(GLOBALIST AT WORK) – Mitt Romney: Putin, Kim Deserve ‘Censure,’ Not ‘Flattery’

By Joshua Caplan

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) on Monday took a veiled swipe at President Donald Trump’s diplomatic approach to Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, arguing they “deserve a censure rather than flattery,” reports the Salt Lake Tribune.

Romney, an outspoken critic of the administration, jabbed the president without naming him in a prepared speech at an event held by the Sutherland Institute, a right-of-center think tank based in Salt Lake City.

“I think demonstrating personal character is one of the most important responsibilities of a leader of the land,” the Utah Republican continued. In an attempt to denuclearize a belligerent North Korea, President Trump has participated in two summits with Kim and exchanged several letters. The president also met with Putin in Helsinki, Finland, in a bid to repair ties left in tatters by the Obama administration.

Romney, who was soundly defeated by President Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election, has heavily criticized President Trump — most notably during the 2016 election, describing him as a “con man,” and a “fake.” However, in a show of unity, president-elect Trump put aside Romney’s criticism and interviewed him for the position of Secretary of State, a job which ultimately went to former Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson.

During the 2018 midterm election, President Trump endorsed Romney, which the then-senate candidate gladly accepted. Just when the pair’s relationship appeared to be on the mend, Romney once again attacked President Trump with a Washington Post opinion-editorial published two days before he was sworn into office. The Utah Republican recently slammed President Trump for suggesting he may be open to receiving opposition research on his political opponents from foreign governments, calling the idea “unthinkable.” Days later, the president rejected the hypothetical scenario, saying he would alert federal authorities if his campaign was approached.

Later in his speech before the think tank, Romney criticized far-left proposals such as the Green New Deal and “Medicare for All,” advocated by several 2020 White House hopefuls.

At one point, Romney also conceded his “slice of Republican Party these days is about that big,” placing his hands closely together, before claiming he is not “100 percent sold on everything my current party’s establishment is doing.”

“I am aligned with the Republican conservative philosophy and believe that our Democratic friends are taking us in a very different direction, which would be most unfortunate to our future,” said the lawmaker.

August 21, 2019 0

UK ‘up to its neck’ in Russiagate affair, says George Galloway, as secret texts reveal British role

While hysteria raged about possible Russian “interference” in the 2016 US election, British intelligence officials were secretly playing a “key role” in helping instigate investigations into Donald Trump, secret texts have shown.

“Turns out it was Britain that was the foreign country interfering in American affairs,” former MP George Galloway told RT, speaking about the new revelations published by the Guardian about early British involvement in the ‘Russiagate’ investigation.

The Guardian reported on texts between former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe and Jeremy Fleming, his then counterpart at MI5, who now heads GCHQ. The two men met in 2016 to discuss “our strange situation” – an apparent reference to Russia’s alleged interference in US domestic politics.

British intelligence “appears to have played a key role in the early stages,” the report said.

Galloway said the revelation was not surprising because people “already knew” that British intelligence had played a part in the Russia-related investigations in the US. He recalled that it was former British spy Christopher Steele who drew up the now-infamous Steele dossier, which made multiple unverifiable and salacious claims about Trump and has since been largely discredited. Britain is “up to its neck in the whole Russiagate affair,” he said.

The texts also reveal that the Brexit vote was viewed by some in the FBI as something that had been influenced by Russia.

Fear behind fury: As DNI, Ratcliffe could expose FISA files that Russiagaters hope stay buried

Asked what the UK stood to gain by trying to implicate Russia in a US election scandal at a time when then-foreign secretary Boris Johnson was dismissing baseless claims of Russian interference in the Brexit campaign, Galloway noted that Johnson’s comments on Russia have appeared to strangely sway between friendly and antagonistic.

Johnson is like “a sofa that bears the impression of the last person to sit upon him,” the former MP quipped. What happens next will depend on who is leading the tango, “the orange man in Washington or the blonde mop-head in London.”

