US Politics The Mueller Investigation - report is out

[David Wooderson]

trump's claim was "Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped"". the justice department reported that this claim was, simply, wrong.

Trump was being wiretapped by Obama's administration and at least one call was between the President at Manafort's at TrumpTower, he is being 100% factual, he trolls hard lulz.

 

[cduggles]

"Obama Tapp My Phones", A Refresher

In case you don't memorize Trump tweets or want to feel vindicated in your loins about the tapp Obama put on Trump (but are wrong), here's a refresher of the actual allegations and the "evidence" Trump based his erroneous claims upon.

Excerpts from article. Link below.

The tweetstorm that started it all:

‪@realDonaldTrump‬
Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!
1:35 AM - Mar 4, 2017

Is it legal for a sitting President to be "wire tapping" a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!
1:49 AM - Mar 4, 2017

I'd bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!
1:52 AM · Mar 4, 2017

How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!
2:02 AM - Mar 4, 2017


What is Trump talking about? The White House didn’t respond for more than 24 hours. When it did, the press secretary issued a brief statement, which we run here in its entirety:

Spicer, March 5: Reports concerning potentially politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election are very troubling.

President Donald J. Trump is requesting that as part of their investigation into Russian activity, the congressional intelligence committees exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016.

Neither the White House nor the President will comment further until such oversight is conducted.

Spicer didn’t say much in his brief statement, but we learned the president’s claim of Watergate-style criminal abuse of power was not based on U.S. intelligence briefings, but on “reports.”

Later that day, Sanders went on ABC’s “This Week,” where she reiterated the White House’s call for an investigation and cited news organizations that “reported on the potential of this having had happened.”

In essence, Spicer and Huckabee aren’t saying the president’s statement is accurate; they are saying it may be accurate — without providing any evidence to support even that possibility.

Sanders went even further by claiming that Trump was only citing what “multiple news outlets” have already reported.

Sanders, March 5: Everybody acts like President Trump is the one that came up with this idea and just threw it out there. There are multiple news outlets that have reported this.

That is false, as we explain next as we look at the news stories cited by the White House as evidence.

White House Lacks Evidence

When we asked for the news articles referenced by Sanders, the White House provided us with a timeline of events from five news stories written by four news organizations. Only two of the stories were relevant to Trump’s accusations, and none of them claimed that Obama ordered illegal wiretaps.

Trump’s claim rests primarily on the reporting of Heat Street, a conservative website owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and started by Louise Mensch, a former Conservative Party member of the British Parliament.

In a Nov. 7, 2016, article, Heat Street wrote that the FBI on two occasions sought a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISA court, as part of its investigation of Russia’s interference in the U.S. presidential election, and Trump associates who were suspected of contacts with Russian officials.

Heat Street reported that the FBI failed in June to obtain a warrant, but it was successful in October after the request was narrowed to focus on possible “financial and banking offenses” involving two Russian banks:

Heat Street, Nov. 7, 2016: The first request, which, sources say, named Trump, was denied back in June, but the second was drawn more narrowly and was granted in October after evidence was presented of a server, possibly related to the Trump campaign, and its alleged links to two banks; SVB Bank and Russia’s Alfa Bank.

The administration also referred us to a Jan. 12, 2017, report on the BBC website, which also cited anonymous sources who said that the FBI received a FISA court warrant in October.

The BBC report said the warrant targeted two Russian banks suspected of sending “money to Mr Trump’s organisation or his election campaign.” However, the BBC report said that “neither Mr. Trump nor his associates are named in the FISA order”: BBC, Jan. 12, 2017: On 15 October, the US secret intelligence court issued a warrant to investigate two Russian banks. This news was given to me by several sources and corroborated by someone I will identify only as a senior member of the US intelligence community. He would never volunteer anything – giving up classified information would be illegal – but he would confirm or deny what I had heard from other sources. …

Neither Mr Trump nor his associates are named in the Fisa order, which would only cover foreign citizens or foreign entities – in this case the Russian banks. But ultimately, the investigation is looking for transfers of money from Russia to the United States, each one, if proved, a felony offence.

These stories,which were based on anonymous sources and have not been confirmed, do not support Trump’s claims that “President Obama was tapping my phones in October,” or that the alleged wiretapping was illegal.

