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Russiagate: why did the press do it? — 150 Comments

  1. I agree with the tulip mania theory plus Watergate.

    Watergate was a successful coup d’etat by the FBI. Nixon’s “crimes” pale in comparison to Lyndon Johnson’s corruption. The day Kennedy was assassinated Life Magazine was in an editorial meeting to finalize the next week edition that would reveal Johnsons’s crimes. When the news from Dallas arrived, the issue was cancelled.

    Watergate thrilled the news people with the thought that they were more powerful than the president. They have tried to repeat, the Dan Rather attempt was an example, but success has always eluded them. Remember “Fitzmas?”

  2. Yes, Watergate ruined the press. It made them stars instead of reporters. Even the ones too young to remember Watergate as it happened understand this.

  3. “. . . the president was not the perp . . .”.

    Yes and no, in these senses — the newly sitting president (Trump) was not, whereas the departing president (Obama) near certainly is. “Perp of what though?”, is our newfound question. Let’s find out.

  4. “It was a kind of tulip mania, a contagion that spread throughout their ranks, a wishful thinking squared and then cubed.” [Neo]

    I agree, but still, there is nothing new here. The mob of MSM and Hollywood villagers, whipped up by demagogues to hate something they already fear and don’t understand, grab their firebrands and pitchforks and petulantly run through the cyber-streets screaming “Kill the monster!!!”

    The news, brought to you by Hammer Film Productions.

  5. With the media the bottom line has never been the truth or integrity but $$$$ and hence ratings. Prior to Trump, they were floundering and losing revenue and readership daily mainly due to the internet and alternative media. Trump saved their collective asses and allowed them to adopt a false mantle of proud crusaders for truth. Look how that turned out. It turned them, naturally, into propagandists for the Dems and the deep state who only had lies to offer. The incompetent, narcissistic media served those lies up cheerfully.

    If they can latch onto another fake narrative they will adopt it with relish to remain viable.

  6. Yes
    The press was enamored at the thought of another Watergate
    The press never knew anyone who voted for Trump
    The press was trapped by their confirmation bias
    The press forgot that real journalists do the hard work of researching the facts of the story rather than becoming echo chambers for each other and pundits with an agenda

    And I now forget about
    The NY Slimes
    The Washington Compost
    the LA Slimes
    ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, PBS
    as sources of fact based news

    I have been interviewed by reporters over the years and have found that invariably they come with a story already in their minds and are just looking for tidbits to quote that support that story.

    Example, as told to me by a scientist working on COBE (cosmic background experiment) during the time of “Hubble Troubles”:
    Reporter comes in and is given a full day guided tour and Q&A of the COBE facility.
    At the end of the day the scientist guiding her got the feeling that she was unhappy.
    So he asked the quetion: Is there anything that you wanted to see that you have not.
    Her Answer: We are writing a story about all the problems that NASA is having, and nothing I see here matches that.

    QED

  7. Wretchard the cat chimes in with a Tweet (h/t Ace of Spades):

    What was revealed was the extent of rottenness in the system. If Trump had been a godlike Alexander it would have been one thing. But he’s not. That they are actually less competent than a casino manager and reality show host is too much for them to take.

    There are two points here, 1)not only is Trump exonerated with regard to collusion, but 2) new credence is given to both of his claims about the media as an enemy of the people and the fetid and squalid state of the D,C, swamp that he desires to drain.

  8. Your take on Watergate contains observations Nicholas von Hoffman made back in 1982.

    The news business has since 1995 (and particularly since 2000) seen a radical decline in its revenue stream inducing a shake-out in its workforce. Resultant adjustments in pay scales have induced more capable prospects to pursue other lines of work. At the same time, cuts in ancillaries have prevented the staff recruiting from getting hands-on learning as correspondents. What you get is people Ben Rhodes described as “27 years old…they literally know nothing”.

    I don’t think they ever hired many people with a genuine body of knowledge, nor did J-Schools train them in skills which would allow them to critically evaluate much of anything. They hired people who could turn in clean copy on time. Their hires learned what they learned interviewing people. A few did some archival research if assigned. I doubt any reporters ca. 1990 were spending any time on library research.

    One thing Alvin Gouldner and others have remarked on is the escalating tendency of people in word-and-image merchant occupations to have a uniform outlook and predictable sympathies in re political struggles. The only places you see starboard personnel in media would be in outlets which are constitutionally dissident or in ordinary outlets undertaking editorial commentary from a dedicated perspective. A generation ago, you had some straight reporters who were known to be non-liberal in their mundane lives (Mike Wallace, Brit Hume, John Stossel), but not many. This continues apace. Its just that the people they recruit are of lower quality and less indoctrinated in certain guild precepts which inhibited working reporters and editors from being blatantly propagandistic.

  9. Watergate marked the unholy marriage of the liberal press and the Deep State, whereby leaks from the latter fed the stories of the former in a game of mutual political and career gain within each’s realm and often involving a revolving-door relationship for some adherents. Tendentious reporters, in league with power-seeking bureaucrats, served each other’s professional self-interests while sharing in their political objective of undermining the executive branch in the process. The rise of the administrative state, enabled as it has been by the self-destructive media, as first seen in Watergate and now revealed even more boldly by Russiagate, is increasingly the central peril facing the American polity.

  10. I vote for a combination of all of the above–1-7.

    But I think that there is an additional element here, and that is all of the J-schools which have been told by popular textbook, curricula, and reading list author Bill Ayers and others that their newly minted reporters–rechristened these days as the much more high falutin’ “journalists”–that their students have a new role, that of “agents of change,” with a duty to steer our obviously corrupt society in a new, fairer, more just Leftist direction–and not their formerly unglamorous, grubby little role as mere “reporters,” tasked with finding out and reporting the truth/the news in as unvarnished, fair, and as complete a way as possible.

    And if their new role as “agents of change” means that they have to fudge things a little bit, shade the truth here and there, omit certain things and exaggerate others, even tell a lie, or two, or three, well, its all for “the higher, the greater good.”

  11. Ninety years ago, you had a cavalcade of interests in one party and a cavalcade in the other party. You had media and you had a brain trust sympathetic to each side. What’s happened since is that you’ve developed political polarities where in the media, school systems at all levels, and the social work and mental health trade constitute the cavalcade of interests on one side (along with the most consequential segment of the bar and the suborned professional guilds). The media don’t support the Democratic Party. The media are the Democratic Party.

  12. Every once in a while, you’d see lists of Obama employees who had previously been employed in the media and Obama employees who were married to or first degree relations of members of the media. There was no ready distinction between the patronage employees of the administration and the media. And it showed.

  13. Starting with a preconceived story is far from a new trick for the press. Over 20 years ago my daughter and her family moved back to CA from the midwest where her husband’s job that sent him for a few years. They bought a nice house in the ‘burbs in a new development. A TV news team that (it turns out a bit later) was doing a feature at the direction of a station higher-up about where all the people buying these new, pricey home were coming from. It seem that all the neighbors who were out and about were locals, but pointed to the place with the out-of-state license plates. The reporter was disappointed to learn that my daughter was born in CA and was only gone for a year or two (she alluded to it being purgatory) and couldn’t wait to get back. Not a moment of this ever appeared on TV.

  14. I think quite a few knew it wasn’t true but just figured they would get him on something so everybody would forget about their comments in the end.

    Kind of like cops that say ‘he was guilty of something’ as justification for arresting someone on a charge later proven false.

  15. Do I think that the talking heads will acknowledge any blame at all? No.

    I expect that they will assume that their cretinous audience will very soon forget that they said anything untoward on this topic, allowing these ‘journalists” to just move on, and pretend that the past–and their hysteria and statements–just never happened.

    Or, alternatively, they will just keep on repeating the mantra that “Trump is guilty,” no matter the conclusions of the Mueller Report, and it and the AG’s complete exoneration of Trump, or any other further evidence clearing Trump that might pop up in the future.

    Trump’s just guilty as hell, and everyone knows it, can feel it instinctively,

  16. Today on MSNBC’s Morning Joe they showed film of Nixon’s last day in office. Then Tom Brokaw appeared. I laughed so hard I didn’t hear Brokaw.

    It was their fantasy outcome and now it is blown to bits.

    For more insanity, watch the insane Chris Hayes and even more insane Rachael Maddow tonight. Maybe they will cry. More likely, it will be more crazy talk.

    Trump has completely destroyed the credibility of the MSM.

  17. I think there’s an eighth explanation; the media knows that the first amendment and freedom of the press act as a bulwark against consequence. And without consequence, anything goes.

    As Matt Tiabbi confirms;

    “Honest reporters like ABC’s Terry Moran understand: Mueller coming back empty-handed on collusion means a “reckoning for the media.”

    Of course, there won’t be such a reckoning. (There never is). But there should be. We broke every written and unwritten rule in pursuit of this story, starting with the prohibition on reporting things we can’t confirm.”

    The only ‘reckoning’ the media faces is a slight decline in readership because they know that half of America, the half that voted for Hillary have embraced the claim that the end justifies the means.

    So, the media knows that holding them accountable will have the unintended consequence of destroying the 1st amendment.

    They know that “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

    And they know that it’s constitutional provisions can be weaponized against its citizens, by being used as a shield from consequence.

    What they don’t know is that their efforts to destroy the American Republic and construct upon its ashes an imagined “socially just country” will result in a terrible consequence.

  18. Well yes, all true certainly.

    But curious that no one has mentioned Hillary Rodham Clinton (femme fatale extraordinaire….)

    Yes, Hillary Clinton—knowing that there was an “insurance policy” and betting the farm on its infallibility (and indeed, just as she was a shoo-in for POTUS, this exquisitely crafted, ingenious “insurance policy” was stone-cold, could-not-fail brilliant)—unleashed the dogs of war.

    Which the MSM was all too eager to pursue. To wage. To run headlong over the cliff for.

    Yes, he done her wrong. He won the election. Honor meant that he had to be dealt with. (Honor also meant that the Electoral College has to be dealt with. Think of the Democratic Party as the Confederacy and you won’t be far off….)

    So why did they do it? All the archetypes were in place. PLUS, they smelled blood. They were valiantly fighting for justice against a usurper. They were defending their candidate’s honor.

    Hillary, in other words, was—yes!—Marianne (the personification of the “wave of the future”) at the barricades. And the media were her eager defenders. They would fight for her. They would be victorious for her. (And they would die for her.)

    No-Pasaran!!! (Oops, wrong campaign…)

    But still, why did they do it?

    Because, convinced that they were all powerful—and utterly righteous—they could. They had that power—no joking—and they were arrogant to the hilt.

    …and they almost pulled it off.

    They may yet do so.

  19. neo: Good run-down, particularly the Watergate angle.

    Geez. How many 70/80s political thriller movies pivoted on getting the story to the newspapers. I can think of two immediately: “3 Days of the Condor” and “Firestarter.”

  20. Seems to me a prime motive was distracting the LIVs from the crimes of hrc, bho, and their various henchmen Comey, Lynch, Clapper, Brennan, and the usual suspects. How many are familiar with Uranium One? How many know the Clinton campaign was involved in the creation of the Steele dossier? And the beat goes on.

  21. I would add another: this was a coordinated disinformation campaign by former Obama IC members who have installed themselves in the press; precisely what the Church Committee warned us against (cf. Operation Mockingbird).

  22. I’m willing to give a microscopic amount of slack to journalists because big insiders like Comey and Brennan were so adamant in their attacks on Trump, while winking they knew the Big Secrets of Trump’s guilt, but alas could not reveal said secrets directly because of their oaths of service.

    I confess these insiders gave me doubts. How could they, I thought to myself, make such absolute accusations unless they really had damning secret information?

    Turns out it was pretty easy. Just as it was no biggie for Christine Blasey Ford and Jussy Smollett to out-and-out lie about other matters of national consequence.

  23. The only piece I think you are missing (although you sidle right up to it) is the role of social media in the Press’ delusions.

    Social media has done many things, most of them bad, but it has definitively taught the MSM how to affect a mob mentality when garnering support for a straw-man position. Political scandals are nothing new, and I would warrant that at least some had the weight of this story (foreign actors, spies, intra-government officials willing to endorse, etc). 20, 40, 80, or 150 years ago, so many journalists from so many media companies wouldn’t have bought into the story, though, without more evidence.

    Today’s journalists were swept up in the “this is cool; you’re a Trumptard if you don’t believe” world of social media. Whatever reasoning faculties they may have been taught went right out the window when faced with the choice of joining their compatriots online in having the inside scoop on reality against a character they had been told to hate.

    Social media was the oil on the water waiting for a match. We have never seen its like.

  24. I would add to Neo’s number three – in addition to not thinking of the future, they are utterly unaware of the past.

    “To forget your past is to remain forever a child.”

  25. (4) They can and likely will deflect the blow back. Why? Because the GOPe hasn’t the will, spine, or team to capitalize on the scandal effectively. It’s barely possible that that enough independents to matter won’t need a big spin campaign to be disgusted at the media and the Dems.

    (5) Imagine if Trump had fired Rosenstein and Mueller some time ago. Jackpot! If he is the major hot-head that he appears to be, it would have been the obvious outcome. A few people who claim to know him well say that he is very subdued and thoughtful in private. Which is the spin or posture and which is the reality?

    (7) While an excellent point, this one is more of a perfect storm of opportunism, rather than a real explanation for: why Russia? (or similar)
    _____

    It is important to recognize that while team Obama was unsuccessful in getting Hillary elected, they and the upper echelon of the FBI, DOJ, and probably some hidden intelligence people were successful in getting rid of Gen. Flynn. Was hero NSA head Mike Rodgers forced out? And a small group of Trump aids, such as Rodger Stone and Michael Cohen were trashed.

    Neo had made the following excellent point before: who wants to stick their neck out and work for Trump now, and maybe have their life destroyed?

    I suspect that the brains were deeply embedded in gov. while the media, maybe in its entirety, were the “useful idiots.”

    See Art Deco and the Ben Rhodes quote.
    _____

    We all know how these long open ended investigations can end up with process crimes and convictions. But guys like Michael Cohen were a bit weird and dirty. So it’s even better when an investigator can go beyond “he lied to the FBI” and say “he committed bank fraud.” If Trump was a hot-headed chump and a dummy, he might have gone down with Cohen on that one.
    _____

    Finally, team Obama opened the investigation to use the NSA database against Trump long before the election. They only needed a fig leaf to support it if Hillary won, but they needed a more serious cover story if Hillary lost.