In June 2016, the FBI opened a covert investigation codenamed ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ into Trump’s now disproven collusion with Moscow, which was later taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Ultimately, the two-year-long probe that followed came up short, producing no evidence to prove a conspiracy or collusion between Trump campaign officials and Russia.

August 1, 2019 0

Russiagate queen reigns no more: Rachel Maddow ratings tank after collusion narrative implodes

Once a shining beacon of hope for Russiagate true believers, it looks like Rachel Maddow has left her best days behind her; MSNBC’s conspiracy queen has seen her show plummet to fifth place in cable news ratings. What happened?

You rise fast and fall hard in the fickle world of television. Just last April, Maddow overtook Fox News’ Sean Hannity to claim the title of most-watched host across cable news. She had become a reliable source for Russigate aficionados to get their daily dose of crazy.

Sadly for Maddow, the latest data released by Nielsen shows her show in fifth place with a total audience of 2.4877 million viewers for July – behind Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and The Five (all Fox News shows).

Top 5 Russia-conspiracy fails of Rachel ‘highest-ratings-ever’ Maddow

For context, in January this year, Maddow still boasted an audience of nearly 3.3 million, which means she shed around 800,000 viewers in just six months. Maddow was also in fifth place among viewers in the 25-54 age range – the group most-favored by advertisers.

Ouch.

Once dubbed “the smartest person on TV” by Forbes (really), this is certainly not the big payoff Maddow was expecting, having dedicated three years of her career to breathlessly covering every twist and turn in the anticlimactic Trump-Russia “collusion” drama.

There’s no question that Maddow lost a major component of what had made her show so popular when former special counsel Robert Mueller showed up in March having found no evidence of conspiracy or collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia.

As former MSNBC host Krystal Ball noted last week in candid criticism of her former network colleague, Maddow had “built segment after segment, show after show, on building anticipation for a big reveal” that never materialized. Indeed, Maddow became something of an expert at promising her audience bombshells that never amounted to anything.

Recall the dramatic teaser tweet she sent out in March 2017 one hour before her show, claiming: “We’ve got Trump tax returns. (Seriously).” When the story turned out to be a big nothingburger (all she had was one boring form which revealed nothing particularly interesting), Maddow lashed out at her own viewers, saying people had “leapt” to conclusions.

Ball also accused Maddow of doing damage to the left, having become “swept up in the ratings bubble” that was being sustained by “feverish Russian conspiracy theories.”

It’s true. Seemingly convinced that the Russiagate story would end with Donald Trump being dragged from the White House in a dressing gown with shackles around his feet, Maddow had abandoned major issues that are important to the American left and trafficked in mental conspiracies and outright fear-mongering instead.

How about that time she suggested that Russia might kill the power in Fargo during a polar vortex and let everyone freeze to death? Or the time she spent three whole minutes dramatically building up to ‘reveal’ that Russia and North Korea share a border – followed by 15 more minutes trying to prove that Vladimir Putin had orchestrated and secretly controlled the Singapore summit between Trump and Kim Jong-un.

A study of her coverage by the Intercept last year showed that 53 percent of Maddow’s segments focused only on Russia over a six-week period between February and March.

Of course, there were no slaps on the wrist for Maddow at MSNBC HQ for getting stories drastically wrong or failing to deliver on her promises of Trump-destroying bombshells. In fact, it seemed the more dramatic and off-the-wall her coverage became, the more she was celebrated for it. This staggering fall from ratings grace can be her comeuppance.

Boo hoo, Rachel. If you need to cry, you could always use the piles of money you made from lies as tissues.

Danielle Ryan

Danielle Ryan is an Irish freelance writer based in Dublin. Her work has appeared in Salon, The Nation, Rethinking Russia, teleSUR, RBTH, The Calvert Journal and others.

August 1, 2019 0

#KamalaHarrisDestroyed trends on Twitter after annihilation by Tulsi Gabbard, ‘Russian bots’ blamed

Twitter deemed presidential hopeful Kamala Harris utterly “destroyed,” after fellow candidate Tulsi Gabbard landed dizzying verbal haymakers on the former California prosecutor. Naturally, ‘Russian bots’ were swiftly blamed.

