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PoliGAF 2017 |OT2| Well, maybe McMaster isn't a traitor.

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D

Dan

No longer boycotting the Wolfenstein franchise
BlastProcessing said:
The scope of an investigation is primarily set at it's creation. So a possible course of events could be something like this.

*Nunes agrees to start an investigation.

*Schiff out plays him and structures the investigation in such a way where it's scope would actually be damaging to Trump (and possibly Nunes himself)

*Nunes realizes he fucked up and tries to derail the whole thing.

*This does two things:

One: it buys Trump time to destroy information and cover shit up.

Two: it gives the framers of the next investigation an opportunity to narrow the scope of things.
Click to expand...
Of course, it simultaneously bolsters the case for an independent investigation.
 
Emerson

Emerson

May contain jokes =>
The idea the Trump team can just purge their phones is laughable. That's just more evidence. You can't hide this shit from the FBI and NSA.
 
B

balladofwindfishes

Member
This is why we've never had a president with no military or political background.

Pushing for a vote you know is going to fail to get a list of names you can shame with your amazing 37% approval rating is a dumb political move. A very dumb move. A move that nobody whose ever spent 20 minutes in government would ever make.
 
P

PBY

Banned
Can't express what a colossal fuck up it is that you have 7 years, control Congress and the WH... and cant even get this through one chamber of congress.

Wtf.
 
F

FyreWulff

Member
balladofwindfishes said:
This is why we've never had a president with no military or political background.

Pushing for a vote you know is going to fail to get a list of names you can shame with your amazing 37% approval rating is a dumb political move. A very dumb move. A move that nobody whose ever spent 20 minutes in government would ever make.
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As much as people hate politicians and politics, it's how you get stuff done, and it requires willingness to learn it, or just experience.

Don is way too used to running things like a business. What do businesses and CEOs do? Bury stuff they don't like, super artificial loyalty yes-manning is rewarded, you don't think of anything past 6 months ago, announcements/acquisitions are intentionally done at marketing opportunities..... doesn't work in politics. People have long memories, sometimes you have to give up things you want, and sometimes you will lose, sometimes you have to let something die on the vine and try again later. You can't be literal and brash in politics.
 
T

teiresias

Member
I'm not sure why you'd claim Trump "left everything on the field" when approaching a likely-to-fail vote that you're already prepping to use as a way to get people to put on a list of enemies.

mN1sUUF.jpg
 
S

Suikoguy

I whinny my fervor lowly, for his length is not as great as those of the Hylian war stallions
Plinko said:
This is unreal. All forcing a vote does is screw over the republicans who vote for the even worse healthcare bill.

I still say it ends up pulled.
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Going to show what degree of influence the White House has over the House right now.
As I mentioned in the other thread, this bill is being pushed on Trump's victory and hate of the ACA. So my guess is the influence is high.
(It's certainly not being pushed on the merits of the bill, lol).
 
Emerson

Emerson

May contain jokes =>
Trump ostracizing his own party's congressmen over this would be the most delicious shit I've ever seen. That's like literally the only path to impeachment by his own party.
 
V

VendettaRed07

Member
The first vote falling through and trump threatening and embarrassing every republican he can on the first bill is a disaster.

They have no reason to feel pressured to vote for something they aren't comfortable voting for after this. Like his budget plan, tax reform, infrastructure or anything they think is too extreme.

Every man for himself after the first operation
 
I

IggyChooChoo

Member
Outdoor Miner said:
When such thoughts enter your mind, just think what a shit-fest a Hillary presidency would have been. And I don't mean that from her side of the coin, but rather the unprecedented obstruction and hostility the opposition would have shown her. I fully believe we would have been in the midst of a govt shutdown while several investigations into Benghazi and Clinton Foundation were ongoing. Impeachment impeachment impeachment. No cabinet appointments, no SC confirmation, and a stone wall on every single policy proposal. The Russia stuff that would have still come out would be discarded as politicized nonsense from the Clinton executive branch.Not to mention the far-left wing of the party would have been more vocal and thrown countless fits at any perceived compromise or centrist policy (kinda like the HFC are doing now).

Unless we took 1 of the Senate or the House, it wasn't going to be a worthwhile presidency. The Republican party would have been a borderline domestic terrorist organization. As a Hillary fan it would have been torturous for me to endure and I'm honestly glad she doesn't have to go through with that bullshit.

