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The Manchurian Media

The Manchurian Media

The people serving the Russians’ purposes are the media which weekly rolls out unproven and non-disprovable accusations of collusion, delegitimizing our political system far beyond Vladimir Putin’s wildest dreams.

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Two supposed bombshell reports about Trump-Russia collusion rocked the media news cycle this weekend, but as all of the other bombshells dropped by the media, there is a lot less to the reports than the hype suggests.

The hype has given rise to a Manchurian Candidate accusation against Trump, that he is an agent of some sort of the Russians, with Vladimir Putin his controller.

Even those in NeverTrump world who won’t invoke the “Manchurian Candidate” terminology explicitly, assert that Putin must have something over on Trump to influence him.

This is not a new accusation. It was made prior to the 2016 election, and it has percolated through the Resistance and the media for over two years. This weekend the conspiracy theory gained new life from stories at The NY Times and The Washington Post.

The first story, by The NY Times, reports F.B.I. Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia:

In the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests, according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation.

But the article provides almost no details of the investigation or what it concluded, despite having commenced over a year-and-a-half ago. To the contrary, the Times notes:

The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, took over the inquiry into Mr. Trump when he was appointed, days after F.B.I. officials opened it. That inquiry is part of Mr. Mueller’s broader examination of how Russian operatives interfered in the 2016 election and whether any Trump associates conspired with them. It is unclear whether Mr. Mueller is still pursuing the counterintelligence matter, and some former law enforcement officials outside the investigation have questioned whether agents overstepped in opening it….

No evidence has emerged publicly that Mr. Trump was secretly in contact with or took direction from Russian government officials….

There is good reason to be very suspicious of this NY Times reporting in light of this sentence:

Mr. Trump had caught the attention of F.B.I. counterintelligence agents when he called on Russia during a campaign news conference in July 2016 to hack into the emails of his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Trump demonstrably did not call on the Russians “to hack into the emails” of Hillary Clinton, which is the phrase The Times uses to describe what Trump said. In fact, Trump joked during a press conference that maybe the Russians could find the 30,000 emails Hillary deleted, as the hyperlink in the Times current article shows:

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

So the Times story shows nothing beyond political disputes that gave rise to concern, gives no details about the investigation or its conclusions, and is demonstrably biased and inaccurate in putting forth the false context of Trump allegedly calling for the Russians to hack Hillary’s emails.

In what has become a now-familiar tag-team effort, frequently as we head into a weekend, The Washington Post dropped its own supposed bombshell story, with the tantalizing headline Trump has concealed details of his face-to-face encounters with Putin from senior officials in administration.

Both the original WaPo story and the most recent iteration after edits and additions, fail to prove the headline. The story asserts that Trump told an interpreter for a meeting in Hamburg with Putin not to share the interpreter’s notes, but admits that then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson attended the meeting and gave a read-out to others in the administration. Assuming the claim about the interpreter’s notes for that Hamburg meeting is true, nothing was concealed — unless the claim is that Tillerson also is in on the supposed Russia connivance.

WaPo also mentions a conversation during a banquet in Hamburg with Putin during which only Putin’s translator was present. But that conversation took place at a crowded dinner table with other world leaders, most if not all of whom spoke English, just feet away, likely able to hear much if not all of what Trump and the interpreter were saying in English. I wrote about this Hamburg dinner at the time in July 2017, Media scoop of undisclosed Trump-Putin “meeting” at G20 falls apart, noting how WaPo had to update its initial dramatic claim that the dinner conversation was an “undisclosed meeting” with Putin:

…. It turns out the meeting wasn’t a separate meeting, but a conversation at a dinner table in the presence of numerous other leaders. WaPo then amended its story, here is a Revised Version

After his much-publicized, two-and-a-quarter-hour meeting early this month with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin at the Group of 20 summit in Germany, President Trump chatted informally with the Russian leader for up to an additional hour later the same day.

