Putin is explaining to the dim and the disingenuous how the U.S. can’t and won’t stop Russian citizens from “meddling in our affairs,” just like they can’t stop us from meddling in theirs.
When Paul Ryan says “There is no moral equivalence between the United States and Russia,” he means those foreigners are going to be held responsible for their crimes somehow and we’re not. We’re always the good guys, no matter what the historical facts are. That’s the lack of moral equivalence in Washington.
A couple things:
1st, both governments have interfered in the others’ elections, so it’s about private citizens.
2nd, afaik, the proposal would allow Trump and Putin to further interefere with the investigation.
It was the start of his rallies I believe, meaning lots of “biggest inauguration ever” and “the clouds parted before me and stopped raining as I spoke.”
EDIT
It was the launch of his 2020 election advertising campaign:
page 5
OFFICIAL planned to advance Moscow’s long-term strategic objectives in the United States, in part, by establishing relationships with American political organizations, including the GUN RIGHTS ORGANIZATION. Based on my training, experience and familiarity with this investigation, I believe that BUTINA and the RUSSIAN OFFICIAL took these steps in order to infiltrate those groups and advance the interests of the Russian Federation.
- The Russian influence operation included, among other things, (i) taskings from the RUSSIAN OFFICIAL to BUTINA; (ii) meetings between BUTINA and U.S. politicians and political candidates; (iii) BUTINA’s attendance at events sponsored by special interest groups, also attended by U.S. politicians and political candidates; and (iv) BUTINA’s reporting back to Moscow through the RUSSIAN OFFICIAL the results of the various encounters with the U.S. politicians and political candidates.
Laying the Groundwork in Russia
- During the course of her work as a covert Russian agent, BUTINA regularly met and communicated with the RUSSIAN OFFICIAL and U.S. Person 1 to plan and develop the contours of the influence operation.
- On or about March 24, 2015, BUTINA emailed U.S. Person 1 with the subject line of “The Second Pozner.”1 The body of this email also contained a project proposal. BUTINA noted to U.S. Person 1 in the email that she was sending the “Google Translator text. Maybe I could translate it myself but it would take at least a day because the text is very specific.” She went on to note that she “will be happy to answer to any your questions [sic] and follow your recommendations before a [sic] finally send it.” The first line of the proposal reads, “Project Description ‘Diplomacy.’” It goes on to state that a major U.S. political party [hereinafter
I believe that this statement likely refers to Vladimir Pozner, a propagandist who served in the disinformation department of the Soviet KGB and who often appeared on Western television to explain the views of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
page 6
“POLITICAL PARTY 1”], would likely obtain control over the U.S. government after the 2016 elections; that POLITICAL PARTY 1 is “traditionally associated with negative and aggressive foreign policy, particularly with regards to Russia. However, now with the right to negotiate seems best to build konstruktivnyh [sic] relations;” and that “[cjentral place and influence in the [POLITICAL PARTY 1] plays the [GUN RIGHTS ORGANIZATION]. The [GUN RIGHTS ORGANIZATION] [is] the largest sponsor of the elections to the US congress, as well as a sponsor of The CPAC conference and other events.”
- The March 24, 2015 email further highlighted BUTINA’s relationship with the GUN RIGHTS ORGANIZATION’S leadership, including her attendance at events in the United States and BUTINA’s and the RUSSIAN OFFICIAL’S connections to officials of the GUN RIGHTS ORGANIZATION. BUTINA described recent visits to the United States, including references to instances when she was introduced to POLITICAL PARTY 1 leaders as a “representative of informal diplomacy” of the Russian Federation. BUTINA’s project proposal concluded by noting, “[t]he resulting status needs to be strengthened is in the current time interval, before the presidential election in 2016,” and requesting a budget of $125,000 for BUTINA to participate in “all upcoming major conferences” of POLITICAL PARTY 1.
- In late March 2015, U.S. Person 1 replied to BUTINA via email with the subject
“Potential American Contacts”:
Dear Maria,
Your challenge in your “special project” will be to balance two opposing imperatives: Your desire to communicate that you speak for Russian interests that will be ascendant (still around) in a post-Putin world while simultaneously doing nothing to criticize the President or speed the arrival of his successor.
This restriction is easily understood in private meetings with political and business leaders. It will SEVERELY limit your interactions with media.
page 11
of the 2017 Prayer Breakfast for meeting with her and the RUSSIAN OFFICIAL in Moscow. In this email, BUTINA noted that the RUSSIAN OFFICIAL “suggested to President Putin that he consider coming to the Prayer Breakfast next year, Feb 2017, and Pres. Putin did not say ‘no’!” BUTINA observed that she believed that there were a number of conditions that should be met in order for President Putin to attend, including a personal invitation from the President of the United States and the attendance of at least fifteen other world leaders or heads of state. In a later March email, the organizer of the 2017 National Prayer Breakfast promised BUTINA he would provide ten seats at the 2017 event.
