As I type, President Obama is going on and on, answering a reporter’s question about Donald Trump angrily spewing about a “rigged election”. Trump’s motives probably are completely self-serving and intended to stir up his angry followers, to contest the election if Trump loses in November. Trump used this same tactic before the GOP Convention, so it’s reasonable to believe that what Trump cares about is himself, not a corrupt system.
Since August of 2015, I’ve been alarmed by the Trump campaign’s collusion with the mass media on messaging, the relentless selling of manufactured opinion cascades by both Trump and the media, and the glaring similarities in messaging and memes between Clinton operatives and Trump. I’ve been dismayed that no one seriously looked into this obvious media collusion for decades and instead argued about it, as some sort of benign ideological “media bias”, rather than what it really is.
The Clintons introduced an“information warfare” strategy, more at home in totalitarian regimes than America, into American presidential politics. That’s the truth. Now, who was behind the Clinton’s new messaging strategy, I can’t say with certainty and my suspicions have fallen mostly on left-wing academics who study propaganda, social psychology and advertising OR hostile foreign intelligence OR a combination of the two. I am convinced that the Clintons didn’t dream up this sophisticated information warfare strategy on their own.
Trump may be spewing about the “unfair media” and the “rigged election” for selfish reasons and he may have exaggerated some points, blurred the edges on some of his charges, but he is completely right – this election is a RIGGED SYSTEM and it was RIGGED by the CLINTONS and their legions of operatives and their friends in the mass media from the beginning.
The deluge of Podesta email leaks pouring out from Wikileaks is making a term, which I have been talking about since last fall, very trendy: MEDIA COLLUSION. Back in October 2015, I wrote about seeing Bill Clinton’s triangulation strategy setting up perfectly:
Do you ever let your mind wander and think about “what ifs”? Well, as Donald Trump continues to keep the GOP race in disarray and feeds the worst bigots, xenophobes and racists at the base, well, I wonder, would the Clinton political machine be able to orchestrate a more perfect triangulation than to have far-left kook, Bernie Sanders on the left and Donald Trump on the right. Trump’s single-handedly throwing the election to Hillary with his “deport them all”, which threw the Hispanic vote in the toilet for the GOP, if he is the candidate, then it was the attacks on women, or how about his “closing mosques” comment yesterday? That would leave the Queen sitting snugly in the “middle” – calm, grandmotherly and looking “moderate”…
At first, I thought this would be impossible, but as I’ve watched Trump continue to agitate and throw out these verbal hand grenades at any in the GOP field, who looks like he/she might move up in the polls, then add in all these outrageous lines he keeps throwing out to alienate wide swaths of the electorate, it all seems orchestrated and contrived. A couple of days ago he was blaming GWB for 9/11 and not keeping America safe, yet it was President Clinton who let bin Laden go and who did nothing to deal with Al Qaeda’s attacks on American interests – USS Cole, Khobar Towers, Mogadishu ring any bells. No, Trump attacked GWB…
I began to think Trump’s operating like a Clinton sewer rat and he sure fixates on the polls – just like the Clintons. Every other word he speaks is about his poll numbers and the press feeds on that too. This training the American public that polls determine what’s right and wrong, not the merits of the issue, worked like a charm during the Clinton impeachment. “Who cares if a President lies under oath – the American public doesn’t; just look at the President’s poll numbers”, went the argument. The media sold that line of reasoning and the American people bought it.
We know Trump frequently golfed with Bill Clinton, praised Hillary and even invited the Clintons to his wedding. In fact, that reported phone call from Bill Clinton to Trump right before he announced his decision to enter the race as a Republican seems so odd, looking back at how this race is stacking up. Trump is clearing the path for a Hillary win.