First, the president has no role in the FBI’s decision to seek a warrant or the FISA court’s approval for one, as explained in a 2006 story by the New York Times on how the FISA application process works. The warrant application would be initiated by the FBI and presented to the FISA court by Justice Department attorneys.

Second, the FBI must prove to the court that there is “probable cause” that the target of the warrant is “an agent of a foreign power” and engaged in criminal activity, as explained in a joint statement last year to Congress by the intelligence community officials.

Neither Heat Street nor the BBC alleged any wrongdoing by Obama or the FBI in allegedly obtaining a FISA court warrant in October.

On the same day that the White House provided us with these stories, James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence under Obama, appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and denied that a FISA court warrant was issued to monitor Trump Tower.

“For the part of the national security apparatus that I oversaw as DNI, there was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president, the president-elect at the time, or as a candidate, or against his campaign,” Clapper said.

Clapper said he would have known whether the FBI had a court order for surveillance, and he was not aware of one.

Obama’s spokesman, Kevin Lewis, also denied Trump’s allegation, calling it “simply false” in a statement issued on Twitter.

“A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice,” the statement said. “As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen.”

The three other stories cited by the White House:

* An opinion column in the conservative National Review, dated Jan. 11, 2017, that rehashed the Heat Street report and questioned if FISA was being used against “political enemies.”

* A New York Times story on steps taken by the Obama administration that would allow the National Security Agency “to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.” This story, which ran Jan. 12, has nothing to do with the alleged wiretapping of Trump Tower, but rather how intelligence material is shared.

* A New York Times story that said “law enforcement and intelligence agencies are examining intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump.” In its Jan. 19 article, the paper wrote that it “was not clear whether the intercepted communications had anything to do with Mr. Trump’s campaign.”

It is the responsibility of the politician making a claim to provide information to support it. But Trump has failed to do so.

First, there is no evidence that the FBI wiretapped Trump’s phone or his campaign offices in Trump Tower. Indeed, the director of national intelligence flatly denied it.

Second, the claim is loosely based on two reports — a conservative blog and a BBC report — that cited anonymous sources who claimed that the FBI obtained a warrant in October to investigate two Russian banks. Neither report alleged any wrongdoing by Obama or even evidence that the warrant was obtained illegally. In fact, Heat Street and the BBC claimed that the FBI obtained a legal warrant from the FISA court.

Finally, there is no evidence Obama ordered any wiretapping, as Trump alleged. That would be handled by the FBI and Justice Department independently of the White House.

Update, March 16: In a March 15 interview, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson asked Trump why he made his accusation without providing evidence. Trump said that the New York Times “wrote about it … on January 20 using the word wiretap.” That is the New York Times story we mention earlier. It was posted to the paper’s website on Jan. 19 and published Jan. 20 in the paper under the headline, “Wiretapped Data Used in Inquiry of Trump Aides.” However, that story made no mention of Obama ordering a wiretap of Trump’s phones, and, as we wrote, the paper said it “was not clear whether the intercepted communications had anything to do with Mr. Trump’s campaign.”

Update, March 20: At a March 20 hearing of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, FBI Director James Comey testified that the Department of Justice and the FBI have no information to support Trump’s tweets that the Obama administration wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower. “With respect to the president’s tweets about alleged wiretapping directed at him by the prior administration, I have no information that supports those tweets and we have looked carefully inside the FBI,” Comey said. “The Department of Justice has asked me to share with you that the answer is the same for the Department of Justice and all its components. The department has no information that supports those tweets.”

Update, Sept. 25: CNN reported on Sept. 19 that federal investigators “wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort under secret court orders before and after the election,” citing unnamed sources. Some have cited the CNN story as evidence that Trump was right. It isn’t. We explain why in our item, “Revisiting Trump’s Wiretap Tweets.”

Examining Trump’s Wiretap Claim

tl;dr It's bolded. Trump and flacks made baseless claims based on news sources, none of which supported his hysterical claims at the time.

 

[alasdairm]

Trump was being wiretapped by Obama's administration

no he wasn’t as the justice department stated clearly. i’ll agree to disagree.

alasdair

 

[cduggles]

"Obama Tapp My Wires", Retroactive Vindication Rings Hollow

Trump allies see vindication in reports on Manafort wiretapping

For some of President Trump’s staunchest allies, reports that former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was under U.S. surveillance are nothing short of vindication of the president’s widely-dismissed claims that former President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower.

