does poorly in polls that can’t be hacked, then the press should be asking why he “won” the election that was receiving attacks on all levels. On election day there were reports of people saying that when they voted for Trump that the vote changed to Hilary. Since Trump and his supporters operate on projection mode, what they really were saying is that votes for Hilary were being switched to Trump. We also found out that there was massive voter suppression in many of the states that Trump won, and the voter suppress was passed off as “low turnout” reports. Our 2016 election was hacked in various ways, so how do we know that the same methods that were used in 2016 aren’t being applied those 4 special elections(Georgia, Kansas)? They need to act now or else Trump and the Russians are going to use the same methods in 2020 and those elections being held in 2018 and for years to come. Do we want Trump and the GOP for another 4 years? With all that we know now, no one should be surprised that Trump and the GOP are “successful” in every election that is occurring.
Trump is his own worst enemy. He gives interviews admitting to the bad things he has done(firing Comey to stop the investigation, threatening Comey, calling the health care bill mean after his people stated that it never happened). What’s worse is how complicit the GOP and some members of the press are. Trump went on tv and asked Russia to hack Hillary, but according to some members of the GOP and press, there is no evidence of collusion. Trump said that he fired Comey to stop the investigation and then went on to issue threats to him using Twitter(the same thing he also did to Sally Yates to try to make her stop testifying), yet the GOP and some members of the press will say that this isn’t enough evidence for obstruction of justice.
I wish that the press would stop saying that Trump’s base is still supporting him. They “support” him in public not because they are loyal, but because they don’t want to admit that they made a huge mistake. The press are asking them the wrong questions. It shouldn’t be why or do you still support Trump, it should be what will happen to you and your family with all of these EO and changes to budget and healthcare bill. It would go somewhere along the lines of that SNL skit.
When Trump gives those speeches, he isn’t talking to his base. He is talking to himself. He wants to hear praise and adulation. It’s not about his base.
Push to equip every voting machine with paper backup that can be checked by the voter before leaving the booth and insist on hand recounts as a routine double check. That will make meddling with machine counts very difficult. We know how to protect paper with bipartisan efforts.
This needs to be done by 2018. It was obvious to me when I saw the sparkly new voting machines (manufactured primarily by active Republicans) in the first election after 2000 that the purpose for the quick change was to prevent pesky recounts as were aborted in Florida to get GWBush elected.
In 2000, after the Florida Supreme Court ordered hand recounts to continue, GWBush went to the SCOTUS to overturn that decision, which it did for reasons I still don’t understand. The recounts were continued unofficially and Gore did actually win Florida and thus should have been POTUS.
In 2004, there were oddities in Ohio that could be explained if malicious software had been installed that transferred votes from Kerry to Bush. In one precinct, there were many more votes for Bush than voters. A programmer guessed that a typo in one character in such malware would account for such a result. I think his reasoning was something like this: For example, if a very simple program was intended to transfer every tenth vote for Kerry to Bush (which would be ordinarily undetectable), such a typo could instead copy all the Kerry votes every tenth vote, resulting in an obvious discrepancy between votes and number of voters.
In 2004 and later in 2008, we were getting reports that some people saw their vote switch from the Democrat to the Republican just before they left the booth. This suggests to me a timing problem for the malware switch or for the active display. At one point, in an unverified copycat maneuver, some Republican running for office claimed the same in the opposite direction. But the credible reports were a Dem vote to Repub vote switch. My suspicion is that selective hacking was done at least in 2004 and 2008 (only a few precincts needed to be involved) and quite likely has continued through 2016 whether or not the Russians were involved in 2016. I told my enthusiastic brother in 2008 that the only way Obama could win would be if he outran the hackers. I think he did, and actually got many more votes than were recorded. In 2016, possibly the Russian addition (they definitely attacked voter registration databases) was aimed at voter suppression and targeted disinformation campaigns. It’s possible that they wanted to affect the machines (Ukrainian elections last Spring apparently experienced such direct interference but they caught it in time), but I think the Republicans in particular were already set up to do that by themselves. But such interference is a risk regardless of Party affiliation when someone has something important to gain (follow the money).
