When SARS-CoV2 and COVID-19 began to sweep across the globe, and became the focus in news coverage and reporting, the Black PSYOP that the President, his campaign, his elected Republican surrogates in the House and Senate, his other surrogates, and Fox News and the rest of the conservative and right wing news, digital, and social media had been pushing against Vice President Biden to excuse and justify the actions that the President was impeached for got shelved for a while. At least in terms of an attempt to promote it day to day. But now that the President has declared victory against SARS-CoV2 and COVID-19 in an attempt to reopen the US it has been reinvigorated in an attempt to change the subject.
Since Mother’s Day on Sunday, the President has been tweeting and shouting about something he calls Obamagate. This isn’t actually anything new. Back in 2017, in an attempt to divert attention from him, his campaign, and a number of his senior campaign staff and political appointees involvement with or connections to Russia, the President and his surrogates argued that President Obama had ordered the FBI to spy on his campaign. This included wildly inaccurate accusations, because the people making them didn’t understand what they were talking about or were acting as if they did, that the Obama administration spying went beyond having the FBI wiretap the campaign headquarters in Trump Tower. Specifically that Assistant to the President-National Security Advisor (APNSA) Susan Rice asked the National Security Agency (NSA) to unmask the names of Trump campaign and transition officials as part of President Obama’s and his co-conspirators nefarious plot to prevent the President from being elected. These accusations are back, but they still make no factual sense.
Acting Director of National Intelligence and Ambassador to Germany (previously a noted Internet troll and shitposter) Richard Grenell declassified and released three pages of unmasking requests made by Obama administration senior personnel between 30 NOV 2016 and 12 JAN 2017.
Despite the breathless reporting by tweet that “SCOOP @CBSNews obtains @RichardGrenell notification to congress declassified “unmasking list” Flynn between late 2016 and January 2017 – Read 3 pages provided by NSA here”, you’ll notice the following statement at the top of the first document Grenell declassified (emphasis mine):
Each individual was an authorized recipient of the original report and the unmasking was approved through NSA’s standard process, which includes a review of the justification for the request.
And:
In this case 16 authorized individuals requested unmaskings for REDACTED # of different NSA intelligence reports for select identified principles. While the principles are identified below, we cannot confirm they saw the unmasked information.
In short: everything was done in accordance with the law and regulations within normal channels.
But it goes beyond this, because the people requesting the unmasking, from APNSA Susan Rice to Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power to VP Biden had NO WAY TO KNOW WHO THE UNIDENTIFIED AMERICAN OR AMERICANS WHOSE NAMES WERE REDACTED IN THE INTELLIGENCE REPORTS THEY WERE READING ABOUT CONTACTS WITH RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT PERSONNEL, INCLUDING AMBASSADOR KISLYAK WHO WAS RUSSIA’S PRIMARY INTELLIGENCE HANDLER IN DC AS WELL AS RUSSIA’s AMBASSADOR TO THE UN AND OFFICIALS OF OTHER GOVERNMENTS, WHEN THEY MADE THE UNMASKING REQUESTS! WHICH IS WHY THEY MADE THE REQUESTS BECAUSE WITHOUT KNOWING WHO WAS TALKING TO KISLYAK, OTHER RUSSIAN OFFICIALS, AND OFFICIALS FROM OTHER COUNTRIES IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO KNOW WHETHER WHAT HAD BEEN COLLECTED ON THE COMMUNICATIONS – THE TRANSCRIPTS OF THE COMMUNICATIONS – REALLY POSED POTENTIAL THREATS TO THE UNITED STATES THAT AMERICANS WERE INVOLVED IN!!!! It was NOT UNTIL any of these Obama administration officials got the unmasking reports from the National Security Agency that they would have known that LTG (ret) Flynn was the unidentified American citizen speaking with Russian Ambassador Kislyak, or any other official of a foreign government, Russian or otherwise, because that information was redacted in the original reports they were being briefed on. The whole point is to minimize the risk that any American citizen could have their privacy intruded upon by including their names if they are incidentally collected on because we are collecting on the foreign national that they are either speaking with or who mentions them in communication with a third party.
This reality, however, is not the point of what Grenell has done. Grenell’s objective is to use the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Republican majority US Senate, as well as the President’s twitter feed, Fox News, other presidential surrogates, and other news networks to launder the story that Vice President Biden was involved in the plot to both prevent the President’s election and then to destroy his presidency. See!!!! His name is right there on the last line of page 3! Since the declassification of this information by Grenell, Senators Grassley and Johnson have publicly released the documentation and proceeded to act like they do not know and understand how unmasking works. They have been joined by Senator Paul who held a press conference about it this afternoon heavy on innuendo and accusation and very short on actual facts. And AG Barr has indicated that US Attorney John Durham will now include these unmasking requests in his review of the investigations into the Trump 2016 campaign and Russia.
