Something-gate: Trump claims Obama bugged Trump Tower.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

How would he know?

How else would Obama know all about Trump's secret communications with the Russians?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Trump's right about one thing:

"This is McCarthyism!"

At least if by "this" he means his regime, especially his tweeting. Should we start calling him Tail Gunner Trump?

Although the folks who predicted he'd start going after the Democrats by abusing the law to target them may turn out to be right.  If he weren't such an incompetent insane idiot for a wanna-be fascist dictator I'd be scared sick, instead of just worried.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Republicans are stuck on MUH OBAMA and MUH HILLURUH, completely unaware that they have the reigns now, and that they have to back up their bark with actual policy legislation (supposedly for the people).

How's that going for you?

Since they don't control the executive (that's controlled by an independent and cronies), they don't have the reigns at all. Of course they are too politically dumb to point this out.

The Republicans own the insane wanna-be dictator they nominated and elected.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Republicans are stuck on MUH OBAMA and MUH HILLURUH, completely unaware that they have the reigns now, and that they have to back up their bark with actual policy legislation (supposedly for the people).

How's that going for you?

Since they don't control the executive (that's controlled by an independent and cronies), they don't have the reigns at all. Of course they are too politically dumb to point this out.

The Republicans own the insane wanna-be dictator they nominated and elected.

The Republicans on the hard-right used to call Obama a dictator. I think Trump overall is as hated by Democrats as Obama was with Conservatives Republicans.

Trump's own press secretary has described his government as dictatorship.

And the GOP is backing him to the hilt. They own him. And it's going to destroy them. Hopefully forever.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

is there really no way to sideline an unfit president?

outbreaks like that should automatically make pence prez.

If he can rally the cabinet, Pence can sideline Trump for incompetence. But Trump can fight back. My guess is that Pence is waiting for two things:

One, get all the really objectionable and unpopular stuff done under Trump's name and signature. Then he and the GOP can try to dodge blame that way.

Two, wait until Trump has walked all the way out to the end of the crazy plank. That way when Pence does drop the hammer, he'll have lots of support and Trump will be left with no sympathy. It doesn't matter how much he should do it, Pence won't wield the first dagger. But he will be holding the last one.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Latest tweets from the President

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https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/838351476401520640

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https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/838353481526312961

Why is the Donald copying the failed Hillary playbook? As she so convincingly demonstrated, "the other guy is worse" doesn't work politically when your own name is mud. Surely he could find something better to distract people from the fact that his revised immigration EO is a couple weeks late from when he promised it would be ready. May I suggest the following as the meme for the Trump presidency?

Nobody knew ________ could be so complicated.

Pussygrabber is running scared. Cowardice from a coward is not a surprise. But it says there is something he's hiding.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Spicer: WH/President will not comment further until "politically motivated investigations" are looked into by Congress alongside Russian influence

https://twitter.com/PressSec/status/838386005459763200 (1/4 in a thread)

So, they're gagging Pussygrabber and putting him in a straightjacket?

Either way, I'm pretty sure that going a week without ranting on twitter or in public will give him a stroke. So, win for the good guys, I guess?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

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http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/03/trump-white-house-shopping-for-technology-to-plug-leaks/

I'm not super familiar with the mechanisms that have been used for leaks, but isn't there only so much you can do within the White House itself? What's to stop a staffer going home and e-mailing someone in the press with their home computer?

Honestly, nothing. Could also meet media in, say, a parking garage at night

There's more to it than that. While a private employer has a great deal of leeway in how they treat their employees, the government does not. While random phone searches on Trump Organization employees (with a penalty of firing with case for those refusing), doing the same thing to White House staff without explicitly invoking national security is almost certainly illegal.

 are almost certainly illegal.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Jake Tapper just now on twitter:

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So Trump has zero evidence he was wiretapped. He got the story completely from Breitbart/Levin. This man's stupidity knows no bounds.

So, it's basically the same thing as the "last night in Sweden" stuff.

Trump distrusts the intelligence agencies. So, instead of getting his information from them he chooses to watch Fox News and read Breitbart. And since Fox News and Breitbart only say good things about him and his administration they must be reliable sources, right? So, when he sees something on Fox News or Breitbart he agrees with, he assumes that it must be true. And then he writes about it on Twitter...

Not quite. It's not a matter of trust. It's that he cannot take criticism. At all.

