Manpower, hacking skill, money: All of that could have come from Team Putin. But Russian influence cannot have been decisive. I would liken the 2016 campaign to a film set: The production may have had Russian crew members and a Russian executive producer -- even Russian funding. But the writer and the director must have been either Americans or Brits with a thorough knowledge of American culture.
Consider, for example, the language issue. When Trumpist trolls commandeered large chunks of the internet in 2016, we were not seeing many peoples who are talking like this, da? The trolls used our slang and pop cultural references. They were as American as a cross burning.
By contrast, the Guccifer 2.0 website -- now known to be the work of the GRU -- was written in English that was, at times, barely comprehensible. It was obvious from the start that the author thought in Russian.
In early October, Roger Stone and others predicted that Assange would soon release information certain to deal a death blow to the Clinton campaign. To the surprise of many, Assange passed up this opportunity. Guccifer did the honors -- and the results were hilarious.
We're talking about a lie so unconvincing that even the Alex Jonesians scoffed at it. Basically, Guccifer took doctored DNC files and tried to pretend that they were Clinton Foundation Files. From my earlier post:
How do we know that the results are bogus? Well, Guccifer offers a screenshot of folders which were supposedly on the Foundation's computer. There is no mention of the charitable work done by the Foundation around the world, and no reference to anyone who works for the Foundation. In other words, we see nothing that we might reasonably expect to see. Instead, the folders include such headings as "DNC" and "DC Region 2015-1016" and -- my favorite -- "Pay to Play."That was the best that the GRU could come up with: Really crappy, low-quality propaganda -- nonsense that couldn't persuade anyone who has blown out more than two birthday cake candles.
Oh right. Surrrrrrre. As though that would be the actual name of a folder on the Clinton Foundation's (allegedly wide-open) computer system.
Why not a folder marked "Children Sacrificed to Lord NATAS" or "Hillary's Lesbian Lovers" or "Evil Things to Do Today"?
You'd have to have a single-digit IQ to believe this horseshit. Even Katrina Pierson must be rolling her eyes.
There is also the first page of a list of Democratic stalwarts (such as Barney Frank) who supposedly got TARP fund kickbacks, as though it were possible to pull off a scheme like that with the Republicans controlling congressional investigative committees. Are we really supposed to believe that not one banker anywhere complained or blew the whistle? Barney Frank is one of Wall Street's most powerful critics; the idea of him getting secret kickbacks from Wall Street firms is inane.
More to the point: Why would that list be on a computer owned by a fucking charity?
Guccifer's failure on that occasion tells me that the GRU possessed only a limited understanding of what would "fly" in this country. As they say in The Music Man: You gotta know the territory.
A conspiracy installed Trump; I'm convinced of that. Russia was a key part of this plan; I'm convinced of that. But Russia could not have done this job on their own. Jared Kushner seems to have been in charge of the American effort.
We also know that Cambridge Analytica has strong ties to both the Mercers and to Russia.
In that light, I'd like to republish a couple of comments offered by a reader who calls himself or herself Dataflo. (These comments were originally written in response to this post.) I don't know anything about Dataflo -- but you may want to follow the links. (I've somewhat edited the text to aid comprehension.)
Please add to your timeline for the Trump campaign, Brad Parscale's meeting with POTUS on June 8th - see Parscale's Tweet, reported in the Guardian. Note that the President planned to travel to San Antonio on June 16th 2016, for a fund-raiser likely attended by key members of his web-hosting/internet data campaign management firm, Giles-Parscale.
Perscale is a long-time friend of Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Is it a coincidence that Giles-Parscale suddenly hired an additional 100 programmers, 10 of whom were alumni of Computer Analytica?
A National Review article provides a brief view of the link between the Trump campaign and a Mercer backed computer analytics company founded by a U.K.-based oligarch whose fortune is linked to Putin's. (Also see here.)
The Guardian article offers Brad Parscale's picture of himself and the President in a June 8th tweet about his meeting with POTUS:
Great meeting with our next POTUS. I have the great honor to work for @realDonaldTrump daily #TrumpTrain @DanScavinoAccording to mysanantonio.com on June 14, 2016:
12:12 PM - 8 Jun 2016
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee hired Parscale in 2012 to build a website for Trump International Realty. Parscale went on to work on sites for Trump Winery, the Eric Trump Foundation and a site for Trump’s wife, Melania. Among Giles-Parscale’s other clients are the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo, the Archdiocese of San Antonio and the University of the Incarnate Word. Trump will stop in San Antonio on Friday (June 16) for a private fundraiser likely to be held at Oak Hills Country Club on the city’s North West side.
