“They’re our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska”

The question she was responding to was stupid, or at least stupidly phrased, and probably deserves mos of the scorn. But the implication in the answer is that she has some amount of expertise in international affairs simply because Alaska is near Russia, which is objectively stupid. She was unqualified, and it was another of many bullet points to that effect.

Colbert can be a little cliquey, but mostly you're just missing some context.

In those cases, the joke is generally that what he's saying is either completely at odds with his behavior, or completely off-topic for the speech he's supposed to be giving. Bragging about your inaugural crowd size at a rally makes sense. Bragging about your inaugural crowd size in a speech to the CIA is weird and off-topic. Talking about a need to ease political tension and give Americans a sense of unity is normal. Doing it while calling members of your own party "human scum" is bizarre.

"If we can just sit down we can come together and come up with a fair solution for immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship."
The only place google can find this sentence is in this Slashdot thread. I'm sure he's said something similar, but it's obviously a lie. He negotiates in bad faith so regularly and thoroughly that there's no real point talking to him. He'll happily negotiate, then change his mind as soon as you leave the room, or stiff you on whatever concession was required on his part to reach a compromise, or literally just forget the whole thing by the next day.

It's possible to be a "tough negotiator", keep your word, and make good deals - even deals that are better for you than the other guy. Trump isn't a "tough negotiator", he's just a stupid asshole. Some people deal with it by bullying him, which seems to work well. Some trick him, which is easy if he's personally invested in your narrative. If those options aren't available, the last option is to ignore him.

Are you saying it's illegal for me to kick someone out of my house for voicing an opinion I disagree with? I'm not saying it's a good thing to do, but that seems to be what you're suggesting.

Also, in what universe does the "left" control "the communication channels"? I think you used vague terminology because you know it doesn't hold up. The GOP is out-fundraising every Democratic candidate put together, running "please don't impeach me, I'm so big and tough" ads during NFL games, has an extremely popular news channel, most talk radio shows, and is still being amplified by unaccountable Russian troll armies. You're posting in a topic about the right, backed by oceans of SuperPAC-laundered billionaire money, freely flooding the most popular social media site in the country with outright lies, with zero consequences.

It's sad to watch the "party of personal responsibility" beg on its knees to be seen as a victim, licking offense off the floor for sustenance. "A teacher in California once said something bad about Christianity." Front-page news at Fox. The president abandons our allies to be raped and slaughtered while Russia moves into our military bases? *crickets*

I think you've confused a joke with an anecdote:
https://www.newyorker.com/cult...

The original joke concept is that she's political and ambitious, and would have helped her hypothetical husband become president regardless of his original station.

In your serious version, she's essentially a prostitute looking for a powerful man to hitch her wagon to.

I think you should spend a little time thinking about your feelings about women in general, and powerful women in particular. Find worth in yourself. You're intelligent, and a value to society. That wouldn't be diminished by a female presidency, even if you perceive her as condescending.

When a threat is perceived where none exists, it's often the result of childhood trauma of some kind. It can be as simple as living in a one-parent houeshold, or having a transactional parent.

Imagine the feeling that you think Hillary Clinton is trying to cause you to have. Now try to remember a time in your childhood when you actually had that feeling. What was happening? Who was present, and what were they doing?

Congratulations of grouping a nuclear superpower with American citizens who just want to be treated like human beings. It's quite a stretch, but you really doubled down and crammed that nonsense into what would have otherwise been a coherent sentence.

If poor people lived naked in caves with their groceries, sure. But I've heard they like to wear clothes, eat off of plates using utensils, and then wash those clothes and utensils using machines. They live in houses made with imported building materials, and drive imported cars to jobs that also rely on imported materials.

Some of them even own iPhones.

Poor people spend most of their income. Tariffs are a sales tax, and sales taxes are regressive.

People are dying today. Not abstract "my pills are too expensive" dying, actual "guns and bullets" dying. The economy isn't "booming". What you actually mean to say is that you're doing well. Maybe you aren't in one of the demographics he's going out of his way to punish collectively for disloyalty, like hispanics, or the entire population of California.

Elections can't fix it if he's allowed to rig them, and the only check on his power - impeachment - is made impossible by the cowardice of his party.

He's soliciting election interference from foreign governments. Where's the line? That's a real question, not rhetorical. What would he have to do for you to care? Ask someone to have a journalist killed? "The president was joking. No one in the room took it seriously." Use the national guard to "secure" voting sites? "The President is just obeying his obligation to protect the integrity of our elections." Murder someone on live TV? Is that the line?

"Donald Trump is no more of a corrupt incompetent moron than any of the people who came before him."

Obviously untrue.