So he denies any reality where criticism of him has any validity.

When Pussygrabber says "fake news" it's not a ploy, not some clever tactic in a chess game of influence. It's that he is so insane that he really thinks its fake. He confuses protesters with cheering crowds. He doesn't have a clue what he's doing, or how government or the real world work.


To add to this, my median take on what's really going on runs something like this:

Trump, and his team did have some direct and indirect contact with the Russian government. They didn't see anything wrong with what they were doing, and certainly weren't actively contemplating it as treason or anything like that. They probably figured, at most, that it was like similar moves by Nixon or Reagan. That they might accidentally stumble into one or more felonies, or that their actions might be revealed and seen negatively never crossed their minds.

Then Russia stuff starts to leak (more), because the Trump administration is like a steel trap: rusty, and full of rats. And rather than dealing with it in any effective manner, they delayed, and evaded, and fumbled. Because they're incompetent, and scared that they're guilty (certainly of something, if not this), and unable to admit either one, even to themselves. So the media became a hungry pack of wolves, on the scent of fearful and bleeding prey. Minor (but real) transgressions get hyped, questionable looking actions get lots of attention and spin, and the wolves keep their eyes on the target, who just keeps bleeding.

And Trump being Trump (stupid, narcissistic, inflexible, thin-skinned, etc), he cannot wrap his head around the idea that stuff he and his people have done looks questionable, that his campaign may have actually broken the law, or that anyone could offer any valid criticism on Russian contacts or anything else. So he starts to build a counter-narrative, to explain away what he cannot ignore.

He was already leaning towards "plot by Obama" to excuse his flaming crap-wagon of an administration. (That he's a terrible match for the jobs of POTUS would never enter his demented and deluded brain.) And then along comes the piece by Levin through Breitbart (or Fox, or wherever he got it) - Obama pulled a Watergate on him! It all makes sense now! Of course its not the worthless fake press or the feeble Dems in Congress who are thwarting him, it's an evil conspiracy by the previous Most Powerful Man In The World! It's probably exactly what Trump would want to do to any successor he didn't like, so of course it's a conspiracy masterminded by the President of the United States, acting in concert with the intelligence agencies who hate him and pretend he's an idiot because he's smarter than they are. Nothing less could explain why the Mighty Trump Train has been barely able to stay on the track, much less make any progress!

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

This is a man who has believed every conspiracy theory about Obama that he has ever heard.

It's funny that this thread has more personal attacks on the messenger because the other side is still trying to form a consensus: is Trump a lying idiot who is simply making this up? Or is it true and should be defended as a good thing?

Either way, he has a consistent track record of being proven right in phony scandal after scandal, so I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.

The man launched his political career by being wrong about an Obama conspiracy theory.

Trump launched his career with obnoxious media stunts. I'm not going to pretend to condone that stuff. Does that mean I should have voted for career criminal and literally evil person Hillary Clinton instead?

Don't for a second pretend you're in the reluctant Trump supporter camp.

Missed this one. Far from it, though. Trump is exactly the type of match we needed to throw on the increasingly large pile of gunpowder that the outgoing world order represented. I'm not going to pretend for a minute that he's going to be a traditional statesmen. To me, his purpose is to serve as a transitional figure to ensure that the GOP becomes a party of national conservatism and America becomes a regional powerhouse as opposed to an overstretched, crumbling empire.

Exactly. Globalism was getting out of hand. We needed Trump to stop the slide.

Globalism is going to deal with Trump the way a tsunami deals with driftwood. The idea that he can do much about it, other than bitch about it, and the largely non-existent good old days, is just ludicrous. Granted, a couple of nasty trade wars, and a bunch of jobs lost, and so forth, might happen before Trump gets the memo, and/or his fans dump him and move on to the next demagogue. We shall see.
[/quote]

I'm not so confident. Sure, Trump can't turn the globalism train around, but he can run it off the rails, crash it, or blow it up. That (hundreds of) millions of people would suffer isn't going to concern him or his cult one little bit.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

What in hell is Trump's game? The guy is a confirmed sicko for sure.

This guy is not going to last a full term in office. It's not even been two months and he's already acting like a deranged idiot.

