{"id":88878,"date":"2017-03-20T12:00:49","date_gmt":"2017-03-20T12:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=88878"},"modified":"2017-03-18T14:57:58","modified_gmt":"2017-03-18T14:57:58","slug":"key-democratic-officials-now-warning-base-not-to-expect-evidence-of-trumprussia-collusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/03\/key-democratic-officials-now-warning-base-not-to-expect-evidence-of-trumprussia-collusion\/","title":{"rendered":"Key Democratic Officials Now Warning Base Not to Expect Evidence of Trump\/Russia Collusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

16 Mar 2017 – <\/em>From MSNBC\u00a0politics\u00a0shows to town hall meetings across the country, the overarching issue for the Democratic Party\u2019s base since Trump\u2019s victory\u00a0has been Russia, often suffocating\u00a0attention for\u00a0other issues.\u00a0This fixation has persisted even though it\u00a0has no chance to sink the Trump presidency unless it is proven that high levels of the Trump campaign actively colluded with the Kremlin to manipulate the outcome of the U.S. election \u2014 a claim for which absolutely no evidence has thus far been presented.<\/p>\n

The principal problem for Democrats is that so many media figures<\/a> and online charlatans<\/a>\u00a0are personally benefiting from feeding the base increasingly unhinged, fact-free conspiracies \u2014 just as right-wing media polemicists did<\/a> after both Bill Clinton and Obama were elected \u2014 that there are now millions of partisan soldiers absolutely convinced of a Trump\/Russia conspiracy for which, at least as of now, there is no evidence. And they are all waiting for the day, which they regard as inevitable and imminent, when this theory will be proven and Trump will be removed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Key Democratic officials are clearly worried about the expectations that have been purposely stoked and are now trying to tamp them down. Many of them have tried to signal that the beliefs the base has been led to adopt have no basis in reason or evidence.<\/p>\n

The latest official to throw cold water on the MSNBC-led circus is President Obama\u2019s former acting CIA chief Michael Morell. What makes him particularly notable in this context is that Morell was one of Clinton\u2019s most vocal CIA surrogates. In August, he not only endorsed Clinton in the pages of the New York Times<\/a> but also became the first high official to explicitly accuse Trump of disloyalty, claiming, \u201cIn the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.\u201d<\/p>\n

But on Wednesday night, Morell appeared<\/a> at an intelligence community forum to \u201ccast doubt\u201d on \u201callegations that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.\u201d \u201cOn the question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians here, there is smoke, but there is no fire at all,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cThere\u2019s no little campfire, there\u2019s no little candle, there\u2019s no spark. And there\u2019s a lot of people looking for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s former CIA chief\u00a0also cast serious doubt on the credibility of the infamous, explosive \u201cdossier\u201d originally published by BuzzFeed, saying that its author, Christopher Steele, paid intermediaries to talk to the sources for it.\u00a0The dossier, he said, \u201cdoesn\u2019t take you anywhere, I don\u2019t think.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morell\u2019s comments echo the categorical remarks by Obama\u2019s top national security official, James Clapper, who told Meet the Press last week that during the time he was Obama\u2019s DNI,\u00a0he saw no evidence<\/a>\u00a0to support claims of a Trump\/Russia conspiracy. \u201cWe had no evidence of such collusion,\u201d Clapper stated unequivocally. Unlike Morell, who left his official CIA position in 2013 but remains very integrated into the intelligence community, Clapper was Obama\u2019s DNI until just seven weeks ago, leaving on January 20.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most revealing of all are the Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee \u2014 charged with investigating these matters \u2014 who recently told BuzzFeed<\/a> how petrified they are of what the Democratic base will do if they do not find evidence of collusion, as they now suspect will likely be the case. \u201cThere\u2019s a tangible frustration over what one official called \u2018wildly inflated\u2019 expectations surrounding the panel\u2019s fledgling investigation,\u201d BuzzFeed\u2019s Ali Watkins wrote.<\/p>\n

Moreover, \u201cseveral committee sources grudgingly say, it feels as though the investigation will be seen as a sham if the Senate doesn\u2019t find a silver bullet connecting Trump and Russian intelligence operatives.\u201d One member told Watkins: \u201cI don\u2019t think the conclusions are going to meet people\u2019s expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n

