My concern isn't really the specificity of the request here, it's with the general case of the request for espionage to influence an election.
Actually, your concern is with a quote that can be pulled ridiculously out of context to make it appear there was a request for espionage. "To influence an election" is a gratitous addition of your own.
Your read is about as reasonable as the confession in My Cousin Vinnie, and then the defendant said, "I shot the Clerk."
In context, Hillary just turned over government property, including confidential information, to her attorneys - who did not have security clearances (I know another intentional violation), who in response to a subpeona tried to permanently delete the hard drive in question. None of which you apparently think is suspicious?
Asking for the Russians to find the missing emails in that context can not even plausibly be construed as asking for an act of espionage.
I'm neither Republican nor Democrat--but I am an American, and I don't want my President chosen by Putin. I don't want Russia to be given permission to choose my President by committing selective espionage against one of the candidates. It's bizarre to me that any American thinks Trump's "joke" is in any way defensible, given the context that Russia clearly took the request seriously. The fact that this happened alone would justify an investigation IMO regardless of the context of the rest of the history of Trump's disposition toward Russia.
But apparently, any other corruption choosing your President is okay.
It's completely laughable to believe Putin or even Russia had a material impact. Their spend was less that a fraction of a percent of the total spend. Their "sophisticated targeting" was less sophisticated than the campaigns or most of the PACs involved. Heck even their dirty tricks are routinely surpassed by multiple actors.
It's clearly not the foreign actor angle. Never heard any complaints about endorsements by other countries of one candidate or the other. Don't seem to be concerned about a British Agent colluding with the DOJ/FBI/Obama Administration to try and take down one candidate.
The corruption coming out of the DOJ and FBI leadership is the single biggest issue that threatens Americans, so as a non-political American why isn't that your biggest concern?
Do you really not care that our country has been abandoning its support of our allies in favor of Putin's preferences, time after time,...
Hasn't happened. Literally hasn't happened. Name the allies we've abandoned under Trump in favor of Putin's choices.
The only ones I recall are the ones Obama abandoned. Ukraine, red line, even Iraq.
Lots of "liberal truths" without support for a supposed non-partisan.
...while Trump whines to his historically illiterate base that everything the newspapers write is "fake news?"
I'm not "historically illiterate" and he's correct, most of what the newspapers write
about him is in fact fake news. In this case, that's a catchy term for stories written, selected and spun for the sole purpose of making him and/or his agenda look bad.
The fact that some of them rest on true statements, does not change the idea in the least when they are purpose designed to create a false impression.
Writing a story about a green man killed by a blue man can be completely true and yet by stringing four true ones together it creates a narrative that blue men are killing green men. If however those four stories were the only four such, and there were dozens not covered of green men killing blue men, you've created a fake news narrative.
Coverage of Trump has been intentionally negative (much like coverage of Obama was intentionally positive). That's how you end up with people convince that Obama's policies were better for the economy than Trumps, notwithstanding the actual evidence.
Wouldn't you care if a Democrat had asked and gotten Russian support to win the presidency, and then that Democratic president had kissed Putin's ass over and over again?
Sure. I'd also care if a Democrat murdered everyone in a town hall Rambo style on live tv. But neither event happened so I'm a bit indifferent to the question.
Trump criticizes literally everyone in the world, except for Putin. He has repeatedly tried to alleviate sanctions on Russian, against the counsel of his own NSC. When asked to criticize Putin (for assassinations etc) Trump actually prefers to criticize America. ("You think we're so innocent?")
Lol. Trump doesn't criticize everyone. He does use criticism as a tactic, he also uses praise as a tactic. Sometimes you seem a very deep thinker to me, other times you run with a surface idea as if it were the truth.
Assuming that Trump isn't a brainwashed Russian mole, can you not think of any other explanation for how he behaves with respect to Putin as a personal matter (you've already missed that he doesn't behave that way in actions).
And Trump is so image conscious that he isn't unaware of how his behavior looks when he does it.
Trump's a narcissist. I don't think he views "how he looks" in the same way you or I would.
If Putin didn't have dirt on Trump, Trump would attack him randomly just for imaging purposes, given all the allegations.
In my view, at a guess, Trump would view attacking Putin as a sign of his own weakness. Which by the way, any fool can see is exactly how the media would play it. Trump attacks Putin today, and tomorrow the media headlines are about how weak Trump is and how he's risking Nuclear War to cover up his being in the tank. No possibility - at all - that the media reports it positively.
Against that background, your "advice" really doesn't make sense.
Couple that with the reality, that at the moment, he has some advantage with Putin, and he's not going to throw it out without a benefit. I mean come on, as bad as Trump is, Putin is the ultimate vanity project. The man rigs professional hockey games so he can play and score the most goals, rides around shirtless on horses for publicity photos and loves the idea that he's potentially fooling the President.
If you understand Trump enough to follow his MO in responding to media memes, you know this is true--and you should need more of a reason than “maybe Trump just likes Putin.”
Well, it's only part of the analysis. Trump's actions are far more consistent and logical than you give him credit for. The "missing" piece isn't being indebted to Moscow (his narcissim would never allow him to believe they put him in office), nor is it being afraid of Moscow (there's literally nothing I could envision on a personal level that has a hope of being worse than his own personality and prior actions).
My guess, is the missing piece is believing that this is the best way to handle Putin, and with the added benefit of sticking it in the eye of the Democrats. He's been most reasistent to those trying to force him to follow "traditional" policies or to those tying his hands. Passing war level sanctions as a response to his own election, pretty much locked into his head that accepting them and prosecuting them would be delegitimizing himself. That's part of the political calculus that Congress intended so it's not surprising he'd take that view.
The fact that Trump's behavior seems unpredictable to you is really telling, in my view. Trump's behavior looks entirely predictable if you simply assume that he is a corrupt narcissist who has sold America out, and become Putin's puppet.
He's not unpredictable, nor is your story a good fit for how he actually acts. He's talked nice to Putin, frustrated Congresses lame attempt a delegitimizing his election, but otherwise been tougher on Russia than Obama. All of which is consistent with his personal narcissm and his clearly expressed views on foreign policy, and not what you'd expect from a Manchurian candidate.
This is what history will write of him, regardless of whether or not our Justice system succeeds in rooting out this corruption.
History is written by history professors, last time I checked academia has been overwhelmed by a leftist philosophy. Not surprising they'll record him poorly, even if their dead wrong.
Heck these are the same people who can't seem to actually record the history of Socialism and the misery and death it causes.
