Trump on releasing the JFK records

W. Niederhut · March 19

11 hours ago, K K Lane said:

I agree that the political discussion in this thread is better suited for the Political Discussions forum.

But, I think Trump's alleged statement that prompted this thread is pertinent to this forum, and I would prefer folks go to the Political Discussions forum to make their political comments. I prefer the moderators a) discourage political discussion in this forum but b) NOT move threads that devolve into politics. Can specific comments simply be deleted?

Sandy and Ron,

Hold on a minute. I've seen this lousy Education Forum movie before.

Let's not rush, once again, to promptly delete accurate forum posts about American history that happen to offend Trump supporters.

The thread is about Trump and the Deep State-- in relation to the JFK Records. Correct?

Ben Cole then re-posted the false, debunked MAGA narrative that Trump has been a victim of the Deep State, since 2016. It simply isn't true.

If forum members are going to post redundant falsehoods about American history, it's important for others to respond with the facts.

The truth is that Trump and the right wing media have promoted the false narrative that Trump is a victim of the Deep State since 2017, in an effort to blame Trump's misconduct--including his 2016 campaign's involvement with Russian interference in the the U.S. election-- on the "Deep State."

But, on the contrary, the FBI and the corporate M$M played a decisive role in 2016 in putting Trump in the White House.

The false "Trump was a victim of the Deep State" narrative is directly relevant to the main subject of this thread, about Trump and the JFK Records.

What I notice is that these false Trump tropes about history tend to get re-posted on the forum, by one forum member in particular.

Then some people promptly call for the true facts to be deleted only after someone corrects the false Trump narratives about history.

Kirk Gallaway · March 19

I'm almost hesitate to write anything because it's going to get pulled.

Trump“if they showed you what they showed me, you wouldn't have released it either.”

This is just another low hanging fruit sucker's game as "Tucker Carlson's smoking gun JFK files that threw the forum in a frenzy over a year ago. If you don't think that wasn't discussed fully only to eventually have great hopes dashed, as Tucker moved on., I assure you it was. No matter however earthshaking Tucker made it sound "I saw the files, everything since then has been all fake!". he eventually left all his proponents here in the dust and went on to greener pastures! We've beaten this dead horse before and you can see the forum response if you go back to, was it Dec. 2022?

Does your experience with Trump lead you to think there's any credence to his comment? Even further, put on your sleuthing cap, isn't that a typical Trump response to make you think Trump has all the power, knows the secrets of the kingdom, and where the bodies are buried, so you place your trust only him, as only he has the secrets as to the machinations of the "deep state".Why would you trust anything he says?

One thing I'll say about Kevin's Mate, Parenti interview is that I don't think either of them mischaracterized Trump. They acknowledge he has some anti war machine tendencies, pro war machine tendencies, some tendencies that if they were left to Trump and not censored or maneuvered around could possibly have catastrophic consequences. But Parenti tends to focus on those that were anti military establishment and Mate delivers a counterbalance saying Trump was hardly a peacenik.

But why wouldn't any responsible military establishment be against somebody whose lazy, thick has no real understanding, doesn't read or research? The whole question of Trump against the"deep state " military establishment would be much more interesting with a reasoned person and yes,a more known quantity who had some consistency in what he says.

At least with a foe like say, Bernie Sanders, they'd have a record in his campaign speeches, of what they're up against ,and he wouldn't be some guy who was so intransigent that he could change his viewpoint depending who he last talked to.

I'll leave it to you, in a most recent statement by Trump's Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, who warns Trump would be dangerous if reelected, says Trump told him he wanted to shoot the protestors at Lafayette Square. Is that statement coming from a former Trump Secretary of State, a blot on the "Deep State"?

Edited March 19 by Kirk Gallaway

Keven Hofeling · March 19

4 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Sandy and Ron,

Hold on a minute. I've seen this lousy Education Forum movie before.

Let's not rush, once again, to promptly delete accurate forum posts about American history that happen to offend Trump supporters.

The thread is about Trump and the Deep State-- in relation to the JFK Records. Correct?

Ben Cole then re-posted the false, debunked MAGA narrative that Trump has been a victim of the Deep State, since 2016. It simply isn't true.

If forum members are going to post redundant falsehoods about American history, it's important for others to respond with the facts.

