Russiagate (2016- ) is the scandal where US President Trump and some of his top men are suspected of secret ties with Russia.
Robert Mueller was appointed by Congress to look into the matter. His investigation is not yet completed.
What we know so far, as of July 16th 2018:
2008: Donald Trump Jr, Trump’s son, said,
“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.”
2014: Eric Trump, another son, said
“We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”
2015: Trump says he will run for US president. Russia starts using hackers, trolls, and bots to help him win.
March 2016: Paul Manafort becomes the head of Trump’s campaign. Manafort has ties with the Russian government and is deep in debt to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
June 2016: Don Jr, Paul Manafort, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner meet with people from the Russian government to talk about getting dirt on Hillary Clinton. By this point she is the only person capable of defeating Trump at the polls in November.
July 2016: Trump’s people get the Republican Party to soften its language on Russia and Ukraine.
July 27th 2016: Trump says:
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails [of Hillary Clinton] that are missing.”
That same day Russian intelligence tries to break into her email account for the first time.
August 2016: Roger Stone, Trump adviser (and former business partner of Paul Manafort), secretly talks to Guccifer 2.0, an online persona of the GRU (Russian military intelligence).
November 9th 2016: Trump wins the election by 22,748 votes in Wisconsin, 10,704 votes in Michigan, and 44,292 in Pennsylvania.
December 2016: Jared Kushner talks to the Russian government about setting up a way of talking to them without US intelligence knowing about it.
January 2017: The Steele Dossier is made public. It says:
“Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions within the western alliance.”
Which Trump has been doing ever since right before our eyes.
May 2017: Trump fires James Comey, the head of the FBI. He later admits he did it to stop the Russiagate investigation. Congress appoints Mueller days later to carry on that investigation.
July 2017: Trump lies about the June 2016 meeting – which means he knows that Russiagate is not, as he has repeatedly said, a “witch hunt” cooked up by the “deep state” as “fake news” to create “an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election”.
June 2018: Trump’s lawyers move from the argument that Trump did not obstruct justice to the argument that as president it is not possible for him to obstruct justice.
July 16th 2018: Trump and Putin meet in Helsinki. Trump, standing next to Putin, tells the world he believes Putin over US intelligence on the question of whether Russia tried to undermine the 2016 election. Putin, when asked if he was blackmailing Trump, avoided a direct answer and said:
“Please disregard these issues and don’t think about this anymore again.”
– Abagond, 2018.
Update (March 27th 2019): Robert Mueller at long last, after 22 months, completed his investigation into Russiagate on March 22nd. The Republicans say it clears President Trump and yet are blocking its release, providing only a four-page summary. Huh? That summary says that Mueller says that he could find no smoking gun proving that Trump conspired with Russia to win the 2016 election, only that MAYBE he obstructed justice.
Source: mainly Vox (July 16th 2018).
See also:
- Russiagate – the original post, written March 2017.
- deep state
- fake news
- Trump
- Putin
- Russian hackers
- Russian trolls
- Russian bots
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When are the GOP leaders going to break with this?
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The case has by no means been blown open [Mueller’s probe is ongoing] but Trump’s actions = HUGE circumstantial evidence. It really is peculiar how hostile he is to America’s traditional allies and how concilliatory he is towards Putin’s Russia. All of this took place without any official change in US foreign policy or geopolitical doctrine. Trump seems to be winging it and leaving even his own DOJ and state department hanging.
Trumpty Dumpty’s fall is going to massive.
What is going to happen after one election destroys both the Clintons and Trumps politically and leaves both the Democratic and Republican parties reeling? Interesting and volatile times indeed but there may be opportunity on the other side of this interlude.
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I wish you would have chosen a different image for this entry. It reinforces the notion that gay sex – and thus gay people, especially gay men – is icky and worthy of mockery and scorn. There are far better ways to mock Trump and Putin than to imply they are gay for each other.
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@Anon
There is some context to image.
Here are some references.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Everything_Great_Again
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_God,_Help_Me_to_Survive_This_Deadly_Love
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Thanks a lot! This is just the very concise analysis from the other side of the Atlantic we’ve been missing for a while.
And this is the proper context for images like this.
And, well, sorry for the country I’m living in.
Personally, I wasn’t voting for that eff of a jerk. In fact, most of the people I know didn’t, it’s very likely that he’d decided to vote for himself.
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The POTUS seems really not to care about Western interests.
But one simpler and subtler explanation to his behavior, besides his obvious narcissistic drive, is that he wants peace with Moscow or Putin or whoever is ruling in “the other (ill-famed) side”. And he is ready to go “the needed extra mile” to get that peace.
In fact he did it with the North Korean leader a few months before. Now he is doing the same with Putin.
The true allies do not need so much “demonstration of his love”, but a little bit salt to temper the long established relationships is not that bad. They are already “conquered”, after all!
Perhaps all this eccentricity, is not that bad!
P.S;
Just another possible interpretation of the conundrum of the POTUS behavior!
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Trump keeps his lips suctioned to Putin’s sphincter. That image of the two of them is correct.
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So Trump is a traitor but it probably doesn’t matter to his sycophant and brainwashed cult of Trumpanzees.
