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[chadskin]

Putin's state TV spotted at Trump's press conference.

A+ trolling.

 

[Santiako]

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.

The twist: It is you, from the future.

 

[BronsonLee]

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

Russia TV gonna be the only ones allowed to ask questions obv

 

[Kyzer]

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?

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?

I would not be surprised to find out Trump has some sort of relationship with Russia. I absolutely would think its crazy if it turns out this report is true. Either way to claim this is in the realm of possibility merely from his campaign rhetoric (as abundant as it was) is still not 100% logical or reasonable. Theyre crazy claims. It would be the biggest political scandal in American history.

 

[manzoman96]

How come the US let itself be played so overwhelmingly by Putin?

Unbelievable.

They played us like a damn fiddle!

 

[Audioboxer]

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.

Sadly the real amount of harm that is getting done is the further division of America. Especially if none of this can be collaborated and Trump is President in a month. The internet like the country is a battlefield, and it is undoubtedly led by a man unfit to be President even if he is innocent of all of this document. The media fucking this up is just a further L/stake in their heart for them to take, the population of the country is going to be scarred no matter the outcome of this.

 

[Kenzodielocke]

New thread for the conference?

 

[jellies_two]

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.

But it isn't 100% false
It just suggests that the one informant to the informant was not 100% reliable
However it *also* suggests the report was not written by a guy on his laptop as a wish fulfillment exercise. Otherwise why say it was a different cohen.
if the PDF came from the FBI etc, it already passes a test for "obviously invented". As they would know more than anyone does about the people mentioned in it.
It's not validated line by line.
Probably never will be, line by line but that's the nature of these things.

 

[gamechanger87]

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.

You can't debunk hearsay because each party will say that it didn't happen. The best you can do to verify it (beyond video/audio) is verify that the parties in question were either seen together or in the same location at the time the alleged discussion happened. Even then you could just make up what they talked about and send it around.

To your point, nothing else in the report has been debunked but that's because you can't debunk these types of claims without hard evidence. Based on what we've seen thus far there is no hard evidence for any of them.

Again, you can really only verify one item in the report easily and it has been debunked. That combined with the fact the report came from a former intelligence agent who was doing Oppo research for pay should make you look a little more critically at the report. He/she was writing for an audience that was looking for dirt. This type of stuff gets filed into Oppo research books, but never sees the light of day unless the parties using it feel comfortable that it won't blow back. Obviously, the parties who would have loved to use the report didn't feel it had enough hard info to back it up which is why it was never released during the election.

But it isn't 100% false
It just suggests that the one informant to the informant was not 100% reliable
However it *also* suggests the report was not written by a guy on his laptop as a wish fulfillment exercise. Otherwise why say it was a different cohen.

The report didn't say it was a different Cohen. It said it was Trump's lawyer.

 

[UnObtainium17]

Was R. kelly in anyway involved in these? How bout Ja Rule??

 

[Boke1879]

Putin's state TV spotted at Trump's press conference.



A+ trolling.

HAHAHAHAHA

 

[Resident_UA]

Was R. kelly in anyway involved in these? How bout Ja Rule??

R. Kelly was trending on twitter yesterday

 

[UberTag]

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.

Confirmation bias in a nutshell...

 

[Ms.Galaxy]

New thread for the conference?

Trump's Press Conference OT: Live Stream's Gone Gold

 

[Zushin]

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.

Heh, that would be extremely eery.

 

[Funky Papa]

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.

Verifying information of that kind would have required state-like intelligence services, and even the American intelligence community may have a hard time doing so. We are talking about confirming circumstances abroad and several months (if not years) after the fact.

This is also why careless divulgation of the report may play in Trump's favor. Bad journalism usually paves the way of crooks.

 

[TarpitCarnivore]

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.

You're focusing on a single thing. The prostitute stuff is the least damaging thing in that document.

 

[Already Torn]

So basically nothing will come of this?

 

[marrec]

Here is what the New York Times thinks:

But they have no problem reporting on it once it's leaked.

:lol

I get it, it's news and should be reported on and before it was news it wasn't verified, but it's still funny how quickly outlets who passed on this will jump on it with (unverified) tags now that it's out.

 

[weekev]

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.

Actually that makes a lot of sense, I retract my previous statement.

 

[TyrantII]

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.

Funny thing is, if this was flipped it would not matter a lick.