Although surveillance experts from both sides of the aisle say the claims mischaracterize reports about the order on Manafort, that hasn’t stopped Trump allies from saying the president was right all along.

Longtime advisor Roger Stone has gleefully circulated a segment from Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News in which the host says “all those patronizing assurances that nobody is spying on political campaigns were false” and “it looks like Trump's tweet may have been right.”

When Trump made his claim in March, it was rejected by members of both parties. The Justice Department later stated that it had no evidence to back them up.

While there have been some conflicts in the reports on surveillance of Manafort by both CNN and The Wall Street Journal, they have been consistent in stating that officials obtained a lawful order from a clandestine court to target Trump’s former campaign chief as part of the counterintelligence probe into Russian interference in the election.

CNN reports that the order allowed officials to place a wiretap on Manafort, while the Journal reports that it covered only stored communications and did not allow officials to intercept his phone communications in live time.

But in either case, experts say, the reporting provides no justification for Trump’s claim that Obama had his “wires tapped” in Trump Tower.

“No —no —absolutely none,” said David Shedd, a Heritage Foundation fellow who was Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Policy, Plans and Requirements under former President George W. Bush.

Under U.S. surveillance law, the government can target an American citizen if it can show probable cause that that person is knowingly acting as an agent of a foreign government. Manafort has reportedly drawn federal interest for years related to his work for a Russian-backed political candidate in Ukraine —although it is unclear what information sparked the warrant investigators obtained as part of the Russia probe.

CNN reported that investigators obtained a warrant related to his work in Ukraine that lapsed in 2016 due to lack of evidence, but that interest in Manafort was “reignited” due to “intercepted communications between Manafort and suspected Russian operatives, and among the Russians themselves.”

It is possible, experts say, that if Manafort spoke to President Trump during the period he was under surveillance, that the president’s communications may have been collected as well —a legal practice known as “incidental collection.”

According to the Journal, the surveillance began after Manafort was ousted by the Trump campaign in August. CNN reports only that it covered a period before and after the Nov. 8 election but notes that it was conducted at a time when Trump was known to talk to Manafort.

Still, there is no new evidence in the two reports to suggest that Trump himself was under surveillance, experts say.

For supporters of the president —and most casual consumers of news —the distinction is immaterial between a court order targeting the president-elect and a court order under which the president’s communications may have been collected incidentally.

“That lack of understanding of the granularity is exactly what the president and his supporters are counting on,” said Pat Eddington, a surveillance policy expert at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute.**

If it turns out that any of Manafort’s communications with the president were collected at Trump Tower —which is possible given that he had an apartment in the building — “then the whole story is, ‘it’s happening every time, all the time, and I told you so,’ ” Shedd said.

But that argument is specious, he said. “Trump is only the other half of the conversation by coincidence. Obviously Manafort called people, so of course there would be coverage of the other party.”

A spokesperson for Manafort, Jason Maloni, has characterized the court orders as an abuse of power by the Obama administration, which he says wanted to spy on a political opponent.

“It’s unclear if Paul Manafort was the objective,” Maloni told the Journal. “Perhaps the real objective was Donald Trump.”

Surveillance experts are skeptical of that suggestion. For one thing, it is illegal for investigators to “reverse target” an American by spying on a person with whom they know their true target to be in communication.

If the president were in fact the oblique target of government surveillance —either as a candidate or the president-elect —both Eddington and Shedd say, it would have been so explosive that it would have almost certainly been leaked to the press.

Manafort has become increasingly central to the federal probe into Russian interference in the election. Special counsel Robert Mueller has reportedly told him to expect to be indicted and a drumbeat of headlines linking him to Russian officials have emerged in the press.

He was a participant in a highly-scrutinized meeting in 2016 between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian government lawyer promising dirt on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Most recently, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Manafort offered to provide “private briefings” on the 2016 race to a Russian billionaire with close ties to the Kremlin.

The disclosure of the warrants targeting Manafort has drawn legitimate scrutiny as a violation of Manafort’s civil liberties and a possible criminal leak — the mere existence of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, warrant is classified.

House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who first raised alarm about the practice of “unmasking” the names of Americans caught up in government surveillance, is currently under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for allegedly exposing classified information when he disclosed his findings to reporters.