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Everything out there in plain sight. Yet many over “look” or refuse to “see” what is obviously in front of them and correct it.
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Trump is nothing but a vasel being handled by a foreign power.
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The idea behind the mural is that two men kissing is gross. It’s homophobic by default.
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@mjb
I understand that sentiment and perhaps it was the intent of the mural’s creators. That may also be the natural interpretation depending on the cultural lens through which it is viewed.
However, in fact, what it depicts is two men kissing without comment on the actual act. A kiss is a natural symbol of attachment [Jesus to Judas: “will you betray me with a kiss?”]. If America were in Germany’s pocket and the mural featured Trump and Merkel it would not immediately be viewed as a mockery of heterosexual conduct.
So I consider the fact that the mural can be seen as homophobic to be reflection of society’s homophobia. People are disburbed by the Trump/Putin relationship so many consider the juxtaposition with imagery depicting males kissing as homophobic. It is felt that the mural makes a powerful point by exploiting people’s biases. The subtle point I’m trying to make is that if the mural is homophobic it is only so because many people already are. Therefore the point is powerfully and doubly made in a way that would not be possible if one of the leaders were female.
So while I understand that the mural is disturbing to many, I’m not sure that it’s wrong. Perhaps it’s properly thought-provoking art. It is a mirror rather than a projector.
Anyway, just thinking out loud.
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@ Anonymous Poster
@ Michael Jon Barker
I have mixed feelings about the image. You both make very good points about the image being homophobic. But on the other hand, wouldn’t a mural of, say, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher kissing convey the exact same message?
(p.s. MJB, good to see you commenting again)
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I guess I could also be giving it more thought than it’s worth. After all, it was painted in relatively conservative Lithuania which, as a former part of the USSR is probably as wary of Putin as it is of gays.
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Is it real or is it memorex or is it propaganda?
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” But on the other hand, wouldn’t a mural of, say, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher kissing convey the exact same message?”
I don’t think so. Men and women kissing is perceived as normal while two men kissing, gross and two women kissing as erotic.
It was meant to poke both Putin (who passed all kinds of homophobic laws in the Soviet Union) and Trump, whose backers on the Christian right are homophobic.
It was meant I suppose to play on people’s homophobia to make a point.
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I don’t believe this is necessarily homophobic. The mural echos a long tradition of Russian Soviet leaders kissing befriended heads of state.
As the blog post I linked to says: a contemporary joke runs such: Brezhnev was commenting about a foreign leader, “As a politician, rubbish… but what a good kisser!”’
See https://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2010/08/02/the-fraternal-kiss/
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@Jeff Elberfeld
The ‘long tradition of Russian Soviet leaders kissing befriended heads’ became extinct around the nineties, or even soon after Brezhev.
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Would the mural be considered gross if it were two young, physically fit, unknown men, kissing? Point of view.
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I think the Russians have effectively played Trump. But the Americans effectively played Yeltsin some 20 years earlier. I’m going to presume Yeltsin was smart enough to know the Americans were behind him. Trump on the other hand seems oblivious to Russian meddling. In his narcissistic mind his election was all about what a great leader he is.
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Yea, russia? Like we’re going to see borscht in the convenience store? They must have really got him in that hotel.
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how much of the message is part of the fabric of the medium
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The cancer of the presidency has spread. Watergate was nothing compared to this cancer that has no end. Our democracy has been infiltrated with no reprocutions.
There was a time when the thought of communism infiltration in America was cut out immediately.
However, we have reached a time that America is not the Great and Powerful county it once was. America is infested and their is no one stopping this cancerous infestation. The collateral damages of this administration doings is bringing this country down day by day. They talk about fake news when in reality this is a fake administration.
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Now with tax and tarriff on 100% of chinese goods? Wtf is this all really about
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@jefe
Never. The GOP have committed to white supremacy and this is a hill they will die on.
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I used to say that I feared the impeachment of Trump because Pence, the next in succession, could be worse but I am a lot less concerned about that these days.
Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager who is up to his eyeballs in both indebtedness to Russian oligarchs and criminal allegations, personally picked Pence and worked to convince Trump to make him his running mate. Consequently, I think it’s possible, even likely, that Pence’s hands will not be clean if a criminal scheme is uncovered.
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In re certain ‘scripted’ or ‘contained’? civil rights ‘upgrades’ or ‘representation. To wit marijuana rights, i mean nj recreational now? Second only in a nasty little napoleon complex to perhaps connecticut? Maybe there’s room for the little guy to get his say in but it just seems like someone said ‘weed’ and that’s that all this voting and stuff it just got us a trump.
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Update: Robert Mueller at long last, after 22 months, completed his investigation into Russiagate on March 22nd. The Republicans say it clears President Trump and yet are blocking its release, providing only a four-page summary. Huh? That summary says that Mueller says that he could find no smoking gun proving that Trump conspired with Russia to win the 2016 election, only that MAYBE he obstructed justice.
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^ sounds exactly the same that we “knew” 22 months ago.
His investigation was for naught?
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It’s a lot easier to accept that Trump was elected because “America” is a racist zenophobic nation rather then imaginary Russian collusion.
That’s the story. America’s racism and zenophobic mentality, not the fake journalism of MSNBC.
I’m not the only liberal to question this.
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