Truth and upmost dilligence only matters when it's coming from the center or left. If it's the right, just keep hammering the untruth to provide cover and MAKE it true.

See Podesta, Emails, Bengazi, Whitewater, ect.

 

[JohnsonUT]

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?

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?

There are other tangible things like the fact that Trump's team forced a change to the RNC platform on Ukaine and didn't care about much else. (This was widely reported at the time and was mentioned as being a strange move.)

Also, one of Trump's main advisers has many documented years of working directly for Russian government and oligarchs. Even after Manafort had to leave in an official capacity, when these links were brought forward, he still continued living in Trump tower.

 

[ZOONAMI]

This press conference is really going by to happen?

I mean he is going to ask that he was presented with intel about being compromised and he's going to deny it?

Kellyanne Conway already denied that he was aware of this on Seth Meyers.

I guess the line will just be to deny deny deny.

I wish Obama would speak up on it.

 

[Netherscourge]

Putin's state TV spotted at Trump's press conference.

A+ trolling.

He's there to remind Trump that they got him by the balls.

Ala the Godfather 2

 

[Lord Frieza]

I would not be surprised to find out Trump has some sort of relationship with Russia. I absolutely would think its crazy if it turns out this report is true. Either way to claim this is in the realm of possibility merely from his campaign rhetoric (as abundant as it was) is still not 100% logical or reasonable. Theyre crazy claims. It would be the biggest political scandal in American history.

It's a good thing I referenced many other things besides his campaign rhetoric, including physical actions he's taken, like nominating a very well known friend of the Kremlin for the highest foreign policy position in the government.

 

[Audioboxer]

But they have no problem reporting on it once it's leaked.

:lol

I get it, it's news and should be reported on and before it was news it wasn't verified, but it's still funny how quickly outlets who passed on this will jump on it with (unverified) tags now that it's out.

At that point they're as much reporting that Buzzfeed leaked it as the document itself. You can't not report on this now that the cat is out of the bag. However it's why Buzzfeed has flipped a coin and called their decision, and are now waiting on that coin landing. It's best out of 1 flip, not 3, so Buzzfeed be praying.

 

[SparkleMotion]

It's really a shame how Trump has turned the country against the media.

 

[D4Danger]

He's there to remind Trump that they got him by the balls.

Ala the Godfather 2

I know it was you, Putin.
You broke my heart.

 

[slit]

It's really a shame how Trump has turned the country against the media.

The media in a general sense dug their own grave.

 

[Fallout-NL]

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.

You assume he actually thinks before he posts shit like that. He doesn't. He's an idiot.

 

[Kurdel]

It's really a shame how Trump has turned the country against the media.

*citation needed

 

[TarpitCarnivore]

It's really a shame how Trump has turned the country against the media.

The media turned the country against the media

 

[zethren]

It's really a shame how Trump has turned the country against the media.

He's certainly trying to, at the very least.

It'll pave the way for his own state sponsored trump propaganda network run by Kellyanne Conway.

 

[Hex]

Guys no matter the result of this story it isn't fake news.

But it is completely unsubstantiated.
Right now we have hear say, and nothing else.
"But they are investigating, they don't do that for nothing"...
But they did that for emails also...
Sadly this should not have "leaked" before there was something more solid, because this will only give him more fuel.

 

[Kyzer]

It's a good thing I referenced many other things besides his campaign rhetoric, including physical actions he's taken, like nominating a very well known friend of the Kremlin for the highest foreign policy position in the government.

Trump wants to have a good relationship with Russia, thats hardly evidence that hes a double agent. Youre making a huge leap without realizing it because you hate trump. We all do. Take a breath.

 

[Calamari41]

Verifying information of that kind would have required state-like intelligence services, and even the American intelligence community may have a hard time doing so. We are talking about confirming circumstances abroad and several months (if not years) after the fact.

This is also why careless divulgation of the report may play in Trump's favor. Bad journalism usually paves the way of crooks.

Exactly, which is why it is so dangerous for the likes of Buzzfeed to ride this story now. Everyone saying "first of all, this isn't verified" is all fine and dandy, but the general viewing public will only ask "so is this that 'fake news' thing everyone is talking about?" after this is all over if any parts of the report are affirmatively debunked. Especially since, as you said, it's all but impossible to affirmatively confirm any of it.

 

[Boke1879]

It's really a shame how Trump has turned the country against the media.

