7 ms·

We interfere all the time in foreign elections, and so many countries tried to influence ours I don’t see anything innately wrong with it. Other than possibly t

• Analemma_ 9y ago
  It’s amusing to watch that as the walls close in, you guys are gradually changing your story from “There was no collusion!” to “There was collusion... but it’s no big deal”. Should I expect you’ll be fully switched over, with no acknowledgement a shift ever occurred, by the time Muller hands out indictments?
  • dahdum 9y ago
    Us guys? I was not and am not a Trump supporter, but to believe collusion requires actual proof.
    • kevindqc 9y ago
      What do you think is more likely judging by the WH and Trump's behaviour, though? Sure we don't have proof right now as it would be Top Secret if it exists, but I'm sure we will find out in due time. I will reserve my final judgement until the special counsel investigation is completed, but it certainly seems to point towards collusion to me, or Trump has something just as big to hide (RICO).
      • dahdum 9y ago
        I honestly think it’s unlikely any collusion happened, but if proof comes out impeachment is the answer. This investigation reminds me of Whitewater, Travelgate and other political theatre Bill dealt with. The Stormy story is a watered down Lewinsky. With that ballot we were going to get 4-8 years of this garbage news pandering either way. Obama was an outlier, far cleaner than average.
      • mistermann 9y ago
        > I will reserve my final judgement The problem is, the camp of people willing to reserve judgement until we have verifiable evidence is a very exclusive club.
        • chillwaves 9y ago
          Outside of collusion, Trump's public deference to Putin is inexcusable and highly suspect.
          • mistermann 9y ago
            deference - humble submission and respect Respect - is this improper? Submission - really? Or am I misinterpreting you? Is there something verifiable that I'm overlooking? Why the particular hostility to Russia? China is a far worse country in most any respect, yet no one bats an eye. I wonder if skin color has anything to do with it.
    • GVIrish 9y ago
      When Federal law enforcement takes down criminal enterprises they don't reveal the evidence they have until they're ready to take down the head(s) of the organization. The proof will come then. Right now they're just rolling up the smaller players so they can build a case against the bigger fish. All those plea deals being cut are not because Mueller has a weak hand.
      • dahdum 9y ago
        Have any of those charges included allegations of Russian collusion by Americans? All I remember is financial crimes and false statement charges (that were mostly benign or accidental when I looked). Has he made any statement or indication he’s close to something significant yet? Any special counsel looking for crimes in DC is going to find plenty, but I don’t see where Trump is implicated in any of these. The leaks from the FBI have been so voluminous and the Democrat incentive to leak them I doubt they are keeping secret evidence under wraps at this point.
        • ModernMech 9y ago
          > Have any of those charges included allegations of Russian collusion by Americans? Nope, but I wouldn't expect that because "collusion" isn't a crime on the books. > Any special counsel looking for crimes in DC is going to find plenty Ken Starr spent a lot of time looking for real estate investment crimes and only turned up with an extramarital affair. > The leaks from the FBI have been so voluminous and the Democrat incentive to leak them I doubt they are keeping secret evidence under wraps at this point. There have been zero leaks from the SP, which is distinct from the FBI. No one, not Congress, not the President, not the FBI knows what he has.
          • dahdum 9y ago
            The scope Mueller has is far broader than Ken Starr ever had, he seems to be looking for any crimes by anyone connected to Russia or Trump. Thus the tax evasion and very rare false statement charges. Mueller isn’t leaking, but those around him certainly are given how much info is coming out about his intentions, indictments, and activities. My guess is he’ll try to keep digging until he can find something, however minor or unrelated, on Trump. He’ll be looked at as a failure by so many if he doesn’t, so I get the pressure he’s under. Now if I’m wrong, and he has secret evidence that comes to light and ends Trump, I’ll be his biggest fan. Pence is a bit scary, but like 0% chance of Republicans winning in 2020 if that happens. Seems pretty unlikely at this point though.
    • michaelgrosner2 9y ago
      "If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer."
      • lamarpye 9y ago
        But it wasn't what "they" said. Because Trump never got any dirt on Hillary. I mean, how could there be any? Hillary would never do anything wrong.
• sgc 9y ago
  Hmm. what about... Your comment doesn't pass a basic test of moral decency, which is that there is no reason to point fingers. Actions should be judged based on their own merits, not what others are doing. That is just deflection. I doubt you meant it that way, but that is how it came across. And of course it is a very big deal and not at all palatable to interfere with the internal politics of another country to destabilize it, regardless of how often it has been done, the roles of its internal members, or their cooperation with you.
  • dahdum 9y ago
    It’s a connected world, and the US being one of the centers means that nearly every country has a stake in the outcome. I don’t think it’s wrong of them to use their influence, as we do. It bothers me, but then I think of what we should do if Turkey ever came up with a free election. In my opinion that would be doing everything we can to influence, the slide to dictatorship and oppression is more unpalatable to me.
    • stordoff 9y ago
      I feel there's something rather ironic about countering "the slide to dictatorship and oppression" by using state power to interfere in foreign elections, particularly if it used covert or underhanded means rather than openly setting out the country's position.
      • dahdum 9y ago
        My personal way around this is that a democracy using state power to interfere in a dictatorship, with the goal of bringing democratic reforms, is net better for humanity than doing nothing to oppose them. State power includes sanctions, embargoes, tariffs, and the promise of lifting those measures for the preferred candidate/party. I do suspect we only disagree on the degree of influence.
