President 'The Donald' Trump and Surprising Consequences - Mod warning in OP

SkepticQuark

Hank Scorpio wrote: »

You brought Breitbart up in a totally unrelated topic for some reason.

I'll ask again, was it ok for people to leak UK intelligence on the Manchester attack or are leaks only selectively ok as long as it's damaging to Trump?

Am I the only one who thinks this is a false equivalence? The US leaking UK intelligence on a terrorist attack where evidence and investigations were unfolding and developing all the time are somehow equivalent to leaks relating to Trump and his administration. Sure both are leaks but after that they are very, very different things.

Professor Moriarty

Hank Scorpio wrote: »

You brought Breitbart up in a totally unrelated topic for some reason.

I'll ask again, was it ok for people to leak UK intelligence on the Manchester attack or are leaks only selectively ok as long as it's damaging to Trump?

No, Breitbart is a malicious rubbish site that reports fake news. Whatever outlet got that classified info is obviously going to be more informed.

No, it wasn't ok for people to leak UK intel on that bomb. But I'm perfectly fine with intel being leaked on a lying, dodgy and deranged POTUS who is the mouthpiece for some serious loons like Bannon (he's Breitbart BTW).

I'm absolutely delighted, in fact, except that poor woman got caught. When you have a malicious clown in power who tramples all over the institutions of state then I'm ok with the fact that they leak true stuff that damages that same clown. Of course if he wasn't a dodgy liar then there would be no intel to leak. It's all good. More please.

Hank Scorpio

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

No, Breitbart is a malicious rubbish site that reports fake news. Whatever outlet got that classified info is obviously going to be more informed.

Were you ok with the Wikileaks dumps during the election, are Wikileaks heros too like the girl you cited?

Hank Scorpio

roddy15 wrote: »

Am I the only one who thinks this is a false equivalence? The US leaking UK intelligence on a terrorist attack where evidence and investigations were unfolding and developing all the time are somehow equivalent to leaks relating to Trump and his administration. Sure both are leaks but after that they are very, very different things.

It may well be, all I did was post a breaking story and I get hopped on with some random Breitbart garbage because it's not a story insulting or damaging to Trump.

Professor Moriarty

Hank Scorpio wrote: »

Were you ok with the Wikileaks dumps during the election, are Wikileaks heros too like the girl you cited?

I'm just happy that The Donald is dying a death by a thousand cuts. Nothing personal against him as I'm sure he's a lovely, well no he's a nasty egotist so it's personal. More importantl, he's doing terrible damage across America and the world. He doesn't give a sh1t about democracy so it's all good. More leaks please. Bring it on. Pity about that woman though.

mcmoustache

Hank Scorpio wrote: »

It may well be, all I did was post a breaking story and I get hopped on with some random Breitbart garbage because it's not a story insulting or damaging to Trump.

I think that the reason that you're getting hopped on is due to your history in this thread. Let's face it, you've been less than honest and even admitted it.

There's also something else that I think has gotten some people's backs up (mine at least). A few of us have have watched the House and Senate hearings. The interesting one to me was the testimony of Clint Watts. It's a primary source and publicly available so I'm afraid that shouting FAKE NEWS will fall on deaf ears.

Anyway, one (I'll leave Cambridge Analytica facebook stuff to Demfad) of the big take-aways from his testimony was that Russians meddled by brigading forums and promoting Russian talking points and that this was coordinated by the Russian state using troll farms. You can deny this if you like but if you can pay a chinese person to farm gold for warcraft, you can certainly pay a Russian to post propaganda.

Now, the effect of this is that the propaganda dominates the forum and others who fall for it start repeating it. So you have trolls and the people who have been fooled all spreading the same rubbish. It's not new - advertisers use shills for this very reason. Oddly enough, the language used by both Russian trolls and those fooled is pretty much the same and reflects the talking points of RT and Sputnik.

It's all "fake news", "hillary bad", "no evidence of russian collusion", "nothingburger", "russia has a legit claim to crimea", "I like Bernie but couldn't vote for Hillary". The usual stuff. Anyway, there are two types of people posting these talking points as I mentioned earlier and I don't think you're a Russian troll.

