Joy Reid's Take on Indictment: Russians dangled the bait, the Trump team & advisors came running

[kpete]

It all comes back to the quest to find Her Emails. The Russians dangled the bait, the Trump team and “advisors” came running...

Link to tweet

[dalton99a]

1. Of course - "Will Putin become my new best friend?"

[DURHAM D]

2. I assume that the Donald is now regretting how curious he

was about Hillary's yoga schedule and Chelsea's wedding plans.

[gratuitous]

3. It's also a measure of their inexperience

These are "legitimate businessmen" accustomed to wheeling and dealing in real estate, often in very expensive locales. Grease a few palms here, spread a few malicious rumors there, and make the deal. If you run afoul of the law, you spread the vigorish around a little bit, maybe pay a piddling fine, and it all goes away. The losers in the deal can grouse, but you don't have to pay attention to them.

Running for the presidency, however, is subject to slightly higher standards than developing a hotel property in East Bumblefuck. And instead of a matrix of paltry financial fines, lawbreakers face much stiffer penalties, including actual jail time in real prisons.

Team Trump was blissfully, willfully ignorant of any standards, and positively reveled in their ability to run a campaign differently from how any successful campaign had been run before. Trump voters ate it up with a spoon, and cheered their man for his willingness to violate accepted standards and practices. What they didn't know is that some of those standards weren't just "you shouldn't do X," but were "it is a violation of federal law to do X," and Team Trump just couldn't be bothered to find out or even suspect that they should run some cockamamie idea past a lawyer or three.

[Dave Starsky]

5. Trump probably did run it past his lawyers.

But you know they are even dumber than he is. He would never hire ANYONE who might challenge his authority or who he might think was "smarter" than he is. He completely surrounds himself with yes men and incompetents.

[MrsCoffee]

4. It all comes back to so much more than this, but yes, his "advisors" did indeed take that bait.