Also consider his insistence that his inauguration crowd was larger than Obama's, when the photos clearly showed that wasn't the case. It's a completely meaningless lie. He doesn't accomplish anything if people were to accept it as truth, and it was quite obviously at odd with reality, and yet he just kept going on about it.

That's not a strategic lie, that's a pathological lie. That's someone who simply cannot tell the truth.

No matter how much I consider Trump a dimwit liar, I can't completely shake off the other explanation, that of yesmen telling him whatever they thought he would like to hear. I suspect that in a position like that, even making up falsehoods is conveniently delegated. You don't lie, you just select convenient sources to parrot. Putin must have spent recent years in an even worse yesmen-bubble, the shift from him being considered dangerously competent to him being considered dangerously senile should really not come as surprising as it does.

I'll take the downvotes too. We had a president who idolized Putin and still praises him to this day. If we think this sort of thing can't happen here, or aren't clear eyed about the threat he and his enablers still pose, we are in even more danger.

Yes, propaganda and political lies is certainly not confined to Russia or backwater dictatorships. In America you also had that president's opponents concocting lies and peddling insane and baseless conspiracy theories for years about him colluding with Putin to hack the election and other such nonsense. That was even more infantile and simple than the propaganda that comes out of Russia.

We’ve got all the money we need from Russia

From the uranium we sold them?

Everything in the Mueller report was true. No republican has denied that, or come to any other conclusion in their committee reports. Trump was cleared in the impeachment not because of the contents of the report, but whether what happened technically constituted collusion, or whether republicans felt that convicting him was necessary for what he and his associates did in fact do.

This is what the last report from the republican majority senate intelligence committee wrote [0]:

> It is our conclusion, based on the facts detailed in the Committee's Report, that the Russian intelligence services' assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process[,] and Trump and his associates' participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modern era.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committee_...

The Mueller report clearly states they did not find evidence that Trump or his campaign colluded or conspired with Russia to interfere with the election. That nonsense was all a conspiracy theory. For example Adam Schiff never had the "ample evidence" for it, despite being on the house intelligence committee. That was bald faced and repeated lie peddling this conspiracy theory. Unfortunately many fall for these "stolen election" conspiracy theories. Probably as a coping mechanism more than anything.

I know you're not responding in good faith, but I want to respond with actual quotes from the Mueller report, since this is on a public forum.

> "While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."

> "[I]f we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment."

> “Our investigation found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations,” Mueller wrote. “The incidents were often carried out through one-on-one meetings in which the President sought to use his official power outside of usual channels. These actions ranged from efforts to remove the Special Counsel and to reverse the effect of the Attorney General’s recusal; to the attempted use of official power to limit the scope of the investigation; to direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony.”

> "the President engaged in a second phase of conduct, involving public attacks on the investigation, non-public efforts to control it, and efforts in both public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation."

https://www.factcheck.org/2019/04/what-the-mueller-report-sa...

In case it's not obvious, the point of obstructing justice is to prevent facts from coming out.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/obstruction-justice-mueller-repo...

You're the one not responding in good faith because I never said anything one way or the other about obstructing justice. That's clearly a far more complicated and nuanced question seeing as he was head of the executive at the time.

The idea he colluded with Putin to hack the election was always an utter baseless fantasy. There was no evidence for it ever. Not from Mueller, not from Schiff, not from 17 intelligence agencies. It was a conspiracy theory.

You ever wonder about people who fall for baseless conspiracy theories about stolen elections? How could they possibly fall for these politicians and other assorted nutjobs telling them the election was stolen, without ever providing the evidence? Dumb uneducateds! They're nothing like us enlightened intellectuals.

Your red herring arguments and whataboutism is noted. Stretching arguments about obvious ties to russia to being "election = stolen", while ignoring the actual 40℅ of the country who still believes trumps bullshit. I will also note that there were dozens of confirmed contacts between trump and Russia and you see the bromance still playing out to this day.

I'm clearly saying you didn't fall for the baseless idiotic conspiracy theories about Biden stealing the election or Trump colluding with Putin to hack the election, or being a "foreign agent". Not sure what you're all worked up about.

And I'm not talking about "obvious ties to Russia" whatever that means (everyone seems to have weird ties and uranium sales and gas company deals with Russia, Ukraine, etc). I'm talking about the delusional baseless conspiracy theory that Trump colluded or conspired with Putin to hack or otherwise influence the election. That was the conspiracy theory that so many were repeating and so so many gullible people fell for.

Gave him free media attention without any more media dislike than he already suffered, I guess?