Team Trump

From earlier today:

Trump is now defending himself not just by claiming he wasn’t briefed on that intelligence, or just by contesting the significance of that intelligence. Instead, he’s declaring that the entire story simply doesn’t exist — that is, he’s suggesting no intelligence ever actually indicated anything like this.

Yet this defense is itself deeply self-incriminating. It only underscores what critics are saying — that at minimum, Trump should be taking this intelligence seriously and trying to get to the bottom of what it actually does indicate, even if the worst interpretation proves wrong.  (our emphasis)

The damning tweet:

The Russia Bounty story is just another made up by Fake News tale that is told only to damage me and the Republican Party. The secret source probably does not even exist, just like the story itself. If the discredited @nytimes has a source, reveal it. Just another HOAX!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 1, 2020

  

It should go without saying, but --

“A real president would have said, ‘These reports are highly disturbing, and we’re doing everything we can to get to the bottom of them,'” Ned Price, a former National Security Council and CIA official, told me. “That is not what we’ve heard.”

So, briefly, the ones denying the well- sourced Russian- bounties- for- American- lives scandal are Trump, Putin and the Taliban.  In other words, Team Trump.

Trump Regime Knew Of Russian Bounties In Early 2019

Bombshells bursting in air:

Top officials in the White House were aware in early 2019 of classified intelligence indicating Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban for the deaths of Americans, a full year earlier than has been previously reported, according to U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the intelligence.

The assessment was included in at least one of President Donald Trump’s written daily intelligence briefings at the time, according to the officials. Then-national security adviser John Bolton also told colleagues he briefed Trump on the intelligence assessment in March 2019.

The White House didn’t respond to questions about Trump or other officials’ awareness of Russia’s provocations in 2019. The White House has said Trump wasn’t — and still hasn’t been — briefed on the intelligence assessments because they haven’t been fully verified. However, it’s rare for intelligence to be confirmed without a shadow of a doubt before it is presented to top officials. [snip]

The administration’s earlier awareness of the Russian efforts raises additional questions about why Trump didn’t take punitive action against Moscow for efforts that put the lives of American service members at risk. Trump has sought throughout his time in office to improve relations with Russia and President Vladimir Putin, moving this year to try to reinstate Russia as part of a group of world leaders it had been kicked out of.  (our emphasis)

(You probably noted the name "John Bolton" in the above account.  This latest bombshell has "To DJT with love from JB" chalked all over it.)

The longer time line makes White (Supremacist) House denials that Putin's puppet wasn't made aware of the Russian bounties even more risible than it was previously, especially the fact that it was included in at least one presidential daily briefing, as well as in Bolton's March 2019 briefing.

It will all come out, as these things always do.  But, it's highly unfortunate (to say the least) that it took more than a year for people to finally leak the fact that Putin was paying the Taliban to kill American troops and Putin's puppet and his rotted- out regime did nothing to push back.  Especially one person.  Something something book deal?

BONUS:

EXCLUSIVE: Data intercepts showed GRU-to-Taliban $ transfers & a key intermediary fled to Russia, bolstering earlier detainee accounts about a Russian bounty op. Trump WH omitted in its briefing to GOP lawmakers as it downplayed intel as murky/contested. https://t.co/bmMd4V7Fjt

— Charlie Savage (@charlie_savage) June 30, 2020

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

This front page article in the Washington Post doesn't pull many punches in describing the disastrous, deadly failure of moron vector Donald "COVID Donnie" Trump and his weakling toadies to protect our country from the coronavirus pandemic:

Five months after the novel coronavirus was first detected in the United States, a record surge in new cases is the clearest sign yet of the country’s historic failure to control the virus — exposing a crisis in governance extending from the Oval Office to state capitals to city councils.

President Trump — who has repeatedly downplayed the virus, sidelined experts and misled Americans about its dangers and potential cures — now finds his presidency wracked by an inability to shepherd the country through its worst public health calamity in a century. The dysfunction that has long characterized Trump’s White House has been particularly ill-suited for a viral outbreak that requires precision, focus and steady leadership, according to public health experts, administration officials and lawmakers from both parties.

As case numbers began rising again, Trump has held rallies defying public health guidelines, mused about slowing down testing for the virus, criticized people wearing masks and embraced the racially offensive “kung flu” nickname for a disease that has killed at least 123,000 Americans.

A similarly garbled message for the country has also been put forward by the president’s top aides and other senior administration officials, who contradict one another on a daily basis. On Friday, Vice President Pence used the first White House coronavirus task force briefing in almost two months to praise Trump’s handling of the virus and cast aside concerns about a record spike in new infections.

“We have made a truly remarkable progress in moving our nation forward,” Pence said, a few minutes after announcing that more than 2.5 million Americans had contracted the coronavirus. “We’ve all seen the encouraging news as we open up America again.”

Later Friday, the United States recorded more than 40,000 new coronavirus cases — its largest one-day total.

The deeply- sourced article is well worth a read, even if you're up on the topic.

