Obviously you all went crazy over the weekend so I can't respond to everything. I do want to follow up on
@Joe Bagadonuts question about Ukraine and a couple follow up issues.
The degree to which Ukraine is pro-American, and oriented that way
in opposition to Putin, is hard to fully comprehend unless you physically go there. I would literally get in taxis and pay the drivers to do a loop around Kyiv and tell me their opinions about what was happening in the world and in their country. I wandered around on the Maiden (think Times Square for Ukraine) and would just talk to people. This is a dude I met who was raising money for a charity associated with the families of people who died during the Ukrainian revolution. He's holding up his ID so I could verify he was related to an actual victim of violence during the revolution (because I took this VERY seriously).
View attachment 7356
At it's core, the Ukrainian revolution was about a rejection of remaining within the Russian sphere of influence. Although politics everywhere is complicated, the easiest explanation for what "happened" was that the Ukrainian president of the time suddenly took the country off the path to becoming more "Western" and joining NATO/the EU and turned it back towards Russia itself. This was a fundamental betrayal of everything this society had been working towards for decades and it couldn't stand. Notably, the Ukrainian president in question, Yanukovych, worked with Paul Manafort pretty extensively. You might have heard of him.
In the aftermath, Putin invaded Crimea. The question of "Crimean ownership" is complicated. It goes back to the tsarist era, and Crimea was technically "given" to Ukraine while it was still part of the Soviet Union. It was a gift that was symbolic more than anything, no one expected Crimea to "leave" Russia when Ukraine became independent anymore than we would expect the Oklahoma panhandle to leave the United States someday if we reclassified it as part of Texas. The invasion of Crimea, and the follow on conflicts in the Donbass and Donetsk regions, have killed thousands of people and displaced tens of thousands more. My Russian tutor is literally a refugee from this conflict, and she left Mariupol rather than be subjected to periodic shelling. This is a real conflict with existential implications for the entire country of Ukraine, and it goes to something fundamental about Ukrainian identity: are they a distinct people or are they just a subsection of Russia who speak their own dialect.
This is an issue of critical importance there. When the new president was sworn in recently, he was interrupted during his inauguration because he did part of the inaugural address in Russian rather than Ukrainian. Some portions of the political society there see an official address even acknowledging that Russian is an unrecognized
de facto language of the country as a threat to Ukraine's sovereignty. So Ukraine is stuck in this frozen conflict with Russia, for years, about its identity. It fights back and does not just cede territory because to do so would threaten the existence of the country itself in the next decade.
Further, you need to understand why Russia wants Ukraine to fail. Domestically, Putin's primary argument against true democracy is that there is a fundamental clash between Slavic character and a democratic form of government. This is why the Kremlin engages in what they refer to as "managed democracy." The outcome is never really in doubt. The election serves to ratify and legitimize a system that will always produce a fixed winner. As long as they promise stability they can maintain this system, which in turn enables a kleptocratic state. The fact that Ukraine is making a real go of an actual democracy, in which an outsider can win the presidency and there is a peaceful transfer of power, threatens Russia's domestic political situation. If real democracy works in Ukraine, culturally as close to Russia as you can imagine, then there's no reason why it couldn't work in Russia too. The existence of a successful Ukraine is a security threat to Putin's regime.
America, during the Obama administration, and the West generally, has been the effective guarantor of Ukraine's security against Russia. The reason Russia has to engage in a proxy war and/or hide its involvement in Eastern Ukraine is because being overt would risk a larger conflict. Without America, Ukraine likely ceases to exist as a state. It gets rolled over and absorbed back into Russia.
That's the (brief) context here. I could tell you a LOT more, including some stuff that's not so favorable for Hillary (I learned some things about how the embassy got built in Kyiv while I was there, it's amazing how much people will tell you if you show up and you're interested), but that's the overall picture. And it's also what you need to understand to get why the "revelations" as you put it being fed to Giuliani are entirely self-serving reporting that favors Russia. The same individuals alleging that Ukraine was in bed with the Democrats are the people who tried to broker a "peace deal" between Russia and the US in which Ukraine's territorial sovereignty could be negotiated away by the US. They are the same people who were involved with the Yanukovych pull of Ukraine away from the EU and the West. And they are the same people who seek to obscure very well documented ties between the Trump campaign and Yanukovych through Manafort. Simply put, they are not Ukrainian patriots, but people who have a vested interest in tearing the state down in favor of Russia.
Giuliani and the GOP either are unaware of this and are grasping onto anything they can find to spin positively. Or, more cynically, they know this and don't care because they profit from it. These are not good faith allegations, and legitimizing them is a betrayal of how much the Ukrainians who are trying to build something there believe in us and trust in us. Acting like the Ukrainians are involved in the "real crime" (as Trump likes to put it) fundamentally destabilizes that entire country, and that's a fellow democracy that we should support. That's what Trump is doing wrong - and it's only about protecting himself.
The entire point of public service, of working on behalf of other people, is that there is a concept above and beyond your personal interests. You subsume what is narrowly best for you for what is in the best interests of the nation and the world. These ridiculous self-serving accusations about Ukraine go the opposite direction - it's societal level destruction for some cheap points on twitters.
Call me when there's any events uncovered that happened before George Papadopoulos drunkenly bragged about Russian dirt to an Australian ambassador. All the conspiracy theories pretend that event didn't occur. It's also in the Mueller report that this was the first event that caused an investigation - before anything involving the Steele Dossiet.
I'm going to assert, and hope you will trust me, that I've followed the Russia investigation more closely than 99% of the American population. Let me tell you that I'm absolutely convinced that Russian "collusion" occurred but that it's difficult for virtually everyone to keep all the names and players straight.
I already spent a LONG time writing about this today above but if you're interested I'll walk you through some Russian language materials that I'm pretty sure establish the exact chain of communication from Trump/Manafort to Putin himself - complete with video of the various players talking about the American election on a yacht in the Black Sea.
Collusion is not a legal concept. Needless to say the investigation produced dozens of indictments, including of the National Security Advisor and the President's campaign manager. I often wonder how this story would have been covered if Mueller indicted no one until the last week and then indicted everyone all at once.