    Trump made the mistake of including Carter Page on their team in a minor way, and this was a gift from God for team Obama. Page had already done the correct thing and told the FBI that he believed he was being prepped for recruitment by the Russian FSB. Page and Russian spying was the excuse they needed to explain the surveillance that had already been underway.

  26. I believe that most of the press believed too many things about Trump that had circulated for years and they were confident that if he had a determined investigation convened against him that wrongdoing sufficient to chase him from office would be discovered.

    Most of the media suffer from an elite complex. If you don’t do things right, you must be bad. If you’re bad, you don’t deserve due process. If you order your steaks well done with ketchup, you definitely do not deserve due process.

    The man built a real estate empire after being nearly bankrupt more than once, and then he finds his stride as a reality TV star, but he’s an idiot. Right. I could go on, but you get the point.

  27. One other thing about Watergate is that it validated or normalised using anonymous sources with Deep Throat. In my opinion, that is the element which has really damaged the modern press. It has allowed the press to be “played” by sources with their own agenda.

    Even if the press hated Trump and were out to get him, if they had stuck to reporting with named sources, they would have come out of this fiasco in much better shape.

  28. Trump has completely destroyed the credibility of the MSM.

    Cornhead: Maybe for those paying attention. But we happy few had already reached that conclusion.

    I’d love to be wrong, but my guess is the Mueller Report doesn’t change much for Democrats who just know Trump is a sleaze out to destroy everything and low-information undecideds who suspect where there is smoke, there is fire.

  29. Creative and thoughtful list of possible contributors to the behavior of the media! And I agree that the allure of a return to Watergate (like a return to Camelot) was much too tempting for them. But there was an 8th option missing from your fine list, and that was the “All of the above” option!

  30. Obviously it was that second scoop of ice cream that started it all. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

  31. An irony not mentioned is that the “Dossier” IS a piece of Russian disinformation. The whole “collusion” story was a GRU operation using Hillary, the DNC ,and the press as useful idiots.

  32. How about that Michael Avenatti indictment? A $20M extortion scheme. How many dozens of appearances did he make on CNN and TV in general?

    Where are we now? Hands up don’t shoot, Covington High, Smollett, Brennan-Rosenstein-Mueller et. al., and Michael Avenatti!

  33. All of the above – actually. Aspiring journos were drunk on Watergate, and the fascinating example of bringing down a president! Eleventy!!! Instead of being a rather blue-collar trade starting with an apprenticeship doing dull stuff like reporting on city council meetings, and the opening of a new park pavilion, or a couple of neighbors with a grudge having their grudge explode into bloodshed … these J-school graduates were deluded into thinking they were destined for higher things.
    So sorry.
    Well, I’m not. (And I actually indulged in the practice of local reportage, but it was for various in-house military organs, so I suppose that is more along the lines of public relations — a judgement which is pretty fair. But I know the basics of how the sausage is made, thank you, Defense Information School.)
    I can hardly wait until bystanders began booing and barracking CNN reporters trying to do a standup in a public place. (In this instance ‘barracking’ means shouting abusive disagreement. Obscure reference, I know. But I actually had an education in the English language before I started inflicting journalism and blogging on the general public.)

  34. Russiagate is Watergate, but for Obama! He antagonize the FBI against an opponent of his political party.

  35. (8) They’re not that bright.

    Put Russiagate to the side, how did the media get sucked in on WMD in Iraq? Why did no one in the media point out the polls which showed Hillary was VERY unpopular with the public in 2016 and maybe the Democrats ought to run someone else? Why did they uncritically accept the accusations against Brett Kavanaugh when the woman making them couldn’t even be sure about WHAT YEAR they supposedly happened?

    The growth of the information economy had created literally millions of people who think they either are intellectual elites or are just like people who are intellectual elites. But actual intellectual elites become that by…

    A. Being very smart.

    B. Working very hard to educate themselves and discipline their minds.

    We now have a buttload of folks with average and below intelligence who think spending all day online makes them “intellectual.” And that includes reporters, especially ones on television who prosper more because they’re good on TV than good at reporting.

    I’ve been struck by how many people I’ve seen implying or flatly stating that Barr is covering something up without realizing the obvious fact that if something is being covered up now, Bob Mueller and his staff MUST be a part of it. This is a basic bit of simple reasoning that simply does not occur to these people because they simply aren’t that smart.

    Mike

  36. Wow, Watergate as a current press failure because of prior success, very insightful.
    1-6, all true to a large or very large extent.
    Snow – 8?) J-schools teach the news job is not news, it is social activism for the good cause, to make the world a better place. Grand “agents of change”.
    Geoffrey B – 9?) media know there will be no major consequence
    Barry – 10?) HR Clinton, media fighting FOR HER.
    But I think,
    10b) HRC – her crimes, covered up by FBI & DOJ — the cover up of HRC crimes needed to be covered up.

    Finally, the polarization of America. Brought by
    11) Dem academia, discriminating against Reps in hiring professors. This college discrimination, an “open secret” accepted (spinelessly?) by Reps, has graduated to verbal demonization, and verbal rage, and some cases of mild violence.
    Humans like to hate — Germans hated Jews, Dems today hate Reps. More similar to peasant Cambodians hating the educated Cambodians in the Killing Fields (genocide brought by commies enabled by Dem surrender in Vietnam).

    Because of 11, the college educated indoctrinated will not learn any lessons, will not apologize. Might stop this attack, but will not stop attacking Reps.

    Colleges must be forced to hire Reps.

  37. Great comments, Mike K. I was never a real fan of Nixon and in contrast to LBJ (or Obama or Clinton, perhaps even Bush), he was far too close to knowing what was happening so could be unfairly persecuted (which he was, see “It Didn’t Start With Watergate” by Victor Lasky).

    Since Cronkite, the press has become more and more open in it’s opinions and how it intended and intends to manipulate the rubes. I’m really hoping for a comeuppance… ah, dreams.

  38. I browsed through the comments, and did not see my opinion stated so here goes (not a frequent commenter)

    I think you are giving a pass to the media that they do not deserve
    1) Watergate was handed to them on a silver platter by a disgruntled agent. The press has been dining out on it like it’s some kind of triumph for them, for decades.

    2) By saying that they were inspired by Watergate, you are giving them a pass and assuming they had higher aims and aspirations. In reality, they colluded with the dems and governmental agencies to create this entire episode out of whole cloth with the designs to bring down non swamp creature Trump. If all they cared about was exposing the truth, they had scandals aplenty before with Clinton and others. They could not care less about those on their own side breaking the law.

  39. Years ago I saw a program that interviewed budding young reporters and asked about why they wanted to go into the business. They all said they wanted to make a difference, or words to that effect. Not a single one said they wanted to report the news. They aren’t reporters anymore, they are advocates for a cause.

  40. Pingback:Russiagate Explodes in Faces …. Will There be Ramifications With All the Fallout? | The Universal Spectator

  41. As far as I’m concerned, the media have killed themselves off. They are dead to me.

    Why did they do it? As a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democrat Party, THEY HAD TO.

  42. You leave out one of the major Watergate factors. Nixon stood in the way of Washington’s desire to forfeit the Vietnam war. The press and the Dems had already managed to saddle him with blame for the war; but after the withdrawal of US ground troops and the bloody repulse of Hanoi’s 1982 Easter offensive, there was a chance he would be able to pull some kind of Korean truce out of it. Striking him down left Congress free to abandon Saigon, and they lost no time doing so. The obvious contemporary parallel is the Obama Democrats’ wish to cut loose from Israel and align the US with Iran.

  43. The fundamental problem is that it is all click-bait now. The economics of the national newspaper/network business are such that each piece of content must attract its own readers/viewers, that media must super-serve their core audiences, and that content providers must become “brands.” None of this allows for sober reflection or open-mindedness. Hard to imagine where it will end…

  44. Very astute of you to finger Watergate as the main culprit here. At that time journalists became crusaders, and in the intervening decades, we’ve seen hero journalism consume the craft. Don’t know for sure, but reporters then seemed more knowledgeable about the world and less consumed with a hard left ideology–or at least they knew enough not to be so overt about it and there seemed to be some standards. Reporters now seem to have absorbed leftism and live in a cloistered echo chamber, so they don’t even know how how out-of-step their views are with those of mainstream Americans–they’re just desperate to please each other and be accepted by the hive. Dangerous to have them as the ones holding the microphone.

  45. These are the same people who were certain Hillary would win until around 10 PM on election night 2016. We saw their stunned faces. But they know they are too smart to be wrong about such an important thing, politics, their bread and butter. So they were certain Donald Trump had somehow won by unfair means and this investigation was going to provide proof they weren’t stupid. It was the only bet they had and they put everything on it.

  46. Here’s another thing: journalists are mostly extremely ill informed but like to think they are wildly well informed.

    A million years ago, I spent some time in Israel. I found a great bar that served excellent cheeseburgers. It was close to an office building that house NUMEROUS press agencies from around the world. So I met a ton of journalists at that bar. And what I learned was: The Middle East was pretty much covered by journalists sitting on their collective a$$e$, liquored up, in the relative comfort of a fairly Westernized City. Few knew Hebrew, virtually none knew Arabic, most relied on spurious sources, and all genuinely thought they were good journalists and would break the next big story.

    I figured that they were probably very representative of the profession.

    Time has shown me that my assumption was pretty much dead on.

    A small handful are genuine journalists trying to accurately cover the news and events. A very small handful.

  47. c’mon, one of you will come up with a good sounding natural excuse that ignores the games players and the up top who set tone, give orders, etc..

    funny, but the SAME reasons got Gillette in trouble, and more…

    The media are still feeling the impact of an executive order signed in 1917 that created ‘the nation’s first ministry of information’
    Within a week of Congress declaring war, on April 13, 1917, Wilson issued an executive order creating a new federal agency that would put the government in the business of actively shaping press coverage.

    From the start, the CPI was “a veritable magnet” for political progressives of all stripes – intellectuals, muckrakers, even some socialists – all sharing a sense of the threat to democracy posed by German militarism. Idealistic journalists like S.S. McClure and Ida Tarbell signed on, joining others who shared their belief in Wilson’s crusade to make the world safe for democracy.

    and many more, we never include in our reasoning, cause we cant add what we dont know, and it never ceases to amaze me that not knowing, NEVER stops an explanation!!!

    One of the young recruits was Edward L. Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud and a pioneer in theorizing about human thoughts and emotions.

    “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society,” Bernays wrote a few years after the war. “Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.”

    yet, now we want a natural reason why the press did X

    they did X cause long ago, they stopped doing press and do propaganda
    and only now are you noticing that the level of the latter is greater than the former because its less targeted at you as much..

    All news is lies and all propaganda is disguised as news.
    Willi Munzenberg

    said by the man who changed how YOU think whether you know it or not, whether you care or not, whether you believe or not… there was no way for him not to given what he did, and what his trust put together

    the company’s 1926 holdings as follows:

    Two daily papers in Germany with mass circulations, Berlin am Morgen and Welt am Abend; the Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung, a weekly with a circulation of one million, the Communist counterpart of Life; a series of other publications, including technical magazines for photographers, radio amateurs, etc., all with an indirect Communist slant.

    In Japan, to quote a remote country as an example, the Trust directly or indirectly controlled nineteen magazines and newspapers. It also financed Communist avant-garde plays, which were in great vogue at the time. Finally the Trust was also the producer of some of the best films by Eisenstein and Pudovkin that came out of Russia . . . Within a few years, the Munzenberg Trust had progressed from soup-kitchens for starving children to the launching of Storm over Asia.

    While Gramsci was in prison theorizing about cultural hegemony, Munzenberg was out there building it. His campaigns broke down the artificial barriers between muckraking journalism and entertainment, public relations and politics, advocacy work and mass organizing.

    His specialty was the covert influence campaign.

    -=-=-=-=-

    So why did the press ‘fall’ for it?
    they didn’t… whether it was true or not was and is irrelevant…
    what was important was no one knew or could assert otherwise
    Therefore, they had a very long time to put ideas in heads
    ideas which are wrong, but are harder to remove than to make
    Do you think they will be any more curious as to what is right or wrong than here?

    Munzenberg firmly believed that atrocity porn had political uses.
    [ask Kim Phuc]

    Goebbels regarded him as a nemesis but learned the dark arts of media strategy by watching him work. In fact, the two men served together in the Reichstag during the Weimar Republic, Munzenberg for the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and Goebbels for the Nationalist Socialist Party of Germany (NSDAP).

    But Goebbels didnt come to the USA… did he?

    The spy who is said to have inspired ‘Casablanca’

    He was a good-looking, seductively charming opportunist of James Bond savoir faire and adaptability, who was equally at ease among champagne socialists, left-wing intellectuals, publishers and film-makers on both sides of the Atlantic.

    During a career of conspicuousness and longevity unusual in his line of work he was probably the most influential communist propagandist in western Europe and the US from the late 1930s until the worst of the cold war.

  48. The driving force behind all this: the perception that, if the nation elected a “barbarian” like Trump and he was successful, the value of their credentials – their resumes – their reputations – their elitist worldview – would greatly diminish.

    And they can’t handle the idea, that they will not be allowed to impose their busybody Utopia upon us all … along with the primal fear that their mellows now might be harshed by credible criticism of their thinking, by their “commoner” neighbors.

  49. Isolden:

    I’m not sure who you were addressing when you wrote, “By saying that they were inspired by Watergate, you are giving them a pass and assuming they had higher aims and aspirations.”

    I didn’t say they were inspired by Watergate. I don’t use that word. I wrote that it was a “triumph for the press” and that “the press also became heroes, not only in their own eyes but generally,” and that a movie was made with one handsome and one popular actor. None of that says they had higher aims and aspirations. I also said one of their motives was hatred of Nixon.

    Not especially high-minded, although I assume many of them thought it was high-minded. I imagine some felt they were saving the republic from a president bent on using the FBI and IRS to hurt his enemies, and there was at least some evidence for that at the time.

  50. the perception that, if the nation elected a “barbarian” like Trump and he was successful, the value of their credentials – their resumes – their reputations – their elitist worldview – would greatly diminish.

    Good point. And we might find out just how incompetent they are.

