The Democrats' 'Red Scare' Narrative Is Over: With 140 Characters, Trump Destroyed All Their Work

PJ Media ^ | March 8, 2017 | Roger Kimball

[drewh]

David Ignatius should keep up with The Narrative. In his column today, he speaks ominously of Donald Trump's "growing difficulty in the Russia investigation."

This is of a piece with several other Red Scare pieces by Ignatius and other anti-Trump Democrats with bylines. A couple of weeks ago, responding to Trump's declaration that the whole Russian Dressing meme was a "ruse," Ignatius wheeled into print insisting that, no, "Russia's Global Hacking Efforts Are Far from a 'Ruse'." Quoting France's ambassador to Washington, Ignatius speculated that, "if unchecked," Russia' disinformation efforts, in which Donald Trump's presidential campaign was "perhaps" a "tool," "could pose an 'existential threat' to Western democracy."

Had any good hypotheticals lately?

The real Russian story is not Donald Trump's "growing difficulty" in the Russia investigation but, as I wrote in this space a couple of days ago, the evaporation of the alleged Trump connection and burgeoning story of the Obama administration's surveillance of people in Trump's circle.

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One of the amusing aspects of the story is the extent to which it illustrates the principle articulated crisply by Kurt Schlichter on Monday:

"You Can Tell What Leftists Are Doing By What They Accuse Conservatives Of Doing"

In other words, "if you want to know what the liberals are up to, just listen to the lies they are telling about conservatives." Cavorting with Russians? It wasn't Trump, but how about selling 20% of US uranium interests to Putin? That would be something the Clintons arranged.

Talking to Russian banks about ending sanctions? That would be Tony Podesta, brother of John Podesta, Hillary's campaign manager, who took $170K last year from Russia's largest bank to help end one of the sanctions imposed by the Obama administration on Russian financial institutions.

The whole Trump/Russia meme is a tower of groundless insinuation built upon baseless fantasies of malfeasance. What we actually know is almost nothing. Maybe there was a FISA warrant requested by the Obama administration against persons and hardware located at Trump Tower in June that was denied. Maybe a narrower warrant was requested and granted in October. That's what has been reported and repeated endlessly to a chorus of "where there's smoke, there's fire."

But when Trump gets up last Saturday and begins tweeting his outrage at having been "tapped" by the Obama administration, the chihuahuas of the press, together with various Obama spokesmen, yap in unison: "What's your source?"

One source, as was quickly pointed out, was the New York Times. On January 19, under the headline "Intercepted Russian Communications Part of Inquiry Into Trump Associates," the paper told readers:

[I]ntelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House.

This is what Trump meant when he tweeted that his "wires" were "tapped."

Remember when, during the presidential debates, Trump said that, if elected, he might have Hillary investigated by the Department of Justice? Cries of horror from the locust gallery. But it turns out that Obama had actually done what Trump only threatened to do: conduct a secret investigation against a political opponent.

We do not, as of this writing, know exactly how these skeins of allegation and counter-allegation will play out. I suspect that the Trump-Has-Russian-Ties narrative has ground to a halt. If I am right, then David Ignatius' column is just a final twitch of the dead frog's legs before the pack of chihuahuas with bylines cooks up another imaginary tort against Donald Trump.

Will the competing story, the one starring Barack Obama and proxies employing the security apparatus of the United States to undermine a political opponent, get traction? Will it, as some commentators speculate, be "worse than Watergate"?

Stay tuned.

[Grampa Dave]

“Someone in these here parts, opined the other day that Trump’s using of twitter was getting old, or juvenile and that he should stop.”

Maybe it was a CIA Troll trying to take away Trump’s most effective self defense weapon, his Tweets!

[AFreeBird]

Or a CNN troll. I think that would be.....

[nutmeg]

As usual, Grampa, YOU post the best graphics on FR! Love ‘em! :-)

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks!

[kvanbrunt2]

The other part of this move... if you noticed all the leaking against Trump is stopped in its track?

The Anti-Trump leakers now have gone quiet simply because if they leak they prove Trump’s accusations>>> i noticed this as well but i was hopeing they would be caught and hanged on the WH front lawn. during the easter egg hunt.

[Titus-Maximus]

[Seattle Conservative]

Sara (1 of the authors of this article) was on Hannity last night. H/t to NIKK for providing the links:

Bill Mitchell-

How can Liberals sleep at night telling such LIES? Because they are serving #Progressivism, their “greater truth.” FACTS are irrelevant.

Love this guy Bill!

Important if anyone missed this last night.******************************

This was discussed on Hannity last night****

BREAKING: Analysts Reveal SECOND Secret Intel Investigation on Trump Servers (VIDEO).

BREAKING: Analysts Reveal SECOND Secret Intel Investigation on Trump Servers (VIDEO) https://t.co/41UmUJMsgu—; Bill Mitchell (@mitchellvii) March 9, 2017

[Seattle Conservative]

Sorry, I posted my post #27 to the wrong thread - the video is worth a watch though.

[Freemeorkillme]

Well, whatever you’ve done, you seem pretty excited. Got me interested.

Can you point us to that thread??

