The new year is less than two weeks old, and we can already say one thing with confidence. 2017 is not going to be boring.
By now, all of you have heard about the fake news “dossier” created by an ex-Britisth spy working on opposition research funded, first by Trump’s GOP primary rivals, and then Democrats after he clinched the nomination. As has been widely reported, the contents of this document have been floating around media outlets since at least last fall, yet not a single one of them was willing to report on it in any detail or publish it in full as Buzzfeed did last evening. This is pretty remarkable considering how heated the election was, and the extent to which so many in the media desperately wanted Hillary Clinton to win. The reason nobody touched it is because, as Buzzfeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith himself admitted, the claims are unverifiable and “there is serious reason to doubt the allegations” (his words not mine). So why did CNN and Buzzfeed decided to publish this now?
To understand what I think happened, we have to go back to last week’s post titled, Did Chuck Schumer Just Threaten Donald Trump? Here’s what we learned:
The new leader of Democrats in the Senate says Donald Trump is being “really dumb” for picking a fight with intelligence officials, suggesting they have ways to strike back, after the president-elect speculated Tuesday that his “so-called” briefing about Russian cyberattacks had been delayed in order to build a case.
“Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer Tuesday evening on MSNBC after host Rachel Maddow informed him that intelligence sources told NBC news that the briefing had not been delayed.
Rachel Maddow proceeded to ask Senator Schumer what he thought the intelligence community might do, to which he responded cryptically “I don’t know, but from what I am told, they are very upset.” Upset enough to take a fake document that no journalist would publish for months on end, and then give it a stamp of approval so that CNN and Buzzfeed would feel comfortable running with it? Yes, it appears so.
The news organizations that ran with this story are being ridiculed and for good reason. While much of the focus is on the meaningful concern of them dropping basic journalistic standards to cover it, there’s an even more disturbing issue at play. These media organizations, which are supposed to speak truth to power, were eagerly played as cheap pawns by the U.S. intelligence community as a conduit to disseminate ludicrous, anti-Trump propaganda. Moreover, by doing so in such a public and embarrassing manner, these news organizations actually empowered Trump by acting like a bunch of mindless fools. If you doubt my analysis, go ahead and watch his press conference from earlier today.
The negative implications of these media sources falling for this intelligence community scheme cannot be overstated. As usual, Glenn Greenwald did an excellent job of laying it out in his piece, The Deep State Goes to War with President-Elect, Using Unverified Claims, as Democrats Cheer. Here are some choice excerpts:
There is no bigger favor that Trump opponents can do for him than attacking him with such lowly, shabby, obvious shams, recruiting large media outlets to lead the way. When it comes time to expose actual Trump corruption and criminality, who is going to believe the people and institutions who have demonstrated they are willing to endorse any assertions no matter how factually baseless, who deploy any journalistic tactic no matter how unreliable and removed from basic means of ensuring accuracy?
Whatever one’s views are on those debates, it is the democratic framework — the presidential election, the confirmation process, congressional leaders, judicial proceedings, citizen activism and protest, civil disobedience — that should determine how they are resolved. All of those policy disputes were debated out in the open; the public heard them; and Trump won. Nobody should crave the rule of Deep State overlords.
At some point last week, the chiefs of the intelligence agencies decided to declare that this ex-British intelligence operative was “credible” enough that his allegations warranted briefing both Trump and Obama about them, thus stamping some sort of vague, indirect, and deniable official approval on these accusations. Someone — by all appearances, numerous officials — then went to CNN to tell them they had done this, causing CNN to go on-air and, in the gravest of tones, announce the “Breaking News” that “the nation’s top intelligence officials” briefed Obama and Trump that Russia had compiled information that “compromised President-elect Trump.”
Sorry, but that is not journalism.
THERE IS A REAL DANGER here that this maneuver can harshly backfire, to the great benefit of Trump and to the great detriment of those who want to oppose him. If any of the significant claims in this “dossier” turn out to be provably false — such as Cohen’s trip to Prague — many people will conclude, with Trump’s encouragement, that large media outlets (CNN and BuzzFeed) and anti-Trump factions inside the government (CIA) are deploying “Fake News” to destroy him. In the eyes of many people, that will forever discredit — render impotent — future journalistic exposés that are based on actual, corroborated wrongdoing.