Machines are vulnerable without being directly connected to the internet. Vulnerabilities could be built in at the factory or unintentionally present. Malware could piggyback on the ballot that is loaded or be installed from outside the machines by local agents using modern technology. If the ballot is contaminated, this could be done locally or remotely via any contact the ballot might have had to the net. Malware can be set to trigger at a certain time and delete itself at another time. Plus machines do malfunction and it may not always be obvious.
Checkable paper backup and hand recounts make the whole process far more secure. Without it, I myself will not trust the results of any machine count. The danger is not only from foreign interference, but from agents of homegrown fraudsters who want to manipulate local, state, or national elections for their own purposes. I’m a techie myself (Ph.D in physics with a little programming experience and more knowledge of modern tech capabilities than the average bear) and have used computers extensively since a 9″ black and white screen was state of the art. I can’t imagine relying on them for something as important as voting without a non-electronic paper backup and routine hand recounts. I can’t remember any school election with slips of paper placed in a shoebox that didn’t involve at least one recount…
This makes perfect sense to me. How would people go about doing this? I’m asking because I know people would get behind an organized effort to get this done.
Brilliant, jwoolman. Thank you for posting. I wish I could save this comment and go back and read it during the coming months!
@Tiffany. Cut, paste, send to yourself.
“Trump went on tv and asked Russia to hack Hillary” – he even alluded at someone killing her – the 2nd amendment context.
“The press are asking them the wrong questions.” +a billion. WHY don’t they WAKE UP? WHY ?
And there should be a difinitive list of all tRump monikers:
Emperor Zero
Orange Julius Caesar
Donnie Two Scoops (mafia name)
Pol Pot-belly
The Cheeto Mussolini variants
Ghengis Con
Infidel Castro
Barney Ruble
Emperor Babyfists (Kaiser original)
Etc
Orange Voldemort
The Nectarine Nuisance
Bankrupcy Batista
Minute Maid Mussolini
Cheetolini
Toddler-in-chief
SCROTUS
Trumpov
Putin’s Puppet
Twitler
Hair Fuhrer
Please Eric add my favorite King Joffrey to the list. Cheetos Bandito works as well. Deceitful lying coward, but I guess that’s more of a description than a moniker..
Papaya Pinochet
Trumpenfurher.
Donnie Two scoops. Love it, right out of GOODFELLAS.
Oh, you’ve got me sitting here with “Layla” playing on an infinite loop in my brain. 😂
Punky Momma, it should play in everyone’s brain. It’s my favorite rock song. I’m 64.
The Orange Maroon*
President Tweeter
*For the cartoon-deprived:
“What a maroon.” – Bugs Bunny, frequently throughout his career. Often in reference to Elmer Fudd.
Trumplethinskin was my fave.
My brother calls him the SSM – Salmon Swamp Monster.
Agent Orange
Tangerine
The Coral Conman
Idiot always works
Don The Con
Donnie Moscow
Maybe I’m being incredibly stupid but…if it’s been proven that Russia interfered in the election to sway it in someone’s favour, HOW can that result be lawful and stand?
Can anyone explain it to me?
Maybe it is because they don’t have proof that Russia messed with the voting machines, which would have effected the voting count. They have proof of spreading misinformation and throwing gasoline on a fire, which caused people to either not show up or show up to vote, but they didn’t touch the machines. At least they don’t have proof yet that this has happened.
They also didn’t have anything to do with the electorial college who officially elected Foolius. I am pretty sure I am missing some things, but that is my guess from what I have gleaned.
Ah, that all makes sense! Thanks 🙂
I’m still skeptical – who do I fear more, Putin or the Koch brothers? Who or what is actually a direct threat to my life? And I don’t think Obama choked, he choose not to overreact. Sanctions, sending home diplomats and seizing property are strong actions. Maybe some would prefer, what? Bombs? A proxy war? Oh wait…
I think all these big state actors, super powers or whatever, do similar things and that technology has ramped it way up. So far, cyber warfare stops short of directly manipulating votes. Paper ballots, hand counted in public would help ensure the legitimacy of our election results.
And, before you get the knives out, consider the role the U.S. has played in manipulating elections. Recently declassified http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/20/64-years-later-cia-finally-releases-details-of-iranian-coup-iran-tehran-oil/
It’s not that a foreign power was trying to influence our elections, that’s not new, nor is our influence on overseas elections.
