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At this point, anti-Trump Russia hysteria smells like Ben Rhodes-style echo chamber

At this point, anti-Trump Russia hysteria smells like Ben Rhodes-style echo chamber

Media reporting on what other media are saying creates endless cycle of news stories about news stories

The entirety of the evidence made public so far proving that Donald Trump did something illegal or improper in collusion with the Russians with regard to the presidential election looks something like this:

[to be determined, maybe, at some point in the future, as of this moment, nada, ziltch]

or more precisely

[ничего]

Oh, there is a lot of speculation. There has been a mountain of articles written about “contacts,” but nothing showing improper or illegal conduct related to the campaign.

I can’t prove that the speculation is wrong, because there have been no facts disclosed that would allow me to prove it wrong. I also can’t prove that the speculation is right, because there have been no facts disclosed that would allow me to prove it right.

Like the proverbial broken clock, some of that speculation may end up being correct, even if most of it proves incorrect.

I made this point on February 15, and despite continuing media fury, nothing has changed, The fact-free Intelligence Community-Media trial of Trump by innuendo:

I don’t know whether Donald Trump or his aides had any improper contacts with Russian Intelligence officers.

Neither do you, or the media. The Intelligence Community might know, but they have provided zero facts either officially or through leaks to prove any improper, much less illegal, conduct took place….

In this fact-free environment, imaginations and malicious intentions can run wild. We have round-the-clock media and social media speculation and frenzy throwing around terms like impeachment, treason, and so on.

It is, in some ways, worse than harmful facts, because there is no clear accusation against which to defend, and no factual basis upon which the public can judge.

Byron York makes a similar point in an article that nicely summarizes the current state of the Russia mania, Byron York: 11 key points to remember about Trump-Russia affair:

1) Substance is what matters, Part 1. From the very beginning, there was only one central question in the investigation: Did Donald Trump or his associates collude with Russians in an attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election? So far we’ve seen evidence of some in the Trump circle having contact with Russians — see the Roger Stone DMs with Guccifer 2.0 — but we have seen nothing to prove, or even lend much support to, the contention that anyone on the extended Trump team coordinated election interference with Russians.

Andy McCarthy also eviscerates the Trump-Russia narrative, Democrats Know the Election Was Legitimate but Persist in a Dangerous Fraud:

“Russia hacked the election” is politicized theater of the most irresponsible kind — the worst since Democrats last sought to delegitimize a Republican administration by agitating against a war they had voted to support, even as American men and women were laying their lives on the line. And in this theatrical exercise, just as in the last one, the Left is undermining national security for political advantage….

Yet, rather than encourage a responsible evaluation of what we’re up against, Democrats and their media allies are promoting a fraud: If you take the Russian threat seriously, it means Russia stole the election and, ergo, that Donald Trump is an illegitimate president. Since that is not what happened, Republicans — who should be pushing Trump toward a harder line against Moscow — will be constrained to refute the Democrats’ allegations. The Democrats will demonize Trump, while Trump sympathizers sound like Putin’s defense lawyers.

In the Kremlin, they’ll be smiling.

What really is going on here is a Ben Rhodes-style echo chamber created by anti-Trump leakers, Twitter personalities with a lot of followers who constantly scream “treason” and “impeachment,” and a mainstream media that is happy to create a narrative to delegitimize every aspect of Trump’s presidency.

If you don’t know what a Ben Rhodes-style echo chamber looks like, read Grand Deception: How Obama and Ben Rhodes Lied Us Into the Iran nuke deal, detailing how Obama Iran-deal message coordinator Ben Rhodes deliberately created a false narrative about how the Iran negotiations started. That false narrative, among other things, asserted that the Iran nuclear deal negotiations were a result of more moderate Iranian leadership coming to power. That supposed fact was used to paint the Iran nuclear deal as less dangerous than many worried, because it would encourage a further moderating of Iranian policy. It was all a lie.

Rhodes, by his own admission, fed that false narrative to a gullible and ignorant media, creating an echo chamber of media support for the deal.

How the deception unfolded was described in the testimony before Congress by Michael Doran, a former Bush administration senior national security expert. We summarized his analysis in The Five Deceptions of Obama-Rhodes Echo Chamber.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ben_Rhodes_and_Barack_Obama.jpg

The Rhodes Iran-deal deception also was part of a cover up – a cover up of an Obama agenda to empower Iran for regional dominance, the so-called Grand Bargain that had been an Obama goal since the earliest days of his administration.

I see something similar unfolding now as during the Iran deal. Whether Rhodes was or is involved is not clear, though he has been particularly active in attacking the Trump administration. But the methodology is the same, a fact-free narrative endlessly parroted by the media in a circular fashion so that media reporting on what other media are saying creates an endless cycle of news stories about news stories.

It’s worth noting that while the media shows keen interest in building up the anti-Trump collusion narrative, it seems highly motivated to tear down the improper surveillance narrative asserted by Congressman Devin Nunes and others. The media worries more about whether Trump’s tweets about “wiretapping” were accurate than whether the powers of our spy agencies were abused for political purposes, and whether the Obama administration deliberately tried to undermine the incoming president.

I’m going to follow the evidence. Maybe there is a there there on Trump’s supposed collusions with the Russians, but so far there isn’t, at least not publicly.

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Comments

I always thought the local weatherman was overpaid since he could never get his predictions right, but he’s a piker compared to the lsm.

I have invited my progressive friends on FB to fill in the blank: “Trump should be impeached for his collusion with the Russians for doing ______.”

None of them have attempted to fill it in. They say “This is why we need an investigation!” In other words, they really are so ideologically blind that they think “collusion” itself is the crime, or some “independent investigation ” (run by Democrats, of course) is needed.

