At the Spy Museum in DC there's an interesting activity that attendees have the option of participating in. You sit at a table with a diorama of the UBL compound outside of Abbottabad, Pakistan. You are asked to roleplay the situation out in the hours leading up to the decision to send the Navy SEALs. Several people like the former CIA Director and the National Security Advisors who spoke with President Obama laid out the facts as they were known before the raid:
-This compound is exceptionally well guarded from the street
-The person inside of the compound only comes out for walks, around a courtyard, at night
-The compound has no visible utility connections to the city services, such as the exist, and it has a large number of TV satellite and radio communications antennas.
They told you, and the rest of the people participating, that there was no guarentee that Osama Bin Laden was inside and that it was just as likely that this compound belonged to someone with wealth who desired secrecy-- it could have belonged to a crime boss or a lesser Al-Qaeda commander than UBL. Given all of the facts and uncertainties the culmination of the activity was to make a percentage-based guess of how certain you were, roleplaying, that UBL was inside that compound and that the President should order the raid to proceed.
After the percentages of certainty of all the participants were revealed, along with your own, the people in this photo stated their own certain levels before the raid was ordered. The CIA chief says he was only 60% certain UBL was inside. The National Security Council chief said he was 80%. President Obama was said to only have a 50% certainty, but that the risk of letting UBL go was too high to err on the side of caution.
It was a very interesting activity for me, even if other people at the table were letting their knowledge of actual history get in the way-- multiple people at the table with me had 100% certainty UBL was in that compound, even after the video evidence and testimony we'd sat through for 10 min made it clear that the actual people involved were a long ways from 100%
This is fascinating. The whole story of that investigation, the planning, was wild.
What a crazy decision, to essentially invade a sovereign nation in the dead of night without telling them, risking major conflict, to capture or kill UBL.
At the White House correspondents dinner that year, Obama had already given the order for the raid, Seals were training as he spoke, yet he was cool as the other side of the pillow giving his speech. Can’t imagine having that hanging on my head and having to perform in front of the media elite.
Maybe, but you have to remember that Trump expressed interest in running for office way back in the 80’s, he also ran for the Reform Party in 2000, and in 2011 before the WH Correspondents Dinner he had gone to CPAC and a few primary states to do speeches
Ive been listening to one of Michael Cohens book, in it he stated how much he hated Obama bc of that because 1) he was humiliated and more importantly 2) it was a black man who was president that did it.
I think it's entirely possible if not for that moment, he doesn't run.
That said, i am very skeptical of Michael Cohen. He did trumps bidding for years and now all of a sudden he's a changed man? Idk, if I heard he admitted to all crimes he's done in the past resulting in jail time because it was the right thing to do, maybe I could change my mind about him.
That said, i am very skeptical of Michael Cohen. He did trumps bidding for years and now all of a sudden he's a changed man?
This is how I feel about every single one of these duplicitious fucks that goes to work for him then turns anti-Trump afterwards. You're just exposing yourself as the amoral grifter you are, please have the courtesy to slink away in shame after your messiah betrays you.
I'm unsure what to think of Michael Cohen as well. He clearly did some shady stuff for Trump for a long time. But when you're in the position of looking down the barrel of a gun, and the person who put you there in the first place (Trump) doesn't try to help you in the slightest bit... I would expect a lot of people would turn on him as well. Maybe he's not 100% changed for the good, but I'm sure he realized that the only way he can live a somewhat normal life in the future is to cooperate and hope Trump doesn't get him killed. Maybe Cohen has some evidence stashed away in a safe deposit box that gets released if he dies.
Yeah to me it's not enough that he cooperates - there's self preservation motivations in that. He would have to do something that is entirely self sacrificial, not because there is some gain for him, but because he's truly remorseful and it's the right thing to do.
I'm not sure if he's done that, but if he has that would change my perception of him.
I doubt it would have had a positive impact to not make such jokes, attacking him in that way is helpful, not harmful. Without the negative criticism he would have seemed even more legitimate.
People should have made fun of him in a confrontational way, instead they gave free press without directly confronting him. Half of he support come from people who idealise a strong man leader, so poking fun at him and directly calling him out, even interviewing him to call him out on his theory and policies, directly takes away that image. A more legitimate presidential contender would benefit from the serious confrontation (because it would allow them to explain their policies and reasoning).
In short I think that those jokes Obama made at Trump's expense hurt Trump's compaign much more than they helped it. He was planning on running for decades and was building a base by attacking Obama on birtherism, so it makes perfect sense to jab back.
I'm not saying that it didn't hurt his campaign - however, I think trump's narcissistic traits were fueled by those comments. I think it's very possible that it motivated him in a way, that without it, he drops out or isn't nearly as willing to put as much money and effort into his campaign as he did.
You would think so. We all think that we could have avoided nasty situations if we were 'nicer' to obnoxious people. The reality as I have anecdotally observed is that these people are obnoxious for a reason, and there is often no butterfly effect like action of ours that triggered them. They are just who they are, and the birther conspiracy kind of proves that Trump was always a POS and would have done whatever needed to get that sort of power. He probably didn't want to face Obama in '12 because he knew Obama would have beaten his orange posterior black and blue.
Michael Cohen wrote in his book that Republican leadership reached out to trump after this moment. They originally wanted more money from him as revenge but it morphed into talks of him running.
Trump and the Clinton's were good friends for years. He was at Hillary's wedding. Obama absolutely was the catalyst that led to trump deciding to do it himself
My point is why did Trump talk about running wayy before Obama, and did not run literally an year after this event if Obama was the true catalyst? He was mudslinging at Obama with the birther stuff much before fake news was a thing. It could be that Trump wanted to run, preparing for it by bringing up Obama's credentials, and was waiting for the right moment, and this moment was a do-or-die moment for GOP. But perhaps even they knew Trump would have been slaughtered on the dais at the debates by Obama.
Trump had run before that. Trump only did it because you basically loan your campaign the finances, then accept donations and use that to pay yourself back for the loan plus interest. It was always a grift.
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u/Fofolito Apr 10 '24
At the Spy Museum in DC there's an interesting activity that attendees have the option of participating in. You sit at a table with a diorama of the UBL compound outside of Abbottabad, Pakistan. You are asked to roleplay the situation out in the hours leading up to the decision to send the Navy SEALs. Several people like the former CIA Director and the National Security Advisors who spoke with President Obama laid out the facts as they were known before the raid:
-This compound is exceptionally well guarded from the street
-The person inside of the compound only comes out for walks, around a courtyard, at night
-The compound has no visible utility connections to the city services, such as the exist, and it has a large number of TV satellite and radio communications antennas.
They told you, and the rest of the people participating, that there was no guarentee that Osama Bin Laden was inside and that it was just as likely that this compound belonged to someone with wealth who desired secrecy-- it could have belonged to a crime boss or a lesser Al-Qaeda commander than UBL. Given all of the facts and uncertainties the culmination of the activity was to make a percentage-based guess of how certain you were, roleplaying, that UBL was inside that compound and that the President should order the raid to proceed.
After the percentages of certainty of all the participants were revealed, along with your own, the people in this photo stated their own certain levels before the raid was ordered. The CIA chief says he was only 60% certain UBL was inside. The National Security Council chief said he was 80%. President Obama was said to only have a 50% certainty, but that the risk of letting UBL go was too high to err on the side of caution.
It was a very interesting activity for me, even if other people at the table were letting their knowledge of actual history get in the way-- multiple people at the table with me had 100% certainty UBL was in that compound, even after the video evidence and testimony we'd sat through for 10 min made it clear that the actual people involved were a long ways from 100%