- On September 16, 2016, BUTINA sent an email to U.S. Person 1 and U.S. Person 2 regarding organizing another Russian-American “friendship and dialogue” dinner in the District of Columbia. BUTINA suggested scheduling the next dinner at the beginning of October 2016, because “we only have 2 month left before the US elections and it’s the time for building an advisors team on Russia for a new president. I am seriously worry that the candidates some upcoming day will suddenly realize that ‘now’ is the time to do something with Russia and will look for advisory among currently popular radically oppositional to Russia crowd of experts. Bad things happen than. I believe wc can prevent it.” [sic]
- On October 4, 2016, U.S. Person 1 sent an email to an acquaintance. The email covered a number of topics. Within the email, U.S. Person 1 stated, “Unrelated to specific presidential campaigns, I’ve been involved in securing a VERY private line of communication between the Kremlin and key POLITICAL PARTY 1 leaders through, of all conduits, the [GUN RIGHTS ORGANIZATION].” Based on my training, experience, and familiarity with this investigation, I believe that this email describes U.S. Person 1 ’s involvement in BUTINA’s efforts to establish a “back channel” communication for representatives of the Government of Russia.
- On October 5, 2016, BUTINA and the RUSSIAN OFFICIAL exchanged the
I happened to be watching a FOX local news station today (not by choice, was stuck at a car place), and I was struck by how almost every lead-in to a commercial break seemed to be covering Trump’s comments as being “shocking”, “a misstep”, “bad for America”, etc.
I doubt they’ll stick to it, but it was interesting how they were not even sugar-coating it.
That makes sense. It’s just such a dramatic spike in the graph. If it was a week containing a large amount of prepared speeches and he managed to stay mostly on script, it could account for it being the most truthful week on record.
I think the graph is showing each peak as a ratio of false statements to true statements. So if one word out of every one-hundred contained a false statement, it would be depicted as a peak with a value of 100 on the graph. In that scenario, the taller peaks would represent weeks with more relative truthfulness, and shorter peaks less relative truthfulness.
It would be fascinating (to me) to see this for any other presidents that we have a large enough data set on, if only for comparison purposes.
FOX affiliates, though they brand themselves with the network, are independently owned and operated.* The local owners don’t necessarily agree with the management of the separate “Fox News” cable channel about anything.
Conversely, the “local” stations owned and run by the Sinclair Broadcast Group all promote the same right-wing point of view, all the time, even though Sinclair never labels its stations as such.
If we’re looking at the same thing, the Y axis is “total words per false claim.”
That could conceivably be total words in the false claims, or total words spoken at at any time during the week. But either way, a ratio between false claims and truthful claims would be a different graph.
∗ except for the 28 stations owned by “fox television stations group LLC”
A look says a lot.
I guess you could say he’s got Trump by the balls.
from the daily beast
U.S. Person 1 appears to be Paul Erickson, a longtime Republican insider who claimed to advise the Trump transition team. Erickson sherpaed Butina through conservative circles, connecting her with operatives and advising her on outreach, as The Daily Beast has reported. The two even wore a couple’s costume to a birthday party she held: She as Russian Empress Alexandra and he as Rasputin.
U.S. Person 1 is the co-star of the affidavit, quoted at length giving her detailed instructions on how to leverage her already impressive network to connect with as many influential conservatives as possible. And he appeared to know that she had deep-pocketed supporters back in Russia.
Trump winks at his lover:
He can’t even “clarify” his earlier remarks without misquoting himself, because he can’t remember anything and he won’t look at the written materials people hand him all day long.
Seems to me this also enables the “Fake News” meme; people point to the opposite things he’s said and claim they are “right.”
I think what he said in the presence of his puppeteer is probably more important.
So I’ll begin by stating that I have full faith and support for America’s great intelligence agencies — always have. And I have felt very strongly that while Russia’s actions had no impact, at all, on the outcome of the election, let me be totally clear in saying that — and I’ve said this many times — I accept our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election took place. Could be other people also — there’s a lot of people out there. There was no collusion. Now I have to say I came back, and I said, “What is going on? What’s the big deal.” So I got a transcript — I reviewed it. I actually went out and reviewed a clip of an answer that I gave and I realized that there is a need for some clarification. It should have been obvious. I thought it would be obvious, but I would like to clarify just in case it wasn’t. In a key sentence in my remarks, I said the word “would” instead of “wouldn’t.” The sentence should have been: “I don’t see any reason why I wouldn’t or why it wouldn’t be Russia.” So, just to repeat it, I said the word “would” instead of “wouldn’t,” and the sentence should have been, and I thought I would be maybe a little bit unclear on the transcript or unclear on the actual video, the sentence should have been “I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.” Sort of a double negative. So you can put that in, and I think that probably clarifies things pretty good by itself.
I had a manager at a different job right before the 2016 election who probably didn’t vote at all, because he was so ‘disgusted’ by both candidates.
While we rarely talked politics, I’m often reminded of one conversation that got sparked because of my valid concerns about my insurance coverage. At some point, I vented out some of my worries regarding the possibility of 45’s election.
He kind of dismissively snickered at me, asking; “What is it you’re so worried about?”
I’d love to find him now and resume that conversation; I wonder if he still thinks this shit is amusing.
Like, “THIS is what I was worried about, ‘Larry.’
This is what happens when apathetic fuckers like YOU don’t just hold their noses and vote for the obviously ‘lesser evil.’ This is what happens, Larry…”
But this is the amusing part!
PUTTING IMMIGRANT KIDS IN CAGES: not amusing 
SELLING OUT THE NATIONAL SECURITY STATE: hilarious 
The Bay Area is small; he and I will likely cross paths again, and I will have some choice words for him when we do.
This sounds a lot like “Depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is.”
How convenient.
