Earlier this evening I received a comment from a staunch Trump supporter claiming that Natalia Vesnilskaya was a Democratic Party plant, and the whole story about Donald Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort meeting with her was part of a well-planned plot to embarrass the President.
I was puzzled, since it did not seem consonant with reality. After all, the meeting was arranged by a trusted Trump family friend, Rob Goldstone, who also attended.
And then I read this story at CNN. This is the new Grand Explanation about why the top campaign team was meeting with Russians and expecting to get dirt on Hillary. The whole scenario was cooked up by Democrats to embarrass Trump six months into his term of office. Loretta Lynch approved Vesilnaskaya’s visa. She was a friend of Obama’s Ambassador Michael McFaul. This was entrapment, cleverly carried out in June 2016 and never mentioned until now.
The story has been picked up and circulated by the Drudge Report and other members of the rightwing media.
None of it is true, but that doesn’t matter. It gives Trump supporters a way of blaming the Democrats for the trouble Don Jr. and Jared are in. It is fake news.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It is more accurate to title this example of Fake News as “An Object Lesson in Fake News: Russian Lawyer Who Met with Don Jr. Was a Democrat Plant”
The Democrats are NOT Left-Wing. They are Center-Right, especially the many Corporate Democrats such as the Clintons, Obama, Schumer, and Pelosi. If they were left-wing, they would all be supporting single-payer Medicare for All and opposing the murderous U.S. global empire with its illegal wars on seven Muslim nations, its illegal drone assassination program, its “special ops” teams illegally deployed to more than 130 nations, and its empire of more than 700 military bases in more than 80 nations, including 83 in South Korea alone.
Yesterday, July 14, only 73 of the 194 House Democrats voted against the bloated, $696 billion Pentagon imperialist ‘defense’ budget, while we are told we don’t have the money for our schools, infrastructure, truly universal health care, and all the other programs urgently needed by Americans.
Democrats only seem “left-wing” (barely) in contrast to the extremist right-wing RethugliKKKans, who today would consider Dwight Eisenhower, who presciently warned us about the Military-Industrial [and Congressional, in his original text] Complex, a leftist.
Amen, although I will vehemently disagree with you about Ike’s warning. Warning about the problem after you could have done something about it is not a sign of prescience or bravery. It is rank hypocrisy and cowardice.
Agreed
Dismal Democrats cause Republican victories.
One has to wonder whether today’s Democrats would even have had the nerve, guts or inclination to enact Medicare and Medicaid if they had not been created by LBJ. LBJ was truly a monstrous man, he did untold bad but he did so many good things, too. Such a contradiction. For the corporate Democrats, it’s never the right time for single payer, it’s too heavy a lift they say. Maybe in 2150 we can begin to talk about true universal health care in the USA?
Joe
I would settle for an LBJ any day of the week,in spite of the war . A war I was fortunate enough not to have been drafted for. The only and perhaps most important lottery, I ever won.
I agree with Ed, but it sounds like even Bernie, who is our best bet for center left, is only asking for Medicare for All, which I’ve just learned is no panacea. It’s a start, since the GOP health care plan mountd to just don’t get sick, but if you do, die quickly. but it is not as comprehensive as the British Health Care Service.
I became eligible for Medicare this month and I’ve been horrified to discover that they are now deducting payments for Medicare from my already unlivable Social Security retirement income. They are also still taking deductions for Medicare (and SS) from my paychecks at work (and I have to work to supplement my low SS checks). So, I believe I’m effectively paying for Medicare twice each month.
I understand that Medicare only pays 80%, too, and, like many insurance companies, it’s really 80% of what they think you should be charged, not necessarily what’s actually charged. 15% of my income is going to the government to pay off student loans as well, so I can’t afford to pay that 20% from my net income for health care! (And in my experience, the government typically uses gross income to determine poverty level.)
My understanding is that beyond the taxes they pay, Brits don’t pay anything for their comprehensive health care services. Is there even one person in Congress who is advocating for a plan like the Brits have?
Representative John Conyers of Michigan has had Single Payer legislation before congress for years; it has been ridiculed, when not ignored, by the Democratic Party leadership just as long.
Is it single payer that covers 100% or single payer like Medicare that only covers 80%? Democratic leadership’s been right of center & neo-liberal since Bill Clinton, far from Progressive.
I’m not familiar with the details of the bill, but it is usually the mentioned by supporters of universal health care, and John Conyers is one of the Old Lions of the 60’s left, one of the few remaining.