What these gentlemen are obfuscating, or, perhaps, are really too ignorant and uninformed to understand, is that when these 16 officials, including VP Biden made these requests THEY DID NOT KNOW WHO “US INDIVIDUAL 1” was in the intelligence, which is why they asked for the unmasking. Simply, they had no way to know if it was LTG (ret) Flynn, Jared Kushner, Senator Grassley, Senator Johnson, any of the five other Republican senators and one Republican representative who spent Independence Day 2018 visiting Putin in Moscow, Senator Paul who hand carried a communique from the President to Putin in August 2018 (and don’t get me started how far outside of normal and usual that was!!!), your great aunt Petunia, or the ever loving blue eyed Thing who was talking to officials of foreign governments, Russian or otherwise. All they knew is that a US citizen was in contact with senior officials of foreign governments, including the Russian ambassadors to the US and to the UN, and the discussions were about how Russia should respond to recent US actions against Russia, how Russia should vote in an upcoming UN Security Council vote the US had called about Israel, as well as other matters that have yet to be revealed and reported on*., but that based on the dates in the materials Grenell released, were collected and reported by the National Security Agency in late November and early December 2016, which was well before Flynn’s calls with Ambassador Kislyak and Russia’s ambassador to the UN. The US citizen in all of those calls was LTG (ret) Flynn. And then there were the reports that indicated an American citizen was discussing being paid to organize and facilitate the kidnapping legal US resident Fethullah Gulen and illegally extraditing and rendering him back to Turkey so that Erdogan could execute him. That was also LTG (ret) Flynn.
The objective here is the same objective that it has always been since I first started writing about, delineating, and explaining the Black PSYOP the President and his surrogates are undertaking back in October 2019:
- Continue to dirty up VP Biden, which is an extension of the influence operation begun by Putin’s state controlled media in May 2014 to dirty him up in case he ran in 2016, to drive down VP Biden’s popularity to damage his chances of being elected president. This included getting Ukrainian President Zelensky to announce the opening of an investigation into Hunter Biden’s business activities in Ukraine, as well as the attempts to get China to do something similar, which is all intended to promote the suggestion that Vice President Biden misused his position to enrich his son.
- To get the US Federal charges dropped against Dmitro Firtash, so he could get back to Ukraine from his house arrest in Vienna and retake control of Ukraine’s petroleum industry on behalf of Putin’s objectives regarding Ukraine and the EU. This line of operation was how Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman got tied into the Rudy Giuliani’s scheme to get dirt on VP Biden from Zelensky, as well as their connection to Victoria Toensing and Joseph DiGenova, who are both Firtash’s attorneys and working with Giuliani.
- The ultimate goal here was to find an excuse to lift Russian sanctions, which Putin desperately wants and the President has been hellbent to do, for reasons that make no domestic political, national security, and/or geopolitical sense, but make a lot of sense as a payoff. This is only possible if the Mueller investigation, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigations into the 2016 Trump campaign and the Russians actions in that campaign, as well as the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s assessments and reports on Russian interference in 2016 could be obfuscated and undermined.
- The drive to come up with a way to lift US sanctions on Russia and normalize relations ties everything together. Part of dirtying up VP Biden is the promotion of a bizarre and debunked conspiracy theory that it was not the Russians, on orders from Putin, interfering in the US 2016 election to elect Trump president; including failed and aborted attempts between the Russians and the President’s campaign to actually work together. Rather the Democratic National Committee, Secretary Clinton, many of her senior campaign staff, President Obama, Vice President Biden, APNSA Rice, Ambassador Power, former DNI Clapper, former FBI Director Comey, former DCI Brennan, former FBI Director and future Special Counsel Mueller, former AG Lynch, a number of senior Obama and Biden national security staffers, and the Ukrainian government actually conspired with the mainstream news media to keep the President from being elected in 2016. And when that failed to destroy his presidency with the creation of a fake scandal – that Putin wanted Trump to be president because he was angry at Secretary Clinton from something she did in 2011, that Putin had Russia interfere in the 2016 presidential election, that Putin is still interfering in American politics, that senior officials in the Trump 2016 campaign, as well as senior outside surrogates, were attempting to make contact with Russian officials and proxies to facilitate Putin’s influence operation to elect Trump president – in order to hide the truth, their crimes, and destroy the President and his administration. Because if the actual conspirators were the Obama administration, Secretary Clinton, her campaign, and the Ukrainians, then Russia is being punished for something it didn’t do. If you believe that, I also have a bridge to sell you…
- The last piece of this convoluted, conspiracy driven puzzle is the prosecution of LTG (ret) Flynn. Whatever Special Counsel Mueller’s team had actually collected on LTG (ret) Flynn’s was so damning and disturbing, that Judge Sullivan told him in open court at a sentencing hearing that he had “sold out his country” and all but accused him of committing treason! But in order for the Black PSYOP to work, LTG (ret) Flynn has to be an innocent, wrongly accused, and maliciously prosecuted patriot who loves the US and the President. This is why LTG (ret) Flynn fired his attorneys and replaced them with a conspiracist who used to be a legal contributor to Fox News. And it is why AG Barr has assigned two separate US Attorneys to look into it in order to undermine the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence investigation into the President’s 2016 campaign, Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation, and all the prosecutions, including Flynn’s, that resulted from it.
