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[Kyzer]

Honestly, I would love for all this to be true, but I'm still remaining skeptical since I've been fooled too many times before in the past with stories like this.

For me though, the biggest story right now is the president elect publicly comparing claims made about him to Nazi persecution. That's a pretty fucked up thing in it's own right and deserving of current media attentions.

youre thinking correctly.

 

[Staccat0]

What this thread is really teaching me is that most of GAF doesn't quite understand what a golden shower is

 

[Lord Frieza]

i mean theyre both absolutely ridiculous and absurd. ill give you that demonic sex ring is more absurd but trump being a russian double agent is pretty crazy too?

If you've been paying attention at all to what happening in the election, you would realize it's not nearly as crazy as it sound.

so even my posts are a conspiracy.

Didn't say that at all

what am I "doing"?

are you sure im not just speaking, and that my words are exactly what they are at face value? I assure you, I have no overarching plan or strategy, nor a goal to accomplish. and youre damn right im smh @ people for making the same fucking mistake pizzagaters made. I wonder if as pizzagate was happening, how many of those people were saying the same exact things some of you guys are saying. "this hasn't been debunked", "just because it hasnt been verified doesnt mean its not true."

This.

 

[Resident_UA]

Honestly, I would love for all this to be true, but I'm still remaining skeptical since I've been fooled too many times before in the past with stories like this.

For me though, the biggest story right now is the president elect publicly comparing claims made about him to Nazi persecution. That's a pretty fucked up thing in it's own right and deserving of current media attentions.

I couldn't care less if any of this is true. I just love the irony that the guy who "heard people saying..." has to deal with this bullshit.

More concerning thing is that Trump does have Russian ties, but it's hard to know how that will get managed during his presidency...

 

[sturgboski]

I hope the Republicans use US taxpayer money to investigate after spending millions going after Clinton.

 

[Zushin]

How in the hell does that add credibility? I want this to be true as much as the next person but this is basically saying that some of this report is false and if some of it is false it brings into question the whole report.

Jake Tapper saying a different Michael Cohen was in Prague means one of those things is not wrong. The report said Michael Cohen was in Prague. Doesn't the fact that a Michael Cohen was in Prague add some sort of legitimacy to that report then?

Who knows how that intelligence was obtained? MI6 guy might have heard the name Michael Cohen and linked it (irresponsibly) to the investigation he was already doing.

^

I'm not saying it's correct but it is one hell of a coincidence to be something that is totally made up.


Edit: this explains what I mean:

I think it's probably just a misclassification of their part



I think what he's saying there is the fact that a Micheal Cohen was in Prague leads credence to the overall report, because it shows that 1) there was a person of that name in Prague at the time the report says, and 2) while not the right person, the report calls into question this piece of information as less confidence based as the others, so a case of a mistaken identity isn't a total deconfirmation of the report as a whole.

Of course, though, that's more complex than most readers and watchers will understand. They'll just see 'fake news' as it'll be parroted over and over and latch on to that.

 

[Foggy]

i mean theyre both absolutely ridiculous and absurd. ill give you that demonic sex ring is more absurd but trump being a russian double agent is pretty crazy too?

Searching for confirmation to your biases is a human thing, a very common thing. There's nothing particularly noteworthy about it. When that search for bias leads to demonic sex rings or lizard people or whatever, then yeah it's noteworthy and even people with common flaws can mock it.

Now Trump being a double agent? Of course not, that's fantasy land. Now, a leader in power because of foreign influence and being explicitly guided by that influence? There's nothing absurd about it at all. US and Russia have done this for decades.

 

[Doc Holliday]

I just love that Trump is having to respond to this. Mr. Conspiracy is tasting of a bit of his own medicine.

Of course if this is true, its right up there with the biggest stories in US history.

 

[gamechanger87]

Outside the Cohen thing, what else has been debunked?

Outside the Golden Shower thing, what is absurd about this report?

The Cohen thing is the easiest to debunk, because it takes a government agency minutes to check the customs data. It is the only concrete claim in the report that can be validated and if one was going to put in in their report you would think they would have spent the time to validate it.

Instead, they just typed everything up and sent it around. If the easiest thing to validate is false and the rest is hearsay it calls into question the rest of the report as the party compiling it did not do the required work to verfiy.

 

[jellies_two]

I thin people need to calm down on this for a little bit and let journalists/intelligence agencies do their work. We already have a new bit now where BBC says sources in 2 locations have audio and video evidence.

Let this happen if it happens at all.

Yes we should all Shut up and not discuss anything even for a few hours, lest we get compared to the machine behind the many month long pizzagate looney tune shit, and risk being equated to that.
No speculation, no repetition of anything short of facts Trump himself signs off on. Talk about being graded on a fucking curve.

