Robert Mueller lijdt aan dementie en maakt van Russiagate een nog belachelijker verhaal

Het verhoor door een comité van de Democraten in het Huis van Afgevaardigden van speciaal aanklager Robert Mueller n.a.v. diens rapportage over Russiagate, was een anticlimax voor de Democraten, Mueller gaf op veel vragen geen antwoord en hij gaf verder de indruk het eigen rapport niet of slecht te kennen.......

Over deze zaak hieronder twee artikelen, de eerste van Consortium News en de tweede van Zero Hedge, over dat tweede artikel het volgende:

Robert Mueller hoogstwaarschijnlijk niet de schrijver van eigen rapport

Robert Mueller die afgelopen week moest getuigen over 'eigen' rapport*, leek voor een groot deel van de tijd wel dement, zo kon hij (als gezegd) veel vragen niet beantwoorden en niet zelden leek het erop dat hij z'n eigen rapport niet eens kende.....

Niet zo vreemd als je bedenkt dat het grootste deel van het team van aanklagers dat Mueller ter zijde stond bestond uit donoren van Hillary Clinton! (ha! ha! ha! ha!, de ware misdadiger was Clinton en met de Russiagate leugen kon ze haar eigen zeer kwalijke rol verhullen binnen de Democratische Partij, een misdadige rol van haar en haar campagneteam tijdens de voorverkiezingen t.b.v. de democratische presidentskandidaat in 2016......

Nogmaals is duidelijk dat het team van Mueller en hijzelf geen flinter aan bewijs hebben dat Rusland inderdaad de boel heeft gemanipuleerd..... Je moest intussen ook wel een imbeciel zijn als je dat hele achterlijke verhaal nog gelooft, zoals de reguliere westerse media en het overgrote deel van de westerse politici deze nonsens keer op keer blijven herhalen als was het een feit, ondanks dat er geen bewijzen zijn die e.e.a. bevestigen..... Dit alles terwijl er meters aan bewijs zijn voor bemoeienissen van de VS met verkiezingen in andere landen, dit nog naast het op poten zetten van gewelddadige opstanden die met staatsgrepen moesten (en moeten) eindigen, zoals de VS al zo vaak heeft gedaan, om nog maar te zwijgen over de illegale oorlogen die de VS keer op keer begint.......

Tyler Durden is de schrijver van het tweede artikel hieronder dat eerder op Zero Hedge verscheen (zie ook de link onder zijn artikel*):

CAMPAIGN 2016, COMMENTARY, INTELLIGENCE, LEGAL, MEDIA, POLITICS, RUSSIA, RUSSIAGATE, 

WIKILEAKS

Democrats Blowing on Embers With a Politicized Mueller

July 25, 2019

By Joe Lauria Special to Consortium News

Former Russiagate special counsel Robert Mueller’s appearance before the Democratic-controlled House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees on Wednesday was an exercise by the Democrats of trying to extract statements that would keep Russiagate alive and an attempt by the Republicans to finish off the story once and for all.

Appearing to be feigning, or actually suffering early signs of senility, the nearly 75-year old Mueller disappointed both parties and the public. He declined to answer 198 questions, according to a count by NBC News. When he did answer he was often barely intelligible and mostly stuck to what was in his final report, though he often had to fumble through pages to find passages he could not recall, eating into committee members’ five-minute time limit.

Mueller especially refused to comment on the process of his investigation, such as who he did or did not interview, what countries his investigators visited and he even dodged discussing some relevant points of law. It was an abdication of his responsibility to U.S. taxpayers who footed his roughly $30-million, 22-month probe.

But when it came to making political statements, the former FBI director suddenly rediscovered his mental acuity. He went way beyond his report to say, without prosecutorial evidence, that he agreed with the assessment of then CIA Director Mike Pompeo that WikiLeaks is a “non-state, hostile intelligence agency.”