In his refusal to release his taxes or divest from his business interests, he had broken important norms on Day 1 that set him apart from every president back to Nixon. Since then, his administration has been a flood of graft, nepotism, and despotism unlike anything the country has seen in over a century.

His son in law is in charge of middle-east peace. Foreign governments are booking rooms in his hotels and leaving them empty, then telling him how much they love his hotels on the phone, then the phonecalls are being deliberately mishandled to keep them from the public. He's publicly and privately asking foreign governments to help damage his opponents, then refusing the comply with congressional oversight because he deems it invalid.

He bullshits his way through every question he's asked on every topic, and in the rare cases he seems to have actual information at hand, it usually turns out to be made up.

He fires people for kissing his ass insufficiently, even when sufficient ass kissing would place them in legal jeopardy. That's not normal. If you think that's normal, you're incorrect.

He stared directly into a solar eclipse.

He slurs his words, sometimes the same word repeatedly as he struggles to make his mouth obey his brain.

Everyone he fires says he's out of his goddamn mind. The only defense he's ever offered is, "They're bitter that they got fired." Really? All of them? Nobody Obama fired said he was out of his goddamn mind. Nobody Bush fired said he was a crooked lunatic with no understanding of the responsibilities or limitations of his job.

If it's all lies, he's the single worst judge of character in the history of the presidency. Occam's Razor says he's mentally ill, and it's now being backed up by documentation released by the White House itself.

Train0987 spent all day yesterday posting "Hillary2020" trolls". There's a concerted effort to pretend it's a thing, because hating her is the only thing the GOP has been consistently effective at for the last 30 years.

They did all three - sow chaos, damage Clinton, and bolster Trump.

Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Russian Active Measures: Part Two
https://www.lawfareblog.com/se...

"1. (U) The committee found that the IRA sought to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election by harming Hillary Clinton's chances of success and supporting Donal Trump at the direction of the Kremlin."

Of course they swing votes. Don't be a child.

They created and commandeered entire fake US Facebook groups, pretending to be black activists, US military veterans, and god-fearing midwesterners. They infiltrated existed groups, made "friends", and aggressively astroturfed online forums, probably Slashdot included.

When a person's community appears to support something, the person is vastly more likely to support it. Russian trolls effectively simulated community support for Trump on the right, hatred of Hillary on the left, and mistrust of the voting process among black Americans. They created fake news websites to for their fake citizens to cite during the arguments they instigated.

They created real-world activism events that people actually attended in the US.

They promoted, and may even have created the Seth Rich conspiracy - a farce that ran for months on Fox News. Fox News spent months accusing Hillary Clinton and the DNC of murder. Months, laundering Russian disinformation to the American plublic. You don't think that matters?

Here's a Wikipedia article about it, since you're too lazy to google one of the most important events of the 21st century:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

And McCrae Dowless was trashing votes in North Carolina. Neither example involves illegal immigrants or dead people.

Black voters are routinely disenfranchised by inadequate funding and old equipment, and their votes are deliberately diluted through gerrymandering.

The article doesn't seem to say if they were hacking Trump or Trump's opponents, so you seem to be injecting your own bias into the conversation.

That said, the president has openly invited foreign governments to hack and investigate opponents. In the notable case where a government was found to be responsible (Russia), he refused to believe the results of the investigation and resisted all efforts to punish them.

If hacking results in zero accountability, it's likely to be done more aggressively. Pretending the US government isn't able to influence the actions of foreign governments, if only in degree and not type, is a silly and lazy way to argue.

It was investigated. By Mueller, and the US intelligence community. The investigation resulted in the indictment of a bunch of Russians, because Russia did it. The President doesn't believe his own CIA and FBI, and also doesn't believe the results of an inquiry that he, bizarrely, also claims exonerates him.

Now he wants foreign governments to prove that the hacking was a Democratic/Ukrainian plot (which is wasn't) so that he can accuse the Democrats of corruption and collusion during the 2020 election.

"Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you."
Giuliani is not a part of the government. He's a part of the campaign, looking for campaign dirt.

Disturbingly, he seems to actually believe Ukraine has a Crowdstrike server hidden somewhere, which makes zero sense. His own staff told him repeatedly it isn't true, and that it doesn't even make sense. The only person egging him on is Rudy, who was also warned that the whole thing is garbage.

Trump's own state department, in real-time, interpreted the events as quid-pro-quo for election interference.

It is obvious, open corruption. Corruption in plain site. Corruption on TV. Corruption as policy and platform. It is end-game late-stage corruption. Short of assassinating an opponent, there is no deeper level of corruption than this, and you're defending it with an obvious lie (that 2016 meddling wasn't investigated) and obvious bullshit (that campaigns put off dirt digging, and only dig dirt on the final nominee, and that Trump has any ability think strategically or control his impulse to sling mud).