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Trump 18: Info to Russia, With Love


Destiny

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I know we weren't quite ready for a new thread, but since we are on to yet another new scandal, I thought it might be helpful for future us to be able to find them somewhat separately. So .... To impeachment and BEYOND! (I hope!)

Continued from here:

 

20 minutes ago, nvmbr02 said:

Wow. Just Wow. Can we say obstruction of Justice??

JFC. At what point are the republicans going to wake the fuck up and be the patriots they say they are?

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20 minutes ago, Destiny said:

I know we weren't quite ready for a new thread, but since we are on to yet another new scandal, I thought it might be helpful for future us to be able to find them somewhat separately. So .... To impeachment and BEYOND! (I hope!)

Continued from here:

 

It will be thread #Eleventy-Gazillion at the rate TT is going.

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Just now, onekidanddone said:

It will thread #Eleventy-Gazillion at the rate TT is going.

Sadly, I have enough thread titles saved up to go that long. Please FSM, don't make us do that. 

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Hells bells, it's only Tuesday! :tw_flushed:

I seriously need some comfort food tonight. I'm making some of my mom's tacos, frying up some tortilla chips, and making guacamole. Tacos, work your magic!

Can someone please tell Kim Jong Un not to try anything else this week? We're busy enough with the Orange Oaf's antics. :pray:

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Apparently, Comey made detailed contemporaneous  notes of every meeting with Trump.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/notes-made-by-former-fbi-director-comey-say-trump-pressured-him-to-end-flynn-probe/2017/05/16/52351a38-3a80-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html?utm_term=.4e78835ae041

Spoiler
Quote

President Trump asked the FBI to drop its investigation into his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and urged the FBI director James B. Comey instead to pursue reporters in leak investigations, according to private notes taken by Comey, according to people familiar with the matter.

According to a set of notes written by Comey following a February meeting with the president, Trump brought up the counterintelligence investigation into Flynn and urged Comey to drop the probe in the wake of the national security adviser’s resignation.

“I hope you can let this go,’’ Trump said, according to the Comey notes, which were described by associates. Comey’s written account of the meeting is two pages long and highly detailed, the associates said. The details of Comey’s notes of the meeting were first reported by The New York Times.

Officials have previously said that Trump and his senior staff have been pressing the FBI to prioritize leak investigations over the bureau’s ongoing probe into possible coordination between Russian officials and Trump associates. On Tuesday, people close to the matter said Comey kept detailed notes of his multiple conversations with Trump.

Details of Comey’s notes were shared with a very small circle of people at the FBI and Justice Department, these people said.

Comey’s description of the event make clear his understanding of the conversation was that the president was seeking to impede the investigation, according to people who have read the account or had it read to them, these people said. Comey felt the conversation was improper and decided to keep the details of the conversations away from the case agents working on the Russia probe.

An FBI spokesman declined to comment.

A White House statement denied the version of the conversation described by those who had seen Comey’s notes, saying “the president has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end an investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn... This is not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the president and Mr. Comey.’’

 

He really shouldn't have pissed off the FBI. :pb_lol:

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This is going to get very interesting.

Trump screwed with the wrong people.

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This is so freaking true: "Amid Trump controversies, GOP picks compartmentalization, not confrontation"

Spoiler

As President Trump lurches from one crisis to another, Republicans have chosen a strategy of compartmentalization over confrontation. It is a survival mechanism, one that comes with no guarantee of ultimate success but with significant risks attached.

It was just more than a year ago that Trump emerged from the primaries as the Republicans’ presumptive presidential nominee, having bested the favored candidates of the party establishment. Ever since, those in the establishment, including many elected officials, have grappled with the terms of what has always been an uncomfortable bargain. They and the president are on different pages, both generally allied and wary, and sometimes mistrustful of one another.

With each controversy, Republicans try to look away, in the hope that the storm around the White House will pass and some sense of calm and normalcy will emerge. Events of the past eight days — the firing of James B. Comey as FBI director and now the report that the president shared highly classified information from a U.S. ally with the Russians — underscore just how difficult it has become to maintain that posture.

Many Republicans embraced the president’s decision to dismiss Comey, but then found themselves parroting a rationale for the firing first offered by White House officials — that it originated at the Justice Department and had nothing to do with the ongoing Russia investigation — that was undermined days later by the president’s own words. This was one more reminder that vouching for the credibility of White House statements can be perilous.