Mueller called “illegal” WikiLeak‘s obtaining the Podesta and DNC emails, an act of journalism. In the 2016 election, the Espionage Act would not apply as the DNC and Podesta emails were not classified. Nor has WikiLeaks been accused by anyone of stealing the emails. And yet the foremost law enforcement figure in the U.S. accused WikiLeaks of breaking the law merely for publishing.

Though Mueller’s report makes no mention of The Guardian’s tale that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort visited WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy, when questioned on this, Mueller refused to refute the story, for which there isn’t a scrap of evidence. That was another purely political and not legal intervention from the lawman.


Russia, Russia, Russia

Mueller: Came to when he wanted to make a political point. (Flickr)

While Mueller concluded there was no evidence of a conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign to throw the 2016 election, he has not let up on the most politicized part of his message: that Russia interfered “massively” in “our democracy” and is still doing it. There was no waffling from Mueller when it came to this question.

He bases this on his indictment of 12 GRU Russian intelligence against who he alleges hacked the DNC emails and transmitted them to WikiLeaks. Mueller knows those agents will never be arrested and brought to a courtroom to have his charges tested. In that sense the indictment was less a legal than a political document.

Among the inaccuracies about Russigaate that were  recycled at the hearing is that the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) spent $1.25 million in the United States to influence the election. That figure belonged to a unit that acted worldwide, not just in the U.S., according to Mueller’s indictment. In fact it only spent $100,000 on Facebook ads, half coming after the election, and as even Mueller pointed out, some were anti-Trump.

Cambridge Analytica had 5,000 data points on 240 million Americans, some of it bought from Facebook, that gave an enormous advantage for targeted ads to the Trump campaign. It paid at least $5.9 million to the company co-founded by Trump’s campaign strategist Steve Bannon. But we are supposed to believe that a comparatively paltry number of social media messages from the IRA threw the election.

Mueller implied in his testimony that there was a link between the IRA and the Russian government despite anorder from a judge for him to stop making that connection. In focusing again on Russia, no member of Congress from either party raised the content of the leaked emails.

IRA headquarters in St. Petersburg (Wikimedia Commons)

For the Democrats especially, it is all about the source, who is irrelevant, since no one disputes the accuracy of the emails that exposed Hillary Clinton. (That the source of authentic documents is irrelevant is demonstrated by The Wall Street Journal and other major media using anonymous drop boxes pioneered by WikiLeaks.) Were a foreign power to spread disinformation about candidates in a U.S. election (something the candidates do to each other all the time) that would be sabotage. But the leaking and publication of the Clinton emails was information valuable to American voters.

And WikiLeaks would have published Trump emails, but it never received any,  Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson told Consortium New‘s webcast CN Live!

No Power to Exonerate

With “collusion” off the table, the Democrats have been obsessed with Trump allegedly obstructing an investigation that found no underlying crime. That’s something like being arrested for resisting arrest when you’ve committed no other infraction.

In his morning testimony, Mueller amplified the misperception that the only reason he didn’t charge Trump with obstruction is because of a Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel policy that a sitting president can’t be indicted.

But then Mueller came back from a break in the  hearing to issue a “correction.” It was not true that he had concluded there’d been obstruction but was blocked by the OLC policy, he said. In fact he never concluded that there had been obstruction at all. “We didn’t make a decision about culpability,” Mueller said. “We didn’t go down that road.”

Instead of leaving it at that, Mueller said in his report and testimony that Trump was not “exonerated” of an obstruction charge. That led to blaring headlines Wednesday morning while the hearing was still going on. “Trump was not exonerated by my report, Robert Mueller tells Congress,” said the BBC. “Mueller Report Did Not Exonerate Trump, Mueller Says,” blared the HuffPost.

But in what may have been the most embarrassing moment for Mueller, Republican Congressman Michael Turner (R-OH) pointed out that a prosecutor does not have the power to exonerate anyone. A prosecutor  prosecutes.

