Rommie wrote:
I don't frankly give a fuck about CNN; I haven't watched it in years and most of the bombshells published thus far in bringing the Russia investigation forward have been from the Washington Post and New York Times.
No need to get hostile. I wasn't accusing you of getting all of or any of your information from CNN. It's just ironic that they're doing this shit when Trump has been accusing them of being Fake News. And they're really, really, really pushing the Russia agenda, so it was on my mind. The NYT and Washington Post have also had to post retractions btw. Just pointing it out. I already read where you said you're getting your political news from.
Rommie wrote:...because there's plenty verified by Trump et al. themselves that we don't need to speculate about golden showers or what have you.
Plenty of stuff verified by Trump? I'm being sincere when I ask you to elaborate.
I will agree that it's clear these guys don't think what they did was illegal, and it's also obvious that Trump the president similarly thinks this is a lot of noise about a non-story. (I find the irony pretty amazing in terms of the "BUT HER EMAILS" stuff from last year though.) I cannot imagine however in a million years that revealing this information in this way was run past the lawyer, as frankly even if one genuinely believes it was not illegal, no lawyer hired in the past few days will have had time to review everything involved (and probably not allow it even if he had). I'm also not going to call this a smoking gun of criminality, but I will put in the category of "definitely sketchy."
I absolutely agree that it's sketchy. I also absolutely agree that Jr. seems to be either very naive or stupid or both. By the same token, any lawyer agreeing to work for this family at this point in time surely knows what they're getting into.
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon_lol.gif)
Btw, if you're looking for sources in politics, I have really enjoyed the subreddit Neutral Politics in the last few months, which has a thread discussing the criminality
here. Really heavily moderated and just devoted to people trying to get facts with sources about various topics in politics.
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_e_smile.gif)
I will absolutely check it out. I'm on the hunt for sources, and while I find Tucker Carlson amusing and pretty good at debate, I don't consider him a source for anything, merely another person with an opinion.
I dunno, I guess the part that gets to me is just the complete lack of the thought that plausible deniability is a thing you might want, on multiple levels. Even if said meeting wasn't illegal, could you imagine the top people in any other campaign's history arranging a meeting for dirt via email, with the subject "Russia and Clinton- private and confidential"? How in fucking hell dumb do you have to be to do that? It's pretty clear all campaigns search for dirt on each other these days, but I'm pretty sure you tend to set these things up via phone to minimize paper trail, and even then meet with a random underling. I find that entire angle a bit bewildering TBH.
I definitely could imagine other campaigns arranging a meeting for dirt via email. There is no shortage of stupid in politics. Now I'll move into speculation. I believe the reason you find this angle bewildering and the reason you are astonished at their behavior is because you have not been brought up in an entitled environment thinking you actually deserve to have everything handed to you, thinking either that you can do no wrong, or if you do, your lawyers will handle it. I mean, seriously, how is someone raised by Trump (whom I believe is a narcissist) going to come out of it sensible? I'd go so far as to suggest Jr. did this to get Dad's approval. And he kept it a secret because he wanted to walk in to his dad's office and announce that he had the smoking gun that would put Hillary in jail. When he failed, he kept it secret because why bring up a fail? Now, he'll throw himself on his own petard to protect his father. Yeah. I'm making this up, but it kind of makes sense, don't you think?