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Saturday, March 17, 2018

What You Gotta Believe

If Trump has a knack for something, it's a use of language that is compact and effective. He isn't a great communicator, per se--but he's really good at branding. This is an example: what you see in the above 280 characters is a distiallation of what #MAGA is supposed to believe. Let's break it down:

  1. Trump and his campaign didn't in any way (collusion) conspire to work with the Russians to win the election. Certainly in no illegal way (crime).
  2. The FBI investigation is based on a series of frauds perpetrated by high-level FBI guys, Obama, and Hillary, which included illegally tapping / unmasking / surveilling Trump campaign members and setting up a scapegoat should they lose (that "Russia did it").
  3. A key part of this was the Steele dossier that was created by Team Hillary using Steele as the mechanism. It was then used to influence judges and leak information to the press (which was then used to further influence judges) in order to create a false narrative about Trump-Russia collusion.
  4. The Mueller investigation, spun up from this fraudlent FBI investigation, is a WITCH HUNT aimed at Trump by the same cabal in the FBI (of which, of course, Mueller is a part) designed to [ something something ] him.
This is, of course, extreme--and extremely obvious--bullshit--but #MAGA believes it. They have to. If it's not true then the Great Man is deluded . . . or worse.

What Must Be True For This To Be True

The problems with this story could (and will) fill several books--but let's just look at some of the more gaping holes. This is easy to do with material produced in defense of Trump or by Team Trump themsleves (or even himself).

It's that easy.

No Collusion--No Crime

The first stop on this "Trump-Train-To-Hell" is that the team didn't collude and certainly not to any criminal intent. For that, we have Don Jr.'s emails. He was trying to collude and had he been given information (something of value) from a foreign agent, that would be a crime. Did it happen? They say no--but they also tried saying the whole damn meeting didn't happen--which was a bald-faced lie they got caught in.

At this point, self-righteously asserting that there was no collusion and no crime means (a) it's necessary to lie about this non-collusive/criminal meeting in the first place and (b) it's cool to--because although it was an attempt at what (in the final story) would likely be criminal behavior, the crime didn't work out--so, eh.

In other words: we don't have to speculate about Team Trump's wish to collude: by their own words, it's a fact--and a fact POTUS tried to cover up.

MAGA-HAT: The meeting was a set-up because the lawywer worked for Fusion GPS! It's proof, man. Red-handed.

This is stupid bccause: If this were a set up, Fusion GPS would have audio of the meeting, would have handed over fake Hillary dirt, and pulled off the sting. In this case, allegedly, Fusion GPS set up Don Jr. in the early days of the campaing--but waited until after he won the election to spring the "trap" which consited of basically nothing other than his own self-incrimination in his emails. Uh-huh.

But MAGA-HAT gotta believe.

A Series Of Crimes By A Cabal
The second stop is that a group of high level FBI guys--run by Comey and McCabe--as well as Obama, Susan Rice, and Hillary--and, you know, whoever, cooked up a story to blame the Russians for any election loss.

Now: The Russians were certainly helping this evil plan out--they were, for example, sowing discord and hacking our power-grid. They were also pretending to be Americans who were Pro-Trump, Pro-Sanders, and anti-Clinton (unless it was the radical Islamics or the Blacks--they knew their racists well, Trump voters--and it was YOU).

We've got all this on record. No one disputes it--but the question is: did Team Hillary make up a story that would, later, match the discussion in the Don Jr. meetings--in order to start an illegal investigation?

Well -- 

1. Don Jr. was told flat out in the email that Russa was backing his dad. He didn't react with surprise or, well, anything. It was stated as a known fact and he reacted to it as a known fact.

2. The Devin Nunes memo itself says the investigation started with stories from extrenal diplomats about leaky Trump campaign people. Certainly if that was a lie, Nunes wouldn't have put it in his (incredibly bullshit) memo.

3. Other countries IC's have indicated they were seeing this too. How far does this small cabal spread?

4. The investigation involved following Carter Page after he left the campaign. Surely if you were going to cook something up, you'd want to cut a little closer to the bone?

5. All of these people are Republicans. Comey very arguably gave the election to Trump (and was fired for it--as an excuse--but it's one King-MAGA backs). This cabal is pretty bad at skullduggery since if they had an active investigation on Trump, leaking that to the press would've been the surest way to torpedo him.

