Oh... And Crimea.

When Russia... you know...

invade[d] neighbouring country unopposed — unenlightened

Only they did it without any...

confusion and dissent — unenlightened

I bet Putin's generals were absolutely sweating buckets knowing they were invading a foreign country without having first ensured that Americans doubted the authenticity of a laptop. What a mad gamble!

Yeah... Only Obama wouldn't send lethal aid to Ukraine, Trump gets in, and the first Javelins go off to help their fight against Russian separatists. — Isaac

It's boring when sarcasm is the whole argument. It becomes an irritating straw man. I'm saying that Putin saw Trump rightly as a disrupter of American society in the same way he saw Boris and Brexit as disrupters of UK society. That there turn out to be downsides to that for him does not make my argument or Putin's tactics foolish.

So what's the angle there. Trump helped Russia invade unopposed by... giving Ukraine weapons his predecessor wasn't prepared to give...? — Isaac

Apart from Trump personally adoring Putin, the pro-Russian stance of the Trump team was actually very brief and basically when Trump was running for office and had Paul Manafort at the helm.

In the Republican convention in Cleveland 2016 the only thing the Trump team change about the policies was not to give arms to Ukraine. Nothing else.

(Washington Post, July 18th 2016) The Trump campaign worked behind the scenes last week to make sure the new Republican platform won’t call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces, contradicting the view of almost all Republican foreign policy leaders in Washington.

Throughout the campaign, Trump has been dismissive of calls for supporting the Ukraine government as it fights an ongoing Russian-led intervention. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, worked as a lobbyist for the Russian-backed former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych for more than a decade.

Manafort and all the pro-Russian in Trump team were quickly whisked out, and then when Trump was in office, Trump filled his administration with former generals, so then the honeymoon of the administration with the Russians was over. Of course, Trump himself continued adoring Putin with one of lowest events being the press conference in Helsinki, where Trump said he believed Vlad more than his intelligence services. A bit strange coming from the US president.

Then of course there was the case of not giving the aid decided by Congress to Ukraine, but that was a way for Trump to pressure the Ukrainians to give information about Hunter Biden, which lead to the first impeachment of Trump:

(ABC, Jan 16th, 2020)The Trump administration broke the law by withholding congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine last summer “for a policy reason,” a top government watchdog said Thursday in a scathing report.

The Government Accountability Office’s report came a day after the House of Representatives sent articles of its impeachment of President Donald Trump to the Senate for conduct related to holding back that aid.

Trump refused to release the funds to Ukraine at the same time he was pressuring that country’s new president to announce investigations of former Vice President Joe Biden and of Biden’s son Hunter, who had served on the board of a Ukraine gas company. Joe Biden is the current front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

It should be said that after February 24th 2022 Trump has changed his stance.

It's boring when sarcasm is the whole argument. — unenlightened

Oh. I thought it was winsome and endearing...

For me he is the demagogue I’ve been waiting for, the kind Murray Rothbard defended. His mere presence has lead the establishment, Washington, the 4th estate, the political dynasties, and their stooges on the world stage to overplay their hand, and I don’t think there is any going back. — NOS4A2

OK, so you don't like the establishment the establishment, Washington, the 4th estate, the political dynasties, and their stooges on the world stage. So Trump irrated them.

That still doesn't make him a good US president, because just irritation isn't good leadership.

That still doesn't make him a good US president, — ssu

I don't think NOS wanted him to be a good US president. He wanted Trump to break the system and create the conditions for a revolution. In another century NOS would have been a communist.

Reasons for voting Trump are like these. Yeah, he was a protest vote. And it doesn't count to vote for Donald Duck. (A fictional cartoon duck might be a great POTUS for some: won't do anything worse)

I remember one of best reason given by some guy to vote Trump: with Trump as president the press will do their job. With Hillary they will be her lap dog.

I guess that specific Trump-voter was satisfied:

I remember one of best reason given by some guy to vote Trump: with Trump as president the press will do their job. With Hillary they will be her lap dog. — ssu

There's probably some truth to that. The one I saw that sticks with me is a young woman living in West Virginia where the demise of coal mining left a lot of people in poverty. She saw a vote for Clinton as a vote for the status quo. Voting for Trump meant at least trying to improve things.

Voting for Trump meant at least trying to improve things. — frank

Unfortunately that's one of the saddest reasons incompetent populists do get elected. People will fall for the boisterous guy who declares the "He can fix everything" and are for them "against the evil elites" and in the end just make a mess.

