Nothing to see here, folks. Move along please. Get on with your lives.

You heard it, folks. This is all fake. Ignore it.

 

Do we have to stop at his level Everytime? For once can we get off at the higher floor and be better citizens.

Our country's safety is more important than any presidential tween.

 

With all the gold in Trump's penthouse, we shouldn't be surprised that it's also how he prefers his showers. I haven't been this happy in a long time. I knew all along this ended in a Trump sex tape. And here we are.

 

Better citizens would've voted for a qualified candidate.

In any case, it's certainly the right of every citizen to know if their elected officials are being blackmailed by a foreign government!

Or maybe that's not a big deal to you.

 

This was one of the two stories that Rick Wilson (the conservative never-Trump media dude I was following on twitter) predicted was going to drop before the election and finish off Trump's chances. (The other was that Trump's paid for literally dozens of abortions for the women he's banged over the years.)

The reason you haven't heard about it before now was that none of those journalists (you know, the ones that everyone on here has been dissing these past several weeks for "not doing their jobs") were able to confirm any of it, despite herculean efforts to do so.

But I see we've all decided that this particular bullstuff-laden tale must be true, because it makes the idiot-in-chief look bad ... journalistic standards be damned.

You're part of the problem, guys.

#WASS

 

Yeah, I'm going to wait for independent corroboration before I go into full schadenfreude mode. Not that I don't find the allegations credible. It's just that they're basically coming from one ex-MI6 guy. Apparently our own intelligence services know him and find him credible enough to at least tell Trump (and Obama) of the allegations, so this isn't in the same category as "Hillary Clinton runs sex ring out of pizza parlor!" (Though the Trumpistas are already spinning it as that). But he may have some of it wrong, or even all of it wrong. My GUESS would be that some is true and some isn't, but I can't say that with any certainty.

Considering that it began as paid oppo research by Trump's Republican opponent(s), and then by the Clinton team, I would think if there was any smoking gun, one of his opponents would have used it. Maybe the smoking gun appears later. Who knows.

The Kremlin denials ("We don't do kompromat on visiting foreigners! Outrageous for anyone to suggest this!") are laughable; I have little doubt they've got something on the guy. But if you oversell your case (like Buzzfeed), you run the risk of being seen to cry wolf. Other news outlets have been better at making it clear that corroboration is needed, and reporting verifiable facts (like the fact that Trump and Obama were briefed on this). But for those not paying close attention, it can all blur together.

It's interesting that one of the (unverified) allegations is that the Trump team wasn't even particularly worried about their Russia ties; it's their China ties, with allegations of flat-out bribes and kickbacks, that could hurt them more. I wonder if any good reporter(s) will go digging there.

 

"Not that I don't find the allegations credible."

He went to Russia and had models pee on the Obamas' bed? I don't find that credible at all. Could he not have found a bed in America that the Obamas had slept in?

Some of the other allegations ... well, we'll see. NBC, by the way, is disputing some of the stuff in CNN's report. so we have dueling news organizations here. Presumably I need not rehash which of the two I consider more credible.
Trump wasn't told about unverified Russia dossier, official says

And incidentally, Rick Wilson says he was not the source of the leaked documents (although they contain a lot of the same stuff he was hinting at during the election), and he does not know if the info in them is true or not. He was never able to confirm any of it either.

 

Is the allegation that he went to Russia just to pee in the bed? That wouldn't be credible. That he was in Russia and found the opportunity? Perfectly credible. We'll see how it shakes out. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't, but such behavior is very Trumplike.

 

"such behavior is very Trumplike."

How so? I've never heard a single remotely credible report that he's into that kind of thing. Why would you just assume that? It's quite a big jump from walking in on women undressing to ... uh ... that.

And as he noted today in his press conference (and has also been reported repeatedly in the past), he's an obsessive germophobe. Of all the unusual things he might be into, seems like that would be one of the last ones on the list.

 

Sometimes it seems to me like you make a lot of assumptive leaps. This is one of those times. I don't ever recall claiming that the mainstream press prints lies or makes stuff up (right wing rags, on the other hand...). Nor do I recall any people here saying anything to that effect, and yet with your comment here it sounds like you think we have.

