Nate Silver: https://fivethirtyeight.com/feature...p-russia-story-is-smoke-and-how-much-is-fire/ natesilver: I’d say that it’s obviously a worthy subject for reporting. But there definitely is more smoke than fire so far and there’s been some tendency for claims to be overdrawn. As I wrote last month, these stories tend to die if they don’t provide specifics — and often they don’t. clare.malone: Which is amazing, given how much stories used to stick just if they gave the appearance of impropriety. perry: The Jeff Sessions and Michael Flynn contacts with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. and the resulting controversies were a kind of fire. I think The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza wrote recently — and I agree with him — that we have something like a cover-up without evidence of a crime (so far). clare.malone: Thing on the Russia story is how much it’s been back and forth. Take this story from October — the headline on that said “no clear link.” So what people took away was, “no link!” micah: Which is a reasonable reading. It’s very confusing. clare.malone: And then a couple of months later, we find ourselves here, with a new spin on that story — still no clear link, but as Perry said, people have been acting awfully suspicious. natesilver: I think that Oct. 31 story from the The New York Times that Clare linked to really does not hold up well in light of their subsequent reporting. perry: Agree. micah: And I’d add the confusion of churn. So, weirdly, we didn’t actually learn anything new on Russia on Monday, yet there’s a new spate of stories. So the smoke-to-fire ratio gets bigger. perry: Well, the FBI director saying his agency is investigating the campaign of the sitting president feels like a big story, even if not new? clare.malone: Roger that. micah: It’s definitely a big story, it’s just not new. And it’s hard to keep track of what’s new and what’s not. clare.malone: Too much #content. micah: Yes. natesilver: It all feels sort of Groundhog Day-ish to me. But I read a lot of news, so things that might be “already knew that” to me might be new to members of the public.
More Nate Silver: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-makes-a-trump-story-stick/ It would be one thing if Tuesday’s Times story had provided specific evidence or proof of these pre-existing claims, something those earlier stories largely lacked. But it didn’t: Their most recent story was almost entirely based on anonymous sources and was exceptionally light on specifics. In its third paragraph, furthermore, the story reported that American officials “had seen no evidence” that Russia and Trump were colluding to influence the election, only that there had been contacts between them. I’m not saying that the Times story wasn’t newsworthy, but there wasn’t really a lot there that would cause you to shift your prior views if you’d been following the news fairly carefully already. And yet, at least as I write this on Wednesday morning, the story has blown up massively. How come? Obviously, one big reason is the timing: The story came after the resignation on Monday of national security adviser Michael Flynn, after it was revealed that Flynn had conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak about economic sanctions on Russia, contradicting claims made by White House officials. Reporters smell blood in the water — especially with Trump acting something like a wounded animal — which made the allegations about Trump and Russia seem relevant again even if they aren’t new, exactly.
More from that Nate Silver article: As president, Trump might find it more difficult to avoid sustained coverage of a single issue. The stakes for every action he takes are much greater, making him less nimble. And the media’s incentives are a lot different. I’m making generalizations, but major news organizations are usually willing to take a more openly adversarial posture toward a sitting president — especially one they don’t like — than they would be toward a presidential candidate (especially one they didn’t expect to win). Many of them would regard publishing stories that led to Trump’s resignation or impeachment as the ultimate badge of honor, in fact. If there’s any chance of that happening, the media will need fire and not just smoke — and they’ll need a whole lot of persistence when Trump tries to change the subject.
Former FBI Director James Comey testified under Senate oath May 3rd that the Trump administration had never pressured his agency to halt any investigation for political purposes. Comey proclaimed that the FBI has always been free to operate without political interference.
This Russian witch hunt is a disservice to the people. Trump should be judged on his decisions related to his job, not if he's some Kremlin agent or some shit. It's weird how Russians get spat on by the US media, imagine if they said Trump was an Israeli ajgent or some shit they'd say the claims are based in deeply routed anti semitism blah blah bullshit. This is some crazy shit.
The thing is its totally fabricated as well. Just shows you how big of evil scumbags politicians and the media are. Oldest trick in the book. "THE RUSSIANS DID IT!"
It's outdated as fuck and nobody but neo lib/con boomers and delusional SJWs are buying it. Russia is a shit hole, and it's allies aren't even on good terms with each other.
Well, he's bad at his job. Are you saying that his being a Kremlin agent or some shit isn't the reason? It's just bigly incompetence? This is indeed some crazy shit. barfo
I liked Trump during the election, not gonna bullshit here. Not exactly thrilled with how it's gone so far, but a lot of it is external factors, it's ridiculous watching the news crawl in shit to find anything on Trump. To be real, I went from on the Trump train to hanging off the side of it when he bombed Syria. Seeing how the media went from Trump is Hitler impeach him now to look at these beautiful missiles launch Donald Trump has proven he's the leader of the free world in a matter of minutes, man, I can't just forget that shit. Seems like he's going to be under the electron impeachment microscope unless he does what he's supposed to do. I know this isn't very political, but I worry about Trump in this situation, if it comes down to towing the company line or getting kicked out of office, he'll probably betray his priniciples completely because of his massive ego.
I think he has some standard of like how he should be doing things, principles doesn't fit his style, he's like the political equivelant to that fighting style where you wobble around like you're drunk to confuse your opponent lol. I don't buy into the 4D chess fucking cult worship shit, but I don't agree with the idiot label he's gotten.
