Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Criminal Donald and the GOP weakened the United States by pushing a bogus election fraud lie causing even further division amongst Americans. Not only that, it damages our democracy and our election process. The GOP attempted coup allowed a thug like Putin to overthrow Ukraine when he sees right wing fascists in America doing it to our own country. The radical right's relentless attempt to delegimaitize President Biden is an absolute disgrace as they praise and root for Putin to take Ukraine. The GOP are the ultimate anti American traitors.     

Trump's praise for Putin will look 'atrocious' when tens of thousands die: former ambassador



Donald Trump's recent praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin will look "atrocious" if, as U.S. intelligence predicts, tens of thousands of people die during an invasion of Ukraine, according to Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia.

"There's going to come a moment of truth very soon," McFaul said on MSNBC on Wednesday. "There is a good and evil in the world."

McFaul pointed to not only Trump's comments praising Putin, but also those of his former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo.

"There is an autocratic Putin that's about to attack a democratic Ukraine, and if all the predictions that we have, all the intelligence is right, tens of thousands of people are going to die, and Mr. Pompeo's comments that he just made yesterday or today, and Mr. Trump's comments that he just made, are going to look really, really silly. They're going to look atrocious that when it was good and evil, they were standing next to evil."

"And the second thing that they fundamentally don't get, they always talk about 'Biden's weak, Biden's week, Biden's weak,'" McFaul said. "What makes us weak in the world is this kind of division. This is exactly what makes us weak, when we are divided amongst ourselves when it's a clearcut thing between good and evil. We are on the eve of probably the biggest war in Europe since 1939, and what are they focused on? Attacking the president of the United States. That makes us weak."

Watch below.

https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-2656780239/

[Rick Plant]

Just another example of Russian collusion. 4 years of weakness with Criminal Donald got us where we are today. Nobody hides info like that unless they are up to no good. And the GOP looked the other way and allowed this criminality to go on. Not to mention Criminal Donald took Top Secret documents to Florida. Who knows what he was doing with it. 

Trump went to 'extraordinary lengths' to hide details of Putin meetings, report says

January 14, 2019



Donald Trump went to "extraordinary lengths" to keep details from his conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin secret – even from officials within his own administration, The Washington Post reported this weekend, citing unnamed sources.

After meeting with Putin at the 2017 Group of 20summit in Hamburg, Germany, Trump took his interpreter's notes and told him not to discuss the meeting with anyone, including other U.S. officials, the Post reported.

The paper said Trump's handling of the Hamburg meeting was "part of a broader pattern by the president of shielding his communications with Putin from public scrutiny and preventing even high-ranking officials in his own administration from fully knowing what he has told one of the United States’ main adversaries."

No detailed record exists from five of Trump's interactions with the Russian leader since taking office, the Post reported. It was unclear if that was the only time Trump took his interpreters' notes, but the paper said several administration officials have been unable to obtain a readout from his meeting last year with Putin in Helsinki.

Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was present at the meeting in Hamburg. The Post said Tillerson did not answer questions about Trump asking the interpreter to keep details of the meeting quiet, or if Trump took the interpreter's notes.

Fiona Hill, a senior Russia adviser on the National Security Council, and former State Department official John Heffern asked Trump's interpreter for more information about the Hamburg meeting, which is how they learned of the president's request to keep the details under wraps, the Post reported.

In a news conference after the meeting, Tillerson said Putin denied interfering in the 2016 election, but refused to say how Trump responded to the denial, per the Post. Officials told the Post that the only detail from the meeting that the interpreter did share was that Trump told Putin, "I believe you."

Democrats were alarmed by The Washington Post report.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., has sought details from Trump's meetings with Putin and, after the 2018 Helsinki meeting, called for the president's interpreter to testify before Congress.

In August, she and Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., sent Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a letter requesting records from that meeting, including the interpreter's notes. They cited the "extraordinary and, to our knowledge, unprecedented circumstances of President Trump’s two hour, one-on-one meeting with a leader identified as a threat to the United States by President Trump’s own National Security Strategy."

"When he takes the interpreter's notes and wants to destroy them so no one can see what was said in written transcript, you know it raises serious questions about the relationship between this president and Putin," Sen. Dick Durbin said Sunday on ABC's "This Week."

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said if the Post's report is accurate, Trump "broke all protocol."

