Donald Trump Jr. communicated with Wikileaks via Twitter and appears to have done their bidding on a few occasions.

Courtesy of the Atlantic:  

Just before the stroke of midnight on September 20, 2016, at the height of last year’s presidential election, the WikiLeaks Twitter account sent a private direct message to Donald Trump Jr., the Republican nominee’s oldest son and campaign surrogate. “A PAC run anti-Trump site putintrump.org is about to launch,” WikiLeaks wrote. “The PAC is a recycled pro-Iraq war PAC. We have guessed the password. It is ‘putintrump.’ See ‘About’ for who is behind it. Any comments?” (The site, which has since become a joint project with Mother Jones, was founded by Rob Glaser, a tech entrepreneur, and was funded by Progress for USA Political Action Committee.) 

The next morning, about 12 hours later, Trump Jr. responded to WikiLeaks. “Off the record I don’t know who that is, but I’ll ask around,” he wrote on September 21, 2016. “Thanks.”The messages, obtained by The Atlantic, were also turned over by Trump Jr.’s lawyers to congressional investigators. They are part of a long—and largely one-sided—correspondence between WikiLeaks and the president’s son that continued until at least July 2017. 

The messages show WikiLeaks, a radical transparency organization that the American intelligence community believes was chosen by the Russian government to disseminate the information it had hacked, actively soliciting Trump Jr.’s cooperation. WikiLeaks made a series of increasingly bold requests, including asking for Trump’s tax returns, urging the Trump campaign on Election Day to reject the results of the election as rigged, and requesting that the president-elect tell Australia to appoint Julian Assange ambassador to the United States.

......

Though Trump Jr. mostly ignored the frequent messages from WikiLeaks, he at times appears to have acted on its requests. When WikiLeaks first reached out to Trump Jr. about putintrump.org, for instance, Trump Jr. followed up on his promise to “ask around.” According to a source familiar with the congressional investigations into Russian interference with the 2016 campaign, who requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, on the same day that Trump Jr. received the first message from WikiLeaks, he emailed other senior officials with the Trump campaign, including Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Brad Parscale, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, telling them WikiLeaks had made contact. Kushner then forwarded the email to campaign communications staffer Hope Hicks. At no point during the 10-month correspondence does Trump Jr. rebuff WikiLeaks, which had published stolen documents and was already observed to be releasing information that benefited Russian interests.

First off Wikileaks "guessed" the password to a progressive anti-Trump website?

Yeah, right.

And secondly, Wikileaks was echoing the message from the Kremlin trolls for Trump to refuse to concede even if he lost the election?

Interesting.

Thirdly, gotcha Junior!

For his part Don Junior has already confirmed that these emails exist, though I am not sure he understands how devastating they will turn out to be for his father's claim there was no collusion with Russia.

Here is the entire chain of messages with @wikileaks (with my whopping 3 responses) which one of the congressional committees has chosen to selectively leak. How ironic! 1/3 pic.twitter.com/SiwTqWtykA

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 14, 2017

(There! Happy now? I gave you the emails.)

For instance Junior somehow got his father to tweet about the hacked Podesta emails 15 minutes after Wikileaks asked him to.

We've now updated the story with @ByronTau's great catch: @realDonaldTrump tweeted about the release of Podesta's emails *15 minutes* after @Wikileaks wrote to @DonaldJTrumpJr about it. https://t.co/pVGEBqmB9O pic.twitter.com/pOszShJ7JY

— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) November 13, 2017

🤔 https://t.co/ZYk79Niw5a pic.twitter.com/3OpXf8ii1v

— Byron Tau (@ByronTau) November 13, 2017

As we now know the American intelligence community recognizes Wikileaks as an agent for the Kremlin.

In other words, smoke meet gun. 

Donald Trump meets Vladimir Putin, and allows himself to be dominated just as anticipated.

So as you can see Trump claimed to be "very honored" to meet with the man who interfered in our presidential election, and may have just hacked into our nuclear power stations.

Essentially showing himself to be Putin's bitch right off the bat.

As for what they discussed about any hacking, the two sides have very different accounts.

Courtesy of Business Insider:  

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday that President Donald Trump "pressed" Russian President Vladimir Putin on findings that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, during what Tillerson described as a "very robust and lengthy exchange on the subject." 

Tillerson said Russian meddling was discussed right at the onset of the pair's first bilateral meeting, at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. 

Russia's account of the discussions on the topic was quite different. 