Reactions to the unfolding story about the new report, first published in The Washington Post, that Trump passed along intelligence during an Oval Office meeting with the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador to the United States, have been more muted as elected Republicans have tried to analyze statements from White House officials about what happened. The stakes are far higher on this matter, and the hesitant response from members of the president’s party reflects the seriousness of this latest episode.

In that context, the reaction of Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) was telling. Corker has been, generally, restrained in his criticism of the president. In this case, he sent a message to the White House that reflected exasperation that must be widespread within the president’s party. “Obviously, they are in a downward spiral right now and have got to figure out a way to come to grips with all that’s happening,” he said of the operations of the White House and senior officials around the president. “And the shame of it is, there’s a really good national security team in place.”

Republicans desperately want this relationship to work. They have a big policy agenda that they want to see turned into law. They want to move on health care and taxes, government regulations and budget priorities. They waited through the last years of the previous administration for the opportunity to hold all the levers of power. Now that they have them, though possibly only for a limited time, they want to do as much as they can as quickly as they can to undo what President Barack Obama had done and to advance several long-sought conservative policies.

To pursue a course of confrontation or conflict with Trump over everything from the events of the past eight days to his claim that Obama ordered wiretapping of Trump Tower to claims of unprecedented electoral fraud is, in the estimation of many Republicans, counterproductive. On big matters, they will put some distance between themselves and the president. They hope to avoid creating barriers with a volatile president who came to office largely independent of the party he claims as his own.

When the president tweets something provocative, they prefer not to give the fire more oxygen. But the regularity of these fires is taking its toll. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) expressed his view Tuesday in the way he often does, through understatement.

“I think we could do with a little less drama from the White House on a lot of things so we can focus on our agenda,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

On legislative matters, however, the president has proven to be an unsteady partner. Trump has provided limited leadership on health care and limited leadership on taxes. He has offered direction that does not always conform to the preferences of conservatives in Congress. He has offered guidelines but no details. His priorities are not always those of congressional Republicans. He retains the power to sign legislation but in all other ways seems to frustrate or complicate efforts by congressional Republicans to bring those measures to his desk.

The president can interfere. In a recent interview with the Economist, Trump spoke about health care in ways Congress will be hard-pressed to deliver, from an assurance that everyone will be covered to the claim that premiums and deductibles will be lower than they would be under the Affordable Care Act. That’s not what the Congressional Budget Office said of the first version the House had under consideration.

Nor has the president proven to be the master dealmaker that some had hoped. His efforts the first time the House was preparing to vote on health care came up short. For the most part, he washed his hands of the effort to revive the bill, which just proved successful. That came about through the work of House members, though White House officials were pushing for action. Now, the Senate is mostly starting from scratch on its own bill. But the timetable for these big priorities has slipped significantly from aspirations earlier in the year.

Beyond that is the collateral damage from the constant controversies. There is rarely a quiet week in this presidency. The president claimed last week that he moves so quickly that it’s difficult for his own advisers to explain fully and truthfully what’s going on or what his positions are. The reality is more worrisome.

The White House is now in perpetual crisis mode, reacting to the latest eruption, consumed by talk of a staff shake-up, pointing fingers at one another when things go wrong. All of that affects the legislative process. It’s not that congressional committees cannot go about doing basic business but the distraction of a crisis a week, in a media environment in which every official must respond and react, creates an atmosphere that is anything but helpful to the ongoing process of governing. The big story saps the energies of everyone.

Republicans will try to maintain this uncomfortable balance in the relationship as long as possible. War with the White House is not an option. The terms will only change if there is a dramatic shift in public opinion that puts their House majority at risk, or until the president’s controversies become serious enough to force a constitutional breach.

Events have not reached that point, but if they grow worse, so too will the tensions between the mutual self-interest of congressional Republicans and the White House to maintain a positive relationship vs. the responsibility of one branch of government to check another when it becomes necessary.

 

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1 minute ago, nvmbr02 said:

There has been a Jason Chaffetz sighting!

Now to see if any of the R's actually act. 

Could they be finding spines? Here's to hoping!

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1 hour ago, Cartmann99 said:

Hells bells, it's only Tuesday! :tw_flushed:

I seriously need some comfort food tonight. I'm making some of my mom's tacos, frying up some tortilla chips, and making guacamole. Tacos, work your magic!

