Piece of puzzle - Trump, et al picked ONLY one platform issue to change and lied about it.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

TRUMP PEOPLE WERE INVOLVED IN NO PLATFORM DISCUSSION EXCEPT FOR UKRAINE and LIED ABOUT IT

snip
Diana Denman, the GOP delegate who proposed amending the Ukraine platform to include the "lethal weapons" language, contradicted Gordon's version of events in an interview with Business Insider in January. She said Gordon and another Trump campaign representative asked the cochairmen of the subcommittee to table the amendment after she read it aloud.

"Two men sitting over to the side of the room — I had no idea who they were but later found out they were Trump representatives — jumped up and tore over to get behind the three cochairmen," she said.
Gordon then left the room to make a phone call, Denman said. Equal parts confused and angry over her proposal being scuttled, Denman said she confronted Gordon about whom he was calling.

"I'm calling New York," Gordon replied, according to Denman. "I work for Mr. Trump, and I have to clear it," she recalled him saying, apparently in reference to the amendment.

Gordon said in an email at the time that Denman "sought to significantly elevate the Ukraine-Russia issue beyond the already strong position of RNC and Trump campaign," so the language had to be watered down.

But the committee member present at the meeting, who requested anonymity to discuss the deliberations, said "the language of Diana's original amendment didn't seem strong." "It was controversial if you hold Donald Trump's express views on Russia, but it wasn't controversial with regard to GOP orthodoxy on the issue," the committee member said."This change definitely came from Trump staffers — not from RNC staffers."

http://www.businessinsider.com/jd-gordon-trump-adviser-ukraine-rnc-2017-3

[Laura PourMeADrink]

1. The Lie - Stikes me that the minions are now "covering their asses" on the sinking ship

Now
The Trump campaign's national-security policy representative for the Republican National Convention, J.D. Gordon, told CNN on Thursday that he pushed to alter an amendment to the GOP's draft policy on Ukraine at the Republican National Convention last year to further align it with President Donald Trump's views.

In January, Gordon told Business Insider that he "never left" his "assigned side table" nor spoke publicly at the GOP national security subcommittee meeting, where the amendment — which originally called for "providing lethal defense weapons" to the Ukrainian army to fend off Russian-backed separatists — was read aloud, debated, and ultimately watered down to "providing appropriate assistance" to Ukraine.

[Gabi Hayes]

2. they televised a LOT of platform meetings on cspan. I immediately

thought about whether this discussion made it to TV

any way to find out? surely somebody is looking into this

these guys should be changing their depends regularly for at least the near future

[Laura PourMeADrink]

3. True - I'll see if I can find more. Guess this is the same "Steele" dossier mentioned in article?

Paul Manafort was Trump's campaign manager from April through August. He served as a top adviser to a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine from 2004 to 2012 and helped the Russia-friendly strongman Viktor Yanukovych win the Ukrainian presidency in 2010.

An unverified dossier presented to Trump in January by top US intelligence officials alleges that Trump "agreed to sideline" the issue of Russian intervention in Ukraine during his campaign after Russia promised to feed the emails it stole from prominent Democrats' inboxes to WikiLeaks. The dossier also claims Manafort was receiving "kickback payments" from Yanukovych's associates in Ukraine, where Manafort "had been commercially active ... right up to the time (in March 2016) when he joined campaign team."

Manafort and Trump later denied having anything to do with softening the language of the GOP's platform on Ukraine.

"I wasn't involved in that," Trump said in an interview with ABC after the convention. "Honestly, I was not involved."

But he said his supporters were. "They softened it, I heard, but I was not involved," he said.

[Gabi Hayes]

4. "I wasn't involved in that," Trump said in an interview with ABC after the convention.

"Honestly, I was not involved."

"Believe me."

I'm the most honest man you'll ever meet! Nobody is more honest than I am!

[Laura PourMeADrink]

5. P.S. This has got to be it. So much smoke here. Quid Pro Quo ! yikes. Russia hacks DNC - Trump

pays back by changing language. But, what doesn't make sense - who cares about what's said in a platform - no one ever worries about that. Maybe this - plus the sanction lifting was payback.

[BumRushDaShow]

6. Still scanning through them but

Part I of the foreign policy plank is here - https://www.c-span.org/video/?412506-1/republican-national-committee-holds-platform-hearing

(but surprise surprise, no transcript and a note from CSPAN that it was "not for sale", whatever relevance that has for viewing online)

Part II is here - https://www.c-span.org/video/?412506-101/republican-national-committee-platform-hearings-part-2

(Ukraine is mentioned a couple times in that one if you do a search on the transcript - as part of a narrative about putting something in the Defense Budget)

[Laura PourMeADrink]

7. Hmmm. Conveniently the minutes to the meeting were not kept. Taken, but not kept