Check twitter sadly many of his supporters/RWers are now convinced that Obama is sabotaging him. All the man is is a bomb thrower, he leads through revenge politics an "us vs them". He pretty much is a walking RW comment section

Does anyone ever give any reasoning as to why they think Obama is after Trump? I mean, Trump is a nobody compared to Obama. Trump has nothing. Especially why would anyone want to wiretap him? There's nothing there to see.

Because, were their places reversed, Trump would absolutely have illegally ordered some underlings to spy on Obama.

And while it in no way counts as proof, it makes one more tic-mark for me in the "Trump actively colluded with the Russians" column.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

This is a very serious accusation which could land a president behind bars.  I don't know if he was really spied on, but if so there would have to be significant evidence of very serious crimes.  It's going to look really bad if Trump calls for an investigation now and nothing is found.  However, the skeptics who are calling Trump a flat out liar must reason with the following.


"Wiretapped data used in inquiry of Trump aides.  Examining Russian ties.  Business dealings of campaign Advisers are investigated."  (New York Times Jan.20, 2017)

No. The problem with Sessions relations with the Russian Ambassador was that he LIED to Congress about it, not the conversations themselves. There is nothing wrong with the FBI, CIA, NSA, and Treasury wire-tapping Trump and/or his associates shady contacts with Russia as part of an ongoing investigation. The problem would come in if Obama ORDERED an illegal investigation of his opponent. Something for which there is NO EVIDENCE.

Trumpy's claim is the equivalent to me saying that because some children were taken from their parents, YOU must be a kidnapper. And that if you want to try to refute the claim that you're guilty of kidnapping and human trafficking, you must reason with the following:

"Separated from their parents and families. Alone, scared and severely distressed. No idea where their parents are.
More than 14,000 children have been separated from their parents." (ITV, Feb. 8, 2017)

Trump is a flat out liar, on this and many, many other topics. Where are his taxes?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I think Trump's inner circle is running scared. Carson, Wikileaks, now Pence backing up Carson, all since Trump launched Idiotgate with the tweets about wiretapps. They are desperate to drag the media and the public off the scent. I don't think Trump is smart enough for that, but his personal advisers are, and this reeks of Trump-camp flavored desperation.

And I can't see why, if there was truly nothing there, they could just sit back and let all their enemies waste the next three month screaming in public about non-existent Russian connections. Even Trump's tender ego should be able to take that. He could make weekly speeches that were equal mixes of pleasant sounding nonsense (like his not-SotU) and denouncing his enemies for the ridiculous lies.

I grow more convinced every day that, from the Big Cheeto on down, there really was some sort of back-channel deal with Russia. Maybe about the emails, maybe blackmail, maybe some old or new bribe, maybe even just a plan made in good faith but with terrible optics.  But there's no reason to lie, twist, cover, and do themselves so much damage otherwise. Even if they all are complete idiots.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I think Trump should experience some negative ramifications for his reprehensible behavior.

You just don't tweet WITHOUT EVIDENCE that the last President wiretapped your offices. How stupid is that?

He needs to start paying for his utter incompetence. Throw the book at him.

Careful. We're not that far from an America where talking online about throwing things at President Trump will be, if not explicitly illegal, grounds for some sort of quasi-legal executive branch punishment.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/13/politics/sean-spicer-donald-trump-wiretapping/

Spicer: Trump didn't mean wiretapping when he tweeted about wiretapping

"I think there's no question that the Obama administration, that there were actions about surveillance and other activities that occurred in the 2016 election," Spicer said. "The President used the word wiretaps in quotes to mean, broadly, surveillance and other activities."

Wiretapping is a narrowly defined surveillance activity that involves tapping into "a telephone or telegram wire in order to get information," according to Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Spicer also said that Trump was referring to the Obama administration broadly -- and not accusing Obama of personal involvement -- when he tweeted that "Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower" and accused Obama of being a "bad" or "sick guy."

A week earlier, Spicer said Trump's tweet "speaks for itself" and declined to provide any further explanation.

But Monday, Spicer was open to providing an interpretation for Trump's tweet, saying the President told Spicer he was referring to means of surveillance beyond wiretapping in his tweets accusing Obama of doing just that.


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I'm glad we finally have a president "telling it like it is"

Translation of Spicer's remarks: Sessions has told the White House that the DOJ and FBI will not be backing up President Pussygrabber's deplorable claims.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Less than 60 days in, and the REPUBLICAN chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is threatening to to subpoena the Trump regime for refusing to provide information backing up the President's unprecedented assertions and his threats against his predecessor. 