Can someone please tell Kim Jong Un not to try anything else this week? We're busy enough with the Orange Oaf's antics. :pray:

I had one my comfort foods today. Panang Curry not as hot as I usually like it but oh so yummy.  This was of course before the the latest.  Now I need (want) some Old Bay Cheese puffs. I'll just use some good old cognitive dissonance to convince myself there are no calories and the puff does not resemble the TT. 

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31 minutes ago, SassyPants said:

This is going to get very interesting.

Trump screwed with the wrong people.

This just made me think of that weirdo around here that harassed people via the mail.  The police were all smile, nod politely, and not do anything about him even after having written proof of how far off the rails this weirdo was going.  Same thing with the paper and their insistence on publishing full street addresses of people.  They didn't give a fornicate about him either.  It was only when he turned against them and started harassing them and other "important people" that the local fuzz finally held the guy to account.

Same thing with the GOP.  They'll only hold the Orange Tapeworm to account when he turns against him or fornicates with the "wrong" people.

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I'm afraid this is true: "Will Trump be impeached? It’s less likely than some Democrats are suggesting."

Spoiler

As the backlash for President Trump's various controversial decisions escalates — firing FBI Director James B. Comey and giving away classified secrets to Russian officials, just to name two — Democrats are starting to use the “i” word more and more.

“It is a looming constitutional crisis because it involves a potential confrontation as did Watergate between the president and other branches of government,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said last week, after Trump fired Comey. “It may well produce impeachment proceedings.”

“On the issue of impeachment, I am doing my homework,” Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) said at a town hall event in April. “I will just say I understand the calls for impeachment, but what I am being cautious about and what I give you food for thought about is that if President Trump is impeached, the problems don't go away, because then you have a Vice President Pence who becomes President Pence.”

...

“We're actually pretty close to considering impeachment,” Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) told a Kentucky television station on Thursday.

But while Democrats, and Trump's opponents in general, might be clamoring for an impeachment, it isn't as simple as Democrats deciding they don't like President Trump. There are two big reasons for that. First, impeachment is actually a relatively lengthy legal process — and no president has ever been removed from office. Second, removal from office requires a vote from two-thirds of the Senate, and Republicans — who still publicly back Trump, although some have criticized some of his recent decisions — still broadly support him.

Let's be clear: Trump hasn't been accused of any specific crimes. His opponents say he's unfit for office, but that's a judgment call, not a standard by which presidents can be impeached. The Constitution states that “The President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

But how those high crimes and misdemeanors are defined is largely up to House members themselves.

Actually removing a president from office is a three-step process. First, a majority of the House of Representatives would have to vote in favor of impeachment. That means 218 out of 435 members of the House would need to cast ballots to impeach the president. As of today, Republicans hold 238 seats while Democrats hold 193, and four seats are vacant. That means Democrats would need to persuade 25 Republicans to vote to impeach Trump, which doesn't seem likely.

Second, the president would face trial in the Senate. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. would preside over the trial.

Third, the Senate would vote on whether to convict or acquit Trump. Two-thirds of the Senate would have to vote in favor of conviction for Trump to be removed from office — a pretty high bar, given that it's hard for either party to get even the 60 votes needed to overcome a legislative filibuster these days.

And history is on Trump's side. Just two presidents have been impeached, and none has ever been removed from office.

Andrew Johnson became the first president to be impeached in 1868. In the wake of the Civil War, Johnson clashed with Republicans who wanted Southern states to pay a higher price to rejoin the union. They eventually impeached him for attempting to replace his secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, without congressional permission, a contravention of the Tenure of Office Act, which stated that the president couldn't relieve members of his Cabinet without consulting the Senate. Johnson's impeachment went to trial in the Senate, and he escaped being removed from office by a one-vote margin.

Bill Clinton became the second president to be impeached in 1998, as the Monica Lewinsky scandal unfolded. He was charged with four counts, two of which he was impeached for: perjury and obstruction of justice. When it came to the Senate trial, all 45 Democrats voted to acquit him on both charges; they were joined by 10 Republicans in acquitting Clinton of the perjury charge, and five in acquitting him of the obstruction of justice charge.

In perhaps the most famous presidential scandal in American history, the president wasn't impeached. When Richard Nixon left office in 1974, he faced almost certain impeachment, and likewise almost certain removal from office. But he chose to resign instead, handing the presidency to Gerald Ford.

