**President Trump 2018 Thread**

[caulfield12]

1 hour ago, Dick Allen said:

Nothing wrong or illegal about collusion, yet there was NO COLLUSION. But if there was.............

 

This guy is like a 3rd grader.

 

More completely twisted logic to push back on the Russia/Mueller story...so logically, China should instead target “Clinton states” to exert the LEAST political leverage in terms of tariffs/trade policy?  By that argument, we should convert to the Chinese political model so our leaders couldn’t be held hostage by “bad actors” trying to influence policy due to “factions” since there aren’t opposing parties to be targeted?  Ludicrous.

 

China is retaliating against President Donald Trump's efforts to promote fair trade by slapping tariffs on U.S.-made goods in a targeted attempt to sway elections in the 2018 midterms and beyond, economist Stephen Moore said Friday night.

"China is now engaging in their own tariffs that are directed at trying to disrupt our elections," Moore, a Trump 2016 campaign economics adviser, told CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront." "Where is the investigation on that?"

 

Read Newsmax: Economist Says China 'Trying to Disrupt Our Elections' With Tariffs | Newsmax.com

Edited July 31, 2018 by caulfield12

[Dick Allen]

Trump looking to go around Congress to implement a Capital Gains tax cut of about $100 billion. 97% of the benefit would be to the rich. Keeping promises. He’s for the little guy.

Edited August 1, 2018 by Dick Allen

[caulfield12]

I can be more presidential than any president in history except for maybe Abe Lincoln with the big hat,” Trump said. “I admit it, Abe Lincoln is tough.”

The president spent considerable time talking about his trade policies, including tit-for-tat tariffs with China that he said would eventually pay dividends for the United States.

The tariffs are causing unease among Republican lawmakers facing tough re-election battles in November, and Trump's focus on them suggested he was concerned about their potential political impact.

China and other top U.S. trade partners zeroed in on American farmers with retaliatory tariffs after the administration imposed duties on Chinese goods as well as steel and aluminum from the European Union, Canada and Mexico.

"China and others have targeted our farmers. Not good. Not nice. And you know what our farmers are saying? 'It’s OK. We can take it,'" Trump said.

The Trump administration announced a $12 billion farm aid package last week, prompting some farmers and farm-state lawmakers, including Trump’s fellow Republicans, to criticize the move, saying they would rather trade with no tariffs than receive government help.

"I want to thank our farmers," Trump said. "Our farmers are true patriots."  Yahoo.com

 

 

Just gave at least two GOP districts in Iowa back to the Dems

 

View photos

At least three could be seen promoting a bizarre online community called QAnon, whose members believe in a secret master plan by Mr Trump to overthrow the so-called deep state.

One sign said: “His name was Seth Rich,” a likely reference to a debunked claim that the Democratic National Committee killed an employee for leaking emails in 2016.

Mr Acosta, who shared footage of the scene on Twitter, said it was just a “sample” of the abuse faced at the rally in Tampa.   

Edited August 1, 2018 by caulfield12

[GoSox05]

That QAnon stuff is pure crazy.  It's probably going to get someone killed.

[bmags]

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252445769/Briton-ran-pro-Kremlin-disinformation-campaign-that-helped-Trump-deny-Russian-links

This article breaks down how the GRU successfully gained cover for their hacking operations through the seth rich conspiracy that reached all the way to Trump, facilitated by a guy in london and right web sites.

Quote

Binney said he told the CIA chief that he had no fresh information. But he said he knew where to look – in the surveillance databases of his former intelligence agency, NSA.  

As a former top NSA insider, Binney was correct, but not in the way he expected. NSA’s top secret records, disclosed in the DoJ indictment earlier this month, lifted the lid on what the Russians did and how they did it.

A month after visiting CIA headquarters, Binney came to Britain. After re-examining the data in Guccifer 2.0 files thoroughly with the author of this article, Binney changed his mind. He said there was “no evidence to prove where the download/copy was done”. The Guccifer 2.0 files analysed by Leonard’s g-2.space were “manipulated”, he said, and a “fabrication”.

 

[StrangeSox]

 

[Big Hurtin]

10 hours ago, GoSox05 said:

That QAnon stuff is pure crazy.  It's probably going to get someone killed.