Point of Order, Mr Chairman—

Is ничего “nothing” or “a little bit”?

Perhaps I’m confusing it with немного. (Wouldn’t be the first time.)

    NavyMustang in reply to tom swift. | April 2, 2017 at 6:13 am

    немного: немного, нареч. и в знач. сказ. не очень много, в нек-рой степени,слегка. н. устал. времени осталось н. н. смущается. н. моложе. живет здесь н. больше года. ii уметай.. немножко.

    ничего: ничего(разг.). 1. нареч. довольно хорошо, сносно. чувствует себя н.живет н. он очень даже н. (совсем неплох). обед получился н. 2. в знач. частицы. выражение согласия, принятия, допущения, а также оценки чего-н. как несущественного. пусть придет, н. тебе больно? – н. * ничего себе (разг.) – 1) то же, что ничего1 (в i знач.). вещь получилась ничего себе; 2) выражение иронического отношения, недоверия, неодобрения. ничего себе отличник! (т. е. вовсе не отличник).

    не за что!

So one story is written with a fabricated chain of events, and ten thousand stories are written on the fake story, thereby giving it an air of legitimacy. Then again, making the press go out and actually collect facts is too much work for them, I suppose.

Still, if I were to go out and blatantly falsify two pieces of news, one showing secret meetings between Donald Trump and Russian spies in October, and one showing secret orders to the CIA by Obama to bug his political opponents in the same month, I have absolutely no doubt which one would wind up on the front page of every newspaper in the US.

And it is masking some really big things happening this week. Monday the Egyptian President arrives for his first ever visit to the WH. Wednesday the King of Jordan comes to Washington. Presumably they are outlining the approach they want to take towards Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.The weekend brings President Xi of China to Mar a Lago.

The orange is strong with this one…

In my darkest moments, I surmised that Obama failed to conclude a “status of forces agreement” with Maliki and Iraq in order to remove all U.S. forces, thus creating a vacuum that Iran would fill. And this occurred to me before the famous Ben Rhodes-echo chamber interview, as Mr. Jacobson describes as “a cover-up of an Obama agenda to empower Iran for regional dominance.” No one who voted for Obama in 2008 knew it was a vote for to elevate Iran, because Obama said nothing of his plans. He couldn’t have, because it would have meant his repudiation at the polls.

Media reporting on what other media are saying creates endless cycle of news stories about news stories.

Isn’t that just a circle jerk?

As with everything else Democrat, the rather solid information we have concerning Hillary Clinton, John Podesta,, and others involving Russian business interests, the Clinton Foundation, corruption, and so forth, is deemed to be baseless and insufficient. It does not matter that there are reams of data suggesting improper actions by these “folks”, or that they are even confirmed facts because to the Democrats there is only circumstantial evidence of these people doing anything wrong.
>
Once again, in the world of Democrats, they make a vague suggestion based on nothing. Be it Romney did not pay his taxes of Trump coluded with the Russians, to them it does not matter that their evidence is nothing more substantial than “I have it on good authority” or “17 intelligence agencies agree that they did this, but cannot release the information because it is classified” because to them this is rock solid information. To the rational world this is all nothing but baseless accusations and innuendo (not an Italian suppository), but to the Democrats there is no better and more damning information. Being that the MSM is a very active arm of the Democrat Party, they run with these vague stories which only serves to inform the sycophants as to what the latest story against Democrat opposition is and allows the (trigger warning) mental midgets of this country to develop monolithic, rock solid, never bending opinions (because everyone else is utterly stupid).
>
How have we as a country become so deluded, so ignorant, and so wanting to believe in these baseless fabrications of a ranting and ethically devoid liar know as the Democrat party? How many times must Trump be declared unhinged for something he said only to be found out as true before we start to learn that perhaps Trump is smarter than what the MSM or Democrats claim? Is there anyone left in the Democrat party that can be believed. (Yes, I know Republicans lie as well, but Republican liars are amateurs compared to the professionals that be the Democrats).

The Obama administration had ample opportunity to leak evidence of collusion. Their actions proved they wanted to destroy Trump. Yet nothing. If there was a scintilla of actual proof of collusion it would have been page one of The NY Times, Washington Post. The fact that there are no leaks and the Obama heads of intelligence stated there is nothing there, leads me to believe there is nothing there.
I heard Rachel Maddow go on for 20 minutes about Trump selling an estate to a Russian Oligarch in 2005 and making a lot of money. If a real estate developer selling real estate 12 years ago is there evidence of collusion with Russia than they really have zero.

Did Bill Clinton “collude with China” when his campaign accepted thousands of illegal campaign contributions from the ChiComs? (Yes)

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/05/23/clinton.china/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/campfin/players/trie.htm

kenoshamarge | April 2, 2017 at 10:24 am

Like Professor Jacobson I have no opinion about Trump’s guilt or innocence because I simply don’t have enough facts.

Fanning the “smoke” as the media is doing and has been doing is dishonest and unproductive. They are a lynch mob in search of a rope.

Trial by media is nothing new – it’s just gotten worse and the bias is easier to see.

    Barry in reply to kenoshamarge. | April 2, 2017 at 4:54 pm

    “Like Professor Jacobson I have no opinion about Trump’s guilt or innocence because I simply don’t have enough facts.”

    I don’t know if you beat your wife as I simply don’t have enough facts.

Virdict first. Crime TBA.

Does this qualify as a news bubble, or multi-level reporting?

Yes, but Trump said “pu ssy!”, so there’s that.

There’s desperation in the MSM as they try to minimize the Susan Rice revelations. So this question. If leaking classified and unmasked information is a felony, how about knowingly receiving and publishing that information?