The election of Donald Trump as president in 2016 was a catastrophic event for a segment of the US government. It had been assumed by the entire “Ruling Class” that Hillary Clinton would, at last, be elected president. Books have been written about her reaction to the loss. One was titled, “Shattered” and recounted her reaction. A pretty good analysis in this Amazon book review.
To be fair to the authors, they lay the blame for her loss squarely on her. They sort of feel bad about it but their close access makes it obvious to them and they are objective enough to report it. The other main person held responsible is campaign manager Robby Mooks, who is so enamored with ‘analytics’ that he can’t see the forest for the trees. The canary in the coal mine is Bill Clinton, who senses that his wife and her campaign are not connecting with the white working class, but is ignored by the team who consider him washed-up and out of date.
What happened after she lost ? The Russia Collusion story was concocted.
Here is an analysis of How it began and why.
It turned out, however, that the dossier was a Clinton-campaign opposition-research project, the main allegations of which were based on third-hand hearsay from anonymous Russian sources. Worse, though the allegations could not be verified, the Obama Justice Department and the FBI used them to obtain surveillance warrants against Page, in violation of their own guidelines against presenting unverified information to the FISA court. Worse still, the Obama Justice Department withheld from the FISA court the facts that the Clinton campaign was behind the dossier and that Steele had been booted from the investigation for lying to the FBI.
Now, more analysis is coming from Sharyl Attkisson.
Taken together in context, the evidence points to two important findings. First, U.S. government insiders, colluding with numerous foreign citizens and governments, conspired to interfere in the 2016 election. Second, after the election, these figures conspired to undermine, oust, and perhaps even frame Trump and some of his associates.
The methods used, according to factual accounts and witnesses, include collusion with reporters and politicians, leaks to the press, and paid political-opposition research. Officials in the intelligence community were involved in the effort, which included the use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), domestic and foreign informants or spies, and electronic surveillance.
Both articles are worth reading in full. The fact that other diversions are appearing, like the hoax bomb story, suggests that the Democrats know the Mueller “investigation” is going to be ended soon with a dud.
We are still dealing with reaction from Angelo Codevilla’s “Ruling Class.”
When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term “political class” came into use. Then, after those in power changed their plans from buying toxic assets to buying up equity in banks and major industries but refused to explain why, when they reasserted their right to decide ad hoc on these and so many other matters, supposing them to be beyond the general public’s understanding, the American people started referring to those in and around government as the “ruling class.” And in fact Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country. They think, look, and act as a class.
This is how we got Trump and why there is a well funded effort to get rid of him him any way possible.
Joel Kotkin has a good analysis.
Over the past few decades, the U.S. has developed essentially two economies. On the one side is the widely celebrated “post-industrial” economy: software, entertainment, media, and financial and business services. These sectors flourished as the stock market soared in the ultra-low interest-rate environment fostered by the Obama administration, whose recovery strategy was built around bailing out major banks, all headquartered in deep-blue cities. The winners under Obama included urban real estate, financial-service firms, and the tech oligarchs. These elements now constitute the Democratic Party’s burgeoning financial base, allowing it consistently to spend more than the GOP in key congressional races, while the GOP still gains support in energy and other less heralded “legacy” industries.
The whole thing is well worth reading and explains a lot about why the big money is backing Democrats.
“What happened after she lost ? The Russia Collusion story was concocted.”
No. As has been well documented online, and as your Attkisson quote states, the BS story was concocted to enable spying on the Trump campaign. Then it was used to attempt to cripple and oust the Trump administration. It should be the biggest scandal in American history. The fact that it is not demonstrates the power of the Deep State. Either they continue to obstruct investigations to implement a CYA cover-up, or (probably more likely) they have convinced Trump and associates that it is better to cover-up the abuse rather than sacrifice government surveillance capabilities, recall e.g., Ted Hall who was allowed to get away with giving the Russians the H-bomb rather than compromise our penetration of Soviet communication systems.
No. As has been well documented online, and as your Attkisson quote states, the BS story was concocted to enable spying on the Trump campaign.
Yes, I should have said “adapted as an excuse.” There is a passage in the book where the decision is made to use the “Russia Did It” as the reason she lost. There are interesting theories about why this continued. Some of that is in Atkinson’s piece. She also has an excellent book I just read.
Yup. Pretty well what you said. The Russia Hacked the Election meme has been used in several ways, both to excuse the loss, and to continue the scam with Trump, and is now the go to for almost anything online.
Its very funny indeed.
They are now blaming Russia for the pipe bombs. ;)
I hereby propose a new unit of measurement for the Cyber age in the spirit of the kiloton for the Atomic age. The Kardashian, K (Lord Kevin has been dead a long time). It would be equal to the total internet bandwidth devoted to persons of that name over an average 24 hour period.
On that scale, the total Russian effort would register maybe 0.001.
The whole Russia-Trump collusion thing is kind of hilarious. It’s, like, straight out of a scooby-doo episode. Villain hires team to investigate and points finger at enemy for crimes he’s doing as a diversion.
https://twitter.com/aaronshem/status/1048762752691593216
1) Russia’s intent was to create discord and cast doubt on elections.
2) It was meant to be caught.
3) It was designed to give the impression Russia did not want Hillary Clinton as US president.
Forget the WWF style narrative of Clinton vs Putin.
There was the Russian reset.
Empty threats and toothless consequences regarding Crimea, were a ridiculous bluff that was basically impossible for Russia not to call. Russia gets a port, HC gets to punish Ukraine for not getting on board with NATO and missile defense and a credible boogie man to push them.
HC opposed natural gas. Was against frac’ing. And was supportive of massive wind and solar expansion which would require massive amounts of natural gas to manage variability.
She had the perfect platform, had she been running for US president in Russia.
~ 20% of Russia’s economy is fossil fuels.
50% of Russia’s government revenue is from fossil fuels.
~ 20% of Russia’s economy is fossil fuels.
50% of Russia’s government revenue is from fossil fuels.
Not that I was a big fan of John McCain, but one thing he said that was funny was that “Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country”
That’s pretty funny.
I had an interesting conversation with a good friend of mine who can probably best be described as somewhere between progressive and libertarian politically. He considers himself knowledgeable about national politics and the like. His response to my expounding on the details of this scandal was incredulity, because it wasn’t covered in the NYT, WaPo, MSNBC, CNN, etc. I explained politically strategic reporting to him. I assured him that all of the stuff I was telling him was in the public domain, much of it in Congressional testimony, the two OIG reports, etc. Instead, he was more interested in Russian oligarchs buying Trump several decades ago, when his companies went through bankruptcy – and that is why the left is so intent on getting their hands (legally) on his tax returns (they think that is where they expect to find the smoking gun that will take him down).