And this is why Acting DNI Grenell declassified these unmasking requests, gave them to AG Barr, and then released them to Senators Grassley, Johnson, and Paul. To launder this information – information that clearly demonstrates that nothing illegal, untoward, or even unusual was done by anyone in the Obama administration through the DOJ and the US Senate – to both dirty up VP Biden to damage his campaign and to facilitate the other parts of the Black PSYOP ultimately leading to the lifting of US sanctions against Russia and normalization of US relations with Russia. Which the President once again discussed with Putin last week in a phone call about “the hoax”.
In May 2020, the President, AG Barr, Acting DNI Grenell, senior administration officials like Kellyanne Conway, a number of Republican senators, members of the Trump campaign, other surrogates for the President and his campaign, and a number of Fox News personalities are all actively promoting a Russian influence operation against the US targeting Americans to effect US politics and the outcome of the 2020 election. Someone should really be looking into this…
Open thread.
Update at 12:30 PM EDT
I’ve made some minor edits for clarity and added some links as in text citations. I also want to direct everyone to this twitter thread from Cheryl that she sent me late last night, which is applicable to the section with the *.
This deal needs a lot more attentionhttps://t.co/caNBzLjDNQhttps://t.co/3erluPGP3Lhttps://t.co/G3LSFrxhb4 https://t.co/OnRhMzmYK0
— Cheryl Rofer (@CherylRofer) May 13, 2020
Adam L Silverman
I’m going to walk the dogs. Back in 2 and 1/2 miles.
Keith P.
This is where Trump goes “If *I* did this, they would be calling for execution!” and then turns around and does it.
Kelly
I wish RWNJ’s would make up their minds about masking. Can’t be masking for the grocery store, must be masking spies. I can’t keep up.
Another Scott
;-)
Thanks Adam.
Cheers,
Scott.
Gin & Tonic
Good post.
HumboldtBlue
Over the past three days, you’ve seen the headlines from the fever swamp get more alarming day after day. They are desperate and they’re only going to turn up the dissembling to 11, that’s all they know.
@Another Scott:
Thanks for that reminder.
Patricia Kayden
Anya
Days like today is when I wonder if FBI’s New York field office officers who kept leaking damaging information against HRC regret their support for Trump.
SiubhanDuinne
Once again, Adam, thank you for your thorough and detailed explanation of a situation that seems just baffling to ordinary laypersons (well, to me, anyhow). I really appreciate the time and attention you devote to these posts.
One small misnomer you may wish to correct: as well as their connection to Victoria Toensing and Victor DiGenova. His name is Joseph diGenova.
Spanky
@Anya: No. Period.
Frankensteinbeck
Thankfully, nobody gives a flying fuck. The MAGAts, voters and elected, would have grabbed anything. This only changes the specific words in their mouths at the moment. The people smart enough to understand this know it vindicates Biden. For everyone else, this is “Blah blah blah Trump is going NUH UH YOU’RE THE PUPPET” again.
NotMax
Please, please, could you change the headline to read either
The Black PSYOP IX: The Unmasking of “Obamagate”
or
The Black PSYOP IX: The Unmasking of So-called Obamagate
Otherwise it cements the impression it is a credible term.
bluehill
@Frankensteinbeck:
Uhhh …
Renie
Thanks so much for posting this. I’ve been hoping you would do a post about this ‘unmasking’ issue cuz I really had no idea what anyone was talking about. I did, however, know that if the trump people were pushing it as Obamagate, it must be something benign that they are escalating into the ‘worst act in the history of America against trump’. Now with these facts I can get a better handle on what is really going on and can push back any RWNJ talk I get involved with. (Though I try hard to stay away from them.)
