The other day, I mentioned that the timing of the Seth Rich conspiratorial story, that alleged Rich leaked the DNC emails to Wikileaks, smelled like more Russian influence efforts to get the Right latching onto this and cast doubt on the Trump/Russian collusion stories. Assuredly, the mainstream media and Dems have way overplayed and sensationalized the Trump/Russian connections too, but the timing of the Rich story was odd. The story originated with a FOX news affiliate and the entire story fell apart under closer examination, but when the story broke, The Drudge Report had that headline emblazoned across the top all day. Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh believed and hyped the story, without any fact-checking. Hannity clung to the story, even when it was obvious the story has no factual basis.
So, the story was intended to get Trump, his mouthpieces and the Right frothing against, not only Democrats, but also to distrust the FBI and American intelligence agencies… again.
Here’s what I suspect is going on and yes, it’s a conspiracy theory too:
Remembering timelines is important and adding new information into the timeline, as you come across it and remembering that timelines don’t end – the story always continues. The Russians aren’t idly sitting on their hands now or declaring victory with Trump’s election, they are still busy with their information warfare efforts in America – to create chaos, to undermine the American political system, to damage America’s image in the world and to destroy the American people’s trust in their own government.
I suspect FOX News has been a tool the Russians exploited for Russian influence operations since it opened shop in America. I suspect the same thing with The Drudge Report, which came onto the scene with breaking the Lewinsky scandal. The Drudge Report has never invested in creating an appealing website. Really, it’s a visually unappealing site, but it’s caché comes with what stories get highlighted at the top. That America’s political class and media take The Drudge Report so seriously is why that site garners so much attention and has so much influence. In recent years, The Drudge Report has worked to mainstream conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones and his “InfoWars” as a “news” source. That Donald Trump, a believer in Alex Jones type “reporting” is now president is a boon to the Russian information war effort.
The rest of this post is all a repeat on what I term a mass media saturation strategy, which came into being with the Clinton “war room” in the 1992 presidential election, so feel free to skip it if you’re tired of my repetitive messaging;-)
I believe this media messaging strategy is really information warfare ( a military swarming strategy juxtaposed to an information battlefield). Since the Clinton impeachment scandal in 1998, I strongly suspect there is a strong, hostile foreign intelligence influence involved in manipulating American politicians, the American media and the American punditry circles. The Clintons launched an all-out scorched earth information war to keep President Clinton from being removed from office. To repeat, ad nauseam, here again are the components:
Here are the components:
- Talking points and buzz word messaging, which are relentlessly repeated by both political operatives and the media. (mass brainwashing)
- Mass media domination of the messaging, to control the 24/7 NEWS cycle, which requires mass media collusion.
- Relentless repetition of polling data by both the political operatives and media, to facilitate the manufacture of opinion cascades (winning in all the polls)
It can NOT work without that media collusion.
Until Trump, with the help of FOX News collusion & Wikileaks leaks, only Democrats had successfully used this strategy. The mainstream media colludes with the Democrats and political Left in America.
I’ve cover all of this many times before, so here are some interesting bits and pieces in this ongoing information war. American partisans have blinders on and when it comes to “Russian influence”, they want to pin the Russian influence on their American political opponents. Republicans will accuse the Dems of emboldening the Russians, because the Obama administration kowtowed to the Russians and Iranians, to secure the Iran deal and because President Obama did not take an assertive American posture in dealing with America’s adversaries.
Trump, although it’s doubtful he was actively “colluding” with the Russians, he assuredly welcomed the Russian influence efforts, because they were benefitting him. Trump also took a hostile approach toward American intelligence agencies and the FBI, who were working to thwart and expose the Russian influence efforts. If there is actual Russian collusion within the Trump campaign and Russian operatives, I would expect the Russians to operate using third-party intermediaries, so they can maintain complete deniability and to mask their collusion. In fact, I would not be surprised if the intermediaries were not even aware they were being manipulated to promote the Russian information warfare memes and messaging.
Like I said the other day, the Russians are many things, but being stupid enough to entrust a loose cannon, like Trump, who blurts and tweets everything based on whims, with the knowledge of Russian operatives identities, seems very unlikely. Anyone who trusts Trump is a fool, the same is true of Hillary Clinton, who would even sell Bill Clinton down the river to save herself… if he didn’t know where all the bodies are buried… so to speak.
Against this history of information warfare, which I wrote about on the Excite politics message boards during the Clinton impeachment scandal, when Trump entered the 2016 presidential race and the media started repeating he was the “GOP Insurgent”, immediately my “information warfare” antennae went up.
Initially, throughout most of the GOP primary all the cable news networks spent a great deal of time promoting the “GOP Insurgent” and they gave him millions of dollars in free media, in addition to endless coverage in their punditry air time. In early 2016, a shift took place, as it became obvious Trump had the GOP nomination locked up. CNN, MSNBC and major news outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post went “full fascist” mode, painting Trump as a dangerous fascist, while FOX news dug in on a 24/7 Trumpathon.
President Trump assures that the Left will stay in full-throated Trump Derangement Syndrome mode, that much of the Right will discount everything they say and that Trump, who truly is a LOOSE CANNON, will flail about and create chaos and mayhem in his wake. Hillary Clinton would have been the same chaos, albeit in a less flamboyant way. The Russians have the dirt on the Clinton Foundation money-laundering and assuredly they are sitting on all the emails from her home-brew server, which they would have wielded to blackmail her or leak to create political damage and hamstring her presidency. There was no better choice between Trump and Hillary.
So, watch closely how FOX News has dismantled its Trump chorus, first with ousting Roger Ailes, now their star, Bill O’Reilly and it seems obvious Sean Hannity is on the chopping block too. FOX News is now not leading the cable prime time. I suspect there will be more critical reporting on Trump at FOX in the near future, because the Russians want the Trump presidency to be an endless Reality TV, scandal-plagued nightmare, that makes America the laughingstock of the world.
The Russians don’t want a successful American president, who unites America. We have had nothing but very extreme partisanship and a complete disintegration of shared American ideals since the 1960s counter-culture revolution, with a short lull during the early Reagan years, and then a downhill slide since the early 90s.
The mass media saturation strategy continues, as does the information warfare, both foreign and domestic.
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