Beyond the reality TV aura to Trump vs. The Media and Trump’s “mean girl” tweets is the larger issue: AMERICA. Every intelligence agency worth its salt has analyzed Trump’s personality and knows he’s a shallow, venal, sociopath (yes, his every action screams that). They know how he reacts and will find ways to goad or feed his ego to advance their own interests.
I’ve stated many times that I believe the Russians didn’t just all of a sudden ramp up their information war in the 2016 election, but have been escalating them for decades and never really stopped when the Soviet Union collapsed. I suspect a large, continuous Russian disinformation effort in our media, fueling the hyper-partisan divide. Without rehashing all that again, you can read some of my old posts, this, this, this, if you’re interested.
Twitter is a how American news is generated. It is how the spin cycles churn up controversies to dominate the 24/7 news cycle. Since the 90s, the Left, which includes the liberal, mainstream media, controlled the 24/7 news cycle. Trump used Twitter to promote his brand (himself) long before 2016. It apparently is a social media format he is comfortable with and one where he feels he can fight the media without any gatekeepers. Trump learned how to break through, by not only Twitter, but also with having Drudge, FOX News and some big agents of influence on the Right spew Trump’s talking points, even the petty personal attacks.
Again, Trump and Hillary both used scorched earth/mass media saturation form information warfare, that the Clinton’s spinmeisters introduced into American politics with their “War Room” in the 90s:
Carville/Begala scorched earth is the military strategy of scorched earth juxtaposed to a mass media battlefield. In information warfare, scorched earth is no holds barred character assassinations and relentless generation of memes.
Mass media saturation (spin) is the military strategy of swarming juxtaposed to a mass media battlefield
Combined, they have been ruthlessly used to divide America into hostile, warring factions.
This latest Trump tweet attack started with the escalating, ongoing information war, on Twitter, between Trump vs. the media, Comey & friends and the Clinton/Obama/Dem hacks.
I keep a personal journal and jot down my thoughts on everything from crafting ideas to serious geopolitical strategy. Here are my musings in my journal on Tuesday:
The Russians or Trump forces (might be some overlap there in efforts – like Drudge), have the long knives out for McCabe at the FBI – another negative Circa story about him being under investigation for campaigning with his wife. Trump went on a major media offensive after that WaPo story last Friday. He didn’t wait to see what the TICK TICK Wittes tweeted about was – Trump just went full speed ahead.
They have to keep trying to come up with more and more outrageous allegations, and they’re now discrediting themselves with their outrageous lies spread by their friends in the media. Trump has learned not to blink – no matter what they throw at him. They’re back to recycling petty dirt tonight – Farenthold is tweeting about some fake Time cover with Trump on it that Trump has hanging in some of his clubs. They are desperate to try to discredit Trump, but in light of this major CNN fake news & retraction, plus the big WaPo story hurt Obama way more than Trump, because it’s obvious Obama didn’t act quickly when he was informed about the Russian hacking last summer.
These recycled attacks on Trump – the penny ante crap about his foundation, the personal attacks about his lying and vanity, the same old crap about his taxes – none of those smears even resonate with anyone except those who hate Trump – the rest of America has tuned that shit out. They overplayed the Russian collusion to the point Trump made it a joke – just like he turned that “fake news” back on them. What is starting to be exposed is the Clinton/Obama corruption to try to get Hillary elected. I hope all of it gets exposed – Trump’s corruption, Hillary’s corruption, Obama’s corruption and the Russian operations in America. Tall order there on my hopes.
Notice more books on Drudge from the endless book mill – Bolling and Mark Levin. I wonder who is really behind Drudge, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Circa, Glenn Beck and several others. This information war is escalating and it’s even more cutthroat than the 2016 election. Comey leaking his memos to prod for a special prosecutor was Comey retaliation and an effort to cast himself in the limelight as a “patriot”. There’s no honor in how he covered up for the Clinton corruption and went along with Lynch’s burying that criminal investigation. The use of arms of the US government as personal tools to attack people is extremely corrupt and alarming.