According to Russia's Interfax news agency, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Trump acknowledged that an anti-Russian campaign in the US was "looking odd" and that he accepted Putin's past statements denying Russia had any involvement in the 2016 election. A White House official pushed back, telling NBC News that Lavrov's characterization was "not accurate.

Sort of hard to determine the truth when dealing with two habitual liars, but I have the feeling that Russia is actually providing the more accurate information in this case.

Lavrov: Trump said he heard Putin's statements that Russia didn't hack election and accepts them.

— Lucian Kim (@Lucian_Kim) July 7, 2017

And if it is true that Trump proposed working WITH the Russians on cyber security that is like asking the mice to help you guard the cheese.

For his part Tillerson also had his description of the meeting.

Tillerson: 'The two leaders, I would say, connected very quickly. There was a very clear, positive chemistry between the two." (via @MSNBC) pic.twitter.com/U5otmORBj0

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 7, 2017

"Not a lot of re-litigating the past," and "There was very clear, positive chemistry between the two" are not phrases that give me any confidence that Trump stood up to Putin in any way.

Of course before the meeting, instead of preparing, Trump made time to attack the media and oddly enough John Podesta.

I will represent our country well and fight for its interests! Fake News Media will never cover me accurately but who cares! We will #MAGA!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 7, 2017

Everyone here is talking about why John Podesta refused to give the DNC server to the FBI and the CIA. Disgraceful!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 7, 2017

I doubt that "everyone here" even knows who the the hell John Podesta is, though of course Putin might since he hacked his email account.

By the way Podesta was not in charge of the DNC and had NOTHING to do with their server.

Podesta did respond to this after learning about during a drive with his wife.

3/ Get a grip man, the Russians committed a crime when they stole my emails to help get you elected President.

— John Podesta (@johnpodesta) July 7, 2017

So to be clear it appears that Trump did NOTHING to seriously confront Putin for attacking our democracy, yet had plenty of time to attack a man who was one of the victims of that attack.

Donald Trump goes after Hillary Clinton and John Podesta while tripling down on the claim that he was spied on by the Obama Administration.

Such amazing reporting on unmasking and the crooked scheme against us by @foxandfriends. "Spied on before nomination." The real story.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 3, 2017

When you are desperately citing Fox and Friends as your information source, you should realize that you have lost the argument.

Was the brother of John Podesta paid big money to get the sanctions on Russia lifted? Did Hillary know?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 3, 2017

Wait, what?

Did Hillary Clinton ever apologize for receiving the answers to the debate? Just asking!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 3, 2017

Okay first off that was for a town hall, and how is any of that even relevant to what is happening today?

.@FoxNews from multiple sources: "There was electronic surveillance of Trump, and people close to Trump. This is unprecedented." @FBI

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 3, 2017

Also untrue.

Clearly Trump is losing his mind over this investigation into possible collusion with Russia, and is throwing everything that he can think of out there to distract and obfuscate.

He is like a toddler who gets caught smearing feces on the wall and quickly points out that he saw the dog pee in the hallway last week.

Clinton campaign publicly supports an effort by the Electoral College to request an intelligence briefing concerning Russia's involvement with the election before casting their ballots.

Courtesy of Politico: 

Hillary Clinton’s top political adviser John Podesta said the campaign is supporting an effort by members of the Electoral College to request an intelligence briefing on foreign intervention in the presidential election. 

“The bipartisan electors' letter raises very grave issues involving our national security,” Podesta said in a statement Monday. “Electors have a solemn responsibility under the Constitution and we support their efforts to have their questions addressed.”

“Each day that month, our campaign decried the interference of Russia in our campaign and its evident goal of hurting our campaign to aid Donald Trump,” he said. “Despite our protestations, this matter did not receive the attention it deserved by the media in the campaign. We now know that the CIA has determined Russia's interference in our elections was for the purpose of electing Donald Trump. This should distress every American.” 

Podesta's statement is the first public statement from the Clinton campaign raising questions about the legitimacy of Donald Trump's victory.

This is a great idea.

I think that knowing for sure that your election was legitimate is a good idea before you cast your vote for the President of the United States.

But hey, that's just me.

By the way it should also be pointed out that Hillary's popular vote victory is now over 2.8 million. (2,843,860 to be exact.)

Courtesy of the Independent:  

Donald Trump lost the popular vote in last month’s US presidential election by a bigger margin than any other US president in history. 

The Republican is currently trailing Democrat rival Hillary Clinton by 2.8 million votes as the last remaining postal ballots are counted – despite him winning the November 8 election because of the Electoral College system. 