MAGA-HAT: They thought Hillary would win so they [ something, didn't do anything meaningful, something something something ]. Also, the story about the Austrailian diplomat and the drunk Papadopulous is hinky.

This is stupid because: That story would be easy to puncture (ask the diplomat), there are dated records, etc. That Nunes didn't even try to puncture it is telling.

The Steele Dossier Is FAKE

Much is made of the fact that the Steele Dossier is hard to validate--after all, a whole lot of it (The Omnivore went through it piece by piece) is what was being said inside the Kremlin. Without copious contacts in the Kremlin who are willing to talk, how do you validate that? 

The answer is that you ask someone with those contacts: Steele. Does this prove he was / is telling the truth? No--but it also makes "It's not validated" . . .  erm . . . invalid (well, irrelevant). 

What we do know: 
1. According to Steele The Russians wanted Trump to win. This is echoed in the Mueller indictments which were echoed in the sanctions from the White House. 

2. The email dump from Podesta was fed through Wikileaks and was released right after the Access Hollywood tape hit. This is exactly in line with what the Dossier suggests was going on. We can see, because of the URL shortner used to hack Podesta, that the entity that did the hacking was a government / state player that looks, well, exactly like Russia.

In other words: the evidence we can see suggests that what Steele said was true.

3. The connections between Hillary, Fusion GPS, and Steele are, by all accounts very arms-length (through lawyers, etc.). You have to believe everyone involved threw caution to the wind and had a secret meeting. You also have to believe that guys like Steele and Fusion GPS would be willing to burn their professional reputations (remember: Fusion worked with Republicans on the first part of the Dossier. They aren't a Dem-Only shop). Steele has spent a life-time building a good reputation. You have to believe he'd torch it all for this lie.

MAGA-HAT: I believe in big conspiracies.

This is stupid because: In this case it's like a world-wide conspiracy (the Dutch intel people) and everyone is either cheap to buy off--or huge sums of dark money are being thrown around for--get this--a dossier that comes out after the fucking campaign. If I were going to fake a document that would fool a FISA judge, I'd sure as hell try to put stuff in there that outlets other than Buzzfeed would publish.

Also: if the FISA judges believed they were had, The Omnivore asserts that Devin Nunes and company would be hearing abou that. Loudly.

The fact is that 4 different judges, no of whom were appointed by Obama, continued to allow the investigation. This is the strongest evidence that they were finding something that kept the search alive.

The Mueller Investigation Is Based On The Fruit Of The Poison Dossier

Perhaps the stupidest belief of all: that Rosenstein launched Muller because of a fraudlent FBI investigation. Uh--no. Let's recap:

1. Sessions recused himself. If this was all dodgy, why'd he do that?

2. Then Trump fired Comey using a Rosenstein report that claimed he mishandled Lock-Her-Up Hillary.

3. Then Trump told NBC he fired Comey because of the Russia investigation.

4. He told Russia that too, while divulging CODEWORD information to them.

There is a clear, bright-line cause-and-effect connection between Trump's behavior and the Special Counsel.

MAGA-HAT: But Rosenstein, an Obama-holdover (uh, no) appointed Comey's best buddy in what is clearly a partisan, illegal conflict of interest. Also: he hired a TEAM OF KILLERS who are all DEMOCRATS!

This is stupid because: If this were what words like "conflict of interest" means then guys like Trey Gowdy would, instead of falling all over themselves to praise Mueller as a choice, raised the red flag. When the people with the actual law degrees tell you that this is okay, you've got to believe them--or else you are stupid.

The even stupider thing is the assumption--the world view--that someone's voter registration card indicates how they will conduct themselves privately and professionally. The Omnivore thinks the problem here is that it's true for MAGA-HATs. 

They know they are loyal unto-stupidity for the Great Man--so they assume everyone works like them. If someone is a Dem, they're corrupt and will lie, cheat, and steal to bring down Trump. If they're a Republican, they're slightly less suspect--but anyone who isn't on the Trump-Train is against Trump.

That's how they see the world--which is why they don't believe any source that tells them things they don't want to hear: if the source were trustworthy they wouldn't be saying those things, would they?

Would they.

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