No rules for the right, they can float all kinds of shit to find out what has legs..
but a godly standard is required around trump.

 

[Audioboxer]

Well, that's the pickle, isn't it?

Sure, but it's why claims require evidence before they'll get taken seriously or every country would just run around claiming to have dirt on another. Blackmail cannot be taken seriously unless it can be proven there is reason to investigate and/or believe it.

Only Trump knows if he was actually involved in some piss parties, and there is truth to such allegations of video/audio evidence.

 

[GarthVaderUK]

BBC reporter:

Let's start with what we know: It was definitely originally compiled by a former British intelligence agent, this report, a former MI6 man. He did it for what's known as an opposition research company in Washington DC. It's a company I know quite well and have visited often. They were working first of all for Jeb Bush's superpac as it's called in the Republican primaries and then for an anonymous Democratic party donor. The allegations themselves are extremely lurid and out of fairness to Mr Trump and anyone under the age of 18 watching I don't think we should relay them. But here's the crucial point: I was able to send a message into the CIA at the beginning of November to ask them about these allegations. It was illegal for any official to talk to me about them but I got a message back through an intermediary with said the allegations were regarded as credible, and more than that, there was more than a single source for them, not just this MI6 man. There was supposedly more than one tape, not just video but audio, more than one date, and not just in Moscow but in St Petersburg as well. Now obviously if the Russians have blackmail material on Mr Trump they're hardly going to release it, so these are necessarily allegations, but they are allegations that are regarded as credible - that's not the same as saying accurate - but they are regarded as credible by the US intelligence community.

I typed it up from the BBC news report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qckj0fGaoSI

 

[dave is ok]

I'm not saying it's correct but it is one hell of a coincidence to be something that is totally made up.

The name Michael and the surname Cohen aren't exactly uncommon.

 

[Funky Papa]

"Unvetted disinformation" doesn't really make sense.

In order for it to be identified as "disinformation", doesn't it need to be vetted?

It would make sense (in a clumsy way) if she's talking about something like stovepiping gone wrong.

I have no doubts about Trump being unfit to lead, a compulsive liar and a venal, corrupt ding dong that will set America back for decades, but allegations of corruption require the utmost transparency and an abundance of evidence, which so far are sorely lacking. Otherwise it can easily turn against you.

The ethics at play here are not that different from the ones behind the completely manufactured Podesta e-mails scandal. CNN fucked up by reporting it the way it did and although some outlets are being upfront about the unconfirmed nature of the report, its careless dissemination is helping to create a narrative. Worse, even, it may permanently damage investigative journalism (so rare and precious as it is right now) and cover Trump in political Teflon. Nothing may stick to him from now on.

The folks at RT are probably amused to no end. This is the way Putin wins.

 

[Guy.brush]

Yeah this got posted earlier, doesn't prove anything

Though, it's great that they felt the need to respond to the one thing that didn't seem to have the most stuff backing it up.

Nobody said anything yet about this particular detail in the report and bam, immediately he posted this weird "never was in prague" tweet. As if they know that detail is something that can hurt them before anyone else even brought it up.
Yeah this feels like an episode of Columbo almost.

"That is ridiculous! You think I knifed my wife in the back?!"

"Sir I didn't say your wife was killed with a knife"

"oh"

 

[Maxim726X]

The Cohen thing is the easiest to debunk, because it takes a government agency minutes to check the customs data. It is the only concrete claim in the report that can be validated and if one was going to put in in their report you would think they would have spent the time to validate it.

Instead, they just typed everything up and sent it around. If the easiest thing to validate is false and the rest is hearsay it calls into question the rest of the report as the party compiling it did not do the required work to verfiy.

Yeah I agree, I have no idea why people are waving this off as a minor defeat- It's really among the only verifiable evidence there is. Not a good start.

 

[BigAT]

I've been trying to parse this Nazi Germany tweet for a while now. Does he think a free press and less than totalitarian control by the government are things associated with Nazi Germany?

I'm honestly confused about what aspect of this scenario he is trying to relate to that regime. It's perplexing.

 

[Dr.Acula]

They had an ongoing investigation into Clinton's emails too. How'd that turn out?

It resulted in the utter dismantling of a decades-long political career?

 

[Kyzer]

If you've been paying attention at all to what happening in the election, you would realize it's not nearly as crazy as it sound.



Didn't say that at all






This.

Umm, so are you saying that an MI6 agent leaking that the current USA president elect Trump is a double agent groomed and blackmailed by the russians and getting prostitutes to pee on obamas bed is not that crazy?


You are really letting your political bias cloud your judgment.

 

[Grug]

The name Michael and the surname Cohen aren't exactly uncommon.

Same birthyear too.

 

[Lord Frieza]

I couldn't care less if any of this is true. I just love the irony that the guy who "heard people saying..." has to deal with this bullshit.

