It turns out that Newsweek's story is not about Trump's alleged breakdown. That report turned out to be -- as I hoped -- no more than a rumor. The actual story is about Trump's financial conflicts of interest. It seems that Rachel Maddow read advance excerpts of this story on her show last night; too bad I didn't get a chance to catch it.
I'm going to let my original post stand, because the warning about what I've called the "McAlpine gambit" still seems like sound general advice. Besides, I had promised you folks an update on that wild (and no doubt false) story about the rape allegation against Donald Trump.
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Newsweek reporter Kurt Eichenwald is working on big new story about Donald Trump. The story is not online now, but it may be by the time you read these words.
As I write, an unverified rumor holds that Eichenwald will reveal that Trump suffered a breakdown circa 1990 and did a stint in a mental institution.
If that is the story -- well, I just hope that Eichenwald has his ducks in a row, because my initial reaction is skeptical.
Do you recall the strange story of Michigan state legislator Todd Courser? Last year, he was caught having an extramarital affair. In order to cover up this minor pecadillo, he used an odd tactic: He deliberately spread false rumors that he had been caught having sex with a male prostitute.
Why would Courser do such a thing? He was following the course of action outlined in a book by Margaret Thatcher's good friend, Lord McAlpine:
First, create a situation where you are wrongly accused. Then, at a convenient moment, arrange for the false accusation to be shown to be false beyond all doubt. Those who have made accusations against both the company and its management become discredited. Further accusations will then be treated with great suspicion.We have good evidence that Team Trump is following the McAlpine recipe. Many of you will recall the story of "Katie Johnson," the woman who is supposedly suing Trump for committing an act of rape committed when she was underaged. You can read the details here and here.
In my earlier pieces, I argue that "Katie Johnson" is probably a fictional character invented by Roger Stone, Trump's skeevy friend and gray eminence. The name is just one of many giveaways: Until recently, President Obama had an attractive secretary named Katie Johnson who just happens to be the same age as the allegedly real woman who brought that lawsuit. I suspect that the choice of the name "Katie Johnson" was one of Roger's little jokes.
A man of great wit, Roger is.
In order to "sell" the rape allegation, we now have a (probably staged) tiff between Roger Stone and his mondo bizarro writing partner, a hypersexualized Texas cryptid named Robert Morrow. (Morrow's motto: "I love titties." His entire life seems to be modeled after Terry Jones' character in the Dirty Vicar sketch.) Morrow -- who wears a jester's cap in most recent photos -- says that he believes Katie Johnson to be a real woman who was really raped by Donald Trump, whom Morrow calls a "child rapist." In response, Stone calls Morrow a "Quisling."
No sale, fellas. I don't buy any of it.
I think that this whole "friends falling out" scenario is a gimmick invented by a couple of weisenheimers who got pissed off because everyone in the media saw through their silly "McAlpine Gambit."
Right now, the big question is: Will Kurt Eichenwald's Big Reveal turn out to be yet another McAlpine Gambit? I know that many right-wingers have targeted Eichenwald for particularly venomous displays of hatred -- just as, years ago, they targeted Dan Rather.
Remember what happened to Dan...?
3 comments:
That is one hell of a quote from Alistair McAlpine. Over the past 20-30 years, the British elite have ensured that the exposure of powerful and well-connected paedophiles hasn't progressed very far at all. We're little further forward than in the 1960s when upper-class paedophilia was presented in the pages of "Encounter" magazine as thoroughly acceptable. (One foul abuser of children was admiringly described in that publication as a man who brought a toy train where most men would bring a bunch of flowers.) Occasionally a dead or dying second-rank politician is thrown to the wolves - a Cyril Smith or a Greville Janner. If Cliff Richard should snuff it, his image will doubtless be allowed to change too. Even now that former prime minister Edward Heath has been mentioned (and Harvey Proctor has fled the country), Heath's connections to the island of Jersey haven't led to a reversal of the relabelling of the children's bones and teeth that were found in the Haut de la Garenne children's home as items that, whatever they were, weren't bones or teeth. The fucking Torygraph cries "witch hunt", and at the top of society it's life as usual.
Exposure and discourse have been minimised and kept at a much lower level than in Ireland, let alone Belgium. Social deference and the stranglehold on the country that is exercised by the boarding-school educated dictatorship have made sure of that. Police operations Ore, Midland and others have been "failures". The lid has been kept on.
I don't know whether you have ever looked at the Madeleine McCann case. It has occasioned long-running professional disinformation that must have cost a fortune. On the night of the so-called "disappearance", bllionaire-bracket Philip Edmonds, nephew of Margaret Hodge, skedaddled from the hotel, which for him was very downmarket. And the involvement of other high-level political and business figures boggles the imagination (from Gordon Brown to US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Philip Green, etc.) The prime minister's media official Clarence Mitchell was seconded to manage the media coverage. No shit! Various politically-connected mid-level organised crime figures get a look-in too.
Meanwhile, the book title "The New Macchiavelli", used by H G Wells, seems to be popular, employed by the vile Alistair McAlpine and then by Tony Blair's chief of staff Jonathan Powell. What "creative" thinkers publishers must be employing nowadays!
"I've been watching this chart like a hawk. (I also go here and here at least twice a day.)"
Only twice? You're insufficiently obsessed! (LOL)
I go here too: the prices at the Betfair exchange. Trump's is currently 3.1, the highest I've seen it. The Betfair figures are more useful than the wannabe stuff published at PredictIt.org.
The Newsweek story will be about finances. That nervous breakdown story is not news. The reporter cancelled his tweets about it because it was overshadowing the real story (finances).
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