The truth is that Trump and the right wing media have promoted the false narrative that Trump is a victim of the Deep State since 2017, in an effort to blame Trump's misconduct--including his 2016 campaign's involvement with Russian interference in the the U.S. election-- on the "Deep State."

But, on the contrary, the FBI and the corporate M$M played a decisive role in 2016 in putting Trump in the White House.

The false "Trump was a victim of the Deep State" narrative is directly relevant to the main subject of this thread, about Trump and the JFK Records.

What I notice is that these false Trump tropes about history tend to get re-posted on the forum, by one forum member in particular.

Then some people promptly call for the true facts to be deleted only after someone corrects the false Trump narratives about history.

Ben Cohen was actually very restrained in his response to me posting the interview of Christian Parenti who maintained that Trump had offended establishment power by doing such things as cancelling the most expensive CIA operation in history, regime change Operation Timber Sycamore (an operation which for the most part remains classified to this day).

I posted same merely for the parallels that exist between the system reacting against JFK as retaliation against JFK's Vietnam withdrawal policy and the system reacting against Trump as retaliation against his Syria withdrawal policy, and in doing so I made it clear that Trump, unlike JFK, definitely did not do so as the result of principled anti-imperialist policies, while at the same time making it clear that I am no Donald Trump fan (I supported Bernie Sanders in the 2016 and 2020 elections).

It was most certainly not my intent -- nor by all appearances Ben Cohen's intent -- to bring up 2024 presidential politics with this discussion, and it did not appear to take a turn in that direction until W. Niederhut misinterpreted the discussion through the perceptual lense of shortsighted partisan political warfare.

Edited March 19 by Keven Hofeling

Keven Hofeling · March 19

3 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

I'm almost hesitate to write anything because it's going to get pulled.

Trump“if they showed you what they showed me, you wouldn't have released it either.”

This is just another low hanging fruit sucker's game as "Tucker Carlson's smoking gun JFK files that threw the forum in a frenzy over a year ago. If you don't think that wasn't discussed fully only to eventually have great hopes dashed, as Tucker moved on., I assure you it was. No matter however earthshaking Tucker made it sound "I saw the files, everything since then has been all fake!". he eventually left all his proponents here in the dust and went on to greener pastures! We've beaten this dead horse before and you can see the forum response if you go back to, was it Dec. 2022?

Does your experience with Trump lead you to think there's any credence to his comment? Even further, put on your sleuthing cap, isn't that a typical Trump response to make you think Trump has all the power, knows the secrets of the kingdom, and where the bodies are buried, so you place your trust only him, as only he has the secrets as to the machinations of the "deep state".Why would you trust anything he says?

One thing I'll say about Kevin's Mate, Parenti interview is that I don't think either of them mischaracterized Trump. They acknowledge he has some anti war machine tendencies, pro war machine tendencies, some tendencies that if they were left to Trump and not censored or maneuvered around could possibly have catastrophic consequences. But Parenti tends to focus on those that were anti military establishment and Mate delivers a counterbalance saying Trump was hardly a peacenik.

But why wouldn't any responsible military establishment be against somebody whose lazy, thick has no real understanding, doesn't read or research? The whole question of Trump against the"deep state " military establishment would be much more interesting with a reasoned person and yes,a more known quantity who had some consistency in what he says.

At least with a foe like say, Bernie Sanders, they'd have a record in his campaign speeches, of what they're up against ,and he wouldn't be some guy who was so intransigent that he could change his viewpoint depending who he last talked to.

I'll leave it to you, in a most recent statement by Trump's Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, who warns Trump would be dangerous if reelected, says Trump told him he wanted to shoot the protestors at Lafayette Square. Is that statement coming from a former Trump Secretary of State, a blot on the "Deep State"?

And as for the question of the true identity of Tucker Carlson's source (who confirmed the involvement of the CIA in the JFK assassination), it is my humble opinion that it was actually former CIA director Mike Pompeo (which seems to me a dead giveaway by Tucker calling Pompeo out in the beginning of the following video as refusing to respond to Tucker's inquiry [a plausible deniability measure which I see as the price Tucker paid to actually get Pompeo's take on the subject]).

I suspect that what the CIA showed Trump to gain his support for refusing to release the remaining JFK records was one of the contrived limited hangout explanations such as the notion that the USSR and the pro-Castro Cubans were behind the assassination, or that a Secret Service agent accidentally blew JFK's head off, and that that is the more likely reason Trump told Judge Napolitano “if they showed you what they showed me, you wouldn't have released it either.” Trump is so infamous for his lack of discretion that I think they would never have exposed him to authentic operational details of the hit.