That deficit is more than five times bigger than the 544,000 by which George W. Bush lost to Al Gore in 2000 - the second biggest popular vote deficit in history for a candidate who has still gone on to become President. 

It appears that James Comey, Wikileaks, and Vladimir Putin did not do such a bang up job of stealing this election after all.

Sarah Palin promotes fake news story while slamming young people for getting an education. (The Palins don't cotton to no "edjumication.")

This of course links once again to that "Young Conservative" page which I think we all know is probably run by a bunch of middle aged white dudes.

On the site it misrepresents one of the Podesta e-mails that Russia so kindly hacked so that it could be used to defeat Hillary and undermine our democracy.

The e-mail references a Clinton Global initiative staff member bragging that they "had" Colbert do a show interviewing Bill Clinton.

The tag line after the e-mail on the YC page says, "So, kids thought they were smart because they’re informed by a comedian, yet said comedian was just doing Hillary’s bidding the whole time."

Essentially the conservatives seem to think that millennials seeing a person being interviewed  by a comedian will trick them into becoming liberals.

What makes this even more ridiculous is that Stephen Colbert already addressed this Wikileaks leak, and mocked its conclusions, two days ago. (Fun starts at the 4:30 mark.)

You know perhaps somebody ought to explain to Palin that since she is now pushing a story promoted by Wikileaks, which is based on hacked data from the Russian government, that she is now doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin.

That is quite a change for the woman who once claimed that she single handedly kept Putin out of Alaska during her time as Governor.

Don'tcha think?

Enraged by baseless conspiracy theory man opens fire inside Washington pizza joint.

Source

Courtesy of The New York Times: 

A man fired a rifle on Sunday inside a Washington pizza restaurant that has been subjected to harassment based on false stories tying it to child abuse, the police said. No one was hurt, and the man was arrested. 

The man, Edgar M. Welch, 28, of Salisbury, N.C., told the police that he had come to the restaurant, Comet Ping Pong, in northwest Washington, to “self-investigate” what is being called Pizzagate, an online conspiracy theory asserting, with no evidence, that the restaurant is somehow tied to a child abuse ring. He entered the restaurant shortly before 3 p.m. with a rifle and fired it at least once inside, the police said. 

The gunfire sharply escalated what had already been a tense period for the restaurant, its employees and the quiet neighborhood since the fake stories began spreading. Dozens of threats against employees had been made via email and social media. 

People inside the restaurant fled, and the police locked down the area, ordering patrons of a nearby bookstore and cafe called Politics and Prose to remain locked inside. Officers with rifles and protective gear surrounded the restaurant and apprehended Mr. Welch. Two additional firearms were found, one on Mr. Welch and the other in his vehicle, the police said. 

The police closed down a normally busy Connecticut Avenue, which runs in front of the restaurant, for several hours Sunday as they searched the area for other potential threats.

If you are not a Right Wing lunatic you probably have not heard of pizzagate, so visiting this BBC article will bring you up to speed.

In a nutshell it was the result of a some prankster sites purposefully misreporting the content on those Podesta e-mails and a bunch of simple minded knuckledraggers taking it from there.

So even though Snopes identified this as bullshit back in November, it did nothing to change the minds of these cretins and this is the result.

It just goes to show that fake news is not only dangerous, it can in fact prove fatal.

So thanks to Wikileaks everybody has finally had a chance to see those scandalous Wall Street speeches of Hillary Clinton's. Prepare to be underwhelmed.

Wikileaks continues this slow dribble of hacked information that they once claimed would destroy the Clinton campaign.

However all it seems to be doing is reinforcing that Hillary Clinton is essentially a very knowledgeable, experienced, and capable politician.

Here are some excerpts courtesy of NBC News.

On the Syrian no fly zone:

She also discussed a no-fly zone, and said putting one in place could draw the U.S. and NATO further into the conflict, according to the documents. 

"To have a no fly zone you have to take out all of the air defense, many of which are located in populated areas. So our missiles, even if they are standoff missiles so we're not putting our pilots at risk — you're going to kill a lot of Syrians," Clinton said, according to the documents. "So all of a sudden this intervention that people talk about so glibly becomes an American and NATO involvement where you take a lot of civilians."

What? She doesn't think killing innocent civilians is a good way to end a conflict in Syria?

And she wants to be leader of the free world, please!

On working with Russia: 

Although Clinton has been making that case that she would be far tougher on the Putin regime in Russia than her opponent, she did tell audiences in 2013 that should would "love it it we could continue to build a more positive relationship with Russia." She described her efforts as Secretary of State to improve relations with Russia and expresses hope that President Vladimir Putin would be "less defensive" towards working with the U.S. on issues where the two nations have mutual agreement. 