  51. The “press” takes orders and Obeys Them. The free press outlined in history for the USA was the ability to print things. REmember.

    Not a bunch of minority aristocrats and elitists calling themselves journalists. Oops, permanent mistake there, AMerica.

  52. Watergate was just Russian gate that succeeded against Nixon. I am surprised people still, at this late stage, can’t or won’t see it.

  53. Your #7 is just a journalistic form of Selma envy, which is the root cause of a lot of the ills in academia and upper/upper middle class society. Teens are being taught that America is sexist and racist, so they and their teachers can validate themselves by being “woke” and by finding and wailing about ever smaller microaggressions. And since the only history they’re learning is the Zinn version of history, they’re not exposed to any other way of serving their fellow man other than by being SJWs.

  54. The free press started disappearing the moment when credentials and other license limitations were put on journalism and other such careers.

    When you need somebody’s approval to get a “press” privilege… your country doesn’t have a free press, just an elite calling itself the press.

  55. Watergate was just Russian gate that succeeded against Nixon

    Alger Hiss’s revenge. A TV commentator actually had Hiss on after Watergate to piss on Nixon’s grave,

  56. I think you are correct about teh media and Watergate–the current crew regret they ween’t part of it and have been trying to vicariously reproduce it for years, and in Trump and Russiagate they thought they finally had it.

    Similar to how the SJWs are sorry to have not been at the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, AL in 1965, and have been trying for years to somehow capture the rush of being moral and worthy.

    For the media it has always been 1973 and the Saturday Night Massacre. For the SJWs it is always 1965 in Selma.

  57. This witch hunt was a distraction. Period. Some of the drive by media may have been motivated by thenewneo points, but I suspect the vast majority were motivated by their paymasters. It was smoke and mirrors to camouflage the bho, hrc collusion to overthrow an election. You give them too much credit if you believe they are indepent actors. They are not, they are bought and paid. Whores in other words.

  58. While Neo lists contributing factors, I think she overlooks the painful but inescapable bottom line fact: The press is socialist, pro-Democrat, and is a major force seeking the Wilsonian destruction of the Constitution in order to achieve the “fairness” of “philosopher kings’ ” dictatorial rule from Washington.
    It is past time for us to know our enemies, who press vigorously in their effort to subjugate us, to force us to obey. We must strike back hardest, and quickly, or our wonderful country is doomed.

  59. I’m with the “all of the above” crew.
    Good comments here, and food for thought from Artfldgr on the antiquity of the microbes (to quote an old joke).

    * * *

    Lee on March 25, 2019 at 8:13 pm at 8:13 pm said:
    Here’s another thing: journalists are mostly extremely ill informed but like to think they are wildly well informed.

    A small handful are genuine journalists trying to accurately cover the news and events. A very small handful.

    * * *
    During and after the Vietnam War I heard much the same thing said about the “journalists” then. Seems to be a pattern there.

  60. My favorite of the many good points made here, because they are succinct and accurate.

    Third runner up for most probable.
    Bandit on March 25, 2019 at 8:40 pm at 8:40 pm said:
    Because they thought they could overturn the election and get away with it –

    Second runner up for most provocative.
    Sam L. on March 25, 2019 at 7:19 pm at 7:19 pm said:
    As a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democrat Party, THEY HAD TO.

    Winner for most compelling.
    ken on March 25, 2019 at 5:47 pm at 5:47 pm said:
    Obviously it was that second scoop of ice cream that started it all. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

    * * *
    Seriously, ken hits on a point that should have tipped off every journalist that Taibibi chastised, because I think it certainly was eye-opening for me*: the degree to which the press hyperventilated about random, inconsequential, normal behavior, just because Donald Trump did it.

    * I think we could call it the Ice Cream Scoop syndrome.

  61. Schmoozing along with some excerpts from some of the articles Neo linked, and some others from further down the trail.

    * *
    I was mostly cheered by Morgan’s tirade, but he gets a few things wrong, one of which has implications for “why the press did it” that might possibly, in a saner situation, have justified their efforts to some degree.

    “Saner” meaning one in which the affair was one of troubling, independent and non-partisan, allegations with credible proof of facts behind them, rather than a put-up hit-job by the top intelligence and law enforcement agencies of the world against their favored candidate’s rival.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6847671/PIERS-MORGAN-Mueller-report-shows-collusion-disgraceful-hoax.html
    “What the hell were all these FBI agents, who took an oath to serve the President, doing by plotting against him in such a disgraceful way?”
    * * *
    Their oath is to the country and the Constitution, not to the President (or Congress or Supreme Court). However, they did WORK for the President, and should have shown some deference to that responsibility.
    Or, at the very least, they should have quit working for the FORMER President once he was replaced.

  62. Another error, in an otherwise excellent post, because these ideal journalists either never existed, or were such a fleeting and circumscribed group that they made no impact on anything other than the public’s imagination.

    https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-most-epic-media-failure-in-us-history/
    “How did the institution of American journalism fail so utterly to get it right? That used to be a tremendous source of pride for journalists. They felt a great weight of responsibility to the public to carefully ascertain the facts of a story and report those facts in a comprehensive and comprehensible manner. Analysis was supposed to be as objective as possible with speculation absent or kept to an absolute minimum.

    What we’ve seen in the collusion story is what happens when freedom is casually and unconscionably abused. Freedom of the press is guaranteed and for 230 years, the press has — mostly — used that freedom responsibly.

    That freedom was used “responsibly” for probably less than the first nanosecond after the Bill of Rights was approved by the States.
    And in the present case, there was nothing casual about the abuse (other than it being endemic in everything published by the main stream press), but it was certainly unconscionable, because the Left has no conscience.

  63. From the above-cited post, a discussion on an attempt to make a silk purse out of the sow’s ear.

    https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-most-epic-media-failure-in-us-history/#comment-4395052569

    starlord
    I’m not holding my breath for any self-examination. The current state of network journalism amounts to unbridled and unrestrained partisanship, supplemented by a supreme sense of intellectual superiority. Lying is an important part of their reportoire – necessary to save the country from the unenlightened dolts that make up so much of the population.

    * *
    CynicalIdealist (to starlord)
    Hmmm, as far as media failures go I’d put this on about the same level as the general over-the-top drumbeat for the invasion of Iraq that went on in the media under the Bush presidency

    to a large extent journalists can only write stories based on what the available facts seem to be, if there’s disinfo out there that they don’t have the expertise to evaluate then reporting as objectively as possible is only the BEST case scenario, as we can now see pretty much EVERYONE fell down on that – just like the WMD stuff back in 2004

    As far as Trump goes, that turned out to be an awful LOT of smoke – enough to make the sky turn black for hundreds of miles in every direction – with no actual fire to speak of (!!!!!) – it would seem to be miracle of nature IMHO, but a miracle is still a miracle and that should be that

    I’m glad that Muller finally delivered his report – not enough evidence to prove obstruction OR coordination – and hope now things can finally move forward.

    * *
    Terrence Barnes (to CynicalIdealist)
    I appreciate your balanced/fair approach.. but I think in this instance it doesn’t quite fit for ALL the journalists. I read AP stories where literally one sentence was a fact and the rest was the talking points about Trump collusion posed as ‘it is likely that’. When a ‘story’ contains one sentence that is something like ‘a report is coming out next week’, and then the rest of the 10 paragraphs is given over to editorializing and repeating talking points, it belongs in the opinion section, not the news section.

    I’ve seen too many instances of this in the last 2 years to think its accidental or just a miss. To be fair, I’ve read stories from journalists on both the left and the right that are fair (this is more weighted right.. but some left leaning journalists have been fair.. so kudos to them). But it seems like the left leaning sources have been overwhelmingly overrun by the ‘editorial as news’ way of doing things. And CNN is right up there regarding this.

    I wish this wasn’t so.. but it is.

  64. I will at least credit USA Today with pubishing articles on both sides of the divide (hurray for Glenn Reynolds!), but there is no doubt where their Editorial heart lies.

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/03/24/mueller-report-mystifying-but-not-because-false-editorials-debates/3261187002/
    The Editorial Board, USA TODAY Published 7:03 p.m. ET March 24, 2019 | Updated 7:26 p.m. ET March 24, 2019
    Why did Donald Trump keep trashing, and aides keep lying about, a Russian interference inquiry that didn’t warrant concealment?: Our view
    “The finding that Donald Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign didn’t conspire with the Russian government is somewhat mystifying.

    Not because it cannot be accepted as true. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s reputation for excellence, diligence and thoroughness underscores how the finding is credible and ought to be welcomed.

    No, it mystifies because Trump could have sat quietly waiting for the truth to emerge. The president’s underlings could have honestly answered questions by the FBI and lawmakers. But this didn’t happen.

    The president spent nearly two years trashing an inquiry that ultimately cleared him and his campaign of criminally conspiring with Russia, and several former aides are now convicted felons for lying under oath — apparently about something that didn’t warrant concealment. Some evidently lied out of a misbegotten, twisted sense of loyalty that only made matters worse. ”

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/03/25/trump-russia-questions-unanswered-after-mueller-report-barr-letter-column/3264104002/
    Tom Nichols, Opinion columnist Published 4:00 a.m. ET March 25, 2019
    Trump’s exoneration may rest entirely on Mueller’s caution and prudence, the very qualities that kept his investigation from turning into a witch hunt.

    “This, however, is an odd finding and one that is difficult to square with how many people are in legal trouble for lying about this very issue. If there was no canoodling with the Russians, why was there so much lying? How did Mueller manage to unravel what looks like a tangle of deceptions about Russia — and then reach a conclusion that there was no collusion with the Russians?

    Without seeing the actual Mueller report, it seems at this point that there are three possibilities:”

  65. History repeats … first as tragedy, then as farce.

    –Karl Marx

    Full marks for Charlie!

  66. The assumption among the news media and Democratic leaders was that, entirely apart from the Russian collusion hoax, Trump is an obvious crook whose fundamental chicanery in business would be easily exposed by Mueller and his team of subpoena-wielding angry Democrats. It was further assumed that rather than face impeachment and removal, prosecution of himself and his family, and loss of his wealth, Trump would be forced to resign based on the Russian collusion claims in return for immunity on all charges for himself and his family.

    Now, instead of heading off in disgrace to exile at Mar-A-Largo, Trump is vindicated by the Mueller Report and poised for a series of major political victories. The excesses and abuses of Trump’s deep state enemies will suffer public scrutiny and potential prosecution, with few voices raised in their defense. If the economy continues to shine, Trump will be an odds-on favorite for re-election.

  67. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/legal-experts-interpret-the-mueller-report-summary.html

    MAR. 24, 2019
    Legal Experts Interpret the Mueller Report Summary
    By Matt Stieb

    Upon the publication of Attorney General William Barr’s summary of the Mueller report, a swirl of takes — from legally adroit to wildly speculative — began to envelop the news media and Twitter. President Trump, naturally, courted the simplest possible explanation, claiming that the synopsis was a “complete and total exoneration,” despite the following quote from the summary: “While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.’”

    Legal experts took more nuanced approaches to the summary, which stated that the Trump campaign did not coordinate with Russia, and that the Department of Justice would not charge the president with obstruction of justice.

    (Writing for the Atlantic, former federal prosecutor Ken White)
    “Trump’s triumphant supporters notwithstanding, we don’t yet know what that means. When prosecutors say that an investigation “did not establish” something, that doesn’t mean that they concluded it didn’t happen, or even that they don’t believe it happened. It means that the investigation didn’t produce enough information to prove that it happened. Without seeing Mueller’s full report, we don’t know whether this is a firm conclusion about lack of coordination or a frank admission of insufficient evidence. The difference is meaningful, both as a matter of history and because it might determine how much further Democrats in Congress are willing to push committee investigations of the matter.”
    ..
    Writing in the New York Times, Georgetown law professor Neal Katyal — who drafted the Special Counsel regulations that led to the Mueller appointment — finds that Attorney General Bill Barr presented the public with flawed reasoning for clearing the president of obstruction of justice.

    A panel at Lawfare provided an extensive breakdown of the Attorney General’s summary, including a case for how gaps in the summary will continue to bother the president:
    ..
    A four-page summary cannot fully represent an investigation that took nearly two years and featured almost 500 witnesses. Joyce Alene, a law professor at the University of Alabama and a former U.S. Attorney, explains that if Trump wants to validate his (bogus) claim of “total exoneration,” he should vouch for the full release of the report: [more on this below]
    ..
    Regardless of What Is in the Full Report, It’s Time to (Tentatively) Accept the Letdown.
    ..
    Speaking with Politico, Notre Dame law professor Jimmy Gurulé — who was Assistant Attorney General for George H.W. Bush under Attorney General William Barr — says that Mueller fell short of the Special Counsel’s mandate:

    There’s a Sense of Relief Somewhere in the Report.
    Picking up on Rosenzweig’s “small comfort” observation, University of Southern California law professor Orin Kerr posits that it’s a good thing that the sitting president of the United States did not engage in a conspiracy with a hostile foreign power.
    The panel over at Lawfare concurs: “After as thorough an investigation as the United States government is capable of conducting, prosecutors couldn’t find any actual agreement — “tacit or express” — on the part of anyone associated with the Trump campaign to work with the Russians to undermine the U.S. election. Every American should be cheered by that conclusion; the ramifications of any alternative are difficult to contemplate.”

    “Joyce Alene, a law professor at the University of Alabama and a former U.S. Attorney, explains that if Trump wants to validate his (bogus) claim of “total exoneration,” he should vouch for the full release of the report:”

    This legal “expert” ought to know better than to keep panhandling with the same charge I see over and over again in comments by non-lawyers: Barr has to release the entire unredacted report or we’ll never be satisfied!

    She ought to know better, because Barr’s summary letter explicitly states that he will release everything that he can consistent with existing law about the protection of privacy for unindicted and very probably totally innocent people.

    This demand is an attempt to deliberately manipulate public opinion against the President, and is indefensible for any legal “expert” to advance.

  68. First prize for the “Never Say Die” award, Clueless division.

    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/03/24/cnns_brian_stelter_on_mueller_coverage_speculation_has_value_too.html

    CNN’s Brian Stelter on Mueller Coverage: “The Press Is Just Following A Trail That Trump Created”
    Posted By Tim Hains
    On Date March 24, 2019

    Partisans on the right are already claiming the end of the Mueller probe vindicates all of their prior positions. They are saying the media, the evil media, was wrong all along.