My beef has always been with the way the press sensationalizes existing stories, along with the way that they'll milk a story to death as long as it's "sexy" and helps them keep the ratings soaring - only to drop it the second it's not hot anymore in favor of the newest sexy tale (sitting here in the shadow of Fukushima while they played that game for weeks (months?) was quite the disconcerting feeling - perhaps more even than the disaster itself!).

Can't argue with that, though!

 

Let's face it folks, the man is hated by over half of our population. He is an embarrassment to the country and to himself, but, he is to egotistical to even realize he is looking like an a.. every time he opens his mouth. He really believes that we all worship him and that any negative thing is just crap.

Well, It's kind of to late now because whatever comes up is instantly going to be picked up as attacking one of the best human beings ever. I saw a post yesterday that was a video of Pres. Obama praising his wife for all she had done for him. I'm sure that is a very foreign thing for Agent Orange to comprehend, however, the wingnuts that supported him started to post this disgusting string of things about Michelle. Calling her a murderer, criminal, etc. and the Trump crew picked up on it like it was gospel and agreed and continued to slander her. First, she wasn't president and second he isn't going to be after next week either. Why this constant attack on someone that made it with a clean slate that even the staunchest of Republicans couldn't soil and it's like it is him they have to fight. I guess in some ways it is. His reputation and admiration from so many Americans is something that I doubt the snake oil salesman will ever see.

The think about the Trump supporters that frustrates me the most is that, I do see what the appeal for Trump is. Our republic along time ago determined that we were the superior society and the fact that other countries were seeming to run roughshod over us, was killing them. We were King of the world how dare they contradict us. Sort of a large scale Donald Trump really. They wanted a bully to straighten out the world and let them know who the top people were... us! Not only is that a dumb way to think it is a highly dangerous way to think. Do they really think that Trump will wave his tiny little finger at them and they will just cower in the corner with fear? Do they really think that other wingnuts like Kim whatshisname in North Korea is going to shiver in fear if Trump demands that they do away with their weapons or a threat of increasing our arsenal, when we can already kill everyone on the planet 3 times over, is going to make them blink? Do they really think that a bunch of radicals that are prepared to die for their religious beliefs are all of a sudden going to throw out their beliefs because Trump threatens them? Do they really believe that the world is going to get behind us and back up a nation that is obviously without any moral compass because they say that God is on our side? What happens to his supporters, most of them obviously uneducated, semi-illiterate losers are going to not be just a little upset if they no longer can get welfare without testing, any form of medical care, food stamps and other governmental aid. When they find out that making America Great Again by going backwards is not going to be all that great. Ask some of us that lived in that time. Ask some of us that had to learn to duck and cover because world tension was so high that we all expected to be melted down any day. That wasn't great. Ask those of us that saw the riots in the streets due to discrimination and hatred (both ways). That wasn't great. Ask what it is like to be draft age or to have to send your sons and daughters off to wars brought on by egotistical leaders trying to look tough. Those boxes so many of them were sent home in were real and the were not great.

I don't care really about what he and his band of idiot congressmen erase from our current system of government, that can all be replaced, but a big mouth show off can get us all blown sky high, but, I guess in the immortal words of Billy Joel, We will all go down together. Not great either.

 

The peeing thing is the most salacious (and thus most reported) allegation, but probably the least important, and not one of the ones I was including in the front half "I'm guessing some are true and some are not."

 

Easy turbo, that's not the case here. Confirmed: FBI is investigating this, and Trump and Obama were both briefed on this. Correct, that doesn't make it true, but then, if the FBI is going to investigate Hillary's email two weeks before the election and that's newsworthy, then so is this.

And today more information comes out, including the news that there's both audio and video of this stuff, and that it happened in both Moscow and St. Petersburg. Sure, still unconfirmed, but let's stop pretending this is some fake news thing that has no business being reported on. That's not what this is.

 

"Sure, still unconfirmed, but let's stop pretending this is some fake news thing"

You've gotta be kidding. "Unconfirmed" is PRECISELY what fake news IS. By definition.

