Trump on releasing the JFK records

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Roger Odisio said:

I'll ask again.  What "Trump friendly fake news sites" are you talking about, that you imagine I have been duped by?

 

I suspect that the commentators you rely upon get their information from, and have been duped by, Trump-friendly fake news sites.

 

[Roger Odisio]

7 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

I suspect that the commentators you rely upon get their information from, and have been duped by, Trump-friendly fake news sites.

 

You're simply repeating, again, what you already said.  The journalists Keven named, and others like them, each reached their own conclusions about Russiagate based on actual work they did.  Based on actual facts they discerned. In contrast to the news readers and pundits on TV and in mainstream "news" who report as fact what they are told, often without verification.  

The idea that Keven's journalists' reporting and analysis is based on Trump friendly news sites, besides being false, is a particular insult to them.  I can assure none of them supports Trump, not that that matters.

Maybe if you named these Trump friendly sites you claim were these journalists' sources, the falseness of the claim can be seen more clearly.  

[Roger Odisio]

8 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Sandy: Roger,

You are aware, aren't you, that Craig Murray claims that he received the leaked DNC e-mails from the leaker himself? And that the leaker was a disgruntled DNC employee?

RO:  Yes.  That's a loose end in all of this.  As I recall Murray did not say the leaker was a DNC employee.  Correct me if I'm wrong.  I think Murray felt he was bound by the same injunction as Assange not to reveal the identity of the leakers.

Sandy: So that's how Murray knows that the e-mails weren't hacked by Russians.

RO:  No.  He knows the person wasn't a Russian.  But that didn't tell him who retrieved the emails in the first place or how it was done. That's a different question.  Murray reached his conclusion about that based on the analysis by Binney and Ray McGovern that the retrieval was a leak by someone close by, not a remote hack by the Russians. He also understood that had the retrieval been a remote hack, the NSA would have known about it and been able to explain the details of how it happened and when.  Which they obviously did not do and were not asked to do by Mueller.

Let's not lose sight of the importance of this.  An important point of Murray's article is that Mueller ignored all of the information that contradicted his claim that the Russians hacked the DNC and gave the information to Assange. He did not interview any of the people who could explain why this assertion was false.  Including turning down an offer to be interviewed by Assange himself.  Murray's point about he dishonesty of Mueller's investigation is the same one Salandria made about the Warren Commission investigation.  What would an honest investigator do?

Sandy:  So what I was saying to you is that, even if Murray is telling the truth, it could be that the guy he got the e-mails from wasn't really a DNC employee. Maybe he was a Russian Agent claiming to be a DNC employee. And that he told Murray he was a DNC employee just to exonerate the Russians.

Murray admitted that he didn't know who the so-called "DNC employee" was.

RO: Answered above.

 

[W. Niederhut]

On 3/24/2024 at 7:42 AM, W. Niederhut said:

     I hate to interrupt this rather touching, romantic spam-fest between Kevin Hofeling and Ben Cole, but I notice that Kevin has continued to highjack his own the thread about Trump and the Deep State, which originated with posts about the JFK Records and Kevin's erroneous thesis that Trump, like JFK, has been an heroic adversary and victim of the Deep State.

     In the process, both Kevin and Ben have also doubled down on the false, ubiquitous Trumpaganda trope in the MAGA media (since 2019) claiming that "Russiagate is a hoax."  This false trope about "the Russiagate hoax" was relentlessly amplified by Rupert Murdoch's propaganda empire, (Fox, NY Post, et.al.) and by Putin's propaganda affiliates in the U.S., after Bill Barr halted Mueller's investigation and misrepresented Mueller's findings-- while blocking Congressional and public access to the unredacted Report.

     Kevin and Ben have also, happily, discovered CIA Operation Mockingbird-- with help from Tucker Carlson-- and are now endeavoring to educate us about the CIA's alleged use of Mockingbird to victimize Trump, their heroic adversary of the Deep State.