Anya
Last time they were yelling about unmasking, Susan Rive was the villain but all of a sudden Biden is the new big baddie. These fuckers are not even trying.
Anya
@Spanky: you’re probably right because if you are a New Yorker and you thought Trump would be a good president then you’re either a moron or a racist, misogynistic asshole
Old Dan and Little Ann
One of my friends made a wifi password post yesterday on book of faces about keeping conspiracy nuts on their toes. I wrote, Obamagate! Another rwnj acquaintance asked me if something was funny about my comment. I replied that Pizzagate was taken. The fact that he never responded made me quite happy.
patrick Il
They have to go after Obama. They cannot have an important politician with his positives campaigning for Biden. When Hillary was SOS her approval rating approached 70%. Benghazi and email conspiracies drove that down into the low 40 ‘s when she started her campaign. This “conspiracy” will build and get more complex, involving more people, including Biden. The apparent complexity and underhandedness will make it more believable to the portion of our population that wants to believe such things.
japa21
@bluehill: Well, it does.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
alas, we need a majority…
I suspect those who say trump is only talking to his most fervent believers are right, but then I rolled my eyes when people were trying to work the Bubba-Lynch Tarmac Meeting into a scandal
Brachiator
@Anya:
It’s a movable smear. These idiots invoke Obama, Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Valerie Jarrett, Biden, Samantha Power and any others as needed.
Mai naem mobile
Whatever the Russians have on Rand Paul has got to be pretty explosive. He must have money laundered the grift from his campaign or the Revolution grift or his daddy is grifting from the Revolution swag.
August West
CBS News’ Catherine Herridge, formerly with Fox News, is still a clueless, useless tool.
SFAW
I am fully confident that the highly-trained investigative reporters at the FTFTFNYT will do a multi-part series on this, showing that Hunter Biden and George Soros brainwashed poor GENERAL Flynn into betraying his country. They probably also used those highly effective psychoactive drugs known as “placebos” on poor Flynn (who is apparently ‘Murica’s Greatest Hero — after the Oval Office Occupant, of course) as part of their dastardly plot.
SFAW
@Mai naem mobile:
Or, per Occam’s Razor, he’s just a moron.
ETA: Yes, he could be both.
Mai naem mobile
@patrick Il: they can go after Obama all they want. Hell, go after Biden all they want. The problem is that Trumpov is such an utter disaster in the COVID19 management that even indies who weren’t thrilled with Obama will at least remember that he wasn’t going cray cray 24/7. Trumpovs going to be down to his 37 percent and hopefully after voter suppression the Dems come up with with 51-52%.
HumboldtBlue
The FBI has been busy:
laura
So many traitors.
Yutsano
@SFAW: I was about to say they don’t pay him. They don’t need to. He’s a fellow traveller. The Russian playbook fits just nicely with both Ron and Rand Paul. Hell wasn’t Daddy taking Russian money back in the day?
joel hanes
Relevant :
https://twitter.com/TheViewFromLL2/status/1260650916736151552
Citizen Scientist
Good ammo against the misinformation and very clear explanatory text as always Adam. Thank you!
Gin & Tonic
@Yutsano: Ron has been all along.
Gin & Tonic
@joel hanes: The Gulen kidnapping plot.
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: You’re welcome and thanks for catching that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@HumboldtBlue: I wonder if Kelly Loeffler and her husband are a little nervous…
HumboldtBlue
@Gin & Tonic:
I remember a family text thread on that. It seems like it was 15 years ago.
They have perverted space and time with bullshit.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I thought the same thing.
bluehill
@Brachiator: I think it’s just another tactic to force Biden to engage and shift some of the focus off Trump. Biden’s team is probably happy to snipe from the sidelines while Trump demolishes his own campaign with each press conference.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
Good reminder.
Of course, now, Trump will have to change his story again about why he fired Flynn in the first place. Back in 2017:
Is he going to say that Obama made him do it? Or that he never really fired Flynn and have him pop up out of a cake?
Renie
Adam, Asha Rangappa just tweeted: I love that the foreign intelligence targets the NSA was monitoring can reverse engineer the channels they were using on the dates they were in contact with Flynn that was just released by the DNI and, if they are still using those same channels, stop.
Shouldn’t Grenell or his staff be aware of this or is this not a big deal?
Redshift
@August West:
One of the most dangerous tendencies of the high levels of the major news media is that they never catch on that someone who is a “conservative journalist” is a conservative first and a journalist way down the list of at all. They want to believe people working for the “news” side of Fox are like them, and bring them into the fold, and it’s just a matter of time before they’re pushing the conservative agenda instead of reporting news. See John Solomon at The Hill, for example.
trollhattan
OT but because it makes me happy, spreading the happiness.