Edited March 19 by Keven Hofeling

W. Niederhut · March 20

On 3/18/2024 at 1:22 AM, Benjamin Cole said:

KH-

The national security state, aka Deep State, Shadow Government was against Trump from even before he was elected, planting any number of articles and op-eds against him national media right through to the Hunter laptop and Jan. 6 story.

I'm re-posting Ben Cole's (not Cohen) historically inaccurate statement (above) for Kevin Hofeling.

Kevin Hofeling is confused here.

Rather than repeating myself, I urge Kevin to study my evidence-based, accurate response to Ben's false, oft-repeated claim that the Deep State was "against Trump...even before he was elected."

Kevin is unfamiliar with our previous forum discussions about this topic.

He is also unfamiliar with my original forum thread about Trump and the JFK Records, from a few years ago, and with my previous forum posts about Operation Timber Sycamore.

As I mentioned (above) Trump does deserve credit for de-funding Sycamore in 2017.

As for comparing Trump to JFK on foreign policy matters, I should probably remind Kevin that Trump green-lighted the genocidal Saudi war against Yemen.

Trump also killed more civilian non-combatants overseas in his first eight months as President than the Obama administration killed in eight years!

JFK's policy decisions were generally based on rational, strategic, and ethical analyses. He had humanistic principles.

In contrast, Trump's policy decisions were generally based on bribery, kickbacks, self-interest, and suspected blackmail (i.e., kompromat.) Trump responds to money.

In that sense, JFK and Trump are diametric opposites.

As an example, Michael Wolff described Sheldon Adelson and Paul Singer, essentially, bribing Trump to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

And the Saudis loaned Trump's son-in-law $2 billion, following Kushner's dubious tenure as Trump's Middle East envoy.

Edited March 20 by W. Niederhut

Kirk Gallaway · March 20

What I said Kevin was,

7 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

We've beaten this dead horse before and you can see the forum response if you go back to, was it Dec. 2022?

You'll see you're hardly the first to speculate that. I personally don't think anyone including Pompeo looked at the files and saw a "smoking gun" at all.

I referred only to your Mate Parenti interview which I thought was actually pretty good.

Keven Hofeling · March 20

1 hour ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

What I said Kevin was,

You'll see you're hardly the first to speculate that. I personally don't think anyone including Pompeo looked at the files and saw a "smoking gun" at all.

I referred only to your Mate Parenti interview which I thought was actually pretty good.

The structure of your post contains the suppressed premise that I have falsely attributed something to you which, if so, I cannot imagine what it could be. Perhaps you would be so kind as to clarify if you think I did?

As for the notion that there are no "smoking guns" in the remaining unreleased files, I think that is a somewhat precipitous assumption given the nature of the files we know are yet to be released. Seriously, why do you think so much effort has been invested in withholding them, even in contravention of the plain language of the JFK Records Release Act?

WHY THE LAST OF THE JFK FILES COULD EMBARRASS THE CIA'

By BRYAN BENDER | 05/25/2015 07:15 AM EDT | Updated: 05/28/2015 12:34 PM EDT | https://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/why-last-of-jfk-files-could-embarrass-cia-118233

"...But among the 40,000 documents are roughly 3,600 that have never been seen by the public. They have been “withheld in full” primarily because they contain information that was considered “security classified” but also to protect personal privacy, tax and grand jury information, and “because information in the document reveals the identity of an unclassified confidential source,” according to Murphy.

Among the 3,600 are roughly 1,100 CIA documents, which make up the largest share. The second-largest batch belongs to the FBI, according to Murphy, while the rest include testimony and other records of the Warren Commission itself; the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which reopened the investigation into JFK’s death in the late 1970s and concluded it was the result of a conspiracy (though the panel couldn’t prove it); records from the National Security Agency and other Defense Department offices; and files from a pair of 1975 congressional probes of CIA abuses — the so-called Church and Pike committees — and a related commission led by then-Vice President Nelson Rockefeller.

The withheld CIA files include those on some of the most mysterious and controversial figures in the history of American espionage — particularly individuals who were known to be involved in CIA assassination plots around the world.