     The problem is that this thesis is nonsense.

     The other problem is that Kevin and Ben, like other denizens of the MAGA-verse, have completely overlooked the reality of MAGA-verse propaganda in the U.S. media; especially the media empires of Trump's Ministers of Propaganda-- viz., Rupert Murdoch, Robert Mercer, et.al.-- and the nexus between Trump's MAGA propagandists and Putin's cyber warfare ops in the U.S. since 2015.

      Here's the big picture that Kevin and Ben are missing-- in relation to their erroneous thesis about Trump and the Deep State.  Trump isn't a victim of the Deep State.

      He's a compromised Russian asset.

PROMOTING A CULTURE WAR: HOW PUTIN USED TRUMP TO SEIZE ALMOST TOTAL CONTROL OVER THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

Posted by Thom Hartmann | Mar 1, 2024

There is little doubt that Russian President Vladimir Putin has succeeded in achieving near-total control over the Republican Party.

They are gutting aid to Ukraine (and have been for over a year), working to kneecap our economy, whipping up hatred among Americans against each other, promoting civil war, and openly embracing replacing American democracy with authoritarian autocracy.

Putin has declared war on queer people, proclaimed Russia a “Christian nation,” and shut down all the media he called “fake news.” Check, check, check.

Most recently, the three-year “Biden bribery” hysteria Republicans in the House have been running — including thousands of hits on Fox “News” and all over rightwing hate radio — turns out to have been a Russian intelligence operation originally designed to help Trump win the 2020 election. The Russian spy who had been feeding this phony info to Jordan and James Comer is now in jail.

Over the past two years, as America was using Russia’s terrorist attacks on Ukraine to degrade the power and influence of Russia’s military, Putin was using social media, Republican politicians, and rightwing American commentators to get Republican politicians on his side and thus kill off U.S. aid to Ukraine.

The war in Gaza is making it even easier, with Putin-aligned politicians like Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) tweeting: “Any funding for Ukraine should be redirected to Israel immediately.”

Russia’s battlefield, in other words, has now shifted from Ukraine to the U.S. political system and our homes via radio, TV, and the internet, all in the hopes of ending U.S. aid to the democracy they have brutally attacked.

And the momentum is following that shift: Russia is close to having the upper hand in Ukraine because of Putin’s ability — via Trump and Johnson — to get Republican politicians to mouth his talking points and propaganda.

Now, with Speaker “Moscow Mike” Johnson shutting down the House of Representatives so nobody can offer a discharge petition that would force a vote on Ukraine aid (and aid for Palestinian refugees, Taiwan, and our southern border), it is becoming more and more clear that Vladimir Putin is running the Republican party via his well-paid stooge, Donald Trump.

I say “well paid” because Donald Trump would have been reduced to homelessness in the early 1990s if it were not for Russian money, as both of his sons have said at different times. He had burned through all of his father’s estate, even stealing a large part of it from his siblings. He’d lost or hidden almost two billion dollars running a casino.

As Michael Hirsch noted for Foreign Policy magazine:

“By the early 1990s he had burned through his portion of his father Fred’s fortune with a series of reckless business decisions. Two of his businesses had declared bankruptcy, the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City and the Plaza Hotel in New York, and the money pit that was the Trump Shuttle went out of business in 1992. Trump companies would ultimately declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy two more times.”

He had been forced to repeatedly declare bankruptcy — sticking American banks for over a billion dollars in unpaid bills — after draining his businesses of free cash and stashing the money in places he hoped nobody would ever find.

No American bank would touch him, and property developers in New York were waiting for his entire little empire to collapse. Instead, a desperate Trump reached out to foreign dictators and mobsters, who were more than happy to supply funds to an influential New York businessman…for a price to be paid in the future.

He sold over $100 million worth of condos to more than sixty Russian citizens during that era, and partnered with professional criminals and money launderers to raise money for Trump properties in Azerbaijan and Panama. According to Trump himself, he sold $40 to $50 million worth of apartments to the Saudis.

