Love the fact that daddy praised his son's "transparency" of providing his email chain (regarding the meeting) to the public only hours before said chain was to be published by the Times.
...all abbbbbboaaaaaaaaaaaaard the Crazy Train!
At the very least, any obstruction of justice case against Don Sr. should be very strong. Whether that case would change anything is another matter. But in legal terms, things seem pretty grim for Trump and his circle. The NYT ran an article about Pence quietly meeting with big donors, apparently for his own ambitions. Makes you wonder whether Pence's advisors are telling him that he may become President before 2020...
Love the fact that daddy praised his son's "transparency" of providing his email chain (regarding the meeting) to the public only hours before said chain was to be published by the Times.
"It's a shocking admission of a criminal conspiracy," said Jens David Ohlin, associate dean of Cornell Law School, in a statement shared with The Post.
The New York Times reported — and Donald Trump Jr. appeared to confirm — that he agreed to a meeting with a Russian lawyer who had damaging information on Hillary Clinton after getting an email that the Russian government was trying to help his father win the election.
“It's as close as you can get to a smoking gun” of whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, said Jeffrey Jacobovitz, a white-collar lawyer who represented officials in the Clinton White House and now is with Arnall Golden Gregory. And it could mean Trump Jr. crossed the legal line on collusion with Russia.
First, a reframing of the way we think of collusion. Collusion actually is a political term; there's no line in the criminal code that says you go to jail for colluding with a foreign adversary.
But you can go to jail for conspiring with a foreign adversary to influence or undermine an election, and Jacobovitz thinks what Trump Jr. did, as documented by emails he himself shared on Twitter, could rise to that level.
“Absolutely,” Jacobovitz replied when asked if these emails firm up evidence that Trump Jr. had intent to commit a crime by conspiring with the Russians. “You may have crossed the line on conspiracy to commit election fraud or conspiracy to obtain information from a foreign adversary,” he said. “You cannot benefit from a foreign adversary in this kind of scenario.”
Other legal minds agree. "It's a shocking admission of a criminal conspiracy," said Jens David Ohlin, associate dean of Cornell Law School, in a statement shared with The Post. "The conversation will now turn to whether President Trump was personally involved or not. But the question of the campaign's involvement appears settled now. The answer is yes."
...
Jacobovitz said conspiracy to commit election fraud is the big legal fish Mueller and his team may be trying to fry. But they're probably also looking at a whole host of laws that could have been broken under this scenario: quid pro quo with the Russians, bribery, potential perjury related to what members of the Trump campaign said under oath to Congress and failing to disclose these contacts in official security forms.
“This goes further than collusion,” he said. Especially now that Trump Jr. appeared to provide proof to all of this.
It's because their allegiance isn't based on thought. It's religion. Something based on thought and reason can be swayed by argument, but religion can't.
Think of people you know that are True Believers. Absolutely nothing you say will cause them to lose their faith. No proof, no stories, no pleading. Something in them has to change fundamentally or otherwise it's no use.
Donald Trump Jr. was told in an email that material damaging to Hillary Clinton was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father
WASHINGTON — Before arranging a meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the email.
The email to the younger Mr. Trump was sent by Rob Goldstone, a publicist and former British tabloid reporter who helped broker the June 2016 meeting. In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he was interested in receiving damaging information about Mrs. Clinton, but gave no indication that he thought the lawyer might have been a Kremlin proxy.
Mr. Goldstone’s message, as described to The New York Times by the three people, indicates that the Russian government was the source of the potentially damaging information. It does not elaborate on the wider effort by Moscow to help the Trump campaign. There is no evidence to suggest that the promised damaging information was related to Russian government computer hacking that led to the release of thousands of Democratic National Committee emails.
I watched that Australian commentary last night and disagreed with the reporter's assessment that Trump represents the end of American dominant rule in international affairs. That goes too far: Russia cannot take over the role that America's played, and China's influence is likely going to be mostly limited to Asia.
There's no need for someone else to become dominant in the same way. In the context of the U.S.' decline (which didn't start with Trump and his cronies) it is often seen as moving from a unipolar (sole superpower) to a multi-polar world with several powerful players. However, the traditional projection of power doesn't (and can't) work as well as it did in the past.
Trump's crude ideology (as witnessed in Poland) and attitude discards most chances of using "soft power" (at least with traditional allies, a.k.a. liberal democracies). The obvious dominance that will remain is in terms of out-sized military spending and possible threats from using that big stick, but the efficacy there has obviously been wanting and those other centres of power aren't as easy cowed.
China has been projected to eclipse the US economically not too far in the future. There's no indication that the U.S. is willing (or able) to invest economically in the same way as China can (esp. in a climate of government cuts). Domestically it can't enact change/treat people in the same that an authoritarian government can. China has been heavily involved in Africa, and is making trade agreements in other places (aside from investments).
Both China and Russia have plenty of past experience with the West (and their belligerence), and pretty much know what to expect (at the very least being consistently painted as enemies).
I watched that Australian commentary last night and disagreed with the reporter's assessment that Trump represents the end of American dominant rule in international affairs. That goes too far: Russia cannot take over the role that America's played, and China's influence is likely going to be mostly limited to Asia.
In a way, it's heartening that the G20 countries are going to try to take up the slack caused by Trump's denial of global warming. We'll see how far their resolve goes and how long it lasts. Trump's isolation at the G20 summit also parallels his growing isolation in Washington: the GOP is trying to get things done without Trump because he is uninformed and uninvolved when it comes to proposed legislation. Trump is not rallying Representatives and Senators to vote for bills and he's not helping the process of finding areas of compromise.
As far as I can see, the Republicans are fatally divided when it comes to healthcare "reform", and a heavily involved Trump wouldn't change that. However, Mitch McConnell said something shocking the other day:
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Thursday that if his party fails to muster 50 votes for its plan to rewrite the Affordable Care Act, it will have no choice but to draft a more modest bill with Democrats to support the law’s existing insurance markets.
The remarks, made at a Rotary Club lunch in Glasgow, Ky., represent a significant shift for the veteran legislator. While he had raised the idea last week that Republicans may have to turn to Democrats if they cannot pass their own bill, his words mark the first time he has explicitly raised the prospect of shoring up the ACA.
“If my side is unable to agree on an adequate replacement, then some kind of action with regard to the private health insurance market must occur,” McConnell said. “No action is not an alternative. We’ve got the insurance markets imploding all over the country, including in this state.”
I don't expect the GOP to become a responsible, moderate and effective party in the near future but it's possible that Trump is indeed becoming irrelevant at home. A divided GOP coupled with an ineffective and disengaged President likely mean that the party's fortunes in the mid-term elections are grim. A lack of party unity and incompetence at the top, in other words, may cripple the GOP's attempts to effect devastating change.