Wednesday night’s Democratic debate was not an enjoyable one for Harris, who went into the faceoff as a darling of the media and among the frontrunners for her party’s nomination. On the stage in Detroit, Hawaiian Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard grilled Harris on her record as California’s attorney general.

In under a minute, Gabbard shredded Harris to pieces for jailing more than 1,500 nonviolent marijuana offenders while admitting in a radio interview that she had smoked marijuana in college, and for her “tough-on-crime” stances. “She blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row… she kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor… and she fought to keep the cash bail system in place,” Gabbard continued, leaving Harris unable to counter.

By Thursday morning, “#KamalaHarrisDestroyed” was trending on Twitter in the US.

Of course, any attack on an establishment Democrat is met with an equal and opposite reaction. Establishment pundits and their supporters responded with a familiar cry: “Russia!” Gabbard, they said, is propped up by Vladimir Putin, and #KamalaHarrisDestroyed is the work of “Putin’s bots and paid for shills.”

Even Harris’ press secretary, Ian Sams, labeled Gabbard’s supporters part of “the Russian propaganda machine.”

It’s worth noting that nobody shouting “Russian bots” did any data analysis to support their claims. Few noted too that, during the debate, ‘Tulsi Gabbard’ was the most searched for politician in every single US state, according to Google Trends.

But if the nefarious hashtag wasn’t the work of the Kremlin, then it must have been the work of the MAGA-hatted deplorables, some #resistance commenters argued.

That opponents would default to Russia to attack Gabbard is unsurprising. Running on an anti-interventionist, foreign-policy-focused platform, Gabbard has been accused of cosying up to Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad for her opposition to military action in Syria and for meeting with Assad in Damascus. That stance alone led to accusations that she was more closely aligned with the position of the Kremlin than that of the White House.

At present, Gabbard is a long-shot candidate, and is polling at around one percent.

August 1, 2019 0

The Mueller Hearings: An Analysis

Don’t Walk, Run! Productions

Published on Jul 28, 2019

No Collusion. No Obstruction. No Shirt. No Shoes. No Service.

July 28, 2019 0

Tucker: Dems Deliver for Russia AGAIN with Mueller Hearing

The Liberty Hound

Published on Jul 26, 2019

July 26, 2019 0

‘Clinton Body Count’ trends on Twitter, establishment blames Russia

Americans waking up to check Twitter were greeted with the trending hashtag “#ClintonBodyCount.” Referencing a long-running conservative conspiracy theory, its re-emergence has of course been blamed on ‘Russian bots.’

The hashtag is familiar to anyone immersed in the murkier ends of American right-wing culture: think late night talk radio and dog-eared copies of ‘None Dare Call it Conspiracy’ passed around backwoods militia meetings.

Coined by writer and conspiracy theorist Danny Casolaro in the late 1980s, the phrase has since been used by conservatives to link the mysterious deaths of people in some way connected to Bill and Hillary Clinton, like the 1993 suicide of White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster, and the fatal armed robbery of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich in 2016.

Jeffrey Epstein found ‘injured & semiconscious’ with suspicious marks on neck in jail cell

Adding to the mystery, Casolaro himself committed suicide in 1991, while working on a story supposedly involving an international cabal.

The hashtag broke into the mainstream on Thursday, trending at number three in the US. Its emergence came after millionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein was found“injured and in a fetal position” on the floor of his New York jail cell just hours before. An associate of Bill Clinton, Epstein is currently facing up to 45 years in prison on charges of conspiracy and sex trafficking, with some of his alleged victims as young as 14.

Twitter sleuths joined the dots:

To some, the hashtag had nothing to do with a decades-old right-wing horror story. To an army of establishment bugmen, its sudden reappearance was the work of, surprise, surprise – “Russian bots.” The Democrat version of the conspiracy theory goes that Russian President Vladimir Putin was so incensed by the knockout testimony given by former special counsel Robert Mueller on Wednesday that he cranked up the output of his “troll farms” and swamped Twitter with the hashtag as a distraction.