The Republicans and conservatives never were able to defeat the spin cycle and Trump didn’t do this on his own. To start, the Clinton collusion with the media to promote Trump’s “GOP Insurgency” coupled with Trump’s Reality TV stardom and celebrity status all aided his rise. Bill Clinton’s perfect triangulation backfired, but there were so many other factors that played into Trump’s victory – Hillary being an awful candidate, her being under criminal investigation, basic last weeks campaign blunders on where to campaign, her awful Deplorable comment, her trying to hide her illness on 9/11 and along with that the massive coordinated Russian info ops to aid and abet Trump, which includes Wikileaks, but also I suspect includes front media operations like Drudge and several others. Rupert Murdoch runs a huge propaganda front. Sadly, the other major news organizations are really just mouthpieces for the Left.
Figuring all this out for sure is a national security imperative and then figuring out how to counter entrenched foreign information ops in America is a dilemma too. I think that unless Americans can be inspired to put being American above rabid partisanship we are on a dangerous road.
Trump might go too far with his attacks and fuel a backlash, but I’m not sure what the tipping point is. The Left went way too far with no evidence on the “Russian collusion” talking points attacks on Trump and everyone around him. They didn’t offer up any facts that stuck and there were so many overhyped stories that disintegrated within 24 hours and that damaged their “Russian collusion” gambit. Schindler looks like he’s as bad as Louise Mensch with his overblown allegations and all he backs it with is all the nameless connections he has in the IC…
Has Trump gone too far with his attack on Mika Brzezinski?
Nope!
For Trump followers, no, they will still follow him. No one will resign in protest. Trump was right, he could probably shoot someone on 5th Avenue and his Loyalists would still follow. They rationalize everything with, at least Trump fights back, at least he’s winning, the Left does worse.
Twitter is where the action takes place in generating the spin cycle and that is why Trump fights there. He effortlessly disrupts and steals the show on their spin cycles. This Mika Brzezinski attack will resonate for days and that means that all things “Russia” won’t.
The thing America’s adversaries are taking note of is that journalists retweeting that fake Time magazine cover, that WaPo’s Farenthold’s latest “Trump is a fraud” story and Mika Brzezinski mentioning that today, goaded Trump into this latest angry, personal attack. He lashed out at Megyn Kelly in August of 2015 over her questions about how he treats women. He and his minions in the media launched a scorched earth attack to cast her as a conniving slut. Trump whined about her unfair question for 8 months.
The President of the United States is that easily manipulated.
And he has an issue with women who stand up to him.
libertybelle diaries 
As an example perhaps?
America has plenty of fellow travelers & useful idiots… doesn’t take much effort for our adversaries to keep stirring the pot.
“Interesting (perhaps) tidbits” LB … couple of pieces available because its the weekend:
Now here’s the one “Heads up for Hoaxes” (currently third one down on Ms. Maddow’s sidebar)
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
***
Won’t do email anymore LB. But I remain interested in your takes.
More accurate link to Ms. Maddow:
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/maddow-to-news-orgs-heads-up-for-hoaxes-985491523709
As well as:
http://www.snopes.com/2017/06/05/federal-contractor-charged-leaking/
Thanks for the links JK. I had already listened to the Maddow report and bookmarked it, thinking that perhaps it might become the subject of a blog post.
Not having any way to prove my very “tentative” working theory, here it goes. The anti-Trump media (most of the mainstream media) bought into their anonymous sources (Obama hacks and Trump-adverse intel peeps) on the whole big “Russian collusion” story. They are determined to prove that Trump and/or people connected to his campaign colluded with the Russians. Hence, these media people, of which Maddow, is one of the most devoted believers, only see two sides, their side working for the forces of light and good in the world or the side of evil, which includes Trump and anyone connected to him. Objectivity is not their strong suit.
I haven’t seen any evidence that holds water, to support that the Russians colluded with Trump and I doubt they worked directly with people in his campaign, because they could manipulate the American partisans, the American media and dump hacked DNC and Podesta emails, without leaving any direct fingerprints back to the Kremlin. I believe, from various reporting over the years, that the Russians use a lot of third-party entities in Eastern Europe and elsewhere for much of their hacking. I believe the Russians have been organizing and setting up front operations (some with American faces) since the late 90s to “influence” opinion in the media and on social media forums. I suspected some on those Excite message boards, back during impeachment, were foreign operators.