And many civil liberties advocates say there is a legitimate need for more limitations and transparency in the FISA process.

But, Eddington said, “We can refute the notion that the president was peddling that he was wiretapped.”

“There is nothing in evidence right now that suggests that,” he said.

Trump allies see vindication in reports on Manafort wiretapping

**I really liked this article (see bolded, underlined paragraphs with asterisks) for the sole reason that it implies that Trump supporters are too stupid to understand the nuance of the distinction being made.

(Yes he shifts gears, but I think it's fairly clear that he meant it.)

Thank you Liquid Method and David Wooderson for arguing that Trump is vindicated regarding wiretaps.

 

[cduggles]

 

[cduggles]

"Obama Tapp My Calls", The Many Ways Trump Is Wrong

Excerpts from stories:

A watchdog group called American Oversight filed suit against the Department of Justice in April, seeking to obtain any documents related to the alleged wiretaps as described in Trump’s March 4 tweets. On Sept. 1, the Justice Department filed a summary motion seeking to have the suit dismissed, saying the FBI and the National Security Division confirmed they had no record that would support Trump’s tweets.
...........

[As of September, 2017:]

•There is still no evidence that Obama ordered wiretapping of Trump or Trump Tower.

• There is no evidence that any of Trump’s conversations [with Manafort] were picked up by the FBI, but if they were that would have been “incidental collection”.

• Incidental collection of information is legal with a FISA court order.

• We don’t know exactly when the alleged wiretapping of Manafort occurred.

...But there is no evidence to support Trump’s tweets accusing Obama of illegally wiretapping his phones. That was the case in March, and it remains so...

Examining Trump’s Wiretap Claim

Revisiting Trump’s Wiretap Tweets

 

[cduggles]

"Obama Tapp My Campaign", Do the Manafort FISA warrants exist?

Donald Trump’s campaign manager says he’s the victim of dirty tricks. But national security investigators don’t play games.

• As an initial matter, a big word of caution is in order about whether there was a FISA warrant to surveil Manafort at all... The universe of people who would know about surveillance [related to a FISA warrant] would be small, the material would be highly classified, and the civil liberties violation would be serious.

• Indeed, if there were a FISA warrant, then the leak of its existence would represent a serious breach [of civil liberties and classified information].
By contrast, [Manafort's assistant Jason] Maloni’s attempt to conflate politically motivated leaking about a FISA warrant with the idea that a FISA warrant would have been issued for political reasons is almost certainly nonsense. Certainly, he provides no evidence that would lead a reasonable person to believe that.

• The government would have gone through an extremely rigorous process in order to obtain a FISA warrant. That process is designed to guarantee that, if a FISA was in fact obtained for Manafort, it was not an exercise in political spying... A [number of] people would have acted knowing exactly how politically explosive FISA surveillance against the former campaign manager of a major party candidate would be if it ever became public.

Paul Manafort Isn’t a Deep-State Martyr

The article goes on to give a far more in-depth explanation of the rigorous application process to obtain a FISA warrant.

 

[cduggles]

"Obama Tapp My Phone", Manafort who?

Is Trump's 'Wiretap' Claim Vindicated?
by David A. Graham
Sept 19, 2017

The president’s defenders say reported surveillance of Paul Manafort justifies an accusation against Barack Obama, but they overstate the facts.

...Trump claimed that he had been “wiretapped” at Trump Tower, and Manafort also kept an apartment in the building, but it is not known whether the FBI surveilled that property.

Manafort also owns several other homes; there are accusations that some of them may have been used for money-laundering, while The New York Times reported that FBI agents picked a lock to conduct a no-knock raid on an apartment in Alexandria, Virginia...

Meanwhile, the White House demanded that Congress investigate whether Obama ordered surveillance on Trump, yet refused to share what reasons it had for believing it had happened. Eventually, the provenance of Trump’s accusation began to emerge: Radio host Mark Levin had alleged surveillance; then a Breitbart story did the same, synthesizing already public information to make a speculative claim. Later, Fox News legal commentator Andrew Napolitano parroted it.

...earlier this month, Trump’s own Justice Department said in a court filing that it had no evidence for his claim. “Both FBI and [the National Security Division] confirm that they have no records related to wiretaps as described by the March 4, 2017 tweets,” a motion said...