There are at least 332 pages of material on E. Howard Hunt, an almost mythical spymaster who is most famous for running the ring that broke into Democratic Party headquarters in Washington’s Watergate Office Complex in 1972, setting in motion the events that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

But a decade before, he played a leading role in the agency’s botched Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. The failed attack by CIA-trained guerrillas generated deep discontent with Kennedy from Cuban exiles seeking to overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro and who felt the president had let their forces die on Cuba’s beaches by refusing to provide air support against Castro’s army.

It was Hunt, shortly before he died in 2007, who claimed that he had been privy to a plot by several CIA affiliates to kill Kennedy — what he referred to as “the Big Event.”

Also under review by the special team of archivists are at least 606 pages about David Atlee Phillips, another CIA officer, who won a medal for his role in overthrowing the government of Guatemala in 1954, went on to run operations in Latin America, and, along with Hunt, played a leading role in anti-Castro activities in Cuba.

Phillips was accused — though never charged — of committing perjury when asked about agency ties to Oswald by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Phillips, too, late in life attributed the JFK assassination to “rogue” CIA officers.

It is the type of information that many researchers believe the agency would still like to keep secret.

“I don’t see the CIA handing out 600 pages on David Atlee Phillips in two years,” said Jefferson Morley, a leading Kennedy researcher and founder of JFKfacts.org, who has sued the CIA to reveal more information about several key figures known to be the focus of some of the withheld files.

“It may have nothing to do with JFK but about other assassinations,” he added. “They still don’t want to open that window and let everyone look in. I expect the worst.”

Another colleague of Phillips at the CIA was Anne Goodpasture. The career agency officer denied to congressional investigators in 1970 that she had any knowledge of recordings of Oswald’s phone calls in possession of the CIA’s Mexico City station, where she worked. But she later admitted in sworn testimony that she had, in fact, disseminated the tapes herself. A 286-page CIA file about [Anne Goodpasture] is among the documents that are supposed to be released in two years.

Also among the agency’s withheld files: 2,224 pages of the CIA’s interrogation of Yuri Nosenko, a Soviet KGB officer who defected to the U.S. shortly after the Kennedy assassination. He claimed to have seen the KGB files on Oswald in the 2 ½ years before the assassination when Oswald lived in the Soviet Union.

Rex Bradford, who runs the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a research organization that has digitized more than 1 million records related to the JFK case, has also identified numerous depositions before the Church Committee that are referenced in the panel’s final report but have yet to be made public.

They include testimony on secret plots to assassinate Castro from CIA officers; Kennedy’s national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy; and the head of the CIA at the time, John McCone.

“The principal question we were trying to pursue was who ordered the assassination of Castro and five other leaders around the world — was it the president or the attorney general?” former Sen. Gary Hart, who was a member of the Church Committee and tasked with looking into the issue, said in an interview.

It was Hart’s digging that first revealed that the CIA had enlisted leading figures in organized crime to help kill Castro, who had closed down all their gambling and prostitution rings in Havana when he took power in 1959. The CIA’s assassination plots at the time have been considered by many government investigators to be relevant to finding out who might have had a motive to kill the American leader.

“How could the U.S. government bring itself to order these [CIA] assassinations?” added Hart. “We never resolved that. If these documents answer any of those questions it would be worthwhile.”

Also withheld are the Church Committee’s interviews with CIA officials about “JM/WAVE,” the code name for the secret CIA station overseeing covert operations in Cuba that was located on the campus of the University of Miami — and files on the obscure figure who ran its psychological operations branch, George Joannides.

It was revealed in a previous document release in 2009 that Joannides had links to some of the same anti-Castro forces that were connected to Oswald — something that was never shared with the Warren Commission.

Meanwhile, Joannides also served as the liaison between the agency and the House assassinations panel that reopened JFK’s murder in 1978 and inquired about the agency’s links to Oswald. But Joannides never told the panel about his role in Miami, a failure that the federal judge who ran the Assassination Records Review Board recently said amounted to “treachery.”

The CIA acknowledged in a lawsuit filed by Morley that there are more than 50 documents about Joannides’ activities, including in 1963 and 1978.

The bulk of the JFK collection now being processed by the National Archives includes thousands of files that were partially released over the years but with key sections blacked out — some of them “heavily redacted,” according to Murphy. Among these files are the CIA’s official history of its Mexico City station (which was opened in 1950 by Hunt).

