haresfur wrote: 
Or perhaps change moniker or have multiples. It's possible. It's no secret The forum participants are sensitive if not outright suspicious of all newcomers irregardless of their profile.

 maryte wrote: 
to be fair, people can lurk for a long time before joining

 kcar wrote: 
Agreed.

 steeler wrote: 


" I usually do not get Trump supporters to engage in this exercise, but at least they are deprived of arguing that I have made things up or that I am unwilling to acknowledge anything positive Trump has done. "


I've had very little luck in getting Trump supporters—here and elsewhere—to have that kind of factual, logic-based discussion. Most of the time they post recitations of Trump's claims without bothering to back those claims up with evidence. Trump certainly doesn't bother...

 kcar wrote: 
I like to take the tack of taking the Trump/Trump supporter statements/explanations at face value and examine the logic or lack thereof; sort of deconstructing: let's accept the facts as have been presented and see where that logically leads us. I usually do not get Trump supporters to engage in this exercise, but at least they are deprived of arguing that I have made things up or that I am unwilling to acknowledge anything positive Trump has done. I invite them to explain the discrepancies — or allay my confusion — based on the factual scenario put forth by Trump or his supporters.

 steeler wrote: 

"Trump says his meeting with Putin was great and those saying it was not are the purveyors of Fake News. How is one to judge?" 





You have to ask??!?!   Trump will lie anywhere, anytime about anything. The only question is whether Trump in his massive stupidity thought things went well or whether he knows things went badly and he's lying about that too. 
Never expect Trump to tell the truth. Even in his most honest moments, Trump will use all his mental energy to keep believing in fictions despite massive evidence to the contrary. Trump's understanding of truth flows only from his belief in his own greatness. He ignores or disputes facts that don't agree with his self-centered world view. Trump is the primary source of truth for Trump. 


On January 6 2017, before he was inaugurated, Trump was briefed in detail about Russian involvement in the 2016 election by the head of the CIA, the Director of National Intelligence, the Director of the National Security Agency (also serving as commander of the US Cyber Command) and the Director of the FBI. Those men told Trump about the work of G.R.U personnel as well as Putin's personal involvement in ordering the meddling. Although Trump apparently agreed with the report—"grudgingly", according to the NYT piece—he spent the next 1.5 years disputing that evidence. Even though his own handpicked intelligence leaders agree with the January 6 report. 


My guess is that Trump hasn't fully told his own staff what happened at the meeting with Putin. There are so many leaks in this administration that if a significant number of people were briefed on the meeting, someone would have leaked details of it to the press. Trump is desperate to have good relations with Putin and doesn't care whether Americans dislike that. The Russians have already referred to promises Trump made during the meeting, so I guess we'll hear about those fairly soon. 

Trump says his meeting with Putin was great and those saying it was not are the purveyors of Fake News. How is one to judge? I have not heard or read anything about what Trump says happened at that meeting — other than the absurd idea that Putin offered to allow Mueller to interview the 12 indicted Russians in exchange for Trump sending former ambassador McFaul to Russia to be questioned about his political missteps while ambassador.
Has anyone in the administration been briefed by Trump as to what transpired during this meeting? All we have is the public version of events that has emerged from Russia. Other than Trump's declaration of it having been great, there is radio silence here. What possible explanation is there for that? I'm going with incompetence and hoping that I am right about that.

A plausible theory of mind-boggling collusion.

 R_P wrote: 

 No i am not new. just thought i would check out the Trump comments, pretty much everything I expected to see, typical (as usual).  And no, I wont be going back Trump forum again. just going to listen to music and support Radio Paradise. I enjoy being my conservative self. 
 

 Red_Dragon wrote: 

Why, yes, s/he is:  

Joined:

Jul 21, 2018

 cbarragan wrote: 
You're new here, aren't you? 

this is about music,not politics. come on give it a break

 

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
100% agree. If he’s saying crazy sh*t to the public about the summit then just imagine the crazier sh*t an untethered Trump talked about with Putin in private.
 

