Other stuff

[Gavagai]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/...reelected/

I still remember how Democrats portrayed Bolton as some sort of lunatic back in the early days of Trump administration. It is hilarious how nowadays they take seriously every word he says.

[Mjmd]

Trump trying to leverage said aid for his own political gain. A topic you still haven't touched.

And will not. As I said, most of the things that concern you I see as media-fabricated non-events. Sometimes they are amusing, like so-called Russian interference in elections, but in most cases - boring.

I think both are relevant into showing Mens Rae; IE guilty mental state. They aren't media fabricated. Both happened. I don't believe Russian interference changed the presidential result, but did it change a seat somewhere? Did it help further devide American politics? If Trump was so against Russian and so pro Ukraine as you seem to be trying to prove why try to withhold aid. Why not speak up against Russia more and try to grow alliances against?

[Mjmd]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/...reelected/

I still remember how Democrats portrayed Bolton as some sort of lunatic back in the early days of Trump administration. It is hilarious how nowadays they take seriously every word he says.

I still think he is a lunatic to be fair. There is a reason I excluded from my list things from former admins. Are all of them true? Probably not, but there are is a lot of stink, so you have to assume a turd somewhere.

[Gavagai]

Trump trying to leverage said aid for his own political gain. A topic you still haven't touched.

And will not. As I said, most of the things that concern you I see as media-fabricated non-events. Sometimes they are amusing, like so-called Russian interference in elections, but in most cases - boring.

I think both are relevant into showing Mens Rae; IE guilty mental state. They aren't media fabricated. Both happened. I don't believe Russian interference changed the presidential result, but did it change a seat somewhere? Did it help further devide American politics? If Trump was so against Russian and so pro Ukraine as you seem to be trying to prove why try to withhold aid. Why not speak up against Russia more and try to grow alliances against?

I don't think Russian was particularly anti-Russian. In fact, I think he initially wanted very sincerely to ally Russia against China, as all presidents before him. I think Trump was about as committed to containing Russia as any normal US President in his place would be. He did not do anything special but he has done all the important things that he had to do. My argument is that such normal, average competence would be sufficient to stop Russian invasion. You needed to have a rare and unique failure to allow the invasion to happen.
Withholding aid was a non-event. I can't say I remember the details of that story but I think the aid was withheld for a couple of months over a bureaucratic formality. It did not really affect anything and the idea that he was blackmailing Zelensky is speculation. Given my knowledge about how such things are done, I find this speculation very hard to believe. Trump would need a loyal Department of Sate to do such a thing and that he did not have.
Why not speak against Russia more - because speaking up against Russia does not help achieve any political goals, the only thing it achieves is making negotiations with Putin harder for no reason. Once again, I am quite intrigued by how half of America does not understand or pretends not o understand such a simple idea. Alliances - I agree that Trump has done a poor job maintaining NATO coherence, he does not understand how to do this sort of diplomacy. But he has exactly the kind of competence needed to deal with the likes of Putin.

[Mjmd]

Trump trying to leverage said aid for his own political gain. A topic you still haven't touched.

And will not. As I said, most of the things that concern you I see as media-fabricated non-events. Sometimes they are amusing, like so-called Russian interference in elections, but in most cases - boring.

I think both are relevant into showing Mens Rae; IE guilty mental state. They aren't media fabricated. Both happened. I don't believe Russian interference changed the presidential result, but did it change a seat somewhere? Did it help further devide American politics? If Trump was so against Russian and so pro Ukraine as you seem to be trying to prove why try to withhold aid. Why not speak up against Russia more and try to grow alliances against?

I don't think Russian was particularly anti-Russian. In fact, I think he initially wanted very sincerely to ally Russia against China, as all presidents before him. I think Trump was about as committed to containing Russia as any normal US President in his place would be. He did not do anything special but he has done all the important things that he had to do. My argument is that such normal, average competence would be sufficient to stop Russian invasion. You needed to have a rare and unique failure to allow the invasion to happen.
Withholding aid was a non-event. I can't say I remember the details of that story but I think the aid was withheld for a couple of months over a bureaucratic formality. It did not really affect anything and the idea that he was blackmailing Zelensky is speculation. Given my knowledge about how such things are done, I find this speculation very hard to believe. Trump would need a loyal Department of Sate to do such a thing and that he did not have.
Why not speak against Russia more - because speaking up against Russia does not help achieve any political goals, the only thing it achieves is making negotiations with Putin harder for no reason. Once again, I am quite intrigued by how half of America does not understand or pretends not o understand such a simple idea. Alliances - I agree that Trump has done a poor job maintaining NATO coherence, he does not understand how to do this sort of diplomacy. But he has exactly the kind of competence needed to deal with the likes of Putin.

You use a lot of ad hominin and I try to ignore it the best I can. You don't prove your idea. In fact you've offered contradictory arguments. You've said Biden should have showed more resolve, but yet think its fine Trump showed less. Again, I'm not saying Biden has been perfect or couldn't have done more. I don't think bluffing would have worked though. On the other hand I have no clue how you get "Trump would have stopped it" when your whole premise is Biden should have done more and there is evidence Trump did less.