And even if the guy doesn't leave behind him a disaster zone like Trump and is a mediocre to OK leader, people can simply put too much hope on an elected leader at a specific time. Just think of Obama. I remember when he was first elected, there was much eager hope that he could do something huge. Starting with the Nobel peace prize given as an option for future merits, I guess. Because his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples" are a bit vague for me.

his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples" are a bit vague for me. — ssu

Yeah. Notice anything about the number of wars between 2009 and 2017?

... No, me neither.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-in-state-based-conflicts-by-world-region?time=2000..latest

OK, so you don't like the establishment the establishment, Washington, the 4th estate, the political dynasties, and their stooges on the world stage. So Trump irrated them.

That still doesn't make him a good US president, because just irritation isn't good leadership.

It doesn’t make him a bad one, either. The deep state doesn’t want leaders, anyways. it wants a compliant figure head to give itself prestige so it can look like a doting grandpa as it funds war, regime change, and rips off the public to pay for its boondoggles.

But it explains the fanaticism of his opposition quite well. They’ve sent the entire perverted and corrupt American justice system after him. District Attorney Alvin Bragg, for instance, is trying to raise a misdemeanor to a federal crime, all while telling his staff to avoid prosecuting crimes like resisting arrest in his own state. It’s purely political. It’s a show trial.

They’ve sent the entire perverted and corrupt American justice system after him. District Attorney Alvin Bragg, for instance, is trying to raise a misdemeanor to a federal crime, all while telling his staff to avoid prosecuting crimes like resisting arrest in his own state. It’s purely political. It’s a show trial. — NOS4A2

I'm sympathetic to some of this. Based on the publicly available information, I don't think a felony charge is warranted. However, while everyday crimes, like resisting arrest, may be over-prosecuted, the same can't be said about white-collar crime - so I disagree there's a relevant inconsistency. I can't disagree that there's political motivation, but there's also political backlash from Trump supporters - which reflects an inconsistency for anyone who simultaneously argued that Hillary should have been locked up (which would have meant treating her differently than anyone else who committed similar security violations).

Again, Al Capone did eleven years for tax evasion. Not because it was heinous or uncommon or central to his criminality, but because it was the only thing they could convict him on. The people accepted as fact that he was guilty of a host of greater crimes and that any legal punishment would serve justice. In this case the letter of the law could supply the spirit of the law.

I wish to hell it would just happen. This interminable will-they-or-won't they is driving me nuts. I want to wake up to the morning news (here in Aus) to the headline 'Trump Arrested, Released on Strict Bail Conditions'. Until then, I'm tuning out.

although I can't help but add that:

Leading Republicans have joined Donald Trump in a fundraising frenzy to boost their campaign war chests ahead of his possible indictment over alleged hush money paid to a porn star

Trump is the actual prostitute.

About a year ago, Trump actually said: " I’ve been investigated by the Democrats more than Billy the Kid, Jesse James, and Al Capone, combined.”

It doesn’t make him a bad one, either. — NOS4A2

The leadership qualities of Trump can be seen just how effective he was when he had also the legislative branch in control, with both houses with a Republican majority. Or how much wall he actually got built.

Abraham accords? Well, Morocco is happy to get a green light for the annexation of Western Sahara and Sudan is happy to get out of the list of states sponsoring terrorism (let's remember that OBL used to be in Sudan earlier). Yet UAE and Bahrain aren't the biggest players on the bloc.

Perhaps keeping the Saudis and other GCC members from invading Qatar, a country with one important naval base for the US, might actually have been far more important than the Abraham records.

The deep state — NOS4A2

How is the weather in conspiracy fantasy land? Do you have your umbrella?

District Attorney Alvin Bragg, for instance, is trying to raise a misdemeanor to a federal crime. — NOS4A2

What do you think this misdemeanor is?

There is a lot of speculation, but the fact of the matter is we do not know what he will be charged with.

But it explains the fanaticism of his opposition quite well. — NOS4A2

Vague but broad accusations accusing the accusers explains nothing, but it does once again demonstrate the fanaticism behind the compulsive need to protect the Orange Messiah.