Oswald visited Mexico City in the weeks before the assassination seeking visas to travel to Cuba and the Soviet Union, which he was denied. Previous government disclosures have revealed that while initially the CIA denied any knowledge of Oswald’s activities, at the time itwas monitoring him closely and created several cover stories to hide what it knew.

Meanwhile, as PBS reported in 2013, “intelligence documents released in 1999 establish that, after Oswald failed to get the visas, CIA intercepts showed that someone impersonated Oswald in phone calls made to the Soviet Embassy and the Cuban consulate and linked Oswald to a known KGB assassin — Valery Kostikov — whom the CIA and FBI had been following for over a year.”..."

Edited March 20 by Keven Hofeling

Keven Hofeling · March 20

3 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

I'm re-posting Ben Cole's (not Cohen) historically inaccurate statement (above) for Kevin Hofeling.

Kevin Hofeling is confused here.

Rather than repeating myself, I urge Kevin to study my evidence-based, accurate response to Ben's false, oft-repeated claim that the Deep State was "against Trump...even before he was elected."

Kevin is unfamiliar with our previous forum discussions about this topic.

He is also unfamiliar with my original forum thread about Trump and the JFK Records, from a few years ago, and with my previous forum posts about Operation Timber Sycamore.

As I mentioned (above) Trump does deserve credit for de-funding Sycamore in 2017.

As for comparing Trump to JFK on foreign policy matters, I should probably remind Kevin that Trump green-lighted the genocidal Saudi war against Yemen.

Trump also killed more civilian non-combatants overseas in his first eight months as President than the Obama administration killed in eight years!

JFK's policy decisions were generally based on rational, strategic, and ethical analyses. He had humanistic principles.

In contrast, Trump's policy decisions were generally based on bribery, kickbacks, self-interest, and suspected blackmail (i.e., kompromat.) Trump responds to money.

In that sense, JFK and Trump are diametric opposites.

As an example, Michael Wolff described Sheldon Adelson and Paul Singer, essentially, bribing Trump to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

And the Saudis loaned Trump's son-in-law $2 billion, following Kushner's dubious tenure as Trump's Middle East envoy.

I don't know Benjamin Cole, I don't know you, and I have no knowledge of your previous discussions about Trump and the deep state.

All I know is that upon raising the issue of the parallels between the establishment response to JFK and Trump's withdrawals from pending wars Benjamin Cole responded with the following:

"However, this is a radioactive topic in the EF-JFKA.

You and I might have civil discourse on this as an interesting example of how the Deep State that perped the JFKA has maintained its grip on DC ever since, putting torpedoes into Nixon, Carter and Trump. Perhaps we even disagree on some aspects of this version of events. Fine and dandy.

Other people take partisan umbrage at such sentiments.

So it goes. See you in "political discussions." I hear the hall-monitor footsteps...."

And a forum administrator started inquiring whether or not a contemporary political discussion was taking place. I replied to the administrator that there was not, but then the political posts started pouring in, providing me with an education about what Ben Cohen was trying to avoid.

I feel fortunate in that I am not a member of either of the camps that feel so strongly about the Trump debate, while at the same time feeling it unfortunate that reasoned discussions in the spirit of diplomacy are seemingly precluded by the venom and hostility between the two camps. But it doesn't have to be that way, and I quite frankly question whose interests are ultimately being served by such animosity and divisiveness; certainly not the interests of either group who have much more in common than reasons for resort to combat, whether merely intellectual or otherwise.

Just one week ago today Tucker Carlson and Chris Cuomo came together in an attempt to break this "divide and conquer" mold that limits the members of both sides of the "debate," and I think it is worthy of being heard by all combatants.

Perhaps, just perhaps, there is a better way...

Edited March 20 by Keven Hofeling

W. Niederhut · March 20

2 minutes ago, Keven Hofeling said:

I don't know Ben Cole, I don't know you, and I have no knowledge of your previous discussions about Trump and the deep state.

All I know is that upon raising the issue of the parallels between the establishment response to JFK and Trump's withdrawals from pending wars Ben Cohen responded with the following:

"However, this is a radioactive topic in the EF-JFKA.

Kevin,

There's nothing "radioactive" about discussing the JFK records and Donald Trump. In fact, I started a forum thread on the topic here a few years ago. Redundant falsehoods about Trump's true history need to be corrected.

