US politics general thread

Status
Not open for further replies.
OrbitalDawn said:
That figure seems very flimsily supported. But the waste by the Pentagon is immense and very well documented by the "MSM". I mean, that figure comes from a Forbes article, lol.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlik...of-our-money-without-telling-us/#691852797aef

Other "MSM" reporting on military spending and waste:

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/...-iraqi-cash-ended-in-lebanon-bunker.html?_r=0
https://www.washingtonpost.com/inve...b0774c1eaa5_story.html?utm_term=.b5607d81e486
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-pentagon-waste-specialreport-idUSBRE9AH0LQ20131118
https://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/23/politics/us-army-audit-accounting-errors/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/business/30military.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/opinion/want-to-make-budget-cuts-start-here.html
Click to expand...
The level of reporting of Pentagon trillions (2.8 or 6 or 21 or whatever) being lost is...totally underwhelming.
 
https://qz.com/1279771/there-are-18...or-doesnt-know-about-the-trump-tower-meeting/


On May 16, the Senate Committee of the Judiciary released a transcript of Donald Trump Jr.’s Sept. 7, 2017 testimony about a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. Among the things it reveals: For a 40-year-old, Trump Jr. doesn’t remember much.

In the 244-page transcript, Trump Jr. said at least 105 times that he could not recall something, 37 times that he didn’t remember, and 44 times that he didn’t know. The memory lapses refer to a variety of situations, including whether he knew about something, discussed something with someone, or met someone.
Click to expand...
don-jr.png
 
Trump Jr. and Other Aides Met With Gulf Emissary

Three months before the 2016 election, a small group gathered at Trump Tower to meet with Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son. One was an Israeli specialist in social media manipulation. Another was an emissary for two wealthy Arab princes. The third was a Republican donor with a controversial past in the Middle East as a private security contractor.

The meeting was convened primarily to offer help to the Trump team, and it forged relationships between the men and Trump insiders that would develop over the coming months — past the election and well into President Trump’s first year in office, according to several people with knowledge of their encounters.

Erik Prince, the private security contractor and the former head of Blackwater, arranged the meeting, which took place on Aug. 3, 2016. The emissary, George Nader, told Donald Trump Jr. that the princes who led Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were eager to help his father win election as president. The social media specialist, Joel Zamel, extolled his company’s ability to give an edge to a political campaign; by that time, the firm had already drawn up a multimillion-dollar proposal for a social media manipulation effort to help elect Mr. Trump.
Click to expand...
 
1cfda5e6069a2cabb02259944ab32178.jpg
 
Donald J. Trump
‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump

I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes - and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!
10:37 AM - 20 May 2018
Click to expand...

Lol. This twat...
 
The princes, the president and the fortune seekers

After a year spent carefully cultivating two princes from the Arabian Peninsula, Elliott Broidy, a top fundraiser for President Donald Trump, thought he was finally close to nailing more than $1 billion in business.

He had ingratiated himself with crown princes from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who were seeking to alter U.S. foreign policy and punish Qatar, an archrival in the Gulf that he dubbed “the snake.”

To do that, the California businessman had helped spearhead a secret campaign to influence the White House and Congress, flooding Washington with political donations.

Broidy and his business partner, Lebanese-American George Nader, pitched themselves to the crown princes as a backchannel to the White House, passing the princes’ praise — and messaging — straight to the president’s ears.
Click to expand...
 
Adam Serwer with the receipts.

There Is Only One Trump Scandal - The myriad Trump scandals can obscure the fact that they’re all elements of one massive tale of corruption.

The sheer volume of Trump scandals can seem difficult to keep track of.

There’s the ongoing special-counsel investigation into whether the Trump campaign aided a Russian campaign to aid Trump’s candidacy and defeat his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton; there’s the associated inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice when he fired former FBI Director James Comey, whom he had asked not to investigate his former national-security adviser; there are the president’s hush-money payments to women with whom he allegedly had extramarital affairs, made through his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, and facilitated by corporate cash paid to influence the White House; there is his ongoing effort to interfere with the Russia inquiry and politicize federal law enforcement; there are the foreign governments that seem to be utilizing the president’s properties as vehicles for influencing administration policy; there’s the emerging evidence that Trump campaign officials sought aid not only from Russia, but from other foreign countries, which may have affected Trump’s foreign policy; there are the ongoing revelations of the president’s Cabinet officials’ misusing taxpayer funds; there is the accumulating evidence that administration decisions are made at the behest of private industry, in particular those in which Republican donors have significant interests.