I’m not sure if the health care system in the UK has changed in recent years, but I had a friend who used to travel a lot in his work and he made sure to go to England every year just so he could see a dentist because it was free of charge. And he was not a UK citizen!
I don’t see anyone proposing anything even remotely like that here. Medicare only covers 80%, though you can pay more and get MediGap for additional coverage. Many seniors are on fixed incomes and cannot afford to pay what they charge for Medicare each month, let alone more. On my $900 per month Social Security retirement income, they are deducting $165 every month for Medicare. I live in a big city that is very costly and people can’t live on $735 per month here. Under this system, retired seniors like me are destined to work until we die, even though our health is declining.
A society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens.
The UK isn’t the only country with affordable health and dental care. My former wife travels to China at least once a year to visit family and for less than $50 US dollars has her teeth cleaned and checked. Last week, I had my 6-month dental check up and cleaning here in the U.S. and that cost me $250.
Several years ago, when we were still married and visited China with friends, one of our friends ate the wrong food and got really sick. We warned him not to eat street food but when we weren’t with him and his wife, he couldn’t resist because the food from one street vendor looked too good. The next day after a night of spewing everything inside of him from both ends, we took him to the nearest Chinese hospital’s emergency room where he stayed for most of the day seeing one specialist after another while they treated him. The next day he was back on his feet with his system back in balance. He was an American citizen with no health insurance in China and all that care that resulted in the proper treatment cost him $50 US. In the U.S. that emergency care would have cost him several thousand dollars if not more than $10k or more.
Dear Leader cult members: are Democrats incompetent or brilliant? If they could foresee the disaster that came after Hillary Clinton’s loss, they much be amazing Zen masters. But if they couldn’t recognize our Dear Leader’s prescience, then they got what they deserve. And if the latest narrative of Republicans foresaw John McCain’s health problems (which seem to preview his vote as being anything but that of a “maverick” [James Garner was better]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mccain-surgery-health-care-vote_us_596ad13ce4b03389bb17d957?y6h3242&ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009), then we must thank God, the gods, or whatever divine influence they deem acceptable. And now we, Dear Leader, based on your minions’ interpretation of Dear Leader Junior’s narrative about his meeting in June 2016, we have confirmed proof of how he was duped, no matter how divine or mature he actually is. Anybody else out there who can make sense of this for me? I don’t make enough money to be infallible like our Dear Leader. My head is hurting. Dear Leader minions, please advise about what I must believe.
The truth is, it was a very successful meeting. The only explanation that makes sense. We do not know what was said in the meeting only what events followed shortly after. So if the Russians have information in the form of stolen emails a criminal act and the only type of information they had on the DNC and Clinton!!!. How does the Trump campaign release stolen emails. They can not release them . The Russians do it for them a few weeks later. Establishing a continuing working relationship was what the meeting was about. The idea that they were going to be given dirt that day is another Trump BS story. What they were given that day was the scope of what the Russians had.
If we just follow through the claim logically, it’s easy to see it’s preposterous; it just doesn’t make sense. If the Democrats had planted Ms. Vesilnaskaya for the purpose of discrediting the Trump campaign, why would they have not have called attention to it immediately, when it might have done them some good, rather than sit on it until months after losing the election?
This is why most conspiracy theories don’t work. Too many variables, coincidences, serendipity, and people involved.
The world 🌎 must think the U.S. 🇺🇸 has gone utterly guano 🦇💩 looney.
Before his death, Barry Goldwater said that the Republican Party under Reagan considered him too liberal to be a “true conservative.” The present Republican Party is no longer conservative. It is a radical right, authoritarian party. Billionaires like Koch, Theil, DeVos, Bezos, Mellon-Scaffe, Coors, Broads, Singer, Trump and their other wealthy donors are libertarian. These libertarian billionaires are anti-democratic and anti-American. They feel no allegiance and responsibility to the United States and it’s citizens. We are being treated like a colonial nation in Africa or the Middle East in which our natural resources are privatized and plundered. Theil (PayPal founder) supported Trump and has become a New Zealand citizen. Richard Branson has his own island resort. Even popular billionaires like Warren Buffet owe back taxes to the US taxpayers. Through Clear Channel AM talk radio, Fox News, Sinclair Broadcast TV affiliates, CATO Institute, Heritage Foundation, Townhall, Breitbart, HotAir, the Liberty Alliance LLC, Frank Lunts, The Blaze, NRA TV, and many more media outlets, the Koch political machine “spins” the truth into blaming the Democratic Party for everything that goes wrong. Right now they are blaming Loretta Lynch for approving visas to the Russian operatives who met with Kushner and Don Jr. They are still blaming Obama and HRC for the lack of Republican legislative success. The current Republican Party is a front for billionaires and millionaires who are determined to destroy the Bill of Rights for the average US Citizen. The most attacked admendments are the First, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Nineth. The Second Admendment is the weakest admendment of the Billof Rights. Republicans pretend it’s under attack while nullifying the more powerful admendments in The Bill of Rights. The arbitration clauses in most employment contracts, credit card agreements, and mortgages and loans violate our rights to a trial by judge and jury in civil cases. US citizens are routinely signing away our Bill of Rights. Congress routinely violates our rights when they arrest protestors or refuse to speak to the press or cordon off protestors in “free speech zones.” Currently, Twitter users are suing Trump for blocking them on his accounts. Since he is using his Twitter accounts as POTUS, they argue that his accounts are a federal government means of communication. All of tRump’s Twitter posts are federal record and are not supposed to be edited or deleted. It will interesting to see how many laws and acts will result from the tRump Administration’s ethics violations.