Oh sure, be reasonable. Too bad half of the country seems willing to embrace the unreasonable.

On Wall Street (Okay now we're getting somewhere.): 

Clinton spoke in great detail about what she saw as the root causes of the Great Recession and its fallout in subsequent years. In part, she said there should have been "greater transparency" on what went wrong from not just bankers but regulators and lawmakers, too. She also argued that an effort to prevent another crisis will require a buy-in from Wall Street itself, which she calls 'the nerves, the spinal column" of the economy. 

"If you were an elected member of Congress and people in your constituency were losing jobs and shutting businesses and everybody in the press is saying it's all the fault of Wall Street, you can't sit idly by and do nothing," Clinton conceded. "But what you do is really important."

That, that was what the Sanders' supporters were convinced would cost her the nomination?

There are a few more examples that you can find on various news sites, but unless they are prone to wild exaggerations or outright deception there is really nothing revealed that hurts Hillary even a little bit.

Here is how CNN summed it up:

Clinton collected at least $1.8 million for at least eight speeches to big banks, according to figures released by Clinton's campaign and tax documents she released earlier this year. 

And while the transcripts show a more blunt, less reserved Clinton, much of what the former secretary of state said to Goldman Sachs and other groups appear generally in line with some of what she has said publicly.

So essentially Clinton made almost two million dollars to say in private speeches essentially the same thing that most of us could hear for free, only with a little more candor.

Well that's a hell of a gig if you can get it.

Let's face it all that we have learned by reading these hacks from Wikileaks is that Hillary is an actual person who tries to keep at least some of her life from the prying eyes of the media, and who is essentially a more approachable and human person behind closed doors than she is in public.

However there is literally NOTHING scandalous and certainly nothing that is going to negatively impact her candidacy.

And yes I know that Wikileaks is going to continue to release more information up until the election, but since early voting has already started in a few states, do we honestly think that they are holding onto some bombshell for release right before election day?

I don't.

You know I thought this tweet perfectly summed up my feelings about Hillary Clinton's supposed "criminal" behaviors.

If Hillary Clinton is a criminal, as you allege, she is Danny Ocean meets Keyser Soze. The greatest criminal mastermind of all-time.

— Will McAvoy (@WillMcAvoyACN) October 15, 2016

Well said.

About those new hacked e-mails about Hillary Clinton's speeches released by Wikileaks. Ho and hum.

Courtesy of ABC News: 

The leaks were the result of another email hacking intended to influence the presidential election. 

Excerpts of the speeches given in the years before her 2016 presidential campaign included some blunt and unguarded remarks to her private audiences, which collectively had paid her at least $26.1 million in speaking fees. Clinton had refused to release transcripts of the speeches, despite repeated calls to do so by her primary opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders. 

The excerpts were included in emails exchanged among her political staff, including Campaign Chairman John Podesta, whose email account was hacked. The WikiLeaks organization posted what it said were thousands of Podesta's emails. It wasn't immediately clear who had hacked Podesta's emails, though the breach appeared to cover years of messages, some sent as recently as last month.

Some of the e-mails it seems dealt with concerns about how portions of Hillary's speeches might be received by the public if they were made public.

Here are some of the portions that concerned the campaing:

One excerpt put Clinton squarely in the free-trade camp, a position she has retreated on significantly during the 2016 election. In a talk to a Brazilian bank in 2013, she said her "dream" is "a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders" and asked her audience to think of what doubling American trade with Latin America "would mean for everybody in this room."

I don't think that anybody would be too surprised by this.

After all though Hillary is now opposing TPP, she does NOT oppose trade deals in general.

Courtesy of Politico: 

Jeffrey Schott, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, agreed that nothing in the excerpts “seems inconsistent with her positions on trade today.” 

“As I understand her position, she is against TPP in its current form but is open to moving forward with TPP if it is restructured in some way,” Schott added. “The No. 1 issue that is cited as part of the fix for TPP is provisions that prohibit currency manipulation.” 

Like I said, nothing burger.

Moving on:

"Running for office in our country takes a lot of money, and candidates have to go out and raise it," Clinton said. "New York is probably the leading site for contributions for fundraising for candidates on both sides of the aisle, and it's also our economic center. And there are a lot of people here who should ask some tough questions before handing over campaign contributions to people who were really playing chicken with our whole economy." 

In the same speech, Clinton was also deferential to the New York finance industry, exhorting wealthy donors to use their political clout for patriotic rather than personal benefit. She also spoke of the need to include Wall Street perspectives in financial reform. 