He then partnered with a former high Soviet official, Tevfik Arif, and a Russian businessman, Felix Sater, who had been found guilty of running a “huge stock-fraud scheme involving the Russian mafia.”

As the founders of Fusion GPS wrote for The New York Times in 2018:

“The Trump family’s business entanglements are of more than historical significance. Americans need to be sure that major foreign policy decisions are made in the national interest — not because of foreign ties forged by the president’s business ventures.”

Thus, when it came time to run for president, Trump had to pay the price. He and the people around him were inundated with offers of “help” from Russians, most associated directly with Putin or the Russian mafia.

Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, had been paid millions by Putin’s oligarchs and ran Trump’s campaign for free. Reporters found over a dozen connections between Russia and the Trump campaign, and during the 2016 campaign Trump was secretly negotiating a deal to open a Trump tower in Moscow. Trump’s son and his lawyer met with Putin’s agents in Trump Tower.

Putin’s personal xxxxx army, the Internet Research Agency (IRA) based out of St. Petersburg but operating worldwide, began a major campaign in 2016 to get Trump elected president.

Manafort fed Russian intelligence raw data from internal Republican polling that identified a few hundred thousand individuals in a half-dozen or so swing states the GOP thought could be persuaded to vote for Trump (or against Hillary), and the IRA immediately went to work, reaching out to them via mostly Facebook.

Mueller’s report and multiple journalistic investigations have noted that the most common message out of Russia then was directed at Democratic-leaning voters and was, essentially, “both parties are the same so it’s a waste of time to vote.”

A report from Texas-based cybersecurity company New Knowledge, working with researchers at Columbia University, concluded, as reported by The New York Times:

“‘The most prolific I.R.A. efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted black American communities and appear to have been focused on developing black audiences and recruiting black Americans as assets,’ the report said. Using Gmail accounts with American-sounding names, the Russians recruited and sometimes paid unwitting American activists of all races to stage rallies and spread content, but there was a disproportionate pursuit of African-Americans, it concludes.

“The report said that while ‘other distinct ethnic and religious groups were the focus of one or two Facebook Pages or Instagram accounts, the black community was targeted extensively by dozens.’ In some cases, Facebook ads were targeted at users who had shown interest in particular topics, including black history, the Black Panther Party and Malcolm X. The most popular of the Russian Instagram accounts was @blackstagram, with 303,663 followers.

“The Internet Research Agency also created a dozen websites disguised as African-American in origin, with names like blackmattersus.com, blacktivist.info, blacktolive.org and blacksoul.us.”

And it appears to have worked in suppressing the potential Black Democratic vote in swing states.

A 2018 bipartisan Senate report found the Russian efforts consequential, as the BBC headline on that analysis summarizes:

“Russian trolls’ chief target was ‘black U.S. voters’ in 2016.”

The news story summarizes:

“A Senate inquiry has concluded that a Russian fake-news campaign targeted ‘no single group… more than African-Americans.’ …

“Thousands of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and You Tube accounts created by the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) were aimed at harming Hillary Clinton’s campaign and supporting Donald Trump, the committee concludes.

“More than 66% of Facebook adverts posted by the Russian xxxxx farm contained a term related to race.

“African-American community voters were discouraged from voting, and from supporting Hillary Clinton.”

Between the information compiled by Oxford Analytica and the details passed along from the GOP to Prigozhin via Manafort, a mere margin of 43,000 votes across a handful of swing states —all microtargeted by Russia — handed the electoral college to Trump, even though he lost the nationwide vote to Hillary Clinton by almost 3 million ballots.

So now Trump has succeeded in making the entire GOP a party to his long-term debt to Putin and his oligarchs. “Moscow Mike” Johnson has blocked any aid to Ukraine for over a year; the last congressional appropriation for foreign aid was passed in 2022, when Nancy Pelosi ran the House.