I think that you've just spent too long on forums where these pro-russian talking points dominate the discourse and it's looking normal to you. As a result, this forum can seem frustrating because running around yelling "fake news" at things is, frankly, a bit weird to non-trumpers. Nobody will take you seriously if you're doing that and neither will your use of Feingold and Clapper snippets that don't say what you claim them to say.

It's that kind of stuff that makes people think they're not dealing with someone who is arguing in good faith. This is why as more evidence emerges of Trump's shadiness with the Russians that you're likely to have a hard time here if you come in repeating Russian talking points.

mcmoustache

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

I'm just happy that The Donald is dying a death by a thousand cuts. Nothing personal against him as I'm sure he's a lovely, well no he's a nasty egotist so it's personal. More importantl, he's doing terrible damage across America and the world. He doesn't give a sh1t about democracy so it's all good. More leaks please. Bring it on. Pity about that woman though.

Actually speaking of breitbart, here's a graph from alexa.com tracking site popularity. Definitely no coordinated brigading there.

Christy42

Hank Scorpio wrote: »

One of the leakers has been caught.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/federal-contractor-reality-leigh-winner-arrested-for-sending-classified-nsa-intelligence-to-news-outlet/article/2625014

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-government-contractor-georgia-charged-removing-and-mailing-classified-materials-news

Winner, of Augusta, Ga., is facing charges that she removed classified material from a government facility and mailed it to a news outlet. She was arrested on Saturday and appeared on the charge Monday.

The announcement came shortly after The Intercept published a report based on a classified intelligence document showing Russian government hackers attempted to hack more than 100 local election officials before the November election.

Right I would prefer a discussion on this instead of attacking Hank over this.

I am curious how well actually catching a leaked will go for Donald. He is liable to say something stupid and let the media paint her as a martyr. His previous pro leak statements will also work against him.

In each case it also confirms the relevant leaks as well giving news agencies a chance to bring up what the leaks were about (let's be honest that is what most people will care about and it will generate viewers/clicks for them).

Maybe it will discourage more but I am not sure. I feel like a large chunk would need to be caught for that as right now the odds seem rather low.

More talking about the effects the arrest will have as opposed to the wrongs and rights of the leak.

BlinkingLights

It seems we are headed for an era where the federal government of the US is just becoming a dysfunctional international laughing stock.

This is exactly where an element of the GOP wanted to go though. Weak fed and stronger individual states going their own way - so you'll end up with deeply conservative deep south states becoming far more conservative, rolling back most of the social progress that has been imposed on them by federal legislation or US Supreme Court rulings.

From what I can see there is an agenda at play to dismantle the US and it suits various players for different reasons. The far right of the GOP because it means they can rollback on a range of civil rights, particularly gay marriage and abortion but also probably create far more religious state law than would be allowed by federal law eg tampering with science teaching and replacing it with scripture and so on.

Then you've a certain aspect of business / energy lobby that wants absolute deregulation, particularly of things around environmental law but I'm sure that will rapidly extend into workers rights and so on.

And to top it off you've external factors, notably Russia, who would he only delighted to see the US crash and burn in chaos much like the USSR did. To many Russians this isn't any different to what the US did to them in the late 20th century and may seem like score settling.

Unfortunately, this looks to me like a confluence of factors that are aiming to just dismantle the US and they're allowing themselves to be played like a fiddle.

There's a similar agenda going on with the attempts to break up the EU but because it's not an actual federal state we aren't really being hit ad dramatically but, the whole agenda was exactly the same in Brexit, particularly when you see UK right wing dislike of human rights laws, environmental laws and other "red tape".

We're in a situation where electorates are engaging with an agenda that will ultimately lead to regression to previous unstable structures and ultimately an aspect of anarchy if we are not careful.

You've got the EU, the US federal government, NATO and even aspects of the UN - all core components of Western systems all finding themselves being picked apart, being seen exclusively as negative with all their positive factors being utterly ignored by a right-wing agenda driven media and before we even realise what we'll be missing, they could be gone or severely damaged.