More concerning thing is that Trump does have Russian ties, but it's hard to know how that will get managed during his presidency...

Yeah, this is really the poetry of it all. Even if nothing comes of this, as it most likely won't, it's really a bomb dropped on him from his own weapon field. It's going to be so easy for anything to bring up, 'And you hear all kind of things. The report was never totally debunked,' etc.

The Cohen thing is the easiest to debunk, because it takes a government agency minutes to check the customs data. It is the only concrete claim in the report that can be validated and if one was going to put in in their report you would think they would have spent the time to validate it.

Instead, they just typed everything up and sent it around. If the easiest thing to validate is false and the rest is hearsay it calls into question the rest of the report as the party compiling it did not do the required work to verfiy.

So...outside the Cohen thing, what else has been debunked? You didn't really answer my question. I'm not aware of anything else that's been debunked as of now.

 

[BowieZ]

The BBC report:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qckj0fGaoSI

The juicy stuff starts here:
https://youtu.be/qckj0fGaoSI?t=201

Cheers, thanks.

Can we confirm the likelihood this guy is legitimately in-the-know?

 

[Audioboxer]

I've been trying to parse this Nazi Germany tweet for a while now. Does he think a free press and less than totalitarian control by the government are things associated with Nazi Germany?

I'm honestly confused about what aspect of this scenario he is trying to relate to that regime. It's perplexing.

Trying to play the victim card with one of the most horrific links possible. It's terrible.

He may well end up actually being a victim of false accusations, but no sane person invokes the victims of Nazi Germany in a damn tweet.

 

[Sianos]

I love how the second one small part of it is proven a mistake a mass of people descend screaming debunked.

We got a long way to go folks.

A single small part explicitly marked "low confidence" in the report itself, at that.

 

[Will the Thrill]

Nobody said anything yet about this particular detail in the report and bam, immediately he posted this weird "never was in prague" tweet. As if they know that detail is something that can hurt them before anyone else even brought it up.
Yeah this feels like an episode of Columbo almost.

"That is ridiculous! You think I knifed my wife in the back?!"

"Sir I didn't say your wife was killed with a knife"

"oh"

Yeah but now we have tapper saying Cohen is telling the truth

 

[Calamari41]

BBC reporter:

I typed it up from the BBC news report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qckj0fGaoSI

So Jeb Bush and the Republican establishment had this information during the primaries and did nothing with it? And the Democrats had this information during the general election and did nothing with it? That says a lot to me.

 

[mAcOdIn]

Nobody said anything yet about this particular detail in the report and bam, immediately he posted this weird "never was in prague" tweet. As if they know that detail is something that can hurt them before anyone else even brought it up.
Yeah this feels like an episode of Columbo almost.

"That is ridiculous! You think I knifed my wife in the back?!"

"Sir I didn't say your wife was killed with a knife"

"oh"

Maybe it's the one easy thing he can prove is true instead? Maybe that was the only fact false about him in the report so it's the one he's going to dispute to help discredit the rest? We gotta slow down on rushing to judgement here. Stop assuming every denial's an admission of guilt because that's a damn witch trial right there.

 

[Ms.Galaxy]

Same birthyear too.

With 7 billion+ humans on Earth, it's possible, just a very strange coincidence.

 

[Zushin]

The name Michael and the surname Cohen aren't exactly uncommon.

With the same birth year too though?

 

[TarpitCarnivore]

Yeah I agree, I have no idea why people are waving this off as a minor defeat- It's really among the only verifiable evidence there is. Not a good start.

No, not a good start is immediately calling into question a THIRTY FIVE page report after one piece is debunked. That's the exact thing Trump and his people want. It's perfect fuel to completely deflect the entire report and bring less attention to it.

 

[Boke1879]

The fact that the only thing so far proven inaccurate in the report is the Michael Cohen bit, and ONLY because they were able to find a completely different Michael Cohen born the same year visiting in Prague at the alleged time...kinda goes to show how much work was put into compiling this report.

Might be wrong, but still...impressive.

And that part of the report was even said to sketchy at best.

 

[D4Danger]

So Jeb Bush and the Republican establishment had this information during the primaries and did nothing with it? And the Democrats had this information during the general election and did nothing with it? That says a lot to me.

they like not getting sued

 

[dave is ok]

No, not a good start is immediately calling into question a THIRTY FIVE page report after one piece is debunked. That's the exact thing Trump and his people want. It's perfect fuel to completely deflect the entire report and bring less attention to it.

The report should be called into question because there is no way short of a video of Trump watching prostitutes pee on a bed to verify most of it.

