SPECIAL REPORT:

Media's Dangerous Game

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The narrative: Putin preferred Trump in the 2016 election.

This is the storyline that the Democrats concocted, and their media allies continue to use as the context for all coverage of President Trump, the election, and Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin and Russia.

This report will show how and why this narrative is being used; evidence showing why it is false has been excluded and ignored largely due to intentional conflating of two issues -- one that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, and two, that Russia and Putin’s efforts were intended to help Candidate Trump win the presidency.

To decouple these two issues, we will begin with the first question:

What did Russia’s interference consist of?

According to current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray, Russia has tried unsuccessfully on a few occasions to “hack” voting machines but their usual method of operation is to deploy disinformation or propaganda.

According to Wray, “What they do is they will identify a divisive issue, and through a variety of means, some overt, some covert, some through fake news, some through propaganda, will essentially sow divisiveness, spin people up on both sides of the issue, and then kind of watch us go at each other.”

So, the answer to the first question is yes. By the way, Russia has been interfering in our elections for at least 70 years, and always preferred Democrats, a fact conveniently suppressed in the current narrative.

Now the second question: Did Russia and Putin prefer Donald Trump?

We actually answered this question from a geo-political standpoint in our previous report “If You Only Knew” which concluded that there is no possible way it would have been in Russia or Putin’s interest for Trump to win the election -- not economically, nor in terms of Russia’s national security.

So why does the so-called “mainstream media” and Democrat Party constantly try to claim that Putin preferred Trump?

What we have learned about Russian operations from the Intelligence Community (reliable members of the community) and Justice Department investigations is that Russia’s game is to create dissention among American citizens.

In other words, their objective is to cause chaos by playing both sides against each other. In this case, if the Russians did hack the DNC servers (that is still in question), there objective was to use what they found to show that Bernie Sanders was cheated out of the primary election and Trump (who they believed was going to lose) was cheated in the general election.

The only evidence to emerge thus far that shows any Russian actions on behalf of Trump was a measly $200,000 worth of Facebook ads aimed at discrediting Clinton. More than one billion dollars was spent to elect Clinton so $200k is a meaningless amount of effort.

When you consider the billions of dollars from the “mainstream media” in what is called “in-kind” contributions to Clinton, the Facebook ads are not even worthy of discussion. Yet that is the one thing that Democrats and their media allies cling to as evidence that Russia wanted Trump to win. That is it. Yet they continue to conflate these two issues of Russia meddling and the desire to elect Trump.

If candidate Trump had been the frontrunner, Russia was prepared to make the argument that the media, Democrats, and Clinton herself are making now—that Clinton was cheated out of the election by Trump colluding with Russia. But notice who is promoting this narrative? You can accurately say that Democrats, their media allies, and Clinton are carrying water for Russia and Putin. The Russians would never have this kind of effectiveness with any other propaganda, but just as they have over many decades, Democrats have been the most prolific agitprop distributors for dictators and tyrants in the United States for more than 70 years.

The Russians could never have been this effective without the Democrats and the media. Throughout the run up to the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both reassured the nation that our elections could not be tampered with. According to Clinton, Obama, and the media it was downright unpatriotic to suggest that our elections were being tampered with. They said that because they were sure that Clinton would win.

Immediately following Trump’s win, the Democrats and the media began to call the election into question, violating their own pre-election demands that we accept the outcome or else.

One recent example of the media manipulating this information to help Democrats’ narrative was in the Washington Post. A “journalist” named Philip Bump wrote an analysis entitled “A Broad Debunking of Trump’s Claims about Russian Interference and the Mueller investigation”.

The piece was anything but that and looked as though it had been written by Clinton herself: “And yet, two years and two weeks later, the person believed to have been the deliberate beneficiary of that interference offers this thought on Twitter.” It shows a tweet from President Trump criticizing the Mueller

investigation and raising questions about why the DNC server that was hacked has never been seen by the FBI. Bump then goes on to continue the Democrat Party talking points in what was not labeled a “commentary” but again, a “news analysis”.

“But that there is nothing new in that tweet — that President Trump continues to offer this alternate view of reality and long-debunked conspiracy theories — is remarkable in itself. So, once and for all, let’s walk through Trump’s nebulous assertions, what’s known, and why Trump, perhaps more than anyone else, should know better,” wrote Bump.

A glance at what Bump refers to as “conspiracy theories” is the fact that the FBI needed the DNC server at all to know whether or not Russia accessed it.

He also declares that because the DNC server was “hacked” by Russia there is clear evidence that Russia was trying to help Trump. Left out of his propaganda though was that Russia also hacked Republican servers as well. But Bump repeatedly demonstrates he is not about to let a little thing like facts and evidence get in the way of a good smear campaign.

At another point Bump claims that Clinton’s involvement in the sale of Uranium to the Russians while she was Secretary of State is a “circuitous” conspiracy theory because there are nine members of the CFIUS review board. Bump and his Democrat allies like to pretend that all nine of the CFIUS representatives didn’t work for the Obama Administration, a convenient fact to overlook.