    Donald Trump Jr. is tweeting out messages like this: “#CollusionTruthers.” Accusing the press of pushing a narrative against his dad. Junior is making a rookie mistake. Mueller’s assignment was to get to the truth about Russian interference.

    Now, did many commentators and Democratic politicians allege collusion? Yes.

    Did many journalists ask about it? Yes.

    There is a giant difference between asking and telling. The job of the nation’s news media is to ask, to question all sides to scrutinize and report on opposing points of view and only take the side of truth and decency.

    Obviously, some opinion columnists and point-of-view news outlets have invested in an anti-Trump narrative. Others, like Watters, have promoted a pro-Trump narrative. That is our wild media world. But the president’s kids and friends on Fox should be able to tell the difference between agenda-driven columnists and journalists trying to report. There is a big difference. There is difference between news and opinion.

    I realize it can be hard to tune out all of the noise and just tune in to the news these days. If I had to pick speculation or solid reporting, I would pick solid reporting in a second. I bet you would too. Reporting is what adds the most value. Finding out something new, putting out new information into the world is the best feeling in journalism. It is the greatest value add. Hundreds of journalists have been trying to solve pieces of this Trump-Russia puzzle.

    But here’s the thing — Speculation actually has value too. It helps open our eyes and our minds to what’s possible.

  69. My personal favorite today.

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/03/25/barrs-letter-trump-right-mueller-report-witch-hunt-talker/3266591002/
    Call it what it was: A witch hunt
    By Tim Young

    Special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed on May 17, 2017, by then-acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump” and “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”

    Those orders meant that the special counsel’s office was tasked to find Russian collusion with the Trump campaign or anything else the investigators might come across while looking.

    To put the Mueller investigation into perspective: Imagine being pulled over for speeding, then held for 90 minutes because the police decided to search you for drugs. Even though you aren’t in the possession of drugs, the police bring in a drug-sniffing dog, remove you from your car, and then search your car even though the dog didn’t positively identify any drugs.

    That’s an incredibly unfair scenario, but it arose directly from your traffic stop, so they claim it’s OK.

    Now add to that traffic stop scenario that while searching your car, the police found your tax returns where you claimed you donated to charity last year, and they don’t believe that could possibly be true, so they launch an investigation into your tax returns. Oh, and by the way, you weren’t speeding — the police pulled you over because of a rumor that you were a speeder. If this happened to a friend or a fellow American, you’d be enraged and want the police department and whoever made those initial claims investigated.

  70. Sarah Sanders for the win.
    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/03/25/sarah_sanders_vs_nbcs_guthrie_democrats_media_owe_trump_american_people_an_apology_for_mueller_distraction.html

    SAVANNAH GUTHRIE, NBC NEWS: Did Robert Mueller deserve better fom the president than this kind of language and behavior?

    SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Frankly I think the American people deserved better. They didn’t deserve for the election of this president to try to be taken down —

    GUTHRIE: Wait a minute, but the president’s rhetoric about a public servant doing a job.

    SANDERS: Are you kidding? The president’s rhetoric matches, they are literally, the media and Democrats have called the president an agent of a foreign government.

    GUTHRIE: Wait, wait, wait. But we’re talking about —

    SANDERS: That is an accusation equal to treason, which is punishable by death in this country.

  71. Greenwald is not everyone’s hero, but he was right on this one.

    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/03/25/glenn_greenwald_vs_michael_cay_johnston_on_trump_mueller_probe_saddest_media_spectacle_ive_ever_seen.html

    As congressional Democrats call on the Justice Department to release the full Mueller report, we speak to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists who have closely followed the probes into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election: Glenn Greenwald, a founding editor of The Intercept and a leading critic of the media coverage of alleged Russian collusion, and David Cay Johnston, formerly of The New York Times, now founder and editor of DCReport.org, who has written critically about Donald Trump for decades.

    Greenwald said no matter what how people try to move the goalposts the fact is, as ‘The New York Times’ Monday headline notes, Robert Mueller found no collusion between Trump and Russia. Greenwald said, “The whole thing was a scam and a fraud from the beginning.”

    “This is the saddest media spectacle I’ve ever seen, since I began practicing journalism in 2005,” Greenwald said. “And what makes it even sadder is to watch all of the people who vested their journalistic credibility into what proved to be a complete and total fraud and scam continue to try and cling to some vestige of credibility by continuing to spin conspiracy theories that are even more reckless and more unhinged than the ones to which we’ve been subjected for three years.”

    “The whole thing was a scam and a fraud from the beginning. And The New York Times headline today says that as clearly as it can: Robert Mueller finds no collusion between Trump and Russia. That was the focal point of the entire narrative, no matter how much people try and change the focus,” Greenwald said.

    “It’s time to stop these dangerous conspiracy theories that are ratcheting up tensions between the two most dangerous countries on the planet,” he said.

    Greenwald predicted that there would be no reckoning for the media like there was for press coverage of the runup to the Iraq War. Greenwald said MSNBC host Rachel Maddow is the Judy Miller of Russiagate, but instead of being fired she will continue at her $10 million a year perch.

    “It was just a conspiracy theory. Rachel Maddow, the most influential liberal TV host in the country, every single night misled millions of liberals into believing something that was totally false, and there will be no media consequences for it. And that is extremely grave and serious, no matter how much is true about how corrupt Donald Trump is in his financial dealings or any of the other stuff that people are now trying to deflect our attention onto,” Greenwald lamented.

    Greenwald also said it is complete idiocy to say Trump is a Russian stooge because of all the actions he has taken that are adverse and belligerent to the Russians.

    “How can you say Donald Trump is a stooge of the Kremlin when he’s right now trying to remove one of Vladimir Putin’s client regime states in Venezuela? Or when he’s trying to bully Angela Merkel out of buying Russian natural gas, probably the thing that’s most important to the Russian economy? Or when he sold lethal arms to the Ukrainians, something Obama refused to do on the grounds that it would be provocative to Russia? Or when he bombed Putin’s client state in Syria?” Greenwald asked.

    “Over and over, the Trump administration has taken actions far more adverse and aggressive and belligerent to the Russians than the Obama administration did,”he said. “That’s why this whole narrative that Trump all along was being blackmailed by Putin, that he’s an asset of Russian intelligence, this is idiocy. It is completely irrational. It is contrary to all facts.”

    “Greenwald predicted that there would be no reckoning for the media like there was for press coverage of the runup to the Iraq War.”

    That’s because, after Bush started looking too good to the public, the Left decided they were against the war after all, and the Dems pretended they had been against it all along, so the reporters who thought they were trotting out the party line when they wrote their stories had to be thrown under the bus after the narrative changed.

    Kind of reminds you of the Communist party in Americal getting whiplash when Stalin repudiated his peace treaty with Hitler and everybody had to instantly change talking points.

  72. Another piece of Greenwald’s answer to the Democrats’ “but but but” complaints.

    “he second point, this idea that, “Oh, we haven’t heard from Robert Mueller yet, we’ve only heard Bill Barr’s summary of him,” yes, that’s true. But Bill Barr has been friends with Robert Mueller for 30 years. They come from the same Republican circles in the Department of Justice. They both worked together at the Bush Justice Department, the Bush 41 Justice Department. All we heard for 20 months is that Robert Mueller is a man of the greatest integrity and patriotism. The idea, the very idea—just think about this—that he would allow Bill Barr to run around making false and misleading distortions about what the Mueller team found, and not one person on the Mueller team, including Bob Mueller himself, would stand up and say, “Wait a minute, he is distorting what our findings was,” that is laughable. That’s exactly the kind of conspiracy theories that led to this entire mess in the first place, and we should no longer tolerate this.”

  73. Greenwald again. (I don’t particularly agree on the “most corrupt” charge, but he is right that the “thriller story” prevented any time being spent on it.
    Hmm.
    Maybe Trump deliberately set up an investigation into something he absolutely KNEW he was not guilty of…..

    “Secondly, let me say, as well, that I believe that Donald Trump is one of the most corrupt people ever to occupy the White House. I am certain that he’s guilty of all kinds of crimes—war crimes as president, financial crimes as a business person. One of the reason why those of us who were so angry about this obsession on Russia and collusion, aside from the fact that it was so dangerous to ratchet up tensions between two nuclear-armed powers this way instead of trying to forge a peace between these two countries, is precisely because it took the oxygen away from all of the things that the Trump administration is doing that is so damaging, in lieu of this idiotic, moronic, Tom Clancy-type espionage thriller, where we were talking about Putin blackmailing Donald Trump with pee-pee tapes and Donald Trump being a Russian agent since 1987, which was a cover story that was on New York magazine, that Chris Hayes put on MSNBC. Just all kinds of moronic conspiracies, that we love to mock other countries’ medias for circulating and disseminating, drowned out our airwaves and our discourse for three years, preventing us from focusing on the real, substantive damage that the Trump administration is doing and that Donald Trump’s corruption entails.”

  74. PS if you are a Never Trumper, Johnson and Greenwald don’t like him either, even though Greenwald admits the Russiagate investigation was a bust, and they will give you good value for your time if you read the entire very long interview.
    But neither of them understands why Trump won the election.

    For a bonus, you get Greenwald commenting on Noam Chomsky about election interference in general around the world, and especially by the US; and why President’s shouldn’t be mean to people who publish top secret documents.

  75. Reines makes a pretty good case, if you are one of the people who never read anything except what was published by the MSM. Hemingway lists (prior to the excerpt) the people who were publishing the “alternative facts” of the investigation that turned out to be true.

    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/03/24/mollie_hemingway_vs_philippe_reines_on_mueller_its_important_to_understand_philippe_its_over.html

    HEMINGWAY: I think it’s important to understand, Philippe, it’s over

    REINES: You saying it on FOX doesn’t make it so. He’s under investigation by 17 other entities including the Southern District of New York.

    HEMINGWAY: It is kind of important to just accept reality right now. We weren’t fed a theory he was being investigated for his business dealings by people who opposed him politically. We weren’t fed a theory that he was surrounded by people who are bad.

    REINES: He was investigated by the House Intelligence Committee because Devin Nunes whitewashed it.

    HEMINGWAY: We were told he was a traitor who had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. If that were true, it wouldn’t just be something you put in a report, there would be dozens of indictments.

    REINES: There have been dozens of indictments. 34 people have been indicted for almost 200 different crimes.

    HEMINGWAY: As you know, not a single indictment had to do with the animated theory that we had a traitor colluding with Russia to steal this election…

    There are two media issues at play here. To move to obstruction raises the issue. When you saw the coverage of Donald Trump saying there is no collusion. People would say it sounds like he is obstructing justice. The options are either that he was a traitor who was obstructing justice or that he was an innocent man who was proclaiming his innocence.

    REINES: An innocent man who acts innocently who does not fire people and refuse to be interviewed.

    HEMINGWAY: The other issue is transparency, and people have been demanding transparency about all sorts of this investigation. Not just this final report.

    REINES: Donald Trump is not an innocent. He has brought on a tremendous amount of this on himself by refusing to in any way cooperate…

  76. There are way too many folks now who make $75,000/year doing what used to get you $25,000/year. And many of these are jobs that didn’t exist before, because you used to make money when you actually contributed something of value. Well, these $75,000 (and up) jobs reflect how values have changed over my 6 decade life span.
    Trump – and his supporters – are a direct threat to those values, to the status that all these cozy high paying jobs that have proliferated in recent years.

  77. All conspiracy theories are contagious and often capable to outgrow into mass hysteria. In a close, bubble-like communities like modern journalism circles this happens very quickly.

  78. My primary response to the spluttering whore(d)s has pretty much been:
    ===================================
    Delusion:

    ALSO not a river in Egypt.
    ===================================

  79. Will Lindsey Graham get a Special Counsel now?
    Will there be a real investigation into the HR Clinton’s crimes (illegal server, illegal Top Secret documents) and the cover-up of her crimes?
    Collusion Hoax was to cover-up the prior HRC cover-up.

  80. “and a public unjaded by all that’s happened since”

    whoops, I posted a comment that you must have meant “jaded”, but now I understand what you meant: at THAT time they were as yet unjaded by all the chicanery that followed. At that time I wonder what the trust level in the press was as polled by Gallup? I would bet it was exponentially higher than it is now, especially after this debacle.

  81. Massive, hate-induced, group hysteria…

    …feeding and feeding and feeding upon its group-think sense of being utterly virtuous….

    …integrally bound up with the utter hatred they assiduously—RELIGIOUSLY—cultivated against those whom they convinced themselves it was utterly ethical to hate …

    …and constantly fueled by the instantaneity of social media to reach ever higher levels of hatred, hysteria and insanity…

    …which ultimately consumed them…

    …as they became totally addicted to ever dizzying heights of demonization and hatred, to slander and to lies…

    …infecting themselves with ideological and moral perversion on an epic scale.

    (I would venture to guess that many of them still feel this way.)

    Lemmings.

    The tragedy of all this is that in other planes of reality, many of them are very decent, wonderful, loving and intelligent, even brilliant, people.

  82. A summary of Watergate vs Trum/Russian gate.

    They bugged Trum Tower. Somebody informed Trum early on, so no time to “fish and catch bait” in spy world.

    Nixon thought the White House recordings were off. He turned it off. Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t the one controlling White House wiretaps. That would be the NSA, COININTELPRO, Pentagon, and so on. Everybody was spying on the President in DC.

    Nixon got in trouble for using ex COINTELPRO FBi/CIA operatives to check out whether the DNC was getting foreign payouts and other corruption deals. This investigation went nowhere, since the plumbing team got caught by the FBI and other leaks way before they ever got the wiretaps into the DNC HQ. Then he really got nailed for was when the White House wiretaps caught Nixon telling people to destroy evidence and or cover stuff up. Hence, you aren’t caught for the crime but the cover up of the crime. But Nixon must have been so stupid to say that while being recorded instead of writing it down and then burning it.

    What would Trum have said in Trum Tower had he not known he was being recorded?

    Also, coincidentally, the FBI Deep Throat operative was the Director COINTELPRO. He trained all the agents and knew all the ins and outs of policy. Coincidentally, he was the one that got Bernadine Dohr and Ayers free due to double j and raiding Weather Underground homes.