That "truly remarkable progress" that soulless Trump ass- kisser Dense Pence is referring to? Couldn't be this:

When the lines go parallel
The US now has reproduced its March-> April trajectory for new confirmed cases and #COVID19 spread pic.twitter.com/GkvpmKw9Vv

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) June 28, 2020

The Russian- bounties- for- American- troops scandal continues to unfold as the White (Supremacist) House scrambles to protect Putin's puppet:

...[O]ne American official had told The Times that the intelligence finding that the Russians had offered and paid bounties to Afghan militants and criminals had been briefed at the highest levels of the White House.

Another said it was included in the President’s Daily Brief, a written document which draws from spywork to make analytic predictions about longstanding adversaries, unfolding plots and emerging crises around the world. The briefing document is given to the president to read and they serve as the basis for oral briefings to him several times a week.

Asked on Saturday evening how the president could not have known about the report if it had been in his daily brief, a National Security Council spokesman did not immediately respond.

Ms. McEnany notably did not question the substance of the intelligence assessment, saying only that her statement “did not speak to the merit of the alleged intelligence.” She also did not challenge the Times’s reporting that the National Security Council had convened an interagency meeting about what to do about the report in late March.

Ms. McEnany did not explain why such an important report would have been withheld from Mr. Trump. Nor did she indicate whether Mr. Trump was upset at his subordinates for purportedly withholding the information from him.

As Speaker Pelosi said, "This is as bad as it gets, and yet the President will not confront the Russians on this score, denies being briefed."

Meanwhile, VoteVets has a stinging video out:

Donald Trump can take all his empty words about respecting our service and shove them. #TRE45ON #TraitorTrump pic.twitter.com/7vxGxLBYh0

— VoteVets (@votevets) June 28, 2020

With the election so near and yet so far, Greg Fallis has a good explainer about why Trump's scare tactics about fraudulent mail- in balloting don't hold water:

... That level of voting security — signature verification, ballot barcode verification — is only the beginning. The ballot itself has been tested to insure the ballot scanners will read ONLY authentic ballots, and only authentic ballots for that particular election cycle. The scanners aren’t able to read ballots from previous election cycles, even if those ballots were created to use the same scanning system.

But wait, there’s more. There are 3,007 counties in the United States. There are another 236 first-order administrative divisions, which are basically counties by other names (for example, Louisiana has parishes instead of counties, Alaska has boroughs, and the District of Columbia has…well, the District of Columbia). Why is that important? Because there is NO national ballot.

That’s right. Every voting jurisdiction designs and creates its own unique ballot. We’re talking the typeface, the weight of the paper used for the ballot, the size of the ballot, the phrasing of the text instructing the voter on how to vote by mail, the envelope in which the ballot is mailed to the voter, the security envelope containing the marked ballot to be returned, and the actual return envelope. These designs are deliberately changed from election to election.

So in order for Comrade Trump’s claim that “millions of mail-in ballots will be printed by foreign countries, and others” to be true, those foreign countries (and ‘others’ — I have no idea WTF he could possibly mean by ‘others’) would have to exactly duplicate thousands of distinctly different ballot packets unique to every voting jurisdiction in the United States for the 2020 election cycle PLUS be able to match the signatures on file of the individual voters they were attempting to impersonate.

But, of course, Trump's only interested in planting seeds for contesting the election, so the inanity of his lies is beside the point.

Infidel 753's link round- up is, as usual, a fine place to check out for a much more comprehensive picture of Our Times.  Politics, culture, religion, etc.  We always find plenty of stimulating topics, and this week is no exception.  (The piece above on mail- in ballots was found there.)

Tweets Of The Day -- Bounties And Betrayal

There's no distraction so shiny that it should displace the story of treason in the White House:

New reporting from the Times:

“American official had told The Times that the intelligence finding that the Russians had offered and paid bounties to Afghan militants and criminals...WAS INCLUDED IN THE PRESIDENT’S DAILY BRIEF.”
https://t.co/U4O6rnMhy8

— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) June 28, 2020

Well, if you're going to hide it in an obscure document like his daily briefing notes, how can you expect him to know about it? He would have to know how to read. You have to draw pictures.

— Laura T (@torontolaura) June 28, 2020

 

Donald Trump will defend a Confederate statue but not an American soldier.

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) June 27, 2020

Trump is gaslighting “White Power” to distract from this story. Please keep pushing this.

— Greg Meyers 🎱 (@SemGeek) June 28, 2020

40,000,000 unemployed
2,525,900 infected
125,545 killed by coronavirus
429 killed by cops
20 killed by Putin-backed Afghan militants
1 asshole golfing

— Jeff Tiedrich (@itsJeffTiedrich) June 28, 2020

Finally, please follow this thread from someone who knows about PDB's --

Hi. It’s the President’s Daily Brief guy.

Let’s look at the logic and the implications of the claim that neither Trump nor Pence were briefed on the intelligence assessment that Russia offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill US/coalition troops in Afghanistan.

1/10 https://t.co/Laafqaocg3

— David Priess (@DavidPriess) June 28, 2020