(12-31-2016, 07:54 PM)samhain Wrote: What's going to be very interesting is seeing how the Bush admin leftovers on the Trump team advise him to deal with this situation. I've seen and read articles claiming that Cheney is advising the the Trump people extensively. Bolton is a national security advisor, and a serious hawk.
Sooner or later, there will be a reckoning between Trump's alleged passivity/affinity for the Kremlin and his team's history as literal cold warriors. I somehow doubt that his advisors with any degree of experience in geopolitics regard Putin as anything other than a threat to our national security.
I think there's about a 95% chance that Trump finds himself on the business end of Russia's games before his term is up. Gonna be real interesting.
A very interesting insight. Right wing commentators like Rush and Hannity have found it easy to follow Trump in suddenly finding the CIA incredible. I am really curious as to how neocons like Bolton and Gorka will handle this. Seems like now that ISIS is the new COMMUNISM some of the Russophobes are finding it easy to shift away from Russia.
I don't think Trump will finish his term, but I agree that he will be having problems with Putin before he is out.
Quote:TRUMP CLAIMS HE HAS SECRET INFORMATION ABOUT RUSSIAN HACKING
The president-elect says he will reveal “things other people don't know” this week. His own press secretary says otherwise.
Donald Trump has routinely dismissed United States intelligence reports that the Russian government used two major cyber attacks to disrupt the 2016 presidential election and help him win the White House. At various times the president-elect has cast the claims of Kremlin involvement as “ridiculous” and “just another excuse” for Hillary Clinton and her allies. Now, days after President Barack Obama hit Moscow with a series of retaliatory sanctions for its alleged efforts to influence the election, Trump is claiming that he knows “things that other people don’t know,” and that he’ll share those revelations early this week.
“I just want them to be sure because it’s a pretty serious charge,” Trump told reporters outside his Palm Beach Mar-a-Lago resort on Saturday, referring to U.S. intelligence agencies, The New York Timesreports. “If you look at the weapons of mass destruction, that was a disaster, and they were wrong,” the president-elect added, referring to the faulty intelligence President George W. Bush used to buttress his decision to go to war in 2003. “So I want them to be sure,” the president-elect said. “I think it’s unfair if they don’t know.”
Trump isn’t entirely wrong that some skepticism is warranted, as it always should be when the White House makes such significant claims. Last week, the Department of Homeland Security and the F.B.I. both published declassified reports revealing a number of specifics about Russian intelligence operations in the U.S., including some technical details.
Critics have countered that such evidence is insufficient on its own, and the federal government is unlikely to release more compelling information, which could jeopardize its sources and methods, all of which leaves journalists in a tough spot.
But Trump has gone well beyond casting doubt on the findings of U.S. intelligence agencies. The president-elect has received top-secret briefings on what the C.I.A. has found, and has sought instead to publicly discredit the agency and its findings, characterizing the allegations of Russian hacking as a political attack on himself. Rather than call for additional investigations, as another politician would, Trump is claiming to have secret knowledge about the cyberattacks. “I know a lot about hacking. And hacking is a very hard thing to prove. So it could be somebody else,” Trump said Saturday. “And I also know things that other people don’t know, and so they can’t be sure of the situation.” (In the past, Trump has suggested that China or “someone sitting on their bed weighing 400 pounds” may have been behind the high-profile hacks of the Democratic National Committee servers and the personal e-mail account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.) When pressed as to when he would share exactly what it is that he knows, but others do not, Trump said,
“You’ll find out on Tuesday or Wednesday.”
Trump, who reportedly has little experience with computers, then went on to warn of the dangers of computers. “I don’t care what they say, no computer is safe,” Trump insisted. “I have a boy who’s 10 years old; he can do anything with a computer. You want something to really go without detection, write it out and have it sent by courier.” Trump’s remarks echo those he made last week during a set of impromptu press conferences, during which he stressed we “ought to get on with our lives” and appeared to credit technology, not the Kremlin, for sowing disinformation during the election. “I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of the computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what’s going on,” Trump said outside Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday. “We have speed, we have a lot of other things, but I'm not sure we have the kind of security we need.”
On Monday morning, incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer took to CNN’s “New Day” to lower expectations for Trump’s promised revelation. “It’s not a question of necessarily revealing,” he said. “He’s going to talk about his conclusions and where he thinks things stand. He’s not going to reveal anything that was privileged or was shared with him classified. I think he can share with people his conclusions of the report and his understanding of the situation and make sure people understand there’s a lot of questions out there.“
Trump’s promise comes amid heightened tensions between the incoming and outgoing administrations. The amicable and seemingly presidential relationship Trump struck with President Obama in the immediate aftermath of his unexpected victory has unraveled over the past several weeks as the Trump transition team has continued to break with the U.S. intelligence community over their conclusion that Russia sought to tip the scales in the billionaire New Yorker’s favor. The conflict came to a head last week after Obama imposed additional sanctions on the former Soviet country, and Trump’s subsequent decision to praise Vladimir Putin on Twitter after the Russian president announced that he would not respond to Obama’s actions with retaliatory measures. “Great move on delay (by V. Putin)—I always knew he was very smart!” Trump tweeted.
