that's a very poor comparison to the outright falsehoods perpetuated by propaganda. Not only was the Trump campaign never exonerated of the collusion accusations, but several associates were convicted for their dealings with Russia related to the election and investigation:
-----
"If we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that. We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime... A president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. That is unconstitutional. Even if the charge is kept under seal and hidden from public view – that too is prohibited."[164]
Dozens of ongoing investigations originally handled by the Special Counsel's office were forwarded to district and state prosecutors, other Department of Justice (DoJ) branches, and other federal agencies.[165] The following (in alphabetical order) were indicted during the Mueller investigation:
13 Russians implicated in election interference: Mueller's team indicted thirteen Russian citizens, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), Concord Management and Consulting and Concord Catering with conducting social media campaigns about the U.S. elections.[166] Twelve of the Russian defendants, who were alleged to be members of the Russian GRU cyber espionage group known as Fancy Bear, were charged in June 2018 with hacking and leaking DNC emails.[167] The other Russian indicted, who was not a direct employee of Fancy Bear, was Russian business tycoon Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was alleged to have served as the financier for the organization.[168] The US government dropped all charges against Concord Management and Consulting and Concord Catering in March 2020.[154] In November 2019, Time magazine reported that it was "unlikely that any of the Russians will ever face a trial in the United States, but the charges make it harder for them to travel overseas".[169]
Maria Butina, who had claimed to be a Russian gun activist, was investigated by the Special Counsel investigators and then prosecuted by the National Security Law Unit. She was imprisoned for espionage after entering a guilty plea.[170][171]
Michael Cohen, Trump's personal lawyer, pled guilty to making hush payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal in violation of campaign finance laws, and was convicted for several unrelated counts of bank and tax fraud.[172][173]
Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, who had been appointed as National Security Advisor by the incoming Trump administration, was dismissed from his position and later pled guilty to making false statements to FBI investigators about his conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition.[174][175]
Konstantin Kilimnik, Manafort's business partner in Ukraine, was indicted for witness tampering at the behest of Manafort;[176] Kilimnik is suspected of working for Russian intelligence.[177]
Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign chairman was found guilty on eight felony counts of tax evasion and bank fraud,[178] pursuant to his earlier lobbying activities for the Party of Regions of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich.[179][180] He later pled guilty to conspiracy to defraud and obstruction of justice;[181][182] in total, he was sentenced to over seven years in jail[183] in February 2018.
George Papadopoulos, Trump campaign adviser, was convicted for making false statements to the FBI.[184]
Roger Stone, a longtime Trump advisor who had met with a Russian person offering to sell derogatory financial information about Hillary Clinton,[185] was indicted on seven charges of lying to Congress and witness tampering. He pled not guilty.[186] The jury subsequently found him guilty on all seven counts.[187]
> that's a very poor comparison to the outright falsehoods perpetuated by propaganda.
No it's a very apt one. Millions of people fervently "know" that ample evidence exists implicating Trump in colluding with Putin to hack the election. They've never seen it, but they are sure it must be there. Just the same as this wall.
> Not only was the Trump campaign never exonerated of the collusion accusations,
"The investigation did not establish that the contacts described in Volume I,
Section IV, supra, amounted to an agreement to commit any substantive violation
of federal criminal law—including foreign-influence and campaign-finance
laws, both of which are discussed further below."
"The investigation did not establish any agreement among Campaign officials—or
between such officials and Russia-linked individuals—to interfere with or
obstruct a lawful function of a government agency during the campaign or
transition period. And, as discussed in Volume I, Section V.A, supra, the
investigation did not identify evidence that any Campaign official or associate
knowingly and intentionally participated in the conspiracy to defraud that the
Office charged, namely, the active-measures conspiracy described in Volume I,
Section II, supra."
"The investigation did not, however, yield evidence sufficient to sustain any
charge that any individual affiliated with the Trump Campaign acted as an
agent of a foreign principal within the meaning of FARA or, in terms of Section
951, subject to the direction or control of the government of Russia, or any
official thereof. In particular, the Office did not find evidence likely to
prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Campaign officials such as Paul Manafort,
George Papadopoulos, and Carter Page acted as agents of the Russian
government—or at its direction, control, or request during the relevant time
period."