So, does Trump have some vendetta against GWB or the Bushes, because his ultimate target is to demolish Jeb Bush? Trump holds grudges and he believes in destroying his enemies. Back in August 2015, I wrote a post where I quoted one of Trump’s books:
Last week I bought one of Trump’s books, as I mentioned before, and I read it. Assuredly, Trump offered many interesting insights into, as the book’s title stated, “TRUMP: How to Get Rich”. The pride he takes in his children comes across and he offers some worthwhile advice on investing and negotiating, but trying to get to the character of who exactly is Donald Trump, well, he’s a man who has chapters in his book like “Be Strategically Dramatic”, “Sometimes You Still Have To Screw Them”, and “Sometimes You Have To Hold a Grudge”, replete with examples from his life and his guiding principles. Here are some quotes (page 138):
“When somebody hurts you, just go after them as viciously and as violently as you can. Like it says in the Bible, an eye for an eye.”
Be paranoid. I know this observation doesn’t make any of us sound very good, but let’s face the fact that it’s possible that even your best friend wants to steal your spouse and your money.”
The chapter on holding a grudge is even more interesting, because Trump relates how for years he had donated huge amounts of money to NY governor, Mario Cuomo and when he called Cuomo to ask for a favor from Cuomo’s son, Andrew, who was running the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Mario Cuomo refused to do the favor (which Trump doesn’t explain in detail other than to say it was an appropriate favor involving attention to a detail). Trump blew up and for any who are confused with Trump’s vendetta against Megyn Kelly on Twitter, calling her a bimbo last night or his refusing to entertain a question by Jorge Ramos from Univision this evening, well, this chapter on holding a grudge (page 142) explains it. Trump called in a political favor believing it was owed to him, because he donated a lot of money to Mario Cuomo (crony capitalism is what most people call this greasing of palms). Here is how Trump describes the phone call:
“I did the only thing that felt right to me. I began screaming. “You son of a bitch! For years I’ve helped you and never asked for a thing, and when I finally need something, and a totally proper thing at that, you aren’t there for me. You’re no good. You’re one of the most disloyal people I’ve known and as far as I’m concerned, you can go to hell.”
My screaming was so loud that two or three people came in from adjoining offices and asked who I was screaming at. I told them it was Mario Cuomo., a total stiff, a lousy governor, and a disloyal former friend. Now whenever I see Mario at dinner, I refuse to acknowledge him, talk to him, or even look at him.”
Today, Vice President, Joe Biden, decided not to run, so the field is cleared for Hillary and I believe Bill Clinton is throwing his political muscle around to secure the nomination for Hillary. After all, she went to great lengths to save his presidency during all their assorted scandals, but especially during the Lewinsky scandal. Coincidences do happen, but some are just too strange, like Bill Clinton calling Donald Trump weeks before Trump’s decision to run as a Republican for president.
Perhaps, this all falls in the realm of a wild conspiracy theory, but it’s best to look at how many segments of the electorate Trump has thrown to the Queen and keep tabs, as he makes more, supposedly, contemporaneous comments that set GOP hopes in flames. This sure has the stench of a Clintonian scorched earth policy, where they hold all of the matches.
The pieces of Bill Clinton’s triangulation strategy are being exposed in the Podesta emails and now that the “media collusion” is out in the open, with so many in the media blatantly working with the Clinton campaign, to pile on Trump, the corruption smacks you in the face almost daily. The Podesta emails make clear that the Clinton campaign colluded with the media to sell the “Pied Piper GOP candidates”, Trump, Cruz, and Carson. So, the only GOP candidates that made any bumps in the polls were Trump, Cruz and Carson.
On October 9, 2016, Kerry Picket, at the Daily Caller, wrote a piece about a April 7, 2015 Podesta email to the Democratic National Committee, which laid out a plan “to elevate the GOP long shot candidates” (the so-called Pied Piper candidates). This is the carefully planned Bill Clinton’s triangulation strategy, where they wanted to create far-right kook candidates. She writes;
“The e-mail focuses on the strategy of the “Pied Piper Candidates.” These candidates are the individuals Democrats believed to be the most beatable in a general election as a result of their views, but want them to be taken more seriously in the primary so the more competitive candidates will be forced to adopt positions that they may not feel comfortable with.
“We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to[sic] them seriously,” the e-mail says, noting that the Pied Piper candidates would be Cruz, Trump, and Carson. The candidates to be cleared from the field would be Bush, Rubio, Walker, Paul, Christie, and Gov. Bobby Jindal.
