A short, personal note…
Dozens of news sources — including The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Salon, The Washington Post, The Intercept, and, why not, Stormy Daniels’ ex-lawyer Michael Avenatti — all claimed Trump was the Manchurian Candidate, controlled by Putin.
When we demanded evidence, you attacked us. You told us we were wrong. You said democracy was in peril, the Republic facing a clear and present danger. You kept us off your shows, wouldn’t print our skepticism.
When we appeared on smaller stages, you tried to silence us claiming what we said was “hate speech” or was sowing discord or supporting white supremist nazis and should not be protected by the First Amendment. You purged us from your social media. The MSM blacklisted us in favor of Twitter stars (Abramson, Tribe, Steyer, Wheeler) and Deep State scum (Brennan, Clapper, Comey) making ever more outrageous claims with never anything but paranoia to corroborate them. Ever-more faux “fact checks” were deployed to make it seem we were the ones saying things which were untrue.
When asking for proof is seen as disloyal, when demanding evidence after years of accusations is considered a Big Ask, when a clear answer somehow always needs additional time, there is more on the line in a democracy than the fate of one man.
Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
John Poole said...
1If a Get Trump deck of cards is ever released. Brennan would be perhaps a queen of clubs, Comey a jack of spades etc.- Mueller the joker. So what game should be played with such a deck? Old Maids? Hearts? ……. nah. It would have to be Go Fish!
03/26/19 9:42 AM | Comment Link
wemeantwell said...
2In response to several offers (thanks Wolf!) I want to stress the offer to “suck my balls” does not apply equally to all media personnel. I plan to be selective.
Also, Andrea Mitchell, please stop sending those kind of photos. No means no.
03/26/19 10:00 AM | Comment Link
traven said...
3Ir it walks like a duck and quakes like a duck it is probably a dictator duck.
03/26/19 11:52 AM | Comment Link
John Poole said...
4Big media pushes the false mantra that only it can prevent or stop a dictatorship from happening while diligently working to become an unassailable dictator.
03/26/19 12:10 PM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
5Collusion is in the eye of the beholder. Did Trump act so stupidly as to tell Putin’s people that he would eliminate the sanctions if Putin approved the Trump Tower in Moscow? Give the pinhead some credit. The offer can be assumed and not overt. Everybody wins.
03/26/19 12:30 PM | Comment Link
Joe said...
6The MSM pushed “Russiagate” so hard because it was a convenient excuse for why their reporting on the 2016 campaign was so shoddy. Even though all the “Hillary will win by a landslide” stories ended up being about as accurate as the ones about WMDs in Iraq, that was because of a secret conspiracy between Trump and Putin that the MSM could never have foreseen. And Hillary’s supporters of course gobbled up the nonsense the MSM was pushing, since it explained how the “most qualified person ever” could have lost to someone like Trump. Now that little fantasy has finally come crashing down like the house of cards it always was, and the cycle begins anew. Kind of sad really.
@PVB Yeah, I’d be pretty selective about which pundits I’d let anywhere near my junk too – you have no idea where their mouths have been. But hey, that’s what it takes to be a political pundit nowadays, vice say a real journalist.
03/26/19 6:17 PM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
7Right. Just like Trumpie was in Putin’s junk on those private date nights. Forget the Manchurian Candidate nonsense. Trumpie was only in it for the money.
03/26/19 9:27 PM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
8So the Russian bear has the hots for the Orange bear? Not saying he sucked his balls. Not like there is anything wrong with that. Not…at…all.
03/26/19 9:42 PM | Comment Link
Kyzl Orda said...
9I do not understand why the charges were allowed to be framed they way they were. The focus should have been on the role of lobby groups or something else. However, I remember when there was a probe of Chinese contributions to both parties to influence favourable outcomes for the Chinese government back in the 90s (?) but clearly nothing useful resulted.
The Post had an article back in January how the new Democrats met with Nancy Pelosi and said there was too much focus on investigating the president when there needed to be focus on legislation.
If this were the 1950s, would this report have had different outcomes? It is sadly ironic considering all the professional foreign service (and wonder if any civil service who are never covered) who were charged with being communist sympathizers as a cover for either ticking off some big cheese or uncovering something illegal. There should be a mass retroactive exoneration of those folks who by and large were likely just doing their job and ran afoul of something and got smeared.
03/27/19 9:56 AM | Comment Link
Kyzl Orda said...
10To be clear, the fact our President refuses to release his tax returns is a huge red flag. No candidate should be allowed to compete for or hold office anywhere at any level of the government — if they can’t divulge tax returns. If he has nothing to hide, why not do this?
This was the /same/ argument the right used to advocate for expanded intelligence surveillance of ordinary Jane and Joe Americans. ‘If you have nothing to hide, so what?’ There is lots of room for Constitutional violation and abuse of power in this regard.
But refusing to divulge tax returns?? That is just wrong and begs the question – so what’s being hidden and did our government get robbed?
03/27/19 10:02 AM | Comment Link
Kyzl Orda said...
11With the Mueller Report out, it /should/ be made accessible to the public. Our taxes paid for this. I do not trust anyone in this government to interpret for me. The voters should be able to read this for themselves.
These guys are claiming they did nothing wrong, so what’s wrong with transparency of this report?? If ordinary Americans can be spied upon by our own government, no double standards for our lawmakers.
03/27/19 10:08 AM | Comment Link
Kyzl Orda said...
12Here is one of the Post articles on what the freshmen dems demanded with Pelosi regarding investigations:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/12/03/freshmen-democrats-legislation-not-investigations-should-be-house-priority/?utm_term=.485a60828192
03/27/19 10:10 AM | Comment Link
wemeantwell said...
13The question of Trump’s tax returns is not a red flag but a red herring. Guess who has seen Trump’s tax returns for past four decades? The IRS and NY tax authorities. Guess who had access to them via warrant? Mueller and the FBI.
The only people other than all those left to see the returns are the amateurs on twitter and MSNBC, who file two page 1040EZs and yet imagine they will be the ones who find the smoking gun inside the tens of thousands of pages of documents Trump has filed. And that’s only his personal taxes. Trump owns over 500 companies, so gotta sleuth out those.
I am always in favor of transparency, so, for the record, #ReleaseTheTaxes. But we all know what will happen. CNN will have some expert, followed up by “reports” from “sources” generate dramatic headline that ultimately lead nowhere.
I can assure you there is no 1099 hidden in there saying “Payoff from Putin.”
03/27/19 10:14 AM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
14Trumps fear is the public will learn he pays a lower tax rate than Peter.
03/27/19 10:55 AM | Comment Link