D’oh, beaten to the punch–fist shaken @ HumboldtBlue
bluehill
@HumboldtBlue: Long knives out for Burr. Matt Gaetz called for his removal a few weeks ago. Maybe Burr will give up some dirt to save his rearend.
sanjeevs
@Adam L Silverman: Speaking of dirty tricks did you see this story on the Tara Reade check fraud thing.
Seems like Grim had a sort of confirmation that she had been charged from Reade’s new lawyer but now the lawyer denies it and the courthouse say the confirmation email was altered.
https://www.salon.com/2020/05/13/dirty-tricks-against-tara-reade-check-fraud-story-is-based-on-altered-court-emails/
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: No.
Adam L Silverman
@Mai naem mobile: The Russians have been funding his father and his various institutes for years.
Brachiator
@bluehill:
You’re probably right about this. If pressed on it, Biden could easily say something like, “there’s really no point in my commenting on this. Trump will change his story tomorrow, anyway.”
But if I were Biden, I would say something more like, “You, know, after the election, we will probably find out which Republicans are traitors to America. We just have to see how many of them ask the Russian government for asylum. What’s that? Does that include Trump? Oh, I’m sure he will be out of here before the inauguration is over. I understand that Kim is offering him a place to stay as well.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Gin & Tonic: the blogosphere theory at the time was the Flynn was cooperating with the Feds in order to protect his aggressively stupid son from state charges in PA
alternate theory: he didn’t realize at the time how far into the tank the GOP was wilding to go for and with trump, so he didn’t want to bet on a pardon. Now he knows Lindsey Graham will host his pardon party
Adam L Silverman
@HumboldtBlue: While it appears he may have engaged in insider trading, and gotten his brother in trouble for doing so as well, this is really about payback because of what the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which he chairs, has formally reported about what the Russians did in 2016 and are still doing in support of the President.
J R in WV
@Anya:
There’s some purty nigh treason, that right there. And probably against a whole passel of regulations and laws.
Whatever happened to the Inspector General’s investigation into all that New York FBI office leaking…???? Who kept that investigation a secret? And why?
Must have been some real dirt there, otherwise it would have been huge headlines in the NYT, WSJ Faux News.
SiubhanDuinne
@HumboldtBlue: Interesting. Wonder whether they’re also
going afterinvestigating Kelly LoefflerETA: Curse you, Jim, Foolish Literalist @ 35.
Adam L Silverman
@joel hanes: This is correct for the requests at the beginning of December. Those most likely involved the attempt to kidnap Gulen for Erdogan and telling the Russian ambassador to the UN to vote against the Obama administration promoted Security Council resolution against Israel.
cmorenc
Judge Emmet Sullivan seems hesitant to grant Barr’s request to drop charges against Gen. Flynn – and has requested briefing from third party “friend of court” sources.
So – if Sullivan does ultimately deny the DOJ’s request to drop charges. Since Flynn’s status is a convicted felon awaiting sentencing, based on two guilty pleas, rather than an indicted suspect awaiting trial, it would seem the DOJ has limited leverage to accomplish it’s goal anyways by simply tanking the prosecution’s case except to argue for a trivially minimal sentence.
OTOH – Paul Manafort won early release from prison to house arrest due to COV-19, but Michael Cohen (who turned on Trump) did not. If Sullivan wound up sentencing Flynn to prison, Barr will somehow see to it that Flynn never actually serves a day under anything more than house arrest with more holes in it’s restrictions than a cheese grate.
eemom
@Adam L Silverman:
Quotation marks don’t match. #killmenow
Adam L Silverman
@Renie: She is correct. Grenell wouldn’t have a clue because he has no actual experience working with intelligence or in the Intelligence Community. He was fired by Romney from his 2012 campaign for being a shitposter on twitter. He did some illegal – as in he conveniently forgot to register under the FARA laws – foreign agent work for some sketchy foreign powers. And then he jumped on the MAGA train and was specifically appointed as the US Ambassador to Germany to be a public and private nuisance and asshole to punish Chancellor Merkel because she stood up to the President. Frankly, she should have persona non grataed his tuchas.
SiubhanDuinne
@bluehill:
A day or two ago, Trump rolled out that bullshit TRANSITION TO GREATNESS.
Biden retweeted it with the comment “That’s the plan.”
LOL.
Adam L Silverman
@sanjeevs: I had not.
Mike in NC
Fat Bastard has gone so far off the rails that he shouldn’t be within a mile of the nuclear codes.