I'm starting to honestly think a Trump win was the best case scenario for Dems long-term prospects.
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I'm starting to agree with this more. McConnell paid zero price for obstructing Garland -- why would he worry about permanently blocking a Hillary nominee? sure, it'd be unprecedented, but he wouldn't care.
 
B

BlastProcessing

Member
The New Yorker: HOW A REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN ACCIDENTALLY DISCLOSED A SECRET INTELLIGENCE DEBATE

New Yorker said:
On Monday, when the House Intelligence Committee held its first public hearing about Russian involvement in the U.S. Presidential election, Republican members were almost completely focussed on leaks.

In his opening statement, Devin Nunes, the chairman of the committee, made clear how important the issue was to the G.O.P. ”Who has leaked classified information?" he asked. ”We aim to determine who has leaked or facilitated leaks of classified information so that these individuals can be brought to justice."

Republicans were especially agitated about whether any former Obama Administration officials leaked information from classified transcripts of conversations between Michael Flynn, President Trump's former national-security adviser, and Sergey Kislyak, the Russian Ambassador to the United States, during the Presidential transition. At one point, Trey Gowdy, the Republican from South Carolina best known for his investigation of Benghazi, pressed James Comey, the F.B.I. director, on whether reporters might be jailed for publishing classified information.

”Director Comey, you and I were discussing the felonious dissemination of classified material during the last round," he said. ”Is there an exception in the law for current or former U.S. officials who request anonymity?" Comey said that there was not, and Gowdy asked, ”Is there an exception in the law for reporters who want to break a story?" (To his credit, Comey said, ”That's a harder question.")

With all the focus by Republicans on leaking classified information, Democrats on the committee were stunned when, in one little-noticed moment during the five-hour hearing, a prominent Republican seemed to let slip what two members of the panel told me was a piece of classified information.

Last year, the intelligence community, which consists of sixteen U.S. entities that collect secret information, produced classified and unclassified versions of a report on the Russian influence campaign during the election. The unclassified report makes bold conclusions about Russian intentions. ”We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency," the report said. ”We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments."

The conclusions were unambiguous, but the evidence in the unclassified report was unsatisfying. Republicans have questioned whether Putin really had a clear preference for Trump rather than simply a general animosity toward Hillary Clinton. Members of the committee were pressing Comey and Rogers on this point when a behind-the-scenes fight that was previously classified spilled into public.

It started when Nunes asked, ”Do Russians historically prefer Republicans to win over Democrats?" Nunes ticked through some recent elections and inquired whether the Russians supported John McCain over Obama, in 2008, or Mitt Romney over Obama, in 2012. Comey said that he didn't know the answer.

”I'm just asking a general question," Nunes said. ”Wouldn't it be a little preposterous to say that, historically, going back to Ronald Reagan and all that we know about maybe who the Russians would prefer, that somehow the Russians prefer Republicans over Democrats?"

Watching the hearing, this seemed like a curious line of questioning. Because members of the House Intelligence Committee often know a great deal more than they can say publicly, they sometimes use their questioning to hint at what they have learned in classified settings. Nunes's questions seemed to suggest some broader debate, as Comey confirmed when he shut down the exchange.

”I'm not going to discuss in an unclassified forum," he said. ”In the classified segment of the reporting version that we did, there is some analysis that discusses this because, remember, this did come up in our assessment on the Russian piece."

Nunes thanked him and turned to Representative Peter King, of New York. King was less circumspect than Nunes had been. ”I would just say on that because, again, we're not going into the classified sections, that indicating that historically Russians have supported Republicans, and I know that language is there, to me puts somewhat of a cloud over the entire report," King said.

I didn't notice it at the time, though I was in the room, and the C-SPAN video of the hearing doesn't capture it, but Democrats told me that there was, at this point, a minor commotion on the dais. King had just revealed that the classified version of the report had concluded ”that historically Russians have supported Republicans."

Two Democrats, confirming what King said, told me that there was a significant fight over this judgment during a recent classified briefing. ”I was really taken aback that it came up in the hearing," one Democratic congressman on the committee told me. ”I might just observe to you, if there was such a conclusion, you can bet that the Republicans would have pushed back very, very hard about such a conclusion. And I don't want to say more than that."

