Trump campaign won't say no to hacked political dirt, Democrats agree not to use illegally obtained data

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/24/trump-campaign-wont-say-no-t.html

Rudy Giuliani: “nothing wrong with taking information from Russians.”

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If only Huck-a-sands was still taking questions, she would have tossed up a few lies no problem

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So maybe Trump will get caught “not colluding” the 2nd time. :wink:
Afterall Watergate was about rigging the reelection campaign and Roger Stone can’t pass up a chance at imitating his idol

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So this ad came up on the post. Such a feel good t-shirt.

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This is kind of a naive way of looking at it. If someone leaks information to the media that harms the other candidate then “agreeing not to use illegally obtained data” is moot. You can refrain from going looking for ill-gotten dirt, you can refrain from accepting it if it’s offered to you, but if it ends up in the public debate then you will benefit from it.

Obviously if Trump can get away with it he will, that’s Trump, there’s no honor or sense of fairness in anything he does.

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And then in the same breath contradicts himself by saying, “well I’d never do that!”.

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Why would we, the public, not want access to all political dirt? We’re not talking about exposing personal info of private civilians here, we’re talking about airing political secrets of career politicians.

It feels like the Democrats are trying to push for some kind of gentlemen’s agreement of “we’ll keep your secrets from the public, you keep ours”. How is that honorable or honest? Seems sketchy and aristocratic to me.

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When the “dirt” is grossly one-sided it creates an inaccurate impression about which side has been up to bad behavior.

I don’t need to hear about one side’s jaywalking tickets if I’m not getting any info on the other side’s manslaughter convictions.

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I mean, I think your general sunshine=disinfectant line of reasoning is strong. However, I don’t think it’s so out of line for politicians to publicly declare that information should be legally obtained if it’s going to be used by a campaign as part of their advertising strategy. I find declarations that relevant disclosures like business ties, sources of campaign funds, etc…should be routinely and legally exposed more tasteful from a politician.

That said, I think journalists should do whatever they can to get out and air all the dirt that’s fit to print with professionalism, care, context and at least more impartiality than a political campaign would.

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I like the look on the model’s face, it really screams feeling good to me.

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Consistent with the GOP mantra of “if you can’t win fairly, cheat.” The Dems need to stop pretending that the Republicans have any honour or shame.

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"Over the weekend, the BBC ran a story about declassified tapes of President Lyndon Johnson, who knew about Nixon's interference in the peace talks by November 1968. Although he called Nixon's actions "treason," LBJ decided not to reveal the sabotage, because of how he knew about it -- the FBI had tapped the South Vietnamese ambassador's phones and LBJ had transcripts of the ambassador's talks with Nixon's intermediary, Anna Chenault, and revealing Nixon's involvement in the scheme would have meant revealing the illegal wiretaps. Oops. Johnson's administration did pass the information on to the Humphrey campaign, which chose not to use it either, since their polling suggested that they would win. Oops, again."

They go low; we prefer not to win.

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A new line for the end of the narcissist’s prayer: And I’ll do it again!

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I think the issue is that politicians shouldn’t actively encourage foreign governments to illegally obtain information from U.S. citizens and organizations. But the Dems don’t seem to be willing to take that bold stance (or call out Trump on it because they’ve decided that tiptoeing around impeachment is the best course of action, politically).

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Right—how are the Democrats supposed to maintain equal footing when foreign adversaries like Putin are investing serious resources into illegally gathering dirt to help sway the election and Republicans are gleefully going along with it?

Are the Dems supposed to encourage another foreign government to hack the Republicans to make it a fair fight?

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The look on her face says, “I feel things crawling on my skin. Can I take it off yet?”

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Fight fire with ethics.

I bet the photo was taken of her wearing a blank t-shirt, and the design was added to the shirt later. That’s far easier, and cost effective, than scheduling a shoot where the model keeps changing into each shirt design they offer.

ETA That aside, I do wonder what she would think of that design being added to her (likely) stock image.

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This feels like “fair and balanced” to me, the idea that to be truthful one must give equal attention to “both sides” of an issue or conflict. It’s absurd to imagine that a political party (or a corporate media outlet) would ever be interested in creating “an accurate impression about which side has been up to bad behavior”. That’s our responsibility as the public, and to do that we need access to as much info as possible, not to be sheltered from “one-sided” information.

You picked an example nobody cares about. If you said “I don’t need to hear about a candidate’s history of sexual harassment if I’m not also hearing about the rape charge of his opponent” it feels different. Like, basically a moral relativism which seeks to downplay bad behavior on the basis that someone else did worse.

The common framing is that Democrats and Republicans are opposing forces which keep each other accountable by exposing each other’s shortcomings. We can see from this DNC agreement that it’s not the case - there’s a great degree of solidarity between all politicians, and they’re willing to collude (heh) to keep things within the family. Politicians should be accountable to the public, not to each other. If information is not relevant to a political issue or candidate, the public should determine that, not the DNC.

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Get a load of this fence-sitting asshole at Redbubble.


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