Perry Gaskill

Here’s Perry, and his observations on the media and Russians! purported involvement in the 2016 Presidential election. Although the horse is now dead, they just can’t let go.

Hillary and the Hairball

by Perry Gaskill

Although an ocean of ink has been spilled, and media talking heads have generated enough wind to power a yankee clipper, somehow the news media still can’t wrap it’s head around certain relevant facts about Russian involvement in the 2016 election. Here are my own five reasons the news media still gets it wrong about the Trump investigation, and why they won’t stop no matter what the full Mueller Report says:

The Russians wanted to hurt Hillary, not help Trump

Although it might be a mistake to start the list with a subtle point, an important common theme in the news media for many months has always been that Russian influence was directed at helping Donald Trump win the election. Conceptually, it’s like having a pre-built armature of context to use to interpret facts and provide narrative. If you assume helping Trump was the main goal from the outset, it becomes easier to also assume collusion.

The reality is somewhat different. While it’s likely the Russians did meddle in the 2016 election, the intent was almost all about harming the Hillary Clinton campaign. A main reason for this was that when Clinton was Secretary of State, White House foreign policy as it regarded the Russians, was a disaster. There’s ample evidence to support the idea that the Russians were highly offended by a patronizing attitude on the part of both Hillary and Barack Obama. Vladimir Putin was also apparently very annoyed by blatant attempts at American influence in Putin’s own campaign for relection in 2011. According to Angela Stent at Brookings:

“Putin himself emphasised the primacy of sovereignty and the illegitimacy of attempts by foreign countries to interfere in Russia’s domestic affairs.”

What made things worse was that there was apparently no denial of American meddling on Hillary’s part:

Clinton raised the issue of Russia’s elections again on Thursday during a visit to Brussels. “Human rights is part of who we are,” she said, after Putin’s comments emerged. “And we expressed concerns that we thought were well founded about the conduct of the elections… We are supportive of the rights and aspirations of the Russian people to be able to make progress and realise a better future for themselves.” Guardian Dec 8, 2011

This is something not usually included in news media stories; a possible reason being that it might cast Barack Obama in a bad light, which amounts to a political third rail because of racial issues.
Trump Tower New York Meeting

From a Daily Mail story from last year:

“The New York Times broke the news of the now-infamous (June 9) 2016 Trump Tower meeting a little more than a year ago, on July 8, 2017. It has become a focal point in the Schiff investigation as to whether or not there was collusion between Team Trump and Moscow in the presidential race…

…The Russian lawyer at the meeting, Natalia Veselnitskaya, has led a multipronged attack against the Magnitsky Act, an American law that blacklists suspected Russian human rights abusers and championed by financier Bill Browder, who Russian President Vladimir Putin named during a June press conference in Helsinki as someone Russians want to speak to in exchange for letting Mueller talk to Russian nationals.”

It seems to me that the best way to understand the significance of the notorious Trump Tower meeting in New York is to ask yourself a simple question: Let’s say you were running for public office and somebody called up, and told you that your political opponent was both a former Charles Manson follower, and also wanted for a chainsaw massacre in Texas. Under normal circumstances, would your first reaction be to hang up the phone? “Sorry, Tovarich. I can’t talk to you because you’re, well, a Russian.”

Everybody who was at the Trump Tower meeting, including Donald Trump Jr., has pretty much agreed that the meeting lasted no more than around 20 minutes. Just about enough time to pour the coffee and pass around donuts. Veselnitskaya was supposed start dishing up some “dirt” on the Hillary Clinton campaign, but instead started in on some kind of pitch involving the Magnitsky Act. At that point, Don Jr. apparently cut her off because what she was saying was unrelated to the topic at hand.

Say bye, Natalia.

The Email Joke

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

— Donald J. Trump

Anybody with a healthy funnybone probably found the above tweet during the campaign amusing as a sort of typical Trumpian whoopee cushion for Hillary Clinton. Anybody but the New York Times who managed to warn readers with the bleating headline, “Donald Trump Calls on Russia to Find Hillary Clinton’s Missing Emails”

News media references to that sinister 30,000 email tweet have continued to be routine, although now seem to be morphing to fit more recent events. Said Congresswoman Katie Hill (D-CA) this week in a CNN New Day interview:

“I think everyone needs to kind of slow their roll on this whole thing because right now we have evidence from Mueller, a direct quote from Mueller that there was direct interference by the Russians in the election. We’ve known that for a while. What we’ve seen since Trump took office is that even beforehand he said he was encouraging Russia to release the e-mails, to find those 30,000 e-mails. Now we have to say, ‘OK, fine. He didn’t directly coordinate with Russia moving forward.'”

Hill continued, “But now we have evidence over the last two years that the Mueller investigation was not covering that is highly, highly suspicious. Both on the influence by foreign entities that have directly had part with our foreign policy, but also on so many other things.”

Hill doesn’t offer any specifics details about highly, highly suspicious secret stuff. That’s apparently how she rolls. Slow or otherwise.

