Holy shit.

[rameshgupta@mastodon.social]

️ @Extra_Special_Carbon @cstross

>> The least Biden could have done is drop the cases so they coild release the evidence. i mean once Trump was elected, the cases were dead, sk just put it out there

The LEAST #Biden could have done is appoint a competent Attorney General and not kneecap him/her with a preemptive declaration of his own desire to avoid all #Trump investigations.

What a dereliction of duty from a man who knew everything about Trump from the #Obama days!

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/president-elect-biden-wary-trump-focused-investigations-sources-say-n1247959

[geos@toot.community]

@cstross
Yeah, if you follow the money it should probably be called CCCP(ac).

[extra_special_carbon@mastodon.world]

@rameshgupta @cstross That would have bern nice too, but I don’t think it qualifies as “least”. I guess technically, what he did was least, but the one slightly more than that, was release all of the documents.

[ltning@pleroma.anduin.net]

@DM_Ronin @cstross Are there alternative sources? I am not going to throw money at Bloomberg

[mrbirch@beige.party]

@cstross And probably with laundered Russian money.

[bsm6789@toots.nu]

@cstross
Put Orban to jai.
He is a traitor..all of Fidesz are traitors.

[klausfiend@mstdn.ca]

@cstross Watch Trump spin this as "bringing jobs back to the US" if fash-curious American billionaires step up to pay.

[klausfiend@mstdn.ca]

@GhostOnTheHalfShell @Kierkegaanks @cstross With documents confirming that MAGA bloggers like Tim Pool and Benny Johnson were funded by Russia, I think it's reasonable to conclude that CPAC became yet another Kremlin psyop, intended to disrupt and corrupt US foreign and domestic politics.

[alienghic@timeloop.cafe]

@cstross

Jailing Orbán sounds like a nice treat for people who like democracy and human rights.

[whitecattamer@mastodon.online]

@cstross Hey remember this story: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mccarthy-trump-putin-pays_n_591cc97ce4b03b485cae64c2

It really does come back to this schmuck half the time, huh?

[npars01@mstdn.social]

@cstross

Orban functioned as a conduit for Putin's foreign threat funding for years.

Petrostate despots and oil oligarchs fund a lot of fascism globally.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/13/us/politics/russia-election-interference.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/20/us/politics/koch-network-2024-election-trump.html

Republicans & the Epstein Class cannot resist fossil fuel public corruption.

https://www.newsweek.com/who-konstantin-nikolaev-money-mike-johnson-1870600

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/06/the-nra-spent-dollar30-million-to-elect-trump-was-it-russian-money

[onpubcom@techhub.social]

@cstross Gonna bet JD got paid, too.

[mmarcott@bsd.network]

@ltning @DM_Ronin @cstross

https://archive.ph/IZp17
Try there

[grumble209@kolektiva.social]

@cstross It's moderately heartening to learn that other countries are opposed to money in politics.

Unlike here in the US, where it's only the voters that are against it.

[mokhtarstork@sciences.social]

@cstross There is a need to get down improving life rather then than to get political hang-ups. Every one comes with the same political gimmick throughout the world. We call it Democracy, but at the end of the day is there any real difference?

[ravenonthill@mastodon.social]

@cstross see https://bsky.app/profile/emptywheel.bsky.social/post/3mjhbhrv3mc22

[gimulnautti@mastodon.green]

@cstross Viktor Orban’s Hungary was more meaningful to MAGA than you think. Steve Bannon and many others visited there frequently, and many think-tanks operated from there!

[klausfiend@mstdn.ca]

@W6KME @GhostOnTheHalfShell @Kierkegaanks @cstross The first CPAC was during the tail end of the Cold War so I think it's reasonable to assume it wasn't always a Republican-flavored Gathering of the Juggalos, and at least once serious policy discussions occurred. (No offense intended to any Juggalos who might be reading this.)

[jeffmcneill@hachyderm.io]

@cstross @pluralistic And CPAC was taking the money

[timolaine@mastodon.green]

@graydon @cstross This fits nicely with @anneapplebaum's thesis in Autocracy Inc. All these autocrats form a network of mutual assistance.

Some nodes, like Putin, are more important to the network, I guess. Orban was mostly a satellite?