If a foreigner, be they Russian or Chinese or Saudi Arabian, offered to help me by hurting my enemy, I’d be happy to meet with them. I’d be happy to meet with Stalin to beat Hitler. America partnered with the Soviet Union to win WWII. That’s how life works. You often make partnerships with unpalatable people. I’ve earned money from people I didn’t like. As a reporter, I would routinely seek information from people I didn’t like.
If I were on Hillary’s team and some Russians or Iranians or Chinese told me that they wanted to swing the election in my favor and wanted to give me damaging information about Donald Trump, I would meet with them if they seemed credible.
Donald Trump Jr. did nothing wrong. He did nothing that any other sane person in his place would not have done.
I’m rewatching Game of Thrones. It’s an Alt Right show. Do you think the contenders in Game of Thrones would not stoop to talk to enemies if they thought it could give them an advantage? What about on House of Cards?
When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.
I would prefer that my team play by the rules and be nice, but that is not as important to me, generally speaking, as winning. I want my people to win. I want my people to live. All other considerations pale in significance to that.
The most ridiculous part of the Trump-Russia story is that Israel wields far more political power in America than does Israel. Do the media really want to investigate that? How come it is kosher for Israel to influence American politics but it is illegitimate for Russia to have one-tenth of that pull?
If the situation was reversed and there were the same type of allegations that Hillary was president because of the influence of a foreign power, do you think the MSM would be as interested in that story?
I no longer care for democracy. I want my people to live. When democracy is an impediment to that, I don’t want democracy. I want aristocracy. I want an alternative.
New York times: “Donald Trump Jr. was looking for dirt on rivals, a typical part of modern campaigns. But information is not usually harvested from, say, Russia.”
Right. It should come from some place like China or Israel or Saudi Arabia. So much better.
A friend says:
I think this stems from two sources: (1) the Trump opponents need to delegitimize him and so are willing to do whatever is necessary to keep the narrative alive that he didn’t win the election, but that the Russians hacked it and without their aid he would have been defeated. This is needed to placate the Democratic base and to a certain extent its funders and (2) the media recognizes that Trump actually poses an existential threat. Trump’s quest to gain the Republican nomination and then win the presidency exploited the press’s need for viewers and readers by feeding them non-stop controversy. He also campaigned over and around the press through rallies and social media. Once he was elected, the press tried to rein him in and to reassert its power through its gatekeeper function, but during the election the press destroyed its own credibility to the point where more persons believe Trump than CNN. The traditional sources of news-weekly newsmagazines, daily newspapers, daily television broadcasts- have all been dying. I find it funny that the NYT bragged about how Trump’s election and subsequent attacks on the NYT actually led to more subscribers, yet the Times just let go a number of editors, including copy editors and has pared its news staff. So even if circulation is up (and my suspicion it was at most a temporary and insignificant bump) advertisers are still fleeing the big city dailies, witness the incredibly shrinking Los Angeles Times which has a monopoly in Los Angeles. The press, especially print media is in trouble anyway. The NYT is afloat only because of its sugar daddy, Carlos Slim, who of course has not influenced the editorial policy of the paper at all. Wapo will survive for a long time because it is a vanity project for Jeff Bezos, just as the WSJ will survive because of Rupert Murdoch (although after he dies, who knows) but the rest of the papers are on their way out, and this trend would continue regardless of who is president. However, Trump has added onto the other woes the body blow of attacking their veracity, accuracy and credibility, with at least some success.
The only way the mainstream, legacy press can recover some of its luster, is to BRING TRUMP DOWN. And that is what is motivating the stories about Russia and keeping the pressure on Trump.
