Quote:
Originally Posted by Adder
You have, from the beginnings of these discussions, accepted the GOP frame that's laser-focused on "crimes." Which has been such a wildly successful strategy that no one is talking about how Mueller found that the Russian were actively interfering with the election, Trump new about it and was lying about it and thus compromised from an intelligence perspective from the jump. Putin literally had information he could use to influence Trump - the fact that Trump knew and lied about Russian involvement in the campaign - from day 1.
That alone should be a massive scandal.
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I think I'm being misunderstood. Do I agree that asking the Russians to hack Hillary is a huge scandal? Of course. It's insane. You and I agree about that being something so wrong and irregular that it should have disqualified Trump.
I highlight the lack of criminality in large part to demonstrate how crazy a majority of the media and Trump haters who drank its kool aid were from the start. If this thing had never gone where politics always seems to go - criminal prosecutions for political reasons - we'd be looking at the issue of "How fucked up is Trump to have courted Russian interference?" That's a political discussion worth having. And it harms Trump among sane people.
But instead, a majority of the media, and the rabid Trump haters, led a large portion of the country to believe Mueller was going to come back with proof of criminal acts. That was a high standard, a really tough promise to keep. And in it's failure, Trump has now been given a gift. He gets to say "I'm exonerated" of criminal charges where the discussion should have remained, "Trump asked Russians to hack us. Are we really going to re-elect someone so crazy?"
I understand there was enough smoke to warrant Mueller's probe. But I think there's also a lesson in this, and the Stevens case, and the Menendez case, about the criminalization of politics. I'm loathe to say we need new laws, but we definitely need some sort of legislation or regulation to stop dragging prosecutors and investigators into political battles. Particularly where we've all know from the start, the only real way to beat this guy is at the ballot box.
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