Trump's Personal Lawyer And Campaign Manager Both Going To Prison

[Final-Fan]

EricHiggin said:

Final-Fan said:

I read two of your links, and it seems like you're trying to use a "where there's smoke there's fire" argument, only you can't even say the smoke is coming from Muller, just that smoke exists somewhere in the world.  Not really compelling to anyone who isn't desperate to see Muller in the wrong. 

For example, hypothetically, if you proved conclusively that "either the White House or Muller leaked stuff", and Trump's White House has been proven in the past to leak like a sieve, you can't reasonably expect us to believe that it's evidence Muller leaked stuff. 

Again, you are coming at this with a whole boatload of assumptions that just aren't a reasonable starting point. 

You read some of it, and are making a decision based on that, and not everything? That's how poor decisions get made. Great starting point...

The point I was making was that what was being used against me, 'Trump is a liar', not only isn't what the Cohen and Manafort case is about, but that using 'Trump is a liar', means applying every single time he's ever lied to make a point, like saying 'where there once was smoke, there must eventually be another fire'. Which ironically is what your saying, that I'm saying. So neither argument has all that much merit then, which I pointed out. If indirect evidence isn't worth admitting, neither of our points are useful since we aren't focusing on what applies directly and specifically to the case. I could throw out more indirect references to why Mueller himself doesn't exactly have the cleanest track record, but it'll either end up more 'conspiracy theory', or just another 'excuse', based on what evidence is deemed "admissible" in this conversation so I'm told.

The fact of the matter is the direction has gone considerably off topic. I started out by joining an existing talking point about how the Stormy payment may or may not be a problem for Trump himself, and somehow I'm now defending the case against Cohen and Manafort, and Muellers team and it's integrity. As for whether or not Trump is a liar, I thought that was already covered in the first few posts of this particular conversation. I didn't expect joining a contained battle would turn into a world war. When it comes to Trump though I guess, every battle, no matter how minor, must be turned into a war by his foes to completely destroy him. No wonder why the right typically stays so silent and keeps to the shadows.

If you tell me to go read your ten pages of evidence, and the first five are literally nonsense, I feel justified in not reading the other five.  You presented the links as showing "Plenty of reasons that sure make it look like there have been plenty of leaks from Muellers team, whether the leaks went straight to the media or through another source."  I gave the first 50% of the evidence you cited a good solid read and it did not support your statement at all.  I don't mean "not sufficiently to convince me", I mean "not sufficiently to even suggest what you are claiming is one iota more likely than before I read this."  It's possible I missed something, but until that's shown, you can try to turn this around on me all you want, but it's not going to work. 

Regarding your point about smoke and fire, I hope you're not seriously suggesting that we can never establish an observed pattern of behavior and use that to make judgments about what is likely (not 100% absolutely known, but likely) to be true in other situations.  The argument is that Trump's pattern of behavior is to lie or bullshit or somehow think he's telling the truth but be massively wrong (in ways that he could have fact-checked in literally two minutes) time and time again.  This has not been established to be true of certain other parties.*  Similarly, White House leaks vs. Mueller leaks.  (vs. congressional leaks?  Not sure if that would apply in this case)

If you think the topic has been derailed, and don't want to go there, then by all means try to rein it back in and only discuss what you originally wanted to discuss.  But you weren't doing that.* 

* (For example, you say the media lies more than Trump.  Perhaps true by raw number of lies if you consider the number of journalists on the whole planet and include North Korean state-run media and InfoWars, but the claim is certainly false given "mass media, on a percentage basis, in the United States".  I'd like to know what evidence you were basing your statement on but it would probably be a path you don't want to go down.)