Meanwhile, under Trump’s and Putin’s direction, Republicans in Congress are doing everything they can to damage the people of the United States.

They believe it will help them in the 2024 election if they can ruin the U.S. economy while convincing American voters that our system of government is so corrupt (“deep state”) that we should consider replacing democracy with an autocratic strongman form of government like Putin’s Russia. Tucker Carlson is even suggesting that Russia is a better place to live than the US.

They revel in pitting racial, religious, and gender groups against each other while embracing a form of fascism that pretends to be grounded in Christianity, all while welcoming Putin’s social media trolls who are promoting these divisions.

Republican-aligned think tanks are working on Project 2025, a naked attempt to consolidate power in the White House to support a strongman president who can override the will of the people, privatize Social Security and Medicare, shut down our public school system, fully criminalize abortion and homosexuality (Sam Alito called for something like that this week), and abandon our democratic allies in favor of a realignment with Russia, China, and North Korea.

Trump got us here by openly playing to the fears and prejudices of white people who are freaked out by the rapid post-1964 “browning” of America. Putin jumped in to help amplify the message a thousandfold with his social media trolls, who are posting thousands of times a day as you read these words.

Now that Putin largely controls the GOP, today’s question is how far Republicans are willing to go in their campaign to bring the USA to her knees on behalf of Putin and Trump.

• When Congress comes back into session next week, will they take up Ukraine aid?
• Will they continue their opposition to comprehensive immigration and border reform?
• Will they keep pushing to privatize Social Security with their new “commission”?
• Will they work as hard to kneecap Taiwan on behalf of President Xi as they have Ukraine on behalf of Putin?
• Will they continue to quote Russian Intelligence propaganda in their effort to smear President Biden?
• Instead of just 7 Republicans going to Moscow to “celebrate” the Fourth of July, will the entire party move their event to that city like the NRA did? Or to Budapest, like CPAC did?

Or will the GOP suddenly start listening to the rational voices left in their party, the Mitt Romneys and Liz Cheneys who still believe in democracy (even if they want to gut the social safety net and turn loose the polluters)?

      

I'm re-posting this for Roger Odisio.

Roger is, apparently still unaware of the pervasive propaganda in the right wing U.S. media (Fox News, NY Post, Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, Breitbart, Townhall.com, Gateway Pundit, et.al.) denying Trump's multi-decade involvement with Russia.

What many Americans still don't know is that Russian propagandists have also been actively involved in some left-wing (non-MAGA) media outlets.

[Kirk Gallaway]

Of course, just ignore all previous statements made by Trump and his sons. They mean nothing right.?

Again, a lot of members on the forum in their hypotheses never seem to focus on economic necessity. Even in light of recent developments.

Is this too current? Not 60 years old. (where it's proven we can get complete clarity, right??)

Then given our lead character's proclivities since.

You guys couldn't sleuth your way out of a paper bag!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 25 by Kirk Gallaway

[Roger Odisio]

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

I'm re-posting this for Roger Odisio.

Roger is, apparently still unaware of the pervasive propaganda in the right wing U.S. media (Fox News, NY Post, Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, Breitbart, Townhall.com, Gateway Pundit, et.al.) denying Trump's multi-decade involvement with Russia.

What many Americans still don't know is that Russian propagandists have also been actively involved in some left-wing (non-MAGA) media outlets.

What those rags said about Trump has nothing to do with the legitimate debunking of the Russiagate story by others using logic and facts.  Nor do those alleged "Russian propagandists".

Please stop the innuendo and name those propagandists and left wing outlets you mean, so the veracity of your claims can be evaluated.

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, Roger Odisio said:

What those rags said about Trump has nothing to do with the legitimate debunking of the Russiagate story by others using logic and facts.  Nor do those alleged "Russian propagandists".

Please stop the innuendo and name those propagandists and left wing outlets you mean, so the veracity of your claims can be evaluated.