There is a lot of speculation, but the fact of the matter is we do not know what he will be charged with. — Fooloso4

According to this,

The charges likely center on the way Mr. Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, handled reimbursing Mr. Cohen for the payment of $130,000 to the porn star Stormy Daniels. The company’s internal records falsely identified the reimbursements as legal expenses, which helped conceal the purpose of the payments, according to Mr. Cohen, who said Mr. Trump knew about the misleading records. (Mr. Trump’s lawyers deny that and have accused Mr. Bragg’s office of targeting the former president for political purposes.)

In New York, falsifying business records can be a crime, and Mr. Bragg’s office is likely to build the case around that charge, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

On a bigger note, Special counsel claims Trump deliberately misled his attorneys about classified documents, judge wrote.

Prosecutors in the special counsel's office have presented compelling preliminary evidence that former President Donald Trump knowingly and deliberately misled his own attorneys about his retention of classified materials after leaving office, a top federal judge wrote Friday in a sealed filing, according to sources who described its contents to ABC News.

U.S. Judge Beryl Howell, who on Friday stepped down as the D.C. district court's chief judge, wrote last week that prosecutors in special counsel Jack Smith's office had made a "prima facie showing that the former president had committed criminal violations," according to the sources, and that attorney-client privileges invoked by two of his lawyers could therefore be pierced.

How is the weather in conspiracy fantasy land? — Fooloso4

This from the person who thinks that some evil supervillain took over the elections using a network of super-hackers and spy assets to install a puppet head of state to do his bidding, only so secretly that apparently no one can come up with a single thing he actually did during the four years he had absolute authority.

Effectiveness is no measure for leadership, for me anyways, unless one adheres to some statist or collectivist foundation. Hitler was effective. Who cares?

Honestly it was just nice to have someone who wasn’t an utter coward, for a change. The man walked into North Korea where past presidents could only peer through binoculars at a safe distance. He reasoned with Kim Jung UN. He reasoned with Putin. He reasoned with the Taliban leadership. He reasoned with Xi. He reasoned with the Saudis. Imagine warmongers like Bush or Clinton or Biden doing something like that. His mere presence made the status quo shudder beneath its glaringly apparent limp-wristedness. Now that he’s gone, look where we’re at. War in Ukraine. Failure in Afghanistan. A belligerent North Korea. An ascendant China. And a war-posturing American world order trying to assert itself as the world police again.

Falsification of records seems likely, but as another article in the Times today discusses, there are questions about how they will handle it.

Things are not looking so good for Trump and he looks it.

I should ask you the same question about the weather in fabrication land. What evidence do you have of what accuse me of thinking?

What evidence do you have of what accuse me of thinking? — Fooloso4

Well...

There is plenty of evidence that Trump was and is a Russian asset. — Fooloso4

Then...

I can see a lot of anti-Russian policies which emerged from the Trump administration. I'm not so clear on what Trump actually did for Putin.

What policies did this Putin-puppet put in place during his four year tenure in service of his master? — Isaac

Followed by studious silence....

Hence you think some evil supervillain (Putin) installed a puppet (Trump), despite not being able to come up with a single action carried out during this puppet-hood.

He reasoned with Kim Jung UN. — NOS4A2

Was that before or after he fell in love with him?

Honestly it was just nice to have someone who wasn’t an utter coward, for a change. — NOS4A2

Brave = dodging the draft because of bonespurs?

Trump is so scared right now.

A source said of Trump’s team, “They are very pumped about this … The Manhattan DA, NYPD and even the Department of Justice were trying to work out a quiet handover coordinated with the Secret Service — and Trump was having none of that. If an indictment and arrest happens, he wants it to be public.”

We are even told that Trump’s people are planning to “try and film and document it with their own camera crew, they want a shot of him in cuffs and will release the mugshot. They are loving this stuff.”

https://pagesix.com/2023/03/21/donald-trump-in-high-spirits-team-pumped-over-arrest/amp/

Brave = dodging the draft because of bonespurs

Smart.

Dodging drafts may be smart, but it's not brave. And how did you fell when Trump feel in love with Kim Jong Un?

Followed by studious silence.... — Isaac

For good reason, which I don't expect you would understand. But really you should if you would look at what I actually said compared to what you accuse me of. But this is a game you are only too willing to play. Play with yourself I'm done.

Trump is so scared right now.

We are even told that Trump’s people are planning to “try and film and document it with their own camera crew, they want a shot of him in cuffs and will release the mugshot. They are loving this stuff.

Political theater and financial opportunism are not incompatible with being scared. I am sure he will get some mileage from playing the martyr.

It felt really good because until then cowards like bush and Obama hid behind bunkers.