YouTube bans Steve Bannon's podcast channel

> No that is wrong. "The investigation found there were over 100 contacts between Trump campaign advisors and individuals affiliated with the Russian government, before and after the election, but the evidence was insufficient to show an illegal conspiracy"

The fact that presidential advisers, among the US Senators, former diplomats, and foreign advisors, had contact with foreigners is not surprising in the least. I'd be happy to discuss any specific contacts that you find to be troublesome, though.

> Many of you also believed that Hillary was responsible for Benghazi and Republicans wasted millions of dollars and time on that investigation and yet she was not guilty.

The Benghazi investigation was undeniably an attempt, in part, to damage Hillary Clinton politically. The question of who was "responsible" for Benghazi is a matter of opinion. The question of whether there is evidence for Trump-Russia collusion is one of fact. That's an important difference.

Another important difference is the fact that the the lie-de-jour of the right--that the 2016 election was stolen--is currently being panned as anti-democratic, fascist, a danger to the very fabric of our nation, etc, etc., and we're told that his is because it is undermining our sacred institutions. Well if that's the case, it's odd that nobody seemed to give a shit that the Democrats did the exact same thing four years ago. After all, the lie that Trump colluded with the Russians is effectively the same lie--it's simply a different side of the same coin. This is very different from the Benghazi issue, which is, at worst, a run-of-the-mill political hatchet job.

> So [Manafort] and many other broke the law and went to jail for that, why is that a bad thing. Why did Trump pardon them though?

I never said that it was. Criminals should, of course, be punished. But this has no bearing on my point about Trump-Russia collusion, which is why I specifically mentioned it as a distraction. As for the pardons, who can say why Trump does what he does?

> How many people in the US went to jail because of the Benghazi investigations?

No idea...?

> Mueller did not say that Trump was innocent, why didn't he say that?

Who cares whether Mueller himself said Trump was innocent? In a system where the accused are innocent until proven guilty, his report said it for him. "[The report] did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple efforts from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign."

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the fact that almost 90% of Democrats were still convinced of the lie that Trump colluded with the Russians, and how that differs from the current right-wing mania about the 2016 election, which affects a much smaller proportion of the country.

> his report said it for him. "[The report] did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple efforts from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign."

This sentence is not from the Mueller report, but is from Bill Barr's summary of the Mueller report, which a federal judge characterized as "misleading" and "substantively at odds with the redacted version of the Mueller Report". https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6796353-barr-ruling....

As myself and others have noted, you need to read the actual Mueller report and the Senate Intel Committee report before engaging on this topic further.

For example, the idea that no one in the Trump campaign coordinated with the Russians flies in the face of the finding in the (Republican lead) Senate Intel report which shows that Trump's campaign chair was transmitting internal campaign data to a Russian intelligence officer.

I have read many an article with words like "hallowed halls" and "sacred ground". It's just a building, and with enough dollars it can be cleaned up and repaired. What I keep coming back to was the intent to overturn an election with force by disrupting a critical vote on the election that was in progress. That's not clutching at pearls, that's a threat to democracy and the rule of law.

I've banned this account because it's using HN primarily for political argument and that is not what this site is for. Please don't create accounts to break HN's guidelines with.

The purpose of this site is intellectual curiosity, which is not compatible with political battle. Some political overlap is fine and inevitable, but when accounts go way beyond "some overlap", we ban them. We have to or else the site will be wrecked for its main mandate. More explanation here: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. But please don't create accounts to break the rules with.

> But there’s also been a bipartisan rebuke of Trump and his gang’s tactics.

There's been no investigation report. It appears the left was responsible for a false flag operation. (The guy breaking the Capitol window appears to be antifa, and the crowd tried to stop him several times.)

> But when you play with fire (like telling people a fair election was in fact stolen) and people die, it’s not funny anymore.

Yes, it was stolen. Dominion voting machines are owned by the CCP, and aren't FEC-compliant. The USPS was involved in back-dating ballots and discarding ballots.

3 of the 5 people who died, in a crowd of 500,000 people, died of natural causes. Not unexpected.

Leftists, your feelings are not facts. The facts are not hard to find, unless you're wilfully ignorant.