He's certainly trying to hide SOMETHING

[homersapien 11,366]

This has got to be at least as good as what he's trying to hide in his tax returns.

 

Trump and Putin’s Cone of Seclusion

It’s not just unusual that there are no notes from Trump’s meetings with Putin. It’s unprecedented.

 

The Washington Post’s Greg Miller reported Sunday that President Donald Trump’s confiscation of the translator’s notes from a one-on-one conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2017 was “unusual.” This is incorrect. It was unprecedented. There is nothing like it in the annals of presidential history.

It is also truly unusual that Trump failed to bring in a note taker, along with his translator, during his meetings with Putin, as almost every other president has done when meeting with foreign heads of state since the end of World War II. Usually the note taker is an official or aide with deep background in the subject under discussion........

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/01/trump-putin-meeting-no-note-taker.html

 

[homersapien 11,366]

Here are 18 reasons Trump could be a Russian asset

On Friday, the New York Times reported that “in the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests.” That investigation may well be continuing under the auspices of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. We don’t know what Mueller has learned. But we can look at the key, publicly available evidence that both supports and undercuts this explosive allegation.

Here is some of the evidence suggesting “Individual 1” could be a Russian “asset”:

— Trump has a long financial history with Russia. As summarized by Jonathan Chait in an invaluable New York magazine article: “From 2003 to 2017, people from the former USSR made 86 all-cash purchases — a red flag of potential money laundering — of Trump properties, totaling $109 million. In 2010, the private-wealth division of Deutsche Bank also loaned him hundreds of millions of dollars during the same period it was laundering billions in Russian money. ‘Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,’ said Donald Jr. in 2008. ‘We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia,’ boasted Eric Trump in 2014.” According to Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s guilty plea of lying to Congress, Trump was even pursuing his dream of building a Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign with the help of a Vladimir Putin aide. These are the kind of financial entanglements that intelligence services such as the FSB typically use to ensnare foreigners, and they could leave Trump vulnerable to blackmail.

— The Russians interfered in the 2016 U.S. election to help elect Trump president.

— Trump encouraged the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails on July 27, 2016 (“Russia, if you’re listening”), on the very day that Russian intelligence hackers tried to attack Clinton’s personal and campaign servers.

— There were, according to the Moscow Project, “101 contacts between Trump’s team and Russia linked operatives,” and “the Trump team tried to cover up every single one of them.” The most infamous of these contacts was the June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower between the Trump campaign high command and a Kremlin emissary promising dirt on Clinton. Donald Trump Jr.’s reaction to the offer of Russian assistance? “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”

— The Trump campaign was full of individuals, such as Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and Michael Flynn, with suspiciously close links to Moscow.

— Manafort, who ran the Trump campaign for free and was heavily in debt to a Russian oligarch, now admits to offering his Russian business partner, who is suspected of links to Russian intelligence, polling data that could have been used to target the Russian social media campaign on behalf of Trump.

— Trump associate Roger Stone, who was in contact with Russian conduit WikiLeaks, reportedly knew in advance that the Russians had hacked Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails. (Stone has denied it .)

— Once in office, Trump fired Comey to stop the investigation of the “Russia thing” — and then bragged about having done so to the Russian ambassador and foreign minister while also sharing with them top-secret information. Later, Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions because he would not end the special counsel investigation that resulted after the firing of Comey. As Lawfare editor Benjamin Wittes argues, “the obstruction was the collusion” — Trump has been effectively protecting the Russians by trying to impede the investigation of their attack on the United States.

— Trump has refused to consistently acknowledge that Russia interfered in the U.S. election or mobilize a government-wide effort to stop future interference. He has accepted Putin’s protestations that the Russians did not meddle in the election over the “high confidence” assessment of the U.S. intelligence community that they did.

— Like no previous president, Trump attacks and undermines the Justice Department and the FBI (“a cancer in our country”) — two institutions that stand on the front lines of combatting Russian espionage and influence operations in the United States.

— Again, like no previous president, Trump attacks and undermines the European Union and NATO — he has suggested that France should leave the E.U. and that the United States should leave NATO, reportedly saying, “NATO is as bad as NAFTA.” The E.U. and NATO are the two major obstacles to Russian designs in Europe.

— Trump supports populist, pro-Russian leaders in Europe, such as Viktor Orban in Hungary and Marine Le Pen in France, just as the Russians do.