"The people that know the industry better than anybody are the people who work in the industry," Clinton said.

Now if this were coming from Bernie Sanders, who ran a fairly anti-Wall Street campaign, then I think people might be legitimately scandalized.

But Hillary Clinton was never anti-Wall Street, she was just in agreement that it needed serious reform, which thanks to President Obama and Elizabeth Warren is now being addressed aggressively.

Next?

In an April 2013 speech to the National Multifamily Housing Council, Clinton said politicians must balance "both a public and a private position" while making deals. Clinton gave an example from the movie "Lincoln," and the deal-making that went into passage of the 13th Amendment, a process she compared to sausage-making. 

"It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be," Clinton said. "But if everybody's watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position."

Okay if you are surprised, or upset by this admission then you REALLY don't understand how politics works in this country.

EVERY politician has a public persona they present when being interviewed by the press or interacting with their constituents.

In 2008 President Obama stated in interviews that he did not support same sex marriage, and yet has been one of the leading advocates for making it legal in America.

Was he really against is?

Probably not.

Could he have been elected if he had said he was for same sex marriage in 2008?

Absolutely not.

So yes we have to take things politicians say in public with a grain of salt.

No shit Sherlock.

In fact these revelations were so underwhelming that some folks decided to spice thing up a little with some creative editing.

WIKILEAKS BOMBSHELL: Hillary Clinton Smeared Poor Americans, Called Them "Bucket Of Losers" In Paid Goldman Sachs... https://t.co/KZwlS6FeUS

— Mark D. Ellis (@MarkDEllis1) October 8, 2016

Problem with that, as revealed by Snopes, is that nowhere on the actual documents does it say anything like that.

Which of course did not stop Fox News and other conservative outlets from running with it. 

In other words the hacked documents, which we believe came from Russia by the way, were so flaccid that disappointed Right Wing nutjobs decided to manufacture some real dirt in order to help their man Trump a little.

Nice try Wikileaks. What do you have for us next? Is Hillary secretly dying her hair? Or does she sometimes eat dessert before she has had her dinner?

Talk about a "bucket of losers."

Former senior adviser to President Obama, John Podesta, says that the one thing he regrets the most is not securing the disclosure of the UFO files. I'm sorry, what?

1. Finally, my biggest failure of 2014: Once again not securing the #disclosure of the UFO files. #thetruthisstilloutthere cc: @NYTimesDowd
— John Podesta (@Podesta44) February 13, 2015

Courtesy of Yahoo News:  

Podesta’s longtime fascination with UFOs is well-documented, as his brief political hiatus following four years as President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff freed him up to pursue his otherworldly passion. 

At a 2002 press conference organized by the Coalition for Freedom of Information, Podesta spoke on the importance of disclosing government UFO investigations to the public. 

“It’s time to find out what the truth really is that’s out there,” he said. “We ought to do it, really, because it’s right. We ought to do it, quite frankly, because the American people can handle the truth. And we ought to do it because it’s the law.”

As some of you may, or may not be aware, the Air Force recently declassified 130,000 pages of UFO records.

However before anybody gets TOO excited you should know that conclusion by the Air Force is that they have not seen any evidence suggesting the sightings "represent technological developments or principles beyond the range of present-day scientific knowledge."

I know. That would have broken 13 year old me's heart completely.  But these days I am more of a realist.

As you all know I kind of have a reputation for skepticism and  that holds true in my private life as well.

I remember somebody once asked me if I believed in UFO's, and I answered "Yes, absolutely."

After that person finished running around the room telling everybody that I was a big phony and that I was just as gullible as the next guy, he came back to me to rub my nose in my "superstition."

At that time I calmly pointed out that the term "UFO" does NOT refer to a flying saucer from another planet, but rather an unidentified flying object, and reason dictated that there must have been thousands of those that nobody ever gathered enough data to completely explain.

I then went on to say that if he was asking me if I found the possibility that there was life on other planets, and that those lifeforms might have developed the ability to travel in space, then yes I did indeed think that possibility might exist.

As for having visitors here on earth I remain a hopeful agnostic.

Like I said the 13 year old that lives inside of me would be incredibly excited to learn that we had been visited by aliens, however the grownup in charge of this body today needs more than what has been offered so far to be convinced that such is the case.

So if John Podesta is correct, and there IS evidence to support the fact that we have had visitors from space, than I think the information should be declassified and the people of this planet should get the chance to examine and discuss it.

13 year old me awaits the information with bated breath.