The way that football players are having their brains examined after death, someone needs to examine the brains of those that believe these batshit theories.  Something has to be damaged / missing.

[Jack Parkman]

Buy the new best seller If I Did It By Donald J. Trump. 

Edited August 2, 2018 by Jack Parkman

[caulfield12]

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/08/01/qanon-trump-rally-foreman-lead-pkg-vpx.cnn

Q-Anon leaps to the top of Trump conspiracy pushers...

[NorthSideSox72]

I didn't (and wouldn't) read Fire and Fury, or some of the other trash writer books about Trump, or any of his "own" books that others wrote for him. But I AM looking forward to the Woodward book, due out in September.

 

[Balta1701]

4 minutes ago, NorthSideSox72 said:

I didn't (and wouldn't) read Fire and Fury, or some of the other trash writer books about Trump, or any of his "own" books that others wrote for him. But I AM looking forward to the Woodward book, due out in September.

 

:::Holds back involuntary retching reflex:::

[StrangeSox]

Fire and Fury was 100% accurate though

[NorthSideSox72]

36 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

:::Holds back involuntary retching reflex:::

No idea what this means.

6 minutes ago, StrangeSox said:

Fire and Fury was 100% accurate though

And I assume this one is sarcasm?

 

[StrangeSox]

Kinda sorta, most of the push back was "oh how dare he!" rather than actual factual rebuttals. He was presenting the story as "how this or that particular source viewed and believed things to be" rather than some sort of notion of 'objective truth'

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/fire-and-fury-is-the-perfect-postmodern-white-house-book/550397/

Quote

If Michael Wolff is writing fiction in Fire and Fury, this is the kind of fiction he is writing. Indeed, at the very beginning of the book, in an author’s note, Wolff declares himself an unreliable narrator:  “Many of the accounts of what has happened in the Trump White House are in conflict with one another; many, in Trumpian fashion, are baldly untrue. Those conflicts, and that looseness with the truth, if not with reality itself, are an elemental thread of the book,” he writes.  The traditional promise of the journalist is to find the single, fundamental truth obscured by all the partial, biased accounts he elicits. But Wolff explicitly declines to make that promise; he offers not the story but a whole chorus of stories.

If you do ever read it or some excerpts while keeping that firmly in mind, it's an entertaining read. I at least appreciate that he was willing to burn his access to write out the details rather than acting as a friendly PR arm that never dares to criticize *too* much lest he lose his precious access (Maggie Habberman, looking squarely at you).

 

 

As for Woodward, as this Atlantic review pointed out, he engages in a similar style to Wolff as he also relies heavily on unnamed sources to tell his narratives.

Edited August 2, 2018 by StrangeSox

[Balta1701]

6 minutes ago, NorthSideSox72 said:

No idea what this means.

I don't want to run Christopher Hitchens's quote even if it's accurate, but I found an equally good summary of Bob Woodward's last several decades:

Quote

"Bob Woodward has gone wholly into access journalism.

In exchange for access and direct, on the record quotes, he never evaluates those quotes or does anything with them. That was the hallmark of both of his books on the Bush administration - oh they said they believed there were weapons of mass destruction, why should I investigate why they say this? They say it so it must be true. He just reports what Republican politicians say and because they say it, treats it as though it must be true. He'll get one or two juicy quotes to make sure his book gets read by all the people in DC who matter.

This willingness to be a stenographer had him actually involved in the Valerie Plame leak coverup, where he was publicly criticizing the prosecutor investigating the case while not publicly revealing that he had received one of the leaks, so he was literally deceiving his readers in order to cover for the administration.

He should have no credibility with anyone honest.

[NorthSideSox72]

2 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

I don't want to run Christopher Hitchens's quote even if it's accurate, but I found an equally good summary of Bob Woodward's last several decades:

In exchange for access and direct, on the record quotes, he never evaluates those quotes or does anything with them. That was the hallmark of both of his books on the Bush administration - oh they said they believed there were weapons of mass destruction, why should I investigate why they say this? They say it so it must be true. He just reports what Republican politicians say and because they say it, treats it as though it must be true. He'll get one or two juicy quotes to make sure his book gets read by all the people in DC who matter.

