House majority leader to colleagues in 2016: ‘I think Putin pays’ Trump

I can read this as a joke, but they're definitely serious about Russia interfering in Europe and energy, as well as hacking the DNC.
 
LOL "But you say 'I'm serious'!"

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Now that's funny
 
Paul Scheer‏ @paulscheer

Three places where you are family
1.) Republican House of Representatives
2.) The Fast & Furious Film Franchise
3.) Olive Garden
 
This is asinine. There's only one way this could be a joke in that context- that there was a kernel of truth to it. Nobody would laugh if they didn't believe there was some connection between the Russian state and Trump.

Exactly. Like, it doesn't appear he's making a serious accusation against Trump that he can back up... but this does speak to Republican cowardice more broadly. That they clearly recognize Trump's Russia connections but have been totally negligent in acting on them
 
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That's the transcript cropped/edited to show McCarthy's entire dialog which happened within seconds. Two sentences, two laughs, and one "swear to god".

This was the day after DNC announced they had been hacked. So using his defense, he was just joking about DNC getting hacked because he laughed.

I personally think he really believed that, thought it out loud, and Ryan didn't want McCarthy's rumination to leak.
 
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That's the transcript cropped/edited to show McCarthy's entire dialog which happened within seconds. Two sentences, two laughs, and one "swear to god".

This was the day after DNC announced they had been hacked. So using his defense, he was just joking about DNC getting hacked because he laughed.

I personally think he really believed that, thought it out loud, and Ryan didn't want McCarthy's rumination to leak.

Reading this makes me think it was McCarthy thinking "holy shit trump is either lucky as hell or paid by russia wtf" but at this point fuck it, take a page out of the GOP playbook and make this a big ass deal.
 
Hahahha can't wait till everything gets uncovered. All these fuckers need to get exposed for the criminals they are.
 
Holy shit. This was alluded to by Claude taylor. Which means that maybe the rest of what hes saying isnt false. Which means the whole GODAMN GOP is in on this. Holy fucking shit.
 
I don't doubt the veracity at all, but I would love to hear the tape. I'm assuming WaPo doesn't actually have the tape, they were allowed to listen by the person who recorded it?

Not that it matters, the principals have all confirmed it happened anyway.

Holy shit. This was alluded to by Claude taylor. Which means that maybe the rest of what hes saying isnt false. Which means the whole GODAMN GOP is in on this. Holy fucking shit.

Link? I can't keep up with all the theorizing.
 
Goddamn, the whole Republican party has been compromised. Putin laughing his ass off right now.

What I'm curious about is how does this affect the USA/world's relationship with Russia after/if we restore competent leadership to the states? we can't just like... let it slide, right?
 
Yooooo

Between this and the special council news...I'm starting to think this could actually happen!

Please don't be all for naught!
 
Hate to sound like some sort of silly conspiracy theorist, but it's getting hard to keep calling it a "theory" at this point, so fuck it. And it's not like anyone in the GOP deserves the benefit of the doubt.


This has to be the tip of the iceberg. We have to assume a lot of higher-ups in the government, especially the GOP, knew about the Russia stuff and has been hushing it up. But how many are actually involved? How have they kept the party and the propaganda so unified until now? Why hasn't anyone gone rogue and spilled the beans?
 
I know whenever I'm with my family and one of us tells a hilarious joke the first thing I do is remind them that it never leaves this room.

Right? And, of course, that also explains why McCarthy wouldn't remember it. Because being sworn to secrecy over a joke is such a common occurrence, it's not memorable.
 
Reads like a joke to me.

Ryan and the rest of the assholes were enjoying a little schadenfreude. McCarthy jokes about Trump being on Putin's payroll - because come on, they all were thinking it or probably joked about it when he was running, nobody liked him then. Then Ryan jokingly tells them to hush it up, like McCarthy has revealed some secret. So it's in poor taste but I don't think it reads as them knowing all about Russian interference.
 
Reads like a joke to me.

Ryan and the rest of the assholes were enjoying a little schadenfreude. McCarthy jokes about Trump being on Putin's payroll - because come on, they all were thinking it or probably joked about it when he was running, nobody liked him then. Then Ryan jokingly tells them to hush it up, like McCarthy has revealed some secret. So it's in poor taste but I don't think it reads as them knowing all about Russian interference.

There's more in the transcript, Ryan talking about Putin funding populists, etc.
 
Reads like a joke to me.

Ryan and the rest of the assholes were enjoying a little schadenfreude. McCarthy jokes about Trump being on Putin's payroll - because come on, they all were thinking it or probably joked about it when he was running, nobody liked him then. Then Ryan jokingly tells them to hush it up, like McCarthy has revealed some secret. So it's in poor taste but I don't think it reads as them knowing all about Russian interference.

It reads like they believed that the Trump campaign was inappropriately close with Russia, not that McCarthy or anyone else literally believed the specific allegation in question.
 
Incredible to think most people ridiculed Bush and his cabinet. At least the likes of Cheney could pull off evil effectively. These guys, a shower of clowns.
 
Nah, only a few. The rest are just assholes which is why it worked so well.

Ehhh. I would say the vast majority of the Republican party has been indirectly compromised. They have been mostly silent and in most cases outright deny any evidence put forth. It's not a gross exaggeration to say that if this were happening under a Democrat President the outrage would be vastly different.
 
Here's the thing that gets me about Paul Ryan. He's a fanatic to the point of irrationality. Someone once posted a good analogy to show just how scary and dangerous he is:

Imagine you've got a simple society of 100 people. There's only one well as a source of water for the society. The one guy who owns the well decides to up the price of water to something insane like $10 per bucket. Only 9 or so other people can afford that. Logically, you'd want some kind of structure in place to make sure that the guy couldn't hoard all of the water to himself and those with more resources because the society can't function that way. The other 90 people also contribute to society by making tools, hunting, etc.

People like Paul Ryan would look at that situation, insist that the only fair way for that society to function was to allow the well owner to charge $10 per bucket. People would die of thirst and society would collapse. But to people like Paul Ryan, that doesn't seem to matter because ideology is more important than anything else.

I hope all of this takes Paul Ryan down. He's little more than an AI program with the set goal of destroying the safety net. Aliens could land in Washington DC and he'd still be insisting that we focus on cutting Medicare.
 
Ehhh. I would say the vast majority of the Republican party has been indirectly compromised. They have been mostly silent and in most cases outright deny any evidence put forth. It's not a gross exaggeration to say that if this were happening under a Democrat President the outrage would be vastly different.

Outrage? They'd take up arms and hang people for treason.
 
I think all this will lead to is the GOP deciding to back Trump's plan to get friendly with Russia. It's the only way for them to normalize all this, and GOP voters would be fine with it.
 
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