Of course, I could be wrong, but when this 2016 election got going, I noticed the virulent attacks on various sites in the Disqus comment sections and the tactics seemed just like what I experienced on the Excite message boards.
That forged document, could be someone connected to Trump, it could be someone who just supports Trump and hates the media, it could be hostile foreign intel peeps, it could be just some teenage hacker, etc. Not having the technical knowledge to even analyze her reporting, I don’t know where that forged document really leads.
There have been numerous large hacks of federal/military databases and if there’s one thing the Russians and several other hostile intelligence agencies mastered it’s efforts to break the morale and spread disinformation within the ranks. Their influence operations could be much broader and deeper than just “colluding to help Trump win”. This report is interesting:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/12/how-russia-targets-the-us-military-215247
I think, basically LB, we’re on the same page where theory is concerned. I take it where you’re mentioning “the forged document” that’d be the so-called Steele Dossier? If so I’m generally of the opinion (all) that stuff is why, as reported/mentioned on that first [today] link … which incidentally was my first becoming aware of the Maddow thing … Anyway my guess is that’s why Meuller’s assembled team moved into what I’m conjecturing implies a “SCIF” with all these moving media pieces going who knows where.
After I’d taken some time to digest Ms. Maddow’s thing it occurred to me to return to the transcript of Comey’s last (publicly known) appearance, specifically the transcript because – I wonder how long the media’s been depending on this junk. Excerpting from what I was looking at (please forgive the length) notice there’s a series of periods – I excised a couple of Senator Cotton’s irrelevant paragraphs.
—
RISCH: … OK.
On — I remember, you — you talked with us shortly after February 14th, when the New York Times wrote an article that suggested that the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians. You remember reading that article when it first came out?
COMEY: I do. It was about allegedly extensive electronic surveillance…
RISCH: Correct.
(CROSSTALK)
COMEY: … communications. Yes, sir.
RISCH: And — and that upset you to the point where you actually went out and surveyed the intelligence community to see whether — whether you were missing something in that. Is that correct?
COMEY: That’s correct. I want to be careful in open setting. But…
RISCH: I — I’m — I’m not going to any further than that with it.
COMEY: OK.
RISCH: So thank you.
In addition to that, after that, you sought out both Republican and Democrat senators to tell them that, hey, I don’t know where this is coming from, but this is not the — this is not factual. Do you recall that?
COMEY: Yes.
RISCH: OK. So — so, again, so the American people can understand this, that report by the New York Times was not true. Is that a fair statement?
COMEY: In — in the main, it was not true. And, again, all of you know this, maybe the American people don’t. The challenge — and I’m not picking on reporters about writing stories about classified information, is that people talking about it often don’t really know what’s going on.
And those of us who actually know what’s going on are not talking about it. And we don’t call the press to say, hey, you got that thing wrong about this sensitive topic. We just have to leave it there.
I mentioned to the chairman the nonsense around what influenced me to make the July 5th statement. Nonsense, but I can’t go explaining how it’s nonsense.
***
COTTON: On February 14th, the New York Times published a story, the headline of which was, “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence.”
You were asked earlier if that was an inaccurate story, and you said, in the main. Would it be fair to characterize that story as almost entirely wrong?
COMEY: Yes.
COTTON: … … There was a story on January 23rd in the Washington Post that says — entitled, “FBI reviewed Flynn’s calls with Russian ambassador but found nothing illicit.” Is this story accurate?
COMEY: I don’t want to comment on that, Senator, because I — I’m pretty sure the bureau has not confirmed any interception of communications. And so I don’t want to talk about that in an open setting.
—
Curious.
Well now … check the signature and the date LB. Who’da thunkit?
Click to access icpg404-1.pdf
Ditto what you said JK … or, um, “3 period level” Curious!