The second meeting, undisclosed at the time, took place at a dinner for G-20 leaders, a senior administration official said. At some point during the meal, Trump left his own seat to occupy a chair next to Putin. Trump approached alone, and Putin was attended only by his official interpreter.

In a statement issued Tuesday night after published reports of the conversation, the White House said that “there was no ‘second meeting’ between President Trump and President Putin, just a brief conversation at the end of a dinner. The insinuation that the White House has tried to ‘hide’ a second meeting,” it said, “is false, malicious and absurd.”

“All the leaders” circulated around the room throughout the dinner, and “President Trump spoke with many leaders,” the statement said. “As the dinner was concluding,” it said, Trump spoke “briefly” with Putin, who was seated next to first lady Melania Trump.

The dinner conversation with Putin was first reported Monday by Ian Bremmer, president of the New York-based Eurasia Group, in a newsletter to group clients. Bremmer said the meeting began “halfway in” to the meal and lasted “roughly an hour.” The senior official said it began with the dessert course, but did not comment on its length….

According to that updated WaPo report, Trump walked over to where Melania and Putin were seated, which was right next to Merkel and others.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Z2aDLl793P0

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Z2aDLl793P0</a

I guess it’s possible that something nefarious took place at that dinner table conversation surrounded by world leaders, but WaPo doesn’t prove that.

WaPo also mentions the Trump-Putin private meeting in Helsinki, and states that the U.S. interpreter was seen exiting with a lot of notes. But WaPo does not state that those notes are missing, or what happened to the notes other than that the administration does not want the interpreter testifying to Congress because interpreters for the president do not normally testify:

But Trump and Putin then met for two hours in private, accompanied only by their interpreters. Trump’s interpreter, Marina Gross, could be seen emerging from the meeting with pages of notes.

Alarmed by the secrecy of Trump’s meeting with Putin, several lawmakers subsequently sought to compel Gross to testify before Congress about what she witnessed. Others argued that forcing her to do so would violate the impartial role that interpreters play in diplomacy. Gross was not forced to testify. She was identified when members of Congress sought to speak with her. The interpreter in Hamburg has not been identified.

So the Helsinki meeting does not support the headline anymore than the Hamburg meetings.

WaPo mentions that “Trump also had a brief conversation with ­Putin at a Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires last month” but presents no facts showing either secretiveness or deception. And WaPo acknowledges that Trump allows aides to listen in on calls with Putin.

So there really isn’t any there, there, to the WaPo story that would support the Manchurian candidate speculation sweeping the media and social media of Putin conveying instructions or otherwise running Trump as an agent through secret communications.

The sum of the NY Times and WaPo stories is to create the impression, amplified by other media and anti-Trump pundits, that Trump is illegitimate, a Manchurian candidate serving Russian masters. Yet the allegations are not proven, and are non-disprovable because they are so vague and speculative.

When reporting is both unproven and non-disprovable, there is every reason to be suspicious of the messengers.

More important, are we to believe that our law enforcement and intelligence agencies have proof — actual proof — that Trump is a Manchurian candidate or otherwise compromised but have withheld that information from Congress and the public? If that is the case, then law enforcement and the intelligence community have betrayed the public interest. Or, more likely, it means there isn’t any hard proof there to begin with.

At such time as there is actual proof of wrongdoing, then we can judge. But that proof, if it exists, has not been made public or even disclosed to Congress, despite two years of searching for it.

We have been told that the goal of the Russians has been to disrupt our democratic processes, to sow discord throughout the United States and among Americans, to weaken our institutions and to delegitimize our political process. I believe those are the goals of the Russians, as it would be consistent with almost a century of Soviet and now Russian propaganda and disinformation efforts.

But if that is the goal of the Russians, then Donald Trump is not the culprit. All he did is win an election fair and square.

The people serving the Russians’ purposes are the media which weekly rolls out unproven and non-disprovable accusations of collusion that undermine our political structures and institutions, and delegitimize elections far beyond Vladimir Putin’s wildest dreams.