There are metaphorical babies being thrown out with bathwater all over the place.

Peregrinus

As Christy42 points out, one of the ironies of this situation is that prosecuting a leaker (a) confirms the veracity of the leaked material, and (b) calls renewed/increased attention to the leaked material. The result is that it is politically embarrassing for the administration to prosecute someone for leaking material which has embarrassed the administration; doing so tends to increase the degree of embarrassment they suffer.

Low-placed leakers are identified quite often but, for the reason just stated, they are either dealt with informally (it becomes clear to them that their future career lies outside government service) or the matter is dealt with not as a crime but through employment disciplinary procedures (so they end up being reassigned, demoted or fired).

In this case the defendant is only 25 years old and has only being employed on a government contract since February, so I'm guessing, yeah, this is someone quite junior. Possibly they're prosecuting her to make an example of her, or possibly because Donald Wants A Head On A Plate, and hers is the first head to come along. In which case, as with so many things that Donald wants, this may turn out to be not good for Donald. There are the factors already mentioned, plus in this instance if the Washington Examiner is to be believed the leaked information relates to Russian attempts to corrupt the US electoral process, and the defendant may run with the defence that (a) I love my country, and (b) I had publicise this, because the administration was trying to ignore it/do nothing about it/suppress investigations into it. Which of course will tap right into the already widespread impression that the Trump administration is up to its oxters in vodka and cossack dancing. На здоровье!

Igotadose

BlinkingLights wrote: »

It seems we are headed for an era where the federal government of the US is just becoming a dysfunctional international laughing stock.

In something non-negative, at least one person in government (a charge d'affaires) has shown a bit of ethics:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-diplomacy-idUSKBN18W2NT

"David Rank, the chargé d'affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, has left the State Department over the Trump administration's decision to quit the 2015 Paris agreement to fight climate change, a senior U.S. official said on Monday."

BlinkingLights

Well, it must be incredibly frustrating for anyone with any sense or logic to work under the Trump administration.

He and his team will probably cause the loss of loads of people from the federal government. That's just going to cause a brain drain.

I can't imagine how head wrecking implementing and defending his agenda must be for senior civil servants, diplomatic staff, technical staff and even the US security services and military.

Christy42

Actually the story in question about the Russians attempting to hack the local machines is something I had glossed over previously. That there is no serious response from the administration is damming given the seriousness of the situation.

The administration seems entirely cool with the Russians attempting to subvert American democracy. Trump is wilting before the Russians and seems to be in their pocket whether he realises it or not. I largely think he knows it. Even with all the stories running around he has refused to take a strong stance against Russia and look at how long he kept declaring he had proof of Russian innocence!

Leroy42

I agree Christy42, it staggers me that Trump and the GOP seems totally unmoved by the suggestion (though the evidence is growing) that the Russians, at the very least, tried to be actively involved in the elections.

The only comment Trump ever makes is that collusion is a MSM fake news story. But even if that is true, surely the US is worried about how apparently easily Russia was able to be involved. Whether Trump was involved is almost the easy bit (in that if he was then taking Trump out of the equation solves the problem) the more worrying thing, IMO, is if Trump wasn't involved then how can they possibly do anything to counteract this.

And following on from threat, how can they possibly be sure that Russia is not effectively running the US? It is a deeply worrying scenario, but strangely neither Trump or GOP seem to be too worried about it, certainly not enough to actually make it an important issue.

Peregrinus

Leroy42 wrote: »

And following on from threat, how can they possibly be sure that Russia is not effectively running the US? It is a deeply worrying scenario, but strangely neither Trump or GOP seem to be too worried about it, certainly not enough to actually make it an important issue.

It's possible the Russians are effectively running Trump, but it doesn't appear that Trump is effectively running anything at all, and certainly not the US.

NinjaKirby

mcmoustache wrote: »

"I like Bernie but couldn't vote for Hillary". The usual stuff. Anyway, there are two types of people posting these talking points as I mentioned earlier and I don't think you're a Russian troll.

Is this really such an outrageous talking point?