What makes all of this most significant is that officials like Clapper and Morell are trained disinformation agents; Clapper in particular has proven he will lie to advance his interests. Yet even with all the incentive to do so, they are refusing to claim there is evidence of such collusion; in fact, they are expressly urging people to stop thinking it exists. As even the law recognizes, statements that\u00a0otherwise lack credibility become more believable when they are ones made\u00a0\u201cagainst interest.\u201d <\/a><\/p>\n

Media figures have similarly begun trying to tamp down expectations. Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, which published the Steele dossier, published an article yesterday warning<\/a>\u00a0that the Democratic base\u2019s expectation of a smoking gun \u201cis so strong that Twitter and cable news are full of the theories of what my colleague Charlie Warzel calls<\/a> the Blue Detectives \u2014 the left\u2019s new version of Glenn Beck, digital blackboards full of lines and arrows.\u201d Smith added: \u201cIt is also a simple fact that while news of Russian actions on Trump\u2019s behalf is clear, hard details of coordination between his aides and Putin\u2019s haven\u2019t emerged.\u201d And Smith\u2019s\u00a0core warning is this:<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s critics last year were horrified at the rise of \u201cfake news\u201d and the specter of a politics shaped by alternative facts, predominantly on the right. They need to be careful now not to succumb to the same delusional temptations as their political adversaries, and not to sink into a filter bubble which, after all, draws its strength not from conservative or progressive politics but from human nature.<\/p>\n

And those of us covering the story and the stew of real information, fantasy, and \u2014 now \u2014 forgery around it need to continue to report and think clearly about what we know and what we don\u2019t, and to resist the sugar high that comes with telling people exactly what they want to hear.<\/p>\n

For so long, Democrats demonized and smeared\u00a0anyone trying to inject basic reason, rationality, and skepticism into this Trump\/Russia discourse by labeling them all Kremlin agents and Putin lovers. Just this week, the Center for American Progress released a report using the language of treason to announce the existence of a \u201cFifth Column\u201d<\/a> in the U.S. that serves Russia (similar to Andrew Sullivan\u2019s notorious 2001 decree<\/a> that anyone opposing the war on terror composed an anti-American \u201cFifth Column\u201d), while John McCain listened to Rand Paul express doubts about the wisdom of NATO further expanding to include Montenegro and then promptly announced<\/a>: \u201cPaul is working for Vladimir Putin.\u201d<\/p>\n

But with serious doubts \u2014 and fears \u2014 now emerging about what the Democratic base has been led to believe\u00a0by\u00a0self-interested carnival barkers and partisan hacks, there is a sudden, concerted effort to rein in the excesses of this story. With so many people now doing this, it will be increasingly difficult to smear them all as traitors and Russian loyalists, but it may be far too little, too late, given the pitched hysteria that has been deliberately cultivated around these issues for months. Many Democrats\u00a0have reached the classic stage of deranged conspiracists where evidence that disproves the theory is viewed as further proof of its existence, and those pointing to it are instantly deemed suspect.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A formal, credible investigation into all these questions, where the evidence is publicly disclosed, is still urgently needed. That\u2019s true\u00a0primarily so that conspiracies no longer linger and these questions are resolved by facts rather than agenda-driven anonymous leaks from the CIA and cable news hosts required to feed a partisan mob.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s certainly possible to envision an indictment of a low-level operative like Carter Page, or the prosecution of someone like Paul Manafort on matters unrelated to hacking, but the silver bullet that Democrats have been led to expect will sink Trump appears further away than ever.<\/p>\n

But given the way these Russia conspiracies have drowned out other critical issues being virtually ignored under the Trump presidency, it\u2019s vital that everything be done now to make clear what is based in evidence and what is based in partisan delusions. And most of what the Democratic base has been fed for the last six months by their unhinged stable of media, online, and party leaders has\u00a0decisively fallen into the latter category, as even their own officials are now desperately trying to warn.<\/p>\n

____________________________________<\/p>\n

Related:<\/em><\/p>\n

WikiLeaks Files Show the CIA Repurposing Hacking Code to Save Time, Not to Frame Russia<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Democrats Now Demonize the Same Russia Policies that Obama Long Championed<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Glenn Greenwald<\/a> – \u2709glenn.greenwald@\u200btheintercept.com<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The principal problem for Democrats is that so many media figures and online charlatans are personally benefiting from feeding the base increasingly unhinged, fact-free conspiracies \u2014 just as right-wing media polemicists did after both Bill Clinton and Obama were elected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88878\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}