— Trump has praised Putin (“a strong leader”) while trashing just about everyone else from grade-B Hollywood celebrities to leaders of allied nations. Trump even praised Putin for expelling U.S. diplomats and, notwithstanding instruction from his aides (“DO NOT CONGRATULATE”), congratulated Putin on winning a rigged reelection.

— Trump was utterly supine in his meetings with Putin, principally in Hamburg and Helsinki. Even more suspicious, according to a Post article on Saturday, Trump “has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with . . . Putin, including on at least one occasion taking possession of the notes of his own interpreter and instructing the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials . . . Several officials said they were never able to get a reliable readout of the president’s two-hour meeting in Helsinki.”

— Trump defends the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and repeats other pro-Russian talking points.

— Trump is pulling U.S. troops out of Syria, handing that country to Russia and its ally Iran.

— Trump has effectively done nothing in response to the Russian attack on Ukrainian ships in international waters, thereby encouraging greater Russian aggression.

— Trump is sowing chaos in the government, most recently with a record-breaking partial government shutdown and “acting” appointees in key posts such as the Defense Department and Justice Department, thus furthering a Russian objective of undermining its chief adversary.

Now that we’ve listed 18 reasons Trump could be a Russian asset, let’s look at the exculpatory evidence:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can’t think of anything that would exonerate Trump aside from the difficulty of grasping what once would have seemed unimaginable: that a president of the United States could actually have been compromised by a hostile foreign power.

In his own defense, Trump claims he has been tougher on Russia “than any other President,” but literally in the next sentence he says, “getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing.” When the United States actually has taken steps to get tough with Russia in the past two years, it has usually been the work of Congress (the 2017 Russia sanctions bill) or Trump aides (expelling 60 Russian diplomats). The Post reports that Trump was “furious” when his administration was portrayed as being tough on Russia, and NBC News reports that he instructed subordinates never to publicly discuss plans to sell weapons to Ukraine.

This is hardly a “beyond a reasonable doubt” case that Trump is a Russian agent — certainly not in the way that Robert Hanssen or Aldrich Ames were. But it is a strong, circumstantial case that Trump is, as former acting CIA director Michael Morell and former CIA director Michael V. Hayden warned during the 2016 campaign, “an unwitting agent of the Russian federation” (Morell) or a “useful fool” who is “manipulated by Moscow” (Hayden). If Trump isn’t actually a Russian agent, he is doing a pretty good imitation of one.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/here-are-18-reasons-why-trump-could-be-a-russian-asset/2019/01/13/45b1b250-174f-11e9-88fe-f9f77a3bcb6c_story.html?utm_term=.48dabb18789f

[SaltyTiger 7,790]

13 hours ago, homersapien said:

This has got to be at least as good as what he's trying to hide

 

[Proud Tiger 4,261]

3 hours ago, SaltyTiger said:

 

Is this homie after one of his wet dreams?

[homersapien 11,366]

I like how Salty and PT prevaricate when faced with the truth. 

It's funny, if predictable.

 

[HVAU 673]

1 hour ago, Proud Tiger said:

Is this homie after one of his wet dreams?

Seriously dude?

[AuCivilEng1 11,000]

6 minutes ago, HVAU said:

Seriously dude?

Are you even really that surprised?

[homersapien 11,366]

1 hour ago, HVAU said:

Seriously dude?

That's what passes for 'wit' in his mind. 

[HVAU 673]

4 hours ago, Proud Tiger said:

 

You always make me feel special PT.  Hope you're having a wonderful evening, you old curmudgeon.

 

[SaltyTiger 7,790]

5 hours ago, HVAU said:

Seriously dude?

 

4 hours ago, homersapien said:

That's what passes for 'wit' in his mind. 

 

5 hours ago, AuCivilEng1 said:

Are you even really that surprised?

 

Look at the three stooges that replied to PT's humor. 

[HVAU 673]

59 minutes ago, SaltyTiger said:

 

 

Look at the three stooges that replied to PT's humor. 

Good thing he's got you to come to his defense. Kind of weird seeing you White Knight for the old boy.

[HVAU 673]

3 minutes ago, Proud Tiger said:

One more so you will have sweet dreams you naïve youngun'

It's always nice to be in the thoughts of another.  Enjoy your Geritol nightcap and sleep well.

