Ladies and gentlemen..Your President

[Dump Trump 2021]

The whatabouttery demonstrated above should be surprising, but stopped being a long, long time ago now.

Completely blind to the sins of their own side, if not defending them(!) and then whatabouttery of FAR less serious mis-steps from the other side.

Biden not wearing a mask was stupid, clearly. What point do you think you're proving??

That he's a "hypocrite?" That he doesn't believe masks are necessary? But he had the mask on every other time?? So he clearly wants to wear it.

It's just such a nothing "point..."

[C’mon man]

There’s 11 pages of hatred towards Trump in this thread, but I can’t point out something dumb Biden does on his first day as President? Guess I should have just posted about impeaching Trump or called him names and that would have been up everyones alley.

[cliffs]

You can point out all you want about anybody but if you are trying to make Biden out to look like Donald, you will fail at every word you type. As for something dumb, just what did he do that was dumb? Did not wear a mask for a photo shoot with immediate family and not 1,000s of unmasked fanatics at a rally?

[Dump Trump 2021]

Actually, to be fair, going back and reading what you've said, you didn't say anything wild or unreasonable.

However, as you're anonymous, I assumed you were the same as previous anonymous posters and also, as you were posting in the trump criticism thread, it seemed like very clear whatabouttery.

I'm actually sticking with that perspective but yeah, if your only point is that it was a bad move, I accept it.

Might have been better for the "news" section, in that case?

[Dump Trump 2021]

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/29/trump-russia-asset-claims-former-kgb-spy-new-book

"Then, in 1987, Trump and Ivana visited Moscow and St Petersburg for the first time. Shvets said he was fed by KGB talking points and flattered by KGB operatives who floated the idea that he should go into the politics.

The ex-major recalled: “For the KGB, it was a charm offensive. They had collected a lot of information on his personality so they knew who he was personally. The feeling was that he was extremely vulnerable intellectually, and psychologically, and he was prone to flattery.

“This is what they exploited. They played the game as if they were immensely impressed by his personality and believed this is the guy who should be the president of the United States one day: it is people like him who could change the world. They fed him these so-called active measures soundbites and it happened. So it was a big achievement for the KGB active measures at the time.”

Soon after he returned to the US, Trump began exploring a run for the Republican nomination for president and even held a campaign rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. On 1 September, he took out a full-page advert in the New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe headlined: “There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure.”

The ad offered some highly unorthodox opinions in Ronald Reagan’s cold war America, accusing ally Japan of exploiting the US and expressing scepticism about US participation in Nato. It took the form of an open letter to the American people “on why America should stop paying to defend countries that can afford to defend themselves”.

The bizarre intervention was cause for astonishment and jubilation in Russia. A few days later Shvets, who had returned home by now, was at the headquarters of the KGB’s first chief directorate in Yasenevo when he received a cable celebrating the ad as a successful “active measure” executed by a new KGB asset.

“It was unprecedented. I am pretty well familiar with KGB active measures starting in the early 70s and 80s, and then afterwards with Russia active measures, and I haven’t heard anything like that or anything similar – until Trump became the president of this country – because it was just silly. It was hard to believe that somebody would publish it under his name and that it will impress real serious people in the west but it did and, finally, this guy became the president.”

Trump’s election win in 2016 was again welcomed by Moscow. Special counsel Robert Mueller did not establish a conspiracy between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. But the Moscow Project, an initiative of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, found the Trump campaign and transition team had at least 272 known contacts and at least 38 known meetings with Russia-linked operatives.

Unger, the author of seven books and a former contributing editor for Vanity Fair magazine, said of Trump: “He was an asset. It was not this grand, ingenious plan that we’re going to develop this guy and 40 years later he’ll be president. At the time it started, which was around 1980, the Russians were trying to recruit like crazy and going after dozens and dozens of people.”

“Trump was the perfect target in a lot of ways: his vanity, narcissism made him a natural target to recruit. He was cultivated over a 40-year period, right up through his election.”