“Most of the more-established candidates will want to focus on building a winning general election coalition. The ‘Pied Pipers’ of the field will mitigate this to a degree, but more will need to be done on certain candidates to undermine their credibility among our coalition (communities of color, millennials, women) and independent voters. In this regard, the goal here would be to show that they are just the same as every other GOP candidate: extremely conservative on these issues,” the Podesta e-mail notes.
By early March 2015, according to a Quinnipiac poll, Republicans had been coalescing behind Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker for a few months, but he had yet to officially announce his candidacy. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, however, was only two points behind Walker with 16 percent. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee both received eight percent.
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson garnered seven percent while Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz received had six percent, while Florida Sen. Marco Rubio picked up five percent. No other Republican contender went over two percent at the time and 17 percent were undecided.”
(The highlights are mine.)
This email certainly goes a long way towards providing evidence to my “conspiracy theory” that the rise of Donald J. Trump was a Bill Clinton dirty trick. This email was in April 2015 and Trump didn’t even enter the race until June 2015… yet, the Clinton machine had already figured out how to set him up with the media collusion.
Here’s another timeline:
Early March 2015 – Hillary’s email server scandal broke. To get a hint of the worries, the following quote is from a March 2, 2015 ,New York Times story:
“Her expansive use of the private account was alarming to current and former National Archives and Records Administration officials and government watchdogs, who called it a serious breach.
“It is very difficult to conceive of a scenario — short of nuclear winter — where an agency would be justified in allowing its cabinet-level head officer to solely use a private email communications channel for the conduct of government business,” said Jason R. Baron, a lawyer at Drinker Biddle & Reath who is a former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration.”
April 7, 2015: Podesta sent the “triangulation strategy “email to the DNC.
May 2015: Donald Trump initiated contact with Bill Clinton, and Bill Clinton returns Trump’s call, according to a August 5, 2015 Washington Post report:
““Mr. Trump reached out to President Clinton a few times. President Clinton returned his call in late May,” a Clinton employee said. “While we don’t make it a practice to discuss the president’s private conversations, we can tell you that the presidential race was not discussed.”
One Trump adviser said Clinton called Trump, but the adviser did not provide specifics about how the call came about.”
June 16, 2015: Trump entered the race and leapt to the head of the pack of the Pied Piper candidates and the mass media elite all start running the “GOP Insurgency Show”, replete with Clinton-style talking points, memes and manufacturing opinion cascades, selling Trump 24/7.
April 29, 2016, <ahref=”http://www.nationalreview.com/article/434765/nevertrump-needed-now-more-ever”>I posted the following comment at National Review in their Disqus comment section:
In recent weeks, the punditry class is abuzz with the Podesta email revelations of obvious media collusion between the Clinton campaign and media, to actively sell Hillary and dump damaging dirt on Trump. Understandably, the Trump campaign feels like they’re not being treated “fairly” and they’re not, BUT every Republican candidate was NOT treated “fairly” by the media, because all along many of the big wig media elite AND many individual journalists and editors were conspiring with the Clinton campaign to derail Bernie Sanders campaign, to derail the most likely to win Republican campaigns and promote the most extreme, general election losers in the GOP primary. Trump received billions of dollars in free media in the GOP primary, all to help Hillary in the general. That Trump GOP Insurgent side show was a Clinton meme that their friends in the media sold. The “GOP establishment conspiracy” that Trump peddled was exactly like Hillary’s “vast, right-wing conspiracy” messaging – sounds like the same people wrote that messaging.
Trump never set up a real presidential campaign and assuredly he never came out with anything as well-thought out as the “Pied Piper Podesta email” to the DNC. So, let’s look at another LB conspiracy theory – the Trump fascist meme set-up. No worries if you discount me as just a tinfoil hat crazy. I am used to being discounted and told I am nuts – after all I am the one who was attacked in my home in 1998 by a freakin’ retired general, recruited to silence me during the Clinton impeachment scandal, all over my posting comments on the Excite message boards about the Clinton Scorched Earth Strategy and how the “media collusion” is really INFORMATION WARFARE.
