[AMV] Amerikaanse politiek #675: To quid or to quo

quote:

Op zondag 20 oktober 2019 12:25 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:

[..]

Ben benieuwd of de mensen die zo bezorgd waren om Greta's geestelijke gezondheid hier van vinden.

quote:

Op zondag 20 oktober 2019 16:41 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

[..]

Leuk verzonnen maar een check van CNN en FOX News leert dat ze hetzelfde aantal items met impeachment hebben.

Maar wel weer typerend dat rechtse usertjes een veroordeelde crimineel ineens betrouwbaar vinden als hij iets negatiefs over hun boeman CNN vertelt.

quote:

een check van CNN

quote:

Op zondag 20 oktober 2019 16:33 schreef KingRoland het volgende:
Wel mooi dat er nu bewijs is dat CNN andere nieuwsitems gewoon bewust negeert en alleen de focus op het impeachment zetten. Ook als Trump een scheet heeft gelaten wordt dat gewoon de headliner.

Die klokkenluider verdient een medaille.

quote:

Op zondag 20 oktober 2019 16:34 schreef KingRoland het volgende:

[..]

Ik heb nog geen users gezien die voor Greta juichen. Dat kind moet gewoon naar school en is niet eens verstandelijk capabel om zich druk te maken om dit soort dingen.

quote:

Op zondag 20 oktober 2019 17:04 schreef Kansenjongere het volgende:

[..]

Als verstandelijke capabiliteit voor een president geen vereiste is, waarom is het dat dan wel voor een activistische tiener?

quote:

Op zondag 20 oktober 2019 16:33 schreef KingRoland het volgende:
Wel mooi dat er nu bewijs is dat CNN andere nieuwsitems gewoon bewust negeert en alleen de focus op het impeachment zetten.

quote:

Op zondag 20 oktober 2019 17:11 schreef KingRoland het volgende:

[..]

Omdat Greta nog steeds leerplichtig is en een president niet.

quote:

Op zondag 20 oktober 2019 16:33 schreef KingRoland het volgende:
Wel mooi dat er nu bewijs is dat CNN andere nieuwsitems gewoon bewust negeert en alleen de focus op het impeachment zetten. Ook als Trump een scheet heeft gelaten wordt dat gewoon de headliner.

Die klokkenluider verdient een medaille.

quote:

Op zondag 20 oktober 2019 18:47 schreef Monolith het volgende:
Dit topic gaat over de Amerikaanse politiek, niet over CNN.

quote:

The important news today was a very public fight between candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination Tulsi Gabbard and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but the story is not important because it says anything about the Democratic presidential candidates for 2020. It is important because it is a textbook example of precisely what the Senate Intelligence Committee warned about in their October 8 report on Russia's use of social media to undermine American democracy.

In an interview with David Plouffe, an Obama advisor, Clinton said "I'm not making any predictions, but I think they've got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate.... She's the favorite of the Russians." Tulsi Gabbard, a Democratic Representative from Hawaii running for president, immediately tweeted back: "You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain." Social media has buzzed ever since.

But while Gabbard tweeted at Clinton, “It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me," that's not clear at all. Gabbard is polling at 1%, which means her candidacy is dead in the water. Clinton is not running, and she didn't mention anyone by name (which is a long-honored tradition in American politics for avoiding conflicts when discussing colleagues with whom one has issues), so no harm, no foul. In normal times, this "controversy" would be a non-story.

But somehow this extraordinary non-story is getting way more oxygen than the fact that today top officials in the Department of Housing and Urban Development admitted they broke the law to withhold money from Puerto Rico intended to help it rebuild after Hurricane Maria. It is getting more oxygen than the fact that outgoing Energy Secretary Rick Perry is ignoring a congressional subpoena for documents about the Ukraine scandal because he considers the impeachment illegitimate.

Those two stories are huge: both signal an administration breaking laws, and in normal times would likely sink a presidency, or at least swamp it.