Nor is there anything "radioactive" about discussing inaccurate comparisons of JFK's peace initiatives (and his historic conflicts with the CIA and Joint Chiefs) and Donald Trump's bribery-based foreign policy record.

Trump was never an heroic adversary of the Deep State. He was elected with the help of some FBI chicanery, and widespread sabotage of Hillary Clinton's candidacy by Russian hackers and the U.S. corporate media.

What I pointed out is that it is simply historically inaccurate to claim that "the Deep State was against Trump before he was even elected."

The truth is that Trump (and his MAGA pundits at Fox and elsewhere) promoted a series of bogus propaganda tropes about Trump being a victim of the Deep State beginning in 2017-- after the FBI initially questioned Michael Flynn about his December 2016 phone calls with Sergei Kisylak, and data began to emerge about Russian interference in the U.S. election on Trump's behalf.

As for your revisionist history claiming that Trump was a peace-seeking adversary of the Deep State, it is inconsistent with a number of historical facts.

1) Trump green-lighted the genocidal Saudi war against Yemen.

2) He significantly increased non-combatant casualties committed by U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen, by changing U.S. Rules of Engagement. In fact, General Mattis had to talk Trump down from his demands for the murder of non-combatant women and children!

3) Trump's de-funding of Operation Timber Sycamore in Syria in the summer of 2017 may have been a response to instructions from Putin-- who had intervened against the CIA/MI6/Saudi/Israeli proxy war on behalf of the Assad regime. In effect, Trump turned Syria over to Putin. (I happen to agree with Putin's intervention.)

For those of us who believe that Trump is a compromised Russian asset, this interpretation of Trump's 2017 Timber Sycamore intervention makes sense. It's what Putin wanted Trump to do.

Ron Bulman · March 20

On 3/16/2024 at 12:39 AM, Benjamin Cole said:

It is hard to believe anything Trump says. If Trump now says he will open up the the JFK Records, why would anyone believe him?

We know Biden will not open up the JFKA Records.

There is a third candidate, whose name cannot be mentioned, who would open up the JFK Records, given his family history and background.

So it stands.

Is this unmentionable third candidate, who is loathed by establishment DC and media, a "spoiler" ...or are the two extant political parties crapulent and feculent in every way, and "spoiling" a chance for an American renewal and transparency in government?

Stay tuned.

I'm bumping this for Keven. The Ben Cole W is referring to is Benjamin Cole. Pretty much everyone here has referred to hm as such since he joined, he's never complained that I remember. Who is Ben Cohen? Related to Michael or Mickey?

This post is also the reason I first thought this thread might need to be moved. The "unmentionable third candidate, whose name cannot be mentioned", "this unmentionable third candidate . . . a "spoiler" . . . a chance for American renewal and transparency in government?"

This is a recurring theme with Ben in multiple threads. Thankfully no one has taken that bait, yet.

Keven Hofeling · March 20

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

Kevin,

There's nothing "radioactive" about discussing the JFK records and Donald Trump. In fact, I started a forum thread on the topic here a few years ago. Redundant falsehoods about Trump's true history need to be corrected.

Nor is there anything "radioactive" about discussing inaccurate comparisons of JFK's peace initiatives (and his historic conflicts with the CIA and Joint Chiefs) and Donald Trump's bribery-based foreign policy record.

Trump was never an heroic adversary of the Deep State. He was elected with the help of some FBI chicanery, and widespread sabotage of Hillary Clinton's candidacy by Russian hackers and the U.S. corporate media.

What I pointed out is that it is simply historically inaccurate to claim that "the Deep State was against Trump before he was even elected."

The truth is that Trump (and his MAGA pundits at Fox and elsewhere) promoted a series of bogus propaganda tropes about Trump being a victim of the Deep State beginning in 2017-- after the FBI initially questioned Michael Flynn about his December 2016 phone calls with Sergei Kisylak, and data began to emerge about Russian interference in the U.S. election on Trump's behalf.

As for your revisionist history claiming that Trump was a peace-seeking adversary of the Deep State, it is inconsistent with a number of historical facts.

1) Trump green-lighted the genocidal Saudi war against Yemen.

2) He significantly increased non-combatant casualties committed by U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen, by changing U.S. Rules of Engagement. In fact, General Mattis had to talk Trump down from his demands for the murder of non-combatant women and children!

