***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[RustyShackleford]

Enough is enough already. Wow

Smh

Racially ambiguous Stephen Miller really be on his bull****

 

[Nike Jordan]

Belgium

 

[deleted]

As if his motivations for being a Trump vote weren't clear enough already

Da proof is in da puddins

 

[frenchbreadbuilds]

Trolling and racism are not permitted on our forums.
If you'd like to test those rules, you'll soon find yourself in the hallway.

BARS

 

[addict4sneakers]

I’m sure he was just a kid being a kid when he championed that scumbag Greg Z

 

[Belgium]

Belgium

Was expecting this result, though the margin was bigger than I expected. She cancelled her first vote on the deal and nothing really changed leading up to today's vote.
The EU sent her a letter that simply said the EU would honor the commitments in the deal and that was it really

Edit: Accidentally wrote "wasn't expecting this result", meant to say I was expecting it.

 

[elpablo21]

 

[Based Jesus]

Look at the future mother of my children

 

[Belgium]

Whitaker's testimony is public too

Not sure what to expect of his testimony. I recall reports that as Sessions' chief of staff, Whitaker was advising the White House on how to pressure the DOJ into giving in to Trump's demands. Whitaker's alleged communications with the WH were reportedly often between just Whitaker, Trump and Kelly or just Whitaker and Kelly on the line. [1]

Trump also reportedly lashed out at Whitaker about the SDNY investigation on 2 separate occasions. [2]

A week after that first outburst, Trump reportedly pressed Whitaker on why more wasn't being in to reign in the SDNY prosecutors.

Whitaker also ignored DOJ ethics officials advising him to recuse.
The DOJ letter stated implies Whitaker never formally sought an ethics recommendation in the first place. [3]

1) https://www.vox.com/policy-and-poli...ump-hillary-clinton-sessions-attorney-general
2) https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/21/...-after-explosive-cohen-revelations/index.html
3) https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/20/...neral-robert-mueller-investigation/index.html

 

[frenchbreadbuilds]

Racism only counts toward blacks. Not even real racism, just any criticism toward anything any black person has done.

What’s so difficult about understanding that racism doesn’t show up in away that meaningfully affects the average white person. Point blank period. Not economically, not politically, and not socially. In almost every situation I can think of under those three categories you can put a white person and black person who have exactly identical backgrounds except for their race into a situation, the white personality will come out with the more favorable result more times than not. And like many have told you, that doesn’t have to be a measure of the aggragate of hate for another race. We’re talking about systems here. That doesn’t mean a black person is free from criticism. But black people aren’t a monolith. They don’t all live by one set of rules that makes them make all the same decisions. But they do live under certain systems that are geared to favor certain results. Perfect example of that is voting. The political system gears African Americans to vote in large part democratically although there are large swaths of black people who have conservative morals and values. I don’t know how much simpler it can be explained. There’s a big difference between criticizing one person for their actions and assigning a set of actions to a group of people by race. When you attempt to explain disparities with “they do this” and “they do that”
You’re making the statement that being of a certain race predetermines how someone behaves. Which itself is a racist statement .

 

[elpablo21]

 

[Nike Jordan]

You can unofficially add Amy Klobuchar to the list.

 

[Armada]

man this is the goofiest possible timeline we could possibly be living in.

 

[IATT]

man this is the goofiest possible timeline we could possibly be living in.

 

[Belgium]

In the UK, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has filed a no-confidence motion that will debated in parliament tomorrow.
Personally I expect Theresa May to survive the vote but we'll see what happens. You kind of have to have a no-confidence vote after a defeat like this in parliament.

I'm not a fan of Theresa May but at the same time I have to give her major props.
Her leadership has been under attack for months and months and she has continued battering away those attacks. Idk if you guys have seen some of May's weekly appearances before parliament but it's been a complete ****show. It takes a lot to be able to withstand all that and come out largely unscathed. She didn't really look like the barrage of attacks was effecting her much at all and was willing to fiercely defend her positions.

 

[kdawg]

She’s still scum though. Like the GOP the Conservative Party are only interested in padding their buddies pockets and don’t care about average people. Nothing they have done has benefitted average people.

 

[Mark Antony]

man this is the goofiest possible timeline we could possibly be living in.

We have to go back.

 

[Nike Jordan]

 

[noskey]

Damn even the S*n is going in on her.

 

[Belgium]

These people...
If that's true, go testify to Mueller instead of bitterly writing some book because you got fired.

Excerpt: (on Comey's firing)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...ristie-book-jared-kushner-accusations-hit-job
Chris Christie accuses Jared Kushner of political 'hit job' in explosive new book
Exclusive: ex-New Jersey governor, who had prosecuted Kushner’s father, was sacked as head of Trump’s transition team

Chris Christie, who was ousted as chairman of Donald Trump’s White House transition team in 2016, has written a blistering attack on Jared Kushner, whom he accuses of having carried out a political “hit job” on him as an act of revenge for prosecuting his father, Charles Kushner, a decade ago.