I'm not against the media. I just that the media has an agenda and that's ratings and will literally do anything to get them. Even if they take Trump to task now.

What they did during the election was disgusting.

 

[Lord Frieza]

There are other tangible things like the fact that Trump's team forced a change to the RNC platform on Ukaine and didn't care about much else. (This was widely reported at the time and was mentioned as being a strange move.)

Also, one of Trump's main advisers has many documented years of working with Russian government and oligarchs. Even after Manafort had to leave in an official capacity when these links were brought forward, he still continued living in Trump tower.

Yeah, there is even more than I listed, but that's all I could come up with off the top of my head. Honestly, nothing outside the pissing stuff is really that outrageous when you look at all of this. Trump being in bed with Russia isn't something that is all that surprising if true, at all. I mean, we can discount this with loaded terms like 'double agent,' but anyone who can't see a very disturbing Pro-Russia aspect to Trump's entire campaign really isn't looking very hard.

 

[Ms.Galaxy]

It's really a shame how Trump has turned the country against the media.

Makes it easier for the right to abolish the freedom of the press eventually, first move to form a totalitarian state is to control state-funded media and silence the free press. Granted as others have pointed out, the media itself is to blame for it too. The need for ratings for 24/7 news media caused them to sensationalized news and broadcast anything that can get ratings with click bait headlines.

 

[gamechanger87]

Puttie, is that you?

I'm not a Trump fan at all, but I'm willing to take a logical look at things as they flow in. A lot of people are falling victim to confirmation bias and missing the forest for the trees.

This report has been around for awhile and mainstream outlets haven't wanted to use it, nor did Hillary's camp. This alone should make everyone take a step back and wonder why they didn't want to run with it when it would obviously help their campaign.

As stuff starts to trickle in for larger media outlets, you will see why.

 

[zethren]

But it is completely unsubstantiated.
Right now we have hear say, and nothing else.
"But they are investigating, they don't do that for nothing"...
But they did that for emails also...
Sadly this should not have "leaked" before there was something more solid, because this will only give him more fuel.

But fake news is totally different from this.

Fake news is something that's is 100% fabricated and distributed with the intention of misleading.

 

[TheOctodad]

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.

It sounds like they've only had this info on a mass scale since Nov/Dec. May not have been enough time to responsibly sift through it before acting when you wanted.

Or it's just bollocks - which is possible as well.

 

[Jakoo]

At that point they're as much reporting that Buzzfeed leaked it as the document itself. You can't not report on this now that the cat is out of the bag. However it's why Buzzfeed has flipped a coin and called their decision, and are now waiting on that coin landing. It's best out of 1 flip, not 3, so Buzzfeed be praying.

My feelings exactly: I think Buzzfeed is staking the credibility of their newly anointed political wing on one massive throw.

It could payoff. Drudge was one of the earliest sources to take the Clinton scandals seriously and look how big that site is now.

 

[Tubie]

Holy shit I'm just finding out about all this.

This is fucking crazy.

 

[WedgeX]

*citation needed

You mean aside from all those times he led his supporters in intimidating reporters at his rallies?

 

[Saint Gregory]

The Michael Cohen thing reminds me a lot of GW Bush's draft dodging scandal from 2004. CBS received forged letters proving that Bush's national guard service was a scam to keep him out of Vietnam.
The same military secretary that confirmed the documents were fake also confirmed that the content of the letters were genuine and the forgeries had to have been made directly from the originals but that information was completely lost in the outrage over CBS reporting a story based on forged documents.

It would probably be best to not make make judgements on this information until everyone has a chance to investigate it independently.

 

[SparkleMotion]

So this was just typed up for funsies by soneone with too much time on their hands?

 

[old]

It just keeps getting better.

 

[Lord Frieza]

Trump wants to have a good relationship with Russia, thats hardly evidence that hes a double agent. Youre making a huge leap without realizing it because you hate trump. We all do. Take a breath.

And you're using no logic whatsoever to counter what I'm saying, outside it being 'too crazy'. This has nothing to do with "hating trump." Could it all just be coincidental? I mean, sure, maybe, but there's a definite pattern here. And it's a really weird pattern when you consider that Trump prides himself on a strongman persona, one that is slowly shifting into a strongman puppet by an even bigger strongman by his total lack of inaction and unwillingness to say anything of substance about it.

 

[Pop]

It's really a shame how Trump has turned the country against the media.

MSM did it to themselves