    Coincidentally, Mark Felt aka Deep T, was pardoned by Reagan for acts that violated US Constitution due to “national security”. Nixon’s plumbers weren’t exonerated for trying to find DNC Russian collussion and foreign treason due to national security.

    COINTELPRO was only just an FBI program Hoover and others ran spying on Americans like Republicans, Luther, other Presidents, and so on. Just normal everyday “national security” stuff.

    The person running the FBI/CIA investigation into Trum was the one leaking information to the press and setting Trum and his boys up with investigations and “process lying to fed” charges.

    The FBI during Nixon was in charge of COINTELPRO, prosecuting Nixon’s boys for using COINTELPRO that would have found Demoncrat Russian corruption at HQ, while leaking the information to the press that would catch Nixon in a bind.

    In the end, Americans believe the media caught a bad actor and crook, Nixon, and that the media somehow acted differently with Trum…

    You Americans are… way too ignorant and gullible when you outsource your thinking to the main sewer media and think you are actually “thinking” things.

    Aesop, I can’t wait for when Trum starts twittering that “the Mormons in the FBi are out to get me again”.

  83. In conclusion, if the Deep State ran an op using Leftists and media to cover up HRC/Hussein treason with Russian or foreigners, with Trum Gate, then why do people think that this was the first time the DS pulled this trick?

    This is the second time (that I know of). They just failed this time vs the Nixon Watergate success.

  84. artfldgr – if you seen this, could you contact me? I’ve been writing about Gramsci’s effect on the Left, and would love to find out more about Munzenburg.

    Lfox368806 – yahoo email.

    Thanks

  85. AesopFan, Thank you…

    but i fail to see how this: “My favorite of the many good points made here, because they are succinct and accurate.” would EVER apply to me…

    sadly…

    🙂

    [hope your laughing]

    the degree to which the press hyperventilated about random, inconsequential, normal behavior, just because Donald Trump did it.

    which is why, today, in the USA, we no longer are allowed to use hammers… Yes, hammers… you see, way back in last century, there were these fascist people trying to fulfill engels prophecy to whipe out the hidebound, and and… oh, lawd, its so hard to say… and, they..

    used hammers..

    and god save us, we did the same thing with our hammers they did…

  86. Remember when some reporter asked Harry Reid why he lied about knowing that Mitt Romney never paid any income taxes? Reid replied, “Well, it worked didn’t it.” (or words to that effect)

    One of my earlier points was that the Dems (and their media lackeys) did find some success with Russiagate. But I forgot the elephant. We now have Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. All federal spending originates in the House. Also, the GOP will likely have a tough time keeping the Senate in 2020, unless there is a big backlash.

  87. AesopFan, That freedom was used “responsibly” for probably less than the first nanosecond after the Bill of Rights was approved by the States.

    nope… i put up the date it changed..
    not too long after tar an feathers was no longer fashionable
    but during a time, when you could get hanged if they got you!
    really…

    Within a week of Congress declaring war, on April 13, 1917, Wilson issued an executive order creating a new federal agency that would put the government in the business of actively shaping press coverage.

    Sadly, all those who had projects to make the world different ALL COLLIDED in those middle years of the first decade of 1900s.

    they ALL realized the world war, as engels said, would afford them great leeway to change things that prior, could never be changed..

    WWII, took that into steroid land…

    “The first casualty when war comes is truth.” – Sen. Hiram Johnson

    but, there is another coming, which is why we did what we did with our military… you think our population would, being below replacement and all, survive women getting killed?

    hope they like it, cause you see, the guys have NOTHING TO FIGHT FOR
    and Russia just landed troops last night in South America – yes…troops.. and there is no way to know if they also unloaded a nuclear bomb or two (tactical and legal) in the 35 tons of stuff…

  88. “…it worked…”

    Sure did. Big time. Good old “Let’s take this Republic apart” Harry Reid.

    (Of course, it came back and bit the Dems on the backside…but who could have foreseen that? Not the “the-future-is-us-and-ours”—aka “Tomorrow-Belongs-to-US”?—Democrats, that’s for sure.)

    And now? Yes, the MSM lost big time this week, but they’ll sweep it all under the rug and scramble back. Pretend it never happened. Just another aspect of that HUGE Trump collusion conspiracy. Business as usual.

    Any doubters?
    https://www.tmz.com/2019/03/26/jussie-smollettt-plea-bargain-charges-dropped-dismissed/

  89. From Barry’s link:
    https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/ex-cia-director-john-brennan-admits-he-may-have-had-bad-information-regarding-president-trump-and-russia

    Dagnoll says:
    “Sorry Brennan, having bad information is not an excuse for acting on bad information without verifying it!OMG you were head of the CIA and you of all people know this!”

    * * *
    What a pusillanimous weasel — he even stands out in the most oleaginous pack of weasels and stoats since Toad Hall.

  90. By stealing, murder and lies, Bolshevism has looted Russia not only of its material strength but of its moral force. A small clique of outcasts from the East Side of New York has attempted this, with what success we all know. Because a disreputable alien ÐLeon Bronstein, the man who now calls himself TrotzkyÐcan inaugurate a reign of terror from his throne room in the Kremlin, because this lowest of all types known to New York can sleep in the Czar’s bed, while hundreds of thousands in Russia are without food or shelter, should Americans be swayed by such doctrines?

    ya got to read about Edward L. Bernays, Cree, Munzenberg, S.S. McClure, Ida Tarbell, and George Creel

    Out of the goodness of the kind of journalists you said didnt exist:
    He was later fired from “Kansas City World” refusing to write a story that would publicly embarrass a prominent businessman after the man’s daughter eloped with a family employee

    Creel’s aggressive campaign to rid Denver of crime made many people upset and he was fired…

    The purpose of the CPI was to influence the American public’s views about the war through the use of propaganda in magazines, movies, newspapers, radio broadcasts, posters, press releases, and public speakers. Creel and the CPI were criticized by journalists for releasing exaggerated accounts of events and for hiding bad or unflattering news about the war by censoring the press.

    ie. doing bad to do good… using evil to do good… etc.

    Creel reentered politics with a failed run against author Upton Sinclair in the Democratic primary for California governor.

    President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him chairman of the National Advisory Board for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and and helped Mexico establish its own Ministry of Public Information and Propaganda.

    why not?

    any of this familiar to anyone but me?
    President Wilson wanted more information before acting and decided to send a goodwill mission to Russia.

    given that this is going to get too long, here is a list of names that would get you to find out what you dont know… this is the only way to be short… and not get cut by neo.

    George Creel
    Elihu Root
    Arthur Bullard – believed in making democratic ideology a component of our propaganda in Russia
    P. A. Strachen – Movies…
    Mitchell Palmer – palmer raids / Fear of Dissent /

    “I have discovered the hysterical methods of these revolutionary humans with increasing amazement and suspicion.” Mitchell Palmer

    to what extent deportation will check radicalism in this country. Why not ask what will become of the United States Government if these alien radicals are permitted to carry out the principles of the Communist Party as embodied in its so-called laws, aims and regulations? There wouldn’t be any such thing left. In place of the United States Government we should have the horror and terrorism of bolsheviki tyranny such as is destroying Russia now. Every scrap of radical literature demands the overthrow of our existing government. All of it demands obedience to the instincts of criminal minds, that is, to the lower appetites, material and moral. The whole purpose of communism appears to be a mass formation of the criminals of the world to overthrow the decencies of private life, to usurp property that they have not earned, to disrupt the present order of life regardless of health, sex or religious rights. By a literature that promises the wildest dreams of such low aspirations, that can occur to only the criminal minds, communism distorts our social law….

    Mitchell Palmer

    so this immigration game goes back to when?

    It has been inferred by the “Reds” that the United States Government, by arresting and deporting them, is returning to the autocracy of Czardom, adopting the system that created the severity of Siberian banishment.

    why dont the press tell us?
    because Palmer LOST… today, the issue has reversed…
    The ones who cant be stopped are the ones that were stoped before..

    To deny them the privilege of remaining in a country which they have openly deplored as an unenlightened community, unfit for those who prefer the privileges of Bolshevism, should be no hardship. It strikes me as an odd form of reasoning that these Russian Bolsheviks who extol the Bolshevik rule should be so unwilling to return to Russia. The nationality of most of the alien “Reds” is Russian and German. There is almost no other nationality represented among them.

    this is no longer the truth given international has spread since then…

    It is my belief that while they have stirred discontent in our midst, while they have caused irritating strikes, and while they have infected our social ideas with the disease of their own minds and their unclean morals we can get rid of them! and not until we have done so shall we have removed the menace of Bolshevism for good.

  91. AesopFan: left leaning sources have been overwhelmingly overrun by the ‘editorial as news’ way of doing things. And CNN is right up there regarding this.

    – Feminist Format… discovered in the ladies magazines as they have an intimate discussion, commiserating in their dislike, and cluing you in on what women say, and even what men think!!! without actually asking any… which is why i found out that when i stand at a urinal, i am celebrating my manhood and putting down women.. who knew taking a piss meant so much to them?

    that where the format got polished revised etc
    then when we set us all on a femail good male bad
    making the polity “like a woman” to quote hitler

    What would one expect IF one knew?
    most dont know… and sadly, it takes a dump truck to cure such
    and they wont hold still for that..

    ignorance wins!

    and as far as their bs…

    Obstruction of Innocence is not Obstruction of Justice

  92. Without seeing the actual Mueller report, it seems at this point that there are three possibilities:

    no, there is a fourth..

    1) kept the left busy chasing nothings… will o wisps leading them to their fates
    2) has now forced his opposition to clear and approve him (Which i said he was doing)
    3) exposes them, as you will see the question is more, why let us do that? to which i will say “dont correct an enemy when they are making a mistake”
    4) ran out the clock on their election positions – the “now what” move

    and now, there will be a bunch more fun!!
    as they finalize the point…

    the more he resisted and threw up a stink, the more they thought he was hiding. Ultimately we forget that HE KNOWS HIS OWN CARDS, and he forced all the others to show theirs, and bet on him being a projection of them

    oh, whats more fun?
    well now he has had practice… havent you noticed he constantly adjusts

    and i will say it again from the people i work with:
    to be honest is to be protected… putting aside the idiots concept of standing naked before a one man judge jury and executioner, and honesty being best – in general, the honest person with good records doesnt fear an audit much, do they?

    all this is classical conservative stuff going back before Shakespeare
    and he is just following it… you know, those etiquette that are ignored
    [you THINK grabbing someone might not fit, but then again, how much wrong did the left see in things that was not there cause when it comes to right behavior, they are so wrong?]

    etiquette does NOT mean your not a boor, or brusk, etc..
    you CAN be all that and rude too, and be proper..
    because its a dynamic, not a singular, who your with matters

    so when the garter fell to the ground, a bad thing
    the king scooped it up, put it on, and the knights of the garter were created

    the list goes on and on and on and on…
    including stories of such luminaries as chico marx at a state dinner

    the left can not conceive of someone who can win without cheating

    and since we are of their mind, most of us have a problem with that too
    but if you know history, and you know all manner of people and things
    you would know how it worked and how it has done its work over time

  93. SANDERS: That is an accusation equal to treason, which is punishable by death in this country.

    SURE LOOKS LIKE LOTS OF LAWS ARE BEING IGNORED…
    FROM TOP, TO BOTTOM…

    18 U.S. Code §?2381. Treason
    Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States..

    (June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 807; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, §?330016(2)(J), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2148.)

    she should have read onwards

    18 U.S. Code CHAPTER 115— TREASON, SEDITION, AND SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES

    Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States and having knowledge of the commission of any treason against them, conceals and does not, as soon as may be, disclose and make known the same to the President or to some judge of the United States, or to the governor or to some judge or justice of a particular State, is guilty of misprision of treason and shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than seven years, or both.
    (June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 807; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, §?330016(1)(H), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2147.)

    and depending on how you define rebellion

    Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
    (June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 808; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, §?330016(1)(L), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2147.)

    If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
    (June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 808; July 24, 1956, ch. 678, §?1, 70 Stat. 623; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, §?330016(1)(N), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2148.)

    Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government; or

    Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or

    Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof—

    Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

    If two or more persons conspire to commit any offense named in this section, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

    As used in this section, the terms “organizes” and “organize”, with respect to any society, group, or assembly of persons, include the recruiting of new members, the forming of new units, and the regrouping or expansion of existing clubs, classes, and other units of such society, group, or assembly of persons.

    (June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 808; July 24, 1956, ch. 678, §?2, 70 Stat. 623; Pub. L. 87–486, June 19, 1962, 76 Stat. 103; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, §?330016(1)(N), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2148.)

  94. I think you’ve only got part of the equation with Watergate. You need to add the wisdom of Ben Rhodes: “The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old… They literally know nothing… We created an echo chamber… They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.”

    The media was busy chasing the next Watergate “to bring down a President” while aggressively ignoring the greatest political scandal in the history of the country. It’s not so much that they were wrong on RussiaGate, it’s that they were active participants in covering up the corruption in the CIA, FBI, Department of Justice and Obama Administration.

    It sure looks like their coverage amounts to the “Collusion” and “Obstruction of Justice” that they keep screaming about.

  95. More on Sarah Sanders and her take-down of the talking-point talking-head (I posted the transcript earlier).

    https://libertyunyielding.com/2019/03/26/sarah-sanders-dems-accused-trump-of-treason-why-she-has-a-definitive-point/

    Sarah Huckabee Sanders swung back hard on Monday at NBC’s Savannah Guthrie in an interview in which Guthrie asked if Trump owed an apology to Robert Mueller.

    The short summary of Sanders’s response would be “No.”

    In her longer one, Sanders argued that the American people deserved better than what they got from “Mueller, the Democrats, and the media.”

    Guthrie tried to press the issue, and Sanders let fly:

    But there’s a reason why Sarah Sanders’s point has unique merit, and needs to be taken seriously. It’s because in Trump’s case, the accusations that amounted to a brief of “treason” against him were not merely made by pundits, late-night comedians, or disgruntled voters.

    The accusations were funneled into agencies of the U.S. government, with the complicity of federal officials, and actually pursued through abuse of the powers of government.

    Sarah Sanders says Democrats and the media leveled an accusation against Trump that is the equivalent of treason. But given what we know at this point, it’s more accurate to say that they, and the Obama administration, tried to frame Trump for treason.

