a big DRIP? TPM - "Trump Ally Drastically Changes Story About Altering GOP Platform On Ukraine"

[NRaleighLiberal]

the below is set up by Josh's entry "This is Important"

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/this-is-important--3

By JOSH MARSHALL PublishedMARCH 3, 2017, 3:30 PM EDT

This is important if you care about the Trump Russia story. One of the first bits of news that attracted attention to this possible link was a Trump campaign effort to soften the GOP platform's plank on Russia and Ukraine at the GOP convention. The Trump foreign policy advisor who was monitoring the platform committee for the campaign earlier denied any such effort. Yesterday he conceded that he did press delegates to soften the language. And he now claims he did so because of what now-President Trump told him at a meeting at the Trump DC hotel last March. Allegra Kirkland has the details. (link goes to story below)


http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/jd-gordon-change-story-gop-platform-ukraine-amendment

By ALLEGRA KIRKLAND PublishedMARCH 3, 2017, 2:16 PM EDT

In a significant reversal, a Trump campaign official on Thursday told CNN that he personally advocated for softening the language on Ukraine in the GOP platform at the Republican National Convention, and that he did so on behalf of the President.

CNN’s Jim Acosta reported on air that J.D. Gordon, the Trump campaign’s national security policy representative at the RNC, told him that he made the change to include language that he claimed “Donald Trump himself wanted and advocated for” at a March 2016 meeting at then-unfinished Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Gordon claimed that Trump said he did not “want to go to World War III over Ukraine” during that meeting, Acosta said.

Yet Gordon had told Business Insider in January that he “never left” the side table where he sat monitoring the national security subcommittee meeting, where a GOP delegate's amendment calling for the provision of “lethal defense weapons” to the Ukrainian army was tabled. At the time, Gordon said “neither Mr. Trump nor [former campaign manager] Mr. [Paul] Manafort were involved in those sort of details, as they've made clear."

snip - more.

drip drip drip

[NanceGreggs]

1. I suspect we'll be seeing more of this ...

... kind of thing in the weeks to come - people clarifying any "mis-statements" or "mis-remembering" of events before (a) being seen as having been complicit in something nefarious, or (b) having anything come back to bite them in the ass.

[C_U_L8R]

2. Some folks are realizing

that they're facing potential jail time.
And they're not liking the odds that
Trump will (or will be able to) bail them out.

[NanceGreggs]

3. Yup.

And it's not just the spectre of jail time. For many, it's the slow realization that they're backing a losing horse.

I'm sure there are many Repubs - especially younger ones who are looking forward to long political careers - who want to be remembered in years to come as having said "I knew that Trump idiot was a lying crook all along."

It's Nixon all over again - remember him? The guy nobody voted for?

One thing you can always count on the Republicans for: If they see one of their own drowning, they'll start throwing water on him the minute they realize he's going down.

[Eyeball_Kid]

5. Congressional Republicans DO NOT understand what is happening. They still think they won

the election, but what they did was unwittingly back a coup. THEY LOST. And they don't know it.

Their giddiness about "winning all branches of government" is delusional. They helped elect an Executive Branch that is intent on destroying the Constitutional functioning of Congress. And the GOP thinks that THEY won!

[NanceGreggs]

6. True.

But they will, slowly but surely (keep in mind how dumb the average GOPer is) start to realize that their "win" could likely turn into major losses in future elections if their "brand" is tarnished enough - and that brand is already taking a beating.

I remember the post-Watergate atmosphere, when Republicans were desperate to shake the perception that the entire party was as crooked as Nixon had proven to be.

As they say, a fish rots from the head down.

[Eyeball_Kid]

4. This is difficult to fathom: We have undergone a coup.

Trump and his inner circle are sympathetic, not only toward Putin, but toward Putin's authoritarian style of governance. In other words, they are interested in abandoning the US Constitution. They DO NOT WANT civil liberties. They do not want any principle of equality of citizens. They do not want representative government. They want to control the media to manage the population. They want to control all information from the top-down.

Putin murders his political opposition. This is where we're heading. if you don't believe any of this, read the words of the White House Chief Strategist. He's right up front about 95% of this. When Bannon says that he wants the "deconstruction of the administrative state", that means that he wants to dismantle the arms of governance. Right now, he's starving the State Department, he's dismantling the EPA, he's dismantling the Department of Education. This is Bannon's agenda, and Bannon's agenda has become Trumpy's agenda.

This is serious. This is a matter of the nation's life or death. Trumpy wants to KILL the nation. He wants to model the nation after what Putin is doing to Russia, which means Death to a representative democracy.