Stop kidding yourselves. Plus: As I predicted, Kolomoisky has become a key player

I can't watch. I literally can't watch what's going on right now.

The left-wing sites are completely mis-reading the situation. They are speaking as if the Republicans are on the ropes, as if the Trumpers are making fools of themselves. Ignore that MSNBC happy talk: The situation is, in fact, dire.

Yes, the IG report seems to clear the FBI -- but it gave the Trumpists just enough to work with. The Durham/Barr investigation will be filled with lies, but those lies will take root. The Republican pushback at the impeachment hearings is also a lie-fest, but it will turn around those Americans who are turn-roundable.

The QAnon version of reality, however absurd, however fascistic, will become...reality.

Many of Trump’s most loyal boosters and sycophants at Fox News have long promised that Horowitz’s report was not only going to expose FISA abuses and reveal that the Russia investigation was a politically motivated hoax by the Obama administration, but would also lead to actual jail time for those in the Deep State.

Watch it happen. Outright fascism is coming.

On the right, the commonly-heard rationalization for the Horowitz Report is that he had access only to DOJ material, not information available to the intelligence community. This is true. But it's also a kind of coded message.

For years -- long before the advent of Trumpism -- I have been trying to warn the world: There is a large and powerful pro-fascist network within the American intelligence community. That network has been in place since the earliest days of the CIA.

I am convinced that there are people within the American community willing to concoct evidence in order to empower Trump.

The "spooks against Trump" framework promoted by Malcolm Nance and Louise Mensch is utterly misleading.

Can I prove what I'm saying? Yes. I need mention just one name: William Barr.

Even today, the media -- both left and right -- are engaged in a conspiracy to hide the truth about that man. He has always been CIA. (So was his dad, the guy who recruited Jeffrey Epstein.) Even when ostensibly working in private practice, William Barr was really working for Spookworld.

The fact that Barr is going to such lengths to keep this administration afloat tells you all you need to know: Trump has the spook vote -- the only vote that counts.

To repeat what I said in an earlier post: I wish I could spit in the eyes of everyone who spoke of Barr as an "institutionalist" who would rein in Donald Trump. When Barr was nominated, I was derided as a conspiracy theorist because I brought up his long, long career as a CIA cover-up artist. Remember, this is the same William Barr who helped BCCI take over an American bank. This is the same William Barr who covered up Iran Contra. This is the same William Barr who helped Poppy Bush impede congressional oversight of the Agency.

The evil, lying bastard Barr will win. Here's an excerpt from his response to Horowitz:

The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken. It is also clear that, from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory. Nevertheless, the investigation and surveillance was pushed forward for the duration of the campaign and deep into President Trump’s administration. In the rush to obtain and maintain FISA surveillance of Trump campaign associates, FBI officials misled the FISA court, omitted critical exculpatory facts from their filings, and suppressed or ignored information negating the reliability of their principal source...

This is nonsense, of course. If the FBI was out to get Trump, Comey could simply have revealed the existence of the investigation before the election.

Side note: While writing these words, I heard Sensenbrenner liken the Democrats to Joe McCarthy (whom he knew, back in the day). This association is obscene: Trump and his friend Roger Stone are the ones who learned under Roy Cohn, the man who made McCarthyism possible. Yet Sensenbrenner's message will get through. Don't kid yourself: It will take hold.

I'm going to turn off the Teevee so I can concentrate on making my point. Which comes down to these words:

STOP THINKING POSITIVELY.

OPTIMISM WILL KILL YOU.

Only a fearless embrace of total, brutal, impermeable cynicism will allow you to see things as they really are.

You want to make accurate predictions about the future? It's a simple two-step process: 1. Imagine the worst. 2. Sit back and watch it happen.

The pro-Dem sites and MSNBC are deluding you. I believe that Trump's popularity will go UP -- very soon. The upward movement may be subtle or it may be profound, but it's definitely going in that direction.

In the near future, most Americans really will believe that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that intervened in the 2016 election. They already believe that the Democratic Party is a cesspool of conspiracy and evil.

Do not underestimate the power of incessant propaganda. To cite an obvious example: Many Americans have been convinced of the absurd proposition that Jim Comey was pro-Clinton, even though he enabled Trump's victory by hiding the fact that Trump was under investigation. In essence, Comey elected Trump. Nevertheless, most Americans -- including, I suspect, most Democrats -- have had their brains so thoroughly laundered that they now accept the absurd proposition that a pro-Clinton bias motivated Comey.

If Americans can be convinced of that, they can be convinced of anything.

The American intelligence community has spent decades learning how to manipulate public opinion. That's a story which Malcolm Nance won't discuss: In his books, the bad guys are always Russian, and the CIA has always worn the white hats. He never talks about Bill Barr's CIA background.

