A Tweet Too Far ?

[zetreque]

Here is an interesting case.

Twitter users sue Donald Trump for blocking them over critical comments
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... -institute

A list of people he blocked before that lawsuit in July. So I'm sure it's much larger.
https://www.wired.com/story/donald-trum ... r-blocked/

What I'm curious about is how many people have him blocked.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation ... story.html

But in an interview Wednesday, Citron said her views had changed. Since Trump has come to use his personal account for official government business — announcing changes in military policy and staffing through his @realDonaldTrump handle — Citron now says the president could be violating the First Amendment by blocking dissenting viewpoints.

[someguy1]

Since Trump uses his Twitter to announce government policy, it seems reasonable that he has no right to block someone from his Twitter, any more than he'd have the right to prohibit you from watching a Sarah Huckabee press conference. But hasn't he blocked certain news outlets from his press conferences? Is that legal? I don't remember how that came out.

Legal rights around Twitter are developing rapidly. There are lawsuits against Twitter for viewpoint censorship. The question of whether Twitter is a private company or a de facto public utility is working its way through our legal system.

Also it was funny the other day that some low-level Twitter employee on their last day of work at the company deleted Trump's account.

[zetreque]

Twitter being a private company probably has the right to terminate Trump's account. Would have to look into their terms of service. The grey area might be if they think he is jeopardizing the safety of the country through tweets which increase hate or violence.

[toucana]

To which Senator John McCain replied on his official senate webpage:

“President Trump today stated that he believed Vladimir Putin is being sincere when he denies Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and reiterated that he hopes to cooperate with Russia in Syria. There’s nothing ‘America First’ about taking the word of a KGB colonel over that of the American intelligence community. There’s no ‘principled realism’ in cooperating with Russia to prop up the murderous Assad regime, which remains the greatest obstacle to a political solution that would bring an end to the bloodshed in Syria. Vladimir Putin does not have America’s interests at heart. To believe otherwise is not only naive but also places our national security at risk.”

[zetreque]

President Chump

Former U.S. intelligence officials: Trump being ‘played’ by Putin
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pos ... -by-putin/


Last night he posted a scary tweet insulting NK again. This Thanksgiving I will just be grateful if imbecile chump hasn't gotten us nuked yet. It's crazy we have a president this childish.

[TheVat]

[TheVat]

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-shooting-wrong-tweet_us_5a0bedf9e4b0bc648a0ebb0a

Is it really this hard to fake empathy?

[zetreque]

Ever since the election I have wanted to fly the American flag upsidedown but I don't want to deal with the repercussions and I doubt it would make much of a difference unless it did turn into a controversy. Too bad that isn't a movement similar to the one above where I mentioned the trend of people flying police themed American flags. I don't care what anyone says, a large percentage of this country is in serious distress over what's going on in the government.

People must not forget the hundreds of thousands who marched in protest over the past year.

[toucana]

Problem - If Trump knew at the time he sacked General Flynn in January 2017 that Flynn had been caught lying to the FBI as well as to VP Mike Pence, then that means that Trump was guilty of attempted obstruction of justice when he approached FBI director James Comey several days later and asked him to let Flynn off from any further investigation into the Russian collusion scandal .

(Why ? - Because lying to the FBI in the course of a criminal investigation is a felony offence. This Tweet will be Exhibit A in Trump's trial.)

[toucana]

FFI

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/02/politics/trump-tweet-flynn-firing-fbi-reaction/index.html

[TheVat]

I just surfed over here to SPCF to post the same link.

I'm not sure our finest political satirists could make this stuff up. Yes, Trump just implicated himself in obstruction of justice, and not just attempted obstruction. Flynn could have been charged much earlier, if Trump had cooperated with the DOJ concerning his knowledge of Flynn's falsehoods. He's got legal cover, I guess, on the firing of Comey, but that wouldn't necessarily protect him in the larger picture where it seems more apparent that he was trying to deflect the FBI from pursuing Flynn.

Thursday was Jonathan Swift's 350 birthday. Swift would surely be enjoying this madness.

[jocular]

Does it look like Trump's team (=I Trump ;-) ) were trying to get dirt on Clinton by offering potential concessions to Russia in the event he would win the election?

Any more to it than that (of course obstructing justice would be "more".I just mean would that sum up the primary motivation and first actions?)

[toucana]

It gets better:

Members of Trump's team are now trying to tell the Washington Post that what MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell has called 'the most self-destructive tweet in history' was written not by President Trump, but by an attorney on his personal private staff called John Dowd.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-obstruction-justice-claims-michael-flynn-fbi-tweet-russia-investigation-latest-a8089171.html

This raises two possibilities:

- Either Donald Trump is relying on the services of the most comically incompetent lawyer in modern history, one who apparently either slept his way through law college, or bought his degree online from 'Trump University'.

- He's lying (again).

[jocular]

This raises two possibilities:

- Either Donald Trump is relying on the services of the most comically incompetent lawyer in modern history, one who apparently either slept his way through law college, or bought his degree online from 'Trump University'.

- He's lying (again).

