We know that there is a lot of circumstantial evidence. Looking forward to the FBI final report. We'll see if the Democrats/Republicans accept the conclusions depending on what the FBI finds.
An individual, inspired by Islamist, attacked people in London. Must be circumstantial evidence that everything associated with Islam is evil.
Actually that isn't even circumstantial evidence. The topic is so broad that making those kinds of generalizations are meaningless at best.
It has graduated way pass the point of consipracy theory. And it went from lot of smoke to some focused small . Well, Trump has set up his devoted to not accept negative news.
If these people really did have nefarious dealings. Perhaps they thought that they could get away with it like in business and then proceed to buy themselves out of trouble. Therefore they were careless with their communication. It is possible some of these guys are idiots. Astounding I know.
You look back at Trump history, you'll see a pattern - he pushes the edge of the law and have all the lawyers to fight for him. Wouldn't at all be surprising that he push the edge here. If he's guilty of doing that, his mistake is thinking he can get away with it like he always ha...
This administration is full of useful idiots I'm sure, but the evidence suggests that there was direct collusion and cooperation.
You believe there will be 19 GOP senators voting to convict him if he is impeached in the house? I am beginning to think to they might have things that can get people like Manafort, but still not seeing tying in Trump in this mess.
It is entirely dependent on the evidence, which is coming out, like Watergate, in bits here, in bits there. Not only evidence the public sees, and classified evidence the investigations uncover that may take a while for Americans to see, but what the White House, after the cover up starts unraveling (a process slowly happening now, in my opinion), begins to realize is damning and will not be contained. So damning that it cannot be ignored by those Republicans in Congress who see their elected positions in deep jeopardy. And if, like Watergate, it puts the man in the Oval Office right in the cross hairs of prosecution for "high crimes and misdemeanors," and he is obviously guilty of such, proven by classified information that slowly comes to light, Republicans in Congress that are honorable men and women will call for Mr. Trump's impeachment themselves. The American public, in their righteous anger, will demand it. Whether Trump would take Nixon's path and resign, or fight on to the bitter end, even against members of his own party, an act that will put the Republican Party, by that point in danger of losing their majorities in 2018, well and truly on the road to ruin, remains to be seen. In my humble opinion. Oh, and Dobro? Watergate had nothing at all to do with Vietnam. The war was a campaign issue, of course, but the public, in general, viewed that war as well on its way to ending. Watergate was about the campaign, driven by Nixon's paranoia. And why the paranoia? The best explanation I've seen is in this article in the New York Times titled "Why the Watergate Break-in?," published in November of 1987, link below. Because Nixon resigned before he was tried in Congress, the public continued to wonder, why? Why did Nixon do it? He won the election in 1972 by a huge margin, and had to know before Watergate unfolded that he would win, so why? Read the article. http://www.nytimes.com/1987/11/30/opinion/why-the-watergate-break-in.html
@Deckard I thought the Kissinger tapes revealed something about Nixon lying to LBJ about not trying to sabotage the Peace treaty in Vietnam, and later caught him in a lie. Did the Kissinger tapes have nothing to do with Watergate being broke open or am I confusing scandals?
You would need a smoking gun that links trump directly and not just his staff. Another thing to remember is that he would be replaced by Pence who the GOP would drool over.
They're going up the food chain starting with Flynn, Manafort, Stone, Page first. If they have enough evidence, maybe one of them will sing for immunity. Maybe Trump can pardon but he'd look guilty as hell.
Yes, that's expected. But if it does turn out that Trump campaign worked with the Russian, the whole Trump team is illegitimate. To me, if that's proven, they all need to go. Special election for POTUS would then be next step.
Nope. Nothing to do with Watergate. Watergate was more about Nixon's paranoia that people were "out to get him." He believed that there was scandal out there for the press and/or the Democratic Party to unload before the election that might turn his huge victory into a humiliating defeat. Watergate was about seeing what DNC chairman Larry O'Brian had on Nixon about secret funds funneled to him by Howard Hughes for years (read the NYTimes article. I posted the link). Larry O'Brian knew nothing about the secret funds from Hughes, ironically. Watergate appears to have been about learning what he knew, when he knew nothing. Nixon's paranoia, in this sense, reminds me of Trump. A huge difference is that Nixon was a quintessential Cold Warrior. It wouldn't have occurred to Nixon to get help with his election campaign from the USSR (Russia) in a million years, nor would the Soviets (the Russians - people need to understand that they were the same thing) have dared to make the attempt. What Mr. Trump's closest people apparently did in working in collusion with Russian intelligence, with or without Mr. Trump's knowledge, and it is difficult for me to believe that he didn't know, is unprecedented. A scandal without peer in American politics, when all the facts come out, and they will, in my humble opinion. Connect the dots, people. That's the title of the thread, and that's what a lot of you need to do.
Did Nixon surround himself with people who enabled that paranoia to flourish? I don't know much about that era, I need to learn more. However, when I hear clips of Nixon speaking, it's clear he had some level of intelligence. When I hear Trump speak, I hear a paranoid, bumbling moron who surrounds himself with like-minded morons.
There seems to be 2 camps in the Trump administration -- the guys who could never get through a confirmation process like the Trump family, the campaign managers, Bannon and the other advisors, and maybe a couple of the guys who did get through confirmation; and then the more independent political entities that had a role outside of Trump's orbit: Pence, much of the cabinet. The guys in the second camp are probably locked out of the shadier stuff because they are more of a risk of rolling over on Trump. It's possible there were deals with Russia that Pence didn't know about. It's also possible, of course, he did know, and if we were going to make him President I think some care should be taken to find out. In any case, I don't think any special election is possible. If you impeached Trump, the job is going to Pence unless you can impeach him too. After that the job goes to Speaker Ryan. He's probably clean.
Nixon still had all the credentials that you'd want in a president. He was a former Congressman, a former VP, and a leader in the Republican Party. He had been around politics for years. Nixon in many ways is a competent version of Trump. Nixon was from a different era so the Republican Party was different. You had the right wing Goldwater-esque Republicans but you also had a very strong moderate wing (which doesn't exist today). And you had a much stronger Democratic Party that had a lock on Congress. Bipartisanship was basically mandatory back then because Democrats owned the House but even their caucus had huge divisions. And in that vein, Nixon had a few things he cared about and a lot of things that he frankly didn't care about and was willing to just go along with the Democrats in exchange with something he wanted. Ironically, Nixon cared deeply about health insurance and was probably the closest to health care reform before the ACA (the bill was killed by Ted Kennedy who at the time wanted more in it but in hindsight Kennedy admitted that he screwed up). Really Nixon didn't care all that much about domestic policy so a lot of LBJ's legacy stuck around. Combine that with a Democratic Congress and you really saw a lot of continuity from the JFK/LBJ years on domestic policy. And the sort of rabid right wing conservatism we see today was still fringe stuff back then so he didn't have to deal with that back then. Nixon's main focus was always foreign policy so that's really where he left his mark. However, like Trump, Nixon was image obsessed, paranoid and overly calculating. But its hard to compare the two in a vacuum. Nixon had no choice but to deal with a seemingly unbreakable Democratic majority in Congress. Trump has the opposite situation (majority Republican congress) so who knows how Trump would act with a Congress that was close to a Democratic supermajority. I could see Trump just letting some Democratic bills through like Nixon and avoiding fights. But Nixon's era was also a different era of politics and parties and politicians behaved very differently at the time.
