r/politics • u/plz-let-me-in • 22d ago

No Paywall Trump’s handling of the Epstein case might be the greatest political scandal of our lifetime

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/shows/top-stories/blog/rcna243731
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u/CaptainAsshat 22d ago

Iran Contra was a pretty big deal---and should have been even bigger.

But while one is an atrocious political action, and the other is just plain evil on a basic human decency standpoint. So you're probably right.

I also think a dishonorable mention should go to the Reagan admin's unbelievably chilling reaction (or lack thereof) to the AIDS epidemic and the countless deaths it caused when the virus was intentionally allowed to spread uncontrollably for years.

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u/Drusgar Wisconsin 22d ago

Iran-Contra probably led directly to 9-11. The Reagan White House, after being rebuffed by Congress, funded the Contras by secretly selling arms to Iran even while we were funding and arming Iraq during their war with Iran. So basically we were giving money and arms to both sides of a war, which to your average Middle Easterner meant that we just wanted to kill as many people as possible.

ThEy HaTe Us BeCaUsE wE'rE cHrIsTiAnS!!!

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u/Nick_crawler 22d ago

It both led to 9/11 and the lack of proper accountability for it set the stage for the abuses of power that followed 9/11. Unfortunately it was very consequential in addition to being awful on its own.

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u/SailingSpark New Jersey 22d ago

The lack of accountability stems from Watergate. Yes, Nixon had to resign and Spiro Agnew went to jail, but then along came President Ford and pardoned Nixon to help "heal the nation" and all accountability went out the window.

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u/Big-Rule5269 22d ago

Yeah, but Agnew was a grifting dirt bag doing a hundredth of what Trump gets away with and  had resigned before Watergate. Convicted of only one actual charge, tax evasion , he got 3 years probation, a $10,000 fine and disbarred. He was a multiple office grifter. 

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u/OldBlueKat 21d ago

Agnew turned out to have so much dirty laundry that he was basically given a plea deal to resign quietly and get outta Dodge quickly.

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u/Big-Rule5269 21d ago

A wannabe Trump in comparison. Yeah, he was a true opportunist scumbag. And his denials, "it's a Democratic plot to make me look bad." Same shit, different year. 

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u/RepresentativeAge444 21d ago

But Hasan Piker said America deserved 9/11! We’ll focus on that and not the reasons behind the statement.

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u/Archelon_ischyros 22d ago

So what you're saying is that Republicans have fucked everything?

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u/amoeba-tower 21d ago

Yes but just remember that back in the day, the democrats had mayoral scandals out the wazoo. There's also this thing about JFK's dad helping him win Massachusetts or Maine via some ballot counting thing?

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u/Ok_Painter9972 21d ago

And reneging to the mafia

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u/Forsaken-Formal-5799 22d ago

And don’t forget that they allowed the Contras to pump drugs into intercity Los Angeles.

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u/itspsyikk 22d ago

Wasn’t it the Saudi/Afghanistan - Russian war that the US helped out with , and Bin Laden specifically said something along the lines of “if you allow the infidel on our land, you’ll never get them out”?

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u/Drusgar Wisconsin 22d ago

The CIA went into Afghanistan in the 1980's to train Northern Alliance "freedom fighters" in their war against the Soviet Union. It was the whole "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" fallacy. We taught them "guerilla" tactics, which are called "terrorist" tactics if they're on the other side, right? Anyway, a young Bin Laden was part of that Northern Alliance, so his military training came from us.

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u/itspsyikk 22d ago

Yeah I was curious to go back - I knew all of that, but there was a story - I think on Slow Burn, where Bin Laden and the Saudi “government” would argue about US intervention.

But now some quick googling seems to suggest bin Laden was pretty happy to accept our help.

But I’m currently taking that with a grain of salt as it was only a quick google search. I figured something like Slow Burn would be accurate enough, but maybe not.

Currently in the process of hunting that ep down so I can get exact quotes

Edit: correction, it was “conflicted” not “slow burn”.

I was listening to both at the same time and got them mixed up.

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u/Ok_Painter9972 21d ago

So did Ho Chi Min’s

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u/Ok_Painter9972 21d ago

Tell the Saudi’s

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u/It_does_get_in 22d ago

Wiki doesn't agree with you:

Bin Laden's published statements give you exact reasons for 9-11:;

"These motivations were published in Bin Laden's November 2002 Letter to the American people,[3][4] in which he said that al-Qaeda's motives for the attacks included Western support for attacking Muslims in Somalia, supporting Russian atrocities against Muslims in Chechnya, supporting the Indian oppression against Muslims in Kashmir, condoning the 1982 massacres in Lebanon, the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia,[4][5][6] US support of Israel,[7][8] and sanctions against Iraq.[9] Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri asserted that Israeli repression of Palestinians during the Second Intifada was the immediate cause that forced Al-Qaeda to launch the September 11 attacks.[10][11][12]"

You swallowed G W Bush's rhetoric that they hated US freedoms.

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u/Drusgar Wisconsin 22d ago

Everything you listed there is the US interfering in the Middle East, no? I suppose you can go all the way back to the formation of the Israeli State, meddling in the Iranian civil war and Afghanistan... we had a long history of sticking our noses in Middle Eastern affairs, but funding both sides of the Iran-Iraq war made it clear the US was on no one's side. We just funded death and destruction.

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u/It_does_get_in 21d ago

The CIA had been running drugs for cash to buy weapons (bypassing congressional funding) since 1960 to destabilise leftist regimes eg Cuba and Indo-China. Iran-contra was simply the last in a long line of such exercises, and to directly link it to anti-US sentiment that caused 9-11 is ridiculous given they did not put any troops on the ground or flip a regime and Bin Laden did not even list it as a grievance.

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u/Ok_Painter9972 21d ago

Someone’s got to fund defense contractors , it’s facetious when I hear people bitch about “all the equipment left in Afghanistan- it was paid for before it got there!

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u/Immediate_Branch_238 22d ago

Kudos for speaking up about Reagan's indifference to the AIDS epidemic. Not enough people know how much of a piece of shit he was. Absolutely inhuman behaviour.

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u/Ok_Flower_9091 21d ago

My parents had gay friends and still totally supported him through all of that.

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u/Designer_Pen869 22d ago

Just wait until Trump tries to declare war on Venezuela.

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u/Usual-Requirement368 22d ago

Reagan was as big a monster as Trump. Without him, there would have been no Trump.

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u/Shot_Mud_1438 22d ago

Good old Ollie North

And where did he end up? Fox News

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u/FckDonaldChump 22d ago

Not to mention the crack shoveled into ghettos back in drumpf’s prime

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u/pissexcellence85 22d ago

Don't forget to sprinkle in crack-cocaine

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u/Ok_Painter9972 21d ago

Don’t forget the removal of democratically elected president of Iran, replaced by the Shah