[Featured Image: Screenshot from opening scene of The Manchurian Candidate]

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Comments

There is a law against lying to the FBI, government officials so i think it would be against the law for the FBI to lie to the president. Details omitted.Fill in the blanks.

The story makes the FBI look TERRIBLE.

Which is probably why they wrote it. Vegas odds say that the story was about to be broken by conservatives, so they leaked it to the NYT to try to get favorable spin on it.

    MattMusson in reply to Olinser. | January 14, 2019 at 6:47 am

    I believe this is one of those stories that is deliberately leaked to get ahead of a bigger story. Certainly, it proves that the FBI director was lying to Congress when he said that Trump was not under investigation.

    PersonofInterests in reply to Olinser. | January 14, 2019 at 12:09 pm

    The FBI cannot look much more terrible than it already does. As a matter of fact, the FBI will need a top to bottom purge and renaming for any possibility of it returning to the level of respectability and honor that it had before it became politicized and weaponized by President Zero and his Commie Demtard Thugs, Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, and James Comey. The era of assuming objectivity and honesty from our Federal Government in general has been materially damaged for the forseeable future.

You hit the nail right on the head.

Always note what the left either accuses, or blames anyone or anything of: it is themselves they are inadvertently pointing to, and trying to deflect from.

Speaking of the WaPo, are they going to publish their boss’ penis pictures, or what?

Washington Post Owner Jeff Bezos Allegedly Sent Penis Selfies:
https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2019/01/11/report-washington-post-owner-jeff-bezos-allegedly-sent-penis-selfies-to-his-mistress/

Colonel Travis | January 13, 2019 at 10:34 pm

When reporting is both unproven and non-disprovable, there is every reason to be suspicious of the messengers.

Yes. And in a society that valued integrity over BS, garbage stories like these wouldn’t even be published.

I’ve written for the Washington Post. There was a time I was proud of that. Now I am genuinely embarrassed. I cannot stand the media in America.

    Adam Brandes in reply to Colonel Travis. | January 14, 2019 at 7:32 am

    It is, by now, a well-known meme:
    “our” media is the enemy of the people.

    And let’s not be cowed by their reminding us that tyrants, such as Stalin, used the term to attack his (mostly imaginary) own enemies with this term. “Our” media became our enemies by deceiving us, not only by lying to us, but more importantly, by covering up crucial information that was unavailable to ordinary citizens, thus depriving us of our democratic rights.

Bernstein really said a whopper when he argued it didn’t matter whether Trump did it purposefully or not, his actions in the campaign and in office have destabilized the country.

I had to re-read it three times to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. Apparently, it is sufficient that Donald Trump exists for him to do Putin’s bidding. No intent is necessary. Quite a standard.

And to this day they continue to ignore that time when “somebody” was caught on a hot microphone offering more flexibility after the election to Vladimir.

    You mean that traitor calling himself ‘barack hussein obama’ (or whoever he really is)?

      You’re referring of course to the real-life Manchurian Candidate, who actually did succeed in gaining the Presidency, and about whom nothing can be verified but the fact that he’s a great liar (and that his maid keeps his trousers well-creased, can’t forget that.)

      I wonder if all those sealed records will be sealed forever? It’s ironic that he succeeded in being elected to public office by getting other people’s sealed records unsealed!

    NavyMustang in reply to Exiliado. | January 14, 2019 at 3:07 am

    Just imagine the storm if the press kids caught PDT saying anything even remotely similar to Putin what Obama said to Medvedev. Chaos.

I am getting very tired of all this. Part of me thinks they will stop once Trump is not in office anymore but given the effectiveness of not dressing their bias anymore, what for? As has been the case the past two years I slowly acquiesce to Trump’s position – they are the enemy of the people.

    “…they are the enemy of the people.”

    Yes, they have been my entire life. They are the enemy of freedom and liberty. We, Americans, are the only substantial opposition.

    Shy of removing Trump, their goal is to make us too weary of battle to elect another great man like him.