It’s that in this case the RNC seemed to welcome, and perhaps even assist, in the influencing.
Obama is basically not allowed to use the word “mean”? What about the rest of us? Can we use it? Is it still ok to sell or watch the movie “Mean Girls”? Or does it belong to Trump as well? I have so many questions.
I would enjoy a slap fight between the Fine brothers and Trump.
And what about the different uses of the word? It is both a verb, a noun, and an adjective and has different meanings within some of those uses. Is he laying claim to all?
The fact that the POTUS would seize on that as some sort of affront may be a new low for Bigly and his pettiness and ignorance. Just when I think I couldn’t be more appalled, he lowers the bar yet again.
ROTFLMAO
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/26/ivanka-trump-politics-fox-interview-239945
This should be an interesting, lie filled exercise. Like father, like daughterwife.
http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/24/news/companies/ivanka-trump-court-deposition-aquazzura/index.html
Wow, so much resemblance it’s ridiculous. Good on the judge.
…hooray…daily trump…he’ll keel over soon… from stress…
The Dump is awake and going bonkers on twitter. So another typical Monday. 🙁
He is losing his mind.
Trump is having another tweetstorm. Why is this acceptable? Why is Trump allowed to use twitter as a bully platform to intimidate Comey, Sally Yates, Obama, Susan Rice, and the Democrats? At what point do the GOP say enough is enough? This is how you know that the actual voting machines were hacked in addition to voter suppression, bot campaigning against Hillary, Comey’s mistake, and hacking of DNC. There is no way that Trump would have won without the interference from a third party. This is why Trump is so obsessed with Hiliary, the 2016 election, and blaming everything on Obama(wiretapping, unmasking, falsely claiming that Obamacare is in a death spiral and that he inherited a mess-this country was perfectly fine when Trump stepped into office and now it’s all a mess) because he knows that he “won” by dishonest measures and not by his own merit.
Trump tweeted that Obama did “NOTHING”(which we know isn’t true because Trump spent the first months of his presidency trying to remove the sanctions that Obama placed on the Russians) because he thought that Hiliary would win. The major problem is that Obama and his administration greatly underestimated the Russians and Trump. Then there there are those GOP, like Mitch M, who stood in the way. Why was Mitch M so reluctant to do anything?
We are being governed by a man who can’t tell the truth if he was offered a billionaire dollars to do so. Trump lies knowing that there is evidence to contradict him. He does it because he knows that there won’t be any consequences for his lies. That is dangerous. Trump thinks that he is above the law and the GOP are giving him every reason to believe it. Like how the GOP keep claiming that unmasking is illegal to cover up those Trump officials who were exposed for meeting with Russians or asking who leaked to WP about Flynn when Trump has a direct contact to WP via Robert/Bob Costa. Every time that Lindsey Graham asks about who leaked to WP, someone should point out that Trump has a direct contact with one of the reporters from WP.
Keep it up, I say. He’ll tweet himself into impeachment. Or, better yet, jail.
So we live in a country where our President claims to have ownership over the word the word ‘mean’.
We live in a country where people dozens of people with handicaps are dragged out of their wheelchairs but the President can’t muster up even a moment of somber compassion for the legislation he’s about to enact.
Meanwhile good Christians cosign this as gods work.
Wow.
Yep. I read somewhere about how over 22 million Americans are expected to be uinsured by 2026 and thought ‘What condition is this world even going to be in in 2026 after Trump?’ He can’t resign soon enough.
So trump says a) the Russians didn’t hack and b) blames Obama for not doing something about this (non-existent) hack. Coherent and intelligent as always. And calling Bernie Sanders crazy is…crazy.
You can coulda, woulda, shoulda, all you like but the fact still remains we’re left with El Cheeto. The GOP doesn’t care-they’re too drunk on power at the moment.
I think the American people are going to have to do this one. For the next four years, people are going to have to apply pressure in every possible way so that the current government will have no doubt that the public knows this is unacceptable and they are going to fire them all at the first opportunity. People have to dig in deep, go hard & resist.
