The Trump Presidency Discussion Thread (Non-Meme version)

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:slight_smile:

https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/

this sums it up and is left leaning in the sense that the title states the claims rely on sketchy info.

The FISA warrant requests were in June and October of 2016 though no hard evidence is provided. Just reference to a few articles from the BBC and The Guardian.

But as Jay said… the Obama administration, or Federal agencies during the Obama term, had a pattern of listening in to several world leaders.

In Obama’s defense, he SHOULD have been wire-tapping Trump because of the allegations about ties to Russia. It sounds like they havent found the evidence they want because there likely aren’t any official ties

Agreed. Whoever was in office, there were a lot of people who felt something needed to be looked into further. That’s probably the most concerning part, is it not?

Didn’t Bannon say they have evidence and they aren’t going to show their hand just yet? All the media is up in arms that he won’t spill the beans as to how he found out and I don’t blame him. He doesn’t owe the media anything.

What incentive does Trump have to make this accusation without any hard proof? Is it just to distract people and the media? Does Trump really care to do that considering how much he seems to call them fake news everyday.

The wikileaks dump today showing the CIA has an entire program devoted to making their hacks look like they came from other nations sure complicates things.

I think the most concerning part is not that they are listening in, since I believe they can do so without warrant if the intended target is not a US citizen, but rather how they are handling the information when the secondary party happens to be a US citizen. That data is supposed to be protected, but lately it seems to be flowing out of somewhere.

Unless maybe Im misunderstanding all this.

Dan

No, the most concerning part if the toxic political environment that exists where confluence reigns so hard that even if you invest a great deal of time into trying to find something close to reality it is so distorted that even informed people cannot be sure of what to really feel or believe.

Again, this is why China and Russia kill or jail journalists… It’s not right of course, but this is the environment they try to prevent for their own purposes. I guess we’re still better off for now but when you think about it… we’re not off by much. China is certainly catching up in many ways where as the US is mired in this swamp.

And who cares about Russia anyways

It just supports that attribution in cyber attacks is largely BS.

OMG THEY USED THE SAME LINE OF CODE AS WE KNOW CAME FROM RUSSIA IT MUST BE RUSSIA…yea except the code was leaked all over the internets.

@bing - I wouldn’t lump all news sources into that category. We are leaps and bounds ahead of Russia and China in terms of free press. It’s just that the waters are muddied by the numerous shit starters and their nonstop stream of false claims. And I hope caring about Russia was a joke…

I know that we have a freer press and i agree that freer SHOULD be better… but an agenda-driven press is getting close to being as bad as a completely state-operated press… except policy progress is easier in the state-operated press (China). You can’t get anything done in the US right now… can’t even get the people in the positions they are supposed to be put in to… on both sides.

And yes, Russia is not a threat to the US. I cant see any nation-state willing to enter an actual military conflict with or between any of the major powers. The stakes are too high and no one could ever beat the US anyways.

Russia is just fucking around because it makes them feel cool and it’s a non-military way of fighting back against the sanctions.

Their economy is shit… they can’t do anything but bully some neighbours over whatever…

It’s a lot easier to look at “journalism” in America as not that bad when you’re on the left than when you’re on the right. If you took off your partisan blinders for a minute and took an honest and unbiased look at the coverage the MSM has given Trump ever since he started leading in the primary you’d probably have to admit the “numerous shit starters” aren’t Brietbart and the like but instead CNN, ABC, NBC, WaPo etc. The MSM, where the majority of the country get their “news”, running non-stop editorial hit pieces with just enough truth distorted to make it as negative as possible without being totally false IMO is far worse than some fringe site printing something any idiot can see is false and only a few people read anyway.

You seem to know a lot about Russia’s intentions considering we don’t have any reliable, non-agenda driven news sources.

The US government not being able to get out of it’s own fucking way has nothing to do with the press. Congress doesn’t need to know what Fox News is reporting on in order to review a bill and pass it. They need to stop constantly battling each other with their own agendas. THAT is the problem. The press is supposed to expose that and I think there are some very good outlets trying to do so.

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No.

The MSM media will have an effect on election turnout. It does not have any effect on the current shitshow unfolding before us.

Also - you really want to use the ‘partisan blinders’ bullshit on me? C’mon man…

Just calling it like I see it. The shit you spout in here baffles me. “there were a lot of people who felt something needed to be looked into further. That’s probably the most concerning part, is it not”. Really? Are you kidding me? The left’s playbook was leaked that said even if they had nothing they would call for investigations to do everything they can to slow the Trump administration and you honestly think when they do exactly that, yet can produce NOTHING of substantial proof that the simple fact they want to investigate the most concerning part?

I just wanted to come in here to state that Bill Maher is a condescending piece of shit and his show sucks.

Hang on there, tiger. Wasn’t the claim that lines at Trump were tapped? Was that not true? The reason I say it’s concerning is because a judge would have had to approve that type of activity. So if a judge actually reviewed what was presented and agreed that something was up, that’s a big deal. And simply ASKING shouldn’t strike you as left or right, so calm down.

However, I did see some reports of requests being denied. Were any of those requests granted?

I wouldn’t mind hearing more about the ‘shit’ that I spew when there’s a whole thread dedicated to the Trump circle jerk, but let’s stay on topic. Get off your high horse.

I don’t think people understand how FISA courts work. It’s not like our public court system with burdens of proof and grand juries. What was supposed to be just about monitoring foreign spies has been corrupted into a basically a secret shadow supreme court.

The rulings, some nearly 100 pages long, reveal that the court has taken on a much more expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny, according to current and former officials familiar with the court’s classified decisions.

It was a classified FISA court ruling that allowed the US government to collect phone records on millions of US citizens that caused Snowden to come forward with his leaks.

I’m aware of that. My point is that it probably wasn’t Obama that said ‘Do this’ and then it was done. He probably hates the Trump but that just isn’t how things like that work. And I should clarify that when I say ‘a lot of people’ I don’t mean the public opinion wanted to know more. There must have been high level support in the intelligence community IF the lines were actually tapped. Does that make what I said a bit more clear? I’m honestly trying to open up discussion about, not point fingers.

There were allegations about Russia. Government officials wanted to know more. That seems concerning to me. That’s all.

What’s more concerning to me is there is a new baseless allegation the media runs with every few days. All this despite a leaked democrat dossier saying they were going to make these allegations non-stop to grind the administration to a halt and NO ONE in the MSM is even willing to report on the possibility of these two facts being related.

Imagine if the media was this fervent about digging into Russia while Clinton was selling them uranium rights through the Clinton Foundation.

Obama claims Trump colluded with Russia to win election with no evidence, media tears into Trump and does everything in their power to decimate his campaign.

Trump accuses Obama of wiretapping his phones while campaigning for presidency, media proceeds to discredit him based on no evidence presented to them.

This tells me all I need to know about the status of the media today.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk

show me where Obama claimed Collusion? You can’t just link two different claims together. Obama and many have said Russia was involved with the election and wanting Trump to win, and that Trump and associates have communicated with Russia, but you need to link the two for your claim.