But his emails
Oh gee, look what the Times has.
When President Trump fired his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in February, White House officials portrayed him as a renegade who had acted independently in his discussions with a Russian official during the presidential transition and then lied to his colleagues about the interactions.
But emails among top transition officials, provided or described to The New York Times, suggest that Mr. Flynn was far from a rogue actor. In fact, the emails, coupled with interviews and court documents filed on Friday, showed that Mr. Flynn was in close touch with other senior members of the Trump transition team both before and after he spoke with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, about American sanctions against Russia.
While Mr. Trump has disparaged as a Democratic “hoax” any claims that he or his aides had unusual interactions with Russian officials, the records suggest that the Trump transition team was intensely focused on improving relations with Moscow and was willing to intervene to pursue that goal despite a request from the Obama administration that it not sow confusion about official American policy before Mr. Trump took office.
And the Times has (some of?) those emails.
But it is evident from the emails — which were obtained from someone who had access to transition team communications — that after learning that President Barack Obama would expel 35 Russian diplomats, the Trump team quickly strategized about how to reassure Russia. The Trump advisers feared that a cycle of retaliation between the United States and Russia would keep the spotlight on Moscow’s election meddling, tarnishing Mr. Trump’s victory and potentially hobbling his presidency from the start.
As part of the outreach, Ms. McFarland wrote, Mr. Flynn would be speaking with the Russian ambassador, Mr. Kislyak, hours after Mr. Obama’s sanctions were announced.
“Key will be Russia’s response over the next few days,” Ms. McFarland wrote in an email to another transition official, Thomas P. Bossert, now the president’s homeland security adviser.
The Times chatted with Ty Cobb, Trump’s lawyer for The Russia Thing, said it’s all perfectly legal and normal and fine.
I’ve always figured that Putin’s lack of response was the result of Team Trump assurances and that such restraint would not have been forthcoming without Russian confidence that whatever Flynn was offering had the backing of Trump himself. It’s probably just a matter of time before something more incriminating comes out. Of course, this has been the case every week for the last eleven months…
It seems like every week it gets worse and then there is hope. And then it gets worse.
For the stupid and the craven, Trump has normalized everything. Not to me. Not until he is gone and even after … all his huddle minions see reason and educate themselves to the consequences of ignorance and prejudice.
I feel so stupid for still not being able to understand how little Trump supporters care about any of this. Trump lies. So what? Trump is a bully. So what? Trump is historically inept. So what? Trump’s policies, if actually enacted, would probably harm you. So what? Trump’s take on diplomacy (ha!) is dangerous. So what? Trump has never cared about the little guy in his whole life. So what?
Is it really just that he hates the same people I’ve been talked into hating? Is that really as deep as it goes?
Ben, that is as deep as it goes. Plus, I suspect for some of them (say, most of my family, some of whom thought he was way too vulgar when he started running), they will be loyal forever because he showed that bitch, Hillary. He saved this country from the horror of Hillary. For people like my father, that is enough. For people like my brother, he thinks exactly like Trump and has been saying the same things as Trump for six decades. Never mind that my brother relies on Social Security and Medicare to survive; he cannot accept that the government gives him anything, and he hates “welfare queens”.
I grew up in the bosom of these people. Is it any wonder I have put three states between myself and them, and rarely go back?
Ben – They’re some 30+% of the voting public, the fairly hard Trumpist core, so there isn’t going to be a monolithic account of them. But yeah – that portion that is simply unaffected by his viciousness, his stupidity, his positive danger to them – sharing their hate, putting it in the big lights, and giving it power and some sort of respectability, all that may well be most of the draw.
We’ve spent so long and so much trouble pushing our id out of polite society, labeling evil as evil and marking it out as unacceptable in some public sphere, that when they can let it out of the dark corners of AM talk radio and onto presidential debate stages, it’s a narcotic release. They don’t expect any politician to work for their betterment – that delicious cynicism we’ve been chugging for decades means they get to take that one as simply granted – and they don’t expect them to have any virtue or competence. For kittens’ sake – government and politics have been smeared so badly and so hard that they expect that kind of thing, if at all, perhaps only accidentally, from business leaders.
So being vicious, stupid, and hateful can be used to make him look just like them. Relatable – but successful so they can cheer him on and feel a part of something successful by proxy, no matter how much he trashes them.
“I grew up in the bosom of these people. Is it any wonder I have put three states between myself and them, and rarely go back?”
I think this is an important point, Iknklast. Some people try to write off criticisms of these people (the “deplorables” who are Trump’s most ardent supporters) as the complaints of the “out of touch liberal elite”, but what they overlook is that often those complaining are themselves refugees from these communities.
And no matter how much we explain that to people, they still often don’t get it. They say, yes, but….
And I am so tired of hearing the tired cliche “we all want what’s best for the country, we just disagree on what that is”. No, we don’t. There are many people who are not interested in what is best for the country, they are only interested in what they perceive is best for themselves – and that may not be economic at all, contrary to what all the pundits seem to think. A lot of it may be a type of purification, as they see it, a cleansing of all in their world that they see as wrong or bad. This usually translates to some odd pretzel version of Calvinist work ethic coupled with old fashioned racism twisted with a huge helping of misogyny.
So to all my friends who are trying to persuade themselves that Trump wants what is best for the country, please stop it. Trump wants nothing of the sort. Trump wants only what makes Trump richer, what makes Trump more famous, what makes Trump happy – two scoops of ice cream, lots of gold plating, and the adulation of crowds. And people in my family cheer him on, because deep down, they just want the women and the other minorities put in their place, and the country restored to the dictatorship of the majority that they are sure was once the real face of democracy (though they would not call it that, and they do not realize that they are not necessarily the majority).
“We all want what is best for the country” is just a kind of banal, trivial optimism. It’s a bit like “everything happens for a reason”. It’s a self-deluding, thought-terminating defence mechanism that people use when they can’t abide to face terrible and grotesque truths. The facts are that humanity is capable of great hatred and sadism, and that many horrible things happen to good people that no good will ever come of.
“A lot of it may be a type of purification, as they see it, a cleansing of all in their world that they see as wrong or bad. ”
They might think they’re “cleansing” or “purifying” with fire, but they’re not. Their tool of choice is toxic and poisonous. Hard to cleanse with raw sewage, but it looks like they’re going to give it a try.
Three states away may not be far enough. Three planets more like…