It seems perfectly reasonable to me that people would not want to vote for Hillary.

Obviously voting Trump as an alternative seems a bit like madness but not voting at all would surely be acceptable if you didn't like either candidate?

The idea of troll farms is so intriguing. I think that would work well with how Trump uses social media. He sends out a tweet and there is a weird ripple across the internet. That covefe stuff was fascinating.

It will never not be hilarious that America managed to elect an internet troll to be their president.

Here's my issue. You are talking about Russian trolls and people not arguing in good faith but then how can anyone know that you are not just a troll from the other side?

If there was a pattern on this tread of certain posters aggressively going after anyone who posts anything that deviates from the norm then wouldn't that suggest that there is some coordinated attempt to control the discourse?

Do the Democrats and Republicans in the US not have troll farms of their own?

I don't doubt now that Russia has tried to influence the US elections but actually I don't care because I do not for one second believe that the Russian Government is somehow the ONLY group in the world with the ability to manipulate opinion online.

The main focus in that discussion has to be on actual state-funded, illegal, hacking and theft. Not "trolling" on messageboards or fake stories spreading on Facebook.

Leroy42

NinjaKirby, you have hit on an important point. The trolls are not really interested in whether people actually believe the stories (same as Fox News etc) it is more about managing the narrative.

Take the recent Pizzagate 'news' as an example, or Seth Rich. It doesn't matter, in the end, what the actual truth of the story is, enough time was wasted on it to derail whatever else was going on. The leaks from DNC server ended up being nothing much of anything, but the stories around the leaks was the real target. It did enough to make people equate Hillary with security threat.

Then end result, as you have alluded to, is that no-one can believe anything they she/hear. Now that fine for the people who spend time reading up on issues etc, but many people will simply turn off (they are all the same is the normal cry).

And that is precisely what they want. It is much easier to control people when they are disengaged. It is up to each of us to listen to both sides, query the points being made and get the information for ourselves.

We are in an era of unprecedented availability of information, yet it appears that rather than helping people to become more informed many are taking the view that there is too much information and opting out.

Hank Scorpio

NinjaKirby wrote: »

Here's my issue. You are talking about Russian trolls and people not arguing in good faith but then how can anyone know that you are not just a troll from the other side?

This, so hard. Trump has a huge online presence, between 4chan, Reddit, twitter and so on. probably in the millions A lot of it is ugly, but to deny its presence and claim it to be Russian bots is somewhat ignorant imo.

NinjaKirby

Peregrinus wrote: »

It's possible the Russians are effectively running Trump, but it doesn't appear that Trump is effectively running anything at all, and certainly not the US.

I would be very surprised if that's the case. Trump seems to be out of his depth and out of control.

I can't imagine that the Russians actually wanted him to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement.

A lot of what Trump does seems to be for Trump and he seems determined to just do what he wants and then try to ride out the accusations and controversy that follows.

It seems like there are 2 competing narratives (3 if you include the idea that Trump is some "4D Chess" playing genius but I think we can discard that).

On one hand you have Trump as the out of control entitled bully with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. On the other hand you have Trump as the Russian puppet colluding with Moscow to damage the US.

I suppose it could be both.

What I see is someone who is not suited for politics in the first place but was actually arrogant enough to think he could fix the country. Actual career politicians SHOULD have been able to stop him in his tracks but the other Republican candidates were so incompetent and hopeless and Trump won the primaries.

In the actual election he was able to take advantage of the Electoral College system to win overall and I think a BIG factor in his win was the fact that his opponent was not a good candidate.

I think Sanders would have beaten Trump. The Democrats chose Clinton.

If the Russians were trying to control this situation then I don't know how much control they actually have/had and whether or not it's simply the illusion of control.

Hank Scorpio

Leroy42 wrote: »

The leaks from DNC server ended up being nothing much of anything, but the stories around the leaks was the real target.

You know there's currently a lawsuit against the DNC filed by Bernie Sanders supporters right? Those people don't seem to think there was nothing in them.