There are solutions to Trump. They involve reasoned strategizing and patient focus on issues people actually care about. Whatever those solutions are, venerating the intelligence community, begging for its intervention, and equating their dark and dirty assertions as Truth are most certainly not among them. Doing that cannot possibly achieve any good, and is already doing much harm.
To summarize, elements of the intelligence community are now in open war with Trump, while the media continues to play its typical role as either useful idiots or willing government propagandists. As such, the question must be asked…
Poll Time: Who wins in a war between the CIA and Donald Trump?
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) January 11, 2017
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This accomplishes two things for the intelligence agencies:
1) It is clearly a shot across Trump’s bow. Even though they’re making sure that the MSM says these are unverifiable allegations, they’ve still accomplished their goal.
2) Now they’ve set the table to leak other damaging information about Trump to the MSM that they will claim are verifiable claims even though they’ll provide no real proof of same. (See: Russian hacked the election).
So they’ve planted the seed of doubt in the minds of the Sheeple. That way the next time around a lot more the mindless idiots that populate this country will actually believe it to be true.
All in all, it’s what is known as “leverage”.
I hadn’t read this when I wrote my previous comment:
Trump : “Head Of US Intel Called Me To Denounce False, Fictitious, Illegally Circulated Report”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-12/trump-head-us-intel-called-me-denounce-false-fictitious-illegally-circulated-report
That’s what’s known as a head fake.
There is definitely a palpable feeling of fear in the air on the part of the entrenched interests that have been running Washington for the last 24 years or longer. That fear is that all of their dirty secrets will become known by the new admin and those in it and that they will use this knowledge to their own ends. No doubt as it takes one to know one. We can bet hard drive removals are working overtime.as the power shift from one set of corrupt bandits and worse has to had over the reins of power to another set, who were on the outs in some specific cases with the former power brokers. Not that a great deal will change in Washington it is nice to see these scoundrels and even traitors to the American Constitution squirm with the fear of the unknown actions the new admin may take. My guess is that they will come to an understanding, or a code of silence among criminals.
mike i strongly applaud this post. you’ve been doing well lately.
i think this subject, the question of the intelligence agencies overgrowth and their pending conflict with the presidency and the civilian government itself is YUUUGE.
it’s not easy for most people to register that while trump is an obvious corporatists and bankstergarch supporter, he is NOT going to just allow the deep state—at least those members of it that are associated with large suckouts of money to specific families via their control of the intelligence agencies———to suck out his profit.
trump WILL establish his own rackets or maybe he won’t , but either wya———–the raquets of the previous 8 years of deep state clinton operatives are going to have to be ‘drained’.
this IS the part of the swamp that IS being drained, and you are seeing the swamp monsters fight back.
really, i’m not saying trump is NOT a fascist or a potential tyrant, but he IS POISED in a position against the current deep state of BUSH/CLINTON syndicate that was used to extracting many many billions of dollars from their oil/swiss banking raquets such as the theft of quaddafi’s swiss bank accounts of HUNDREDS of billions of dollars that got chopped up % by % to various operators when he was taken out by none other than ‘we came we saw he died’ hillary clinton and her cia.
so the real question here is ———–CAN WE SEE TRUMP AS JFK . and is trump as naive as jfk?
jfk died for one simple reason, he let lyndon johnson be forced upon him as vice president so the people who all conspired to murder him had their insurance policy backup plan in the white house.
THE REAL QUESTION HERE IS——-
1) IS PENCE AN INSURANCE POLICY NOT OWNED BY TRUMP?
2) IS PENCE WILLING TO COOPERATE WITH THOSE PEOPLE WILLING TO TAKE TRUMP OUT
3) CAN THEY DO IT? and if so, will they?
should be interesting. if they try and fail. it would be one of the greatest moments in american political history since the murder of jfk. i don’t think they will try if they have even a 1% chance of failing. and i think you will know the fix is in if even ONE SINGLE person close to trump dies or gets extremely sick or injured, just as his entire plane load of bankruptcy lawyers and advisors died in a mysterious plane crash decades ago.
as they say……..they don’t usually try and kill you…….only the people close to you to bring you on board with their plans. then again, there are so many ass kissing sycophants next to trump, i’m not so sure he’d be intimidated unless one of his direct family members were liquidated……….