Bump also attacked the only known salient facts about the case as “even more circuitous” by saying that Clinton’s campaign laundering $12 million to former British agent Christopher Steele, who in turn paid official Russian sources for gossip on candidate Trump is believable. He simply declares that there is “no indication that the Russian government or that Russian President Vladimir Putin directed the information to Steele”. He says that despite the fact that Steele’s report references government sources close to Putin.

In addition to the normal Democrat Party advocacy from eighty percent of the news media, there is the addition of a very concerning new element.

According to a Fox News report:

“Now-former FBI agent Josh Campbell publicly claimed he was leaving the bureau because of ‘relentless attacks’ on it, but he really had a cushy gig at CNN lined up – and now media watchdogs are questioning the ethics behind the entire affair.”

Campbell made these assertions in a New York Times column as he exited the FBI and joined CNN as an analyst. I pointed out to Campbell that he had a credibility issue considering he claimed he was leaving because of attacks on the FBI by President Trump and his staff, but he wrote in the Times and went to work for CNN, both of which attack the FBI on a regular basis when it is being aggressive on terrorism and national security matters.

Campbell regularly attacks President Trump and promotes the Russia conspiracy theories on CNN and social media. What Campbell leaves out of his background is that he was James Comey’s personal assistant, not really the crime-fighter as he tries to portray himself. He is a reliable defender of Comey and the others involved in the investigation of the 2016 election and FISA Court warrants.

Also joining CNN after Trump was elected was James Clapper, who was Director of National Intelligence in the Obama administration. Again, a reliable critic of President Trump. CNN uses people like this to hide their anti-Republican agenda behind the national security credentials of people like Campbell and Clapper. CNN believes this provides them credibility while they are attacking Republicans and President Trump.

MSNBC and NBC hired Obama Director of Central Intelligence John Brennan. Brennan has provided the most pernicious attacks on President Trump of anyone in the media, calling for him to be “tried for treason”.

The point of people like Campbell, Clapper, and Brennan working in the media is to make it appear to unsuspecting audiences that the media and Democrat attacks on President Trump are authentic. This is typical propaganda -- show a person who used to wear the uniform and say “See, he agrees with us”.

Comey himself lacked credibility because Clinton blamed him for her loss in the 2016 election, so he could not be a reliable media figure for the Democrats, so Josh Campbell, his assistant, was the next best thing.  

The reason their presence in the news media is so important is that if President Trump survives these attacks, and Republicans maintain control of the House and Senate, Comey, Clapper, and Brennan could be brought to justice, especially if an independent counsel is appointed to take the cases away from the Justice Department and take over from where the congressional investigations leave off.

Right now -- and expect this “scandal” to grow bigger -- Democrats and their media allies are talking up the indictment of a Russian woman named Maria Butina. She has not been charged with espionage, but with the minor charge of failing to file as a foreign agent of influence.

The media and Democrats are playing up the fact that she had “infiltrated” the National Rifle Association and had been seen cavorting with other conservative

organizations. The way the story is being played is to claim this proves some kind of Russia-Trump-Republican collusion narrative, but it actually is evidence of the opposite. Why would you infiltrate your allies? Russia has attempted to infiltrate conservative groups because we are their enemy.

Apparently, they don’t worry so much about Democrats and the media, perhaps because they know once Trump is vindicated, the Democrats and media will come back to their side again.

Compare and contrast the media treatment of President Trump to how Hillary Clinton was treated during the 2016 election.

In the late 1990s while working undercover in an international arms trafficking network, I happened to mention to a U.S. government official who was familiar with the project that the target of the investigation was "really suspicious" of me. The government official responded, "Well, he should be, he has a reason to be suspicious."

During the 2016 election cycle, the Washington and New York press corps seemed strangely comfortable describing Hillary Clinton as having a long-standing "suspicion of the press corps" without assigning any motives to that suspicion. The implication being that over the years the media had unfairly scrutinized her.
 
If she had been “dead broke” then perhaps they might have a point, but Clinton spent her husband’s entire public life engaged in shady financial deals that enriched the Clintons and sent their co-conspirators to jail. In fact, most of the media left the impression that it is somehow the media's own fault that Clinton was suspicious of them.

Members of the press acted as if they deserved to be critiqued for asking probing questions about the Clintons’ questionable behavior and secrecy surrounding matters about which the public has a right to know.

Briefly in 2015, the media even pretended to be interested in the Clinton Foundation, its odd set of benefactors, and what public benefits the Clintons may have given them for their donations. That curiosity was only temporary.

After a brief dalliance, the media resumed the posture of the Clintons’ defense, the same one they have maintained since their 1992 campaign for president. That is, we can only hold the Clintons accountable if the proof meets an exacting standard, set by the Clintons -- standards not afforded the common man.

The Clinton standard is if they can raise even a modicum of doubt in one shred of a mountain of evidence, then they are 100% innocent. This approach of isolating every incident in a vacuum, the Clintons and the media denied us the privilege of holding them accountable for a pattern of behavior stretching more than 35 years.