3) Trump's de-funding of Operation Timber Sycamore in Syria in the summer of 2017 may have been a response to instructions from Putin-- who had intervened against the CIA/MI6/Saudi/Israeli proxy war on behalf of the Assad regime. In effect, Trump turned Syria over to Putin. (I happen to agree with Putin's intervention.)

For those of us who believe that Trump is a compromised Russian asset, this interpretation of Trump's 2017 Timber Sycamore intervention makes sense. It's what Putin wanted Trump to do.

You sure do have me pegged wrong.

You see, I agree with most of what you claim about Donald Trump, except for the Russiagate flavored McCarthyism that is. I tracked Trump's 300% increase in Drone assassinations, his huge increases in the military industrial complex budget, and his enabling of the Saudis in Yemen and of the military buildup in Ukraine in real time. Trump was poison, but the CIA would not forgive him for taking the anticipated war in Syria away from them. And by the way, your Russiagate hoax explanation for Trump's motives on shutting down Timber Sycamore strikes me as profoundly absurd.

The truth is you are carrying water for a group of neocon criminals that are no better than the Trump criminals, and that the Russiagate hoopla has been thoroughly debunked now for a good long time.

I was a Bernie Sanders supporter when Hillary Clinton first unleashed the Russiagate hoax against Sanders in 2016, and then I was one of the few people who actually read the much-heralded and overblown report of the 27 intelligence agencies entitled 'Background to “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution.' https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/3254229/ICA-2017-01.pdf

That report was supposed to be about "Russian interference" in the 2016 election, but actually reading it revealed it to be just a silly pro-censorship attack on RT (Russian television).

The notion of "Russian interference" was no more than a Hillary Clinton inspired diversionary tactic intended to discredit the profoundly embarrassing DNC email scandal. Emails which Seymour Hersch later confirmed were downloaded directly from the DNC's server by Seth Rich, a DNC IT Tech, who was mysteriously murdered very soon thereafter. According to Seymour Hersh's high level FBI sources, the DNC emails, and evidence that Seth Rich transmitted said emails to Wikileaks were found on Rich's laptop which was confiscated by the FBI from his home on the night of his murder.

The FBI denied all of this of course, but more recently, in the context of civil litigation, it has come to light that the FBI does indeed possess Seth Rich's laptop, and instead of obeying the Court's order to turn over all of the laptop files to the plaintiff's attorney, the FBI has disobeyed the order, asking instead for an order that the files not be released for SIXTY-SIX YEARS!

I could go on and on about this for many more posts, providing documentation about everything from the fraudulent FBI applications the FBI made to the FISA Court for surveillance authorizations on Trump and associates based upon the Steele Dossier and other fraudulent materials, to the more recent disclosures that the Hillary Clinton campaign -- and not Russian hacking -- initially inspired and was behind all of this.

The following is a video from just last month by Glenn Greenwald and Aaron Matte going over the history of the Russiagate hoax, including the more recent disclosures:

What most surprises me is that you seem to be unaware that this has all been exposed as a hoax, and/or that you have somehow compartmentalized and rationalized away all of the disclosures that have debunked your Rachel Maddowesk belief system.

The saddest part about all of this is the McCarthyism type environment it has imposed upon U.S. Russian relations. It is as if you are unaware of the lessons about this that JFK lived for at the end of his life, and then was murdered for, back when the USSR was truly a monolithic power, rather than the current country it is with a GDP roughly equivalent to that of the State of California.

JFK would be highly ashamed and disappointed in this state of affairs, and you should be too...

Edited March 20 by Keven Hofeling

Geo Kozma · March 20

On 3/16/2024 at 6:39 AM, Benjamin Cole said:

Is this unmentionable third candidate, who is loathed by establishment DC and media, a "spoiler" ...or are the two extant political parties crapulent and feculent in every way, and "spoiling" a chance for an American renewal and transparency in government?

With the un/transparent real enemies of the leading Western Power the US it is insane to demand transparency/ when we do know that even without enemies in every group there are extremely oposing visions in masss of people....

so when the last document will be shown it will not clarify anything. the persons who will come out as GAme Masters will be just average people like anyone...---sometimes good sometimes bad...and their having been situated into that corner of organizing the successful part of that conspiracy or putch will be just a short time surprise...It will be someone who was successful in hiding - and that also means he needed to stay hidden because otherwise he did many good things...but he had to stay hidden due to one or two things which he had to do in a way that the Sino-Russian Tyrants also stay calm.