The preceding wall of text may appear to some as an abridged list of the Trump administration’s scandals, but this is an illusion created by the perception that these are all separate affairs. Viewed as such, the various Trump scandals can seem multifarious and overpowering, and difficult to fathom.

There are not many Trump scandals. There is one Trump scandal. Singular: the corruption of the American government by the president and his associates, who are using their official power for personal and financial gain rather than for the welfare of the American people, and their attempts to shield that corruption from political consequences, public scrutiny, or legal accountability.
Click to expand...
 
OrbitalDawn said:
The princes, the president and the fortune seekers
Click to expand...

This story is pretty incredible. Saudi lobbyist bragging that he basically bought the GOP Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and this burn.

The Saudis & Emirates did not think highly of Jared Kushner, per George Nader email to Elliot Broidy. "Nobody would even waste cup of coffee on him if it wasn't for who he is married to," wrote Nader, who called Kushner the "Clown Prince."
Click to expand...
 
The scale of corruption is staggering, actually.

Michael Cohen Helped Trump Donor Seek Investment From Qatar Fund

President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer helped a major donor to Mr. Trump’s inauguration pitch a nuclear-power investment to the Qatari sovereign-wealth fund at a meeting in April, according to people familiar with the matter.

The donor, Franklin L. Haney, is seeking to complete a pair of unfinished nuclear reactors in Alabama known as the Bellefonte Nuclear Plant. His company is lobbying the Trump administration for an extension of tax credits, federal disclosures show.
Click to expand...
 
C4Cat said:
Can't be, don't you know corruption is an African thing?
Click to expand...

:D

The defence industry continues to be a vehicle for corruption.

Elliott Broidy’s Company Got Its Biggest U.S. Government Contract Ever While He Pitched Trump Administration

At the same time Elliott Broidy was cashing in on his access to President Trump by pitching him on behalf of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, he was also receiving the biggest payouts in the history of his company from the U.S. government.

Monday, the Associated Press reported on the months-long 2017 lobbying effort carried out by Broidy and George Nader that brought the pair close to securing nearly $1 billion in contracts with the Saudis and the Emiratis in exchange for lobbying against their enemy, Qatar. Also during the pair’s lobbying blitz in the fall of 2017, Broidy’s company received its largest payouts to date from the federal government on contracts it had been seeking to secure for years, The Daily Beast has learned.

The company, a Virginia-based security firm called Circinus LLC, is owned by Broidy and has secured at least $800 million in foreign defense contracts since Trump took office. All of those payouts came after Broidy reportedly worked his contacts in D.C.—including Trump—to advocate for positions favorable to the countries that Circinus now lists as clients.
Click to expand...
 
The Latest: EPA Bars AP, CNN From Summit on Contaminants

The Environmental Protection Agency is barring The Associated Press, CNN and the environmental-focused news organization E&E from a national summit on harmful water contaminants.

The EPA blocked the news organizations from attending Tuesday's Washington meeting, convened by EPA chief Scott Pruitt.

EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox told the barred organizations they were not invited and there was no space for them, but gave no indication of why they specifically were barred.

Pruitt told about 200 people at the meeting that dealing with the contaminants is a "national priority."

Guards barred an AP reporter from passing through a security checkpoint inside the building. When the reporter asked to speak to an EPA public-affairs person, the security guards grabbed the reporter by the shoulders and shoved her forcibly out of the EPA building.
Click to expand...

Remember when Conservatards fell for the line that Trump would be transparent and fair with the press? :crylaugh:

Michael Cohen’s Business Partner Agrees to Cooperate as Part of Plea Deal

A significant business partner of Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s personal lawyer, has agreed to cooperate with the government as a potential witness, a development that could be used as leverage to pressure Mr. Cohen to work with the special counsel examining Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Under the deal reached with the New York attorney general’s office, the partner, Evgeny A. Freidman, a Russian immigrant who is known as the Taxi King, specifically agreed to assist government prosecutors in state or federal investigations, according to a person briefed on the matter.

The broadened scope of Mr. Freidman’s cooperation may prove worrisome not only to Mr. Cohen, who is the target of an ongoing federal investigation, but also Mr. Trump.

The president’s lawyers are already resigned to the strong possibility that the continuing inquiry into Mr. Cohen’s businesses could lead him to cooperate with federal prosecutors. That likelihood may now be greater, with Mr. Freidman potentially sharing what he knows with federal prosecutors in New York and the special counsel.
Click to expand...

Damn this witch hunt sure is finding a ton of ****ing witches.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X