Less than a day goes by...

[Silver]

Regarding your PM:  Can't be arsed.

Boru

LOL

[Aroura]

I formally request you change the title of this topic to explain it better. It's an important story. The current title could be about anything, though.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I formally request you change the title of this topic to explain it better. It's an important story.  The current title could be about anything, though.

Shan't. Won't. Can't make me.

Boru

[Fireball]

Clinton got impeached because of a silly, perfectly natural sexual act.

Yet we cannot impeach an orange baboon who is clearly mentally unhinged?

Technically, Clinton got impeached for lying to Congress about it. The Chump is clearly mentally unhinged, and should be gotten out of that Office.

[Minimalist]

Interfering with an investigation.

The technical term is Obstruction of Justice but I won't quibble.

[henryp]

I don't understand these stories. It could be as simple as Trump saying "Hey Comey, can you hurry up and get this Flynn investigation over with, so I can focus on important shit." Or it could be as nefarious as "End this investigation or you're fired."

Without context, nobody can draw a conclusion. This is how it is for most of these Trump stories. They're awful if the worst case scenario is true. Or they might just be fairly harmless non-stories in another context.

The trick, is that anti-Trump is a cash cow right now. SNL, Colbert, News Papers, Cable News, etc... All of those people's pocketbooks are tied directly to every story being as big of an outrage/controversy as possible. If someone ever defended trump, or downplayed one of these issues, people would go somewhere else where they can get the coverage they want.

So the problem is, if this isn't really a big deal, who's going to tell us? We've got people trying to tap into the Anti-Trump momentum. We've got the Trump team, obviously, defending him. And in the corner of objective fact based reporting, we have nobody.

[Crunchy]

So the problem is, if this isn't really a big deal, who's going to tell us?  We've got people trying to tap into the Anti-Trump momentum.  We've got the Trump team, obviously, defending him.  And in the corner of objective fact based reporting, we have nobody.

Imagine for one second that what ALL the media is reporting is true. How could they go about reporting this without seeming anti-Trump? In other words, what if the truth is anti-Trump?

[Jackalope]

I don't understand these stories.  It could be as simple as Trump saying "Hey Comey, can you hurry up and get this Flynn investigation over with, so I can focus on important shit."  Or it could be as nefarious as "End this investigation or you're fired."

Without context, nobody can draw a conclusion.

We have some context. We know Trump met with Comey privately. It's been reported that Comey has notes indicating Trump pressured him to stop the investigation. Comey did not end the investigation. Comey was then fired not long after meeting with Trump.

Only one of those things is not known, and while it cannot be said with certainty that it occurred as reported, it is a wholly plausible explanation given the sequence of events.

What do you suppose they talked about, Trump's golf swing, perhaps?

[henryp]

I don't understand these stories.  It could be as simple as Trump saying "Hey Comey, can you hurry up and get this Flynn investigation over with, so I can focus on important shit."  Or it could be as nefarious as "End this investigation or you're fired."

Without context, nobody can draw a conclusion.

We have some context.  We know Trump met with Comey privately.  It's been reported that Comey has notes indicating Trump pressured him to stop the investigation.  Comey did not end the investigation.  Comey was then fired not long after meeting with Trump.

Only one of those things is not known, and while it cannot be said with certainty that it occurred as reported, it is a wholly plausible explanation given the sequence of events.

What do you suppose they talked about, Trump's golf swing, perhaps?

Plausible explanation.  Sure.  That's a low bar.  It's sort of like the Religious folks.  They see a gap in knowledge, and they can't wait to fill it with all sorts of stuff that justifies their beliefs.  You have a memo that, if given the benefit of the doubt, says “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go." 

From there to obstruction of justice to the point of impeachment is such a giant leap.  I'm not saying anything is one way or another, only that the news takes a tiny amount of knowledge, and builds these giant stories built on guessing.  And the guessing always seems to go in a direction that appeals to their subscribers/viewers.  

Fox News/Conservatives will do the same thing.  

It feels like everybody has gone to the Sean Hannity school of 'journalism?'  

---

So the problem is, if this isn't really a big deal, who's going to tell us?  We've got people trying to tap into the Anti-Trump momentum.  We've got the Trump team, obviously, defending him.  And in the corner of objective fact based reporting, we have nobody.

Imagine for one second that what ALL the media is reporting is true. How could they go about reporting this without seeming anti-Trump? In other words, what if the truth is anti-Trump?

You can tell they are guessing rather than reporting the truth, by the question marks they put at the end of their headlines.  Did Trump Commit Treason!?  If the truth was he committed treason, the headline would read "Trump commits Treason."  Instead, major news outlets behave like the Star magazine with headlines like Is Batboy Brad Pitt's Secret Love Child?

It could be the truth, if they are guessing right, but guessing doesn't seem like good journalism to me.

[Jackalope]

We have some context.  We know Trump met with Comey privately.  It's been reported that Comey has notes indicating Trump pressured him to stop the investigation.  Comey did not end the investigation.  Comey was then fired not long after meeting with Trump.

Only one of those things is not known, and while it cannot be said with certainty that it occurred as reported, it is a wholly plausible explanation given the sequence of events.

What do you suppose they talked about, Trump's golf swing, perhaps?

Plausible explanation.  Sure.  That's a low bar.  It's sort of like the Religious folks.  They see a gap in knowledge, and they can't wait to fill it with all sorts of stuff that justifies their beliefs.  You have a memo that, if given the benefit of the doubt, says “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go." 

The fact of the matter is that whatever the truth is, it must be coherent with the facts above (we know Trump met with Comey. We know Comey didn't end the investigation. We know Trump fired Comey shortly after. Furthermore, Trump himself has himself said (amongst other things) that "the Russia thing" was part of his rationale for firing Comey.

From there to obstruction of justice to the point of impeachment is such a giant leap.

I suggest you take that matter up with someone who's actually made that claim. My personal position on this is that it has the appearance of impropriety and needs to be investigated outside of the executive branch, along with other matters.