Johnson, Nixon and Clinton were all publicly accused of transgressions for which there was publicly revealed evidence. While scandal swirled around all three, and their political opponents howled for their removal from office, none was actually removed by the political process laid out in the Constitution.

And as long as Trump retains the backing of Congress, he's very unlikely to be removed either.

 

 

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I don't think these particular scandals will be enough to turn the Republican party. I do think they are causing the tides to turn, slowly, but they are turning.  I am watching Hardball with Chris Matthews right now and there have had 2-3 comments from Republican house members that are at least not jumping to Trump's defense. I think the real test will be what happens when the special elections happen in MT and GA and if the Democrats are able to win either of those two seats. I haven't been following the races recently, but it will be interesting to see what happens there.

 

My FIL is from MT and is a die hard Trump supporter. All that is going on is making me consider picking up the phone to hear what he has to say, though I am afraid I already know., MSM is out to get Trump, they are destroying America, blah, blah, blah

 

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I remember seeing a little posted about this last night. Well, they tracked down the person who did it: "‘Pay Trump Bribes Here’: How an activist pulled off projecting messages onto the Trump International Hotel"

Spoiler

Since entering office, President Trump has faced accusations that his District hotel is profiting from his presidency.

For a few minutes Monday night, projection artist Robin Bell tried to bring attention to the issue by shining light on it — a big, blue light.

Bell parked his van about 9:15 p.m. on 12th Street NW across the street from the west entrance of the Trump International Hotel. Bell and two friends then turned on a projector in the van and displayed animated anti-Trump messages about the president’s alleged conflicts of interest onto the upscale hotel’s facade.

Hotel security ordered him to shut off the projections after only a few minutes, but it was enough time for the messages to go viral on social media, garnering thousands of posts on Twitter and Facebook.

“That is one of the big things that I’m trying to do — using our artwork to explain these stories that are tricky,” said Bell, an artist and filmmaker based in the District. “If someone can laugh and look at something, and then talk about it.”

The projections focused on the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which says that no person holding a federal office shall “accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

Others read “emoluments welcome here” and “pay Trump bribes here.”

Bell said the projections lasted about six minutes, and he was able to keep the projections going while a security guard talked to him about taking them down. His favorite part of the night came, he said, when an open-top tour bus drove by and riders started to cheer.

...

“The timing was awesome because it gave us something to look at and enjoy,” Bell said. “We did it at the right time because everyone is just so utterly depressed and bummed out with what’s going on.”

The projections come at an inopportune time for the Trump Organization, which manages the hotel and recently began inviting guests to a new sidewalk cafe.

Earlier that night, about 7:30 p.m., the hotel’s general manager pulled guests inside from the cafe to avoid protesters advocating for the rights of those with disabilities. That demonstration traveled along Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the hotel.

Since Trump’s election and continued ownership of his stake in the project, the hotel has been dogged by criticism from ethics experts suggesting that he unfairly benefits financially from it. They argue that accepting payments from foreign governments, who rent hotel rooms and meeting spaces, amounts to a violation of the Constitution.

The Trump Organization has pledged to donate profits from foreign leaders to the Treasury at the end of the year. It didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Leading Democrats have joined ethics experts in questioning why the General Services Administration, which oversees the lease, did not move to terminate the agreement once Trump was elected, because the deal includes a clause barring any “elected official of the government of the United States” from deriving “any benefit” from the project.

In March, the GSA’s contracting officer wrote to Eric Trump, the president’s son, to say that the lease remained in full compliance, in part, because the president would not benefit from it financially until he left office.

Vandals have repeatedly targeted the hotel. According to police reports, they defaced or damaged the property six times from Election Day through January.

Bell has said that projections are an effective form of protest because they send a message without vandalizing property.

A few weeks ago, he said, he projected an animated version of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s face outside Justice Department headquarters with a magnifying glass, saying “investigate Trump, investigate Russia,” in English and Russian.

He also traveled to Harrisburg, Pa., in April to project protest messages against the president as he delivered a speech marking his 100th day in office.