> but several associates were convicted for their dealings with Russia related to the election and investigation:
No Trump associates or campaign personnel were convicted for their dealings with Russia relating to the election.
If it was "propaganda" as opposed to credible, unproven allegations you'd be pointing us to paragraphs about how meetings between Trump campaign officers and Russian officials probably or definitely did not happen as alleged, not clutching at the straws of "did not find evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt [specific offence]" in an investigation which substantiated that there was contact between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives and resulted in criminal prosecutions of some of the participants for lying about that contact anyway.
When the OP suggest that claims of a South Korean built wall stretching the full length of the border are baseless propaganda, he's not doing so from the starting point that yes, there's obviously a wall going the full length of the border but we can't be confident of convicting its builders of criminal intent
> If it was "propaganda" as opposed to credible, unproven allegations you'd be pointing us to paragraphs about how meetings between Trump campaign officers and Russian officials probably or definitely did not happen as alleged,
I have not seen these paragraphs that provide evidence that Trump colluded with Russia to hack the election in the Mueller report. Maybe you could point them out?
> not clutching at the straws of "did not find evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt [specific offence]" in an investigation which substantiated that there was contact between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives and resulted in criminal prosecutions of some of the participants for lying about them anyway.
"clutching at straws" = refuting the central claims of the Trump/Russia conspiracy theory.
> When the OP suggest that claims of a South Korean built wall stretching the full length of the border are baseless propaganda, he's not doing so from the starting point that yes, there's obviously a wall going the full length of the border but we can't be confident of convicting its builders of criminal intent
Claims about the existence of evidence of Trump colluding with Putin are exactly the same as claims about the existence of the wall.
The report consists of nearly 400 pages of evidence supporting three of the central "Russiagate" claims - that Russian agents sought to help Trump, that multiple Trump campaign staff had meetings with Russian operatives, and that Trump himself personally encouraged his campaign staff to take steps to obtain and disseminate Hillary's unlawfully obtained emails as part of his campaign messaging. You will forgive me for not serialising this in an offtopic HN subthread. Though I will leave you with the observation that the words "the Office’s investigation uncovered evidence of
numerous links (i.e., contacts) between Trump Campaign officials and individuals having or
claiming to have ties to the Russian government" appear on the same page as one of the statements you quoted. This is not the summary Mueller would have made if he had concluded that the insinuation of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government operatives was "propaganda", as opposed to something which definitely happened albeit not provably in a manner which violated relevant conspiracy law.
Of course he didnt conclude that Russia "hacked the election" because that was not an actual literal claim under investigation (if you're interested in whether unsubstantiated and in many cases provably false claims of vote-manipulation by foreign countries are being used for propaganda purposes, there's campaigns on behalf of another defeated Presidential election candidate you might want to look at...). There is one actual claim of "Russiagate" which is tendentious: that Hillary would have won the election in the absence of any Trump campaign contact with Russian operatives. You could even call that propaganda, if you wish, though its more of the optimistic, conjectural framing of political failure than the just make stuff up variety. But that one's well outside the scope of Mueller.
So there is all this evidence that Trump's campaign colluded with Russia to interfere with the election, you're absolutely sure it exists, but you can't actually point to it. Same as this Korean wall.
The Mueller report concluded that there was no evidence of collusion (conspiracy), bu that doesn't mean anything because it's like how you can't see the wall from South Korea.
I'm absolutely sure my previous post contains a direct quote summarising the state of the evidence from Mueller himself "the Office’s investigation uncovered evidence of numerous links (i.e., contacts) between Trump Campaign officials and individuals having or claiming to have ties to the Russian government" was how Mueller opened his summary. Not "we couldn't find any evidence of any of the alleged meetings actually happening" or "actually conclusive proof exists that these individuals were in a different country at the time". Or perhaps your argument is that they definitely met but there was no evidence the Russians did anything to help the Trump campaign, but Mueller said they were "sweeping and systematic" and prosecuted individuals for their role in it.
I mean, if you've read, say, page 85 in which senior Trump officials set up meetings with people who have emailed them offering "very high level and sensitive information" as "part of Russia and its government's support to Trump", it's kind of difficult to argue that Mueller's statement that proving that they were "knowing" and "wilful" in violating laws in court might be difficult means there's no evidence of any form of collusion between Russian agents offering hacked material and the Trump campaign.
