“President Trump on Wednesday said he would consider accepting information on his political opponents from a foreign government, despite the concerns raised by the intelligence community and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III over Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election,” a Washington Post story today noted. “‘I think you might want to listen; there isn’t anything wrong with listening,’ Trump said. ‘If somebody called from a country, Norway, ‘We have information on your opponent,’ oh, I think I’d want to hear it’.”
Trump’s remarks, which are truly disturbing, set off a firestorm and he was attacked from all corners. Some analysts suggested that Trump made the remarks because he’s looking for help to win the 2020 election.
I have a different interpretation, which is based on interviews with several well-informed sources, and my long study of the farcical, media-driven Russiagate narrative, which fundamentally alleged that Trump was an asset of Russian intelligence and tool of Vladimir Putin.
Here’s my interpretation: Trump isn’t looking for help in 2020. His campaign got it from Russian in 2016, but the true details have not been disclosed. (They will be below.)
Before going further let me say what follows does not make Trump a pawn of Putin’s, though the Russians did know how to stroke his ego. But Trump is too alpha to be anyone’s puppet and so reckless and unstable that the Russians would have been idiots to make him an asset in any case.
Also, Trump did “collude” with Russia — the same way he colluded with China, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan and on and on — in that he was a crooked businessman who accepted dirty money from governments and/or individuals from all those countries. But being a crook is not an impeachable offense, you have to commit high crimes and misdemeanors while in office and Trump took all the dirty money before becoming president.
Getting back to the main point, Trump’s remarks about being willing to take information from a foreign government show he knows, or fears, that the truly dirty information about the help he received from Russia in 2016 will soon leak out. And he’s right, it’s only a matter of time before it gets published by mainstream outlets.
So how did the Russians help Trump in 2016? Prepare for some irony here.
Trump believed, rightly, that major media outlets (apart from the cretins at Fox News and likeminded Trump PR agencies) were in bed with Hillary Clinton’s campaign. A Russian-controlled or influenced foreign entity obtained evidence of that by hacking into at least one major media outlet’s email system and discovered its reporters were actively collaborating with Clinton and Obama operatives to go after Trump. They provided that information to a Trump associate.
It’s not news that major media were in bed with Hillary. Just look back to the Podesta Emails. They showed open collaboration between top reporters and the Clinton camp. For example, see my story here about the morons at Vox, such as Ezra Klein. Here’s an excerpt:
Ezra’s valiant effort to market Hillary to the American public proved harder than selling rat poison to rats — which is not to say the Clinton campaign didn’t appreciate his efforts. He established himself as its most reliable mouthpiece, as seen in a Podesta email released during the campaign, in which a few Clintonistas were wondering which journalist could most reliably be called upon to push out the campaign narrative and keep other reporters in line.
“Lloyd Grove used to be the person who would hold journalist [sic] accountable – who is that now and is there an opportunity for that in real time today?” Cheryl Mills, one of Hillary’s closest aides, asked.
Campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri had the answer: “I think that person, the degree to which they exist, is Ezra Klein,” she wrote. “And we can do it with him today.” And do him they did, repeatedly.
Anyway, returning once again to the point. A Russian entity, if my sources are correct, hacked into a major American media outlet and turned over confidential emails to the Trump campaign. That is fucking bad.
Trump’s recent remarks don’t show he’s looking for help in 2020. They show he got help in 2016 and knows this information is going to come out. They were a preemptive strike to try to mitigate the impact when the information eventually surfaces.