    It’ ll backfire the other way: no news organization will ever come into existence without scrutiny of it being a tool of the left.

Is CNN really any different than the Soviet-era Pravda?

How does the world not see the irony of Bolsheviks complaining about Russian (aka Soviet) interference.

Using the government’s power to spy upon political opponents is so bush league, nobody can bring themselves to believe it.

But the whole point of the Mueller investigation is prevent any investigation into the illegalities conducted by the CIA, FBI, DOJ and their ‘five-eyes’ friends.

Congressional inquiry is rebuffed with ongoing investigation excuses, witnesses are sucked into Mueller’s realm and not allowed to testify, etc.

The guys in the DOJ/FBI believe themselves to be above the law, in fact, they believe themselves to be the law instead of irs servants.

    Remember the good old days, when all we feared from our government was that the CIA ran black ops against forces trying to destroy our way of life?

    It’s horrifying to understand the situation we are in. But it’s gratifying to know the one-in-a-billion Donald Trump is occupying the White House.

      PersonofInterests in reply to TheFineReport.com. | January 14, 2019 at 12:31 pm

      Thank you Ed Snowden to show that reality is stranger than the fictions seen movie productions like “Clear & Present Danger”, “The Pelican Brief”, and “Enemy of the State” that all featured rogue individuals operating under the shields of their official Federal Government roles.

      Our Federal Government is like some of our Banks: Too Big to Fail and Too Big to Manage. The problem of Government is that there is NO Supervision and NO Accountability when unethical and deviant mismanagement and operation are identified. Witness the fact that not even an act of Congress can terminate a Federal Employee ergo, the only way to rid ourselves of these Deep State Swamp Creatures is to drastically reduce the size of the Federal Government. Hopefully, the 800,000 Non Essential Employees who are mostly members of Government Service Unions who do Union Business on Government time and at Taxpayer expense, will be forced to get another job while the Demtards’ Government Shutdown continues.

      PersonofInterests in reply to TheFineReport.com. | January 14, 2019 at 1:02 pm

      Thank you Ed Snowden for showing that reality is stranger than the fictions seen in movie productions like “Clear & Present Danger”, “The Pelican Brief”, and “Enemy of the State” that all featured rogue individuals operating under the shields of their official Federal Government roles. Everything important to make clear the tyranny is guarded by nuanced barriers, e.g., “That’s Classified”, “That is the subject of an ongoing investigations”, etc.

      Our Federal Government is like some of our Banks: Too Big to Fail and Too Big to Manage and so, there are lots of opportunity for the very kind of characters we’ve been seeing like Comey, Strzok, McCabe, Rosenstein, and others.

      The problem of Government is that there is NO Supervision and NO Accountability when unethical and deviant mismanagement and operation are identified. Witness the fact that not even an act of Congress can terminate a Federal Employee ergo, the only way to rid ourselves of these Deep State Swamp Creatures is to drastically reduce the size of the Federal Government.

      Hopefully, the 800,000+ Non Essential Employees who are mostly members of Government Service Unions who do Union Business on Government time and at Taxpayer expense, will be forced to get another job while the Demtards’ Government Shutdown continues. For those crying out their eyes for these Non-Essential employees, where were your tears when so many in the Private Sector were outsourced to permanently lose their jobs; when so many are furloughed in the Private Sector because a company wants to “juice” its financial performance? Sorry, but I’m not persuaded when seeing protests by people wearing Government Service Union attire and having Richard Trumpka of the AFL-CIO give political speeches while he draws $300,000+ in salary and bennies. https://www.unionfacts.com/employees/AFL-CIO

    PersonofInterests in reply to stablesort. | January 14, 2019 at 12:17 pm

    The day seems to be drawing near when American Patriots do the job themselves of reforming our Federal Government because most of our employees are obviously not up to the task and the few that are, haven’t gotten enough help to “Clean Our the Stable.”

question – what is the current FBI director Wray and current AG Whitaker doing?

now we learn the FBI investigators were leading a clandestine ops. on Trump in the days after Comey’s firing?

