There is little doubt in my mind that if Trump announced such a missile launching, people would believe him. If, however, the media accused him of making such an announcement without one seeing him on TV saying it, I, for one, wouldn’t believe it.As the Wall Street Journal puts it:
This is a problem:
This is no longer about whom to vote for. It is about how Trump’s diminishing credibility erodes his ability to govern.
wsj.com/articles/a-presidents-credibility-1490138920
(As JFK once quipped, the WSJ criticizing a Republican president is like L’Osservatore Romano criticizing the Pope.)
The “Breitbart cheering section”.There is little doubt in my mind that if Trump announced such a missile launching, people would believe him. If, however, the media accused him of making such an announcement without one seeing him on TV saying it, I, for one, wouldn’t believe it.
The Atlantic had a similar article today:As the Wall Street Journal puts it:
This is a problem:
This is no longer about whom to vote for. It is about how Trump’s diminishing credibility erodes his ability to govern.
wsj.com/articles/a-presidents-credibility-1490138920
(As JFK once quipped, the WSJ criticizing a Republican president is like L’Osservatore Romano criticizing the Pope.)
I don’t even read Breitbart if that was meant as a personal insult to me. I could be proved wrong, perhaps, but I don’t think I ever have.The “Breitbart cheering section”.
He is squandering credibility, by clinging to his false stories"like a drunk to an empty gin bottle".
Yup!Right now there is so much false news and so many evasive answers floating around.
Speaking of…So Comey says he “has no information” confirming a “wiretap” of Trump at Trump Towers. That could be literally correct even if his phones were hacked or tapped. I’m not saying it is true or untrue. I’m simply saying that calling it a “lie” at this point is simply wishful and sometimes hateful thinking on the part of some. Subsequent events might show us otherwise.
That’s what conversations have become around Trump.Not a very practical philosophy. It cuts off debate and undermines every fact so that ultimately we can never know anything.
This is true. With more and more phone calls being VOIP today you don’t have to physically “wiretap” anything. A simple packet sniffer, many of which are freely available to download by anyone, can intercept the VOIP traffic and piece the packets together to hear the entirety of the phone call, including the ringing before the phone is picked up. Who knows if this actually happened but it is absolutely possible to do and it is not literally “wire tapping” but has the same results.So Comey says he “has no information” confirming a “wiretap” of Trump at Trump Towers. That could be literally correct even if his phones were hacked or tapped. I’m not saying it is true or untrue. I’m simply saying that calling it a “lie” at this point is simply wishful and sometimes hateful thinking on the part of some. Subsequent events might show us otherwise.
According to Comey in his Monday testimony, the FBI did not inform the president about the Russian interference (I think until well after the election) – he said they thought it was too sensitive.Excuse me for interrupting but wasn’t Obama criticized for NOT acting on the Russia thing until he imposed sanctions?
As you state Comey’s statement, that’s even more subject to evasive answer. The more elements there are to a proposition, the easier it is to evade giving a meaningful answer.Yup!
Speaking of…
Comey did not just say that he has no information to support a wiretap of Trump at Trump towers. He said that he had no information to support “the tweets”. He said hat the FBI had looked carefully into the matter internally, and that so had the DoJ and reported the same finding.
The spin on this testimony from the WH and its cheering section is implausible. Of course subsequent events may show us otherwise, but at the moment it is not wishful or hateful but simply the best conclusion to make on the basis of testimony that Trump’s tweet is not credible.
Comey said that?According to Comey in his Monday testimony, the FBI did not inform the president about the Russian interference (I think until well after the election) – he said they thought it was too sensitive.
He said they usually inform the prez and other officials quarterly about new investigations, but in this case they did not do so (their investigation started in July 2016).
When all’s said and done, Trump will make Nixon look like Elmo from Sesame Street. Can anyone imagine if Nixon were buddies with commies like how Trump and his cronies are? Trump’s first 100 days are riddled with scandal that will dwarf Watergate. And he still won’t take questions from reporters? What’s he hiding?Comey said that?
It was all over the place in the news, rumors and assertions were flying everywhere, Assange was on national TV, and the FBI thought it was too sensitive to tell the president?
If so, this whole thing is clinically insane, and Comey needs a years-long vacation.
The “Russian conspiracy theory” is just silly. Undoubtedly, the Russians would like to influence every election in the U.S., but that’s not the issue. The issue is whether Trump acted in concert with them to actually influence the election in some way. There is zero evidence of that.When all’s said and done, Trump will make Nixon look like Elmo from Sesame Street. Can anyone imagine if Nixon were buddies with commies like how Trump and his cronies are? Trump’s first 100 days are riddled with scandal that will dwarf Watergate. And he still won’t take questions from reporters? What’s he hiding?
With that wildly elliptical standard, it is clear that Trump was, is, and will always be correct.Right now, it’s not a matter of White House “spin”. It’s a matter of an assertion being made that might or might not be literally true in whole or part, but could be fundamentally true or incorrect in terms of significance.
Sorry that is a major issue. What they did, how they did it, and how we can resist it are matters that are crucial to the nation, going forward.The “Russian conspiracy theory” is just silly. Undoubtedly, the Russians would like to influence every election in the U.S., but that’s not the issue.
That is also a major issue. Schiff’s opening remarks were intriguing to say the least.The issue is whether Trump acted in concert with them to actually influence the election in some way.
If everybody’s calls are being recorded than of course Trumps would as well. That’s not what Trump claimed and someone that quit in protest in 2001 isn’t someone that would have first hand knowledge of what Trump is claiming.NSA Whistleblower Backs Trump Up on Wiretap Claims
usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-03-07/nsa-whistleblower-bill-binney-says-trump-is-absolutely-right-about-wiretap-claims
**President Donald Trump is “absolutely right” to claim he was wiretapped and monitored, a former NSA official claimed Monday, adding that the administration risks falling victim to further leaks if it continues to run afoul of the intelligence community.
“I think the president is absolutely right. His phone calls, everything he did electronically, was being monitored,” Bill Binney, a 36-year veteran of the National Security Agency who resigned in protest from the organization in 2001, told Fox Business on Monday. Everyone’s conversations are being monitored and stored, Binney said.**
This US News & World Reports is both pertinent and contains quite a number of excellent links, so I do recommend reading the entire article, and not just the brief sippet above.
And THAT was the claim: every citizen of the United States is having their communications surveilled …If everybody’s calls are being recorded …