Here's something that should raise some eyebrows.

I wanted to get a reference on that spiel Jon`C posted, specifically on the "loan-back" money laundering scheme. Lo and behold, what comes up as a top result? A 1999 Slate article about the topic, whose canonical example of the scheme is Russian mobsters laundering money in New York City.

Kind of blows away the whole idea of Trump as an evil mastermind. Nope, he's just a putz who got caught up in a much larger game. He was the right moron to lose money in the right place at the right time, no more no less.

The guy doesn't have the dignity of the Oval Office, and anybody who can see through the guy shouldn't bat an eye about the prospect of seeing him in an orange suit. (If you want Clinton to be prosecuted as well, don't pretend like I'd shed any tears if she were charged for breaking some other law as well.)

This is a scandal no different than the various other wall st. scandals that ought to have resulted in financial big wigs winding up in federal prison.

Wookie06, you didn't even support Trump, and your man absolutely hated his guts while he was still being honest and speaking his mind. Stop making excuses for this criminal already.

I'm pretty sure Wookie06 just made it up because he wanted the attention and he gets off to people losing their **** over him saying stupid things.

Which would be trolling. But the sad thing is that he probably wants it to be true, so maybe it's more like: it's on all of us to disprove it, and until we do, he's content to spread the propaganda he heard from Hannity.

Now I’m sure if you get most of your information from Fox News, it might be shocking to hear that financial crimes exist, but I assure you they do.

Trolling effectively requires you to understand an issue well enough to design a comment that will elicit an emotional reaction from your opponent. That isn’t exactly something Wookie06 is known for. Chances are he got this from Facebook, maybe from one of our wittier conservative ex-members to troll us, but more likely from a gaggle of inbreds who actually believe it.

Either way, I’ll call it what it is. Fake news. Sad!

Conservative logic: it would be cool if Obama faked his birth certificate.

Should I fact check that? Wait, no! I won't do it. On the contrary: it helps conservatives if I make liberals do the fact checking, in public, after I spread the made up, probably bogus idea. Then I'll have enlisted enough morons in my cause who are either content to engage in the same game, or are dumb enough to literally believe it, and in the process, I'll have wasted the time of my political opponents as they explain just exactly what's true or not for me, so I don't have to think about it, and harvest their judgement and research abilities for my own gain, even while their words fall mostly on deaf ears. And then we can make fun of them for it, promoting the idea to our base that liberals are uptight and obnoxious.

It's the same thing as Bill Clinton. Spread as many wacky allegations as possible, and then one day, after training people to think he's guilty of something, somebody finally finds something that is true, and then redirect all the attention you've harvest toward that.

Hey look, I’m not a fan of Hillary Clinton either. She’s a rich neoliberal with wacky finances who subverted the Democratic primary and tried to win the last election through emotional manipulation instead of a strong platform. She’s one of the last people who should be running anything.

But saying Putin wanted her to win? That’s just stupid. Putin has killed more famous people for less than what she’s done to him.

Hey don’t blame this on Republicans. This sort of thing is classic Russian whataboutism.

Thinking again about money laundering, it kind of makes sense to me now that Trump is such an impulsive liar. Because: he must know on a deep level that what he did was illegal, but he rationalized it to himself because he needed to do it in order to survive, financially. So lying is by now such an impulse for him, because his entire success in life is based on protecting himself from his own knowledge about the dirty things he did. This is probably also why he is so emphatic about being a successful businessman with legitimate profits.

Another theory: the real Wookie06 died while he was banned. The Wookie06 we've known since his unbanning is a body double, whose purpose in life is to learn as much as he can by provoking Jon`C into explaining various topics.

I'd prefer this tbh.

I remember also reading about how if Trump had simply invested his money, he would have been just as wealthy as he supposedly is now.

The funny thing is: maybe he couldn't legitimately invest that money, because he didn't have it in a liquid form that would have been deemed legal, from the beginning. I wonder what his father was up to?

Manafort's offering to pay millions of dollars extra to be let out of house arrest, lol. What's the matter Paul, don't want polonium in your breakfast?

This world runs on ****ing bull**** and fraud, and the more you delve into it the more depressing it gets.

Certainly the CIA engages in this kind of dirty stuff. If you read the thing that Jon`C quoted about money laundering, it looks like the American government was partner to some of the expats who fled the USSR and may have been complicit. At any rate the CIA loves this kind of slushing of money around to fund their various off-the-record operations.

But as a civilian, running for president, and with a foreign government? Now that's treasonous, and AFAIK unprecedented in this country. (Usually it's the CIA trying to do something in that vein to a smaller country.)

I guess what I'm saying is: many governments engage in counter-intelligence and do shady things with money for their covert operations. It just hurts when it's your side that falls victim to it. And oh man did they get us this time....

preach my friend.

What is the best reaction to this though?

