If anything, adding in all the context makes the story seem even more insane.digster wrote:What context am I missing here? I'm saying that I'd forgotten that happened, and that most certainly happened.Bi_3 wrote:Sure, but the author is leaving out the context in order to forward the conspiracy narrative.digster wrote:It's funny and somewhat sad that in the tonnage of bullshit over the past year I completely forgot this happened.McParadigm wrote:
Mr Steele claimed that the Trump campaign was taking this path because it was aware that the Russians were hacking Democratic Party emails. No evidence of this has been made public, but the same day that Mr Trump spoke about Crimea he called on the Kremlin to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails.
By late July and early August MI6 was also receiving information about Mr Trump. By September, information to the FBI began to grow in volume: Mr Steele compiled a set of his memos into one document and passed it to his contacts at the FBI. But there seemed to be little progress in a proper inquiry into Mr Trump. The Bureau, instead, seemed to be devoting their resources in the pursuit of Hillary Clinton’s email transgressions.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... 3f01bfe4f0
And they aren't even including...●Trump’s real estate empire relies, though we don’t know how much, on Russian money. Trump says he never invested in Russia or got loans from Russia. But he did get investment from Russia. In 2008, his son said that Russian investment was “pouring in” to Trump properties. Even before that, Trump had a whole series of partners and investors linked to post-Soviet oligarchs and even Russian organized crime.
●Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, spent many years working on behalf of the thuggish Russian-backed Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, who eventually fled his own country. Manafort maintains links to pro-Russian groups in Ukraine. His name appeared on a list of people who took large chunks of cash from Yanukovych. He hasn’t gone away — in fact, he has lived in Trump Tower. There is no secret about his Russian connections. On the contrary, they define him.
●Last summer, Trump operatives at the convention changed the Republican Party platform to soften the language on Ukraine. There was no explanation for this change, one of the few substantive changes made to the entire party platform.
●Throughout the campaign, Trump repeated slogans and conspiracy theories — “Obama invented ISIS,” “Hillary will start World War III” — lifted directly from Sputnik, the Russian propaganda website.
●Finally, and most important: Trump is willing to risk serious conflict with China, to destroy U.S. relations with Mexico, to dismiss America’s closest allies in Europe and to downgrade NATO, our most important military alliance. But he has repeated many times his admiration for Russia and its president. In 2013 he told MSNBC, “I do have a relationship” with Putin, who is “probably very interested in what you and I are saying today” and will “be seeing it in some form.” In 2014 he bragged that Putin had sent him a “beautiful present” and claimed — apparently untruthfully — to have spoken to him as well. Nothing that Putin has done since — invade Ukraine, murder journalists, jail opponents — has induced Trump to change his mind.
●Michael Flynn made multiple calls to Russian diplomats on the day sanctions were announced. Trump team first categorically denied, then admitted to one call, then we learned there were 5 (with some reports describing the contacts as ongoing over a period of weeks). Multiple diplomats and analysts express bafflement. Michael McFaul tweeted: "dealt w/ Kislyak all the time when I worked at WH. Never needed to call him 5 times in one day to make my point."
●Trump continues to imply that sanctions against Russia are probably going away once he's in office.
●At a time when Russia was engaging in efforts to affect our election, Donald Trump called out to them publicly. For help. Which we've heard so much about as to make it feel unremarkable, but is remarkable.
●The Trump team continues to go after or behave in a disruptive manner towards every institution or group Putin considers an enemy. Putin sees the EU as a threat. Trump attacks it in tweets and belittles its legitimacy (irony). Today, we learn this: "Donald Trump’s transition team have called EU leaders to ask “what country is to leave next” with a tone suggesting the union “is falling apart."
●Republican intelligence chairman Richard Burr explicitly states that Trump-Russia connections are not on the table for his hacking investigation. After a closed door 'all hands' with intelligence leaders, he reverses his stance in a joint statement with Democrat Mark Warner the very next day.
●Trump repeatedly disparages US intelligence while literally tweeting "Russia says..." responses to new information leaks.
●Trump is going to be single handedly responsible for Three Doors Down music being played on national and international television, which has to be a war crime.