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/13/politics/intelligence-deadline-wiretaps/

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I'm not sure whether to be more horrified at the fact this is happening at all, or disgusted by the way Trumpolini and his cronies are incompetent at everything, even at being villains.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

It's been going around now that Trump is the little boy who is crying "wolf" too many times.

When something important happens that really is true, nobody is going to believe him.

The odds of him or his cronies being able to make a coherent case for a real issue was always going to be slim. Whether they'd blown their nonexistent credibility or not doesn't really matter.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I'll repeat my post from the other thread on this.

Trumpublicans appear to be moving to cover their cult-leader's questionable foreign entanglements:

https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2017-03-22/surveillance-findings-raise-concern-about-spying-on-trump-campaign-nunes

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While the cultists are doubtless going to see this as "proof" of any and all accusations from their Apricot Antipope, let's make sure the facts are clear: Trump was working with a covert (and illegally so) agent of the Russian government who lives in the same flagship building that holds Trump's personal residence.  Complaints about the counter-intelligence community doing it's job of protecting the United States are nothing but a smokescreen to distract from the hyperkinetic refuse conflagration that is his presidency and its connections to the Russian state.

#PutHimInTheDock

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Let's not allow the Trump camp's whining, and Nunes' smoke-blowing to obscure the key fact here that the AP broke this morning:

Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager (and long-time resident of Trump Tower) was a paid covert agent of the Russian government.

This reeks of team Trump trying to get ahead of a damning reveal to provide cover for themselves.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I could have written that email during the length of his press conference. What are YOU blathering about?

I'm making the point that the White House and Nunes are working together to obfuscate the investigation.

The House Intel committee chairman commenting in a press conference on the fact that there was incidental collection of Team Trump on legally acquired FISA warrants. The chairman does not have the authority to declassify and talk publicly.

What makes it so bizarre is that he is doing this publicly and then running directly to the very people that were collected under said surveillance. This does not bode well for him staying chairman or for any trust between him and the FBI and the IC.

The whole thing seems coordinated.

Perhaps he is counting on the open rejection of democratic or lawful government by Trump and the GOP leadership. (At this point, I don't see how Trump stays in office to the mid-terms. He has *at best* been exposed as a useful idiot for Putin.)

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

This looks alot like the Hillary/Comey email thing:

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Nunes is throwing himself under the bus to save Trump

Except this doesn't save Trump at all.

That, and Nunes is in a safe R district where he is regularly re elected with wide margins. Unless he hates DC falling on the sword for Trump makes zero sense

Remember, it's a cult, and Nunes is a cultist, too for all that he's also a sort of Trump-apostle.

Trump's Razor tells us not to discount how stupid and petty team Trump can be.

If there's anything good coming out of this, it's that the need for a special prosecutor is becoming even more apparent. The GOP can either appoint one, or open admit they're abandoning legal, democratic governance.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

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Nunes is acting insane. (Future defense strategy?) He is obviously unfit to lead the Congressional investigation into the Trump campaign's dealings with the Russian government.

And as I am not an officer of the court, the law, or the government, I'll just come out and say that I'm finding it extremely difficult to evem imagine that the Trump campaign as innocent at this point. They and their supporters (like Nunes) are going far out of their way to AVOID an investigation that can clear them (and make their Dem opponents look like paranoid idiots). That Nunes is skirting jail time by his actions, that clearly serve no one but a guilty Trump administration is enough for me: Trump & Co look effing guilty as Sin.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I think Nunes should be arrested.  I dont care if its legal or not.

That isn't how America works.

Just wait a bit and Trump will fix that, one way or another.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Great or greatest president?

Jokes aside, i am surprised how well Obama handled this affair.

It's not over. In fact, the evidence tying the Obama administration to spying on the Trump transition seems to only be growing. Where are all of the leaks coming from, and why are they being so loose with the content if this is such a major national security matter?

Maybe it's the Russians.

(Really, isn't it suspicious that will all the leaks going on, Trump only blames his opponents and never any foreign powers anymore?)

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

For April Fools day, so-called "President" Pussygrabber pranked the nation by using his Twitter account to pretend his allegations against the Obama administration and plans for health care are real things.