Many Republican state legislatures are passing laws to restrict voter access, criminalize protest, and strip constitutional powers from Democratic governors. Look at what is happening in North Carolina.
https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/510950/
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/27/us/north-carolina-republicans-governor-gerrymander.amp.html
What concerns me is the fact that our entire political system keeps shifting right while the majority of US voters are shifting left. We need a true liberal progressive party in this country. I no longer consider myself a member of the Democratic Party.
Lea S
They are a minority by a roughly 2 to 1 margin . The problem is the lack of vision on the left . Neo liberals (essentially Republicans in dressed in Red or Blue ) can not present an alternative to fascism .
I saw this and thought that we all deserve some good/better news. At least SOME of the people, as mentioned in this one poll, are awakening to the ‘wonderful, beautiful’ Orange Buffoon.
……………………
President Trump’s standing with the American people has deteriorated since the spring, buffeted by perceptions of a decline in U.S. leadership abroad, a stalled presidential agenda at home and an unpopular Republican health-care bill, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Approaching six months in office, Trump’s overall approval rating has dropped to 36 percent from 42 percent in April. His disapproval has risen five points to 58 percent. Overall, 48 percent say they “disapprove strongly” of Trump’s performance in office, a level never reached by former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and reached only in the second term of George W. Bush in Post-ABC polling.
Almost half of all Americans (48 percent) see the country’s leadership in the world as weaker since Trump was inaugurated, compared with 27 percent who say it is stronger. Despite the fact that Trump campaigned as someone skilled at making deals that would be good for the country, big majorities also say they do not trust him in negotiations with foreign leaders and in particular Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Full story: http://wapo.st/2uwaD5l
Results with breakdowns by group: http://wapo.st/2tfcxam
Topline and methodology: http://wapo.st/2t3e1R2
Emily Guskin
Polling Analyst, The Washington Post
(P) 202-334-5856
emily.guskin@washpost.com
@emgusk
Site cannot be reached. Message I got when I clicked on the link.
On Jul 15, 2017 11:23 PM, “Diane Ravitch’s blog” wrote:
dianeravitch posted: “Earlier this evening I received a comment from a staunch Trump supporter claiming that Natalia Vesnilskaya was a Democratic Party plant, and the whole story about Donald Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort meeting with her was part of a well-planned plo”
http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/14/media/trump-russian-lawyer-veselnitskaya-theories-obama/index.html
Matt Taibbi, who speaks Russian, reported for years from Russia, has interviewed some of the background players, and had to leave Russia after threats of violence (and thus cannot be accused of being a Putin shill, as happens so frequently when people exhibit some basic critical thinking and skepticism about all this) has an interesting take on recent events:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/trump-russia-russiagate-magnitsky-affair-linked-again-w492290
Jeffery St. Clair also has an amusing Freudian take on Donnie Jr.’s extra bad horrible week in Counterpunch:
http://www.counterpunch.org.2017/07/14/the-idiots-tale-signifying-what/
Finally, In These Times informs us about what’s happening while the Democrats ally with neo-conservatives and stoke a new Cold War, obliterate their chances of reviving themselves as a legitimate political party, and follow the Whigs into oblivion:
http://www.inthesetimes/working/entry/20329/nlrb-donald-trump-union-busters
Then there’s this, from well-known corporate education reformer and Trump/Putin shill Glen Ford at Black Agenda Report:
http://www.blackagendareport.com/dems_gone_mad_dangerous_year
Michael, do you think that Trump will go to war with Putin? You are kidding, right? He is more likely to go to war with NATO.
You’re misreading the point, Diane.
