Good King Trump

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Mueller Results (So Far) - The Big Picture

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[The Lone Ranger]

Originally Posted by Kamilah Hauptmann

That isn't a signature; it's a scrawl. It doesn't look anything at all like it was meant to spell out "Donald J. Trump," no matter how bad his handwriting might be. In fact, it looks exactly like what would be produced by someone who's basically illiterate, but doesn't want anyone to know.

Which brings us to the fact that numerous people have accused Trump of being functionally illiterate. For example, there are numerous videos of Trump apparently struggling to read something or another. Numerous White House staff members have stated that Trump doesn't read. And in an interview with the Atlantic, Rudy Giuliani stated that it took Trump 3 weeks to make his way through the written part of the Russian collusion exam: "It took him about three weeks to do what would normally take two days." He followed up with, "I know you think I'm going to say: 'Maybe he can't read,' but I'm not."


It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that Trump is functionally illiterate. It would explain quite a few things.

[Corona688]

Unsure. He does a lot of writing for someone functionally illiterate. If he's got some intern following him typing into his phone, maybe.

[lisarea]

I hate to say this and it's not intended as a defense or anything, but my signature is worse than that. It looks like I'm testing to see if a pen is working. There is no possible way you could read my name in it. I pretty much make a loop, a bump, and then trail off. (Take note, forgers.)

Fun fact: Jack Lew had to change his signature when he became treasury secretary because it was too goofy looking to be on all our folding money.

[Ari]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

Which brings us to the fact that numerous people have accused Trump of being functionally illiterate.

I thnk 'functionally illiterate' is a bit too harsh perhaps a permanent developmental retardation. My guess is that at some point in his education he got behind and the narcissistic need to be perfect and avert shame meant he never asked the basic questions or got the basic help many of us got to get us over a tiny hurdle.

It's like hunt and peck typing vs someone trained, sure both are typing but one is much easier to hide when they only speak in 140 character chunks.

[Ari]

Speaking of Trump's illiteracy I ran into this article by the Washington Post wondering why it takes Trump so long to tweet. When Trump tweeted about Boeing and '...' the end of his tweet, 12 minutes later he finished it joking he didn't want Einstein as a pilot. That gap is apparently not uncommon, Trump's chained tweets come an average of 8 minutes between parts. The only time when there isn't a large gap is when the tweets were grouped and posted together by an app.

Let’s address the elephant in the room: Why does it take Trump so long to tweet? - The Washington Post

[Dingfod]

Originally Posted by Kamilah Hauptmann

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Michael Cohen was one of many lawyers who represented me (unfortunately). He had other clients also. He was just disbarred by the State Supreme Court for lying &amp; fraud. He did bad things unrelated to Trump. He is lying in order to reduce his prison time. Using Crooked’s lawyer!</p>&mdash; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1100683974899363840?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Cohen had only three clients in the past few years, Trump, Republican fundraiser Elliot Broidy, and allegedly, Sean Hannity.

[Corona688]

Trump just vetoed the resolution turning down his wall. Of course.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

So this doesn't slide by unnoticed.

The story Maddow is covering right now about Scott Lloyd and the pregnancies of refugee girls is some straight-up Handmaid’s Tale shit. pic.twitter.com/KyOuv5IInp

— shauna (@goldengateblond) March 16, 2019

[The Man]

There is literally no chance that Scott Lloyd isn't a sex offender of some sort. I wouldn't even be all that surprised if they find dead girls buried under his basement. That creep harbours a deep-seated, pathological resentment of women and I would bet actual money that he has acted it out in some way beyond what he's doing in his official capacity, which, in a just world, would already, by itself, land him on the sex offender registry. But of course, he's serving in the Grab Them by the Pussy administration*, so no surprise there.

[slimshady2357]

Nature photographer captures image depicting how the @GOP dies and the @realDonaldTrump presidency ends. https://t.co/zzidpJoxWY

— Richard Hine (@richardhine) 17 March 2019

[The Man]

Republicans: “Late night hosts these days make fun of Donald Trump too much! Johnny Carson would never do that!”

Johnny Carson: *literally does jokes about Trump evicting people from their homes* pic.twitter.com/H0XS3FPy6M

— Mike Drucker (@MikeDrucker) March 14, 2019

[erimir]

BREAKING: In letter to WH, Rep. Cummings reveals that KUSHNER was routinely using WhatsApp to conduct official business as recently as Dec. 2018. Kushner's lawyer told lawmakers he screenshots messages to preserve them.

Cummings wants details by April 4. https://t.co/uOZdCgKGph

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) March 21, 2019

Lowell also told lawmakers, per Cummings, that Ivanka Trump doesn't forward email she receives to her official White House account unless she replies. Cummings says this "would appear to violate the Presidential Records Act."

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) March 21, 2019

The Javanka parts of this story will get all the attention but KT McFarland was discussing selling nukes to Saudi Arabia on A Oh My Fucking Ell. https://t.co/C6PYnYUlCA pic.twitter.com/t6u8Dn08S7

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) March 21, 2019

So we're discussing nuclear technology transfers on the service that is synonymous with elderly people who don't know anything about the internet (although now it's more like "That still exists?" because old people use Facebook instead of AOL chain emails for their right-wing conspiracy theory needs).

