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Rick Massimo's avatar

I don’t think the question of whether Trump is “on the ins or outs” with Putin is the accurate framing. Trump works for Putin. I don’t know whether it’s because Putin has blackmail material, whether it’s business (money laundering)-related, the promise of future business, a genuine ideological harmony or some combination of the above. But Trump works for Putin. Nothing he does makes any sense until and unless you consider that; then everything makes perfect sense. And don’t forget that Trump had classified documents in his motel bathroom while he was having these private conversations with Putin. (One of many things I like about the Harris campaign is that she’ll go out there and say the obvious, that Trump was giving away this information, and not let the Trump-apologist “fact checkers” at the Times and Post stop her.)

Also, you keep making an important point that I kept trying to make constantly in my last newsroom job: We DON’T want reporters to hold Trump to some new standard; we want him to be treated like any other news source, including remembering his track record and assuming it colors his present and future actions, instead of letting him emerge with a clean slate every morning like Wile E. Coyote after every face plant off a cliff.

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Truckeeman's avatar

My wife and I are listening to Rachel Maddow's "Ultra" about the fascists among us since the 1930s. Donald Trump isn't the first to lie comfortably, frequently and without shame - Joe McCarthy did it in the 1950s, destroying countless lives. Of course, Roy Cohn, Trump's early consigliere, was McCarthy's lawyer.

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