Post inauguration Trump:

[stui magpie]

You're confusing them supporting him against the bullshit impeachment proceedings with being in love with him.

They could hate his guts (and many do) and they wouldn't give the Democrats the smell of a fart

[David]

If we’re in the realm of "what people secretly think", then it’s all pretty much speculation at this point. Anyway, what’s most important is that they know he’s a bit of a loose cannon but will basically carry out the agenda that they want in the long run, with his seeming reluctance to get into overseas conflicts one of the few significant sticking points. Otherwise, he keeps the corporate donors happy and deploys the right culture-war rhetoric, so what’s there not to love?

[watt price tully]

Trump is an utter f*ckwit. Impeach him already

Trump thanks the wrong state for the Superbowl win.

A real man of the people 🙄

https://amp.theguardian.com/sport/2020/feb/02/trump-kansas-city-missouri-super-bowl-tweet

[Jezza]

^ ORANGE MAN BAD.

[watt price tully]

[stui magpie]

Or just ignorant about the location of the teams, considering Kansas City straddles the border between both Missouri and Kansas and there actually is a Kansas City in both Missouri and Kansas, the Kansas City Chiefs just happen to come from Missouri, but of course you knew that because you follow the NFL so closely.

[pietillidie]

^It's a curious piece of trivia all Americans learn because it's curious. But that's the least of Trump's flaws.

[Pies4shaw]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-20/donald-trump-offered-julian-assange-presidential-pardon-alleged/11982676

Another corrupt quid pro quo offer, here, not that anyone much seems to care.

[David]

Certainly seems consistent with Trump’s approach – look at the pardons and commutations he offered yesterday, for instance.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/us/politics/trump-pardons.html?0p19G=3248

[thesoretoothsayer]

[Wokko]

Looks like more BS to me, Wikileaks had already stated that the DNC files were an internal leak and not a Russian hack, not that any "Orange Man Bad" morons pay attention to facts anyway.

[thesoretoothsayer]

^ I'm struggling to understand why the Assange team would deploy this information. It suggests that Trump is prepared to deal with Assange and somewhat undermines the claim that Assange faces torture and life imprisonment if extradited to the U.S.

[Jezza]

A DNC insider leaking information to WikiLeaks is more plausible than the Russians hacking into the DNC.

However, Russia was a convenient scapegoat for the left to lose their minds over.

[Pies4shaw]

There is no reason to doubt, at this very, very late stage when all of the evidence is public, that the Russians hacked the Democrats - even Trump’s Attorney-General accepts that. The doubt was only ever whether Trump or his campaign colluded with them:

“The second element involved the Russian government’s efforts to conduct computer hacking operations designed to gather and disseminate information to influence the election. The Special Counsel found that Russian government actors successfully hacked into computers and obtained emails from persons associated with the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations, and publicly disseminated those materials through various intermediaries, including WikiLeaks. Based on these activities, the Special Counsel brought criminal charges against a number of Russian military officers for conspiring to hack into computers in the United States for the purposes of influencing the election. But as noted above, the Special Counsel did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.”

[David]

The issue is that, if Wikileaks was working as it was supposed to – and Assange wasn’t in direct contact with Russian figures – then he wouldn’t be able to confirm or deny the identity of his sources. That’s the entire point of Wikileaks; it’s a means to safely anonymise whistleblowers’ identities (including from Assange himself). So even if he did know, to tell anybody would undermine his entire project. My bet is that he doesn’t, and that because Assange couldn’t give Rohrbacher that assurance (which would serve Trump in defusing the Russiagate stuff), Trump decided to go ahead with throwing him under the bus.

(As for Assange bringing this up now, obviously he’s desperate to avoid extradition to the US, and this info casts further doubt on the integrity and fairness of US justice and the administration’s motivations. As it should.)