Don't fight Trump with conspiracy theories. What's there is damning enough - By Dana Milbank

[DonViejo]

Maybe we should muzzle the wag-the-dog talk.

MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell led off his show Friday night with an alarming report: Russian President Vladimir Putin may have told Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to launch last week’s chemical attackto let President Trump respond militarily — thereby boosting Trump’s standing in the United States and dispelling the belief that he is too close to Putin.

“It’s perfect,” O’Donnell said, telling viewers “what you won’t hear is proof that that scenario that I have just outlined is impossible, because . . . with Donald Trump anything is possible.”

I’m a fan of O’Donnell, and it is technically true that we can’t prove that Putin didn’t orchestrate the attack to boost Trump. But by that logic, we can never prove to everybody’s satisfaction that there wasn’t a second gunman on the grassy knoll, that Vincent Foster wasn’t murdered, that there wasn’t a controlled demolition inside Building 7, that former president Barack Obama didn’t forge his birth certificate, or that the government isn’t controlling our minds with fluoride.

But speculation without evidence is at best distraction, and at worst it allows Trump’s defenders to discredit the whole story about Trump’s contacts with Russia and Russia’s attempts to tilt the election his way.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dont-let-baseless-conspiracy-theories-about-trump-distract-from-the-truth/2017/04/10/3c2175d4-1e1a-11e7-a0a7-8b2a45e3dc84_story.html?utm_term=.85920ac28383&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1

[caroldansen]

1. It is written, there are none so blind as those who will not see. What you said makes

perfect sense and is most probably true.

[Juliusseizure]

2. O'Donnell should follow Keith Olbermann's example

O'Donnell framed it as a "what if". He didn't need to. There was plenty of evidence it was a stunt. He loses a lot of credibility as a journalist when he does that.

[Hoyt]

3. Pretty much agree with Milbank. With the crud on Trump that is provable, we don't have to sound

like Birthers.

[cheyanne]

4. Syria attack was just a side show to the Kremlin's main goal: get the sanctions lifted.

Whether it was kabuki or not, the upshot will be that Russia will make some minor concessions to US and then Trump will hail the brave new world by lifting the sanctions. Russia has an economy the size of France. It seriously needs to be able to develop it's oil fields. Tillerson was head of Exxon when it made a deal to give Russia that would give Russia billions $$$.

Imagine Russia with enough money to actually spend: take overs of Eastern European countries would be major goal.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

6. Trump/Tillerson - Making Russia great again.

It's a feature, not a bug.

[yurbud]

7. de-escalating conflict with Russia was one of one or two things I agreed with him on but

like everything else, expecting any consistency from him is a losing proposition.

I suspect people a lot wealthier and more powerful than him gave him the heads up: get with the Washington consensus on foreign policy or you'll be removed.

[heaven05]

5. truth is best with clownboy-potus

anything else muddies the water for any possible impeachment proceedings against the idiot-in-chief.