        • stordoff 9y ago
          > I do suspect we only disagree on the degree of influence. You are quite possibly correct. Much of "sanctions, embargoes, tariffs, and the promise of lifting those measures for the preferred candidate/party" would fall under what I meant by "openly setting out the country's position", and is qualitatively different from the (alleged) Russian interference and how the US (and others) have historically influenced elections. I think much of the difference comes down to attributability (giving the country/government's opinion and how they will deal with any particular winner is fine; making claims that appear to come from other/in-country sources, or misleading the population of that country is not) and whether you are directly taking actions within the country/working with a particular political party (what is a small amount of money to the US could very easily skew the election massively in some countries, and lead to the US de facto deciding the result).
• Taniwha 9y ago
  the thing is that this all rather makes the DNC emails rather suspect, we don't know which bits were original and which bits were doctored along the way, it's no longer a lone wolf who just hacked them and then released them. I'm sure they're 95% genuine, we just don't know which 95% all we have is some KGB guy's word on it
  • dahdum 9y ago
    That’s the argument everyone uses (not just DNC), but as far as I know nobody refuted any of the emails as fake or doctored.
    • Taniwha 9y ago
      exactly - we can't prove they were doctored, or not - but my point is that the "lone wolf hacker doing us a public service" story just went out the window, instead we have an "evil Russian spy hacking Americans" - all the motives that people assumed are different - without inside knowledge there's no way we can know what's true or not, so essentially the emails are proof of nothing
      • stale2002 9y ago
        Until someone comes forward and makes a counter claim, then it should be presumed true in entirety. If you are a political party, I am not going to give you the benfit of the doubt. If you POINT to something and say "specifically this email is untrue", then I'll believe you. But if you stay silent, then I am just going to assume that you believe everything is true. Innocent until proven guilty is for the court system. Political parties do not get that benefit from me. All they have to do is counter claim (about a SPECIFIC, point of fact, email, ect) , and I'll listen to them.
        • Taniwha 9y ago
          I don't see why, the charge is after all that the emails are true - as you say "innocent until proven guilty", and that applies to people, who have rights, not inanimate things like emails that don't. Without proof either way you can't assume anything here is true or false. If you think that American politicians are more corrupt than Russian spies then you probably too biased to rationally discuss the issue anyway.
• Daishiman 9y ago
  Well given what we know now about Cambridge Analytica and Trump Jr's contacts with Assange, it's pretty obvious that there was a deal. At the very first, a deliberate refusal to report to US intel that the Russians were in contact.
  • lamarpye 9y ago
    Which contacts are you talking about? The ones where CNN reported the wrong date on an email?
• GVIrish 9y ago
  > We interfere all the time in foreign elections, and so many countries tried to influence ours I don’t see anything innately wrong with it. There's a big difference between 'influencing' an election and committing a concerted campaign of espionage, propaganda, disinformation, hacking, and potentially extortion in an effort to subvert the the government of another nation. The scope and aggressiveness of Russia's actions are quite a different animal than normal statecraft. The fact that several members of the Trump campaign have been indicted and made plea deals indicates that there is a lot of criminal activity there to unpack. Most definitely not business as usual.
  • lokopodium 9y ago
    Everyone with ability and motivation has done this on every occasion. Going after individuals when it's obvious it's a state actor is what puzzles me.
  • adventured 9y ago
    > The fact that several members of the Trump campaign have been indicted and made plea deals indicates that there is a lot of criminal activity there to unpack. Most definitely not business as usual. It was most definitely business as usual. DC is dirty at every corner and most administrations are overflowing with it, including the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. Obama's was cleaner than both of those, based on what we know so far. You also need to look at what those Trump campaign members were indicted for: absolutely nothing to do with colluding with Russia to rig the election. They got them on rather routine political corruption charges, which you can probably get half of DC for given the way it operates, if you look. It's the Xi premise of cleaning up China's corruption: they're all doing it, you can get any of them if you want to investigate closely enough.
    • dbt00 9y ago
      > They got them on rather routine political corruption charges, which you can probably get half of DC for This is false. How many members of Clinton and Bush's campaign staff or senior national security staff were ever accused of collusion with or corruption involving hostile/iffy foreign governments? Because there's nothing comparable to NSA Flynn plotting to execute an extraordinary rendition on US soil on behalf of a foreign power (Turkey), or campaign manager Manafort indicted for financial crimes involving hiding money received from a foreign government under active sanctions, or deputy campaign manager pleading guilty to similar charges. > absolutely nothing to do with colluding with Russia to rig the election Reminder: Paul Manafort was indicated for being a paid agent of and conspiring with the Russian government and 13 Russian nationals have been indicted for interfering with the 2016 elections. The closest you get to this is Iran-Contra in 1987 and the rumored 1980 "October Surprise", where George HW Bush -- allegedly -- negotiated with Iran to delay releasing American hostages until after Reagan defeated Carter. (They were released on Inauguration day 1981.) However, I would argue that nothing in modern US history comes close to this. No American president has been credibly accused or even remotely tied to foreign government attempts to manipulate the US electorate the way the Trump campaign and White House have been.
• anigbrowl 9y ago
  I don't have any issue with Russia engaging in this sort of behavior; Vladimir Putin isn't a moral leader, but he's just pursuing his own interests as rules of russia. I have a big issue with the various Americans who have accepted or solicited his assistance.
  • a_tractor 9y ago
    Why? Why aren't Americans allowed to pursue their own interests? If Putin wants to assist, say, movements opposed to globalism and neo-lib foreign policy, and those movements want assistance...? We've used help from foreign nations before, such during the War of 1812, or naval blockades during the civil war.