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It wasn’t just his brother. Judge Sullivan read the intercept of one of the calls with Kislyak, which is what led him to tell Flynn in open court that he’d sold out the country. Sullivan wanted to make that transcript public and the DOJ defied his request. Flynn pled to lying to the FBI because it took the really serious charges for himself off the table.
sanjeevs
@Adam L Silverman: I don’t really understand what’s going on there.
Best I can guess is its an attempted Rathergate that didn’t get traction.
Adam L Silverman
@eemom: Huh?
rikyrah
Thank you, Silverman.
Always dropping good information.
Adam L Silverman
@sanjeevs: Who knows. She’s been involved in so may petty grifts and financial crimes and so many debunked or retracted accusations of sexual harassment or assault, that anything is possible.
bluehill
@SiubhanDuinne: That was great. Biden’s twitter game is pretty strong.
Jeffro
Hot takes:
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman: In the headline, there’s no closing quotation mark. I think I recall that there’s some kind of glitch in the formatting ever since the rebuild that causes this. You might check with Water Girl some time when you have nothing else going on.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Adam L Silverman: and Rand has (I believe) six kids. Kids are expensive, and I’m guessing they don’t sleep three to a bedroom like the Bradys and wear a lot of hand-me-downs
@SiubhanDuinne:
I am damned from years back…
SiubhanDuinne
@bluehill: I don’t use much social media, but I understand the Biden team is pretty strong in all of them, as well as a slew of really good ads.
joel hanes
@Brachiator:
I don’t think Putin will want Trump, and I don’t think Trump will want to go to North Korea.
I’m predicting that he dies in Bahrain: a high-rise luxury playground for the uber-wealthy with year-round golf, no extradition, and a brutally oppressed underclass.
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: I’ve removed it and returned it back to the original headline with no quotation marks.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
My question about all of this is why is Mueller so far being as quiet as a church mouse? His integrity is being questioned here
bluehill
@Brachiator: I wonder what Trump would do if Biden or his campaign explicitly accused Trump of being a Russian asset. IIRC I think Hillary kind of implied it, but lot more evidence now. Not sure if it would hurt or actually help Trump.
catclub
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: She should not be. Her fortune is~$500M
while the trades in question are ~$1M. If you have inside information that the stock market is crashing, you sell less than 1%?
I think With Burr the fractions are significant.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SiubhanDuinne: there was some kind of exchange on twitter about the Biden campaign and snapchat vs tic-toc ha ha are they gonna show up on myspace next and dude you work for Yahoo….
and I was so confused I had to go fix myself a Sanka and listen to the radio to clear my head
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@catclub: then there’s the brother-in-law
as for Loeffler, i hope the GA Dems can make her defend herself by saying she’s too rich to cheat for a paltry million or two…
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
How could the DOJ legally defy a federal judge’s request?
@cmorenc:
I saw that tonight on NBC. The newscast even said that there no cases in the prison he was being held in
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
55,116 people have died in the past 30 days.
there isn’t enough bleach to make people forget this.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Does anybody else think Biden has a teflon-like quality to him that Hillary Clinton (for a variety of reasons *cough*misogyny*cough*) did not? The Tara Reade shit fell apart pretty quickly. The Burisma “scandal” hasn’t seemed to have hurt him either. Perhaps it’s too soon to say, but I haven’t seen any evidence to the contrary so far
O. Felix Culpa
Alexandra Petri on “Obamagate.”
HumboldtBlue
The assault on our public institutions is one thing, the ravaging of suburban neighborhoods is quite another!
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: LOL. By sheer synchronicity, I’ve caught several of Biden’s live thingies on FB. The one a few weeks ago when Hilary endorsed him was especially good. I teared up when he said something to the effect of “I really wish that right now I was endorsing your reëlection.” It was spontaneous and genuine.
I don’t subscribe, or even much follow, most other social media, but I will say that Sarah Cooper, Randy Rainbow, and Andrew Cotter are getting me through these challenging times.
Brachiator
@Redshift:
There’s nothing new about this. These people know who’s who on the ideological front. Most of them even know which “anonymous” sources in government their fellow journalists go to.
These people hang out together, attend the same parties, or party according to their political preferences.
The only people kept in the dark about any of this is the average American.
Omnes Omnibus
@HumboldtBlue: “Recking” havoc? Jesu.
bluehill
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: If the feds don’t go after Loeffler, it would seem like political payback as Adam noted. Another angle I read elsewhere is whether Trump uses this to blackmail Burr to discredit the IC report on Russian interference, which the Senate intel committee reaffirmed. So many plot twists.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Omnes Omnibus:
I didn’t know you were a grammar nazi, Omnes ?
opiejeanne
@Adam L Silverman: Also, “effect” should be “affect”, near the end.