Trump’s fascist memes were sold to him – I believe, he was manipulated into spewing those fascist memes, as I’ve stated many times. Here’s my Disqus comment at National Review from March 17, 2016:
Here’s a timeline, from my July 30, 2016 blog post, The Pieces of the Media Messaging Puzzle, worth repeating:
FOX has stayed all-in for Trump. Liberal news networks don’t “give” Republicans 24/7 news cycle control and they sure don’t give them that for 8 months straight. It was a set-up to throw the GOP primary into chaos.
Here’s the sequence of events when CNN and MSNBC made the switch to Clinton scorched earth in late February:
Here’s the timeline on those Trump fascist memes:
February 28, 2016 – Trump retweets a Mussolini quote and refuses to denounce David Duke on a Sunday talk show.
March 3, 2016 – GOP debate where Trump defends Mussolini quote and doubles
down on his committing war crimes to defeat ISIS.March 5, 2016 – Trump does a staged raised arm pledge rally where the Nuremberg imagery smacked you in the face. He read a prepared card with that pledge. I’d love to know who came up with that pledge rally idea and if it was Trump, did anyone try to dissuade him.
March 10, 2016 – Michelle Fields claims she was strong-armed by Lewandowski leaving a press briefing. I have wondered if he was a handy Clinton middleman, because it sure seemed like he was set-up as the thug in that Michelle Fields controversy. I watched that video over and over and did not see him grab her arm where the bruises were and I believe she sounded very deceptive in interviews.
The Trump controversy builds. And then he walked into the home of wacko leftist central, Chicago. The timeline suggests that Trump was duped into setting up his own bonfire and lighting it, before he was tossed into it by the left-wing mob.March 12, 2016 – Leftist ground zero, Chicago, Trump faces massive organized leftist mobs and cancels his rally.
Those protests in Chicago were staged and funded by leftists – and Soros very likely played a large role. This riot in San Jose is just part of that continued staged agitation propaganda to try to incite violent clashes with Trump supporters. I still wonder who in Trump’s campaign egged him on with this strong-man themed garbage? Was that pledge rally a Trump brain storm or was Trump sold on it? Soros and other far-left groups are likely funding, organizing and staging these riots and street clashes, but who in Trump’s campaign came up with these strong-man talking points in the first place??? That’s what I would like to know, because it sure looks like he was massively set-up. When he did that pledge rally, where the liberal press was primed with making that Nuremberg rally comparison immediately, almost like they had received some talking points. Was there MEDIA COLLUSION and if so, with whom???
Note: CNN banned key Trump mouthpiece, Roger Stone in late February and MSNBC banned Stone in April, rather extreme measures to silence Trump’s former campaign manager. Oddly, enough CNN immediately hired Corey Lewandowski, in June, when he was fired as the Trump campaign manager, which certainly makes me wonder if Lewandowski was a Clinton mole in the Potemkin Trump campaign all along.
FOX News is a foreign-owned news corporation, that opened shop in America to fuel the right-wing, in massive agitation propaganda efforts. Or as the left dubbed it (Faux News). FOX News has gone all-in to promote the Trump “GOP Insurgency”. Why FOX is all-in for Trump is an open question. The American CEO of FOX News, Roger Ailes, was fired on the very same day as Donald Trump became the Republican nominee, with the news reporting that Rupert Murdoch would be running FOX News for now. Very strange coincidence with that timing, in light of this unprecedented mass media collusion to promote the GOP Insurgent.
Trump played up these racist/fascist memes, but I believe he was fed those memes by someone on his staff, who was being fed those memes by Clinton operatives. For months now, I’ve been stating that I suspect Corey Lewandowski is that Clinton ghost haunting Trump Tower. The racist/fascist memes fit a timeline that led to the Chicago showdown.