I thought I was being sarcastic previously when I said sonething about Viagra being covered in the AHCA, but nooooo …….
http://twitter.com/heatherwhaley/status/878389919869173760
I do love this reaction:
http://twitter.com/tess_tess2/status/879018436533207041
According to Trump and Kellyanne they are doing something about Russia. Their spin is that they are dealing with Russia through the Voter Fraud Commission. The Voter Fraud Commission isn’t about voting fraud though. It’s about voter suppression. The man leading that commission, just like Karen Handel in Georgia, has a history of creating laws to prevent certain groups of people from voting.
Why are the GOP and Supreme Court always trying to appease Trump? Trump’s Muslim Ban has been blocked by several courts. It goes to the Supreme Court and they show that they are not willing to be independent of Trump. It was announced that the Supreme Court is going to allow part of Trump’s Muslim Ban to go on and that they stated that it’s not a Muslim Ban even though Trump stated many times that it was a Muslim Ban. The press are already celebrating it as a partial win for Trump. That’s sad and disgusting. The Supreme Court had one job to do and they failed. Gorsch needs to be removed, he has proven what many of the Democrats suspected. He can’t and won’t do anything independent of Trump.
All I can say is deflect, deflect, deflect. He is in panic mode. He knows Mueller is going to get him. RESIST, RESIST,RESIST!
Sadly, Trump has a partial Supreme Court victory and will, of course, gloat about that for a few days [as one does when one is nominally the leader of the free world]
Trump’s obsession with and jealousy of President Obama has been noted by a number of people [“many people say’] to resemble Nixon’s obsession with JFK. Even in the White House, the paranoid crook was haunted by how admired his one time enemy and opponent had been.
Ugh I’m done with this incoherent f—er! Nothing he says makes sense! Yeah Hilary colluded to tank her own campaign! Obama couldn’t do much because f—ing Turtle Head threatened him.
I am hoping the noose is ever so slightly closing over those traitors. Mueller, hurry up.
On the other hand, Obama should have definitely told Turtle head to F— off and released this news. We should have been notified about this.
About SC Justice Kennedy,
http://abovethelaw.com/2017/06/no-justice-anthony-m-kennedy-is-not-retiring-tomorrow/
‘If you follow the money and follow the troops, don’t follow the tweets’ General Betray-us.
“Putin literally gave the orders to ensure Trump’s victory.”
Russian meddling was one of the contributing factors but apparently not a top five or even top 10 one. Democrats shot themselves in the foot as well. The issue here is the collusion, rather.
Can’t wait to see what T tweets when the pee pee tape is released…it’s going to be gold, pure gold.
Yes, please, please, let it come out!
You are so right. The “rigging” point you made Kaiser WAS a trap and it seems Trump is a clever snake. I can only hope he ends up eating his own tail. This man and the fact that he has even one supporter literally makes me feel ill.
Russia sucks and Putin knows it. Rather than fix his hot mess of a country, he’s trying to bring everyone else down. It’s like in a movie or TV show with one lousy lead actor. You have to surround that turd with even worse actors to make him look halfway decent. Putin is winning, folks. You can have your guns, your Hummers and your anti-woman and anti-gay laws, but it won’t matter once we implode from our own stupidity.
The rate at which Trump and the GOP are destroying this country is getting faster.
This is what happened just yesterday and over night:
-What’s going on at CNN? I read an article that said that they retracted a Trump Russia story, that 3 people resigned because of it, and that any reports that CNN publishes on Trump and Russia have to be vetted now. CNN is now the new Fox. Why are they bowing down to Trump?
-Trump is accusing Obama of colluding with the Russians. Just like he accused Obama of wiretapping and unmasking, he will not be held accountable for this lie because the GOP are too afraid and self centered to do the right thing. The last time Trump lied about Obama it was a huge mess and Trump had Devin Nunes use the NSA to reverse engineer support for his lie about being wiretapped. When that didn’t work, Trump dropped bombs on Syria and Afghanastan.