I like Nance and recommend his books. (Right now, I'm going through his latest.) But we can't trust the guy until he decides to speaks honestly about what the CIA did to Chile, Indonesia, Guatemala, Italy and so many other places. The CIA's well-honed methods of subversion and media manipulation are much more relevant to current events than are the shopworn Cold War tropes that Nance loves to trot out.

(God, if I ever have to hear about that fucking Bulgarian umbrella thingie again, I will scream.)

Kolomoisky. Months ago, I started writing about Ihor Kolomoisky -- the power behind Zeklensky, the current leader of Ukraine. At a time when pretty much all other American writers ignored the guy, I could tell that he would soon play a key role.

Kolomoisky is the funder of the fascist Azov battalion, which attracts volunteers from neo-Nazis around the world. Months ago, I predicted that he would soon patch things up with Putin. Kolomoisky had turned against Putin for a while because the invasion of Crimea did serious injury to Mr. K's business interests. But that situation is changing.

Has changed.

Months after my initial post on Kolomoisky, I am heartened to see that TPM has finally woken up.

EXCLUSIVE: Oligarch Kolomoisky Linked To Giuliani Campaign For Dirt

Not so many months ago, Rudy was tweeting insults at Kolomoisky. Looks like relations are much warmer now.

(Similarly, there was a time when Rudy caterwauled about oligarch Dmitry Firtash -- but those complaints stopped when Lev Parnas, a Firtash lieutenant, joined forces with Rudy.)

The nature and extent of Kolomoisky’s involvement in the pressure campaign remains unclear. There’s some indication that he began dishing the kind of bogus political dirt that Giuliani and Trump are seeking as far back as 2018. But in the murky world where Ukraine business and politics overlap, Kolomoisky has largely managed to remain on the periphery of the coverage of the Trump scandal.

That is, at least, until Rudy waltzed back into town.

Giuliani’s Kyiv trip last week gave away the game, according to Ukraine observers. He took a series of meetings with figures known for their close association with Kolomoisky. According to these Kolomoisky associates’ own accounts and Ukraine news reports, they fed more dirt to Giuliani, who was an eager recipient. One longtime Western official stationed in Kyiv, speaking anonymously due to lack of authorization to speak publicly, told TPM that it seemed Kolomoisky was “trying to become friends with Trump and Giuliani.”

Do you understand what this means? Zelensky will say whatever Trump wants him to say. Zelensky dare not cross Kolomoisky, the man who put him in office.

Kolomoisky can't be touched. He got away with an assassination attempt on the Ukrainian equivalent to our Federal Reserve head. With near-total impunity, he stole billions from Ukraine's most powerful bank. Do you really think that Zelensky can safely disobey his master?

TPM learned that Kolomoisky retained Bud Cummins, an American criminal defense attorney, to represent him in federal criminal investigations in the United States.

Around the same time last year, as TPM previously reported, Cummins tried to set up a meeting between American law enforcement and a Ukrainian prosecutor who was offering information about the Bidens and supposed Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election. That information later became the basis of Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine.

For Kolomoisky, the prospect of pleasing the White House comes with two possible benefits: shutting down the American criminal investigation of him, and getting a favorable resolution to a massive embezzlement case involving a bank he previously owned.

That is precisely what I wrote months ago. Nice to see that TPM has finally caught on!

Kolomoisky is under investigation by the FBI. (He has business interests in the United States.) Bill Barr thus has the ability to make his life easy or miserable.

That's why Barr's name came up in the transcript of the Zelensky call. Why else would the Attorney General of the United States play any kind of role in the interaction of the US President and the leader of Ukraine?

Even now, you probably have yet to grasp just how wretched the situation is. Let me say it yet again: Kolomoisky is the power behind Zelensky.

Try to get your mind around the implications.

When Giuliani and Barr concoct their smears, they will rely on Ukrainian sources -- and those sources are not going to be creeps like Viktor Shokin. Shokin is easily dismissed, and the same can be said of the other has-beens. Barr will cite new sources -- people high up within the current Ukraine government. And Zelensky, the putative anti-corruption crusader, will vouch for them.

Soon after Barr and Rudy drop their bombs, the Zelensky government will -- as promised, as pressured -- initiate their investigation of Hunter and Joe Biden. That investigation will be based on lies. But it will be effective.

I predict that Trump could win as many as 40 states through such smear tactics, even if the economy starts to sour. A year from now, independents will consider the Democratic Party more evil than the mafia -- and the party itself may splinter. Progs, feminists and the proponents of Identity Politics will divorce themselves from mainstream Dems.

Again: OPTIMISM WILL KILL YOU.

Only total cynicism will prepare you for what's going to hit us.