Or this lawyer is providing deniability by taking the fall ? (they might both say "it was him" and create a grey area of uncertainty)

What if Trump claims he mangled the verbal advice from his lawyer and "misquoted" (+he was tired) ?

EDIT: Does the buck now stop with(one of?) the Prez's lawyer?

[toucana]

Dear Donald - Would you like the bad news first, or the *really* bad news first ?

- Former FBI director James Comey testified on oath at a congressional hearing on 8 June that you asked him to abandon the criminal enquiry into Michael Flynn on 14 February, and he also had the foresight to take contemporaneous notes and to circulate them as memoranda to other senior FBI colleagues at the time.

- James Comey was carrying a mobile phone rigged with an SS7 exploit that recorded everything that you said to him. That was why he smiled so broadly when you posted that menacing tweet about "Comey had better hope there are no tapes".

https://patribotics.blog/2017/06/13/exclusive-director-comey-legally-taped-calls-meetings-with-trump/

[zetreque]

We really need to end trump before he ends us both physically and morally.

Race between physical destruction of United States at hands of Marshal Kim Jong-Un, and moral destruction at hands of Donald Trump, said to be too close to call.

https://twitter.com/DPRK_News/status/937784518118903810

[TheVat]

Nice photoshopped pic!

Good piece in the NYT today (don't have link atm) on why it will be more practical to impeach than to prosecute. NYT gives you 10 free articles each month - if you have any left, this is worth reading.

One more injustice I was reminded of yesterday was that Billy Bush, the tv host who was the one laughing and playing along with Trump's infamous Access Hollywood tape remarks, lost his job for that while the other guy became POTUS. Bush, on Colbert last night, which I caught a piece of, said that at the time he thought Trump was doing some kind of comedy thing - as did others on the bus. I can see that. When you hear the whole tape, it does sound like some kind of shtick someone would make up to get a cheap laugh with a bunch of guys. I can credit that Bush, once he realized Trump meant all that, and that there were 20-plus women who had been victimized by Trump, was mortified. So I am feeling like maybe Bush's big sin was being clueless, and that's hardly grounds for firing from a U.S. television network.

[zetreque]

I saw it. Billy Bush calls for the conversation to continue but of course I noticed that the moment his article came out it quickly moved to the bottom of the headlines again. He is so right, there is so much garbage going on that the conversation doesn't continue because people get distracted by the next thing.

[toucana]

President Donald Trump on 27 June 2018:

Three days later:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/06/immigration-bill-president-falsely-claims-he-never-pushed-republicans-to-vote-for-measure.html

[toucana]

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/03/trump-twitter-pore-pour-693629

When you’re blowing it so badly that even the dictionary is trolling you, it’s a sign of trouble. (Palmer Report)

[toucana]

Fox News rush-released the news-flash seen above on Twitter yesterday in response to the discovery of seven pipe bombs sent to former Presidents Obama and Bill Clinton, as a well as a number of other public figures such as George Soros, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), former CIA director John Brennan, and media organisation CNN which had to evacuate its NY news-room live on air.

Fox News equally quickly deleted that particular Tweet, but not before Samantha Bee, among others, had time to note that "Auto-correct doesn't change 'white powder into 'white power' - unless you type 'white power' a LOT".

[toucana]

Earlier today Trump refuted a NYT story that accused of him using an insecure iPhone even though he had been repeatedly warned by aides that his conversations were being actively monitored by both Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/trump-iphone-hack-china-russia-apple-twitter-tweetdeck-a8601066.html

Trump published his denial that he was relying on an iPhone in the following Tweet:

The so-called experts on Trump over at the New York Times wrote a long and boring article on my cellphone usage that is so incorrect I do not have time here to correct it. I only use Government Phones, and have only one seldom used government cell phone. Story is soooo wrong!

but he did so on an iPhone !

[TheVat]

If I were a political satirist like Christopher Buckley, I would feel there was no hope of writing another novel that could match the hilarious absurdity of real life.

[toucana]

We can’t hand over our government to someone whose deepest darkest secrets may be in the hands of our enemies.

Donald Trump - 2016 Presidential campaign.

p.s. - The Chinese have offered him the use of a brand new Huawei cellphone

[BadgerJelly]

As something of a different perspective in the political landscape in the US:

https://bigthink.com/politics-current-a ... ry-clinton

[SciameriKen]

As something of a different perspective in the political landscape in the US:

https://bigthink.com/politics-current-a ... ry-clinton

Hillary Clinton and what she stands for—the status quo, the preservation of global capitalism and even the Republican tradition—is the primary problem for the left, which Žižek said has ceased to question the fundamentals of the system.

Yup -- that right there... Interesting article - thanks!

[toucana]

Nothing like getting off on the right foot with the new incoming chairman of the House Intel committee - (As of 1st January 2019).

[TheVat]

I wondered if Barron had gotten hold of Dad's cellphone, but then realized he's probably too old for that kind of joke. He's 12 now.

[toucana]

We have to practice decorum"
Donald Trump - White House Friday 16th November 2018

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/11/16/people-have-behave-donald-trump-demands-reporters-practice-decorum-white-house/

[toucana]