Even while the press seemed to be raising questions, they were also qualifying them with “so far there is no evidence directly linking Hillary Clinton to any criminal behavior,” even as she was destroying evidence. 

What was the point of raising questions in the first place if the answer requires Hillary Clinton to either incriminate herself or be declared an innocent victim of the press corps? Hillary chose to remain silent, and the media pretended that the evidence she destroyed or refused to provide might contain information that would vindicate her.

Republicans’ most frequent refrain about the media is that they have a "liberal bias." That is simply not true. After all, don’t members of the media pretend to despise the well-off, particularly those who obtained their wealth under questionable circumstances, sort of like the Clintons did? That is merely a liberal pose. The media has a Democratic Party bias, which is far worse than a liberal bias.

If the press corps were "liberal" it would possess a set of standards to which they would not only hold Republicans accountable, but Democrats as well. However, throughout the 1990s, the mainstream media rarely ever held the Clintons to any liberal standards.

In 1992, Bill Clinton ran against "the decade of greed," referring to 1980s prosperity under President Reagan. But as revelations of complex financial transactions, many of which were highly questionable and some outright illegal and made the Clinton's wealthy during the 1980s, the media was largely reluctant to report this staggering hypocrisy.

Similarly, during the 1992 campaign, Clinton attacked then-President George H. W. Bush for coddling "the butchers of Beijing" and failing to keep strategic weapons technology out of the hands of dangerous dictators. Human rights in China was a major issue during the 1992 campaign, as the press corps frequently reminded voters.

But once Clinton took office, he immediately began decontrolling high-tech weapons systems and other technologies that China used to further oppress their own citizens and threaten the U.S. -- even to this day. And it occurred while Clinton was receiving millions of dollars in illegal campaign donations from China -- yes, all this was revealed right in the middle of American liberals' narrative about how big corporate money was unfairly influencing U.S. elections.

One might think that the confluence of two such seismic events would have become fodder for blockbuster exposés in the mainstream media; after all, the narrative fit right into the liberal template. You had big money influencing politicians to aid and abet human rights’ violators, but not only did the mainstream media mostly ignore their own matters of importance, they marginalized House and Senate committees that were investigating what became known as the "China/DNC fundraising scandal."  

Consistent with what the Clinton White House was putting out, the press coverage of the committee investigations was couched in suspicions that Republicans were up to partisan tricks and, therefore, the conclusions of the investigative committees could not be trusted. The self-flattering press corps likes to claim the lofty ideal of "holding the powerful accountable," but defended Bill Clinton, leader of the free-world who violated its most sacred liberal tenets and blames itself for driving poor Hillary Clinton to unnatural heights of suspicion.

 The problem for Republicans, in general, is how to deal with a media that is hostile to them but maintains a sliding scale of accountability for Democrats.

For years I have advised Republicans on how to deal with this problem and was somewhat gratified when a friend, who is a Republican operative, forwarded an article on Rand Paul's challenge to a reporter during the 2016 Republican primary, with a note asking if I had been advising him.

The article explained that when the Associated Press attempted to pin down Rand Paul on abortion, he responded this way:



“Why don't we ask the DNC: Is it okay to kill a seven-pound baby in the uterus? You go back and you ask Debbie Wasserman Schultz if she's okay with killing a seven-pound baby that is not born yet. Ask her when life begins, and you ask Debbie when it's okay to protect life. When you get an answer from Debbie, get back to me."
 
This is not an endorsement of Rand Paul, but advice for GOP candidates to use smart tactics. For years, I provided Republicans with this rejoinder to reporters’ questions about their stance on abortion:

The President of the United States (Obama) voted three times when he was in the Illinois legislature to allow doctors to kill a baby that survived an abortion. When you get around to asking the president about his abortion extremism, then you can get back to me on it.

Republicans have always felt that the press corps is never going to change, so there is no point in complaining about it. But what Republicans can change is the voters’ perception of the mainstream media.

Look at how Democrats treat Fox News Channel, constantly trying to undermine their reporting by calling it "Republican", "conservative", etc. The reality is that Fox News has more viewers than any other cable news channel, thus, by the very definition, making it more "mainstream" than the so-called "mainstream media".
 
It is far more appropriate to call media outlets “Democrat Party apparatchiks” and Republicans should publicly refer to hostile reporters as Democrat Party hacks who cross-dress as journalists. Republicans should treat the media and the Democratic Party as one amalgam, because basically they are, and having this aired in public gives voters information that they previously may not have considered.

If Republicans make journalists defend their pro-Democrat Party reportage, it will blunt their attacks on the GOP. Every time the media tries to embarrass a Republican, voters will wonder if that validates Republican complaints about the media.

Public opinion polls show that voters rightly sense that the Washington Political Class is responsible for the decline of the nation. Republicans could do well explaining to them that the Democratic Party is the establishment, and the mainstream media their protectors. The failure of the media to hold the Clintons and other Democrats accountable is clear evidence for making that case.

It has never been more evident that what is considered the “mainstream media” will engage in outright propaganda in order to assist the Democrat Party and turning the U.S. into a one-party nation.

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