Call it what you will – the Deep State, the National Security State, the Military-Industrial Complex, the Permanent Government, etc. – they and their appendages in the think tanks, universities and media are the ones pushing for confrontation with Russia.
Trump, for reasons venal or not, had the good sense during the campaign to talk about reducing conflict with Russia, which would be a good thing for everybody except those mentioned in the above paragraph, along with the discredited leadership of the Democratic (Whig) Party, which is pushing Cold War 2.0 for its own venal reasons.
Anyway, let’s look at the sequence of narratives here:
At first, Trump was Hitler.
Then, when the Brownshirts didn’t arrive on cue, he became Putin’s Manchurian Candidate and boy.
Now, as that that meme has started to become a little threadbare, it’s 24/7 with Trump as a tool of the Russian Mafia (talk about a dog-bites-man story) but I sense this will be running on fumes in the news cycles before too long…
Perhaps, the fourth time will be the charm, when the Democrats win the booby prize of President Pence. But what will be the cause? What will finally bring him down? Startling revelations that he’s under the control of space aliens? That he’s the secret love child of Joseph Stalin?
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party is less popular than the most unpopular President in recent memory, and is on its way to becoming the Whigs of the 21st century. Instead of proposing policies that would provide material benefits to everyone – such as the universal health insurance they’re so desperate to sabotage – all they can say is, “We’re not that awful man.”
But there’s an old truism in politics that, “You can’t beat somebody with nobody.” As long as the Democrats insist on running on conflict with Russia and “We’re not Trump,” they’re heading toward well-earned oblivion.
As Bernie Sanders correctly said, they’re happy to go down with the Titanic, just as long as they get to keep their first class cabins.
Michael,
Even Bernie Sanders said that Trump’s collusion with Putin is unsavory, to say the least
Why is this so hard for you to understand?
He is no Hitler. Too weak for that.
He is Putin’s poodle because Putin has so much dirt on him.
Diane, you continue to misread my intended point.
Trump is a flash in the pan, unlike the right-wing extremism he milks. It’s inevitable that he will discredit/destroy himself politically.
The question then becomes, “What will replace him?” The short answer is, “Pence and the Christian fascists he represents
And what is being proposed as an alternative from the mis-leadership of the Democratic Party? That would be Cold War 2.0, with its hysterical obsession with Putin.
My point is that, absent a positive program demanding universal benefits – material improvements in the lives of all working people,which the Clinton/Obama wing of the Democratic Party is openly hostile to – the Repugs will continue to successfully use their hate/propaganda machine to control the State.
So, you’ll be rid of Trump before 2020 (either because his aorta goes pop while he sits on the toilet tweeting, or because Pence, et.al. will have gotten everything they can from him, and he’ll have outlived his usefulness to them, clearing the way for impeachment, or more likely, resignation) and be even worse off.
You can’t beat somebody with nobody and nothing, which is what the Democratic Party is currently offering.
Finally, I’m happy to see you admit that Trump isn’t Hitler, after all, since last fall people were making fools out of themselves, running around as if their hair were on fire, claiming exactly that on the pages of this blog and elsewhere.
It’s a basic rule of war: know and respect your enemy, no matter how grotesque they may be.
1st: Trump isn’t gone yet, and he hasn’t been in power long enough to match Hitler’s record. Hitler’s rise to power started in 1920, when he rose to the top of the Nazi Party’s leadership. In 1921, Hitler was voted chairman of the party, and violence marked Hitler’s early rise. It is arguable that this is currently where Trump is because he has encouraged
and still, encourages disrespect and violence against judges and traditional media outlets that rule against him or judge him harshly be reporting his behavior and tweets for what they are.
Trump has been at it for about one year now. He has a long way to go to catch up with Hitler. Hitler finally achieved his goal in 1933 when he seized emergency power and detained his political enemies. “Lock her up!” as an early warning of the rise of someone who wants to spread a “greater” darkness than any other leader in history, even Hitler.
2nd: “All it took for Vladimir Putin to improve his standing with Republicans was to hack Democrats’ computers. All it took for Putin to get Democrats to hate Russia was to hack Democrats’ computers.”
American polarization has grown so bad that for millions of Americans, a geopolitical rival and strategic foe of the United States can redeem itself if that nation helps Republicans win elections
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443181/putin-republicans-democrats-love-hate-him-respectively-dangerous-polarization
Just because #FakePresdient Trump hasn’t had time to match Hitler’s evil doesn’t mean he won’t one day eclipse Hitler as a paradigm of evil and atrocities. Hitler’s rise to reach total power took more than a decade – if we don’t stop him as soon as possible.