Steele Dossier

Background on the dossier is that it was written by a former Russian expert for British MI6 named Christopher Steele. In June of 2016 Steele was hired, indirectly, by the Hillary Clinton campaign to get some political dirt on Donald Trump. Over the course of six months, Steele wrote 16 short memoranda based on what he said he had learned from his own confidential Russian sources. For his efforts he was paid about $168,000. Steele has also said his Russian pals provided him with information for free. When the dossier floated to the surface from the apparent effluent that was its origin, it set off the investigations by both the U.S. intelligence community, and ultimately Mueller.

My own skepticism about the Steele Dossier tends to fall into the following areas:

Steele seems to really enjoy playing the role of secret squirrel. It’s not difficult, for example, to get the impression when reading the dossier that Steele is the kind of guy who likes to dress up in a tuxedo, then stands in front of a mirror and practices saying, “Steele. Christopher Steele.” Just before reaching for the Walther PPK in the shoulder rig.

Anybody who has ever handled classified information would probably also agree that the prime directive is to not reveal anything– ever– unless there’s a need to know. This becomes ingrained not only because the information is typically boring, and it’s nobody else’s business, but also because there are all those black helicopters lurking around to whisk you off to PYITA prison if you blab about secret stuff.

So here comes Steele willing to talk to anybody who will listen about what he was doing. It might also be mentioned that he was at one point fired by the FBI as a confidential informant because of leaking things to the press.

Too, if Steele’s Russian contacts didn’t get paid to provide him with information, why did they do it? Somehow this opens up a big prospect of hidden agendas.

Some of the events described in the Steele Dossier also don’t pass a sniff check.

Here’s one example among dozens:

According to Steele’s dossier, “August 2016…IVANOV reported that although the Kremlin had underestimated the strength of US media and liberal reaction to the DNC hack and TRUMP’s links to Russia, PUTIN was generally satisfied with the progress of the anti-CLINTON operation to date. He recently had had a drink with PUTIN to mark this.”

So old IVANOV and PUTIN are laughing it up about giving Hillary the bird and decided to toss back a few shots to celebrate. Unfortunately, the problem with the source’s statement is that Putin doesn’t drink alcohol.

Here’s another example:

Steele’s very first memo, apparently to grab everyone’s attention, trotted out a little anecdote about how a number of hookers put on a “golden shower” sex show for him in the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton in Moscow. This was, according to Steele’s unidentified “Source D” who provided the tip, in order to get revenge on Barack and Michelle Obama who had apparently slept there once.

What’s a more accurate story, told by those who can be identified and were there, is that Trump did indeed stay one night in the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton during the Miss Universe Pageant in November 2013. Some Russian oligarch apparently sent around five ladies of questionable virtue as either an ill-advised courtesy or joke, but Trump and his handlers sent them away.

So where did the “golden shower” pee-pee thing come from? Here’s a guess based on the rarity of coincidences:

As it happens, Trump was in Las Vegas earlier in 2013 for the Miss USA Pageant which he owned along with the one for Miss Universe. At the time he was hanging out with a Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov and his wannabe pop star son Emin (at the risk of a digression, part of Emin’s performance is somewhat like that of an Elvis impersonator. Go figure.) Part of the evening was about business; the Agalarovs apparently wanted Trump to move the venue for the Miss Universe Pageant later that year to Moscow.

But another part of the evening was to party because it was Trump’s birthday. So they all go to a hot new Las Vegas nightclub called The Act. One of the apparent skits at The Act, before they shut the place down for being too raunchy even for Las Vegas, was one where a couple of coeds simulate the act of urination on their professor called “Hot for Teacher”. In the interest of fairness, it should be pointed out that there’s no reported evidence such an act was even performed when Trump was there. Also, that whole what-happens-in-Vegas-stays-in-Vegas stuff evidently doesn’t apply to Russians who need to enhance a made-up a story to tell Christopher Steele.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

As this is written, roughly 48 hours since Attorney General William Barr dropped the four-page summary of the Mueller report, it has become fairly obvious that the same Democrats in Congress, and their compliant news media, have little intention of trying to stop what has become a runaway train. Those demanding impeachment haven’t changed their minds; those convinced of Russian collusion, no matter how discounted and thin the evidence, remain convinced.

How this will all play out next is an interesting question. Earlier this month, before the Mueller Report’s release, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler provided a clue. In a move which might be considered grotesque even by congressional standards, Nadler sent out 81 letters demanding an appearance before his committee by a wide range of people and groups who might have something to do with Russian collusion. People like Julian Assange, good luck with that, Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, left-wing radio host Randy Credico and others.

Something remarkable about Nadler’s list, at least it seems to me, is not the names on the list, but instead the names that are missing. Where on the list, for example, is Christopher Steele, or say, former FBI director James Comey? Where, for that matter, is Hillary Clinton?

If you think about it, the reasons for those omissions appear obvious. Nadler is a lawyer, and almost any lawyer can tell you that a key lesson learned in law school is to never put any witness on the stand unless you know in advance how the witness is going to answer the questions you are going to ask. Nadler’s committee won’t be looking at trying to get at the truth; it will simply be trying to confirm what it thinks it already knows.

And a compliant news media, too heavily invested in the progressive anti-Trump narrative now to change, will continue to trot out the same talking points from the same people who got us here in the first place. Because to admit you have been wrong requires a certain amount of courage, and a moral compass most of the press no longer has.

To borrow from the Bard, theirs will continue to be “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”

Thanks, Perry.

Category: Guest Post, Media, Politics