The Rude Pundit: ...The Fusion GPS Editorial Is More Important Than the Wolff Book Excerpts

[babylonsister]

http://rudepundit.blogspot.ca/2018/01/gauging-level-of-screwed-fusion-gps.html

The Rude Pundit
Proudly lowering the level of political discourse
1/03/2018

Gauging the Level of Screwed: The Fusion GPS Editorial Is More Important Than the Wolff Book Excerpts


Look, we already knew that Donald Trump was a shitty human being. Anyone who paid any attention to him knew that his entire life was devoted to avarice and humiliation. He's garbage and has been for his entire selfish, pathetic time polluting the earth. And it was always obvious that he was a fucking idiot, an incurious dullard whose wealth gave him the illusion of wisdom because he was surrounded by people who pretended he was wise. I have never heard or read an interview with Trump where he said anything other than simple-minded statements, stupid jokes, and belligerent braggadocio.

So, except for the Steve Bannon shit, the New York magazine excerpt from Michael Wolff's upcoming book on the end of the Trump campaign and the beginning of the Trump presidency that reveals that Trump is a moron who didn't want to be president and who is desperate for any media attention isn't much of a revelation. It's pretty much just confirmation of what we all suspected, even if it turns out just a tenth of it is true. Oh, really? Trump's an erratic madman who has no business as president? Color us shocked.

More important is the New York Times editorial by Glenn R. Simpson and Peter Fritsch, the two former journalists who run the private research firm Fusion GPS, responsible for the dossier on Trump, funded by both Republicans and Democrats, put together by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele. Sick of being attacked by Trump and his GOP congressional lackeys, Simpson and Fritsch lay out just how fucked up shit is.

Not only do they plainly state that Republicans on committees looking into Trump's ties to Russia are lying about Fusion GPS, but they clearly have no fucks left to give. In their telling, the Steele dossier is seen less as a sensationalistic fiction created to embarrass Trump with piss tales and more as a roadmap of our doom if we stay on our current path. It is not hyperbole to describe the entire Trump corporation as an elaborate money-laundering scheme for Russian oligarchs (and other criminals around the world). Even Ivanka Trump's diamond business is being investgated for money-laundering. It's all filthy.

This one line struck me like a wet slap in the face: "Mr. Steele saw this as a crime in progress and decided he needed to report it to the F.B.I." Steele had information from unpaid sources in Russia that the Kremlin was, in essence, working to get Trump elected.

I keep coming back to that idea, as I have ever since I first heard about the meeting between Donald Trump, Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and that Russian lawyer. If a foreign national tells you they have dirt on your political opponent, you go to the FBI. The very fact that they didn't says as much about the guilt of all these men as it does about their ease with dealing with Russian emissaries with skeevy motivations.

more...

http://rudepundit.blogspot.ca/2018/01/gauging-level-of-screwed-fusion-gps.html

[longship]

1. Love the Rude One!

[smirkymonkey]

2. K&R

[mountain grammy]

3. Yes Rude is completely correct on this one.

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

4. K & R

He's not even rude just truthful. I guess the dotard might think that to be rude though.

[theaocp]

7. Man, did you just funnel my thoughts to a TEE!

Thanks for saving me the trouble.

[UCmeNdc]

5. K&R

Fusion GPS Release The Transcripts!

[tanyev]

6. Yes, but if the book is driving DOTUS crazy, then the $ I paid to pre-order it is worth every penny.

[babylonsister]

15. They're trying to halt release now...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/report-trump-tries-to-halt-michael-wolffs-book-release

[Nitram]

8. I keep hoping a Few Good Republicans will wake up and do their duty as Americans.

I know that's an oxymoron, but perhaps some will realize that in the long run it would be in their own self-interest.

[Pepsidog]

10. Unless the Dems take both houses in 2018, it will have to be conservatives

who step-up and push the Dotard out. As the mid-terms approach it will be interesting to see how this all plays out. I remember how excite I was to vote for Obama and against the right and that doesn’t compare to how anxious I am to vote in 2018. I have a feeling( I hope) that many others who have sat on the sidelines feel the same way. I am sickened by the state of our country and how diminished we have become. I watched on Netflix a documentary on Joan Didion last week. Towards the end they showed a news clip of President Obama giving a lifetime achievement award to Didion for her writing. It was so nice and comforting to see Obama who exudes dignity and grace in the White House. It was also nice to take a rest from politics for 8 years after the Bush presidency which was also a time of severe national turmoil created by conservatives. Obama was a calming presence during a period of time when the country was moving from one crisis to another.

[Nitram]

11. When you think the stakes couldn't get any higher they always do.

Nixon scared me, Reagan scared me even more. I didn't think it could ever get worse than Bush/Cheney. And then it did.

[Pepsidog]

13. Agreed. Never thought we would be here after 8 years of scandal free Obama presidency.

[Pepsidog]

9. It has been said many times before but I just cannot help myself,

imagine the right-wing hysteria if Obama was accused of doing or saying 1/100 of the things that Trump says and does on a daily basis? Right wingers continue to try and implicate both Obama and Hillary in pseudo-scandals aided and abetted by Fox, Limbaugh, and Hannity wackos. Also, it seems that the only effective measure the left has, besides the ballot, is the threat of a boycott or other actions to attempt to harm the economics of these RW loons. Why hasn’t the left been able to organize a sustained social media and economic attack against Fox and other loud mouth hate mongers? Seems sexual scandals are the only effective means to get rid of the likes of O’Reilly, Ailes and and other crazies. The money behind the left should spend a few bucks gathering dirt on these maggots and get rid of them for good like the right did to Franken and Spitzer. When “they go low, we need to go lower”. The time for 1/2 measures has past, our Republic is at stake!

[dalton99a]

12. Absolutely.

[Pacifist Patriot]

14. Spot on correct!

[AllyCat]

16. This:

If a foreign national tells you they have dirt on your political opponent, you go to the FBI.

[lindysalsagal]

17. Failure to report only hurts if Dems go on the attack and insist they do: Enforcement matters

One of the unfortunate side- effects of this clown-car presidency is the fatigue everyone, including legislators- feel with the daily catastrophies. There just aren't enough minutes in a day to go after every crime this moron commits.

The dems need to agree on a strategy of inforcement an stick to it and not be distracted. Not holding my breath on that.

[robertpaulsen]

18. Part of me wonders if Wolff was played on some level.

It kind of bothers me that the focus of the New York Magazine excerpt is that Trump didn't want to be President and the whole Trump campaign team didn't think they would win in November 2016. This contention undercuts the motive for colluding with Russia to steal the election. I find it hard to believe that, to cite one example, that "Michael Flynn, the retired general who served as Trump’s opening act at campaign rallies, had been told by his friends that it had not been a good idea to take $45,000 from the Russians for a speech. “Well, it would only be a problem if we won,” ­Flynn assured them." Why collude with the Russians to steal the election if you don't want a problem?

So the result of these revelations is that Flynn looks corrupt, Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort are connivers, but Trump is just a bloviating idiot holed up in his room in eating cheeseburgers. Nothing in the book about Trump colluding, AFAIK. Makes me wonder if this was by design: create outrageous distractions, but get Trump off the hook for the Big Crime.

[triron]

19. They are both important but in different ways.

[YessirAtsaFact]

20. One thing they wrote in the editorial is that the FBI took Steele seriously

Because his information corroborated information they already had received from credible sources.

Add Papadopoulos drunk bragging to an Australian official about the Russians having the emails and using them to help Trump in the spring of 2016 and it’s hard to deny that the campaign colluded with the Russians.

It’s been another bad week for team maga

[Raastan]

21. K + R

J