In his soon to be published book, Let Me Finish, Christie unleashes both barrels on Trump’s son-in-law, who remains a senior White House adviser with responsibilities for Middle Eastern peace, sentencing reform and “American Innovation”.

Christie blames this key player in the president’s inner circle for his ignominious dismissal shortly after Trump’s election victory in November 2016. Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, writes that Kushner’s role in his sacking was confirmed to him by Steve Bannon, Trump’s campaign chief, in real time.

As Bannon was carrying out the firing, at Trump Tower in New York, Christie forced him to tell him who was really behind the dismissal by threatening to go to the media and point the finger at Bannon instead.

“Steve Bannon … made clear to me that one person and one person only was responsible for the faceless execution that Steve was now attempting to carry out. Jared Kushner, still apparently seething over events that had occurred a decade ago.”

The political assassination was carried out by Kushner as a personal vendetta, Christie writes, that had its roots in his prosecution, as a then federal attorney, of Charles Kushner in 2005. The real estate tycoon was charged with witness tampering and tax evasion and served more than a year in federal prison.

Even for a White House that has generated an extraordinary cornucopia of hypercritical kiss-and-tell books, Christie’s is exceptional for its excoriating description of events at which he was present. As he points out in Let Me Finish, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian ahead of publication on 29 January, none of the other authors “has known Trump for as long or as well as I have – or was right there in the room when much of this occurred”.

It is also exceptional as a chronicle of the score-settling and animosity that drove key decision-making in Trump’s nascent presidency. As political scientists look for the roots of the mayhem in the current White House, the book provides new clues.

At the heart of it is Christie’s desire to tell the American people that had his transition plan been adopted after Trump’s shock victory on election night in November 2016, the Trump White House would be a much more effective place today. Once he had been tossed overboard, the new transition team led by Vice President-elect Mike Pence had a “thrown-together approach” that led to appalling choices of senior personnel “over and over again”.

But the emotional heart of the book is Christie’s account of the actions of Jared Kushner. In this telling, Christie was ditched by a young man who made it his business to discredit and denounce him because of what he had done to his father.

“The kid’s been taking an ax to your head with the boss ever since I got here,” Bannon confessed at Christie’s dismissal.

Christie was the US attorney in New Jersey when he spearheaded the prosecution of Charles Kushner for witness tampering. The case arose out of a bitter family feud.

The elder Kushner hired a sex worker to seduce his brother-in-law Bill Schulder, then filmed them having sex in a motel and sent the tape to his own sister, Esther. The bizarre plot was an attempt to blackmail the Schulders into keeping their silence about Bill’s knowledge of Charles’s fraudulent activities.

Charles Kushner pleaded guilty to 18 charges and served 14 months in a federal prison in Alabama.

In one of the most visceral passages of the book, Christie recounts for the first time how Jared Kushner badmouthed him to Trump in April 2016, pleading with his father-in-law not to make Christie transition chairman. Remarkably, he did so while Christie was in the room.

“He implied I had acted unethically and inappropriately but didn’t state one fact to back that up,” Christie writes. “Just a lot of feelings – very raw feelings that had been simmering for a dozen years.”

Kushner went on to tell Trump that it wasn’t fair his father spent so long in prison. He insisted the sex tape and blackmailing was a family matter that should have been kept away from federal authorities: “This was a family matter, a matter to be handled by the family or by the rabbis.”

Trump, in an effort to settle the dispute, proposed a dinner between him, Jared and Charles Kushner, and Christie. Much to Christie’s relief, Jared didn’t acquiesce.

In the end, Trump gave Christie the job. But according to Let Me Finish, Kushner had the final say.

Let Me Finish bears all the hallmarks of classic, brash Chris Christie. Its language is blunt, caustic and at times self-satisfied, much like his political reputation.

It has its lighter moments. At his first meeting with Trump in 2002, at a dinner in the Trump International Hotel and Tower, in New York, Trump ordered his food for him. He chose scallops, to which Christie is allergic, and lamb which he has always detested. Christie recalls wondering whether Trump took him to be “one of his chicks”.

At another dinner three years later Trump told the obese Christie he had to lose weight. Addressing him like one of the contestants in Miss Universe, the beauty contest organisation that he owned, Trump said “you gotta look better to be able to win” in politics.

Trump returned to the theme of girth during the 2016 presidential campaign, exhorting Christie to wear a longer tie as it would make him look thinner.

Meanwhile, Kushner is not the only subject of Christie’s wrath. The author is scathing about Michael Flynn, the retired general who was briefly national security adviser before resigning over his dealings with Russia, and who is now cooperating with the special counsel and awaiting sentencing for lying to the FBI.

In one of the book’s more memorable put-downs, Flynn is dubbed “the Russian lackey and future federal felon”. Christie also calls the former general “a train wreck from beginning to end … a slow-motion car crash”.