"The American government does not know what was discussed between Trump and Vladimir Putin in that, frankly, pathetic, embarrassing encounter where Trump was kowtowing on the world stage to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki," Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on CNN's "State of the Union."

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., plans to seek more information about Trump's meetings with Putin.

"It’s been several months since Helsinki and we still don’t know what went on in that meeting," Engel told the Post. "It’s appalling. It just makes you want to scratch your head."

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said Sunday that he accepted Trump's denial and said those one-on-one meetings are part of the president's personal style.

"He likes to create a personal relationship, build that relationship, even rebuild that relationship like he does with other world leaders around," McCarthy said on "Face the Nation."

When asked if thought Trump's interpreter should be asked to testify, McCarthy said, "I want this president to be able to build the relationship, even on a personal level, with all the world leaders."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/01/13/trump-putin-meetings-interpreter-notes/2565471002/

[Rick Plant]

Trump met Putin without staff or note takers present — again
Trump reportedly keeps finding a way to meet the Russian leader privately.

Jan 29, 2019

If you’re a US president, it’s probably not a great idea to meet with a foreign leader who meddled in your country’s elections without some way to record what’s being discussed.

But that’s just what President Donald Trump apparently did — again.

According to the Financial Times, Trump spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin during last November’s G20 summit in Argentina without a US official present to take notes. First lady Melania Trump was by the president’s side during the chat, but no staff joined them.

The White House had previously acknowledged that both leaders met for an “informal” talk but didn’t disclose that Trump had no official member of his team present. Putin did have someone, though: his translator, although it’s unclear if that person wrote anything down.

This isn’t the first time Trump has done this. During the G20 meeting in Germany in July 2017, he got up from his seat during a dinner in order to sit next to Putin, who did have his translator to help. That meeting, which the White House didn’t initially reveal, came just hours after Trump bought Putin’s denial that Russia didn’t intervene in the 2016 presidential election.

Why having no note taker matters

There are two major problems with Trump’s continued and ill-advised conduct.

First, the optics. Trump continually finds ways to meet with Putin privately. That’s a really bad look when you consider the fact that US intelligence says the Russian directed a sophisticated campaign to help Trump win the White House, not to mention special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into possible Trump-Russia ties during the 2016 presidential campaign.

But second, and more importantly, we’ll never really know what happened during the Trump-Putin chat since only four people were there — Trump, Putin, the first lady, and the translator — and nothing was recorded (that we know of).

In addition to this, the administration apparently has no notes of any of the many Trump-Putin interactions over a two-year span. And at least on one occasion in 2017, Trump told his translator after an official meeting with Putin not to share details of the meeting with staff. Trump actually seized his notes.

This isn’t a minor clerical issue. It actively hinders some US officials from doing their job when they don’t receive a detailed briefing about what the president discussed with another head of state. Without knowing what they agr3eed to, fought about, or even laughed at, it’s nearly impossible for the administration to conduct policy accordingly.

And let’s not forget that we’re talking about Trump here: the guy who shared highly classified intelligence in a meeting with top Russian officials in the Oval Office back in May 2017 and who has surrounded himself with a high number of pro-Kremlin confidants.

https://www.vox.com/2019/1/29/18202515/trump-putin-russia-g20-ft-note

[Rick Plant]

Former right-wing insider explains some American conservatives' love affair with Putin



Fox News host Tucker Carlson and other prominent conservatives who support Russian President Vladimir Putin "hate America and want it to burn," according to former right-wing media creator Matthew Sheffield.

Sheffield, who helped create NewsBusters and served as a managing editor for the Washington Examiner, took to Twitter on Wednesday to explain why some conservatives' obsession with Putin shows how the American right has "devolved into personality-cult worship."

"(Fox News host) Tucker Carlson explaining why he supports Vladimir Putin is very instructive about what being on political right means today," Sheffield wrote, sharing a screen shot of Carlson's commentary from his show on Tuesday night. "The global right no longer operates as an ideologically coherent system. Instead, it's a series of identity factions built on negative partisanship. The point of being on the right now is about shared opposition to 'out' groups. It is not about a shared positive agenda. Mitch McConnell actively refuses to run on an agenda. Donald Trump in 2020 deliberately refused to create a GOP platform. Ditto for Putin, Gabbard, etc."