Today, The Daily Caller has an article by Blake Neff, Activist Who Took Credit For Violent Chicago Protests Was On Hillary’s Payroll. Imagine that:
“Notably, a search of FEC records reveals that Rodriguez was paid by the Clinton campaign shortly before she disrupted the Chicago rally. The campaign paid her $1,610.34 as a “payroll” expense, and also gave her a $30 payment that is described only as “phone.”
The payments are both dated Feb. 29, 2016, less than two weeks before the violence in Chicago. Those are the only payments Rodriguez has ever received from the Clinton campaign. It’s not immediately clear what the payment was for, and it’s also unclear whether Rodriguez was really behind the agitation in Chicago or if she was simply making an empty boast.
In the months afterwards, Rodriguez was paid handsomely by other political operations. She received a $1,108.97 travel reimbursement from MoveOn.org Political Action in May, and in June she was paid a whopping $17,500 by Stand Up For Ohio PAC as a “political consulting fee.” Stand Up For Ohio PAC is itself heavily funded by MoveOn.”
So, there you have a money trail between a leftist agitator, who showed up in Chicago to instigate anti-Trump rioting, and the Clinton campaign and Soros…
And for those who think the Lewandowski, as the Clinton mole, idea far-fetched, just look at the fact that CNN (a key Clinton front to run the Clinton scorched earth) immediately hired Lewandowski, right after Trump “fired” him. Trump still kept Lewandowski on the pay-roll through September 2016 and although Lewandowski was “fired”, he’s still in close contact with Trump. I’ll quote the Soros-funded, Media Matters:
Campaign reporters spotted CNN contributor and former Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski joining the campaign’s motorcade and stepping off Trump’s plane as the Republican presidential nominee traveled to campaign events on Saturday, raising more questions for CNN about its decision to continue employing Lewandowski despite the obvious ethical problems in doing so.
CNN’s decision to hire Lewandowski has been widely criticized as an ethical morass by media ethicists and journalists who have condemned the network for months. Lewandowski’s continued involvement with the Trump campaign, his likely non-disparagement agreement with Trump, and his penchant for pushing Trump talking points on air all raise serious questions about his continued employment at CNN. CNN’s employment of Lewandowski contradicts the network’s previous stance that contributors paid by a campaign “would not be permitted.”
According to CNN, Lewandowski’s supposed severance pay ended in late September, as he was paid off “in one lump sum”; he had previously received monthly payments from the Trump campaign following his termination even while drawing a paycheck as a CNN contributor, a practice which was to continue for the rest of the year.
In recent days, Lewandowski has been on CNN defending Trump’s bragging about committing sexual assault and attempting to discredit some of the women who have accused Trump of assaulting them. But after Trump’s arguably worst week of the campaign so far, several reporters covering the Trump campaign spotted Lewandowski traveling with Trump to campaign events in Maine and New Jersey on October 15″
That’s how things roll with the Clinton master strategist, Bill Clinton… he has been orchestrating Hillary’s campaign and the “GOP Insurgent” campaign, with his big media friends colluding, every step of the way.
Just ignore the WHOLESALE PUBLIC CORRUPTION and oh my, don’t you dare hint that this election is RIGGED, because saying things like that undermines our electoral system…
libertybelle diaries 
Susan, you raised some interesting points. I enjoy your blog!
Thanks lolly! That book you mentioned, “Let the Hurricane Roar”, was later released with the names of the main characters changed, as “Young Pioneers”. I bought the kindle version of this revised version, because the story itself is supposedly the same.
I’m reading this book, “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture on Crisis”, and I promised that guy, uberdave, who comments at Qwiket, that I would read his novel next, but then I’m going to read “Young Pioneers”. Another very good novel about the American settlers to the West is “My Antonia” by Willa Cather.
With my blog – at the end of last year, I intended to move away from politics a great deal and write more about American history or inspiring things. This crazy election drew me further into the political stuff, but I still want to move in another direction and try to be a positive voice and highlight the many wonderful people and things in America.
Here’s the link to uberdave’s book:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013XVNCZ2/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o00_?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Thank you for the uberdave link & Willa Cather tip. I appreciate your insights about books and look forward to happy discussions!