propaganda

The Special Counsel focuses on the heart of the Russia investigation (updated)

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Special Counsel Robert Mueller is beginning to ask direct questions about whether Donald Trump knew about the stolen Democratic emails from the 2016 presidential election before their theft became public knowledge — as well as whether he was in any way involved in how they were released during the campaign. Mueller asking if Trump knew about hacked Democratic emails before release:

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is asking witnesses pointed questions about whether Donald Trump was aware that Democratic emails had been stolen before that was publicly known, and whether he was involved in their strategic release, according to multiple people familiar with the probe.

Mueller’s investigators have asked witnesses whether Trump was aware of plans for WikiLeaks to publish the emails. They have also asked about the relationship between GOP operative Roger Stone and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and why Trump took policy positions favorable to Russia.

The line of questioning suggests the special counsel, who is tasked with examining whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election, is looking into possible coordination between WikiLeaks and Trump associates in disseminating the emails, which U.S. intelligence officials say were stolen by Russia.

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GOPropaganda, ‘fake news’ and the post-truth era comes to Gov. Ducey’s campaign

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For all the controversy generated by Donald Trump’s efforts to delegitimize the American news media by claiming they are “fake news” in an attempt to create a post-truth era where facts do not matter, a propaganda technique long employed by the Soviets/Russians and many other authoritarian regimes, this was not something new to the Trump campaign in 2016.

There was, of course, FAUX News and its mantra of “we report, you decide,” reducing everything to mere opinions rather than objective facts. “Don’t bother me with the facts, I know what I believe!” FAUX News is  a rejection of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s admonition that “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”

There was the quote attributed to a Bush aide by Ron Suskind (reportedly Karl Rove) in 2004: The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

In 2014, the National Republican Congressional Committee has launched more than 20 “fake news” sites to attack Democrats running for Congress, creating a media uproar and drawing protest from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the NRCC’s counterpart. GOP campaign arm launches fake news sites against Democrats. “If anyone was wondering why voters don’t trust Congress, look no further than the NRCC’s brand new voter outreach strategy—fake news sites,” said Josh Schwerin, national press secretary for the DCCC, in a statement.

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Democratic Memo rebutting Nunes Memo released, Trump suggests his AG investigate his political opponents in retaliation

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The House Intelligence Committee released a heavily redacted Democratic memorandum (.pdf) on Saturday rebutting Republican claims that top F.B.I. and Justice Department officials had abused their powers in spying on a former Trump campaign aide.

The New York Times reports, 2 Weeks After Trump Blocked It, Democrats’ Rebuttal of G.O.P. Memo Is Released (paragraphs reordered for greater clarity):

The Democratic memo amounted to a forceful rebuttal to the president’s portrayal of the Russia inquiry as a “witch hunt” being perpetrated by politically biased leaders of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department.

The Democratic memo underwent days of review by top law enforcement officials after the president blocked its outright release two weeks ago, with the White House counsel warning that the document “contains numerous properly classified and especially sensitive passages.” On Saturday afternoon, after weeks of haggling over redactions, the department returned the document to the committee so it could make it public.

The release was expected to be the final volley, at least for now, in a bitter partisan fight over surveillance that has driven deep fissures through the once-bipartisan Intelligence Committee.

For weeks, instead of focusing its full energy on investigating an attack on the American democratic system, the committee has been pulled into a furious effort by Mr. Trump and his allies to sow doubts about the integrity of the special counsel inquiry and the agencies conducting it.

The newfound animosity toward the F.B.I. among ostensibly law-and-order Republicans was reflected this past week at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where speakers like Wayne LaPierre, the head of the National Rifle Association, attacked what they called its “rogue leadership.”

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Code Red: dereliction of duty by a ‘criminally incompetent’ commander-in-chief

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After a weekend of our always insecure egomaniacal man-child Twitter-troll-in-chief Trump lashing out over Russia probe in an angry and error-laden tweetstorm, a remarkable series of opinions appeared in newspapers on Monday.

Max Boot wrote at the Washington Post, Trump is ignoring the worst attack on America since 9/11:

Imagine if, after 9/11, the president had said that the World Trade Center and Pentagon could have been attacked by “China” or “lots of other people.” Imagine if he had dismissed claims of al-Qaeda’s responsibility as a “hoax” and said that he “really” believed Osama bin Laden’s denials. Imagine if he saw the attack primarily as a political embarrassment to be minimized rather than as a national security threat to be combated. Imagine if he threatened to fire the investigators trying to find out what happened.

Or if you would prefer, imagine if this was the response to the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, as cartoonist Steve Benson does.

SteveBensonCartoon

That’s roughly where we stand after the second-worst foreign attack on America in the past two decades. The Russian subversion of the 2016 election did not, to be sure, kill nearly 3,000 people. But its longer-term impact may be even more corrosive by undermining faith in our democracy.

The evidence of Russian meddling became “incontrovertible,” in the word of national security adviser H.R. McMaster, after special counsel Robert S. Mueller III indicted 13 Russians and three Russian organizations on Friday for taking part in this operation. “Defendants’ operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump (‘Trump Campaign’) and disparaging Hillary Clinton,” the indictment charges.

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(Update) The conservative media entertainment complex is an ancillary to Russian ‘active measures’ propaganda

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For Donald Trump and his conservative enablers who argue that Russia’s “dezinformatsiya” social media propaganda attack on the 2016 election had no effect on the outcome, there is a similar American right-wing disinformation propaganda campaign that demonstrates just how wrong you are.

The political network affiliated with billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch launched a multimillion-dollar campaign to sell the recently passed GOP tax plan to voters ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. Koch Network To Launch Multimillion-Dollar Campaign To Try To Convince Americans To Support The New Tax Plan. The result: the Republican tax cut law, which once appeared overwhelmingly unpopular, is now supported by a narrow majority of Americans, according to a Survey Monkey poll. Tax Overhaul Gains Public Support, Buoying Republicans:

The growing public support for the law coincides with … an aggressive effort by Republicans, backed by millions of dollars of advertising from conservative groups, to persuade voters of the law’s benefits.

Over all, 51 percent of Americans approve of the tax law, while 46 percent disapprove, according to a poll for The New York Times conducted between Feb. 5 and Feb. 11 by SurveyMonkey. Approval has risen from 46 percent in January and 37 percent in December, when the law was passed.

“Public opinion is moving in the direction of this bill,” said Jon Cohen, chief research officer for SurveyMonkey. “Considering where it was, it is dramatically different.”

Donald Trump is president thanks to 80,000 people in three states: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. “Trump won those states by 0.2, 0.7 and 0.8 percentage points, respectively — and by 10,704, 46,765 and 22,177 votes. Or put another way: But for 79,646 votes cast in those three states, Hillary Clinton would be the president of the United States.”

The Russian “dezinformatsiya” social media propaganda attack on the U.S. election only had to move a small number of voters in key swing states to succeed. It is an imponderable question to know whether it did. There is no way to state with any degree of certainty how many votes may have been swayed by Russian “dezinformatsiya” social media propaganda, often forwarded or retweeted by millions of “unwitting” Americans as the Special Counsel’s indictment recites (or “useful idiots” as Joseph Stalin referred to them). How Unwitting Americans Encountered Russian Operatives Online.

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