Wether you call it gaining influence or blackmail, it's usually the technique of authoritarians or the corrupt and not a path we want to advocate or even tolerate.

By contrast, we've arrived at a point where those very same techniques, practiced openly and brazenly, are considered legitimate in the eyes of a significant plurality of both Washington leaders and the national electorate.

Corruption has always existed, but unless it's normalized you at least have a fighting change of containing it. When its normalized it will consume the whole system. Pervasive cynicism is sufficient to normalize it, and that's often how it metastasizes.

Yes, all presidents and foreign powers do this. Although Bezos doesn't present any proof that it's actually happening here, just speculation.

I'm happy to be proven wrong but to also be clear: there is zero evidence that Trump had anything to do with this.

Before a crime is proven, there's usually speculation. Just like people suspected Nixon of being involved in Watergate before there was actual proof. The truth can come slowly.

I agree that we need to follow due process, but it's just as dangerous to categorize any suspicion of criminal activity as "blaming Trump for everything". You're just on the opposite end of the spectrum as people who thinks he's guilty before we have proof.

Evidence takes time, especially with plea bargains where there's incentive to hold out until the evidence against you is overwhelming.

It's best to be somewhere in the middle where you're equally skeptical and open to whatever news and evidence comes out.

As others have pointed out, he tweet-taunted Bezos a few weeks ago in a way that seems rather connected to this recent revelation.

Joe Scarborough and Mike Brzezinski wrote an op-ed (in the Post!!) about having been threatened with blackmail by AMI, seemingly in direct connection to the White House's desires. Ronan Farrow came forward yesterday to say that AMI tried something similar with him.

Sure, Trump may have nothing to do with it. But you and I aren't courts of law; we're people, and we're allowed to look at the evidence and come to our own conclusions.

If your conclusion is that this is an "era ... which blames Trump for every thing that goes wrong with no evidence whatsoever" then you're just doing a bad job of evaluating evidence.

That realization is actually foundational to our system of criminal Due Process. It's why nearly every piece of evidence entered into trial, even simple documents and scientific analyses, requires a witness to vouchsafe. Facts cannot be divorced from their human origin, and any fact can be challenged by challenging the credibility of its origin.

All facts are messy things, and while some are messier than others there's no avoiding careful consideration in light of the available context. It follows that the distinction between fact and conjecture is one of opinion.

Like other smear attempts for instance Wikileaks on the Clinton campaign and also why its unlikely Mueller will EVER get the smoking gun on Trump. You don’t need to order these things, your allies will do it without your knowledge. Deniability.

You mean the FBI hired Fusion GPS for official business? I believe the term you are looking for is "contracting".

Not to say that previous Presidents haven't done bad things, abused laws, etc, (shit, even launched disinfo campaigns, used the press to attack enemies, etc) but this is just gobsmackingly different from what has come before.

Obviously caveat "if this is true" blah blah blah because my Lord who knows what's true anymore. But knock off the jaded pseudo-educated bs; this is radically fucking strange and a departure from history up until this point.

That's what's unprecedented. It's not abuse of power or corruption that's unprecedented. It's serial, bald faced lies to a willfully, spitefully credulous audience. Not even Nixon or his defenders were so unscrupulous, although it's fair to say that in Nixon lies some precedence.

I used to think it quaint that the dominant principle behind the 6th Amendment prohibition against compelling testimony against oneself remains the so-called cruel trilemma-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_officio_oat). But I realize now that, even without the metaphysical threat of damnation, a society must leave space for even the most corrupt and malicious individuals to avoid outright lying. Lies are the greatest poison to civil society by threatening the very notion of accountability and therefore of fairness or justice. Even when we know somebody is lying it's crucial that we grant them the fiction of plausible deniability, a quid pro quo for not violating the cardinal rule. In so far as the body politic permits and tolerates open lying, it destroys the last and perhaps only common bond between citizens--commitment to a shared truth, even if only nominally.

When a politician says that they can't remember, or even qualifies what would otherwise be a lie with "not to my recollection", that's actually a powerful gesture--submission to a critical civic virtue. When we get to a point when politicians, especially national leaders, don't bother with such gestures, and supporters don't even nominally demand them let alone exact some price, we're in a very bad place.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, there's solid evidence that Reagan openly lied when he denied any knowledge about Iran-Contra. But I think it's telling that we've convinced ourselves he was suffering from Alzheimers, forcing plausible deniability upon him. Even most Reagan detractors have reflexively internalized that narrative. (Obviously he was suffering from Alzheimers, but it's not very reasonable to believe that he was suffering to such an extent that he lacked the capacity for even complicity.)

http://ocean.otr.usm.edu/~w304644/ajha/americanjournalism/fa...

"During the Civil War the federal government was responsible for the greatest amount of newspaper suppression in the nation’s history. More than 300 newspapers were shut down, most of them Democratic papers that were sympathetic to the Confederacy. Some historians have criticized President Abraham Lincoln for allowing such widespread constraints on the press. This article reconsiders the nature of Lincoln’s view of press freedom. Based on a letter the president sent to a Union general, it concludes that Lincoln changed his thinking about midway through the war and began to believe that suppression of the press was not the appropriate policy."

He was arguably more powerful than the Presidents he supposedly served.

But I'm familiar with Hoover; this is wildly different. For one thing, unless I'm mistaken, he was never actually President. "Arguably more powerful than the Presidents he supposedly served" is a neat line and not unreasonable, but doesn't really approach what I'm arguing: that this moment is without precedent in American (world?) history.

That's because the story here likely goes beyond simply AMI going after Bezos at the White House's direction - that would be a hell of a story but also hardly original.

A President conspiring with two separate foreign powers to undermine our elections in order to enrich himself is just one part of the overall story that I contend is novel here. It may not even be the seediest part, depending on what comes of, say, the Seychelles meeting.

If it happened, even then I think it would not be unprecedented -- I'd have to think for a bit about specific examples but I suspect we've even done it to other countries ourselves.

Wait, they are? Who?

Yet all the jaded Hacker News historians around here haven't really pointed out any actual incidents in history that approach this story. "You should read about Hoover" or "Abraham Lincoln did some bad shit during the Civil War" doesn't really approach the level of "President conspiring with two separate foreign adversaries/frenemies to undermine American elections, enrich himself and blackmail his enemies" to say nothing of all the juicy details we don't yet know.