Except the hole in that theory is that no amount of sneaky Russian meddling is needed to distract from Mueller’s testimony. Stammering through answers, seemingly forgetting key details from his report, and declining to answer any questions outside its scope, Mueller did a pretty good job deflating the expectations of Democrats hoping for some new ‘Russiagate’ revelations.

With the left and the right fighting an infowar forcontrol of the hashtag, one commenter summed up the state of the debate. “#ClintonBodyCount is trending… Watch for people trying extra hard to convince you they know things they don’t today.”

July 25, 2019 0

Hell freezes over? New York Times wants closer relationship with Russia, congratulates Trump

The New York Times’ editorial board, fresh from peddling anti-Russia conspiracies for two years, has made a remarkable about-turn. Now the paper wants closer relations with the Kremlin, all to thwart China’s ambitions.

‘Russiagate’ has maintained an iron grip on American political discourse for two years now, even after Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report cleared President Donald Trump of conspiring with the Kremlin to steal the 2016 US election. In the media, the public has been treated to nightly conspiracy theories and bizarre connect-the-dots articles claiming to prove collusion; and lawmakers have crafted ever more draconian sanctions bills against Russia and have slotted opposition to Russia into their campaign messages.

Meanwhile, Moscow and Beijing have looked to each other, holding joint military exercises and upping their trade volume to more than $100 billion in 2018. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev recently announced plans to build a new, 2,000km-long highway linking Europe and China, while President Vladimir Putin has been mulling connecting Russia’s Northern Sea Route with China’s Maritime Silk Road, an ambitious global trade route linking China with ports in Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.

The idea of closer Moscow/Beijing cooperation clearly worries the New York Times’ editorial board. In an op-edpublished on Sunday, the board wrote that “President Trump is correct to try to establish a sounder relationship with Russia and peel it away from China” – itself a remarkable compliment from a paper that ran op-eds titled “Donald Trump Hates America,” and “Trump is Racist to the Bone” in the last five days.

The board then suggested that the US could strengthen its cooperation with Russia in space exploration and Arctic cleanup – areas untainted by ‘Russiagate’. In addition, new arms control treaties could be a step towards geopolitical cooperation between the two rival superpowers.

All valid and worthy points, but from the New York Times? Yes, we’re talking about the same newspaper that last year called Trump a “treasonous traitor” ahead of his meeting with Putin in Helsinki. Instead of seeking rapprochement then, the paper argued that Trump should “be directing all resources at his disposal to punish Russia.”

We’re talking about the same New York Times that dubbed Trump “Putin’s Lackey” and released a mocking videodetailing a ‘love story’ between Trump and Putin, laden with homoerotic overtones and culminating in a tongue-locking kiss between the two leaders. It’s funny because they’re gay, see?

The piece surprised many, like pundit George Szamuely, who wrote that Washington has “demonized Russia and blamed it for every problem besetting [the] US,” while the Times “has for years berated Trump for advocating this perfectly sensible policy, at times suggesting that he was doing so only because he was Putin’s agent and a traitor to the United States.”

Bear in mind that the Times’ editorial board does not hold the same opinions as its revolving cast of op-ed writers. Still, for a newspaper whose writers almost unanimously despise the US president, Sunday’s op-ed represents a shocking repudiation of two years of anti-Russia, anti-Trump static.

Perhaps the outlet that often voiced the ideas of the American establishment has finally realized that the ‘Russiagate’ horse is too long dead for another flogging? Or maybe the Times saw it’s time for a new kind of politics: the politics of Detente. Either way, the change is a surprising one.

July 22, 2019 0

Russian trolls are coming! Obama staffer issues warning amid dispute within Democrtic party

Screen Shot 2019-07-15 at 11.18.08 AM

With sniping and infighting rocking the Democratic Party, former White House staffer Ben Rhodes has warned the left to be on the lookout for those ever-present “Russian trolls,” drawing ridicule.