This willingness to be a stenographer had him actually involved in the Valerie Plame leak coverup, where he was publicly criticizing the prosecutor investigating the case while not publicly revealing that he had received one of the leaks, so he was literally deceiving his readers in order to cover for the administration.

He should have no credibility with anyone honest.

The fact that Woodward works to present facts, and NOT dive into the WHY aspects, in fact is one of the reasons why I have MORE respect for him than many others. It is exactly what I want out of a book like this. I think he did excellent work on both his Bush and Obama books. He is not treating statements to him as if true - he is reporting the statements. He just isn't adding a slant after the fact, which sounds like what you are hoping for.

Besides, in Trump's case, the guy is so strikingly incapable at his job that the facts alone should be plenty damning.

[Balta1701]

1 minute ago, NorthSideSox72 said:

The fact that Woodward works to present facts, and NOT dive into the WHY aspects, in fact is one of the reasons why I have MORE respect for him than many others. It is exactly what I want out of a book like this. I think he did excellent work on both his Bush and Obama books. He is not treating statements to him as if true - he is reporting the statements. He just isn't adding a slant after the fact, which sounds like what you are hoping for.

Besides, in Trump's case, the guy is so strikingly incapable at his job that the facts alone should be plenty damning.

He wouldn't have that access if he wasn't willing to play nice.

[StrangeSox]

Yeah basically if you don't like what Wolff did you shouldn't like Woodward either. Uncritically repeating claims isn't exactly reporting "facts" but it does help the people making those claims to legitimize them. It's like nowadays with AP and Reuters and WaPo etc. sending out push notifications or headlines with "TRUMP SAYS MUELLER PROBE CORRUPT, CAMPAIGN SPIED ON"

Yes, it is a fact that Trump said those things, but merely reprinting his claims without pointing out the baselessness of them is irresponsible and shody journalism. The same can be said for a lot of Woodward's books. If he does nothing but uncritically reprint officials' claims while giving them the cover of anonymity, what good is that really doing? It's not adding a slant to do some actual journalism and to evaluate the claims that are made. Access journalists maintain their access by making sure they never go too hard after their subjects, though, or otherwise they'll lose the access. That's the thing I appreciate about what Wolff did--he went in, got a whole lot of information, and then willfully burned any possible future access by sharing all the information. That's not anything Woodward could ever be counted on to do.

 

 

Edited August 2, 2018 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

Now that Pruitt's corruption has forced him out, the investigators are on to the next deeply corrupt Trump Cabinet member

 

 

[Balta1701]

Just now, StrangeSox said:

Yeah basically if you don't like what Wolff did you shouldn't like Woodward either. Uncritically repeating claims isn't exactly reporting "facts" but it does help the people making those claims to legitimize them. It's like nowadays with AP and Reuters and WaPo etc. sending out push notifications or headlines with "TRUMP SAYS MUELLER PROBE CORRUPT, CAMPAIGN SPIED ON"

Yes, it is a fact that Trump said those things, but merely reprinting his claims without pointing out the baselessness of them is irresponsible and shody journalism. The same can be said for a lot of Woodward's books. If he does nothing but uncritically reprint officials' claims while giving them the cover of anonymity, what good is that really doing? It's not adding a slant to do some actual journalism and to evaluate the claims that are made.

 

 

The most classic example is the WMD case. Woodward basically took the administration at their word that they had no idea and it was all the intelligence agencies' fault. The intelligence agencies weren't going to respond to this because they were intelligence agencies. But what we understand from better sources is that even though the intelligence agencies were saying that, they were saying that because the case was being rigged. They set up their own intelligence agency in the defense department to get versions of the story they wanted, experts who would have said "this makes no sense" were sidelined, they made sure they got the answer "Iraq is building huge numbers of WMD" and then threw their hands up and said "who us?" when the music stopped.

Woodward helped make sure they found chairs.

[NorthSideSox72]

10 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

He wouldn't have that access if he wasn't willing to play nice.

Part of the art of journalism is playing this game. The way Woodward happens to play it is by being a pure journalist - lack of commentary, just reporting everything he can get information on. And let the cards fall where they may. This allows his subjects to feel better about their chances of not looking terrible, while also allowing him access to good information. It's a good example of how to do this really well. Woodward is excellent at his job.