"The reactionary project has never been about creating coherent policy frameworks that are responsive to contemporary political issues," Sheffield added. "Instead, it offers identity and strong-man leadership as the solution to everything. Policies don't matter. Only the people in charge do."

Sheffield wrote that Putin's appeal to "religious authoritarians in the U.S. predates former President Donald Trump by many years." He shared a 2017 article from Right Wing Watch titled, "How the American Right Learned to Love Moscow in the Era of Trump," about how "Putin oligarchs have directly funded many Christian Right initiatives has never been more relevant."

He went on to say that the "authoritarian personality ... has has supplanted ideological conservatism and temperament in most global right-wing parties," pointing to Theodor Adorno's "Analysis of Trump’s Authoritarian Personality."

"With right-wing politics devolved into personality-cult worship, it must by necessity attack any other form of ethical system, such as traditional faith," Sheffield wrote. "It also must attack our imperfect Western republican system--not as in need of improvement, but as wholly illegitimate."

"These sweeping reactionary attacks against bourgeois liberalism have a deep resonance w/certain anarchistic leftists who hate 'the system' but who refuse to understand change," Sheffield added. "This explains why there are a fair number of people w/left-derived politics who praise fascists. It also explains why there are more than a few atheists who openly ally themselves with Christofascists. The one thing Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwald, and Ginni Thomas have in common is that they all hate America and want it to burn. But simple-minded centrism and deference to corrupt businesses and politicians who control the current order will not work to repeal the protean appeal of fascism. Acknowledging and working to solve the current system's problems is critical, more on which later."

You can read the full thread below:

1/n: Tucker Carlson explaining why he supports Vladimir Putin is very instructive about what being on political right means today.

The global right no longer operates as an ideologically coherent system. Instead, it's a series of identity factions built on negative partisanship.



https://www.rawstory.com/tucker-carlson-2656779339/

[Rick Plant]

The real reason why the GOP loves Putin

On the surface, it seems like Republicans can't decide how they feel about Russian President Vladimir Putin invading the sovereign country of Ukraine. On one hand, the more old guard GOP leadership is formally denouncing Putin and trying to score their political points against Joe Biden by claiming that this is evidence that the U.S. president is "weak." But both their de facto leader, Donald Trump, and their de facto party agenda-setter, Tucker Carlson, have been out there making their love and support of Putin known. As with every internal conflict in the GOP, the smart bet is the Trumpian wing will win over the traditional conservatives, even though it once again means that Republicans will be siding against America and democracy in favor of the forces of authoritarianism.

It's tempting to write this off, as so many in the mainstream media like to do, as evidence that the Republican party is "afraid" of Trump as if they were setting aside good intentions out of fear of crossing the orange mob boss who runs their party. The darker truth, however, is that this is part of a larger turn in the GOP towards anti-democratic, even fascist politics. As journalist Stephen Marche told Salon's Chauncey DeVega, "a huge number of Americans want such a dictatorship," and it's important to ask why, even though the answers don't "feel good."

One important document that points to the answer was released this week by Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott, a pamphlet titled, "An 11 Point Plan To Rescue America." Needless to say, the title is misleading, as this pamphlet is very much about destroying America — by dismantling basic freedoms and democracy itself — under the guise of "saving" it.

Despite the heavy declarations of patriotism, the document presents a depressing and dystopian vision of America that is at total odds with the values of freedom, equality, and democracy that are supposed to define this country. Through rhetoric heavy on euphemism and doublespeak, Scott's plans are not hard to suss out: Replacing fact-based education with nationalistic propaganda, destroying voting rights, ending all efforts to ameliorate racial inequalities, and forcing rigid and sexist gender roles on all Americans. Scott justifies the latter by declaring it's "God's design for humanity," which of course, violates the very first amendment to the constitution that protects freedom of religion.

It's not just, as Paul Waldman of the Washington Post wrote this weekend, that Republicans want "a return to the 1950s, a dramatic rollback of social progress to a supposedly simpler time, with traditional hierarchies restored." As Ed Kilgore wrote in New York, this document is "batshit crazy," full of ideas like ending Medicare and Social Security, as well as dismantling federal agencies like the Department of Education and the IRS. As Aaron Rupar noted in his newsletter, "It's not that Republicans don't stand for anything. It's that they stand for things that are unpopular and divisive." For instance, Scott's plan to replace real education with book bannings and nationalistic propaganda? Polling shows a whopping 83% of Americans oppose the idea.