So what's going on? On October 8, the Senate Intelligence Committee released an 86-page document about Russian interference in the 2016 election. This investigation ran alongside the Mueller Investigation, and was overseen by committee chair Richard Burr, a Republican. The committee concluded that Russian organization called the Internet Research Agency (IRA) flooded American social media with commentary before the 2016 election. The IRA is run by Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch close to Putin, and the committee concluded the IRA's actions are sanctioned by the Kremlin.

The IRA worked to elect Donald Trump. It pushed Americans to support Trump, or Bernie Sanders or other third-party candidates, and constantly undercut Hillary Clinton, claiming she was sick, anti-Black, or a war-monger. While the committee found no indication that Sanders or Stein were aware that IRA was pushing their candidacies, they did find evidence that Trump people worked with the IRA in some cases. This highlights the difference between being a Russian agent, meaning you are knowingly advancing Russian interests, and being a Russian asset, which means you are helpful to them whether or not you mean to, or want to, be.

The committee report also said that the key tool in the IRA's kit was to exploit tensions in American society to drive Americans apart. Even more than turning us against each other, though, their plan was to undermine voters' belief in news of any sort. The IRA threw stories at the US like a firehose through the use of bots-- automated accounts that retweeted and reposted stories-- or with trolls-- real people hired to appear to be Americans as they posted on news sites and interacted with other commenters. These fake accounts advanced stories and memes that helped Trump and hurt Clinton by pushing false stories from both far right and far left positions. As voters tried to figure out what was real and what wasn't, good people gave up, concluding that everyone was corrupt, everything was too complicated to figure out, and American political debate was too toxic to tolerate. They withdrew.

The Senate Intelligence Committee discovered that the IRA did not stop after 2016. Instead, it ramped up its activities. Their goal is to keep Americans arguing and confused, despite the fact that polls show that we are overwhelmingly in agreement with each other on even hot button issues like abortion, gun rights, and taxation. As bots and trolls push extreme positions, the news skews. So, for example, today we have a manufactured fight between two non-candidates, rather than a focus on the ethnic cleansing of our former allies in Syria, apparently suffering from war crimes like the use of chemical weapons.

In addition to the Gabbard/Clinton story, you could see, over the past 24 hours, a bizarre skewing of the story of Hillary Clinton's emails, and I, anyway, saw first-hand how convincing the bots and trolls can be. I read the State Department report on the investigation when it came out, and it was unequivocal: "Instances of classified information being deliberately transmitted via unclassified email were the rare exception and resulted in adjudicated security violations. There was no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information." Further, while there were minor violations of handling material, none of that material was classified.

But after I wrote about the report last night, this page was swamped with comments saying I was a Democratic apologist and highlighting the violations (which the report said were just business-as-usual). By midmorning, major newspapers were leading with the violations rather than the exoneration. By mid-afternoon, I was mortified, assuming that I had been so tired last night I had misread the document. So I called it back up (it is quite hard to find, by the way) and reread it. I had been right the first time (and will put it in the notes so you can see it for yourself). Even though I knew what was in the original document, pressure from bots and trolls, and then media stories from people probably under similar pressure, made me doubt what I had read with my own eyes.

That is what we are up against in America today. The goal is not simply to get us to support one candidate or another, although that is undoubtedly part of it. The goal is to get us to lose faith in any news at all, thinking it is all skewed and there is nothing left to believe in. At that point, we will accept the rule of anyone who promises clarity.

This is an attack not just on American democracy, but on the very concept that formed this nation, the Enlightenment concept that, given access to factual information, human beings can devise a government that will enable them to rule themselves, rather than to be ruled by a few rich men.

We are at war, but fortunately is a war in which it is remarkably easy to take up arms. You simply need to question what you hear and read, demand evidence, think for yourself... and ignore the trolls.

