An Internet troll lobs bombshells to get a rise out of the other side, for his own enjoyment, or to get attention, or to make a point.
.. In fact, it’s possible to see Trump’s entire campaign in 2016 as one long troll of respectable opinion. It’s no accident that among his most ardent admirers were fellow practitioners such as Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos.
.. Trump was a troll long before anyone had coined the term. He’s a natural — fearless, shameless, and a genius at identifying and exploiting the psychological and emotional weaknesses of others.
.. How did the hunter become the hunted in the Russian controversy? Trump’s critics stumbled on a couple of his own greatest weaknesses — namely, an extreme sensitivity to slights over his status
.. their focus on Russia has, for all intents and purposes, been an inspired act of trolling.
.. their focus on Russia has, for all intents and purposes, been an inspired act of trolling.
.. The most successful trolls are those that elicit self-damning reactions. E.g., Bret Stephens
.. Trump didn’t realize that an investigation in a highly charged political environment is like quicksand; the more you fight it, the deeper you sink.
.. Now, it doesn’t necessarily matter whether Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russians or not. If Democrats take the House with anything like a comfortable majority, they may well impeach him based on an obstruction case.
.. For now, it looks as though Trump’s handling of the Russia story is his reaction to the inaugural crowd-size controversy last January writ large — a lashing out at a perceived insult that he believes diminishes him and his achievement.
Steve Bannon to head Trump’s Russia war room of legal ‘A-Team,’ street fighters and surrogates
Bannon, the former Breitbart executive whose no-holds-barred approach served Trump well in the homestretch of his presidential campaign, headed home from Trump’s foreign trip and is reportedly the quarterback of an emerging war room of high-powered lawyers, surrogates and researchers.
Their mission: Respond, rebut and refute bad press and legal issues emanating from the special counsel probe led by former FBI Director Robert Mueller into Russian influence on the 2016 election.
Peter Schweizer: FBI Naming Kushner ‘Person of Interest’ Marks ‘Major Shift in the Russian Investigation’
Marlow asked for Schweizer’s take on the news that President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has become a focus of the investigation into possible Russian interference with the 2016 election.
“First of all, Jared Kushner has significant ties to people in Russia, meaning financial ties, deals that have been done,” Schweizer responded. “Some of those are direct ties with investors where he shares investments in a company. In other instances, they’re people that perhaps are investors that are now based out of Israel, but are very tied commercially to Russia. That’s the first part of it.”
“The second part of it, though, is what’s kind of emerged is that some of the individuals that popped up initially in the Russia investigation – Paul Manafort, for example – we now know that actually Paul Manafort, one of the reasons he was hired or brought into the Trump circle was in part because Jared Kushner thought it would be a good idea,” he continued.
That’s really the main reason why the FBI is looking,” he said. “To be very clear, when the FBI uses the term ‘person of interest,’ that does not mean that they’re saying they’ve committed a crime. What they’re looking for is for him to talk and share with them about what he knows, as it relates to individuals, actions, deals that might have been done. They’re simply saying, ‘this is a guy that is going to have interesting things to say to us, and will help us in the investigation.’”
.. “But something that I think is overlooked in this very long article is really one sentence, which talks about the fact that he procured thousands of these apartments in 2011, really at fire-house prices, with the financial backing of Freddie Mac – which is the federal government’s financing agency,” he said.
Senate Committee to Question Jared Kushner Over Meetings With Russians
The Trump administration is going to great lengths to distance itself from former associates in the face of an F.B.I. investigation into whether there were connections between the Trump campaign and Russia.