Christy42

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/06/05/politics/trump-travel-ban-courts/index.html

You would swear he is trolling his own helpers at this point. How long had the lawyers worked to argue that people it was not a travel ban and Trump destroys all the work from his own lawyers instantly. Brilliant stuff.

I am curious if the administration will be forced to comment on the attempted attack on the voting machines. They really don't seem to care.

Leroy42

Hank Scorpio wrote: »

You know there's currently a lawsuit against the DNC filed by Bernie Sanders supporters right? Those people don't seem to think there was nothing in them.

Isn't that lawsuit based on internal DNC workings and how they were pro Clinton?

That is not the narrative of the leaked e-mails that was used during the campaign. Trump heavily pushed the fact that HC had allowed top secret info to be stolen etc.

Nobody was really worried about how Bernie was treated (well Bernie was of course)

You are mixing two things up here (not unusual I suppose).

NinjaKirby

Leroy42 wrote: »

NinjaKirby, you have hit on an important point. The trolls are not really interested in whether people actually believe the stories (same as Fox News etc) it is more about managing the narrative.

Take the recent Pizzagate 'news' as an example, or Seth Rich. It doesn't matter, in the end, what the actual truth of the story is, enough time was wasted on it to derail whatever else was going on. The leaks from DNC server ended up being nothing much of anything, but the stories around the leaks was the real target. It did enough to make people equate Hillary with security threat.

Then end result, as you have alluded to, is that no-one can believe anything they she/hear. Now that fine for the people who spend time reading up on issues etc, but many people will simply turn off (they are all the same is the normal cry).

And that is precisely what they want. It is much easier to control people when they are disengaged. It is up to each of us to listen to both sides, query the points being made and get the information for ourselves.

We are in an era of unprecedented availability of information, yet it appears that rather than helping people to become more informed many are taking the view that there is too much information and opting out.

It's exactly how I feel. Disengaged.

I feel like if you step into the wrong company with an opinion that even deviates slightly from "Drumpf is the Worst" or "The Donald is the Best" then you are going to be aggressively shut down.

The problem for me is that they actually have been as bad as each other at one point or another and so there is no trust at all.

Someone is coming to me and talking about Russian trolls and I'm thinking "well couldn't anyone with enough money set up a Troll Farm and do this" and there is no reassurance at all that all sides are not deep into this.

Peregrinus

NinjaKirby wrote: »

On one hand you have Trump as the out of control entitled bully with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. On the other hand you have Trump as the Russian puppet colluding with Moscow to damage the US.

I don't for a minute imagine that Trump sees himself as the obedient servant of Moscow. More that he is close enough to the Russians, and is surrounded by people who are close enough to the Russians, that the Russians are in a position to manipulate him, to some extent. He himself would not recognise that this was happening because, to his mind, it would be simply unthinkable that anyone could manipulate him.

But, as I say, even if the Russians can manipulate him, there's a limit to what they could achieve with that, since he lacks the political awareness or skills to be an effective president.

The payoff here for the Russians may not actually be that they get to control or influence the US through its president, but just that they get to ensure that the US has an ineffective president who can achieve nothing, and who will diminish the stature, influence and respect the US enjoys internationally.

Hank Scorpio

Leroy42 wrote: »

Isn't that lawsuit based on internal DNC workings and how they were pro Clinton?

Yup, same reason DWS resigned. Someone from her office allegedly phoned up the law office using a voice changer to mask their identity, I shít you not.

And I agree with you for the most part, there was fake narratives generated from the emails and pushed online, but there also was legitimate information, something which is irrelevant now so I won't go into it.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/dnc-lawsuit-now-includes-claim-that-someone-in-debbie-wasserman-schultzs-office-used-voice-changer/article/2624876

Leroy42

Going back to the recent leak, it would appear that there is growing evidence that Russia was actively involved.

Trump said before the election it was rigged, he said after the election that 5m illegal votes had been cast, but seems strangely silent on a report that alleges Russia tried to hack into voting machines.

You have to question why that would be. Why would the leader of world democracy be so unmoved by the allegation of hacking of said democracy by a foreign power. He seems worried about the London Mayor, about TV ratings, about his daughters collection being sold in certain stores.