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zondag 20-10-2019 om 23:45:17 This Scam going on right now by the Democrats against the Republican Party, and me, was all about a perfect phone call I had with the Ukrainian President. He’s already stated, NO PRESSURE! Where is the Whistleblower, or the 2nd Whistleblower, or the “informant?” All gone..... reageer retweet

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zondag 20-10-2019 om 23:45:17 ....because their so-called story didn’t come even close to matching up with the exact transcript of the phone call. Was it a Corrupt Adam Schiff con? Why didn’t the IG see this? When do we depose Shifty Schiff to find out why he fraudulently made up my phone call and read this.. reageer retweet

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zondag 20-10-2019 om 23:45:17 ....fiction to Congress and the American People? I demand his deposition. He is a fraud, just like the Russia Hoax was, and the Ukraine Hoax is now. When do the Do Nothing Democrats pay a price for what they are doing to our Country, & when do the Republicans finally fight back? reageer retweet

quote:

Op zondag 20 oktober 2019 23:58 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
Ik denk dat POTUS zich echt zorgen begint te maken over wat Schiff allemaal ontdekt heeft
...

"I demand a deposition!"

twitter:

kyledcheney twitterde op donderdag 17-10-2019 om 21:43:29 JUST IN: Judge Howell says DOJ improperly redacted a recent filing to prohibit the House from learning the identities of two witnesses who *didn't* testify to the grand jury.She also adds this curious bit questioning why Mueller didn't seek to subpoena these unnamed witnesses. https://t.co/AjYj7CwfVz reageer retweet

SPOILER

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

twitter:

kyledcheney twitterde op donderdag 17-10-2019 om 21:45:53 Howell also notes that DOJ's claim -- that revealing the identities of people who didn't testify to the grand jury would help the House identify who did -- omits the fact that DOJ willingly revealed that they considered but did not subpoena Trump. https://t.co/sjVIItfhNN reageer retweet

SPOILER

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

twitter:

kyledcheney twitterde op zondag 20-10-2019 om 20:40:21 JUST IN: DOJ confirms that Don MCGAHN and Donald Trump Jr. did not testify before the Mueller grand jury. It’s part of a newly unredacted line in a recent filing ordered up by Judge Howell in DC federal court: https://t.co/ahFsjzQqxg reageer retweet

SPOILER

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

twitter:

kyledcheney twitterde op zondag 20-10-2019 om 23:10:57 Howell made clear she was perplexed about why Mueller didn’t put Don Jr. before the grand jury. https://t.co/wrfRnFJXjk reageer retweet

twitter:

kyledcheney twitterde op zondag 20-10-2019 om 23:12:23 One lawmaker had a theory: Joe Neguse asked Mueller if Don Jr. pleaded the 5th. Mueller wouldn’t say, though his report acknowledged some witnesses did: https://t.co/3pnXSdpdDL reageer retweet

Donald Trump Jr. speaks out on Hunter Biden-Ukraine scandal

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zondag 20-10-2019 om 17:03:13 “The ceasefire is holding up very nicely. There are some minor skirmishes that have ended quickly. New areas being resettled with Kurds. U.S. soldiers are not in combat or ceasefire zone. We have secured the Oil.” Mark Esper, Secretary of Defense. Ending endless wars! reageer retweet

twitter:

JenGriffinFNC twitterde op maandag 21-10-2019 om 00:20:07 Gen Mazloum, in phone call, tells me Turks have carried out 15 airstrikes against SDF Kurdish forces since ceasefire. Also tells me his Kurdish forces are still guarding ISIS prisons.”We promise Pres Trump to watch these risky people.” reageer retweet

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op maandag 21-10-2019 om 02:40:03 The Justice Department distanced itself from Rudy Giuliani, declaring that department officials would not have met with Giuliani to discuss one of his clients had they known that federal prosecutors in New York were investigating two of his associates. https://t.co/1DHU7oMREw reageer retweet

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op maandag 21-10-2019 om 02:45:02 "This is an incredibly unusual statement from the Justice Department, which does not comment on ongoing investigations or even acknowledge them, and it's the kind of statement that would give clients pause about who is representing them," said fmr. federal prosecutor Joyce Vance. https://t.co/WbQA54fyDo reageer retweet

quote:

The Justice Department’s public statement on Sunday illustrates the unusual and broad set of roles that the president’s personal lawyer has played in the scandal that has engulfed the White House and imperiled Mr. Trump’s presidency.