HumboldtBlue
@Omnes Omnibus:
I bet they were never taught handwriting in school.
O. Felix Culpa
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Spelling. Omnes is a spelling Nazi.
Sheesh, kids these days. //
joel hanes
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Mueller is old, sick, and Republican.
I do not know which of those are dispositive; maybe all of them.
He certainly seemed unwell during the hearings.
Omnes Omnibus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I am not any kind of Nazi, but I have standards. FWIW I once broke up with a woman who described herself as a nervous “reck” in a letter. It was beyond my control.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@O. Felix Culpa:
Oh shit you’re right. Well, this is embarrassing ?♂️
Brachiator
@joel hanes:
I actually think that Trump will stay in America and milk being a former president for all it’s worth. But if he were to flee the country, I think your speculation here is close to his preferences.
@bluehill:
Trump’s base is utterly blind to anything except their love for their Dear Leader. Their faith in him is unshakeable.
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Remains to be seen, although I agree with you that Biden has reputation for honesty, etc, that the GOP is desperately trying to chip away.
patrick II
@Mai naem mobile: I’m not saying it will work, but, considering their policy, making up stories is what they have.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@joel hanes:
He’s so old and sick that he couldn’t write a letter? Now, being a Republican I could buy. A company man doing the bare minimum for appearances
eemom
This needs to catch on.
Another Scott
The hits just keep coming. Wonkette:
(Emphasis added.)
Bright’s whistleblower complaint really is horrifying. Lots of people have a lot to answer for.
Donnie will probably have Pompeo announce during the hearings that Donnie’s taking over Greenland since Denmark won’t sell it to him. There will be something thrown up to try to distract us – count on it…
Cheers,
Scott.
SiubhanDuinne
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
It’s even more sinister. There actually was a CV-19 outbreak at the prison where Michael Cohen was incarcerated and they announced at the time that Cohen would be released to serve the rest of his sentence under house arrest.
And then, a couple of weeks later, they announced that no, he’d be staying behind bars after all. This whole thing stinks to high heaven.
HumboldtBlue
@eemom:
I passed along a similar story so who knows?
eemom
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
@Omnes Omnibus:
Spelling, not grammar. #killmeagain
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): At this point, everyone in the minimum security Federal prisons should be released to home arrest and monitoring.
oclib
@bluehill:
Loeffler is in a weird spot wrt to Trump. Trump wants Collins in that seat and could put pressure on Loeffler from that standpoint, but Kelly’s husband is a wildcard. Jeffrey Sprecher is the chairman of the NYSE and probably knows where some shady deals are hidden….
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/10/the-mystery-of-the-trump-chaos-trades
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: I never mentioned grammar.
lgerard
Burr reversed himself on the Ratcliffe nomination for DNI. I guess it was too little, too late
eemom
@HumboldtBlue:
Per that DB article, if you go to http://www.trumpdeathclock.com they’ll work with you to get it put up in your community. I tried but haven’t heard back yet.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
No, but you should have corrected the young ‘un.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Brachiator:
Eh, I’m not sure this is entirely accurate. Weren’t there polls recently that showed his “strongly support” has fallen to the low 30s or 20s among Republicans or his supporters? Keep in mind the Republican Party has shrunk since 2016.
Trump’s margins were razor thin back in 2016. 80,000 across a few states. Imagine how many of those voters have died since then, probably will die before this November (from COVID-19 or otherwise), or will simply sit home
Dems have also outperformed their vote totals from 2016 AFAIK. Dems have the energy atm going into this election
You’re probably right, but people as a whole just seem to like Joe
@Omnes Omnibus:
I hope that wasn’t why you broke up with her. My parents hate it when I correct them about something. My father actually said, “Yugoslavia” offhandedly once when referring to an eastern European country where some product was made. I had to point out that YGS doesn’t exist anymore and was never in eastern Europe.
The Thin Black Duke
Maybe “Obamacare” would work if COVID-19 wasn’t in the way. Can you imagine what the ugly statistics are going to look like by November?
Patricia Kayden
HumboldtBlue
Is Abrams’ site a source?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Republicans were afraid of Hillary Clinton for the past 35 years, they feared her much more than Bill. Read “The Hunting of the President”, you’ll get a good idea what Hillary was up against. It started long before Bill ran for President.