As explosive new Russia revelations hit Trump, Republicans throw him a lifeline

The Times reports that in January 2017, two weeks before his inauguration, senior intelligence officials privately presented Trump with extensive evidence that Vladimir Putin had personally ordered the campaign of cyber-subterfuge and information warfare that worked to tilt the 2016 election to Trump. If true, as many were quick to point out, then all of Trump’s subsequent dismissals of the Russian sabotage effort amounted to a much more active coverup on behalf of Putin than we knew.

...

The Republican approach has been to set the threshold for an acceptable Trump response at the point of acknowledgment that the Russian interference effort did take place. In this arrangement, as long as Trump takes that minimal step, there is no need to talk much about why Russia interfered (to elect Trump), or about the fact that the Trump campaign eagerly sought to benefit from that Russian interference, or about why Trump lied to cover that up. There is no need for Republicans to play a more active role in trying to ensure that the fuller truth comes out (by passing a bill protecting the Mueller probe) or in trying to get to that fuller truth themselves (by forcing transparency on Trump’s tax returns, to learn whether he is beholden to Russians in some way).

In this arrangement, as long as Trump is admitting that Russia did interfere, and publicly pretending to take that seriously, House GOP leaders can also continue to lend tacit support to Trump loyalists in the House who are working to delegitimize Mueller’s efforts to flesh out the bigger story. You saw this double game afoot in House Speaker Paul Ryan’s response to Trump’s news conference with Putin. Ryan urged Trump to accept the intel community’s findings, while trying to create the impression that House Republicans are on the same page with the intelligence services on what really happened (which is complicated by the fact that the House Intelligence Committee probe did not even acknowledge that Russia interfered to help Trump).

In so doing, Ryan was simply trying to nudge Trump on to the safe ground for all of them, the place where everyone agrees Russia interfered, and everyone agrees that attacking intelligence professionals is bad (while winking at ongoing efforts to undermine them), without asking any of the follow-up questions that all of this raises. In effect, this is the escape hatch Republicans have offered him.


...


But the question now is a lot harder: Why did Trump continue actively trying to deceive America into believing that Russian sabotage didn’t happen at all, after having been comprehensively briefed to a previously unknown extent on Putin’s direct involvement in that sabotage effort?

From the Start, Trump Has Muddied a Clear Message: Putin Interfered

WASHINGTON — Two weeks before his inauguration, Donald J. Trump was shown highly classified intelligence indicating that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had personally ordered complex cyberattacks to sway the 2016 American election.

The evidence included texts and emails from Russian military officers and information gleaned from a top-secret source close to Mr. Putin, who had described to the C.I.A. how the Kremlin decided to execute its campaign of hacking and disinformation.

Mr. Trump sounded grudgingly convinced, according to several people who attended the intelligence briefing. But ever since, Mr. Trump has tried to cloud the very clear findings that he received on Jan. 6, 2017, which his own intelligence leaders have unanimously endorsed.

...


In the run-up to this week’s ducking and weaving, Mr. Trump has done all he can to suggest other possible explanations for the hacks into the American political system. His fear, according to one of his closest aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity, is that any admission of even an unsuccessful Russian attempt to influence the 2016 vote raises questions about the legitimacy of his presidency.


...

According to nearly a dozen people who either attended the meeting with the president-elect or were later briefed on it, the four primary intelligence officials described the streams of intelligence that convinced them of Mr. Putin’s role in the election interference.

They included stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee that had been seen in Russian military intelligence networks by the British, Dutch and American intelligence services. Officers of the Russian intelligence agency formerly known as the G.R.U. had plotted with groups like WikiLeaks on how to release the email stash.

And ultimately, several human sources had confirmed Mr. Putin’s own role.

...

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
In Donnie's case, you're assuming presence of mind and careful consideration where none exists.

 sirdroseph wrote: 
In normal times, this is correct (both of you). But since there's a thick cloud of suspicion around these two, they might have considered having their only meetings in public and leave the back room stuff to underlings.