Discussion: WV Man Wanted Trump Camp To Discuss 'Christian Values' With Russian Officials

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This is, bar none, the most outlandish, confusing, and altogether bizarre news headline think I have ever read.

(This is a complaint about our 2017 funhouse mirror of hell, not the writing)

ETA: As an opinion piece, “Should We Be Punching Nazis?” is technically ineligible.

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Agreed. I swear, I read the first four paras at least 3x and I’m still not sure who was contacting who. The purpose for the meeting I understand.

“Trump’s personal lawyer, Ty Cobb, said in a statement that it was “salacious speculation” to suggest that Dearborn did anything wrong.”

So that’s the reason Flynn, Manafort, Sessions and the rest are trembling. I thought they were scared of going to jail. Turns out the whole thing just has them hot and bothered.

Diff’rent strokes, I guess. I understood it better when it seemed it was just money that gave them stiffies.

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“Shared Christian Values”

Translation: We both oppose abortion and gay rights.

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Er. Sure. Maybe in another time/place/universe some one who had been involved with Christian NGOs, and worked with similar Russian Christian NGOs, might realize they have a (low level) connection with someone within the campaign and tries to network it. Highly unlikely - but it is how networks can work.

But in this reality, and this time/place/universe - where it seems like there were Russian connections falling off passing buses and right into Trump staff (sons, son in laws, campaign managers, FP advisors, etc.), ya - completely unfathomable.

Perhaps there is a way to rejigger the old game (novel and movie) of six degrees of separation (aside: I always appreciated the good humor of Kevin Bacon when that became a thing) to the ‘six direct connections between Trump and Putin’.

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Huh. At least one. Is there anyone else?

At least one member of Congress was aware that Clay wanted to contact Dearborn about meeting with Russians: Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican.

Clay had told Capito about his desire to discuss the Russia matter with the campaign, a Republican source said, and she passed Clay’s contact information along to Dearborn because of the role he played as a campaign liaison to GOP senators. The GOP source said that was the extent of Capito’s involvement.

“Sen. Capito received a request from a constituent to pass along his contact information to the Trump campaign,” a Capito spokesperson confirmed in a statement Thursday evening. “She did so and asked the campaign to follow up.”

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This raises another interesting thread. Not only Trumps business ties going back to the 90’s deserve scrutiny but evangelical outreach to Russia as well since they are a key part of the Trump base.

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Ty Cobb:
“However you may feel about my next assignment, trust that I take my ethics, and my strongly held views on the importance of support, tolerance and equality for all races, ethnicities, genders, and the LGBT community with me into that new workplace.”

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Let’s never forget that “Christian values” for Trump voters do not equate to “anti-abortion”.

Sure, “White evangelicals” oppose abortion and marriage equality and LGBT rights and Islam…

But it’s been well-documented that even after Roe v. Wade, they remained largely apolitical.

It wasn’t until the tax-exempt status of segregated religious schools vanished that they woke up to politics.

(See: Bob Jones University, et al.)

Racism was originally at the heart of their affair with the GOP, and it continues to be their unifying principal.

The other stuff? Sure, it helps – but it’s (mostly) window dressing.

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It’s not entirely implausible that this guy is telling the truth, but in that case you have to wonder why the proposal was flagged to a relatively high level in the campaign. My most plausible explanation: they had so many corrupt efforts to engage with russian sources of money/hacking/whatever that no one could keep track of them all. And this guy’s proposal got bumped up to the top just in case he was somebody with top-level connections that dearborn didn’t happen to know about.

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There is one simple reason that Trump and anyone in his administration cannot talk about Christian values. That reason is self-evident.

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You belong in a church, not in government!

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Thank You!

And working women. And science. And higher education (unless it’s at Bob Jones or Liberty)…

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And we both also oppose the Bill of Rights and other portions of the US Constitution…

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Nothing says Jesus like polonium milkshakes, defenestration, and active affiliations with biker thugs who openly advocate the murder of gay people because they’re gay.

And let’s be real: for this particular Christianist knucklehead, the last item is by far the most attractive. After all, who can deny that Jesus spoke often about the pleasure of beating up gay people?

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I think there’s a lot of research – marketing studies – done on what will motivate this group. Republicans have played them for years. Rapture myths, the language of the new crusades in the Bush years. And at the bottom of it all, the successful Puritan myths of the chosen, the awarding of the faithful with abundance, the coded language that seeded the general corporate subjugation of colonies. Centuries of it. “The religion of America is business.” No kidding. And their most useful tool, propaganda. Pamphlets, magic books (our Deist founding fathers hoped to circumvent this), internet spam, trolls, bots: ever evolving in the bosom of god, the human imagination.

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Both white and gun loving.

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