Manafort & the noisy Russians

[Dill]

(12-05-2017, 11:01 PM)hollodero Wrote: No it does not for me. Because what you describe might be more or less accurate for some people, but yes a Paul Manafort simply has to know better. He doesn't fit your description too well. Think of guys like this what you want, but they don't just take Breitbart articles at face value and let it drive their actions. I can no longer accept this explanation. 

Not that "Russians have leverage over him" is so much of a better explanation of course. But if you're Manafort, you just have to know that this will surface eventually, no matter your cupidity or intellectual laziness...
- Who tries to secretly collude and sends an email with the subject line "Russia - Clinton - private and confidential"? I mean, sure it's genius Trump jr., but this is ridiculous. As are indeed the lawyers talking matters in a steakhouse and not even noticing the reporter nearby, as is Trump talking about "we talked adoptions... funny, same thing Don jr. debated". Guccifer, the genius hacker and master of web disguise, talks to Roger Stone on Twitter. They paid for their facebook ads with Rubels... This all and more uber-obvious stuff (I could go on) is sticking one's nose right into it intentionally, I'm no longer intellectually satisfied with calling all these things just utterly stupid.

I admit my thoughts might be hard to follow and they can be dismissed of course, but I can't get around that noise. Trump might be, but Russians aren't that clumsy. I don't know why, but I come to think they hit all these pots intentionally. As if that was part of the plan all along.

I am speaking of people who "simply have to know better." That is why I mention Trump's high end lawyers.

I don't want to dismiss your thoughts. And I don't see Manafort and Trump's lawyers as Breitbart creatures, wholly. They are right wingers, though. Manafort's career has been making dictators look good to US banks and government. Twisting the truth for money has been his life, and he was drawn to Trump like a moth to flame. He is operating in a milieu of people who break and bend the law, and aggressively characterize legal pushback as evidence the country and government are in the hands of the wrong (liberals!) people--think of Nixon's clumsy henchmen and the Iran Contra crew. These people have competencies, certainly, that lead to their hiring by certain types of political actors and control over large budgets and power, but at some point they act on their simplistic ideological premises and the world outside their groupthink doesn't work as expected. (The last Bush administration fits this category as well.)

The list of "ueber obvious" stuff you relate above cannot be coordinated from a single directing point. Too many undisciplined players. I think it makes better sense to see direction in the multiple Russian contacts with the Trump campaign (which presented a uniquely pervious target), complicated by targets (e.g. Carter Page) displaying unusual initiative, and breathtaking incompetence among all the targets.

Imagining a plan or directive in which Manafort is intended to be caught violating parole while working with people to whom he may be desperately in debt is a tad too far.