 

[TyrantII]

All of the contents of the report are based on hearsay and there is no way to validate any of it. The stuff that can be easily validated has been debunked. The entire report reads like a game of telephone where someone compiled all the stuff they heard and typed it up. Someone actually in a position of power within the intelligence agencies would never have made that type of mistake. It is incredibly easy for them to check if X person traveled out of the country and where they went.

I mean, I could have typed up this report if I wanted. No need to validate claims. The fact that the report included the Golden Shower thing should indicate how absurd the entire report is.

Puttie, is that you?

 

[UnluckyKate]

when is press conf ? will it be streamed ?

 

[digita1alchemy]

Sure, but it's why claims require evidence before they'll get taken seriously or every country would just run around claiming to have dirt on another. Blackmail cannot be taken seriously unless it can be proven there is reason to investigate and/or believe it.

Only Trump knows if he was actually involved in some piss parties, and there is truth to such allegations of video/audio evidence.

I agree. The more serious accusations involve money and communications between parties, which should be easier to verify. In an ideal scenario, this document never reaches the public and a few months down the road we only ever hear about the items (if any) that the intelligence community is actually able to verify. Otherwise, it will end up doing more harm than good if none of the information is ever confirmed.

 

[cackhyena]

when is press conf ? will it be streamed ?

Oh yeah baby.

 

[TheOctodad]

So Jeb Bush and the Republican establishment had this information during the primaries and did nothing with it? And the Democrats had this information during the general election and did nothing with it? That says a lot to me.

It's unconfirmed. What did you want them to do with it?

I know some of you want this to be true really badly - maybe it will be. But it's irresponsible and potentially harming to just release unconfirmed documents about anyone. They were given to the CIA/FBI and McCain. That's enough for now until more evidence comes forward.

 

[marrec]

when is press conf ? will it be streamed ?

Presser starts at 11am, Trump is usually late to these things, it'll be streamed everywhere

 

[kiri]

With the same birth year too though?

Funnily enough, on a side note, there is someone in the UK, who was born with exactly the same name as me (its a rare name), in exactly the same hospital, on exactly the same day, except 4 years earlier.

 

[BronsonLee]

So Jeb Bush and the Republican establishment had this information during the primaries and did nothing with it? And the Democrats had this information during the general election and did nothing with it? That says a lot to me.

Look at how hard the information is to verify

 

[adj_noun]

when is press conf ? will it be streamed ?

There will be streams.

There will be torrents.

Oh yes.

 

[UnObtainium17]

when is press conf ? will it be streamed ?

Even if you didn't get to streams.. it'll be leaked everywhere.

 

[Lord Frieza]

Umm, so are you saying that an MI6 agent leaking that the current USA president elect Trump is a double agent groomed and blackmailed by the russians and getting prostitutes to pee on obamas bed is not that crazy?

The peeing thing is crazy, but the fact that Trump has been increasingly soft on rhetoric on Russia, praising of Putin, talked dismissively about NATO, has been said to have interests in Russia from his own family, has lied about meeting Putin, nominated a very well known friend of the Kremlin as Secretary of State, has expressed distaste in the new sanctions Obama put on Russia after the hacking information circulate, and absolutely refuses to even acknowledge any kind of Russia influence within the election and actually references the fact that Russia denies as some type of confirmation over internal intelligence agencies, including one that helped him win the election in the FBI?

Yeah, I don't think it's crazy at all that Trump is in bed with Russia. "Double Agent" is a loaded term, but looking at all of that, can you really say Trump having a deep connection to Russia is that 'crazy' of a claim?

 

[JohnsonUT]

So Jeb Bush and the Republican establishment had this information during the primaries and did nothing with it? And the Democrats had this information during the general election and did nothing with it? That says a lot to me.

Quite a few of the alleged events took place after the primaries were decided.

 

[HotHamBoy]

There will be streams.

There will be torrents.

Oh yes.

There will be blood.

 

[Calamari41]

It's unconfirmed. What did you want them to do with it?

I know some of you want this to be true really badly - maybe it will be. But it's irresponsible and potentially harming to just release unconfirmed documents about anyone. They were given to the CIA/FBI and McCain. That's enough for now until more evidence comes forward.

My point isn't that they should have released it. My point is that they had every existential reason to do whatever it took to verify the information - any of it - in order to punch some holes in Trump's boat, and yet the end result was that they apparently couldn't.

 

[dave is ok]

Here is what the New York Times thinks:

In a brief interview in the Times newsroom on Tuesday evening, Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The Times, said the paper would not publish the document because the allegations were “totally unsubstantiated.”

“We, like others, investigated the allegations and haven’t corroborated them, and we felt we’re not in the business of publishing things we can’t stand by,” Mr. Baquet said.

 

[wesleyshark]

when is press conf ? will it be streamed ?

 

[Boke1879]

Media is going to hammer him on these questions unless he pulls some sort of act.