All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!(Part II)

[numberthirty]

That's the problem.

If you don't have even an "I Could Make A Case For And A Case Against." on conspiracy with a foreign government, all you will have is what Trump has been talking about the entire time.

He's just going to say that they are going after a "Maybe" on obstruction because they had nothing the entire time on conspiracy with a foreign government.

[numberthirty]

As for Clinton, at least they had an actual "Dictionary Definition" example of lying to them go try to go after him with.

I don't know that they even have that here.

If they did, I can't see them letting that go in the report. If it's there, it will probably come out.

[Mister Mets]

Nate Silver considers the ways in which the Mueller could have gone worse for Trump, assuming Barr's summary of its contents is accurate.

If that’s what Mueller’s report concludes — clean bill of health for Trump on collusion, ambivalent on obstruction — that’s still a pretty good outcome for the president, especially since (for a variety of reasons) the bar was high for what was likely to make a big dent in public opinion. If, however, Barr has shaded his summary to be friendly to Trump — maybe Mueller was more ambivalent about collusion, too, than Barr’s letter implies — it might be more of a wash. So there’s a margin of error in predicting the political fallout from the report.

What we can say, however, is that a number of really bad outcomes have been removed from the table for Trump:

• There’s no previously unknown smoking gun linking Trump to Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 campaign.
• Trump wasn’t indicted, and none of his family members were indicted.
• Trump didn’t pardon anyone before the investigation concluded.
• Trump didn’t fire Mueller.

The latter two outcomes are easy to overlook. Whether or not Trump himself committed any crimes or directly coordinated with Russia, there was always the possibility that — out of spite, paranoia, confusion, or the fear that Mueller would look into potential illegal activities other than Russia — Trump would fire him, as he reportedly came close to doing in late 2017. There was also the chance that Trump would pardon a subject of the investigation while the investigation was underway. There are several different ways that such moves could have ended badly for Trump, and with the Mueller investigation over, he’s dodged all of them for now.2
Removing these extremely negative outcomes is a pretty big win for Trump. It isn’t quite the same as predicting that he’ll gain immediate political upside from the conclusion of the investigation; it wouldn’t surprise me at all if his approval rating goes up by a couple of percentage points, for instance, but it also wouldn’t surprise me if it doesn’t.

Matt Taibbi believes the speculation about Russia has hurt the media's credibility.

Mueller, in other words, never stepped out of the bounds of his job description. But could the same be said for the news media?

For those anxious to keep the dream alive, the Times published its usual graphic of Trump-Russia “contacts,” inviting readers to keep making connections. But in a separate piece by Peter Baker, the paper noted the Mueller news had dire consequences for the press:

It will be a reckoning for President Trump, to be sure, but also for Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, for Congress, for Democrats, for Republicans, for the news media and, yes, for the system as a whole…

This is a damning page one admission by the Times. Despite the connect-the-dots graphic in its other story, and despite the astonishing, emotion-laden editorial the paper also ran suggesting “We don’t need to read the Mueller report” because we know Trump is guilty, Baker at least began the work of preparing Times readers for a hard question: “Have journalists connected too many dots that do not really add up?”

The paper was signaling it understood there would now be questions about whether or not news outlets like itself made galactic errors by betting heavily on a new, politicized approach, trying to be true to “history’s judgment” on top of the hard-enough job of just being true. Worse, in a brutal irony everyone should have seen coming, the press has now handed Trump the mother of campaign issues heading into 2020.

Nothing Trump is accused of from now on by the press will be believed by huge chunks of the population, a group that (perhaps thanks to this story) is now larger than his original base. As Baker notes, a full 50.3% of respondents in a poll conducted this month said they agree with Trump the Mueller probe is a “witch hunt.”

Stories have been coming out for some time now hinting Mueller’s final report might leave audiences “disappointed,” as if a President not being a foreign spy could somehow be bad news.

Openly using such language has, all along, been an indictment. Imagine how tone-deaf you’d have to be to not realize it makes you look bad, when news does not match audience expectations you raised. To be unaware of this is mind-boggling, the journalistic equivalent of walking outside without pants.

There will be people protesting: the Mueller report doesn’t prove anything! What about the 37 indictments? The convictions? The Trump tower revelations? The lies! The meeting with Don, Jr.? The financial matters! There’s an ongoing grand jury investigation, and possible sealed indictments, and the House will still investigate, and…

Stop. Just stop. Any journalist who goes there is making it worse.

For years, every pundit and Democratic pol in Washington hyped every new Russia headline like the Watergate break-in. Now, even Nancy Pelosi has said impeachment is out, unless something “so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan” against Trump is uncovered it would be worth their political trouble to prosecute.

The biggest thing this affair has uncovered so far is Donald Trump paying off a porn star. That’s a hell of a long way from what this business was supposedly about at the beginning, and shame on any reporter who tries to pretend this isn’t so.

The story hyped from the start was espionage: a secret relationship between the Trump campaign and Russian spooks who’d helped him win the election.

The betrayal narrative was not reported as metaphor. It was not “Trump likes the Russians so much, he might as well be a spy for them.” It was literal spying, treason, and election-fixing – crimes so severe, former NSA employee John Schindler told reporters, Trump “will die in jail.”

Ken White thinks Barr was way too quick to rule against obstruction.