By the same token the Comey investigation into Hillary Clinton found "no pervasive evidence of systematic, deliberate mishandling of information", but only someone arguing in bad faith would suggest this proved that reports of email servers were just North Korean style propaganda inventions.
There's no evidence Trump colluded with Russia to interfere with the election. Just say what the evidence is if you have any. Mueller did not, as the report explicitly states. That is why you can't point to anything from the report except vague snippets of things that are not evidence that Trump colluded with Russia to interfere with the election.
Two can play at the gish gallop game. Please point me to the line in the Mueller report which 'explicitly states' that 'there is no evidence Trump colluded with Russia to interfere with the election.'
If this section of the report is any less imaginary than the great Korean wall I assume you would have pointed to that, and not vague snippets referring to insufficient evidence to support specific criminal charges, following Mueller's actual statements on collusion and evidence which were that "we applied the framework of conspiracy law, not the concept of collusion" and "A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts".
Perhaps you wish to argue that the Trump campaign meeting with Russian agents for the primary purpose of receiving documents about Hillary Clinton as part of what Mueller established to be an organised Russian campaign to support his election using unlawfully obtained material does not meet your personal thresholds for "collusion" between the two campaigns. Understanding of the applicability of what Mueller calls "the commonly discussed term collusion" to the established fact of the Trump campaign taking that meeting is a matter of opinion rather than fact, after all. The Mueller report did, however, establish that the meeting was not invented by propagandists but definitely took place.
So you can't point to any evidence, despite insisting and "knowing" it exists. The fact that the Mueller report states they found no evidence the Just like this invisible Korean wall.
Yes, your failure to find the page where "the Mueller report states they found no evidence" as requested is very much like the failure to find the Korean wall.
I think we're going round in circles now, but I understand that if your claim that Russiagate was just propaganda rests on claiming that Mueller stated there was no evidence of any collusion, it's particularly hard to refute direct quotes from Mueller that he didn't assess whether they fit the "concept of collusion" and him not establishing stuff didn't mean there was no evidence for it. But perhaps he contradicted himself by stating that they found no evidence of any collusion in invisible ink only you can read?
It seems entirely reasonable for millions of people to continue to believe that the Mueller-established facts of Russian hacking, Trump campaign enthusiasm about using the hacked material and Trump campaign meetings with declared Russian operatives for the stated purpose of receiving sensitive information point towards collusion between the campaigns if the only argument you are able to make against this conjecture is a claim that Mueller made a statement he did not make.
Wishing you and whatever your non-throwaway account is better faith lines of argument (preferably on different subjects) in the New Year.
This is your wild conspiracy theory. You can't just tell everyone else they have to prove it's not true otherwise that's proof it is true! Typical conspiracy theorist tactic.
You said there is evidence. Where is it? The idea that Trump colluded with Putin to interfere with the election under Obama's nose somehow and then hid all the evidence from the Mueller investigation somehow is utterly ridiculous. Such an extraordinary claim without evidence is just worthless.
Available evidence strongly suggests Trump and his campaign coordinated with representatives of Russian government interests that involved both significant lawbreaking and a targeted media campaign that resulted in a victory for Trump that would not have occurred otherwise. Whether that's semantically equivalent to "colluded with Putin to cheat in the election" I don't know.
What you're saying, is itself an example of propaganda, in the sense that it's a simplification that while technically true leads a reader to reach a different conclusion that what actually occurred. And it's easy to do, because reality is complicated while disinformation can be simple. No, Donald Trump did not sit down in a hotel or pick up a phone and directly conspire with Vladimir Putin to scheme about how to change vote totals. Here's what is known to have happened:
> Available evidence strongly suggests Trump and his campaign coordinated with representatives of Russian government interests that involved both significant lawbreaking and a targeted media campaign that resulted in a victory for Trump that would not have occurred otherwise. Whether that's semantically equivalent to "colluded with Putin to cheat in the election" I don't know.
The Mueller report disagrees. What available evidence exactly do you have which the special council investigation did not? Cite your sources please.