THAT doesn’t scream bias to anyone?

Comey has proven again and again how inept he was for such a powerful position yet there is still no blowback from the Trump appointments in any of this

(heck, I betcha an investigation into any of this has even been launched off the ground)

Wray, who should have been canned a year ago after his congressional testimony of supporting the not-release of requested documents, needs to be fired now for being a part of the blatant cover-up

President Trump really needs to look at his current advisors and question they are on his side or not

because nearly all are acting like Democratic plants from Sessions to now Wray and Whitaker

Republicans in Congress have literally been stonewalled from Trump’s own department heads when they rather should be working hand in hand in exposing these levels of corruption

nothing can be released because of supposed “continuing investigations” and when things are released – they are heavily redacted

THIS shit needs to stop with the new Senate and department heads coming in

I almost never agree with Glenn Greenwald, but he covers many important points about the Trump/Russia hoax investigation regarding the abuse of power by the FBI. Well worth the read and history lesson about how the FBI investigated Vice President Wallace under FDR for decades without any proper basis for so doing.

From the article…..
“The lack of any evidence of guilt has never dampered the excitement over Trump/Russia innuendo, and it certainly did not do so here. Beyond being construed as some sort of vindication for the most deranged version of Manchurian Candidate fantasies – because, after all, the FBI would never investigate anyone unless they were guilty – the FBI’s investigation of the President as a national security threat was also treated as some sort of unprecedented event in U.S. history. “This is, without exception, the worst scandal in the history of the United States,” pronounced NBC News’ resident ex-CIA operative, who – along with a large staple of former security state agents employed by that network – is now paid to “analyze” and shape the news.

The FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of Trump is far from the first time that the FBI has monitored, surveilled and investigated U.S. elected officials who the agency had decided haroberd suspect loyalties and were harming national security. The FBI specialized in such conduct for decades under J. Edgar Hoover, who ran the agency for 48 years and whose name the agency’s Washington headquarters continues to feature in its name (see photo above).

Perhaps the most notable case was the Hoover-led FBI’s lengthy counterintelligence investigation of the progressive Henry Wallace, both when he served in multiple cabinet positions in the Franklin Roosevelt administration and then as FDR’s elected Vice President. The FBI long suspected that Wallace harbored allegiances to the Kremlin and used his government positions to undermine what the FBI determined were “U.S. interests” for the benefit of Moscow and, as a result, subjected Wallace to extensive investigation and surveillance.”

Worth the read….
https://theintercept.com/2019/01/14/the-fbis-investigation-of-trump-as-a-national-security-threat-is-itself-a-serious-danger-but-j-edgar-hoover-pioneered-the-tactic/

How any of the Trump critics who recognize the size of his ego can posit that he allowed someone else to tell him what to do is beyond me.

2nd Ammendment Mother | January 14, 2019 at 3:05 pm

I still think we need to see the list of reporters on Fushion’s payroll…. we know they were paying reporters, but we ought to find out which ones and how much

From the ‘revised’ version:
The second meeting, undisclosed at the time, took place at a dinner for G-20 leaders, a senior administration official said.

Undisclosed to whom? All the leaders, their wives, and some photographers were present. Is WaPo really admitting to such cluelessness that they were unaware of this dinner in the schedule?

No, not really. It’s a part of their disparagement campaign, such their incessant claims of the President stating something “without evidence.” It’s shameful that they play such infantile deception game attempts.

Or maybe they are truly that clueless: they certainly get up on their hind legs about ‘fake news’ accusations, as they wonder why their credibility dies. It does take a special kind of stupid to be that blind.

notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital | January 15, 2019 at 9:07 pm

There the Democrat owned slave MSM go self-projecting their evil treason. The Dems and Clintons COLLUDED with Putin in Corrupt Uranium Deals. Hear the Obama-Holder-Lynch Mob were enriching themselves with that same dirty Corrupt Uranium Deal. Anyone know about that?