 

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10 minutes ago, nvmbr02 said:

My FIL is from MT and is a die hard Trump supporter. All that is going on is making me consider picking up the phone to hear what he has to say, though I am afraid I already know., MSM is out to get Trump, they are destroying America, blah, blah, blah

FWIW, I read the WaPo tag on twitter for several hours yesterday. The cognitive dissonance there was amazing. The WaPo needs to be shut down for spreading lies, the NYT is also evil and spreading lies, delete your amazon accounts because Bezos (sp?) owns the WaPo, the WaPo needs to be shut down and all the employees sent to jail for lying, and the totally terrifying calls for the leaker to be executed.

I seriously was terrified for our futures after spending those hours. 

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Politico has a story on Comey's memo which has the immortal line

 "Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), when asked about the news by a POLITICO reporter, looked her in the eye, gave her the middle finger and walked away."

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/16/trump-comey-flynn-shutdown-238467

And my new favourite name for the TT - "Hair Furore" - courtesy of a WaPo commenter.:cracking-up:

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I am going to put this in a spoiler box because it might be a little long but I found this quote on Dan Rather's facebook page a few minutes ago and thought it was beautifully written.

Spoiler

Dan Rather

 

I end each of my days with a silent prayer for my country. It has been a ritual for some time, but as of late I feel an anxiety gripping my heart and a sadness permeating my soul that seems unlike anything I have felt before.

I hope against hope as I slip off to sleep that our rapid descent into governmental chaos has hit a nadir - only to awaken to a new set of incoherent tweets or explosive headlines from top-notch reporters. And with that, we are falling once again. As I fall, we fall, even further, I pray again that our Constitutional government, the great gift of our Founding Fathers, will provide a safety net to catch us before everything we hold dear is no more. I believe that is the case, but the slowly rising level of uncertainty is not to be ignored.

I see recklessness where we need leadership... and I am deeply saddened.

I see politicians putting power and politics over principle... and I am incredulous.

I see lies treated as truths... and I am disgusted.

I see justice denied and likely obstructed.... and I am fearful.

I see norms flaunted... and I am angry.

I see global challenges going unaddressed... and I am worried.

I see the press under attack... and I am furious.

I see this, and more, so much more... and I am exhausted.

I find myself returning in my mind to dark days from the past, trying to remember how we as a nation felt, when Pearl Harbor was attacked, when Kennedy was shot, when Watergate took down a President, when terrorists rained terror from the skies. We somehow overcame. And I do believe that we shall overcome, someday. Perhaps, hopefully, someday soon.

But in the end, prayer will not be enough. Action, sustained action, will be required.

 

7 minutes ago, sawasdee said:

Politico has a story on Comey's memo which has the immortal line

 "Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), when asked about the news by a POLITICO reporter, looked her in the eye, gave her the middle finger and walked away."

 

Klassy. 

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26 minutes ago, Destiny said:

FWIW, I read the WaPo tag on twitter for several hours yesterday. The cognitive dissonance there was amazing. The WaPo needs to be shut down for spreading lies, the NYT is also evil and spreading lies, delete your amazon accounts because Bezos (sp?) owns the WaPo, the WaPo needs to be shut down and all the employees sent to jail for lying, and the totally terrifying calls for the leaker to be executed.

I seriously was terrified for our futures after spending those hours. 

I try my best not to read comment threads on newspaper, TV, radio, etc, sites. I fear for the future of humanity if I do and I don't need to worry more than I already worry. (The only worse option is listening to AM talk radio while trying to get drive-time traffic updates).

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Coming home from three hours without being around any internet and my husband says "I guess we should check and see what the latest scandal is."

Me: "Surely nothing else could have happened in such  a short amount of time."

Well fuck, it did. I want to go back to the days when I spent weeks not even thinking about politics. 

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39 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

Coming home from three hours without being around any internet and my husband says "I guess we should check and see what the latest scandal is."

Me: "Surely nothing else could have happened in such  a short amount of time."

Well fuck, it did. I want to go back to the days when I spent weeks not even thinking about politics. 

So say we all. So say we FUCKING ALL. 

To quote .... SNL I think? I just want to go one day without a CNN alert that scares the crap out of me. 

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"434 people less annoying than Ted Cruz...and Ted Cruz." My favorite quote from the John Oliver video.