Also, Trump didn't use the state department in that whole affair. That was a small but significant part of that whole thing. There was a whole impeachment trial over it and in my view it was at least at the level of Watergate.

[Gavagai]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/...reelected/

I still remember how Democrats portrayed Bolton as some sort of lunatic back in the early days of Trump administration. It is hilarious how nowadays they take seriously every word he says.

I still think he is a lunatic to be fair. There is a reason I excluded from my list things from former admins. Are all of them true? Probably not, but there are is a lot of stink, so you have to assume a turd somewhere.

I think a large part of US media, Democratic political elite, and most of Republican political elite invested an enormous amount of effort into manufacturing a portrait of Trump as an incompetent, evil wannabe-dictator. From my observations, this portrayal is very far divorced from reality, in some cases tragically so (for example, I think Trump is one of the few politicians in the modern world who has genuine kindness and some concept of honor which is likely explained by his non-political background) but neither Trump, nor his allies have competences to adequately deal with this character-assasianation. Can't really fault them as one would need exceptional talents to survive such concentrated and skillful effort.

[Mjmd]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/...reelected/

I still remember how Democrats portrayed Bolton as some sort of lunatic back in the early days of Trump administration. It is hilarious how nowadays they take seriously every word he says.

I still think he is a lunatic to be fair. There is a reason I excluded from my list things from former admins. Are all of them true? Probably not, but there are is a lot of stink, so you have to assume a turd somewhere.

I think a large part of US media, Democratic political elite, and most of Republican political elite invested an enormous amount of effort into manufacturing a portrait of Trump as an incompetent, evil wannabe-dictator. From my observations, this portrayal is very far divorced from reality, in some cases tragically so (for example, I think Trump is one of the few politicians in the modern world who has genuine kindness and some concept of honor which is likely explained by his non-political background) but neither Trump, nor his allies have competences to adequately deal with this character-assasianation. Can't really fault them as one would need exceptional talents to survive such concentrated and skillful effort.

Just to point out he did try to overthrow US democracy. If you want to see that whole argument you can go the American thread.

[Gavagai]

I distinguish between "showing resolve" and randomly "speaking up" against your political rival. Some political statements are meaningful, some - are not. In particular, concrete threats and promises are meaningful, calling your opponent colorful epithets - is not.

[Mjmd]

I distinguish between "showing resolve" and randomly "speaking up" against your political rival. Some political statements are meaningful, some - are not. In particular, concrete threats and promises are meaningful, calling your opponent colorful epithets - is not.

So saying Crimea and Donbas are ok to be part of Russia is good? Sounds like appeasement at worst.

[darrelljs]

The best argument that Trump was good for Putin is that Russia tried to swing the election in Trump’s favor.

Edit: And thinking about it a bit, it’s probably not so much that Trump was directly helping Putin, but that his “America First” agenda was weakening America’s global influence.

Darrell

About Russian interference. It is actually a great example of non-events that only have great significance inside American media bubble. For me it is especially comical because I have some understanding of how Putin and his government operate and I can reconstruct how the events transpired on the other side.
Firstly, Putin is very certain that Americans massively and systematically interfere in Russian elections and is quite mad about it. So, when people from his inner circle approached him with the idea "hey, we can play this game too!" he gave it a green light without much thought. There was no cunning plan or considered strategy behind it, he just saw an opportunity for "payback".
Secondly, from the perspective of those who put the plan into action, the primary goal of the operation was to steal the money allocated to it. From the evidence of "Russian interference" I saw, it was obvious that they were doing things with the goal to generate content for sufficiently convincing reporting, not actually influencing anything. Their budget was infinitesimal compared to the budget of American campaigns (no wonder because the money was mostly stolen). Needless to say, the real-world effect of all this was probably zero.
I find the fact that small-scale Russian corruption turned into a huge American political scandal hysterically funny.
(With that said, Trump handled the whole affair terribly in lots of ways but this is a different story.)

So this contradicts the Mueller report.

The Russian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election with the goals of harming the campaign of Hillary Clinton, boosting the candidacy of Donald Trump, and increasing political and social discord in the United States. According to the U.S. intelligence community, the operation—code named Project Lakhta[1][2]—was ordered directly by Russian president Vladimir Putin.[3][4]

[1] Schick, Nina (2020). Deep Fakes and the Infocalypse. United Kingdom: Monoray. pp. 60–75. ISBN 978-1-913183-52-3.
[2] "Russian Project Lakhta Member Charged with Wire Fraud Conspiracy". www.justice.gov. September 10, 2020. Retrieved September 5, 2021.
[3] Ross, Brian; Schwartz, Rhonda; Meek, James Gordon (December 15, 2016). "Officials: Master Spy Vladimir Putin Now Directly Linked to US Hacking". ABC News. Retrieved December 15, 2016.
[4] Hosenball, Mark (August 19, 2020). Mohammed, Arshad (ed.). "Factbox: Key findings from Senate inquiry into Russian interference in 2016 U.S. election". Reuters. Washington. Retrieved September 5, 2021.

I’m open to that being wrong but the evidence bar is much higher for something like the Mueller report than it would be for a CNN or Fox “news” report.

Darrell