AS he said in the recent speech about the Paris accord, his job is to serve the citizens of the USA. How does failing to deal with a direct threat to democracy fulfil that remit?

Leroy42

Hank Scorpio wrote: »

Yup, same reason DWS resigned. Someone from her office allegedly phoned up the law office using a voice changer to mask their identity, I shít you not.

And I agree with you for the most part, there was fake narratives generated from the emails and pushed online, but there also was legitimate information, something which is irrelevant now I won't go into it.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/dnc-lawsuit-now-includes-claim-that-someone-in-debbie-wasserman-schultzs-office-used-voice-changer/article/2624876

Right, so not the same thing at all then.

Hank Scorpio

Leroy42 wrote: »

Right, so not the same thing at all then.

HRC allegedly losing top secret information had nothing to do with the Wikileaks releases, so I don't know what you're talking about.

NinjaKirby

Hank Scorpio wrote: »

This, so hard. Trump has a huge online presence, between 4chan, Reddit, twitter and so on. probably in the millions A lot of it is ugly, but to deny its presence and claim it to be Russian bots is somewhat ignorant imo.

When you consider also how much people absolutely will not accept being "Wrong On The Internet" you can see how that stubbornness can come across as trolling or just straight up malicious dishonesty.

There are plenty of people who have been demonized online or had their careers and/or lives ruined without the shadowy presence of "The Russians".

The focus of what the Russians may or may not have done should really be on any illegal hacking or theft that has taken place.

If it turns out that there is some massive factory in Russia where people make up fake blogs and Facebook posts and tweets then that is certainly a very interesting concept but to what extent is that even illegal?

Leroy42

NinjaKirby wrote: »

It's exactly how I feel. Disengaged.

I feel like if you step into the wrong company with an opinion that even deviates slightly from "Drumpf is the Worst" or "The Donald is the Best" then you are going to be aggressively shut down.

The problem for me is that they actually have been as bad as each other at one point or another and so there is no trust at all.

Someone is coming to me and talking about Russian trolls and I'm thinking "well couldn't anyone with enough money set up a Troll Farm and do this" and there is no reassurance at all that all sides are not deep into this.

But you have the power and access to info to get to the truth, or a least cut away some of the lies. They are not all the same. That is a cop out to allow people the excuse for not bothering.

Every person has a bias, it is part of who we are. But most people try to be objective even within that bias. Case in point being Corbyn in the UK. Most people thought of him is crazy etc, but the election campaign has shown, even if you don't agree with his policies, that the man comes across as honest and sincere. The normal view of him is wrong.

So you take the speech from Trump about the Paris accord. One can either just accept what he says as truth, ignore it as being wrong because it's Trump, or actually look at what he said and see if makes sense.

The same for his Wall, Nato, Muslim Ban etc. Does the evidence back up the position he takes. It is up to each of us to do that. It seems, to me anyway, that many people want someone else to do it for them, and then are surprised when that person gives them a bias viewpoint.

A final point, I am assuming you are talking about posters on this site being demonised for the views that are contrary to the anti-Trump narrative. If so, then I disagree with you. Certainly people are called up on their points, asked to back up their claims. We hear things like "everyone is the same", "HC is worse" etc etc. Now they might very well be true, but you need to have backup to make those claims.

It the double standards to annoy me. HC is terrible because of a potential security threat. Trump calls for Russia to hack into servers to find e-mails and that is fine. Trump has a major problem with leakers in the WH, but openly applauded Wikileaks etc prior to the election. We have people who seem aghast that the DNC would favour one candidate (a democratic stalwart) over a blow-in (Bernie was independent) but are seemingly at ease with Trump using any tactic to slur his opponents (Cruz dad knew Harvey Oswald!).

None of them are clean, you don't get to be in those positions without dirting your hands. But it is this seeming inability of people to even consider that their 'team' is somehow involved. It is akin to football. Team A always get screwed by the Refs, the associations, never get the 50/50 calls, etc etc.

As an example, today we have confirmation that the US are actively investigating an alleged attempt to hack elections. YEt some on here want to discuss whether Bernie was treated failry.