Even as Mr. Giuliani ran a shadow foreign policy campaign to pressure Ukraine to investigate the president’s political enemies — which is now at the heart of an impeachment inquiry against Mr. Trump — he and his business associates were under criminal investigation for unlawfully wielding political influence. And while all of this was happening, Mr. Giuliani still served as a lawyer to clients with cases to plead before the Justice Department.

In distancing itself from Mr. Giuliani and trying to draw bright lines around how the Justice Department will and will not engage with him, the department has also undercut the perception that Mr. Giuliani can influence some of Washington’s most important lawyers and decision makers. That could make it harder for Mr. Giuliani to represent clients who are under Justice Department scrutiny in the future.

“This is an incredibly unusual statement from the Justice Department, which does not comment on ongoing investigations or even acknowledge them, and it’s the kind of statement that would give clients pause about who is representing them,” said Joyce Vance, a former federal prosecutor.

Mr. Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment.

twitter:

maggieNYT twitterde op maandag 21-10-2019 om 02:56:03 Trump called into Mulvaney’s Camp David meeting w House moderate members Saturday and asked aides to find out what members thought of Doral for the G7. They all said it was a mistake. ⁦@EricLiptonNYT⁩ @katierogers and me https://t.co/gP5kPdvwVL reageer retweet

twitter:

maggieNYT twitterde op maandag 21-10-2019 om 03:19:54 By Saturday afternoon, Trump had decided he was going to pull the plug on the Doral decision, but he waited until just before Judge Jeanine's show, and paused between tweets about Doral to watch her opening, in a move that he didn't tell most aides about https://t.co/gP5kPdvwVL reageer retweet

quote:

The president first heard the criticism of his choice of the Doral watching TV, where even some Fox News personalities were critical of the decision. By Saturday afternoon, his concerns had deepened when he put in a call to Camp David, where Mr. Mulvaney was hosting moderate congressional Republicans for a discussion of issues facing them, including impeachment, and was told the consensus was he should reverse himself.

“I didn’t see it being a big negative, but it certainly wasn’t a positive,” said Representative Peter T. King of New York, one of those at Camp David. He said the group told Mr. Trump’s aides that sticking with it “would be a distraction.”

With many members already unhappy with the consequences of the president’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria, and Democrats pressing their impeachment inquiry, Republicans on Capitol Hill were not eager to have to defend the appropriateness of the president’s decision to host the Group of 7 summit at one of his own properties.

“I think there was a lot of concern,” said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a member of the Republicans’ leadership team. “I’m not sure people questioned the legality of it, but it clearly was an unforced political error.”

Mr. Cole said he did not speak to the president directly about it, but was relieved that Mr. Trump had changed his mind, and was certain that other Republicans felt the same way. “We just didn’t need this,” he said.

quote:

Op maandag 21 oktober 2019 03:09 schreef AnneX het volgende:
Ow...Kijkertje...je bent weer hard aan het werk. thx.

quote:

Op maandag 21 oktober 2019 00:05 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:

[..]

Misschien zit dit hem dwars?

Fox's Wallace says 'well-connected' Republican told him there's a 20 percent chance GOP will vote for impeachment

Edit, of nog wel meer uit het interview van Wallace met Mulvaney die hem het vuur aardig aan de schenen legt. Videootje van 9 minuten over de genoemde quid-pro-quo voor een onderzoek in dit artikel met nogal overdreven titel: https://www.thedailybeast(...)y-foxs-chris-wallace

quote:

Several White House aides and Trump allies presume Mulvaney's job is safe during the impeachment proceedings. That's in part, they say, because no one else would want the chief of staff job right now and partly because Mulvaney is too much at the center of the Ukraine scandal for Trump to unceremoniously dump him as he has done with other senior aides like John Bolton, his former national security adviser.

POLITICO (betere titel ook)

twitter:

IngrahamAngle twitterde op zondag 20-10-2019 om 15:24:11 Republicans in the Congress should be asked: why have you allowed the State Department to become an arm of the Democratic Party? And what are you going to do about it? https://t.co/mPoy2ebfwU reageer retweet