Quote:
Originally Posted by PilotMan
Just a reminder on the sort of shit we're missing out on.
July 31, 2020 – A day after Trump aired the possibility of delaying the election, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany rebuked the Hong Kong government for postponing its own elections. “This action undermines the democratic processes and freedoms that have underpinned Hong Kong’s prosperity,” she said.
July 31, 2017 – Donald Trump dictated a public statement on behalf of his son, Donald Trump Jr., regarding a meeting between Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer. President Trump’s dictation stated the meeting "primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children.” A subsequent release of Trump Jr.’s email thread on the topic indicated that the topic of the meeting was regarding Clinton and Russian support for Trump’s campaign.
July 31, 2017 – New White House Chief of Staff John Kelly fired Anthony Scaramucci ten days into Scaramucci’s tenure as communications director.
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"I wouldn't say I've been missing it, Bob"
'I love it': Donald Trump Jr posts emails from Russia offering material on Clinton | Donald Trump | The Guardian
Also, it's amazing how that second one was swept completely under the rug. I mean, it was amazing to watch in real time and it's been all but completely forgotten. People were accusing Trump of having met the Russians who offered dirt on Hillary Clinton. He gave his usually bullshit rorschach bullshit response that the media futilely tried to dissect for a week. Then he flatly denied it. But then Don Jr released emails TO THE MEDIA that totally admitted they were doing it. And not like "oh, if you look closely, you can subtly connect the dots" or mob-esque non-specific "Yeah, Vinnie, take care of the business". It was like "yeah, I love the dirt you dug up on Clinton - release it late in the campaign" and a list of who met them and when. If you had submitted this for Law and Order, they'd have been like "yeah, too on the nose".
It was such a weird, stupid unforced error - like who just releases a confession to the media after trying to hide it for a couple of weeks. But, I mean, that's what you get when, well, that whole family and White House was basically one big incompetent mess. But then... it just disappeared. It had to compete for news cycles with whatever "flood the zone "crap Bannon came up. And then the Charlottesville Nazi march happened about a week and a half later.
Sure the campaign had a lot of "now that's the thing that brings him down" moments, most notably the Access Hollywood tape. And there were some little ones in his first few months. But, this was only a few months into his Presidency so we hadn't gotten to the place where we all just assumed nothing would bring him down. This was the first real test of that. I mean, his son admitted that a bunch of the inner circle like Kushner and Manafort met with the Russians to try and fix an election. The Ruskies! Like Ronald Reagan rolling over in his grave Russians, surely there would be an objection here even from his own party,
But, nope. This was also where, anecdotally, feelings towards Russia started to shift among my coworkers. In the past I had been made fun of for studying the Russian language in college and visiting Russia a few years prior - the old Reagan trope of them as the Cold War enemy. These were the same people who loved to call the Ukranian sysadmin "Russian", in the pejorative, and watch him get pissed before he eventually just started ignoring them (strangely, the couple of Indian dudes who did that didn't take too kindly to when I called them Pakistani one time and protested loudly abut how that was so much different - weird, that). That was when I remembered them really starting to warm up to Russia and be like "see, Putin isn't so bad" and stuff about how people in Russia had it so much better than here because they were still anti-gay, etc.
SI