“Have no doubt that Russian trolls will work to exploit the divisions opening up in the Democratic coalition,” Rhodes tweeted. “Let’s debate and respect our differences without losing sight of our common objectives” – with voting President Donald Trump out of office presumably among those objectives.

Screen Shot 2019-07-15 at 11.20.22 AM

Rhodes’ warning to Democrats comes at a tumultuous time for the party. With a group of newly-elected lawmakers breaking ranks with the party establishment on immigration law, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been biting in her criticism of the progressive upstarts on the party’s left-most wing.

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez –among those who clashes most often with Pelosi– has responded to the 79-year old speaker’s criticism by accusing her of targeting “newly elected women of color,” while a top aide to Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter to accuse a moderate Native American congresswoman of voting to “enable a racist system,”triggering counter accusations of racism from the party.

Add another racism spat between the Justice Democrats and the Congressional Black Caucus and it becomes clear that the Democratic Party is perfectly capable of tearing itself apart without any Russian help.

Rhodes was mocked by commenters. “Have no doubt that Obama/Clinton trolls will work to exploit Russiagate to dismiss or minimize divisions in the Democratic coalition, as they have since 2016. Let’s debate our differences without falling victim to this habit of blaming a Russian bogeyman for our own issues,”tweeted journalist Aaron Mate, whose reporting on the American media’s ‘Russiagate’ fixation earned him an Izzy Award earlier this year.

“You have to question the basic intellectual ability of anyone who still thinks that mythical Russian trolls are behind all political schisms in America,” replied radio host Patrick Henningsen.

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“Russia paranoia has been used from the beginning to stigmatize deviations from establishment consensus and neutralize dissent,”wrote commenter Michael Tracey. ‘That will no doubt continue.”

Indeed, Russian trolls have been accused of fanning the flames of division and dissent in the US since election season 2016. Using internet memes and gifs, trolls connected with the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) supposedly tipped the election in favor of Trump, and continue to exploit social and racial divisions in America for the Kremlin’s benefit.

Except that argument is all but dead. Despite Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s assertion that these trolls engaged in “sweeping and systemic” meddling in the election, a federal judge revealed last week that Mueller’s charges against the IRA failed to link the “troll farm” to the Russian government.

July 15, 2019 0

UK tabloids theorize Russia hacked ambassador’s Trump memos… as London eggs them on

London has said there is no evidence that a foreign state was behind the recent leaks from its embassy in Washington, but this hasn’t stopped British officials from quietly feeding tabloid narratives blaming Russia for the affair.

The UK government is in full damage-control mode after a series of memos penned by the UK ambassador to Washington, Sir Kim Darroch, were leaked to the press. The diplomatic cables described US President Donald Trump as “incompetent.”

While British officials appear to believe that the embarrassing leaks were carried out by an “unpatriotic” insider, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt didn’t seem to mind playing along with tabloid speculation that Russia is somehow at fault.

Pressed by the Sun about whether he believed “hostile states such as Russia” may be behind the leaks, Hunt was all too happy to quietly fan the flames – even while acknowledging that there was no reason to suspect that Russia or any other country played a part in the incident.

“Of course it would be massively concerning if it was the act of a foreign, hostile state,” he said, adding that investigators would “follow all avenues of inquiry to try to understand how this happened. That’s something that will be considered.”

Despite his apparent hand-wringing, Hunt conceded that he’s “seen no evidence” to suggest that any foreign country was involved in the affair.

The Daily Mail was a bit more creative with its Russia-baiting. In a write-up of Hunt’s comments to the Sun, the British tabloid claimed that it had spoken with a “government source” who “thought [the leak] looked like something ‘out of Russia’s playbook.’”

Russia has become the West’s go-to scapegoat, with media outlets accusing Moscow of a litany of devious misdeeds, from hacking elections to training Beluga whales to spy on Scandinavia.

The threat posed by Russia may be a tad overstated, however. An alert system created by the EU to detect “Russian meddling,” for example, has yet to sound an alarm in the six months of its existence.

July 9, 2019 0