[Proud Tiger 4,261]

Just now, HVAU said:

It's always nice to be in the thoughts of another.  Enjoy your Geritol nightcap and sleep well.

Actually it's a whisky nightcap by the fire wit a good cigar. sleep tight. And just to be nice I removed the last emoji

 

[Proud Tiger 4,261]

7 minutes ago, HVAU said:

It's always nice to be in the thoughts of another.  Enjoy your Geritol nightcap and sleep well.

Actually Homer stole my geritol so it's a whisky nightcap by the fire with a good cigar. sleep tight. And just to be nice in a weak moment I removed the last emoji

 

[homersapien 11,366]

11 hours ago, SaltyTiger said:

 

Look at the three stooges that replied to PT's humor. 

More 'wit'.    I'll bet Salty 'killed' in the third grade.

[SaltyTiger 7,790]

10 hours ago, HVAU said:

Good thing he's got you to come to his defense. Kind of weird seeing you White Knight for the old boy.

I am just a great kind of guy like that HV. When I lived in a neighborhood I would forgo blowing leaves at times. Just so a neighbor could win "yard of the month".

I feel sure that @homersapien would blow his leaves into a  neighbors yard. 

[NolaAuTiger 3,295]

1 hour ago, homersapien said:

More 'wit'.    

Homer, did you eat a lot of paint chips when you were a kid? 

[homersapien 11,366]

13 minutes ago, NolaAuTiger said:

Homer, did you eat a lot of paint chips when you were a kid? 

Hah, that's a good one!  You're right in there with Salty.

[NolaAuTiger 3,295]

1 hour ago, homersapien said:

Hah, that's a good one!  You're right in there with Salty.

Did you?

[homersapien 11,366]

Trump-Putin meeting secrecy presents 'very damning picture'

The first time they met was in Germany. President Donald Trump took his interpreter’s notes afterwards and ordered him not to disclose what he heard to anyone. Later that night, at a dinner, Mr Trump pulled up a seat next to Russian President Vladimir Putin to talk without any American witnesses at all.

Their third encounter was in Vietnam, when Mr Trump seemed to take Mr Putin’s word that he had not interfered in U.S. elections. A formal summit followed in Helsinki, where the two leaders kicked out everyone but the interpreters.

Most recently, they chatted in Buenos Aires, Argentina, after Mr Trump said they would not meet because of Russian aggression.

Mr Trump has adamantly insisted there was “no collusion” with Russia during his 2016 presidential campaign. But each of the five times he has met with Mr Putin since taking office, he has fueled suspicions about their relationship.

The unusually secretive way he has handled these meetings has left his own administration guessing what happened and piqued the interest of investigators.

“What’s disconcerting is the desire to hide information from your own team,” said Andrew S. Weiss, who was a Russia adviser to President Bill Clinton. “The fact that Mr Trump didn’t want the State Department or members of the White House team to know what he was talking with Mr Putin about suggests it was not about advancing our country’s national interest but something more problematic.” ......

Read the rest at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-putin-meeting-russia-collusion-mueller-investigation-2016-election-a8730366.html

[GiveEmElle 1,559]

On 1/15/2019 at 3:58 PM, homersapien said:

That's what passes for 'wit' in his mind. 

I’d say since Trump had Russian hookers to “wet” the bed, his mind might be confusing the two of you. #WasItAFreudianSlip

[GiveEmElle 1,559]

On 1/15/2019 at 5:43 PM, HVAU said:

You always make me feel special PT.  Hope you're having a wonderful evening, you old curmudgeon.

 

Do the thumbs down add or subtract from our like count?

[HVAU 673]

I don't know, but when I get one (thumbs down) from certain participants here I feel like there is a karmic tally that's being tabulated which is vastly more important.

[Proud Tiger 4,261]

42 minutes ago, HVAU said:

I don't know, but when I get one (thumbs down) from certain participants here I feel like there is a karmic tally that's being tabulated which is vastly more important.

It's no big deal I think. I give a lot more likes than I  get 2968 now to 1274. I usually give downers when someone calls me out by name  with some negative type post. For me downers are just a way of responding without doing a quote which often starts a non-productive argument.

[GiveEmElle 1,559]

48 minutes ago, HVAU said:

I don't know, but when I get one (thumbs down) from certain participants here I feel like there is a karmic tally that's being tabulated which is vastly more important.

The thumbs down being red is kind of ironic since all the red  leaning people seem to hit it so often.