The notion that surveillance of a Trump associate, which may or may not have occurred while he worked for Trump, constitutes surveillance of Trump contradicts the White House’s attempts to distance the president from Manafort as just another random campaign aide...

Paul Manafort who?

When pressed for evidence this spring, [Trump] did not cite any such information, instead pointing to Napolitano. It is true that customarily a president would not reveal the existence of a secret wiretap, but Trump has shown no such hesitations. He has casually revealed classified information, including to Russian officials, and if there really had been surveillance ordered by Obama, he would have revealed it in his tweet.

Much of the information in this article is redundant to previous posts. However, it does have some unique perspectives and facts.

 

[cduggles]

"Obama Tapp My Tower", The Screws Turn into Manafort

THE RUSSIA CONNECTION
The Latest Scoops from CNN and the New York Times: A Quick and Dirty Analysis
By Susan Hennessey, Shannon Togawa Mercer, Benjamin Wittes
Monday, September 18, 2017, 11:03 PM

CNN and the New York Times this evening published dueling scoops on former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort...

CNN reported that interest in Manafort was “reignited” [for a second FISA warrant] because of “intercepted communications between Manafort and suspected Russian operatives, and among the Russians themselves.” The FBI also conducted physical searches: one of a storage facility belonging to Manafort and a more widely reported search of his Alexandria home in late July...

While CNN did not report a known start date for the second surveillance period, it suggested that the FBI had already “noticed what counterintelligence agents thought was a series of odd connections between Trump associates and Russia” by the time Manafort left the campaign in August.

The [New York Times story] catalogs what it describes as “aggressive tactics” that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has employed in his investigations of Trump associates, specifically Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

First, the Times reveals that after the July raid on Manafort’s residence, Mueller’s prosecutors warned Manafort that he would be indicted.

The story also reports that Mueller’s team has subpoenaed several of Manafort’s associates, including Jason Maloni, a former Manafort spokesman; the heads of Mercury Public Affairs and the Podesta Group; and one of Manafort’s former lawyers (with Mueller’s team claiming an exception to attorney-client privilege). While White House officials have been given the opportunity to appear for “voluntary interviews” instead of before grand juries, Manafort’s associates have been subpoenaed, marking a less deferential approach to the Manafort investigation.

The Times suggests that Mueller, leaving no rock unturned, is investigating Manafort for “possible violations of tax laws, money-laundering prohibitions and requirements to disclose foreign lobbying.”

This article describes the two stories that are the only sources regarding FISA warrants and Paul Manafort.

The article continues with interesting but mostly baseless speculation about the Mueller investigation and who leaked the information for the articles. Hint: not Mueller.

 

[cduggles]

Trump was being wiretapped by Obama's administration and at least one call was between the President at Manafort's at TrumpTower, he is being 100% factual, he trolls hard lulz.

1. Trump was never "wiretapped" or recorded intentionally because of a FISA warrant issued for Paul Manafort--the shady campaign manager Trump hired-- by the Department of Justice, which by convention operated independently of the Obama White House. (Yes, unlike Trump).

2. There is no evidence that any call between Paul Manafort and Trump was recorded due to monitoring allowed by the FISA warrants.

3. There is no evidence that Trump Tower was "wiretapped". No confirmation exists that Manafort called Trump on a monitored phone line in Trump Tower.

4. There are two source articles from CNN and the New York Times (legal analysis above) regarding the existence of the FISA warrants for Paul Manafort.
No person of appropriate authority has confirmed the existence of either of the FISA warrants; or, if extant, the parameters of the kind of communications that could be monitored (e.g., email, texts, cell phone, residential phones at his properties); and the effective dates of the either warrant are not certain, if they exist.

tl;dr There is not one underlying fact that proves what you are saying.
There's wrong, and then there's fiction.

 

[Scrofula]

Obama has been known to "troll hard lulz" though, as the virgins at 4chan say.

 

[David Wooderson]

1. Trump was never "wiretapped" or recorded intentionally because of a FISA warrant issued for Paul Manafort--the shady campaign manager Trump hired-- by the Department of Justice, which by convention operated independently of the Obama White House. (Yes, unlike Trump).

2. There is no evidence that any call between Paul Manafort and Trump was recorded due to monitoring allowed by the FISA warrants.

3. There is no evidence that Trump Tower was "wiretapped". No confirmation exists that Manafort called Trump on a monitored phone line in Trump Tower.