Scott ostensibly opposes Putin and his war on Ukraine. This document, however, shows why that stance is increasingly incoherent for Republicans — and therefore opposed by their true leaders, i.e. Fox News hosts and Trump. Like Putin, American Republicans support a far-right social agenda that simply cannot withstand democratic debate and fair election systems. That's why Republicans are rallying behind Trump and his Big Lie. Democracy itself is their enemy, and they are siding with a transnational anti-democratic movement against the U.S. and its values.

The Trumpian wing of the party often doesn't even really bother to hide their goals. On a recent episode of his popular podcast "War Room," former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, as his wont, got vivid and violent with his fantasies of imposing one-party rule on the U.S.

Steve Bannon today: "We have a chance, once in our lifetime, to destroy the Democratic Party as an institution. We cannot let this slip from our grasp .. That is everyone's maniacal focus. We're in a war." pic.twitter.com/0A2vmrew5V
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) February 23, 2022

This kind of rhetoric has become so normal on the right that it's easy to get inured to it, but it's important to remember what exactly Bannon is saying here. The Democratic Party represents a strong majority of Americans, a fact which is already disturbingly hidden by election systems that favor right-wing minorities. Since 1992, the Democrat won the popular vote in every presidential election but one. Bannon's "war" is very plainly about destroying the ability of the majority of voters to express their preferences in elections.

This kind of rhetoric has become so normal on the right that it's easy to get inured to it, but it's important to remember what exactly Bannon is saying here. The Democratic Party represents a strong majority of Americans, a fact which is already disturbingly hidden by election systems that favor right-wing minorities. Since 1992, the Democrat won the popular vote in every presidential election but one. Bannon's "war" is very plainly about destroying the ability of the majority of voters to express their preferences in elections.

A slightly slicker but similarly disturbing message is evident in a recent campaign ad by Peter Thiel-backed GOP candidate for Arizona's Senate seat, Blake Masters.

America isn't just an idea. We're a country. We're a people, with a history, and a culture. pic.twitter.com/5HD077MMf4
— Blake Masters (@bgmasters) February 22, 2022

Don't be fooled by the faux-innocuous assertions of cultural history or the glib tokenism of mentioning Chuck Berry. By declaring that America is a "people" and not an "idea," Masters gestures towards this white nationalistic, anti-democratic argument. This is a strike against the very foundational premise of the country, which is that this a constitutional democracy defined by its laws and ideals, one that is flexible and can evolve alongside its population. Instead, he clearly wishes to replace that vision with a white nationalist one, where "America" is about "its people," a group that will inevitably be defined along exclusionary lines of race and ethnicity.

As Roy Edroso, a writer focused on chronicling the right, noted on Twitter Wednesday, a focal point for the softly pro-Putin voices in the GOP is that "Russia is right because it persecutes gay and trans people, and America wrong because it doesn't."

It is a particularly salient example of why Republicans are growing increasingly anti-democratic, because their vicious bigotries on this front simply cannot withstand the rigors of the ballot box. We see this in Texas, where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott issued a vile executive order instructing CPS to strip parental rights off anyone who supports their trans child's gender identity. The bill was proposed in the Texas legislature, but it's so gruesome that it couldn't pass, despite firm Republican control of the state. So Abbott is simply going around the democratic system in a bid to destroy families in the name of his rigid gender ideology.

Like Putin, Republicans know that their views cannot win in a free, fair democratic debate. The tension between claiming to be for democracy in Ukraine while opposing democracy in the U.S. is causing way too much cognitive dissonance on the right. It's why Trump is going with a simpler message of blatantly rooting for Putin. Trumpism has always been part of this transnational war on democracy. Bannon in particular loves to trumpet this fact. With this invasion of Ukraine, this alliance between Trumpists at home and authoritarians worldwide is only going to strengthen — and strengthen Trump's hold on the Republican Party.

https://www.rawstory.com/the-real-reason-why-the-gop-loves-putin/

[Rick Plant]

Trump sides with Putin as Biden tries to stop a war
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/23/politics/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-joe-biden/index.html

[Rick Plant]

President Biden just said that every Russian asset in America will be frozen. Does that include Russian asset Donald Trump?