    So this one can’t be swept under the rug and forgotten. This one matters. It wasn’t just a matter of cranks with a few too many beers in them calling the president a traitor on a Friday night. This was federal officials with the power to use the tools of government spying on people, dragging them in for questioning, bringing them to financial ruin, and getting them indicted and convicted on process crimes in an effort to create something that did not exist: a reason to railroad a duly elected president out of office.

  96. https://libertyunyielding.com/2019/03/26/trump-might-not-be-guilty-but-neither-is-the-press/
    [Ed. – What’s the sound of a journalist shirking responsibility for his part in perpetrating a fraud?] links to this:

    https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/03/24/mueller-report-trump-media-226112

    Jack Shafer is Politico’s senior media writer.

    The president is not a crook.

    That’s the six-word précis of Attorney General William P. Barr’s four-page summary of the still- to-be-paginated report by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III of his 674-day investigation into Russian government efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. Barr’s findings, delivered to Congress on Sunday, lanced the Russia pustule that began festering during the Trump campaign and carbuncled the first two years of his presidency.

    Trump walked away victorious if bloodied from the announcement, hailing the Barr letter, in a classic bit of exaggeration, as a “complete and total exoneration” as he boarded Air Force One in Florida. But Trump had every right to revel. Mueller’s air-tight inquiry—did his team ever leak?—encouraged political speculation from Democrats and journalistic supposition on the part of reporters that Russian monkey wrenching of the election, which almost everyone now concedes happened, had succeeded in penetrating and influencing the Trump campaign. Mueller’s failure to connect Trumpworld directly to Russian skullduggery in a way that would hold up in a court of law made a shambles—for the time being, at least—of the theories formed by pols and reporters studying the issue from outside Mueller’s cone of knowledge.

    Did the press blow the Trump story? That’s what journalist Matt Taibbi wrote in his newsletter the day before the release of the Barr letter, excoriating “every pundit and Democratic pol” who hyped an emerging Russia headline. He dings CNN, the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, the New York Times, and others for what he considers credulous and gullible reporting, comparing their output to the faulty coverage of WMD during the Iraq War run-up. The Taibbi tirade will be cringemaking for every reporter whose extrapolations of the Russian story now place them on the wrong side of the Barr précis.

    But there’s a major difference between the press coverage of the WMD story and the Russia business, one that deserves highlighting. Much of the faulty WMD coverage was contaminated by partisan liars who described non-existent weapons programs and caches in hopes of drawing the United States into a new Gulf war. And let’s not forget that credulous coverage had consequences far more dire than the roughing-up Trump has endured. But to my knowledge, no similar set of liars misled the press in a campaign to incriminate the president.

    Excuse me for a minute until I stop laughing briefly, because I’m gonna keep on for the rest of this post.

    The press has covered the Trump-Russia procedurally, the way it does whenever a major figure is accused of wrongdoing. In effect, reporters started putting Trump on trial the day special counsel Mueller was appointed,

    Oh, please.

    and as is usual in such procedural coverage, they indicated the sense of his guilt or innocence months and years before he got anywhere near his day in court. That’s the way the American press has worked for almost two centuries. When press coverage suggests conviction but the jury (or the prosecutor) exonerates, you’re welcome to diagnose a press failure but I think it’s something different.

    In defense of the coverage, let’s remember that charges of collusion didn’t arise in a vacuum.

    No, the charges arose in a fetid swamp of illegal attempts to paint the candidate/president as a traitor.
    The only vacuum was between the ears of the MSM pundits, and most of their target audience.

  97. nice neat clean theory ymarsakar..
    but short on facts

    in fact, short on the fact your whole bs hinges on!!!!!

    ymarsakar on March 26, 2019 at 9:05 am at 9:05 am said:
    They bugged Trum Tower. Somebody informed Trum early on, so no time to “fish and catch bait” in spy world.

    WRONG… making the rest of it a waste… despite you having a semi broken p key

    here, stop pissing in everyones skull!!!!!!!

    On March 4, 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump wrote a series of posts on his Twitter account that accused former President Barack Obama of wiretapping his phones at his Trump Tower office late in the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump called for a congressional investigation into the matter, and the Trump administration cited news reports to defend these accusations.

    Representative Devin Nunes, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, vowed to investigate the claim. At a House Intelligence Committee open hearing on March 20, 2017, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey stated that neither the FBI nor the Department of Justice (DOJ) possessed any information to support Donald Trump’s wiretapping allegations. Nunes stated on March 23 that the Trump administration’s communications might have been legally monitored during the transition period as part of an “incidental collection”.

    So far, no one told trump, in fact, very much the opposite…
    your like those crapped out journalists pissing into the wind wondering why your clothes are wet

    The DOJ declared in a September 1, 2017 court filing that “both the FBI and NSD confirm that they have no records related to wiretaps as described by the March 4, 2017 tweets”, and confirmed this in another court filing of October 19, 2018. On September 19, 2017 CNN reported that the FBI wiretapped Paul Manafort before and after the presidential election, extending into early 2017, although the report did not make clear whether Manafort was monitored during his tenure with the Trump campaign from March through August 2016.

    again… telling trump he was not being bugged by the sitting president obama…

    The CNN report also stated that the Manafort surveillance began after he became the subject of an FBI investigation in 2014. Some commentators cited this report as vindication for Trump’s claims, while others noted that it did not confirm the accuracy of Trump’s original tweets, and that it is still unknown whether any surveillance of Manafort took place at Trump Tower

    so you miss there too..
    at what point is your crux going to be valid so the rest of your musings have something to them?

    At a March 13 press briefing, Spicer claimed that Trump was referring to general surveillance rather than direct wiretapping. Spicer also said that the White House believed that the Obama administration was responsible for the surveillance, not Obama himself, said Trump’s tweet which specifically named the former president

    and to lend less credence to your ideas
    On September 18, 2017, CNN reported that the FBI wiretapped Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, from as early as 2014 through an unspecified time before the 2016 election, and also after the election through early 2017, pursuant to two separate FISA court orders. It has not been confirmed whether Trump’s conversations with Manafort were intercepted as part of this surveillance. CNN acknowledged that prior to this disclosure, “speculation has run rampant about whether Manafort or others associated with Trump were under surveillance”. The CNN report noted that it was unclear if Manafort was under FBI surveillance while he resided in Trump Tower

    There has been criticism of Trump’s claim as simply being a “dead cat”, a false allegation against Obama intended to direct media and public interest away from Trump and his team’s alleged connections with Russia

    OBVIOUSLY Yarmarskar believes it…
    and he even believes trump was warned bout it
    and has a huge theory based on it as the fulcrum

    but…
    all a waste of time…

    Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis repudiated the claim in a statement later that day saying: “A cardinal rule of the Obama administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice.”

    officials in the Obama administration refuted any claims that it had been monitoring the Trump team. Nunes said the surveillance was unrelated to the Russia investigation and “suggested the contents may have been inappropriately disseminated in intelligence reports … for political reasons”

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    On March 4, FBI director James Comey asked the Justice Department to issue a statement refuting Trump’s claims

    Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said “For the part of the national security apparatus that I oversaw as DNI there was no such wiretap activity mounted against the President-elect at the time, or as a candidate, or against his campaign.”<

    On September 1, 2017, a DOJ court filing stated that "both the FBI and NSD [United States Department of Justice National Security Division] confirm that they have no records related to wiretaps as described by the March 4, 2017 tweets". Furthermore, it said that the Department of Justice and the FBI "do not confirm or deny the existence" of any other records that are responsive to American Oversight's FOIA request, which was broader than the alleged wiretaps of Trump Tower
    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    but but yarmarskar said he was warned!!!

    by who? so far, it never happened…
    so did it or didnt it?
    ask Yarmarskar…

  98. Nice set of nasty non facts, artful.

    Mike Rogers went to Trump and told him that his transition team was being surveilled at Trump Tower right after the election.

    On Tuesday November 8th, 2016 the election was held. Results announced Wednesday November 9th, 2016.

    NSA Director Rogers participates in session at Intelligence and National Security Summit in Washington. On Thursday November 17th, 2016, NSA Director Mike Rogers traveled to New York and met with President-Elect Donald Trump.

    On Friday November 18th The Washington Post reported on a recommendation in “October” that Mike Rogers be removed from his NSA position.

    They moved Immediately to the New Jersey golf course he owns.

  99. Umm no Art. Here is an article about Susan Rice unmasking many names from Trump’s team using NSA intelligence, by A. McCarthy.

    I haven’t read past the first few paras, gotta go now. But here McCarthy says concerning Rice,

    “Why is it so important … [she] called for the “unmasking” of Trump campaign and transition officials whose identities and communications were captured in the collection of U.S. intelligence on foreign targets?”

    McCarthy’s got one thing wrong I think. It doesn’t just include foreign targets. Its includes any U.S. citizen who has had suspicious contact with foreign targets. So all of Carter Page’s phone calls are fair game. It’s possible that they included the next level of Page’s contacts and their phone calls.

  100. Mike K on March 26, 2019 at 1:36 pm at 1:36 pm said:

    Nice set of nasty non facts, artful.

    Mike Rogers went to Trump and told him that his transition team was being surveilled at Trump Tower right after the election.

    On Tuesday November 8th, 2016 the election was held. Results announced Wednesday November 9th, 2016.

    Did NSA Admiral Mike Rogers Warn Trump On November 17th, 2016?…

    is the article… right?

    FIRST PARAGRAPH
    In hindsight, NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers may have notified Team Trump of Obama’s Intelligence Community (James Clapper and John Brennan) spying on their activity.

    DID YOU MISS THAT WHEN YOU CALLED ME A LIAR?

    You MAY HAVE had sex with a newt, but how would we know?

    Do you understand that may means they dont know? and that your asserting a false fact without basis of the same kind of bs we are discussing?

    what it does is say MAY / then builds a circumstantial case based on nothing other than the potential they spoke to each other.. .

    and with much about dates and so on, but no actual information:
    Remember, historically The Washington Post is the preferred outlet for the CIA and Intelligence Community within Deep State to dump their “leaks” and stories. The State Department “leaks” to CNN for the same purposes.

    ah… so, now we have to believe the idea because everyone knows that when there is a leak it isnt the times that gets it, it isnt fox, its wapo and cnn… cause they are the places who have been the most correct, right?

    THIS is your EVIDENCE?

    Did NSA Director Mike Rogers wait for a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) to be set up in Trump Tower, and then notify the President-elect he was being monitored by President Obama?

    ….Seems likely.

    seems likely your wrong

  101. TommyJay on March 26, 2019 at 1:40 pm at 1:40 pm said:

    The assertionL: Umm no Art.

    Point to Evidence: Here is an article about Susan Rice unmasking many names from Trump’s team using NSA intelligence, by A. McCarthy.

    Leave yourself an out: I haven’t read past the first few paras, gotta go now.

    oh joy!

    First i am not sure what your refuting, even AFTER reading the whole article…

    here McCarthy says concerning Rice:
    “Why is it so important … [she] called for the “unmasking” of Trump campaign and transition officials whose identities and communications were captured in the collection of U.S. intelligence on foreign targets?”

    FIRST ISSUE: She is part of a sitting presidents violation of laws to gather secrets about the opposition party for the democrats for the purpose of gaming an election by claiming your opposition gamed the election.

    Second Issue: we dont want to believe McCarthy of the 50s that he had a list of names and such he saw, why are we MORE ready to believe the side that has a 200 year history of lying and even killing people and seizing their property in various ways to game elections?

    Third Issue: did she have a list of actual names from the secret documents or did she know you have no access to the McGuffin and so, a percentage would beleive, a percentage would not, etc..

    AFTER THE Paragraph YOU COPY:

    Consequently, if unmasking was relevant to the Russia investigation, it would have been done by those three agencies. And if it had been critical to know the identities of Americans caught up in other foreign intelligence efforts, the agencies that collect the information and conduct investigations would have unmasked it. Because they are the agencies that collect and refine intelligence “products” for the rest of the “intelligence community,” they are responsible for any unmasking; and they do it under “minimization” standards that FBI Director James Comey, in recent congressional testimony, described as “obsessive” in their determination to protect the identities and privacy of Americans.

    Understand: There would have been no intelligence need for Susan Rice to ask for identities to be unmasked. If there had been a real need to reveal the identities — an intelligence need based on American interests — the unmasking would have been done by the investigating agencies.

    The national-security adviser is not an investigator. She is a White House staffer. The president’s staff is a consumer of intelligence, not a generator or collector of it. If Susan Rice was unmasking Americans, it was not to fulfill an intelligence need based on American interests; it was to fulfill a political desire based on Democratic-party interests.

    nothing like having someone call you a liar with evidence they have yet to read..
    wow…

    we are gonna win this one… right?
    cause we have great thinkers, researchers, and people who know the subject well..

    The second point is that, while not a pillar of rectitude, Ms. Rice is not an idiot. Besides being shrewd, she was a highly involved, highly informed consumer of intelligence, and a key Obama political collaborator.

    Unlike the casual reader, she would have known who the Trump-team players were without needing to have their identities unmasked.

    Do you really think her purpose in demanding that names be revealed was to enhance her understanding of intelligence about the activities and intentions of foreign targets? Seriously?

    I’m betting it was so that others down the dissemination chain could see the names of Trump associates — names the investigating agencies that originally collected the information had determined not to unmask.

  102. Art,

    Both of your excerpts reinforce McCarthy’s point that these communications obtained from intelligence sources and unmasked by Susan Rice were executed for political anti-Trump reasons, and did not have independent legitimate intelligence purposes. Which was my point.

    I read somewhere that Susan Rice unmasked more communications of U.S. citizens in those few weeks (the time period of the McCarthy piece) than the G.W. Bush admin did in its entire 8 years.

  103. Art, you still think reading Art of War by Sun Tzu makes you his equal or better, don’t you. Until you figure out how you were wrong, you aren’t going to get anywhere going up against me.

    You lost that round years ago, you still remember it, and you think you will claim the next round. Eh.

    Yes, someone told Trum his tower was being bugged and surveillance had been applied to various other things.

    Your problem is your sources on tradecraft comes from the MSM and the public relations division of FBI/CIA/NSA. Reading novels about spies doesn’t make you good at this topic, Art.

  104. https://thefederalist.com/2019/03/26/collusion-deep-sixed-resistance-switches-even-crazier-claims-obstruction/

    “As Barr clearly stated in his letter to Congress, “I am mindful of the public interest in this matter. For that reason, my goal and intent is to release as much of the Special Counsel’s report as I can consistent with applicable law, regulations, and Departmental policies.”