 

4 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

The most classic example is the WMD case. Woodward basically took the administration at their word that they had no idea and it was all the intelligence agencies' fault. The intelligence agencies weren't going to respond to this because they were intelligence agencies. But what we understand from better sources is that even though the intelligence agencies were saying that, they were saying that because the case was being rigged. They set up their own intelligence agency in the defense department to get versions of the story they wanted, experts who would have said "this makes no sense" were sidelined, they made sure they got the answer "Iraq is building huge numbers of WMD" and then threw their hands up and said "who us?" when the music stopped.

Woodward helped make sure they found chairs.

Bolded is outright false. And yeah it was found in later investigations just how much, at both CIA and DIA (read: Curveball), was going on to push the case the way they wanted. Your being upset about it seems to indicate you think Woodward should have known every single thing? Seriously, a Presidential administration has so many moving parts, there is no way anyone could ever accomplish that.

And LOL at putting Wolff on the same level as Woodward, SS. Seriously.

 

[StrangeSox]

They're both access journalists telling a story via unnamed sources, at least Wolff is honest about what he is and what he writes and is willing to burn that access when necessary.

Lack of analysis of the information you've gathered is bad journalism, and it's important to note that there is a difference here, a very substantial and important one, between analysis and opinion commentary. Letting the cards fall where they may without bothering to check the validity of any of those cards or whether they contradict other known cards is doing a disservice to anyone who reads your work. It's stenography, not journalism.

This is a pretty classic criticism of the work that Woodward engages in and the fundamental problems it has.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1996/09/19/the-deferential-spirit/?pagination=false

Quote

 

Mr. Woodward’s rather eerie aversion to engaging the ramifications of what people say to him has been generally understood as an admirable quality, at best a mandarin modesty, at worst a kind of executive big-picture focus, the entirely justifiable oversight of someone with a more important game to play. Yet what we see in The Choice is something more than a matter of an occasional inconsistency left unexplored in the rush of the breaking story, a stray ball or two left unfielded in the heat of the opportunity, as Mr. Woodward describes his role, “to sit with many of the candidates and key players and ask about the questions of the day as the campaign unfolded.” What seems most remarkable in this new Woodward book is exactly what seemed remarkable in the previous Woodward books, each of which was presented as the insiders’ inside story and each of which went on to become a number-one bestseller: these are books in which measurable cerebral activity is virtually absent.

The author himself disclaims “the perspective of history.” His preferred approach has been one in which “issues could be examined before the possible outcome or meaning was at all clear or the possible consequences were weighed.” The refusal to consider meaning or outcome or consequence has, as a way of writing a book, a certain Zen purity, but tends toward a process in which no research method is so commonplace as to go unexplained (“The record will show how I was able to gain information from records or interviews…. I could then talk with other sources and return to most of them again and again as necessary”), no product of that research so predictable as to go unrecorded.

The world rendered is an Erewhon in which not only inductive reasoning but ordinary reliance on context clues appear to have vanished

 

Quote

Here is where we reach the single unique element in the method, and also the problem. As any prosecutor and surely Mr. Woodward knows, the person on the inside who calls and says “I want to talk” is an informant, or snitch, and is generally looking to bargain a deal, to improve his or her own situation, to place the blame on someone else in return for being allowed to plead down or out certain charges. Because the story told by a criminal or civil informant is understood to be colored by self-interest, the informant knows that his or her testimony will be unrespected, even reviled, subjected to rigorous examination and often rejection.

The informant who talks to Mr. Woodward, on the other hand, knows that his or her testimony will be not only respected but burnished into the inside story, which is why so many people on the inside, notably those who consider themselves the professionals or managers of the process—assistant secretaries, deputy advisers, players of the game, aides who intend to survive past the tenure of the patron they are prepared to portray as hapless—do want to talk to him. 

Quote

Those who talk to Mr. Woodward, in other words, can be confident that he will be civil (“I too was growing tired, and it seemed time to stand up and thank him”), that he will not feel impelled to make connections between what he is told and what is already known, that he will treat even the most patently self-serving account as if untainted by hindsight (that of Richard Darman, say, who in 1992 presented himself to Mr. Woodward, who in turn presented him to America, as the helpless Cassandra of the 1990 Bush budget deal* ); that he will be, above all, and herein can be found both Mr. Woodward’s compass and the means by which he is set adrift, “fair.”