4. There are two source articles from CNN and the New York Times (legal analysis above) regarding the existence of the FISA warrants for Paul Manafort.
No person of appropriate authority has confirmed the existence of either of the FISA warrants; or, if extant, the parameters of the kind of communications that could be monitored (e.g., email, texts, cell phone, residential phones at his properties); and the effective dates of the either warrant are not certain, if they exist.

tl;dr There is not one underlying fact that proves what you are saying.
There's wrong, and then there's fiction.

@realDonaldTrump‬
Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!
1:35 AM - Mar 4, 2017

Is it legal for a sitting President to be "wire tapping" a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!
1:49 AM - Mar 4, 2017

I'd bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!
1:52 AM · Mar 4, 2017

How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!
2:02 AM - Mar 4, 2017

And where in ANY of those tweets does he speak of FISA warrents, he was being purposely vague because he loves to troll hard, you obviously don't get it, he was taking a piss on his adversaries.

You are trying to get into the details. when you over-explain a joke it is no longer funny, you obviously didn't get it.

Obama has been known to "troll hard lulz" though, as the virgins at 4chan say.

I wouldn't know, my only knowledge of 4chan is them driving Shia Lebeoblahblah crazy from youtube.

 

[alasdairm]

"i was joking and you didn't get it"

the refuge of the lame and the bully.

i remember people saying that when i was about 13 years old and in school too

i think it takes a special kind of cynicism or delusion to believe that trump was joking when he sent those tweets and i think that suggesting that's the explanation is extremely weak.

alasdair

 

[cduggles]

And where in ANY of those tweets does he speak of FISA warrents, he was being puposely vague because he loves to troll hard, you obviously don't get it, he was taking a piss on his adversaries.

Great job with the tweet reading and reposting!

Unfortunately, your post is still wrong. (Actually even more wrong now.)

And apparently you don't get it, but his many adversaries are taking quite the steamer on Trump. (That means "a shit".)

 

[David Wooderson]

i remember people saying that when i was about 13 years old and in school too

i think it takes a special kind of cynicism or delusion to believe that trump was joking when he sent those tweets and i think that suggesting that's the explanation is extremely weak.

alasdair

Were you like Pip from South Park mate?

I was bullied so bad in school that the teacher sided with the bullies as it was easier to kick the victim out instead of 1/5th of the classroom.

Do you revel in your victimhood or did you move on and become stronger, and are better because and all that?

 

[alasdairm]

i have no idea what you're talking about - and i haven't watched enough south park to know who pip is - but i don't appreciated the (not very) thinly-veiled personal shit. let's stick to the subject instead of turning this on me, please?

alasdair

 

[David Wooderson]

i have no idea what you're talking about - and i haven't watched enough south park to know who pip is - but i don't appreciated the (not very) thinly-veiled personal shit. let's stick to the subject instead of turning this on me, please?

alasdair

agreed

 

[David Wooderson]

Holy jebus, Trump trolled us so hard

Yes, he does on a near daily basis.

More consistent than ANY comedian alive.

I personally am an independent and left leaning, I wouldn't consider myself the common Trump empathizer.

I want Trump to do his job and in the process disillusion the voting majority on the modern political process.

The majority of politicians are armature Trumps, the majority are armature wannabe actors taking their talking points from their major paymasters.

 

[Scrofula]

Sorry, I didn't see you had responded, and i'd deleted my post out of consideration for you (figured you were sleeping it off).

I want Trump supporters to see the illusion that he is, including his total lack of humor. THe folks who oppose him are definitely disillusioned with the country now, if they weren't before.

As for doing his job, how would you rank that so far?

And sorry, even if I sub in "armchair" I don't understand "armature" here.

 

[cduggles]

Yes, he does on a near daily basis.

Trump appeals to the lowest common denominator, so while I find him to be an idiot, I understand others find him humorous.

I personally am an independent and left leaning

Tell your tailor? (Get it?)

I wouldn't consider myself the common Trump empathizer.

Great impression!

I want Trump to do his job and in the process disillusion the voting majority on the modern political process.

But if you had to choose...

The majority of politicians are armature Trumps, the majority are armature wannabe actors taking their talking points from their major paymasters.

And sorry, even if I sub in "armchair" I don't understand "armature" here.

I think he means "amateur."
As a female, I understand drunk guy text.