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Somebody tell the Donald that Snowden stood up to Obama era policy.
by markjenkinswpg 7y ago
Somebody tell the Donald that Snowden stood up to Obama era policy.
- justinmchase 7y agoHow can he stop this without inviting criticisms of being a Russian asset or some such accusation?
- burtonator 7y agoHe could probably help with these accusations by releasing his tax returns. :)
- skyyler 7y agoI don't follow US politics. How would that help? Legitimate question.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 7y agoIt wouldn't. They're just trying to get their talking point in.
- hsod 7y agoThe public presently has very little information about Trump’s personal financials. He has refused to release his tax returns despite long precedent and intense political pressure. His excuses for this have been very weak. The idea is that the reason for this secrecy is that he is hiding something which would be politically damaging, such as the long-rumored (and denied) financial links to Russian oligarchs
- Retric 7y agoMany suspect he is deeply in debt to and sustained by various Russian banks. A positive cash flow would dispel some of that concern. I personally doubt he is, but it’s a more reasonable concern considering how unwilling he is to disclose his financial situation.
- makomk 7y agoFor context, the main "Russian bank" that people suspect Trump of being deeply in debt to is Deutsche Bank. Releasing his tax returns wouldn't help with those concerns because they're already so tenuously related to the facts that any release would just supply more bits of information that could be spun somehow as proof of Russian ties.
- ryanlol 7y ago>Many suspect he is deeply in debt to and sustained by various Russian banks Are there people who suspect this who are not qanon or similar nutjobs?
- skyyler 7y agoWhy do they suspect that? Would a positive cash flow dispel any of that concern? If people are up in arms about what seems to be suspicion, why would anything on his tax return make any suspicion go away?
- Fjolsvith 7y agoTheir demand for his tax returns is because they've not been able to use anything else to remove him from office. They're hoping they can find a little bit of dirt with which to hang him. Good thing he's squeaky clean.
- Inityx 7y agoIf he's squeaky clean, why is he scared shitless of people seeing his finance records
- Fjolsvith 7y agoYou're attributing that he's scared, when he is simply exercising his right to conduct his personal business privately.
- norcalli 7y agoThis would be a perfectly reasonable argument for almost anyone in the world, but most certainly not for Donald Trump due to his position and his track record of statements on public record on Twitter, of all places.
- Fjolsvith 7y agoBy your example, I could argue that you posting publicly here in HN eliminates your right to keep your personal finances private. You cannot authorize a different standard of law to a person without invalidating that law.
- bilbo0s 7y agoIn fairness, that's never stopped him before. Why not now, when it's useful?
- SomeOldThrow 7y agoThe criticisms will occur at this point no matter what he does. I would actually bet he welcomes the talk as a distraction from his easy to prosecute crimes.
- aldoushuxley001 7y agoWhat crimes has Donald committed?
- hsod 7y agoCampaign finance violations (his personal lawyer is currently sitting in jail for an illegal campaign contribution he carried out at the direction of Donald trump). Obstruction of justice is pretty well documented in the mueller report. Those are just the obvious ones
- Fjolsvith 7y agoThe Mueller report also well documented Trump's complicity with those illegal campaign contributions. That's why he was impeached right after the Mueller report was released.
- aldoushuxley001 7y agoHow is obstruction of justice well documented in the mueller report? Honestly, there's more ground for obstruction of justice charges against Trudeau for his role in the SNC-Lavalin scandal than anything I've seen for Trump.
- SomeOldThrow 7y agoHe allegedly paid for sex work with campaign money, which is why Michael Cohen is in prison right now.
- dragonwriter 7y ago> I would actually bet he welcomes the talk as a distraction from his easy to prosecute crimes. None of his crimes are easy to prosecute while he is in office; the distractions won't have much effect once he is not in office. So I doubt that that is exactly the issue.
- notredame911 7y ago.
- notredame911 7y ago.
- wavefunction 7y agoThe NSA is spying on everyone and trying to weed out the Americans. That doesn't make your completely unsupported claims any firmer, and getting downvoted so quickly indicates you are posting things that might be acceptable in the rest of the internet but are not so welcome here. Now, if you have some verifiable evidence to support your claims and can provide it then you will receive a far different response.
- notredame911 7y ago.
- weare138 7y agoExtraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence or any in your case.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- michaelmrose 7y agoYou are getting downvoted because your contributions to hacker news are low quality. Consider contributing something else other than conspiracy theories. The CIA and NSA are two organizations under the Dept of Homeland Security. They are only opposed to one another in the sense that they are both competing for funding. The divisions among government that you imagine just aren't real. The "deep state" is mostly a bunch of employees that keep on chugging regardless of who is in charge. Most of what they do isn't secret it is just complicated and boring. To the degree that they possess agendas those agendas are enumerated in long boring documents you will probably never bother to read. Those that ARE confidential or secret work at the behest of our President even when said President is a giant orange boob.
- wnevets 7y agoand that hes best buds with Putin
- espeed 7y agoTrust between US tech and the @DeptofDefense is what got burned down. Trust is key. There has been a concerted effort to break that trust to weaken the US position. The US is more resilient than that, and tech is smart enough to see through it. DoD will restore trust. It's time.
- monocasa 7y agoWhat has the DoD done to restore that trust?
- mirimir 7y agoAlthough the DoD (or War Department, as it was originally called) is part of the Executive Branch, it (for the most part) operates only outside the country. And military intelligence (for the most part) operates outside normal government constraints. That's how it's always been, throughout recorded history. If you constrain military intelligence too much, as happened in the US between WWI and WWII, and during the 90s, you get fuckups like Pearl Harbor and 9/11. But on the other hand, if military intelligence (and the military generally) operates too much domestically, then you have (doh) a military government. So it's a delicate balance. As far as I can tell, the US does not have a military government. However, as we saw from documents released from Snowden's cache, the military does operate too much domestically. It's arguably mainly about terrorism and the drug war. But although there are certainly impacts on civil liberties, especially on some ethnic groups, at least there's apparently not much outright suppression of political and social dissidents. So that's reassuring.
- 7y ago
- friendlybus 7y agoIt's not the same, but Assange is credited with helping Donald win the election and he's been blackholed in the UK.