"Trump’s careening toward an inevitable showdown with an undeniable truth"

Spoiler

Ten days ago, Donald Trump’s rocky presidency was in relatively calm waters. He’d helped push a health-care bill through the House and was spending the weekend at his Trump-brand property in Bedminster, N.J. After that, the deluge: Sally Yates’s testimony on Capitol Hill, the firing of FBI Director James B. Comey, the private meeting with Russia’s foreign minister, the revelation that the Comey firing was spurred at least partly by the Russia investigation, the threat to release tapes of his conversation with Comey and, on Monday, The Washington Post’s revelation that Trump had shared classified information with the Russians.

Tuesday had its own surprise: A report from the New York Times about a conversation between Comey and the president in which Trump asked him to end the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. According to the Times, Comey detailed the Feb. 14 conversation with Trump in a memo that he shared with other senior FBI officials at the time — but didn’t reveal it publicly because he didn’t want to influence the investigation.

The White House denied it in a statement. It reads, in part: “The President has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn. The President has the utmost respect for our law enforcement agencies, and all investigations. This is not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the President and Mr. Comey.”

According to Comey’s purported memo, read to Times reporters by an associate, Trump said in their conversation, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

It seems as though the flood of information over the past 10 days has been pushing us to a point that we haven’t yet reached, forcing an explicit choice between the word of the White House and the word of an outside party. The Post’s story about the revelation of classified information came close, but the carefully worded administration responses released Monday didn’t constitute a robust denial of our story. In this case, the denial of the Times report is explicit. Trump’s White House says the report about the Comey memo is not “truthful or accurate.”

Forcing the American public to decide: Whom do you believe, Trump or Comey? Or, in a layer of abstraction that will continue to complicate things, the White House or the reporting of the Times (and others, including The Post)?

There is a surfeit of circumstantial evidence that bolsters the idea that Trump pressured Comey to drop the investigation into Flynn.

• After Yates’s testimony eight days ago, White House press secretary Sean Spicer was asked why Trump kept defending Flynn, despite his having been asked to resign for apparently lying to the vice president. Spicer insisted that the president didn’t want to “smear” Flynn, who is a “good man.” (In Comey’s memo, he’s a “good guy.”)

• Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt that he was thinking of the Russia investigation when he decided to fire Comey, contrary to what his staff had been insisting.

• His dinner with Comey, in which he admits to asking the FBI director whether he himself was under investigation, came the day after Yates informed the White House that Flynn’s actions conflicted with what Vice President Pence had said publicly — a conversation that revealed that the FBI was investigating Flynn.

Overlay that with Trump’s repeated insistence that any investigations into Russia were suspect, and it certainly seems believable that he might have tried to twist Comey’s arm on the investigation into Flynn.

But we’ve seen repeatedly that in a believability contest between Trump and A Number of Other People, Trump often, somehow, emerges the victor. At least with the core base of support he has enjoyed over the course of his brief time in politics — a base of support that constitutes a big chunk of the Republican electorate and, therefore, has seemingly frozen significant robust Republican criticism of Trump.

In this case, Americans will be asked to choose between the White House and the media, a choice that, particularly for many Republicans, will be an easy one. Lots of polling shows that Republicans are more likely to trust Trump than the press.

...

It’s not clear whether Trump’s obvious recent contradictions have eroded Republican confidence in his word vs. the media’s, but there’s little evidence to suggest that it has.

Those contradictions remind us of another layer of complexity. They often come at the expense of his staff, who were aligned to offer one story until Trump, in an interview or a tweet, casually tosses a grenade into their fortress. It happened with the Comey firing; it happened to a lesser extent with the Russia story this week. It’s very possible that this conflict will be defused in the morning, when Trump simply cops to the conversation with Comey. It’s impossible to know; even Trump admitted on Twitter this week that his representatives are imperfect conveyors of his truths.

As it stands, there’s enough to the Times report to give Trump defenders wiggle room. But, again, the path of the past 10 days has been toward less and less wiggle room and a more and more direct contrast between Trump and some other trustworthy outside individual. That’s the moment of tension that has been building since Trump announced his candidacy, always pitting him against imperfect foils like Ted Cruz or Hillary Clinton or the mainstream media. Eventually — seemingly inevitably — that wave will crash into a wall.

Sadly, many Branch Trumpvidians won't admit he has ever said or done anything wrong. I'm not sure if it's because they believe him or because they don't want to admit they were wrong to trust him.

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As a Brit (albeit expat) I'm just praying he's out before the scheduled State Visit  to the UK. The Queen is a 91 year old woman and shouldn't be subjected to this &##*%*&!

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