To understand why the FBI is investigating the Trump campaign's web-hosting, campaign marketing, and data firm, Giles-Parscale, place Brad Parscale's tweet about his June 8, 2016, meeting w/ POTUS in context with Don Jr's tweets and the timeline of meetings w/ Russians. Now add...
1) Peter Thiel's (co-founder of Crunchbase, PayPal founder, Facebook board member)...
"It's hard to overstate and hard to summarize Jared's role in the campaign," says billionaire Peter Thiel, the only significant Silicon Valley figure to publicly back Trump. "If Trump was the CEO, Jared was effectively the chief operating officer."...and 2) This quote from Eric Schmidt's, former CEO of Google.
"Jared Kushner is the biggest surprise of the 2016 election," adds Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, who helped design the Clinton campaign's technology system. "Best I can tell, he actually ran the campaign and did it with essentially no resources."Now consider Brad Parscale's role in leading the multi-state ad campaign for the Mercer funded non-profit organization, Make America Great Again, and look at the Trump campaign spending and the FBI's Annapolis MD raid on Strategic Campaign Group in May, 2017.
Who is leaking WH info, including Don Jr's emails...? Maybe someone in Giles-Parscale, not just Bannon. Many people are motivated to swing attention toward Kushner and away from Mercer-backed operators and interests.
Certainly, Giles-Parscale personnel will have a strong interest in turning state's evidence soon, but if you follow the money, all roads lead to Mercer family business, PAC, and non-profit investments and henchpersons (Bannon, Conway, Parscale, Thiel, Eric Trump's wife who works for a Giles-Parscale entity), not just Russia. Mercer's co-conspirators and minions have an incentive to frame Kushner.
Trump is in Kompromat bind. He was played through his greed and bottomless sense of entitlement. Does he really have any choice about who is sacrificed -- his sons, his daughter's husband?
Mercer family interests and entities advocate for a post-nationalist world with spineless, corrupt governments primed to do the bidding of a handful of wealthiest people in the world. Mercer organizations' debt to Russian intelligence is strong. Kompromat is a ponzi scheme where an inner cabal, a handful of players, will have agency to dominate world affairs. Everyone is either a pawn or player. In their de-constructed, cutthroat vision for world order, the ends justify the means. We all know by now that "make America great again" is just another lie.
Look twice at who is in the FBI's legal crosshairs...? For example, who has monetized criminal activity (e.g. RICO/money laundering... in NY) that they can lean on to turn state's evidence in a Russia interference in the U.S. election investigation?
8 comments:
Joseph, another mind-expanding post. Will follow links.
One link of my own is having read back in college, apparently digested, then forgotten the Hamilton piece you wrote about recently. It seems to have been forgotten, but it informed my political sensibility. So thanks for bringing it back.
The suberb book _Democracy in Chains_ tells an important part of the story of how such a plan has been and is carried out.
Wordsmith stuff…"Trump is in Kompromat bind. He was played through his greed and bottomless sense of entitlement. Does he really have any choice about who is sacrificed -- his sons, his daughter's husband?" end of quote.
"Bottomless sense of entitlement". Wow.
After reading about the Michigan primary and the outcome of the general election vote in the swing states, why am I reminded of Beverley Harris and Black Box Voting?
Hillary said as much in one of her interviews. Although I had a feeling she was thinking of Americans other than Rs as culprits.
So there were at least eight people at the meeting in Trump Tower:
Donald Trump Jr,
Jared Kushner,
Paul Manafort,
Natalia Veselnitskaya,
Rinat Akhmetshin (who first lied and said he wasn't there),
Rob Goldstone,
Anatoli Samochornov (interpreter),
a representative of the Agalarovs.
This is not the end of the story!
@b:
Yeah, that’s about the only conclusion that can be safely drawn… The representative of the Agalarovs was most likely Emin. Since there seems to be a consensus that Kushner and Manafort completely lost interest after just a few minutes, including in Veselnitskaya’s “plastic folder”, they must have come to the meeting knowing exactly what they were looking for. And I guess there were a lot more emails and messaging about the meeting.
-Brumel
At this point what prevents Hillary from starting a law suit to overturn the election? There is something like that at the the state level, I am sure an enterprising lawyer can find a way to extend it. I am sure within few hours they can secure a hundred millions signatures. Her silence is maddening.
I've been wondering along the same lines about law suits. Certainly there's an enormous class of millions who have been harmed.
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