    Nothing about that statement says anything resembling what we’re hearing now from pundits and Democratic politicians talking about a “fight” to pry this information out of the clutches of a resistant attorney general. Blind to the lesson just delivered regarding rampant speculation under the guise of argument and debate, they’ve taken the extra step of characterizing the obstruction evidence as “substantial,” having seen nothing that the rest of us haven’t seen.

    As is inevitably the case with lessons unlearned, they’re setting themselves up for another swat on the nose, but they can’t help themselves. It’s all they’ve got left, and they’re going to play it out as long as they can—even if it requires besmirching Barr’s character in advance of any actions that he’s taken, or is yet to take.”

  105. Good point in a tweet by Mike Huckabee
    — and kudos to Trump for putting some conservatives into the Swamp’s Entertainment & Culture Division.

    https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/435946-trump-appoints-jon-voight-mike-huckabee-to-kennedy-center-board


    Hope Dems/Media (same thing) answer this: You say @realDonaldTrump didn’t really want to win, but accused him of colluding w/ Russians so he could win. It can’t be both. Face it-you made the whole thing up. We can’t trust you unless you come clean.”

    I won’t trust them even if they did “come clean” but there is no danger that they will.

  106. https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/435675-mueller-has-exposed-james-comey

    BY KEVIN R. BROCK, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 03/26/19 10:30 AM EDT

    f anyone looks like an unwitting agent of Russia now, it’s McCabe and his fired boss, former FBI director James Comey.

    Comey and McCabe came into possession of a “dossier” that was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and produced by a former British intelligence operative who reached into the ugliness of the Russian intelligence apparatus and asked for dirt on Donald Trump. Never known to pass up such a juicy opportunity to stir up trouble, the Russians happily obliged.

    This, in the intelligence world, is known as an “active measures” effort. It is the use of propaganda to sow discord into the politics and culture of an adversary. Truth is not a prerequisite for these operations. Lies are the yeast in the dough.

    The dossier was blinking “Russian active measures” in bright neon lights. But an FBI director and deputy director chose to ignore the obvious and instead use this Russian farce to open an investigation into a presidential candidate and his campaign. It was a staggering abuse of the FBI’s legitimate authorities.

    Such a move never would have been considered by experienced FBI counterintelligence agents operating in field offices. They would’ve immediately recognized the dossier for what it was.

    But Comey’s and McCabe’s investigation was kept from real investigators and instead run out of the director’s office by a cabal of individuals proven to be politically biased against the target of their investigation.

    A special counsel indeed was appointed and $30 million of the people’s money has been spent examining foolishness emanating from a Russian intelligence operation while politicians and cable TV pundits have roiled the country driving wedges amongst us. Listen carefully: you can hear the laughter from the Kremlin. James Comey is their favorite American.

    Comey may yet regret his calculated actions. The special counsel investigation reached the only logical conclusion that it could have, since there was no adequate basis for the counterintelligence investigation in the first place. Comey has been exposed.

    The question remains: should there be consequences for the reckless path carved by Comey and his inner-circle team that sent the country down this path, abusing and degrading an otherwise honorable FBI?

    Abuse of justice may be worse than obstruction of justice. If we are to have faith that our system of justice does not overlook the powerful who misuse their positions and enrich themselves with books describing what they did, then, yes, the actions of James Comey should be criminally investigated and not simply subjected to an administrative inspector general report.

    There likely will be a temptation to keep remnants of this investigation alive for purposes of political exploitation and cable news ratings. The Russians will be pleased, but there is a sense that the American people have had enough. Proceed at your own risk.

  107. https://thefederalist.com/2019/03/26/collusion-deep-sixed-resistance-switches-even-crazier-claims-obstruction/

    This sounds serious. And, if you’ve been paying attention to the hyperbolic sophistry of the last two years, it also sounds familiar.

    As with almost every emerging blockbuster report of Trump-Russia collusion evidence, there exists within all of us the ability to consider facts in context that doesn’t necessarily default to the darkest side of the room.

    In this case, it’s quite possible that Barr included the phrase “most of which” in describing the president’s acts, not as an attempt to “cover himself” while “trying to close the door on the Mueller report before it’s been read,” but—wait for it—perhaps simply because it’s the truth. In fact, the report has been read—by Barr—hence his knowledge and disclosure that not all of the “acts by the president” considered by Mueller were in the public domain.

    If we’ve learned anything from the last two years, it’s that knee-jerk speculation of malign intent projected on unresolved questions isn’t necessarily a healthy way to live. Perhaps journalists would better serve their viewers by resisting the urge to assign evil intent to pending issues, such as whether an attorney general who has pledged to be as forthcoming as possible with disclosure of the Mueller report will follow through on his promise.
    ..
    As I said, it all sounds familiar, doesn’t it? We’re going to hear this nonsense about “fighting” for full disclosure of the report until the day it’s turned over to Congress, at which point one of two things will happen. Either Democrats in Congress will find enough information to support the Great Deflection from collusion to obstruction, or they won’t find enough information to support the Great Deflection but will pretend that they did.

    Either way, they will fail to consider that those of us out here in the cheap seats have seen this play before, and we know how it ends.

    “Jason Beale (a pseudonym) is a retired U.S. Army interrogator and strategic debriefer with 30 years experience in military and intelligence interrogation and human intelligence collection operations. “

  108. Lots of good points in this article, so I will only excerpt a portion that was news to me, despite my unhealthy obsession with reading political news blogs.
    The author at the second link backs up his claim well, it seems to me, depending on work done by Jay Sekulow.
    Maybe I just missed a discussion somewhere….

    https://thefederalist.com/2019/03/25/russiagates-damage-country-will-take-years-realize/

    Much of the special counsel appointment was based on the false claim that Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt that he fired Comey to end the Russia investigation, when Trump in fact said the opposite. At the time, even many Republicans, especially in the Senate, supported Mueller’s appointment—which speaks volumes about who used to run the Republican Party.

    Links to this:
    https://lovebreedsaccountability.com/2019/03/23/this-part-of-the-mueller-report-will-hurt-cnn-the-most-video/amp/?__twitter_impression=true&fbclid=IwAR2nCcwjyj0qU1mDDPXisRtvGmf4tRm-UA1GENxUe2C4zALO74if_uhwYsM

    Since May 2017 the media and Democrats have falsely claimed that President Trump “admitted he fired Comey because of the Russia investigation.” Their evidence for the claim is an interview the President did with NBC’s Lester Holt.

    But what CNN and the rest heard simply never happened. Nor did anything even close to it.

    The worst part has been that their lie was told so much, to so little push back, that it became generally accepted in the public dialogue. It was taken as gospel and tossed around on cable news for two years without anyone really ever pushing back on it. (Mollie Hemingway, as is so often the case, being an exemplary exception.)

    “Trump actually told Lester Holt, on tape, that he fired Comey to end the Russia investigation. I mean guys, it’s right there on tape!”

    That’s what they all said. But it never happened.

    Well, what they “heard” was close to what was said, but artful editing was necessary to make it so.
    What Trump meant is something else altogether.

  109. http://ace.mu.nu/archives/380473.php

    New York Post: Choose Your March Madness Brackets for the Leftists and NeverTrumpers (But I Repeat Myself) Who Were Most Wrong on the Russia Hoax

    bonus: Neontaster to John Schindler:
    I see Schindler has decided to go with “Trump’s crimes are so secret he can’t get indicted for them because of how secret they are.”

  110. http://ace.mu.nu/archives/380502.php

    March 26, 2019
    Collusion: US Embassy Pressed Ukraine to Drop Probe Into Soros-Connected Group in 2016

    Links to two pieces by John Solomon.
    https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/435906-us-embassy-pressed-ukraine-to-drop-probe-of-george-soros-group-during-2016
    “Yuri Lutsenko, widely regarded as a hero in the West for spending two years in prison after fighting Russian aggression in his country, was named prosecutor general and invited to meet new U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

    Lutsenko told me he was stunned when the ambassador “gave me a list of people whom we should not prosecute.” The list included a founder of the AntAC group and two members of Parliament who vocally supported the group’s anti-corruption reform agenda, according to a source directly familiar with the meeting.

    It turns out the group that Ukrainian law enforcement was probing was co-funded by the Obama administration and liberal mega-donor George Soros. And it was collaborating with the FBI agents investigating then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s business activities with pro-Russian figures in Ukraine.

    The implied message to Ukraine’s prosecutors was clear: Don’t target AntAC in the middle of an America presidential election in which Soros was backing Hillary Clinton to succeed another Soros favorite, Barack Obama, Ukrainian officials said.

    In the end, no action was taken against AntAC and it remains thriving today. Nonetheless, the anecdote is taking on new significance.

    First, it conflicts with the State Department’s official statement last week after Lutsenko first mentioned the do-not-prosecute list. The embassy responded that the claim was a fabrication and a sign that corruption is alive and well inside Ukraine.

    But Kent’s letter unequivocally shows the embassy did press Ukrainian prosecutors to back off what normally would be considered an internal law enforcement matter inside a sovereign country. And more than a half-dozen U.S. and Ukrainian sources confirmed to me the AntAC case wasn’t the only one in which American officials exerted pressure on Ukrainian investigators in 2016.

    When I asked State to explain the letter and inclusion of the Soros-connected names during the meeting, it demurred.

    Internal memos from Soros’s umbrella charity organization, Open Society Foundations, describe a concerted strategy of creating friendships inside key government agencies such as State, DOJ and the FBI that can be leveraged inside the countries Soros was targeting for anti-corruption activism.”
    * * *

    I leave it as an exercise for the reader what Soros defines as “anti-corruption activism.”

    https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/435700-trump-russia-collusion-did-affect-an-american-election-the-one-in-2018

    “Now that we know for sure that special counsel Robert Mueller, the U.S. intelligence community and Republicans on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees found no evidence that President Trump conspired with Russia to hijack the 2016 election, it is worth stepping back and evaluating the electoral impact of one of the greatest faux scandals in history.

    Over the past two years, I have talked with law enforcement and U.S. intelligence officials who unequivocally told me they found no evidence that Trump and Russia colluded. Yes, Russia hacked Democratic emails and bought some Facebook ads to influence the election, but such activity was not coordinated with the Trump campaign.

    Yet, key lawmakers such as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) continued to insist there was evidence of collusion, circumstantial or otherwise. They were talking to the same FBI and intelligence agencies as Mueller and I did — and that means what they said in public was not consistent with what they were told in private.

    In all, more than 530,000 stories were written between May 2017 and this month about a Trump-Russia investigation that, ultimately, found no collusion. The earned media impact of that negative coverage likely would have cost billions of dollars if a Democratic candidate had tried to buy such coverage.

    But the news media provided it free of charge, fanned by the commentary of lawmakers and intelligence officials such as Brennan and former National Intelligence Director James Clapper, whose public comments contrasted with the secret intelligence.

    As the “Impeach Trump” machine raged with fuel provided by Democrats and an errant media, a funny thing happened: More than three dozen Republican incumbents in Congress announced they were retiring in 2018, leaving the GOP with a gaping hole in the House that Democrats exploited.

    Polls showed the impact of the Russia coverage on voters. About half of American voters declared they believed Trump or his aides had colluded with Russia, even though they hadn’t.

    It is the most compelling proof in a long time that false information repeated long enough becomes truth for many people.”

  111. https://freebeacon.com/blog/the-real-putin-stooges/

    The Real Putin Stooges
    Now the media wants ‘unity’ two years after their failed disinformation campaign goes up in flames
    BY: Elizabeth Harrington

    March 25, 2019 1:39 pm
    The results are in. After more than two years of fever dream hysteria that the duly elected president of the United States is a Putin stooge (who always had a funny way of showing it), shockingly, the mainstream media conspiracy theory turned out to have no basis in fact. But guess what? It’s still somehow Trump’s fault.
    @politico
    But after the nearly two-year investigation found no collusion or clear obstruction of justice, Trump and his aides showed little interest in healing or national unity

  112. Aesop, above at

    https://www.thenewneo.com/2019/03/25/russiagate-why-did-the-press-do-it/#comment-2428678I ,

    linked to Liberty Unyielding, and I followed the link. She did a bang-up job her comment, in and I agree with it 100%. (Except that where she couldn’t stop laughing, I ran for the kidney basin and simultaneously went nuclear. GRRRRRRR!!!) She included the following in her comment, but I really, really want to stress it. From

    https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/03/24/mueller-report-trump-media-226112

    But to my knowledge, no similar set of liars misled the press in a campaign to incriminate the president. The press has covered the Trump-Russia procedurally, the way it does whenever a major figure is accused of wrongdoing. In effect, reporters started putting Trump on trial the day special counsel Mueller was appointed, and as is usual in such procedural coverage, they indicated the sense of his guilt or innocence months and years before he got anywhere near his day in court. …..

    The rest of the column proceeds to excuse the Press for its B.S. reportage while heaping blame on Trump & co. for its having given perfectly good and valid reasons for suspicion*.

    *Politico’s contention, not mine.

  113. When you need somebody’s approval to get a “press” privilege… your country doesn’t have a free press, just an elite calling itself the press.

    never needed approval… you just have to do the work… hustle..
    get some tear sheets and articles published, submit, get press pass…

    i never bothered and it never mattered and i covered all kinds of luminaries and famous, and access only… i always find it fun to listen to people talk about that as its hilarious how far they are off, and have no idea…

  114. Blasted AWOL Edit! This was what I really wanted to stress in the excerpt:

    “The press has covered the Trump-Russia procedurally, the way it does whenever a major figure is accused of wrongdoing.

    Right, same as they did with every Obama scandal, every HR Clinton scandal.

  115. From the same Politico piece of garbage as the above, just preceding (and leading into) the quoted excerpt, this needs attention in its own right and should be the subject of numerous more-or-less conservative news and weblog sites:

    “…[A] major difference between the press coverage of the WMD story and the Russia business … [is that] … [m]uch of the faulty WMD coverage was contaminated by partisan liars who described non-existent weapons programs and caches in hopes of drawing the United States into a new Gulf war.”