Everyone who tries to think about this must calculate with this: both the Russians and the Chinese leaders (and the US ones) do know that in the Kennedy Clan some secrets were really dangerous - some high places spy or some underage sex partner or drug use and murder - and this means (like in every privat person's life there ar unmentionable desires - to demand full transparency is naive, foolish, and self destructive. So yes, only Junior might try it but who knows they will allow it to him. To think that the leaders are able to do any whim is just a fantasy. (I am glad to see that TRump respects some limits after all.)

During my first 65 years my family successfully has hidden from me the job of my grandparental Uncle in the White House. And his famous colleagues of course. They had a rational reason at the era of our Russian Slave Colony Occupation - it had to be kept a secret. then I found out that even the main surviving family membes have never known each others friends (who were in local politic on ahigher level) - people just stopped mentioning their friends.

Whoever is hidden - probably a bunch of people - may bring shame on the Kennedy family - and many other Big NAmes - as a close friend. And the real problem will be that we will see that this Secret Chief was constrained - (we know Kennedy needed drugs against huge pains and it could be simply a friend's duty to organize his exit...that is the most benevolent scenario...but it may have been a demand of the Russians because he threatened them with nukes after all...they both did it but only Kennedy went into insanity due to his cocktails. (It is not impossible that it was NOT meant to finish the life of the Pres. Now that we know that Oswald did not go up to the 6th floor...)

What if the level of danger in this unknown secret part of that tragic era is better stay forgotten. Like so many past secret murders (like the trap of Crwon Prince Rudolf...there are lots if similar cases in history where we will never know the truth...And maybe it is better for us. )

Edited March 20 by Geo Kozma

Geo Kozma · March 20

5 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

As an example, Michael Wolff described Sheldon Adelson and Paul Singer, essentially, bribing Trump to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

And the Saudis loaned Trump's son-in-law $2 billion, following Kushner's dubious tenure as Trump's Middle East envoy.

Politicians are like lawyers- for any legal ttlement the lawyer getss a percentage. Also: it is an ongoing debate - there are masses of people who think Isral is a spcial case and sure its Capitol is Jusalm and yes many Muslims do think that Iran is the common enemy of the West and Israel and themselves as sunnite Muslims, so they wanted that abraham Accord arranged by Trump and his family. I do not think that in such extreme perplexing dilemmas eithr side may claim that his truth is more true than the opposite side's truth claim. it is impoible dr outsiders to judge this

Keven Hofeling · March 20

3 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Kevin,

There's nothing "radioactive" about discussing the JFK records and Donald Trump. In fact, I started a forum thread on the topic here a few years ago. Redundant falsehoods about Trump's true history need to be corrected.

Nor is there anything "radioactive" about discussing inaccurate comparisons of JFK's peace initiatives (and his historic conflicts with the CIA and Joint Chiefs) and Donald Trump's bribery-based foreign policy record.

Trump was never an heroic adversary of the Deep State. He was elected with the help of some FBI chicanery, and widespread sabotage of Hillary Clinton's candidacy by Russian hackers and the U.S. corporate media.

What I pointed out is that it is simply historically inaccurate to claim that "the Deep State was against Trump before he was even elected."

The truth is that Trump (and his MAGA pundits at Fox and elsewhere) promoted a series of bogus propaganda tropes about Trump being a victim of the Deep State beginning in 2017-- after the FBI initially questioned Michael Flynn about his December 2016 phone calls with Sergei Kisylak, and data began to emerge about Russian interference in the U.S. election on Trump's behalf.

As for your revisionist history claiming that Trump was a peace-seeking adversary of the Deep State, it is inconsistent with a number of historical facts.

1) Trump green-lighted the genocidal Saudi war against Yemen.

2) He significantly increased non-combatant casualties committed by U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen, by changing U.S. Rules of Engagement. In fact, General Mattis had to talk Trump down from his demands for the murder of non-combatant women and children!

3) Trump's de-funding of Operation Timber Sycamore in Syria in the summer of 2017 may have been a response to instructions from Putin-- who had intervened against the CIA/MI6/Saudi/Israeli proxy war on behalf of the Assad regime. In effect, Trump turned Syria over to Putin. (I happen to agree with Putin's intervention.)

For those of us who believe that Trump is a compromised Russian asset, this interpretation of Trump's 2017 Timber Sycamore intervention makes sense. It's what Putin wanted Trump to do.