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman: I agree. That’s partly why keeping Cohen locked up seems like egregious nastiness.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@SiubhanDuinne:
I’d believe it. Barr was the same prick who, in response to a question about if he was worried how he would be viewed by history, said that depends on who writes the history; that history is written by the victors
Spoken like a true fascist. Trump has to be defeated.
SFAW
@eemom:
It goes beyond spelling — it’s not even the correct word (even when the “w” is inserted). Unless “wrecking havoc” is the kewl-kids replacement for “wreaking havoc,” and no one told me.
I expect someone has beet me to the paunch on this.
danielx
@Omnes Omnibus:
Was it for actually putting it in writing or spelling it “reck”?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
Yup. FCI Elkton, a federal low-security prison nearby from me, has had 9 prisoner deaths. I believe they had already released some inmates either to home arrest or some temporary parole 1.5 months ago
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: So your not a phan of criative speeling?
Bill Arnold
@opiejeanne:
I’ ve always been fond of (the late) Iain M. Banks’ “Effectorize”, e.g.
“Effectorize the fucker. Get it off the other one.”
“I can’t do that! That would be cheating!”
Clearer that way. (Pretty sure he invented the verb as a joke.)
SiubhanDuinne
O/T, but this is heartbreaking. Melissa Etheridge’s 21-year-old son has died — not of COVID-19, but of opioid addiction. Devastating.
Captain C
@joel hanes: Probably not too long after he arrives, and of convincing natural causes.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Oh I know. Hence “for a variety of reasons”. It took 30 years to dirty her up to the point of unelectablity
Mai naem mobile
@Another Scott: in the clips I’ve seen of Bright he comes across as very credible. Kind of like the House impeachment witnesses to the Ukraine quid pro quo stuff. Very straight arrow wonk.
Bill Arnold
Point “4. Which ties…” is difficult to parse. Specifically, the “And when that failed…”
(I’m not normally one to complain, ’cause am prone to obtuseness (the less common meaning))
Thanks for the piece. (Richard Grenell needs some destroying; that was unforgivable on his part.)
Adam L Silverman
@Bill Arnold: Try it now.
mrmoshpotato
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks for the post(s), and hope you had a good walk with the doggos.
Above the pictures, you wrote “between December 30 NOV 2016 and 12 JAN 2017.” Is that December a typo?
hervevillechaizelounge
Republicans were afraid of Hillary Clinton for the past 35 years
Serious question: in hindsight, how should Hillary have handled the 35 year slander campaign? I think we can all agree her tactic of ignoring the bullshit and kowtowing to the both-sides press was ineffective. Operating in good faith is useless.
We’re seeing the same kind of campaign gearing up against AOC and other young Dem stars; what are their countermeasure options?
Adam L Silverman
@mrmoshpotato: Yep, I’ll remove it.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@hervevillechaizelounge:
Fighting fire with fire and going directly after the shit-stirrers
hervevillechaizelounge
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Do we need our own network, à la Faux? Do we need our own troll farms? How can we go after the shit-stirrers if we can’t get coverage?
Mnemosyne
The other way we know this is 100 percent a Russian operation is that Glenn Greenwald is defending Flynn as the innocent victim of overzealous prosecutors. ?
Darkrose
@hervevillechaizelounge: Except that’s not what Hillary did. When she spoke the truth, like when she referred to the “vast right-wing conspiracy” against her and her husband, or when she said that half of Trumps supporters were in the “basket of deplorables” and the other half were genuinely suffering from economic anxiety, the press twisted her words and amplified the criticism of her.
They hated her because she was the mean mom, and they hated Bill because he was a tacky dude from Arkansas who “came in and trashed the place and it wasn’t even their place.”
There go two miscreants
@Bill Arnold:
We’ve finalized it, but we haven’t definitized it yet.
Uncle Cosmo
@Omnes Omnibus: Just FTR, this goes at least as far back as Kurt Vonnegut’s first novel, Player Piano (1952), where the makework Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps is referred to as “The Reeks and Wrecks.”
(And it might go even farther back. After all, Vonnegut cheerfully admitted he’d lifted the plot of Player Piano from Brave New World – which, he noted innocently, had stolen its plot from Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We.)
Uncle Cosmo
He dies by falling from a window in his 50th-storey suite. A window that couldn’t be opened. A window that had to be smashed open by throwing a chair through it. And then he falls out. By accident…
I think the one-word description is дефенестрация…
Matt McIrvin
@Mai naem mobile:
I would be more comfortable believing this if I saw any COVID-related drop in Trump’s job approval at all. But there’s none. He gained a little and then lost most of that little bump.
Raoul
@Redshift: Well, The Hill is a conservative project and not a journalistic venture, so there’s that.