I think "lowering expectations" is pretty much the theme of the incoming administration....
Your anger and ego will always reveal your true self.
(01-04-2017, 08:24 PM)Aquapod770 Wrote: Curse those checks and balances!!!!!!
There is a difference between 'checks and balances' and blatant obstructionism. But hey, if you like giving republican lawmakers millions of dollars to literally do nothing for 6 years that's your own priority.
Quote:Trump alleges delay in his briefing on ‘so-called’ Russian hacking; U.S. official says there wasn’t one
Arriving at an annual New Year's Eve celebration at his Mar-a-lago, Fla., estate, President-elect Donald Trump left open the possibility of a meeting with Taiwan's president if she visits the United States after he is sworn in on Jan. 20. Trump also pushed back on intelligence claims about Russian hacking. (Reuters) President-elect Donald Trump took to Twitter on Tuesday night to say that a planned intelligence briefing for him on “so-called ‘Russian-hacking’ ” had been delayed until Friday, a development he called ‘very strange!” -- but one that a U.S. official said wasn't a delay at all.
The tweet was the latest sign of Trump’s skepticism about a case pressed by the Obama administration, based on the work of U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, that Russia tried to influence the U.S. presidential election by hacking several Democratic email accounts, among other actions. Several leading Republicans have also endorsed that view.
@realDonaldTrump
The "Intelligence" briefing on so-called "Russian hacking" was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange! 8:14 PM - 3 Jan 2017
Trump returned to the topic on Wednesday morning, sending out a new tweet referencing an interview of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange by Sean Hannity of Fox News Channel. In the interview, Assange said a 14-year-old could have hacked the email account of John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. WikiLeaks published the contents of Podesta's emails without identifying the source of the hacking.
@realDonaldTrump
Julian Assange said "a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta" - why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info! 7:22 AM - 4 Jan 2017
Speaking outside a party at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last week, Trump sounded dismissive of Russia's alleged role in the hacking, saying it was “time for the country to move on to bigger and better things.” But he indicated that he was willing to listen to a briefing on the issue this week.
Those remarks on Thursday came just hours after President Obama announced retaliation against Russia that included the removal of 35 Russian government officials and other sanctions against state agencies and individuals allegedly tied to hacking.
[Obama administration announces measures to punish Russia for 2016 election interference]
In a conference call with reporters Tuesday, transition spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump's briefing would be “later this week” but he did not specify a date.
In his tweet Tuesday night, Trump speculated that the reason for a delay of his briefing until Friday was “perhaps more time to build a case.”
“Very strange!” the president-elect said in the tweet.
A U.S. official disputed that there had been any delay in delivering the briefing that Trump requested on Russia, saying that high-level U.S. intelligence officials are scheduled to meet with the president-elect in New York on Friday.
The official said that Trump did receive a regular intelligence briefing Tuesday, and raised the possibility of confusion on the part of his transition team or schedulers.
“It's possible that his team has some scheduling disconnect” and that “whatever he received today didn't meet his expectations,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters. But, the official said, the fuller briefing on Russia's alleged election hacking was never scheduled to occur Tuesday, and plans for a fuller Friday briefing have been in place for several days.
The officials expected to take part in that session include Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James B. Comey and the head of the National Security Agency, Adm. Mike Rogers.
U.S. intelligence agencies in recent days completed a draft of the comprehensive review of Russian hacking that Obama had ordered after the election. U.S. officials said the document would first need to be briefed to Obama before it is shared with Trump.
The full report could be delivered to Obama as soon as Thursday, allowing for the document and its principal findings to be shared with Trump shortly thereafter. U.S. spy agencies are also preparing a declassified version, stripped of the most sensitive intelligence information, that could be shared with the public.
In December, during a closed door briefing with senators, the CIA shared a secret assessment. The agency concluded it was now “quite clear“ that Russia’s goal was to help Donald Trump win the White House. (Jason Aldag/The Washington Post)
That version could be ready as soon as next week, but the U.S. official cautioned that the timetable on all of these events is subject to change because of the complexity of coordinating the meetings of multiple spy agencies and their top officials with the White House and Trump's transition team.
Leading Democrats were quick to criticize Trump on Tuesday night.
When Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) was shown a copy of Trump's tweet during a television interview, he said Trump was “being really dumb.” “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer said on MSNBC's “The Rachel Maddow Show.” “So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this. … From what I am told, they are very upset with how he has treated them and talked about them.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Mark R. Warner (Va.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, took to Twitter, saying he wished Trump showed “more . . . respect for our intelligence professionals.”
@clairecmc
Intelligence community is the FIRSTLINE in our war against terror. The disrespect shown them by Trump is stunning.They're the best in world. 7:55 AM - 4 Jan 2017
Trump also spoke briefly to reporters on Saturday about the situation, saying that “no computer is safe” and that, for intelligence officials, “hacking is a very hard thing to prove.”
“You want something to really go without detection, write it out and have it sent by courier,” he said. Trump also suggested at that time that he had additional knowledge to share about the situation, saying, “I also know things that other people don’t know, and so they cannot be sure of the situation.”
When asked what he knew that others did not, Trump demurred, saying only, “You’ll find out on Tuesday or Wednesday.” Sign up It was unclear whether Trump was referring to Assange's upcoming interview with Hannity.
For months, Trump has sounded skeptical about Russian responsibility for the hacks, which included the email accounts of the Democratic National Committee and Podesta.
Trump has suggested other countries could be involved or that it could be the work of “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds.”
Your anger and ego will always reveal your true self.
(01-05-2017, 05:55 AM)treee Wrote: There is a difference between 'checks and balances' and blatant obstructionism. But hey, if you like giving republican lawmakers millions of dollars to literally do nothing for 6 years that's your own priority.
my favorite is when they stole a Supreme Court nominee from a sitting president...
Quote:Trump in 2010: WikiLeaks 'disgraceful,' there 'should be like death penalty or something' By Andrew Kaczynski, CNN
Updated 1:47 PM ET, Wed January 4, 2017
Story highlights
Trump called WikiLeaks "disgraceful" and suggested there be a "death penalty" for their actions during a 2010 interview.
His 2010 comments are in sharp contrast to his decision Wednesday morning to invoke WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
(CNN)Donald Trump called WikiLeaks "disgraceful" and suggested there be a "death penalty" for their actions during a 2010 interview.
Speaking on camera to preview Brian Kilmeade's radio show, the Fox News anchor brought up the topic of WikiLeaks. At the time, WikiLeaks had published hundreds of thousands of classified documents and videos that were leaked to the organization by Pfc. Chelsea Manning, known at the time as Pfc. Bradley Manning.
"I think it's disgraceful, I think there should be like death penalty or something," Trump said during the quick exchange uncovered online by CNN's KFile.
His 2010 comments are in sharp contrast to his decision Wednesday morning to invoke WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who claimed in a new Fox News interview that the Russian government was not the source of the hacks during the presidential campaign.
Following the interview, Trump tweeted: "Julian Assange said 'a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta' - why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!"
The president-elect has repeatedly questioned the U.S. intelligence community's assessment that Russia was the source of the hacks, which took place during the 2016 presidential campaign and targeted Hillary Clinton's campaign chair John Podesta and the Democratic National Committee. During the campaign, Trump cited information released by WikiLeaks to attack Clinton and the DNC.
A Trump transition team spokesperson did not return a request to comment on the record for this story.
Watch the full clip here:
Your anger and ego will always reveal your true self.
Here's the problem I have with this email hacking thing,
First, didn't Podestas emails get hacked by a phishing email?
Second, the hackers were able to get into the DNC servers but not the RNC.
Third, the hackers put nothing on those servers and only published emails written by Democrats.
What the hackers did was wrong and they should be held accountable.
Here's my problem,
These people who got hacked wanted to run the country and if they were easily hacked with not very confidential information, how easy would it have been to hack the White House, State Department and so on if these people were in charge?
I know, I'm over thinking this but it is something to think about.
(01-07-2017, 09:20 PM)Nebuchadnezzar Wrote: Here's the problem I have with this email hacking thing,
First, didn't Podestas emails get hacked by a phishing email?
Second, the hackers were able to get into the DNC servers but not the RNC.
Third, the hackers put nothing on those servers and only published emails written by Democrats.
What the hackers did was wrong and they should be held accountable.
Here's my problem,
These people who got hacked wanted to run the country and if they were easily hacked with not very confidential information, how easy would it have been to hack the White House, State Department and so on if these people were in charge?
I know, I'm over thinking this but it is something to think about.
This is where I have always been with this. I Russia hacked our secure government emails and made them public then there should be repercussions.
I just don't get how Russia (or anyone) doing so can be blamed for costing someone an election or getting someone elected.
(01-07-2017, 09:20 PM)Nebuchadnezzar Wrote: Here's the problem I have with this email hacking thing,
First, didn't Podestas emails get hacked by a phishing email?