Congratulations. You're them. Time for you to apologize for all the grousing about the "unconfirmed" fake birth certificate story.

 

This just aint right. So let me get this straight: the same guy who perpetuated the whole Kenya nonsense against Obama is now crying foul over fake stories????

What perfect karma or what comes around goes around

 

BuzzFeed played right into his hands. There are legitimate questions raised about how determined Trump has been to ignore evidence of Russia’s hacking operations prior to the election. But BuzzFeed did more to obscure and discredit these questions than Trump Tower could ever hope to. By publishing the uncorroborated dossier, BuzzFeed has associated the Russia issue with fantastical rumors and hearsay.

Its decision to post the document has to be considered another chapter in the ongoing saga of the media and Democrats losing their collective minds. If the election had gone the other way, it is hard to see BuzzFeed publishing a 35-page document containing unverified, lurid allegations about President-elect Hillary Clinton that it didn’t consider credible. This was an anti-Trump decision, pure and simple.

It created a media firestorm, but everyone should realize by now that media firestorms are Trump’s thing. They have been literally since the day he got into the presidential race. They suck the oxygen away from everything except the transfixing melodrama surrounding Donald Trump. The question is always, “How can he possibly escape this?” And at the center of attention, vindicating his own honor and that of his supporters by proxy, he always does.
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Why the Media Lose to Trump

 

I would argue that there is a difference between fake news and an unconfirmed story.

An unconfirmed story shouldn't be reported by respectable journalists until it is confirmed. Or, at best, with big caveats like "We know that the intelligence services prepared a briefing on the subject, but the allegations themselves are unconfirmed," as indeed many news outlets did.

Sometimes unconfirmed stories later get confirmed. And yes, respectable journalists should refrain until they are. But initially, the Lewinsky story was unconfirmed (and didn't the National Enquirer, of all things, break that one?). And denied by Bill Clinton. But, of course, it later became confirmed (and became all any news outlet wanted to talk about).

Fake news is something made up from whole cloth. The "Hillary sex ring in a pizza parlor!" is a good example. So is "Pope endorses Donald Trump!" Just plain untrue, and never true. And known by its authors to be untrue from the get-go.

The birther thing was sort of a third category. It was both obviously unconfirmed that Obama was born in Kenya, and quickly disproved by the Hawaii birth certificate. But then you had people complaining it wasn't a long-form certificate, even though the type Hawaii initially released is accepted for passports, voter registration, and any other method one needs to prove citizenship. So that became more of a "I choose not to believe the facts" story. And then you had people contributing "sub-threads" of fake news into it, including Trump himself, with his "I've sent investigators to Hawaii, and they're finding shocking things, unbelievable things..." which was obviously a bald-faced lie. So yeah, if this thing turns out to be completely fake, Trump would indeed be getting a taste of his own medicine (which doesn't make it right).

But we don't know it's completely fake, and we don't know the motivation behind the former MI6 guy. He was apparently paid by Trump's opponents (initially Republicans) to do oppo research, and this is what he was told by various Russians. Were the Russians telling the truth? Were some telling the truth and some not? We don't know, and until these various allegations can be verified, they really shouldn't be reported. But unverified is, I would hold, different from knowingly fake.

 

What makes it fun is that it could be true. You read it and think 'yeah, I could see Trump behaving that way.'

For Trump -- That's what you get when you behave like Biff Tannen from 'Back to the Future.' You're the big bully grabbing girls and picking on weaklings, until you end up buried under a pile of cow shit, crying to your buddies about getting revenge.

Boo-Hoo Mr. President-elect! Boo-Frickin-Hoo!

 

Your argument is correct, and mawnck is wrong. Whether the event happened is unconfirmed (and is how a lot of legitimate news stories begin); whether it is being investigated by the FBI, whether it was reported to the President of the United States and the President-elect, is not unconfirmed. News media reporting on a briefing to the president by US intelligence officials on a major event like this is not a fake news story.

Insisting people who are following this story are just the same as people who bought Pizzagate or Birtherism is just as intellectually lazy (if not more so) than people who swallow this story whole cloth without the caveats.