Update:Top officials in the White House were aware in early 2019 of classified intelligence indicating Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban for the deaths of Americans, a full year earlier than has been previously reported, according to U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the intelligence.The assessment was included in at least one of President Donald Trump’s written daily intelligence briefings at the time, according to the officials. Then-national security adviser John Bolton also told colleagues he briefed Trump on the intelligence assessment in March 2019.
Still, if, as some predict, this ends up with Trump saying "I've spoken to Putin and he denies it, and you know, that's good enough for me", that example (on top of others) of Trump disbelieving his own intelligence services over what an autocrat tells him may be the straw that breaks Republican support.
Just remember he has the attention span of a cockerspaniel
ReplyDeleteHow can that even possibly be true? Firstly he has to have an opponent to lose. And if the opponent was reasonably good sure I'd want the opponent to win. But the DNC made sure that any reasonable opponent couldn't get anywhere. So he has a monopoly so far with the competition. Secondly its not anything that Trump did. Trump is supposed to control the US military but doesn't. But even less does he control the Russian military. So where is the scandal. Its just standard retaliation, from the Russians, for what the Americans have been doing at least since 9/11. So thats not going to fly because Trumps critics aren't going to want to let on that sponsoring allegedly Muslims who are allegedly terrorists is what the Americans and the Israelis do.
ReplyDeleteI'm just struggling to try and figure out where you think the scandal is. If American and Israel can create and work hand in glove with ISIS where in the book of rules can we say that the Russians cannot pay proxies. In fact its ethical behaviour on the part of the Russians. Since the idea is to not get your own guys killed.
There is another thing that is bothering me. What do you want Trump to do about this? If it was up to him it wouldn't be a problem since he would have pulled his troops out of harms way already. Do you want ANOTHER proxy war against the Russians? Are you looking for a direct nuclear confrontation? What do you propose? Putin would be open to a deal. His country is the weaker power in most respects. If you sponsor every mercenary in the Muslim world to cause havoc don't you think another country might want to be in on that technique?
ReplyDeleteI just cannot see where the scandal is. Not with Trump and not with the Russians. The Americans ought not have been paying Muslims to kill other Muslims in the first place. No good was every going to come of that.
I was in a mood to "break with Trump" when he killed a bunch of Syrians over the fake news of a chemical attack. Quiggin is being somewhat reasonable here because he's framed it in terms of an excuse. But to break with someone you need an opponent. You remember me and Jason were very fond of Tulsi. Andrew Yang seemed quite inspiring. But the DNC and the media rigged the elections against these people so they could never get momentum. If it was a true democracy unrigged by voter fraud, bogus surveys, an oligarchical controlled media and so forth, then a reasonable alternative would have risen to the top of the scum. Do you know that in the middle of mass-unemployment and Covid induced small business failure, the Senate, without any real debate, rubber stamped a 38 billion dollar "aid package" to Israel. Is this the will of the people in a depression? Trump is not the real problem. But he's not going to veto this extortion.
ReplyDeleteTrump didn't do anything to stop the 7 trillion looting of the treasury and the massive new subsidy to the big corporates and to the financial sector via the Federal Reserve. Maybe he doesn't even really know about it. So by the time we got to that fork in the road he's proved to be equally as economically catastrophic as his predecessor. Even though you had to hand it to him for some sort of micro-economic achievement twisting the big corporates arms to create a lot more jobs prior to that. But in the end this has proven ephemeral now with his macro-failure of letting this massive looting spree happen.
So from my point of view Trump should be replaced by a good Democratic candidate, of an appropriate age, who hates the financial system, and can't be blackmailed. But no such person is in view. Its not even clear that Tulsi or Andrew would understand these esoteric financial issues.
So Professor Quiggin can make these suggestions. But who will the Republicans break towards? The oligarchy has cut out all alternatives. A fellow who can be blackmailed, who is weak on oligarchy, actively malicious in his zionism, and should really be planting a vegetable garden somewhere peaceful, given his advanced age, looks to be the only option. The situation is begging for third political party intervention. But the apparent duopoly has safeguards against such an occurrence.