-To distract from the disaster that is Mitch M care, the WH decided to make threats against Syria and Assad because the last time that TrumpRyancare was doing poorly, Trump dropped bombs on Syria and Afghanastan and the press were too busy calling Trump presidential to focus on TrumpRyancare. The WH released a statement saying that they got advanced warning that Assad is planning on another chemical attack and that they plan to attack Assad and Syria if the chemical attack occurs. It is thought that Trump and the WH didn’t consult any of their intel before releasing this statement, but we all know how this will end. McMaster, who is supposed to be the adult, will make more excuses and lies for Trump. This seems like a trap? Putin gives Trump fake intel on Assad, US attacks Assad and Syria, and then Russia turns around and attacks the US. Trump has isolated us from all of our allies, so there won’t be anyone to help us.
-Neil Gorsch showed his support for Trump yesterday by convincing members of the Supreme Court to allow part of Trump’s Muslim Ban to go into effect and by saying that the Muslim Ban isn’t a Muslim Ban because it was done for the national security of this country despite the fact that Trump and his administration proclaimed many times that it was a Muslim Ban. This is so wrong. Just as many thought, Gorsch is not able to be independent of Trump and he is tainting the rest of the Supreme Court. If he hadn’t been there, none of Trump’s Muslim Ban would have went into effect. Trump’s Muslim Ban was blocked at least 7 times by other courts. the Supreme Court and Gorsch had one job to do and they failed us.
-During one of the Spicer briefings, Kristen Welker asked about Trump’s tweet and speech asking Russia to hack Hiliary. According to Spicer it was just a joke. More attention has to be placed on this. We keep hearing that there is no evidence of Trump colluding with the Russians, yet we have a tweet(I didn’t know about the tweet) and Trump’s own speech asking them to hack Hiliary. Collusion.
-The GOP are trying to bully any GOP members who said that they are voting no on MitchMcare. They are running negative ads against Dean Heller, just like they did to Comey.
-The WH is now claiming that collusion isn’t a crime.
-Reporters are losing their minds because of the restrictions that are being placed on Spicer’s briefings. Why? All Spicer does during these briefings is lie. Spicer’s briefings are a waste of time and instead of whining over access the reporters need to be more concerned with the lies that Spicer spreads during these briefings.
-I wish that the press would stand up to the GOP and Trump when they say that Obamacare is failing and in a death spiral. The CBO score for TrumpRyancare, Housecare, and MitchMcare are worse than the CBO score for Obamacare. One of the reasons that carriers are leaving Obamacare is because the GOP and Trump are withholding the funds that they need to operate. The GOP and Trump are deliberately sabotaging Obamacare and it’s not being covered enough by the press. Obamacare has it’s problem, but it’s not as bad as the GOP and Trump are making it out to be.
-The press keep saying that the GOP are trying to repeal Obamacare because that is what they promised their constituents, but based on the town hall meetings and protests, that’s not true. Their constituents want to keep Obamacare. The real reason the GOP want to repeal Obamacare is because they don’t like that they had to abide by Obamacare and to make all those billionaires and millionaires in Trump’s administration richer. Here is where the press are failing us. They need to stop spreading the GOP narrative and tell the truth.
I think the DNC needs to take some of the blame because they favored Hilary over Bernie Sanders when they were supposed to remain unbiased.
After the DNC was caught through hacked emails, the democrats, including Obama, had to be very careful to not be seen as overly biased towards Hilary. I think this made them too reluctant to say anything about the Russian interference with the election.
Putin and Russian intellegence played this so well.
When did Obama finally have sufficient proof this was happening? Whenever that was he should have immediately at least told the press what was happening.
Maybe he was too sure that Hilary was going to win or maybe he thought mentioning it would have the opposite effect – bringing more attention to Trump would mean more votes for Trump.
I think it’s more likeky, however, that once again democrats weren’t being bold enough or even standing up for themselves. What’s happened to the progressive politicians? It seems like they are going through a “wimpy” phase. Hopefully they’ll snap out of it soon!
I agree that the DNC and democratic party should bear some responsibility here. Trump was merely a candidate, not the president, he had no power to control the Russia hacking and it has yet to be proved he was involved in anyway. We now know the FBI informed the dnc as well as Obama, and they did very little, or waited. Most likely believing Hillary would win. The same of you who have been so angry about trump and Russia should be just as angry at Obama and the democrats for not being transparent and dealing with the problem. If not, youre a hypocrite.