However, one central character escapes relatively unscathed: Trump himself. The president is utterly fearless and a unique communicator Christie writes – and his main flaw is that he speaks on impulse and surrounds himself with people he should not trust.

Christie gives a detailed account of his effort to be named as Trump’s vice-presidential running mate in the summer of 2016, after his own bid for the Republican nomination for president failed. He detects yet again the hand of Kushner – and that of his wife and Trump’s beloved daughter, Ivanka Trump – working against him. An anonymous “high-ranking Trump staffer” is depicted calling to warn that “the family is very upset that he says it will be you”. A mollifying call from son Eric Trump follows but that is as close as Christie gets. Trump chooses ultra-conservative Indiana politician, Mike Pence, after a mystifying wait. Christie repeatedly says he was not disappointed.

US attorney general, the other role Christie would have accepted, also eluded him. As with most appointments he is scathing about the man who got the job, Jeff Sessions, whom he calls “not-ready-for-prime-time” and whose recusal from the Russia investigation he blames for its ever-growing scale. Trump did apparently offer Christie “special assistant to the president in the White House”, which he turned down, prompting from the president-elect “an expression that said maybe he hadn’t heard me right”.

Christie would have taken chair of the Republican National Committee and seemed poised to get it. But according to Christie, once again Trump’s family worked against him. In a near-comic scene, Reince Priebus, the RNC chair who would become Trump’s first chief of staff, offers him role after role in a frantic attempt to fulfil the directive from Trump to “make Chris happy”. One by one, Christie turns down labor secretary, homeland security secretary and ambassadorships in Rome and the Vatican.

Christie is relatively forgiving of Kushner in the context of the infamous June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between the candidate’s son-in-law, his son Donald Jr, his campaign manager and a group of Russians, some with Kremlin ties, offering “dirt” on his Democratic presidential opponent, Hillary Clinton. Bannon memorably told the author Michael Wolff the meeting was “treasonous” but Christie writes that taking the meeting was merely “dumb” or, in the case of Kushner and Trump Jr, a “sign of profound inexperience”. He faults Trump’s response to Robert Mueller’s investigation into links with Russia, but does not go into detail about the work of the special counsel.

He does, however, contend that Kushner misjudged two Russia-related firings: that of Flynn in February 2017 and most famously that of the FBI director James Comey in May the same year. According to Christie, Kushner thought firing Flynn would end talk of links between the Trump campaign and Russia – it did not – and that firing Comey would not provoke “an enormous ****-storm” in Washington. It did.

“Again,” Christie writes, having detailed conversations with Kushner in which he was acting in an informal capacity, “the president was ill served by poor advice.”

 

[gry60]

When you attempt to explain disparities with “they do this” and “they do that”
You’re making the statement that being of a certain race predetermines how someone behaves. Which itself is a racist statement .

This.

 

[Belgium]

Mueller's Manafort filing has arrived, laying out the evidentiary basis for determining Manafort breached his plea agreement by lying.

Part 1:
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5684980/1-15-19-SCO-Declaration-Manafort.pdf

Part 2:
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5684981/1-15-19-SCO-Exhibits-Manafort.pdf

 

[bigrockford]

Quick question.
If a woman is angry with patriarchy, sexism, misogyny and then speaks out against it, does that make her sexist or misogynistic?
Replace misogyny and sexism with racism, and then you'll understand why it only goes one way.
Have a nice day.

To the others who seem well rounded with a precise bullskip meter, I have been reading this thread, keep it up! Bravo!

My point is that it can't go one way. A rule has to be applicable to everyone.

 

[Belgium]

From reading the documents, even with all the redactions, it's pretty obvious Manafort was lying through his teeth.
There's lots of descriptions of him contradicting previous grand jury testimony, changing his story after a quick talk with his lawyer, randomly contradicting previous interviews, suddenly having his memory refreshed after multiple denials, ...

On Manafort's lies about his contacts with the Trump administration:

This is still part of the prosecutors' proof that Manafort lied about his contacts with the Trump administration.
Sounds very odd. What was Manafort doing in May 2018 that is relevant to him lying about those contacts with the Trump administration?
There's a strange reference to a Word document on Manafort's iCloud dated May 15 2018 and referenced [redacted].
What's the bullet point about in a section titled "Targets"? It states "ISSUE: JPM (Manafort) will find out if [redacted].

Continuation from the above screenshot describing Manafort's answer to that question in his grand jury testimony.
A Trump administration official texted Manafort on May 26th and asked "if I see POTUS one on one next week am I ok to remind him of our relationship?"
Manafort replied "yes" and "even if not one on one."
During his grand jury testimony, he confirmed [redacted].
What's that text all about? It must be someone with access to a one on one with president Trump.

Manafort apparently told Rick Gates in January 2017 that he was using intermediaries to get people appointed in the Trump administration. Manafort stated that he was talking to [redacted] up through approximately February 2018. That's when Rick Gates pleaded guilty and started cooperating.

 

[toinethedude]