Sometimes it's difficult for someone privy to classified information to keep straight what is classified and what is not, especially when a classified judgment seems relatively innocuous. I asked King about the exchange, and his answer suggested that he was confused about the classification.

”I have to watch myself," he told me. ”I think it was in the public report that came out, the unclassified report, that there was a finding in there that historically—so don't quote me on this, O.K.? Because I'm not sure if this was the classified or the unclassified, but there was a conclusion that historically the Russians have favored Republicans." I could not find that conclusion in the public report, and, as others confirmed, it was a classified judgment.

Setting aside the issue of whether it was appropriate for King to allow this piece of classified information to become public, King and the Republicans do indeed have good reason to question the intelligence community's judgment.

”We certainly disagreed. It's been brought up in classified hearings," King told me. He said that his intention at Monday's hearing ”was to show how much of a bias is there in the report. If they went out of their way to say that the Russians favored Republicans historically, was that indicating that they were either pressured or were trying to find a way to make a more convincing case for Trump over Clinton?"

It's a fair question. I asked Oleg Kalugin, a former K.G.B. general who now lives in Virginia, about the intelligence community's alleged claim that Russia has historically supported Republican Presidential candidates. ”No, that's not true," he told me. He said that, when he was a press officer at the Soviet Embassy, during the Nixon era, it was part of his job to send daily reports to Moscow on American Presidential elections. ”We always supported the Democrats. The Soviets, and the Russians after the collapse of the U.S.S.R., have been essentially in favor of the Democratic Party, because it represented the more moderate part of the United States' political life, while the Republicans are more reactionary. The Republicans are viewed as more aggressive and anti-Communist, and that's why the Soviets and, subsequently, the Russians would rather deal with the Democrats." Almost everyone agrees that this calculus changed with respect to the race between Clinton, whom Putin personally despised, and Trump, who in public statements was loudly pro-Putin.

Does this debate matter? Perhaps. One of the mandates of the House Intelligence Committee is to evaluate the credibility of the intelligence community's conclusions about Russia's intentions last year. The intelligence community is highly confident that Putin specifically wanted a Trump victory. Republicans are skeptical and will continue to seize on this historical judgment to undermine the broader conclusions.
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Peter King is a dummy.
 
O

Owzers

Member
Also, trump is a turd who lied about his health care agenda.

A turd.

Everyone will be covered even if thats not popular in the GOP.
 
N

neurosisxeno

Member
The Republican Party is so inept, that they managed to find a situation in which they physically cannot win. There is no situation involving the AHCA which results in a win for them.
 
K

Kusagari

Member
neurosisxeno said:
The Republican Party is so inept, that they managed to find a situation in which they physically cannot win. There is no situation involving the AHCA which results in a win for them.
Click to expand...

They've been stuck in this situation since 2009. There was and never has been anywhere for them to go since they were basically opposing their own plan.
 
N

neurosisxeno

Member
whyamihere said:
How does he win here
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There is no win. Not for Trump, not for Ryan, not for the Republican Party. The best part is how do you threaten to primary the Freedom Caucus? They're the result of gerrymandering districts so it's pure Republican ideologues. You gonna run a well-funded Moderate against them? Who do you think these people fucking beat to get their seats???
 
G

Geist-

Member
Trump is trying to force AHCA to fail so he can point to the GOP as the reason why he failed to keep the promise to repeal Obamacare.

Works for me.
 
J

jmdajr

Member
neurosisxeno said:
The Republican Party is so inept, that they managed to find a situation in which they physically cannot win. There is no situation involving the AHCA which results in a win for them.
Click to expand...

See if Cruz won it be super easy. Dude was totally cool with people dying in the streets.
 
N

neurosisxeno

Member
Geist- said:
Trump is trying to force AHCA to fail so he can point to the GOP as the reason why he failed to keep the promise to repeal Obamacare.

Works for me.
Click to expand...

That's entirely possible. I see no way he doesn't start lashing out at House Republicans, completely devoid of the fact that this thing was never going to pass the Senate. Unless you wanted to ensure you end up with 52-55 Democrats in the Senate going into 2019.
 
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