well lets try babysteps
don't you think that the Trump Tower meeting should be understood in the context of the atmosphere at the time, rather than juxtaposed into current russiaburger climate?

If Trump Jr and Jared Kushner took that meeting today, it would and should set off red flags. But the tower trump meeting took place before any of the insanity, and we only learned about it after the witch hunt was in earnest, so everyone was frothing about how bad it looked in the wrong context. At the time, nobody would be cautious about associating with Russians just because they're Russian

"The Trump tower meeting was totally a-ok" is just such a ridiculous position that I don't see the point in responding to your essays.

that's just reaffirming what I wrote anyway
If you just take it as a given that the Trump tower meeting was a great moral wrong and aren't capable of questioning that preconceived notion, you can build all sorts of derived constructs on top of it
A rational skeptic should always challenge the premise. Strip away the premise and all the collusion delusion comes tumbling down

And yet the same people outraged over this are perfectly ok with the DNC and Clinton campaign contracting Russians in order to slander a political opponent.

The Trump Tower meeting was sold as "Hillary is up to no good, and we have proof", which no one in their right mind would be surprised to learn. And surprise surprise, the Tower meeting was instigated by Clinton allies in order to trap the Trump campaign.

That's not what happened. They paid Fusion GPS to do research on Trump's activity overseas... which resulted in a former MI6 Russia expert contacting his sources and compiling intelligence reports. That's very different than taking a meeting with the explicit purpose of accepting dirt on Hillary from the Russian government.

Except for the fact that this "former MI6 Russia expert" was literally conjuring shit out of thin air... in reality, they didnt "do research on Trumps activities overseas", they were effectively funding a smear campaign against Trump.

Alice paid bob paid charlie paid david paid edward paid florence to do her dirty work.
A shell game to distance hillary from russia doesn't diminish the connection, it just obfuscates it. And any attempt to wash the clinton campaign's hands of the affair and blame it on independent agents is belied by the fact they disguised the payments to Perkins Coie as legal services on FEC filings, knowing full well that opposition research was being conducted. Hillary's a seasoned enough politician to know how to keep her distance and maintain plausible deniability, she could instruct her team to go out and do opposition research and make sure its not on the books as a campaign expense.

Steele's sources were wrong on a lot of stuff... that doesn't mean Steele was making stuff up. And it's simply false to say Fusion GPS didn't do research on Trump's activities overseas.

Let's dispense with the farce that Steele was a "Russian expert".

https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/417535-questions-grow-about-fbi-vetting-of-christopher-steeles-russia-expertise

What we do know is that Steele was a poorly informed leaker fired for misconduct. Hillary really picks them well.



It was salacious and unverified, as Steele himself admitted, let's not insult everyone's intelligence by referring to it as "intelligence".

This post was edited by bogie160 on Apr 7 2019 11:57am