Second, the hackers were able to get into the DNC servers but not the RNC.
Third, the hackers put nothing on those servers and only published emails written by Democrats.
What the hackers did was wrong and they should be held accountable.
Here's my problem,
These people who got hacked wanted to run the country and if they were easily hacked with not very confidential information, how easy would it have been to hack the White House, State Department and so on if these people were in charge?
I know, I'm over thinking this but it is something to think about.
Security for DNC and private email < government security
Obviously, any tech security can be overridden by the stupidity of the user, but the comparison is apples and oranges.
"A great democracy has got to be progressive, or it will soon cease to be either great or a democracy..." - TR
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." - FDR
(01-07-2017, 09:36 PM)bfine32 Wrote: This is where I have always been with this. I Russia hacked our secure government emails and made them public then there should be repercussions.
I just don't get how Russia (or anyone) doing so can be blamed for costing someone an election or getting someone elected.
I don't think they cost Clinton the election, but it is obvious they interfered with the intent to manipulate the result. This is what I have seen the claims as all along, though.
"A great democracy has got to be progressive, or it will soon cease to be either great or a democracy..." - TR
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." - FDR
(01-07-2017, 09:20 PM)Nebuchadnezzar Wrote: Here's the problem I have with this email hacking thing,
First, didn't Podestas emails get hacked by a phishing email?
Second, the hackers were able to get into the DNC servers but not the RNC.
Third, the hackers put nothing on those servers and only published emails written by Democrats.
What the hackers did was wrong and they should be held accountable.
Here's my problem,
These people who got hacked wanted to run the country and if they were easily hacked with not very confidential information, how easy would it have been to hack the White House, State Department and so on if these people were in charge?
I know, I'm over thinking this but it is something to think about.
valid concern, but that's why government employees are supposed to follow protocol. Unfortunately going back to at least bush, its been clear many high ranking officials dont follow that.
(01-08-2017, 01:24 PM)Benton Wrote: valid concern, but that's why government employees are supposed to follow protocol. Unfortunately going back to at least bush, its been clear many high ranking officials dont follow that.
Probably goes back to Clinton too. I now we had our first computer in 1996 with email. I'm sure many had it before that, especially in government.
The technology is probably outpacing the knowledge of the people using it, especially those elected to government positions.
That's one reason why PE Trump said "computers just complicated things". He'd rather use a bicycle courier and handwritten notes than learn the new technology. (even if his companies use it extensively) because it would be confusing to him.
Its why he doesn't understand how they can "know" Russia was behind the hacks too...too "complicated".
Your anger and ego will always reveal your true self.
(01-08-2017, 01:43 PM)GMDino Wrote: Probably goes back to Clinton too. I now we had our first computer in 1996 with email. I'm sure many had it before that, especially in government.
The technology is probably outpacing the knowledge of the people using it, especially those elected to government positions.
That's one reason why PE Trump said "computers just complicated things". He'd rather use a bicycle courier and handwritten notes than learn the new technology. (even if his companies use it extensively) because it would be confusing to him.
Its why he doesn't understand how they can "know" Russia was behind the hacks too...too "complicated".
Yup. Think of the television series The West Wing. That was at the end of the Clinton presidency, and while that is obviously a work of fiction, the presence of computers in that show is no doubt a reflection of what was occurring in the real White House. And as long as there have been computers connected to a network containing sensitive information, there have been state actors attempting to retrieve that information using less than legal means as well as users that have been less careful than they ought to be with their access to that information.
Security for this information is only as good as the least secure person using the system.
"A great democracy has got to be progressive, or it will soon cease to be either great or a democracy..." - TR
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." - FDR
(01-08-2017, 01:43 PM)GMDino Wrote: Probably goes back to Clinton too. I now we had our first computer in 1996 with email. I'm sure many had it before that, especially in government.
The technology is probably outpacing the knowledge of the people using it, especially those elected to government positions.
That's one reason why PE Trump said "computers just complicated things". He'd rather use a bicycle courier and handwritten notes than learn the new technology. (even if his companies use it extensively) because it would be confusing to him.
Its why he doesn't understand how they can "know" Russia was behind the hacks too...too "complicated".
While the P.E. is a dolt, there are security advantages to the old ways (although susceptible to old-time spycraft).
There's a reason manned missile silos were never updated.
![[Image: 4CV0TeR.png]](https://i.imgur.com/4CV0TeR.png)
FBI & Homeland Sec. Issue Report on Russian Hacking
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Donald J. Trump ![[Image: KB4inkXb_normal.jpg]](https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/789477663178125313/KB4inkXb_normal.jpg)
Mark Warner ![[Image: YS3bB7VZ_normal.jpg]](https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/757539103252635648/YS3bB7VZ_normal.jpg)
Claire McCaskill 