Be genuine and honest.

eew yuck

Put on Goodfellas and tell yourself: state actors are just mobs on the international scale. And now: two for the price of one!

(Well okay, Jared Kushner doesn't quite stack up to Ray Liotta when it comes to charisma, and Ivanka is certainly no Karen. And as of now he's still too much the filthy rich prick for the movie to end the same way, though maybe another picture would emerge if he started snorting his own hotel sugar cubes.)

Just imagine Ivanka screaming outside an apartment "You are nothing but a whore!" to Jared's goomar.

Lol.

Okay, that's it ************, I'm watching that movie again this week.

If all y'all actually want replies to your questions and comments you have to stop completely losing your ****. Anyway, when I check in (not here, necessarily, but irl as well) and see that everyone is still wrapped up in the bogus narrative that Russia interfered with the election to help get Trump elected. I don't really care, as I'm not an apologist for Trump but damn, ADD much? And what's the point Jones was trying to make about all the left wing mass shootings lately?

You are deeply misinformed.

Garbage in, garbage out.

Wookie, I have nothing against you personally, and I also agree that it's probably not a good use of anybody's time here to argue to no end, but...

But.

But, you're going to have to explain just wtf you were talking about when you wrote

I think the troll doth protest too much.

You're angry at us for losing our ****, but isn't that just the kind of response you were angling for when you casually tossed that ridiculous idea out?

Unless you were actually dead serious, in which case: see above post.

More whataboutism.

OMG, I don't get angry here. Not anymore, that's for sure. But, I will pull back from saying Russia tried to get Hilary elected. They tried to infuse chaos and would have preferred Hilary's election.

tbh I'm a lot more interested in the fact that he thinks people with ADD are easily fixated on something.

well you're half right at least.

Sure they are. Video games for one.

And that's fine. Despite history, I actually rarely have yuge problems with your opinions.

Great. Do you have a problem with my facts, too? Because your own intelligence agencies have said, repeatedly, that Russia tried to sabotage Clinton's campaign in favor of Trump:



Why does Putin hate Clinton? Because it turns out Clinton doesn't like dictators much:



Clinton also eventually came to support the Magnitsky Act, after Bill Browder's damning testimony. In fact, it was passed with fairly sweeping bipartisan support. The Magnitsky Act froze billions of dollars held by Putin surrogates, something he's not very happy about.

It would be very convenient for Trump if Putin actually did like Clinton, which is probably why you were told he does. It would solve a lot of Trump's political problems right now. The problem with this theory, though, is that he doesn't like Clinton. There is zero evidence that he likes her and a lot of evidence that he wants to kill her.

Trump, on the other hand, has always played nice with Russian businessmen. I'll forgive you if you don't understand this, but Russia does not have the rule of law; it is not possible to be a rich Russian unless Putin wishes it so. You can't be rich, engage in business, or invest money overseas unless Putin has a hand in it. That's the modern situation in Russia per Browder and many others. The fact that Trump was doing a lot of business with Russians means he is in deep with them. That part isn't even a question, the only question is whether he understood Russia well enough to realize that. Either way, Putin clearly liked Trump well enough to siphon billions of dollars his way over the past 10 years, and by all accounts his preference did not change during the election.

The idea that it was actually Clinton, rather than Trump, who Putin supported, is called whataboutism. It's a classic Russian propaganda strategy. You tell a convenient lie, you deflect criticism by accusing the other side of hypocrisy, so that you don't have to address the substance of the original criticism anymore. It's okay that you do something, because the other side does it too - and then the debate isn't about whether or not you do it, it becomes about disproving your lie. This discussion, for example: instead of addressing the fact that Trump has many suspicious ties to Putin, you asserted that, in fact, Clinton is the one with ties. It doesn't matter anymore that 9 of Trump's closest friends are connected to Russian organized crime, because it's possible that Clinton is too. Thanks to your recitation of Russian propaganda here, I've felt compelled to disprove the claim that Putin likes Clinton, instead of spending the time talking about stuff like the fact that Trump made most of his money laundering money for Putin and is deliberately delaying the implementation of Russian sanctions in order to advance Putin's interests over those of the United States. Brain off, Fox News on. Drinking Russian propaganda from the spigot.

So we just take everyone at their word?

Well, someone told you that Putin wanted Clinton to win, and you believed them pretty ****ing uncritically. Why don't you tell me?

It's been obvious for a long time. My opinion isn't informed by some new reporting.

This is called "making **** up".

I have a lot of very specific opinions about you, Wookie06, which I think have been obvious for a long time. The difference is, I don't post it here because nobody wants to read **** you just made up.

This is not a lucid dream. You cannot imagine a new reality to suit your agenda whenever the current one is inconvenient for you. That isn't a political opinion, that is a mental illness.

Trump is in no way intertwined in any agenda I might have. I don't care if any of these theories ever prove true.