Comparing Hitler’s rise to the Nazi leadership and then to head of the German state over 13 years with Trump’s lightning ascent to the Republican nomination and presidency are a slender thread to hang an analogy on, Lloyd.
Trump is a putrid boil on the surface of the body politic, a symptom of deeper pathologies. Constant expressions of disgust at a fleeting symptom do nothing to cure the underlying illness.
In 7.5 years if #FakePresident Trump is still in the White House and the GOP still holds the majority in both Houses of Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court, we’ll have our answer. Never say never.
I don’t know what the deal is with Glen Beck’s unusual take on Trump and RussiaGate, but he is no corporate education reformer. He called out civil rights groups for taking money from Gates to advocate for corporate reform, and he warned people about the privatization agenda of corporate reformers. See his video, “Corporate Assault on Public Education”
https://www.blackagendareport.com/node/4666
Not Glen Beck. Glenn Ford.
Sorry, yes, Glen Ford, thanks for catching that. (Glen Beck is surely entrenched in the other camp.)
I was being sarcastic, homelesseducator.
#FakePresdient Donald Trump’s team of liars and crooks cooks up this fiction to provide fake facts and unproven conspiracy theories to their die-hard (to die literally but that is another topic) supporters who need and want this fake evidence to support their confirmation bias.
If the Kremlin’s Agent Orange’s hard-core fascist, racist, ignorance loving supporters swallow this one, they will consume anything #FakePresident Trump sends their way, even lethal poison.
“Here,” Trump says, “Drink this. It will make you great (and dead, he doesn’t say).”
Wait, they are already drinking the poison that will probably kill them and all of us too as they drag us under with them while they keep shouting all the way down that the #FakePresdient will make Ameican Great again and bring back the jobs that were lost back in the 19th century.
I eagerly await the day that the space aliens living in luxury at Area 51 are finally exposed and rightly held accountable for all the evils they have inflicted upon us Muricans with their fiendish, government funded mind control rays. Tin foil hats for all! Make mine extra thick please! When the aliens secret transmitter is shut down, I fully expect the entire Trump family to collapse in a heap followed by most of his cabinet, only those who put on their stainless steel colanders at bed time will be spared, tar and feathers for them though for not sharing. Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am……..
If this is the route to getting the Trump family and most of the cabinet to fall in a heap, I’m all for it. I have extra tin foil in my pantry and a metal colander. I can wear this inside my condo but am not sure about going outside. One has to sacrifice. I’ll stay inside.
This is GOOD!
……….
Team Trump’s Absurd Defenses for Don Jr.’s Emails: A Closer Look
Late Night with Seth Meyers
Published on Jul 17, 2017
Seth takes a closer look at the Trump administration’s excuses for their behavior amid bombshell revelations about Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with Russians.
This just came out on a WH email. It is interesting how tRump is advocating made in America when he profits from cheap labor overseas. He is two-faced and some people believe his dribble.
……
Your 1600 Daily
The White House info@mail.whitehouse.gov
1:22 PM (1 hour ago)
Yesterday, President Donald J. Trump hosted 50 companies from each state to showcase American products as part of Made in America Week, reaffirming his dedication to fight on behalf of American workers and families. Products ranged from sandwiches, to wool blankets, to firetrucks; each business connected by the common thread of American excellence. The President stated that, “When we purchase products made in the USA, the profits stay here, the revenue stays here, and the jobs — maybe most importantly of all — they stay right here in the USA”.
Ivanka’s entire product line is made in China in terrible working conditions
She pretends to stand up and understand women who work. Then she takes advantage of women who work in slave labor conditions to make her products.
It’s hard to understand the hypocrisy of this family. Are they all this much in love with getting more and more money? Isn’t there something else in life that matters such as common decency and respect for humanity.
Here’s a good listing of the negative ‘accomplishments’ made by the Orange IDIOT since he took office. It is an opinion from the Dallas News.
…………………….
Let’s outline Trump’s achievements during his first six months in office …Dallas News
President Donald Trump’s first six months have been defined by his often angry and tasteless tweets, his ham-handed efforts to denigrate and undercut the multiple investigations into Russian influence in the 2016 election and the stalemated legislative battle to repeal and replace Obamacare.
But Trump is right in saying he has significantly influenced government and the nation’s image — though much of his impact has been negative. His most significant clear-cut triumph was installing conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. He can take credit for slowing the inflow of illegal immigrants. And his impact has gone well beyond that, a conclusion on which two recent articles from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum agreed….
Read on DallasNews.com: https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/07/17/outline-trumps-achievements-first-six-months-office