Quote

Every reporter, in the development of a story, depends on and coddles, or protects, his or her sources. Only when the protection of the source gets in the way of telling the story does the reporter face a professional, even a moral, choice: he can blow the source and move to another beat or he can roll over, shape the story to continue serving the source. The necessity for making this choice between the source and the story seems not to have come up in the course of writing Mr. Woodward’s books, for good reason: since he proceeds from a position in which the very impulse to sort through the evidence and reach a conclusion is seen as suspect, something to be avoided in the higher interest of fairness, he has been able, consistently and conveniently, to define the story as that which the source tells him

 

Note that this criticism is nothing new as that particular article is about Woodward's book on the '96 elections. Really, read the whole thing, because it's still very relevant to the press/media today and some pull quotes don't do it justice.

The stories he tells are determined by who is willing to sit down with him and tell him their thoughts. He'll then take those at face value and repeat them as if they are simply "the facts." Access journalism is a type of journalism, and maybe it has it's place, but it's certainly not superior to actual analytical and investigative reporting. It shouldn't be seen as a good, 'unbiased' thing to simply repeat the claims of the powerful people who talk to you and that adding thoughtful analysis to those claims somehow tarnishes the work, makes it 'slanted'.

Edited August 2, 2018 by StrangeSox

[Balta1701]

30 minutes ago, NorthSideSox72 said:

Part of the art of journalism is playing this game. The way Woodward happens to play it is by being a pure journalist - lack of commentary, just reporting everything he can get information on. And let the cards fall where they may. This allows his subjects to feel better about their chances of not looking terrible, while also allowing him access to good information. It's a good example of how to do this really well. Woodward is excellent at his job.

I hate the title of this article from 2005, but this is the difference between being a stenographer and a reporter. The stenographer Woodward got the quotes blaming the CIA and ran with them. The reporter would have taken the fact that those quotes were completely different from what they were saying publicly and challenge them.

Quote

For those keeping score: Tenet twice said the intel was a slam dunk, while Bush warned against stretching to make the case “several times.”

Again, did Woodward have to stifle his outrage when he wrote this? Or just his memory? Remember, this key meeting took place in December 2002 — by which time the president and his team had been stretching to make their case for months. And not just a little — their elasticity with the facts would put Mr. Fantastic to shame.

Here’s just a little of what they’d been saying:

Bush: “The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons...And according to the British government, the Iraqi regime could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes.” (9/26/02)

Bush: “You can’t distinguish between al-Qaeda and Saddam.” (9/25/02)

Cheney: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” (8/26/02)

Condi: “We do know that [Saddam] is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon.” (9/10/02)

Rummy: “[Saddam has] amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of biological weapons, including Anthrax, botulism, toxins and possibly smallpox. He’s amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX, Sarin and mustard gas.” (9/19/02)

Any reporter worth his salt would have used these publicly available quotes to — yes, connect the dots — and show Bush’s “make sure no one stretches” comment to be the PR pap it so obviously was. But Woodward just swallowed it.

 

[NorthSideSox72]

Sorry guys, I just do not at all agree. Journalism takes many forms, and I am not at all opposed to the analytical end of things. That's fine too. Woodward is not that - he's a digger. Which I appreciate. Clearly he didn't criticize certain things enough for you, but I don't think he was even trying to go down that road. I look forward to his new book, presenting information that I can synthesize with other sources, myself.

 

[StrangeSox]

It's not a lack of criticism, necessarily, so much as it is taking the words of whichever powerful people have decided they want to talk to him at face value and presenting them as "the facts." He doesn't so much dig as he waits around to find people who want to tell him their version of the story, and then he dutifully prints it. Why should it be up to the reader to have to synthesize this information rather than the journalist? Why should Woodward be excused for printing others' self-serving tales uncritically even when those tales are directly contradicted by other publicly known information? I really recommend you read the NY Review of Books essay I posted in its entirety, and it applies to more than just Woodward.

Edited August 2, 2018 by StrangeSox