Roger,

    I posted a series of questions for you (above) on this very thread, to help you get in touch with the facts about Russiagate.  It was never a " hoax," as Trump and his MAGA media propagandists repeatedly told people.

    But instead of answering my questions, and engaging in an honest debate, you responded with a false, ad hominem slur-- referring to the questions as "rancid bs."

     Can you answer them?  Have you read the Mueller Report and the U.S. Senate Intel Report on Kremlin interference in our 2016 election?

      Have you read Catherine Belton's book, Putin's People, or any of Russ Baker's articles (since 2016) about Trump's history with the Russian mafia and Putin's oligarchs?

[Sandy Larsen]

6 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

14 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I suspect that the commentators you rely upon get their information from, and have been duped by, Trump-friendly fake news sites.

6 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

You're simply repeating, again, what you already said.

 

Okay, then you know my answer.

 

6 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

The journalists Keven named, and others like them, each reached their own conclusions about Russiagate based on actual work they did. 

 

And, I suspect, based on fake information they got from Trump-friendly alternative news sites.

 

6 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

I can assure none of them supports Trump, not that that matters.

 

They support the radical right. Trump benefits from that.

 

6 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

Maybe if you named these Trump friendly sites you claim were these journalists' sources, the falseness of the claim can be seen more clearly. 

 

Trump-friendly fake news site are pervasive on the internet. I don't know which ones those "journalists" read.

 

 

[Sandy Larsen]

5 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

What many Americans still don't know is that Russian propagandists have also been actively involved in some left-wing (non-MAGA) media outlets.

 

Can you give some examples?

 

[W. Niederhut]

12 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Can you give some examples?

 

The World Socialist Web Site, Global Research, and Consortium News.

[Sandy Larsen]

28 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

The World Socialist Web Site, Global Research, and Consortium News.

 

I'm having trouble figuring out what kind of propaganda Russia would try to put on a left-wing news site. Naturally those sites would be anti-Trump (and anti-Biden if it is far-left). But Russia wants Trump to win, which contradicts the goal of those sites.

 

[Roger Odisio]

2 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

  16 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I suspect that the commentators you rely upon get their information from, and have been duped by, Trump-friendly fake news sites.

 

  8 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

You're simply repeating, again, what you already said.

 

Sandy:  Okay, then you know my answer.

 

RO: Your response, that the journalists who debunked Russiagate, did so because they were duped by "Trump friendly fake news sites", rather than as a result of their journalistic work,  is no answer at all.   It's a way of avoiding confronting the substance of what they said.

 

  8 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

The journalists Keven named, and others like them, each reached their own conclusions about Russiagate based on actual work they did. 

 

Sandy:  And, I suspect, based on fake information they got from Trump-friendly alternative news sites

 

RO: You "suspect", huh.  You obviously don't know that to be true, or you would have offered evidence of it, having been asked for substantiation, or even to name these sites you are talking about, and have not done so. 

 

  8 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

I can assure none of them supports Trump, not that that matters.

 

Sandy:  They support the radical right. Trump benefits from that.

 

RO:  You're confused.  All of the journalists that Keven and I have referred to are on the left. Sandy, I'm beginning to think that your belief system--whether you favor or believe something--is based on whether that thing helps or hurts Trump.  Not whether it is true or not.

 

  8 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

Maybe if you named these Trump friendly sites you claim were these journalists' sources, the falseness of the claim can be seen more clearly. 

 

Sandy: Trump-friendly fake news site are pervasive on the internet. I don't know which ones those "journalists" read.

 

RO:  You have no evidence that any of the journalists were fooled by these sites you can't name but you think they were.  Or sometimes you just suggest or suspect they were as away to discredit them without having to confront what they say.

 

 

 

[W. Niederhut]

2 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

I'm having trouble figuring out what kind of propaganda Russia would try to put on a left-wing news site. Naturally those sites would be anti-Trump (and anti-Biden if it is far-left). But Russia wants Trump to win, which contradicts the goal of those sites.

