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There were several (3 or 4) reddit posts about this yesterday that rose to the top or r/all yesterday. After a few hours they were removed/deleted.
News sites they linked to (non reddit) were also removed, "page not found".
Very conspiracy theory suspicious.
Oh no, I was told by the Tone Police, the far right, the "liberal media", online leftists, and by podcasters like The Useful Idiots that talking about the Bronzo the Clown-Russian connection was VERY BAD, MMMKAY?
Whole lotta magats were rubbing one out over pictures of Putin shirtless way back under Obama, because something something "Obama in mom jeans". They love worshipping what they feel are "powerful" men.
I bet many of them will be JUST FINE with that connection even if proven true and even if they accept the evidence, because they believe that Russia is some white xtian ethnostate that they view as a paradise for cishet white xtian right-wing men.
page suddenly gone
Either that, or doing everything exactly like he would be doing if he were.
I'm always skeptical of claims like this. Don't get me wrong, Trump is actively working to advance the Russian agenda, and Russia has actively supported him financially and through propaganda. But I'm wary of tales of kompromat or clandestine, decades long KGB plots.
Occam's razor, I think Trump is a piece of shit that would destroy his own country to make a quick buck, and Putin offered him a quick buck. Honestly, elaborate Manchurian Candidate conspiracies would probably be less scary than the idea that our entire democracy can collapse because one real-estate conman was willing to sell us all out.
He has almost no filter and I think if he was a secret KGB operative, that would not be a secret by now because it would have just come out at random at some point.
He's extremely malleable, loves rich people and authoritarians, and will agree with almost anyone who kisses his ass. So it's pretty easy for Putin to just wrap him around his little finger.
Sometimes pretending to be too socially stupid to be deceptive has advantages. This seems naive.
So what would be the difference between Trumps current behavior in destroying the US "just so" and "because he is an official GRU employee"? He is a traitor, and should be dealt with accordingly. Remember: All enemies foreign and domestic.
As someone else already said, there is functionally no difference in terms of what he's doing to our country. But if we elevate unverified nonsense about Trump being a secret sleeper agent, it makes credible evidence of Russian influence seem less credible.
There is no difference in that sense. That doesn't mean the truth is fungible.
Probably the KGB had lot of people, because survivorship bias we don't know about the great majority of them
I mean, I'm sure the KGB was interested in influencing prominent Americans, and it's very likely they were using Russian businessmen (and mobsters) to influence Trump. The CIA plays similar games with foreign business leaders. But do I believe that KGB directly recruited Trump, asked him to be their spy, gave him a codename, and kept him on as a sleeper agent through the fall of the Soviet Union? No, it's going to take more than one guy's Facebook post to make me believe that. It's very possible there is some truth in what he's saying, but I would take it with several grains of salt.
Your logic ("I can't believe it so it's likely untrue") is flawed. "I can't believe the world is round so Occam's razor it must be flat because that I can understand."
Putin is very smart and the KGB were smart and they bested US intelligence, according to the now deleted article, not in those exact words. Why is that so implausible?
There could just as easily be other bought or compromised US officials, not just Trump. The thinking "but this couldn't really happen, it's too sneaky and complicated!" is a pretty naive counterpoint.
"I can't believe it so it's likely untrue," is a fundamental misinterpretation of what I'm saying. "There is enough evidence of a Trump/Russia connection without unreliable sources," would be more accurate.
Believing unverified claims has consequences. Remember the Steele dossier, with its wild allegations of blackmail and urinating prostitutes? It's now pretty much entirely discredited due to unreliable sources, and the very real, very clear connection between Trump and Russia lost credibility with it.
Similarly, the Mueller investigation was also undermined by outlandish claims. Left-leaning grifters like Louise Mensch and the Krassenstein brothers made predictions of imminent arrests and treason charges. When the Mueller Report was finally released, it stated that, while there wasn't enough evidence to say Trump definitively colluded with Russia, there was no evidence to clear him of that charge, and he committed criminal obstruction of justice during the course of the investigation. That should have been a damning conclusion, but after months of wild speculation and overhype, it was labeled a nothing-burger.
So, I'm going to remain skeptical of an old KGB agent's Facebook post about a 38 year plot to recruit Donald Trump as a spy, and instead stick to what is known: Trump has long had business dealings with Russian oligarchs, the Russian government supported him through online propaganda, there were credible accusations of collusion between his campaign and Russia, and he is now promoting a pro-Russia foreign policy. That's significant enough.
And that is not saying, "I can't believe the world is round so Occam's razor it must be flat because that I can understand." That's saying, "I can see the Earth is curved, and while some people claim we're actually on the back of giant turtle, Occam's Razor says it's probably just round."
Good job. You've earned your rubles and can clock out now.
LOL, you're literally doing the thing I'm describing. You're making an outlandish claim (that I am a paid Russian agent) that's going to make a real issue (Russian online disinformation campaigns) seem less credible. If your reaction to someone saying, "Trump is clearly in Russia's pocket, but you should be wary of outlandish claims with unverified sources," is, "you must be a Russian propagandist," you need to touch grass.
Yeah, I don't think it's some long-running scheme to get Trump into power or whatever. More that he happened to be the right idiot on the payroll when the shit hit the fan.
