Also doesn't help that he's a Russian puppet, no matter what he says. Kisses Putin's ass, when he should be kicking it.

Demosthenes said, "You cannot have a proud and chivalrous spirit if your conduct is mean and paltry; for whatever a man's actions are, such must be his spirit."

Trump doesn't look so good judged in that light.

The above mentioned cynical nihilism may have understandable causes (economic woes, Watergate, et al) , but it's still a choice.  Just like one can decide Developing Country X is the Land of Enchantment and Mystery, or is a Third World Crap Hole, one can decide to feed their darker instincts, or strive for a more noble outcome. Which do you think will give better results?

In other words, regardless of what's going on with everything else, It's Morning In America if you want it to be.

Not a hoax.

Not an imaginary story.

The only elites that Trump is thumbing in the eye are the intellectual elite.

In terms of the moneyed, entitled elite, he's the very definition of one. 

If you're trying to make Putin happy you don't:

- Sell $50 million of arms to the Ukrainians 

- Launch 2 major airstrikes against Syria

- Engage in battle in February with Russians in Syria reportedly killing up to 200 Russians in the process

- Levy sanctions this past August against Russia

- Open the Keystone and Dakota pipelines, and begin exporting liquified natural gas, both having a huge impact on Russia's energy profits, which Putin himself has large holdings in.

As for any campaign collusion with Russia, so far we have an uncorroborated Clinton campaign backed dossier saying hookers peed in Trump's bed in Moscow. Really? With all of the constant leaks, nothing else has come out in a year and a half? Shouldn't that tell you something? And we have reports this week that Rosenstein confirmed Trump is not the subject of investigation in any collusion with Russia in the election......But still this narrative continues. At some point don't you start to feel silly?

And for months all we heard about on the board was how Trump going to destroy the world in a nuclear war with North Korea. Now NK stops their nuclear program, and we hear nothing. Now, it remains to be seen how this ends up, but to see this as anything other than a tremendously positive achievement at this point is impossible. But I guess when you've called Trump a syphilic, senile, drugged-up, nazi, who can't read, you're well past the point of being able to be able to admit to anything positive about him.

What a way to spin it!  A conservative Republican group opposed to Donald Trump first hired Fusion GPS in late 2015 to look into potential ties to Russia.  That got the ball rolling.  The Clinton Campaign and the DNC didn't create the Dossier out of whole cloth in the summer of 2016.  There's also a lot more in the 17 reports filed by Steele that comprise the Dossier than simply hookers peeing.  Neither you nor I can say what kind of evidence Mueller has gathered to corroborate or nullify what is in that document. 

On the topic of Mueller, you mention leaks but there have been no leaks from Mueller's office about the information he's gathered or the direction of his investigation.  There's been a ton of speculation on both sides, but Mueller is playing it extremely close to the vest.  As such, it's not surprising that nothing has as of yet been leaked about what he either knows or doesn't know.  That he's indicted or gotten guilty pleas from 19 people and three companies so far tells me a lot. Where there's smoke, there's fire.  Sure, you could write this off as Trump just having bad judgement with regard to the people he's hired or chosen to work with, but that feels like a deer blinking in the headlights.  

Why no charges directly linking Trump and his campaign with Russia?  That's the scope of the investigation, the endgame if you will.  Getting guilty pleas from some and indicting others pressures them to divulge information they otherwise would not.  Who has talked, what they've said, will the Cohen situation be the turning point?  No-one knows...except for Muller and his team and, as I've said and has proved to be the case, they aren't leaking or tipping their hand.  

Call me what you will.  Claim that I can't see anything positive about Trump.  Whatever.  But an absence of knowledge about an ongoing investigation doesn't make me "feel silly" for suspecting nefarious deeds or actions given contacts and interactions with Russians by a host of people who surrounded Trump before, during and after the election.  Given the United States general attitude about Russia over nearly a century, I find it hard to believe (although not impossible obviously) that Republicans generally and Trump supporters specifically are so eager to look the other way to dismiss some connection when, if the shoe was on the other foot, that same group of people would have cried treason just three years ago if this was Obama and not Trump. 

Regarding the dossier, as you said it was initially started by a conservative anti-Trump opposition group  - The Washington Free Beacon. But it was dropped. The Clinton campaign then contracted Fusion GPS (who had done the work for the WFB) and they're the ones that proceeded with it, ultimately passing it to the press and the FBI, and playing a gossipy "did you hear" game between politicians, press, and FBI. None verifying anything contained within the dossier, but then saying that "sources" gave them the information as it was passed around like a hot potato. The FISA warrant was then deliberately obtained without mentioning that the information came from the rival Clinton campaign, knowing that had it been disclosed , the warrant would have likely been denied. 

There also have been numerous leaks from Mueller's investigators involving Michael Cohen, Jared Kushner, and the UAE. Mueller himself hasn't made any comments, but there have been leaks. In fact, though not Mueller related, Comey's leak sparked the whole special counsel proceeding.

The fact is though that it's not up to anyone to prove that collusion didn't happen. You can't prove a negative. But there's been no evidence of the Trump campaign colluding with the russian government to alter the election results. Should an election have been tampered with and results  changed, be that by Trump or any other politician for that matter, they should be hung. End of story as far as I'm concerned. But the way this collusion story has been played out so far has been frankly embarrassing.

No.  I'm not.  You're missing mine.  That you haven't heard anything tying it all together does not, in any way, mean there isn't something there.  I'm saying you're jumping to conclusions based on an incomplete, ongoing investigation by pulling out indictments and guilty pleas saying that because none of them are related to Russia, that means there is no there there.  But we don't know that.  Why?  BECAUSE THE SPECIAL COUNCIL IS STILL DOING ITS INVESTIGATION.  

Sigh. The right seems to want to move the goal posts with regard to Russia interference. I'm sure /someone/ wants to characterize it as Putin and Trump curled up in bed together as Putin teases Trump's toupee and offers him the presidency, but I don't think that's what happened. The Russians were interfering in the election. Whether it was for Trump or against Trump, it doesn't matter. They were interfering. Members of the Trump campaign may or may not have communicated with the Russians to aid with this action. Whether another aspect of that machine was anti-Trump trolling is irrelevant.

This is false.The FBI disclosed that the information was paid for by a political rival. It didn't name the Clinton campaign specifically, but would that have been really difficult to figure out in October of 2016? And that ignores that an investigation had already been open for months because of George Papadapoulos.

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Observers have noted that Mueller is running the investigation as you would a mob case. You get the guys on the periphery who are more vulnerable, indict them, and get them to flip on the bigger fish. It continues to follow this pattern and still has momentum, but people seem to want to end it prematurely.