Mueller report thread - Mueller testimony July 24

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Barr and Nadler/House Dems are obviously going to spin this. There's no reason to base any inference on what they say. Their words are all meaningless.

There is no reason to take any spin other than the actual report itself. That is where the fight is headed. Try to keep up.

I don't think this is going to sway very many people either way because few people care. Democrats have been making the mistake of thinking that this will somehow to lead to a deus ex machina removal of Trump. But obviously that's wrong and will continue to be wrong no matter what the report says. Shooting someone on fifth avenue, etc.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

This is free speech.  He said "I could shoot someone on Fifth Ave and my poll numbers wouldn't go down!" It was obviously in jest and not a threat.  If he said "I will shoot someone" well that's a threat and would have to be looked into and would've I believe.

Trump jokes a lot but people seem to want to take him seriously word-for-word anyway.

Barr and Nadler/House Dems are obviously going to spin this. There's no reason to base any inference on what they say. Their words are all meaningless.

There is no reason to take any spin other than the actual report itself. That is where the fight is headed. Try to keep up.

I don't think this is going to sway very many people either way because few people care. Democrats have been making the mistake of thinking that this will somehow to lead to a deus ex machina removal of Trump. But obviously that's wrong and will continue to be wrong no matter what the report says. Shooting someone on fifth avenue, etc.

I was saying that no matter what the report says Trump's supporters are going to support him which is what the original quote meant in its original context.

I never thought "obstruction" would have been valid anyways. Firing the Director of the FBI is executive privilege and it was difficult to argue with executive privilege. Hell, even Nixon's "Saturday night massacre" was legal.

President Hillary Clinton would have also fired James Comey the second she took office, so Comey was going to be terminated one way or another.

lmao Clinton wouldn't have fired Comey because he was potentially investigating criminal wrongdoing you very intelligent poster

I accept the summary and the conclusions that it provides. The investigation is over, and we should accept the result. That being said, this does not change the fact that I am opposed to the Trump Presidency in General.

You don't even know what the report says yet. It's been filtered entirely through Barr, journalists, and twitter.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Perhaps Dmeocrats can attack Trump on things that actually are real, like his support for keeping the minimum wage as low as possible?

I don't know how somebody can spend so much time on a forum about a subject and still be so incredibly misinformed.

http://mediaproject.wesleyan.edu/releases/110118-digital/

(MIDDLETOWN, CT) November 1, 2018 – The Wesleyan Media Project has previously reported on digital spending in federal races this cycle. In this report, we show the frequency of issue mentions in TV and Facebook ads for the general election nominees in the twelve most competitive Senate races.

[...]

Not a single Senate candidate mentioned Robert Mueller, the independent counsel, in television or Facebook advertising.

[...]

Taxes are the most commonly mentioned issue on television (of the coded issues), appearing in 16.5 percent of ad airings. It is an issue mentioned frequently by both Democrats and Republicans. Immigration is the second most mentioned issue on television (again, of the listed issues in Table 1), appearing in 11.8 percent of airings overall (8.4 percent on the Democratic side and 16.5 percent on the Republican side). Domestic violence was mentioned in 3.8 percent of television ad airings.

http://theconversation.com/the-big-lessons-of-political-advertising-in-2018-107673

3. The election was about health care.

Even in a fragmented media era with a hyper-polarized electorate, advertising in 2018 shows that it is still possible to find agreement across campaigns on the importance of particular issues.

In this cycle, that issue was clearly health care.

More than a third of the record-breaking number of ads aired in federal and gubernatorial races mentioned health care, and the attention to health care as an issue only grew throughout the cycle, with 41.4 percent of all airings in the post-Labor Day period mentioning the issue. In total, 1.4 million airings mentioned health care and 979,249 of those aired between Sept. 4 and Election Day. Health care was by far the most mentioned issue.

The dominance of health care was driven by the laser focus on the issue on the Democratic side. A little more than half of pro-Democratic ads in federal races during the post-Labor Day period mentioned the topic. By contrast, the second largest issue was taxes, at 14.7 percent of airings.

[...]

Pro-Democratic gubernatorial airings also talked more about health care – 45.5 percent – than any other single issue. Education and taxes ranked second and third, respectively.

http://mediaproject.wesleyan.edu/releases/issues-110518/

We break down the percentage of ads mentioning six key issues tracked by the WMP. Health care continued to be the most mentioned issue in October, appearing in 47 percent of federal ads (up from 41 percent in September). The issue was mentioned even more in pro-Democratic advertising, appearing in 57 percent of airings compared to 32 percent of Republican airings (both percentages represent an increase over September which featured 50 percent and 28 percent respectively). Republicans were slightly more likely to talk about taxation (which appeared in 35 percent of their ad airings) than health care, which also represents an increase in discussion of taxes over September (when 32 percent of pro-Republican ads mentioned the issue). Immigration was discussed in 18 percent of pro-Republican ad airings compared to 5 percent of pro-Democratic ad airings.

Like, what's the point of posting on this forum if you aren't even going to be minimally informed about politics? Why are you here?

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Jesus Christ. Democrats you literally have a wealth of issues to attack him on. His odious economic policies, his trade war, his tax cuts for the rich, his f***ing wall, his obsession with keeping the minimum wage low.

Why do you need to attack him on Russia when you can literally attack him on any of these?

Can dark red atlas stop parroting the blue atlas tactic of equating what people say her, on Twitter, and pundits on tv with “the Democrats”? The democrats as an official party have not been attacking him on Russia as hard as republicans would of done had this shoe been on the other foot. This reminds me of when people attacked the Democrats in 2018 for being Trump obsessed when statistically he was mentioned less in attack ads then Obama was in either 10 or 14

This. Good god what a dumb and tired argument.

The only elected Democrats who breathe any fire into this issue are Nadler, Schiff, Swalwell, etc. That is, Democrats who are on committees directly relevant to the investigation. No other Democrats are making this a cornerstone of their political identity. ZERO. The idea that the national party (rather than unaffiliated news media) is pushing this into a national media rather than a handful of individuals who are directly involved in investigations is demonstrably false (note that I linked several actual research articles saying as much and OP, predictably, ignored them).
 
It's morons like Greenwald who peddle these theories to make themselves feel better so they can continue to be angry about the 2016 primaries. It's rather transparent and people who spend enough time on a politics forum to have over 1000 posts should be informed enough to see that.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

It's pretty depressing to see how little roughly 30 - 35% of the country cares about a president brazenly obstructing justice, and instead so concerned about defending their guy that they will embrace absurd constitutional theories that basically insulate any president from any obstruction claim involving staffing decisions of the executive branch, simply by virtue of them being president.

If only Trump was a Democrat, then they would see how dangerous that road is to go down.

Disappointing but not surprising.

Nobody cares about the constitution, right or left. Or if they do, it's secondary to their actual concerns, which are really just culture wars and identity (in the broad sense of the word, not the "identity politics") issues.

Trump is popular because he's trying to deliver the goods. He's shouting about players kneeling at the anthem, he's inflicting cruelty on immigrants, he's making it easier to mine coal. Impeaching him for some loser like Pence, when that 30% of the country is as distrustful of the Republican establishment as it is, is the best way to threaten their progress.

So what is the incentive for them to actually care about the constitution? The constitution isn't (to the average voter) how to get what they want - in most cases it's actually a barrier. Nobody cares about it. So it's not surprising that people jump to defend an obviously impeach-worthy President.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Fuzzy's bad arguments are like some hydra in that every time somebody chops off one of its heads it manages to regrow in another thread (or often in the same thread). You'd think that after some of his arguments get debunked and he gets totally owned that he'd learn a thing or two.