Trump's ties to Russia have been known forever. The FBI has been trying to pin him for his ties to Russian crime organizations for decades, with all the "gifts" of yachts and planes that they've given him and all the real estate that they own in Trump Towers and the like.
I think he just happened to be there when all the greed and flaws in our system finally broke under the weight of actual schemes to foster extremism in the population for various reasons and the short-sightedness of corporate interests looking to wring the country dry.
Yeah, I think that's about it. I think Russia has been encouraging oligarchs and mobsters to make contact with prominent Americans they thought they could influence, and a lot of those connections went nowhere. When Trump started winning the primary, Putin probably realized he could use him, so he had some oligarchs cut a deal. But this KGB agent's Facebook post about making direct contact with Trump, recruiting him as a spy, and giving him a codename, as well as his claim that he may be assassinated for sharing this? It seems like it's either some sort of disinformation campaign or just some old man embellishing a story for attention.
With most things like this, I truly, honestly think the man is just too dumb to carry out what he's accused of. Now, stupidity is absolutely not an excuse to get you out of the dumb shit you've done (in fact, it now seems to be a prerequisite for his position along with being incredibly wealthy and comically old), but I don't think he's behind a lot of these elaborate plans he's accused of.
I think at the end of the day, he's just a very old, very rich, incredibly gullible and dumb man who is very easily controlled by those around him.
He's not the one behind the elaborate plans. That's Putin.
I followed r/ the_donald when it first started. It was a joke, and rightfully so. It was fun. However, when anyone tried to call it out as the joke it was, they'd be banned within seconds. Any time of day. Those aren't volunteer moderators.
I assume similar schemes were happening on Facebook and other social media. Honestly it was a master class in modern propaganda. I expected more research papers covering it by now.
They picked the horse. The horse didn't pick them.
You'll notice they love to fall back on this "just a joke" thing. It's a theme. Like when you've ironically used the word "rizz" enough that it's no longer ironic. That's what they're going for.
Trump is a Russian asset. This has been known for years.
Our alphabet soup (FBI, CIA, NSA, etc.) have far more information about this than the general public. This has been known for years.
His base does not care. This has also been known for years.
Congress, who has the power to impeach and remove a Russian asset sitting in the Oval Office, will do exactly nothing about it. This has also been known for years.
In other words: We know, nobody cares, it doesn't matter. Nobody's going to do anything about it.
It does seem odd that the intelligence community seems to have been totally compromised. You'd think the cia, who has done quite a few coups themselves would have seen this coming and done something about it.
To be fair the CIA and FBI, like all other law enforcement, has spent literal decades training their agents to view US citizens as "the enemy."
They have simply have no way to wrap their heads around the idea of doing anything about it. The CIA was created as a weapon for the government to point at their enemies. They don't know how to respond when that government is the enemy.
The Manchurian Candidate came out in 1959 and was made a movie in 1962. I guarantee that the people who do game theory about coups and nuclear war have thought about a willing or unwilling traitor in power. It’s one of the most confusing things about all this that they haven’t done anything to stop it.
I guarantee that the people who do game theory about coups and nuclear war have thought about a willing or unwilling traitor in power. It’s one of the most confusing things about all this that they haven’t done anything to stop it.
My take is that whatever plans exist (and I agree they must) for this situation were designed to come into play only when a very specific set of criteria had been met, and that because any such plan would necessarily be very extreme, the designers of the plan codified that no matter how bad things got, it would require ALL those criteria to be met before it could be lawfully executed.
I believe we haven't checked all the boxes yet.
If they managed to kill JFK, you’d think they could kill this douchebag.
Sure they do. They just don't want to because they're complicit in it happening.
Congress, who has the power to impeach and remove a Russian asset sitting in the Oval Office,
they tried repeatedly, but republican shitbird turncoat traitors protected him.
I think we can see that pretty clearly considering the sudden love for Russia throughout our entire administration and pulling out of Ukraine, the best value for our military spending in decades.
On the other end, my fellow citizens are extremely stupid too.
It's not 'sudden.'
Trump Tower has been selling luxury housing the Russians for decades.
Story from 2017
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-property/
Also here's him criticizing NATO after visiting Russia in 1987
https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-letter-foreign-policy-september-2-1987/
Truth Is Stupider Than Fiction Dept.
The Travis McGee novels from John D. MacDonald are still in print. "A Deadly Shade Of Gold" was released in 1965. Travis is a Florida beach bum and unlicensed investigator. When an old friend pops up and is then brutally murdered, Travis begins to investigate.
One of the characters in this romp is a California millionaire. He inherited his money and is now working hand in glove with the KGB for 'kicks.'
A pulp fiction writer came up with the adult Donald Trump while the real one was still huffing airplane glue.
the claims fuel speculation about Trump’s ties to Russia, which he has denied.
“We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”
-Eric Trump
They removed the article? Anyone know why?
Probably because there is no factual way to prove it (he said, she said) and maybe even got legal threats.
In the 60's someone with ties to KGB would be arrested (and death sentence) for treason, now it can be president and no one does anything
Donnie Jr. publicly boasted that the Russian banks loved his daddy.
It was pretty widely known in the intelligence community that Trump was compromised, yet here we are