I also think there is internal fall-out from the previous affair with the producer and the staff. Easy enough for ABC to say it’s there were no laws/rules broken and they won’t comment on a private personnel matter otherwise.

All them folks were together for years. Which doesn’t match the fast flameout scenario. Especially since two got married this year. 

I would think their key demographic is stay-at-home moms who might not view adultery and married co-workers having an affair as favourably as the author tried to and not who they want hosting their morning entertainment. The journalist adage of “report the story, don’t become the story”. Any spike in ratings would…

My hot take that no one asked for:

The irony is that I was (briefly) considering tuning into GMA, a show I haven’t watched in forever, just to see who these folks were, since that was all I heard about lately.

To be fair to you, lots of people think what you think, I’m sure that’s the impression the U.S. government wants people to have.

You keep saying that as if he didn’t know about Russia’s reputation or that he didn’t purposefully choose Russia to be his sanctuary instead of somewhere else that isn’t a poster child for oppression and human rights violation. Russia was as bad back then as they are now.

Has no balls to go to prison?  What the fuck is wrong with you?

You expect him to accept decades in prison?

What whistleblower laws do you think protect revealing classified information?

Is Snowden a French citizen? Because that was the basis on which France denied Polanski’s extradition to the U.S., its extradition treaty with the U.S. allows them to refuse to extradite French citizens. Maybe we’re not pretending anything!  (I mean, obviously all of us would choose Russia over France, which is what…

I mean, he is a free speech and privacy advocate. His claim to it is pretty strong because, again, he is TRAPPED IN RUSSIA FOR BEING THAT VERY THING! That he’s in Russia, and has to make compromises with a dictatorial, repressive regime is a direct consequence of his actions revealing U.S. lies and violations of its…

Besides the fact that France has an extradition treaty with the U.S., which is inconvenient for man who is very much wanted in the U.S. for violations of criminal law he certainly committed, it is hard to travel without a passport.

You need to be in a country that would say “fuck you” to the United States. The US tried to have the HK authorities arrest him when he was in Hong Kong.

He has options besides Russia and the US.

Taking citizenship of a country requires one to swear an oath of allegiance. For any country in the world.

Indeed. It is a standard procedure for acquiring citizenship of a country. You swear an oath of allegiance. Some countries will let you have dual citizenship, some will make you give up existing citizenship.

He didn’t end up in Russia because he wants to be there.  He is trapped there, because he is otherwise facing decades in prison in the U.S.  He is essentially stateless.  In other words, he is only in this situation because of the good he did with his original leak, and the consequences that stemmed from that.

People can think what they want about Snowden swearing an oath to a country run by a murderous authoritarian asshole, arguably selling out his integrity for the sake of his physical security. But relevant to that is that Snowden did not want to end up in Russia. He is essentially trapped there (I believe he was only…

Isn’t that pretty standard for getting citizenship in a country?