FReeRegards,

FMOKM

[Liz]

Excellent deconstruction. Very insightful.

Another factor to be considered........for many years, Trump was the go-to businessman w/ a big checkbook for pols needing campaign money.

Trump knows plenty. God only knows what the pols confided in him to get fatter donations....about the sex lives of their opponents, etc.. .....

[Liz]

Over schmover. The Obama gang still has to face the music.

(JIM0216 hat tip)......the issue isn't whether Trump was wiretapped (Obama admitted such and apparently, there was a FISA warrant issued for the wiretapping). The issue is whether there was probable cause to issue a warrant. Probable cause is defined as the reasonable likelihood that a crime is or has been committed by the person or at the place designated........

===============================================

(REAGANGENERATION2 HAT TIP)---Trump should be able to review all 2 or 3 FISA requests (if he hasn’t already), and then let Congress determine if the requesters lied about the probable cause justifying them......then (1) you’d prove perjury, and, even worse, (2) the intent was to abuse executive power.

===========================================

A good beginning....and then it gets downright lethal for the Obama gang:

Via Breitbart, JOHN HAYWARD observed that the FISA court may have approved a warrant submitted without Trump’s name but “which Obama then misused to spy on Trump and many connected to Trump.”

Ergo the most serious legal jeopardy that might be faced would be (a) perjury for lying to the FISA court, and, (b) the dissemination of collected intelligence that should have been kept tightly classified.

===========================================

It is also entirely possible that Obama and his legal team may have perjured themselves before the FISA court by willfully withholding material information in order to manipulate the FISA court’s willingness to permit the government surveillance.

FALSIFYING GOVT DOCUMENTS would fall under the Crimes Act of 1958. Moreover, falsifying official documents is the criminal MO to hide larger crimes.

EXCERPT A person falsifying documents can be held criminally liable if they are deliberately acting with the intention of deceiving or defrauding another party.

Falsifying documents is a very serious offense and is generally classified as a felony. This means that a person charged with falsifying documents may be subject to the following legal penalties:
◾Having to pay a monetary fine
◾Incarceration in a prison facility

Depending on the gravity of the offense, as well as individual state laws, falsifying documents can result in a prison sentence of 5-10 years.

And if official government documents or govt authorities were involved, the legal penalties may be more severe. Legal penalties may increase with repeat offenses.

Many different types of acts can be considered as falsifying a document, including:
◾Altering or misrepresenting fact-based information
◾Stating false information when requested to provide truthful statements
◾Forging a signature
◾Using official letterheads without authorization
◾Knowingly using or distributing a fake document

The penalty for falsifying government documents is outlined in the Crimes Act of 1958.

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

I have to confess, I don’t understand the state (meaning the condition) of things now. Trump’s tweet was an 8-barrel shotgun blast and has scattered the anti-Trump media into bloody shards everywhere.

What is stunningly remarkable, at least to me, is how the “the Russians hacked the election” meme has been literally disintegrated. Not completely, but 80-90%, the media are just not saying it any more. It’s gone!

So now in its place we have 3-4 distinct levels of counter, counter-counter, counter-counter-counter, and counter-counter-counter-counter story, and at least as far as my own level of confusion, it’s working!

We have people coming out saying “oh yeah, definitely Trump was w/tapped”. Then there are now specific “denial factions” that say either 0bama could NOT have ordered it (the w/tap @ Trump) but might know about it, can be saying that he does not know about it, or knows about it....and then we have Assange saying that the w/tapping tools are now widely available (this is, on the for real side, very very serious damage) but now like the facets of a diamond, there are suddenly a dozen dimensions to this story.

And every week they find yet another two 36-year veterans of the CIA who come on the TeeVee and proclaim EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE story from each other! That, I find very interesting!

If you can at least briefly abandon your brain’s innate desire to want to encapsulate or understand or form a fixed opinion or derive meaning as to the true nature of the facts....it’s kind of amazing how it has suddenly become impossible to know anything with certainty about this. I am absolutely convinced that is precisely the desired effect on the part of those who are running this show.

I remain convinced that Trumps’s Sat tweet was uber brilliant. What we have seen is the media reaction having their go-to story yanked out from under them, and THAT I find very interesting. As for the media, I am heartened that as time goes on, fewer and fewer people maintain the view that these so-called organizations have the slightest connection to the notion of factfinding or disseminating anything that might be called news. They are PPOs, pathetic propaganda organs.

[Liz]

Understandable.....b/c as conservatives the differences between right and wrong have always been crystal clear to us.

At times like this, when confusion reigns supreme, I like to reread passages of C.S, Lewis’ masterpiece.... “The Screwtape Letters” ......to get reoriented as to who really causes the chaos........and why.

[poconopundit]

We don’t need the “old gotcha” press conferences. With the whining and lying liberal mediots attacking our president. We are tired of the mediots lying and telling us what to believe and how to vote! Ban them from the White House. Trump’s comments and statements are for his voters. We don’t need lying liberal mediots to tell us what he says to us. There is zero filtering, adjusting and lying to us when Trump talks to us directly!

Yes, Twitter is for us! Don't forget the other faker and liars on Fakebook (facebook), Bungke (bing), Gaggle (google)