    IMO this is as scurrilous and scandalous a piece of garbage as all the rest. Whatever one thinks of Chalabi & co., when every (well, 123, -6, or -7, I forget exactly) different countries’ spy agencies and Saddam himself believed there were WMD in Iraq, and when evidence of the same was found, how dare this jerk claim that!!!!

    Or maybe the spy agencies and Saddam were all part of a conspiracy to draw the U.S. into another Gulf war?

    (Oh well, of course I must be fair. He — Shafer, the Politico writer — doesn’t say in so many words that ALL of “the faulty WMD coverage” was “contaminated” by liars…only “much” of it.)

  116. Reminscent of our pal Chomsky re the Cambodian refugees’ claims about the Killing Fields….

  117. I’m surprised that I don’t remember hearing this theory from McCarthy (or anyone else) before now.

    https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/andrew-mccarthy-how-long-has-mueller-known-there-was-no-trump-russia-collusion

    “Now that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has concluded that there was no criminal collusion, the question arises: When during their exhaustive 22-month investigation did prosecutors realize they had no case?

    I put it at no later than the end of 2017. I suspect it was in the early autumn.

    By the time Mueller was appointed on May 17, 2017, the FBI had been trying unsuccessfully for nearly a year to corroborate the dossier’s allegations. Top bureau officials have conceded to congressional investigators that they were never able to do so – notwithstanding that, by the time of Mueller’s appointment, the Justice Department and FBI had relied on the dossier three times, in what they labeled “VERIFIED” applications, to obtain warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

    Notably, in June 2017, about a month after Mueller took over the investigation, while he was still getting his bearings, the Justice Department and the FBI went on to obtain a fourth FISA warrant. Yet again, they used the same unverified information. Yet again, they withheld from the court the fact that this information was generated by the Clinton campaign; that the Clinton campaign was peddling it to the media at the same time the FBI was providing it to the court; and that Christopher Steele, the informant on whom they were so heavily relying, had misled the bureau about his media contacts.

    >b>You know what’s most telling about this fourth FISA warrant? The fact that it was never renewed. The 90-day authorization lapsed in September 2017. When it did, Mueller did not seek to extend it with a new warrant.

    This means that by autumn 2017 when it would have been time to go back to the court and reaffirm the dossier’s allegations of a Trump-Russia espionage conspiracy, the major FBI officials involved in placing those unverified allegations before the court had been sidelined. Clearly up to speed after four months of running the investigation, Mueller decided not to renew these allegations.

    Once the fourth warrant lapsed in September, investigators made no new claims of a Trump-Russia conspiracy to the court. The collusion case was the Clinton campaign’s Steele dossier, and by autumn 2017, the investigators now in charge of the Trump-Russia investigation were unwilling to stand behind it.”

  118. Why are the press still doing it?

    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/03/less-than-full-disclosure-from-the-new-york-times.php

    “Yesterday, the New York Times carried an op-ed by Bob Bauer. As the title — “Trump’s Shamelessness Was Outside Mueller’s Jurisdiction” — suggests, the op-ed is just another attempt to talk around the fact that Robert Mueller cleared President Trump of “collusion” with Russia.

    What’s notable about the article is how the New York Times identifies Bauer. The Times states:

    Mr. Bauer is a professor of practice and distinguished scholar in residence at New York University School of Law.

    That’s true as far as it goes. But for purposes of an op-ed about the Mueller investigation of alleged collusion with Russia, it doesn’t go very far.

    Until May 2018, Bauer was a partner at the Perkins Coie law firm. Moreover, when Bauer left the firm, … According to The Hill, both the DNC and the Clinton campaign used Perkins Coie secretly to pay Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele to compile a dossier of uncorroborated raw intelligence alleging Trump and Moscow were colluding to hijack the presidential election.”

    PaulStPaul • 7 hours ago
    Additionally, . . .
    Mr. Bauer was President Obama’s personal attorney and the general counsel of the Obama for America presidential campaign prior to his appointment as White House Counsel. His spouse is Anita Dunn who was also in the Obama admin. for a time.

  119. Very interesting article, Gringo. I’m very glad to see some straightening-out of the record. Thanks very much. :>))

  120. https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/a-very-merry-mueller-monday/
    Jim Geraghty

    “This newsletter could be just an endless series of gifs of people laughing.

    As I noted last night and way back in May 2017, there was always a glaring hole in the “Russia and Trump worked together on the 2016 election, offering friendly relations in exchange for hacking computers and releasing damaging information” theory. That plot would require Russia to engage in an unprecedented conspiracy with several Americans, both prominent and obscure, and leave absolutely no trace that U.S. intelligence agencies could detect. The FBI watches Russians on U.S. soil closely, the NSA’s surveillance and interception abilities are unmatched, and you would like to think that the CIA watches what Vladimir Putin is doing really closely.

    Didn’t it seem a little weird from the start that Christopher Steele would manage to uncover a vast Russian effort to blackmail one of America’s biggest celebrities and the Republican nominee for president — and the CIA, NSA, and every other U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agency completely missed it?

    Every once in a while, I would count the days of the Mueller investigation and observe that if Mueller had found evidence that Trump was a Russian spy or asset, or that the president had been blackmailed or compromised in some way, the special counsel would not dilly dally about informing Congress and the public about this. That’s not the sort of thing you leave sitting on your desk during a long weekend. Just about every time, some snotty liberal would argue that the length of the investigation did not disprove the worst accusations against Trump, and that I should just wait and see. Now we see, and now we know!”

  121. https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/mueller-investigation-report-no-russia-collusion/
    On Russia, Trump Acted Innocent
    By RICH LOWRY
    March 26, 2019 6:30 AM

    “The release of Robert Mueller’s finding that Donald Trump didn’t collude with Russia should settle a question his critics — and, quietly, some of his allies — have asked repeatedly over the past two years: Why was he acting so guilty?

    It turns out that he was acting innocent, only in a typically combative, over-the-top Trump fashion.

    The Left and the media were never willing to credit the idea that Trump sincerely believed that he was being treated unfairly — because he was.

    When Trump said in his infamous Lester Holt interview that the Trump-Russia thing “is a made-up story,” he wasn’t confessing to obstruction of justice; he was stating a fact that the Mueller probe would establish 2,800 subpoenas and nearly 500 search warrants later.

    The prudent thing for Trump to do once the Mueller probe got going would have been to cooperate without complaint and bide his time awaiting his eventual vindication. Instead, Trump fought like a caged animal (while actually cooperating with the probe).

    Trump is a creature of the media and cares a lot about what is said of him. So imagine him sitting in the White House and watching the media constantly suggest that a smoking-gun Russia-collusion revelation is just over the horizon, that the walls are closing in, that he might be guilty of one of the worst political crimes committed in the history of the republic — and all the while knowing that it wasn’t true.

    It’s very easy to be relaxed about someone else’s reputation. We saw this during the Kavanaugh controversy when progressives were outraged that Brett Kavanaugh got emotional about being falsely accused of gang rape. Trump, apparently, was supposed to be cool and nonplussed about being accused of treason.

    Of course, he wasn’t, and got caught in an endless feedback loop with the press. He’d be presumed guilty in the coverage, he’d lash out, and then commentators would take his reaction as further evidence he was guilty. For two long years.”

  122. “…double down…”

    No, Mr. Brennan (you weasel), you are NOT supposed to admit fault. You are NOT supposed to blame so-called “flawed” information.

    You ARE supposed to double down. Triple down. Quadruple down.

    (You didn’t get the memo? YOU’RE the one who wrote the freaking memo!!….Or was it Clapper? or Lynch? or Jarrett? or Rice? or Rhodes? or Hillary? or Obama himself?)

    Well, at least you didn’t take responsibility. (What a relief that is.)

    Mr. Brennan, sir (you weasel): this is how it’s done:
    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rashida-tlaib-continues-calling-for-trumps-impeachment-says-hes-most-dangerous-threat-to-democracy

  123. “Half Truths of Noam Chomsky”.

    That’s giving him way, way too much credit….

  124. “Half Truths of Noam Chomsky”.

    That’s giving him way, way too much credit….

    For example, consider what Chomsky (more or less ) said about Chavez: “Yes there were problems, but he greatly reduced poverty.”

    I consider that a half-truth, for a number of reasons. The stats say that from 1998-2013, poverty WAS reduced in Venezuela. The following points make the “Hugo reduced poverty” narrative not as impressive as it seems. Moreover, the below points were apparent when oil was selling @ $100/BBL.

    1) Other Latin American countries had similar or better records than Chavista Venezuela in reducing poverty. Venezuela ranked about in the middle from ~1998-2013 in Latin America. It wasn’t that exceptional.

    2) Poverty reduction is dependent on a growing economy. If you want to distribute more money, you need more money to distribute. Even with a trillion dollars in oil revenue, Venezuela’s economic growth from 1998-2013 ( here measured in per capita income) lagged behind Latin America’s and the rest of the world: 15% for Venezuela, 29% for Latin America, and 44% for the rest of the world. Which strongly implied mismanagement of the trillion dollars in oil revenue. Thus no surprise regarding what happened when the price of oil fell.

    3)As Clifton Ross pointed out, one would hope that with a trillion dollars in oil revenue, some of that would reach the poor.

    As another example of Chomsky’s half truths, in Year 501 he pontificated on the Pinochet regime. Reading Chomsky, one would conclude that there was a massive failure in public health under the Pinochet regime. For example, Chomsky pointed out a typhoid epidemic- which did occur. Under the Pinochet regime, Chile’s Life Expectancy and Infant Mortality went from 8th best to 3rd best in Latin America. Which indicates that contrary to what Chomsky wrote, the Pinochet regime had a good record in improving public health.

    If you don’t know the subject about which Chomsky is pontificating, he can snow you.

  125. Well, yes. Excellent examples all.

    But surely, with that hefty political axe of his to grind and that mock-rational demeanor, it would be prudent to assume that he’s always “snowing” you (unless, of course, one happens to agree with his particular perversities and/or is in utter awe of his “intellectual” credentials).

    In fact, one can truly appreciate the professional aspect of his perverse arguments and the control he exerts over his personal mania.

    He is impressive and hypnotizing. Until one wakes up and realizes he’s talking total rot.

    What is interesting in particular is the pushback he’s been getting on his overarching linguistic theories over the past decade or so

  126. But surely, with that hefty political axe of his to grind and that mock-rational demeanor, it would be prudent to assume that he’s always “snowing” you.

    Yes, that’s a prudent assumption.

  127. contrary to what Chomsky wrote, the Pinochet regime had a good record in improving public health.

    To the political left Pinochet is worse, if possible, than Trump. Chile is the richest country in South America years after Pinochet is gone.

  128. imagine him sitting in the White House and watching the media constantly suggest that a smoking-gun Russia-collusion revelation is just over the horizon, that the walls are closing in, that he might be guilty of one of the worst political crimes committed in the history of the republic — and all the while knowing that it wasn’t true.

    The Bush playbook. That worked well, didn’t it ?

  129. AesopFan on March 26, 2019 at 9:08 pm at 9:08 pm said:
    Lots of good points in this article, so I will only excerpt a portion that was news to me, despite my unhealthy obsession with reading political news blogs.

    And quoting them to the point where it is difficult telling whether Aesop is writing something or just copying and pasting another article whose author is some passive voice nobody knows or cares about.

  130. One of the problems of epistemology with the written word is that reading the written word becomes both true and false.

    The interpretation of the writing isn’t necessarily the meaning put down by the writer. This causes a kind of aping or mimick effect where people believe that they know the truth when they read something. This mostly affects those obsessed with so called holy texts such as self proclaimed christians but it also affects Americans that fell for media lies again and again and again and again.

    All this reading and writing becomes meaningless after a certain point. Is America going to kill their traitors or not?

    Figure out what you are going to do and gain from that, instead of endlessly reading idiots online writing about this scandal or that scandal or how their media buddies and married couples and relatives did a big baddie against bad troll trum.

    No wonder the Deep State treats Americans as livestock and harvests your child for sex trafficking. It’s like people aren’t even trying to fight back. They just talk about fighting. They think if they read enough Holy Texts they will become ascended or a god or Saved from something or other. If people read enough about pro or anti Trum, then Trum may die or be reborn as the Savior of America somehow. They think what they are reading is actually useful, such as those who read a book about swimming and will jump into the deepest part of a lake or ocean. Lack of wisdom. Knowledge does not necessarily come from reading text. Reading a book about surgery doesn’t lead them to be good at surgery now. Yet people think if they read politics and all that jazz, that it will help them save or destroy their country. These individuals are hollow inside and have mistaken wisdom and knowledge as something they can copy from others by reading their words. This may be a useful action, for a child or monkey, but for a human so called adult… they need experience, not just the WORD.

    Well, that’s going to take a little bit more action and less reaction.

  131. ymarsakar on March 27, 2019 at 4:38 pm at 4:38 pm said:

    And quoting them to the point where it is difficult telling whether Aesop is writing something or just copying and pasting another article whose author is some passive voice nobody knows or cares about.

    * * *
    Actually, I’m very careful about separating my words from those I am quoting, and “copying and pasting” is much more efficient than retyping all that verbiage.
    Pixels are cheap, fortunately, and my budget exactly covers my expenditures.

    The authors of all that c&p may be passive (you are right on that count) voices, but they are voices that quite a large number of people know about, and ones who get paid for their punditry, which we — alas — do not.
    Whether anyone cares or not: who cares? — feelz are irrelevant, so long as they produce some interesting factoids to contemplate.

  132. Pingback:True but Forbidden 15: - American Digest

  133. Artfuldgr on March 26, 2019 at 12:33 pm at 12:33 pm said:
    Without seeing the actual Mueller report, it seems at this point that there are three possibilities:

    no, there is a fourth..

    1) kept the left busy chasing nothings… will o wisps leading them to their fates
    2) has now forced his opposition to clear and approve him (Which i said he was doing)
    3) exposes them, as you will see the question is more, why let us do that? to which i will say “dont correct an enemy when they are making a mistake”
    4) ran out the clock on their election positions – the “now what” move

    and now, there will be a bunch more fun!!
    as they finalize the point…

    the more he resisted and threw up a stink, the more they thought he was hiding. Ultimately we forget that HE KNOWS HIS OWN CARDS, and he forced all the others to show theirs, and bet on him being a projection of them

    oh, whats more fun?
    well now he has had practice… havent you noticed he constantly adjusts
    * * *
    Artfldgr – I think you have that right.

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