 

Sandy,

    I have been tracking a wide array of Russian Federation news on the internet during the past 20 years-- long before the Trump/Russia-gate era-- mainly because of my involvement in the ROCOR, and Putin's takeover of the ROCOR in 2007.

    I used to read ITASS and Russia Today fairly regularly, before RT disappeared in the Western media after Putin's invasion of Ukraine two years ago.  I still read Global Research and Consortium News, because they have long been sources of information about U.S. military and intelligence ops that we don't hear about in the U.S. mainstream media.

     In contrast to Global Research, RT, and Consortium News, the MAGA media (Fox News, et.al.) only started reporting news about the U.S. "Deep State" recently in history.  And the MAGA focus has centered partly on trying to convince people that Trump is a victim of the Deep State.

     As for your question, two main areas where left-leaning news sites have pushed Kremlin propaganda are;

1)  the denial of Russia-gate, ( i.e., Trump's involvement with Russia, and Putin's strategic interference in the 2016 U.S. election) and

2) blaming the U.S. and NATO for Putin's brutal invasion of Ukraine, while denying or ignoring Putin's war crimes.

     This Russia-gate denial has been obvious on Consortium News, which puzzled me for a while, because Consortium has published a lot of great stuff over the years-- including some articles by James DiEugenio.

      Oliver Stone doesn't run a news site, but his public statements about Putin, Trump, and Ukraine have mirrored Kremlin propaganda from the left-leaning media.

Edited March 26 by W. Niederhut

[Sandy Larsen]

46 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

3 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I'm having trouble figuring out what kind of propaganda Russia would try to put on a left-wing news site. Naturally those sites would be anti-Trump (and anti-Biden if it is far-left). But Russia wants Trump to win, which contradicts the goal of those sites.

46 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

As for your question, two main areas where left-leaning news sites have pushed Kremlin propaganda are;

1)  the denial of Russia-gate, ( i.e., Trump's involvement with Russia, and Putin's strategic interference in the 2016 U.S. election) and

2) blaming the U.S. and NATO for Putin's brutal invasion of Ukraine, while denying or ignoring Putin's war crimes.

 

Oh, of course... I get it now.

While it is true that Putin wants Trump to win (for obvious reasons), and so will spread propaganda for that aim, they don't want to be called out for doing so.

So, while on right-wing news site Russia's propaganda is designed to get Trump elected, on left-wing news sites Russia's propaganda is designed to hide the fact that they are doing that.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Roger Odisio said:

Your response, that the journalists who debunked Russiagate, did so because they were duped by "Trump friendly fake news sites", rather than as a result of their journalistic work, is no answer at all.   It's a way of avoiding confronting the substance of what they said.

 

As I said, I am no expert on this. And I have no intention of becoming one. Because of that I cannot confront what your journalists say.

But there's no doubt in my mind that Putin's guys are doing whatever they can think of to get Trump elected, given that is in Putin's best interests. Also given that Trump just adores Putin and has had many business deals in Russia.

 

1 hour ago, Roger Odisio said:

You "suspect", huh.  You obviously don't know that to be true...

 

Yes, that is correct.

 

1 hour ago, Roger Odisio said:

You're confused.  All of the journalists that Keven and I have referred to are on the left.

 

Those on the left can and do get information from those on the right, and vice versa.

Nevertheless, after what I just learned from William, I think it is more likely that the journalists you named get their news from left-wing Putin-friendly fake news sites.

This is what I suspect. I don't know it to be true.

 

1 hour ago, Roger Odisio said:

Sandy, I'm beginning to think that your belief system--whether you favor or believe something--is based on whether that thing helps or hurts Trump.  Not whether it is true or not.

 

Not so. It just seems that way because Trump is so corrupt. Things that hurt him are due to his own actions... nobody needs to make bad things up about Trump.