Why would Mueller spend so much time investigating obstruction of justice but not reach a conclusion? We won’t know until we read his report. But Mueller, a career G-man, is fundamentally legally conservative. That means he has a narrow view of his own role and a healthy respect for the authority of the other branches of government. He might believe that the evaluation is so inherently political that no conclusion he could offer would ever be seen as legitimate, and that the matter is better resolved through Congress’s constitutional authority to impeach (or not) the president. Even if Mueller didn’t make an explicit recommendation, we’ll probably be able to infer his conclusions by reviewing how he marshaled the evidence for and against guilt. Prosecutors, as a rule, are not good at neutral renditions of facts.

The attorney general showed no such circumspection. In less than 48 hours, he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein—who supervised Mueller for most of his investigation—“concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offence.” Though Barr emphasized that he and Rosenstein had been involved in evaluating the status of the investigation for months, and that they consulted the Office of Legal Counsel and other Department of Justice experts, this conclusion reflects startling and unseemly haste for such a historic matter.

Crucially, we don’t know whether Barr concluded that the president didn’t obstruct justice or that he couldn’t obstruct justice. Well before his appointment, Barr wrote an unsolicited memo to Rosenstein arguing that Mueller’s investigation was “fatally misconceived,” to the extent that it was premised on Trump firing former FBI Director James Comey or trying to persuade Comey to drop the investigation of Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national-security adviser. Barr’s memo was a forceful exposition of the legal argument that the president cannot obstruct justice by exercising certain core powers such as hiring or firing staff or directing the course of executive-branch investigations. So although Barr’s letter to Congress says that he and Rosenstein found no actions that constituted “obstructive conduct” undertaken with the requisite corrupt intent, we don’t know whether he means that Trump didn’t try to interfere with an investigation, or that even if he did, it wasn’t obstruction for a president to do so. Democrats in Congress will want to probe that distinction—as they should.

[Tami]

I hope the full report comes out, that's the only way we'll know for sure.

[Mister Mets]

Kickstarter pushes back against unionization efforts, suggesting employees are privileged and appropriating from the marginalized.

Forming a union is a great tool—for marginalized workers. Unions are historically intended to protect vulnerable members of society, and we feel the demographics of this union undermine this important function. We’re concerned with the misappropriation of unions for use by privileged workers, some of whom receive compensation more than twice the average income in NYC, in addition to flexible work from home hours, above-and-beyond industry standards for parental leave, 25+ days of paid vacation, a wellness stipend, a bike stipend, an education stipend, a weekly catered lunch, and a great deal of other benefits. We’re already a radically thoughtful and ethical company with our PBC, and can do more to lead the way in the tech industry by providing an open environment that’s free of hostility.

[numberthirty]

I hope the full report comes out, that's the only way we'll know for sure.

The issue(to me)...

Let's say that most of what's there(I'd guess that secret Grand Jury testimony will wind up staying under wraps) winds up winds up coming out.

What are the odds that anything there will change the mind of the folks at the opposite ends of this("Must Be Guilty..." Versus "This Is A Witch Hunt...")?

[WestPhillyPunisher]

The Mueller Report Is Done, But The Investigations Into Trump Aren’t Over

Here’s what prosecutors are looking at when it comes to the president and his campaign. Once Trump leaves office, he'll be in for a rough ride, without the GOP covering for his fat orange ass.

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AOC: Removing ‘Horrific’ Trump Won’t Solve Our ‘Much Deeper Problems’

Freshman congresswoman says the president alone isn’t the problem. It’s the party that embraced him. Bingo! AOC nailed it! Trump is merely symptom of the disease that's the Republican Party.

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Second Parkland Shooting Survivor Apparently Dies By Suicide

Police confirmed a juvenile who attended Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School died Saturday night, days after another survivor, Sydney Aiello, took her own life. How tragic.

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Ilhan Omar: Trump’s Islamophobic Remarks Inspire Attacks Like New Zealand Shooting

The Minnesota Democrat spoke Saturday at a Muslim civil rights banquet in California. What's troubling is that it's only a matter of time before a tragedy like New Zealand happens here, and everyone knows it too.

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Pete Buttigieg: Trump Should Have Never Come ‘Within Cheating Distance’ Of 2016 Election

The 2020 presidential hopeful is concerned about more than just the possibility of Trump’s re-election.

[ZombieHavoc]

I fucking hate the media for making this there golden carrot on Trump when there is so much other shit he's guilty of.

I don't know, man, it was a fun ride.

[Cimmerian]

LOL

The left becomes more delusional and unhinged by the second.

[Cimmerian]

[Tendrin]

Methinks your yelp about the 'collapse' of 'russiagate' is premature, but yeah. Sure. We're 'delusional', but you're the ones who voted a lying, racist conman into office.

Meanwhile, the rest of us will be waiting for the release of the full report, if we ever get to see it.

[Michael Watkins]

I don't know, man, it was a fun ride.

a fun ride that just made it a lot more likely that Trump will win re-election.

[Michael Watkins]

LOL

The left becomes more delusional and unhinged by the second.

yeah. just wait until we're at the point where it's acceptable to march with tiki torches and yell the jews will not replace us.

[Cimmerian]

Methinks your yelp about the 'collapse' of 'russiagate' is premature, but yeah. Sure. We're 'delusional', but you're the ones who voted a lying, racist conman into office.

Meanwhile, the rest of us will be waiting for the release of the full report, if we ever get to see it.

Orange Man Bad!!

[ZombieHavoc]

a fun ride that just made it a lot more likely that Trump will win re-election.

I mean, was probably gonna happen anyway.