Anyway, it's a good thing the last presidential election spent more time covering information security, private communications and archiving practices than most other issues combined.

As we know that was indeed a big story worthy of both the quantity and tone of coverage it received (to say otherwise is to demand the media simply not cover Democratic scandals at all), we can expect the 2020 election coverage to extensively cover these issues and demand Trump and co. account for and apologize for these lapses in infosec/archiving practices in basically every interview.

[Zehava]

Where's the "Lock them up" chants?

[BrotherMan]

Buttery Males!

I Don't Really Care, Do You?

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Mueller attaches literal smoking gun to report just to keep those fuckers happy - The Beaverton

At press time, President Trump has spent the morning tweeting disparaging remarks about the smoking gun and its family.

[viscousmemories]

Is this the thread where we'll be able to celebrate the nothingburger that the Mueller Report turns out to be? Or is there a less optimistic thread somewhere?

[BrotherMan]

Nothingberder.

[erimir]

We don't really know what's in there and whether there are any interesting sealed indictments or immunity deals (I mean, there probably aren't, but it's certainly possible), etc.

Trump doesn't seem to be crowing about how good it is for him just yet. If it's truly a nothingburger, I might expect him to decide to release it without a fight, so we'll see...

It is of course possible that the report doesn't add a lot to what was already publicly known. It might be there's no "smoking gun" for Trump, because Trump doesn't use email and may have been smart enough not to record any conversations. But what's publicly known is very damning as it is...

On the other hand, it's possible that Mueller concluded that he wouldn't succeed if he tried to indict Trump (perhaps due to SCOTUS hackishness) and that the safer route would be to defer to Congress to decide what to do with him, and there's very damning new information in there. There also may be information about actions that aren't technically illegal (partly because Congress never contemplated a President doing them) but which would be considered impeachable offenses by most people.

There's not a whole lot to go on as of yet aside from no new indictments being announced.

And I don't really care for supposed "lefties" like Greenwald out there openly gloating that the venal, corrupt, dictator-coddling, cruel, narcissistic, racist, misogynist who has almost entirely capitulated to right-wing GOP policy priorities has supposedly been "vindicated" as if he did nothing wrong (even if we assume Trump knew nothing of Manafort and Flynn and others' behavior, that and his continued defense of them in itself suggests someone unfit for office). It doesn't suggest someone who actually cares about left-wing priorities...

(And the House Dems will continue more investigations, the NY AG's office is investigating, etc. there are plenty of Trump crimes that were not under Mueller's purview...)

[But]

A nothingburger? Man, I was really looking forward to nuclear winter because of some butthurt Billary fans.

[godfry n. glad]

Before the new House members took office there were some 17 federal investigations going on regarding the Trump family, foundation, campaign and business interests. This is just one which has 'wrapped up' with a report. Now, the state courts will start to come forward and the House has any number of interesting leads upon which to follow up.

Now, there will be no report to 'wait for'....Now, the actors can act.

[The Man]

A few things:

• This is not the Mueller report. In point of fact, there is no such thing. It is a report by Mueller that deals specifically with the criminal aspects of his investigation – specifically, his choices to indict or not to indict cases relating to Russian conspiracy. Although I’m not a legal scholar, it appears that the Special Counsel regulations require at least one further report to Congress on the counterintelligence investigation, and possibly others as well. Note that this report apparently must be delivered directly to Congress, which means that Barr can’t suppress it.
  
  
• If Mueller’s report on his indictments exonerated Individual-1, he would be crowing from the rooftops about “no collusion” and would probably have released the unredacted version, national security concerns be damned.
  
  
• Although Mueller has let some of his prosecutors go, there are several forthcoming prosecutions, including at least of Roger Stone and Bijan Kian. It also appears that Mueller’s grand jury has not disbanded.
  
  
• Mueller’s office appears to have announced that he will not personally bring any further indictments. This does not mean he has not referred cases in his investigation to other districts. In point of fact, it appears that his investigative work will continue; this announcement means only that if he finds enough evidence for further indictments, he will simply farm them out to DOJ, SDNY, EDVA, DC, state courts, or some other jurisdiction. We also don’t know if Mueller has previously brought some as-yet-unsealed indictments.
  
  
• Although almost all the reporting on Trump’s conspiracies with foreign governments has focused specifically on Russia, it’s quite possible he also has potential criminal exposure for conspiracies with countries such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and several others. This also falls within the scope of Mueller’s investigation, and we still know very little about what he found.

Further info:

1/ At the risk of sounding like Mike Myers' famous SNL talk-show host Linda Richman, "Mueller's final Trump-Russia report" is neither "Mueller's," final, about "Trump-Russia" or a "report." So all the breathless "reporting" today suggesting otherwise is inaccurate and misleading.

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 22, 2019

More info on some of the potentially forthcoming reports.

Also, further info on other ongoing investigations, via Vox (note that the article’s central premise that Mueller is done is… not accurate, however).

In short, buckle up – by all appearances, the reporting on this report is almost uniformly wrong. This thing ain’t anywhere close to finished yet.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Robert Mueller grand jury extended for up to 6 months - CNNPolitics

Why is it wrapped up less than three months later?

Why does the White House get to redact the report?

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Trump is world's worst cheater at golf: book

Surprise.