> What you're saying, is itself an example of propaganda, in the sense that it's a simplification that while technically true leads a reader to reach a different conclusion that what actually occurred. And it's easy to do, because reality is complicated while disinformation can be simple.
No it's not, what I am saying is almost verbatim from the Mueller report. No evidence was found implicating Trump or his campaign of colluding (conspiring) with Russians. I can dig out quotes from it verbatim or cite page numbers for you if you have not read it or disagree. EDIT: I have done so in another reply, if you are interested.
> No, Donald Trump did not sit down in a hotel or pick up a phone and directly conspire with Vladimir Putin to scheme about how to change vote totals.
Strawman, that is not what was being argued against.
Firstly, Rachel Maddow has a very poor and biased record on the whole Russia story. Part of the propaganda, I would say. So no need for that opinion piece, we can link direct to the actual video of the event.
This is not evidence that Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election. It's clearly a joke that is typical of his jokes during his campaign rallies. Does it not ring any alarm bells with you that this is the keystone "evidence" that gets wheeled out by people who claim they have proof Trump colluded with Putin?
Yes, unfortunately. You also have many people who believe Trump said Nazis are very fine people. You have many people who believe Trump told his supporters to drink bleach in other to fight coronavirus.
>You have many people who believe Trump told his supporters to drink bleach in other to fight coronavirus.
Indeed, he merely suggested to inject bleach in order to fight the coronavirus [1]. Of course afterwards he said that was sarcastic, but even if that was true it's not really much better.
Wow, it's hard to listen to these cringy old politicians rambling for more than a minute so I might have missed it later but but is this what you're talking about?
"And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that? By injection inside or or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs and it would be interesting to check that. So you're going to have to use medical doctors but it sounds interesting to me."
He's talking about medical research or trials. He's probably confused about what they told him or doesn't understand how it would work, but he's talking to some doctor or scientist off screen about what they've just told him is being worked on. He didn't suggest people inject bleach, he was asking about medical trials.
Is that really what the whole "he told people to inject bleach" scandal was based on? Surely not. As far as gaffes go it's not even that bad is it? What's so bad about it?
While it's not as bad as telling people to inject or drink bleach, I think it's still pretty bad. First, politicians should be really careful what they say because some people will only half listen to them.
Second, seriously, the president of the United States is suggesting such ridiculous things? He should realise that what he's suggesting is insane and either have them clarify it beforehand or just keep his mouth shut. And if it's just a joke the timing is totally inappropriate.
> While it's not as bad as telling people to inject or drink bleach,
In your previous post you said it was suggesting people inject bleach though. Now it's not?
> I think it's still pretty bad.
Why is it bad?
> First, politicians should be really careful what they say because some people will only half listen to them.
No that's ridiculous. They should be careful in what they say, but not because people only half listen. And zero people out of 300 million injected disinfectant into their bodies after watching Trump ask this doctor about the research they were conducting, believing it would help them.
And if anyone actually did, it would have been because they heard a lie from a "news" corporation claiming that is what Trump said.
> Second, seriously, the president of the United States is suggesting such ridiculous things?
He suggested that medical research be done on some treatments or lines of investigation or promise that he'd obviously just been briefed on. He probably did the usual politician thing and got confused about highly technical details. Which is a cringy thing lots of politicians unfortunately do. Not all that outlandish though.
> He should realise that what he's suggesting is insane and either have them clarify it beforehand or just keep his mouth shut. And if it's just a joke the timing is totally inappropriate.
I'd much rather that than more wars and interventions and regime change though. Strange how this absolute nothing was lied about and propagandized by many who were so quiet about those other things. Makes you think.
We must live on different planets. There are literally mountains of evidence publicly available, and many thoroughly researched books by respected lawyers and political scientists on the subject. You can't live in denial of the obvious and at the same time have the chutzpah to accuse others of lacking evidence. Who's the propaganda victim here?
> There are literally mountains of evidence publicly available, and many thoroughly researched books by respected lawyers and political scientists on the subject.
> You can't live in denial of the obvious and at the same time have the chutzpah to accuse others of lacking evidence.
What I can say for certain is that looking past all the bluster and propaganda and claims of what exists, I have never seen evidence proving Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election.
> Who's the propaganda victim here?
The people who believe there is evidence Trump/campaign colluded with Russia are.