Rep. Michael Turner

“Mr. Mueller, does the Attorney General have the power or authority to exonerate?” Turner asked the witness. “What I’m putting up here is the United States code. This is where the Attorney General gets his power. And the constitution … .

“Mr. Mueller, nowhere in these [documents] … is there a process or description on ‘exonerate.’ There’s no office of exoneration at the Attorney General’s office. … Mr. Mueller, would you agree with me that the Attorney General does not have the power to exonerate?”

“I’m going to pass on that,” Mueller replied.

“Why?” Turner asked.

“Because it embroils us in a legal discussion, and I’m not prepared to do a legal discussion in that arena,” Mueller said.

Pointing to a CNN headline that had just appeared, “MUELLER: TRUMP WAS NOT EXONERATED,” Turner said: “What you know is, that this can’t say, ‘Mueller exonerated Trump,’ because you don’t have the power or authority to exonerate Trump. You have no more power to declare him exonerated than you have the power to declare him Anderson Cooper.”

Turner said: “The statement about exoneration is misleading, and it’s meaningless. It colors this investigation— one word of out the entire portion of your report. And it’s a meaningless word that has no legal meaning, and it has colored your entire report.”

Who is a Spy for Whom?

Mueller also took a pass every time the Steele dossier was raised, which it first was by Rep. David Nunes (R-CA):

“Despite acknowledging dossier allegations as being salacious and unverified, former FBI Director James Comey briefed those allegations to President Obama and President-elect Trump. Those briefings conveniently leaked to the press, resulting in the publication of the dossier and launching thousands of false press stories based on the word of a foreign ex-spy, one who admitted he was desperate that Trump lose the election and who was eventually fired as an FBI source for leaking to the press.

 “And the entire investigation was open based not on Five Eyes intelligence, but on a tip from a foreign politician about a conversation involving Joseph Mifsud. He’s a Maltese diplomat who’s widely portrayed as a Russian agent, but seems to have for more connections with Western governments, including our own FBI and our own State Department, than with Russia.”

When Nunes pointed out to Mueller that Konstantin Kilimnik, a Manafort business associate, whom Mueller’s report identifies as having ties to Russian intelligence, was actually a U.S. State Departmentasset, Mueller refused to comment saying he was “loath” to get into it.

This Schiff Has Sailed

The chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff (R-CA) used the word “lies” 19 times in his opening statement, which contained at least that many.

The central one was this:

“Your investigation determined that the Trump campaign, including Donald Trump himself, knew that a foreign power was intervening in our election and welcomed it, built Russian meddling into their strategy and used it.

Disloyalty to country. Those are strong words, but how else are we to describe a presidential campaign which did not inform the authorities of a foreign offer of dirt on their opponent, which did not publicly shun it or turn it away, but which instead invited it, encouraged it and made full use of it?”

Schiff reluctantly admitted that no Trump conspiracy with Russia was uncovered, but said the “crime” of disloyalty was even worse.

“Disloyalty to country violates the very oath of citizenship, our devotion to a core principle on which our nation was founded that we, the people and not some foreign power that wishes us ill, we decide who governs us,” said Schiff.

It was pure fantasy.

Mueller should have taken a pass on that one too.

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Sunday Times of London and numerous other newspapers. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe .

Tags: Adam Schiff Joe Lauria Robert Mueller Russiagate

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

James Clapper Suggests Mueller Was "Just A Figurehead" And Didn't Even Write His Own Report

by Tyler Durden

Fri, 07/26/2019 - 09:30

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said on Thursday that Robert Mueller could just be a "figurehead" who may not have been involved in writing "his" own report, according to The Gateway Pundit.

The comments came during a CNN interview discussing why Robert Mueller didn't seem to have "command" over the report's contents while testifying on Capitol Hill yesterday. 

Clapper was heavily involved in the coup against President Donald Trump and was an advocate for the Russia hoax theory earlier on.

Mueller's role was likely more of a "CEO", he said. “I think his role as a special prosecutor was a lot more like a CEO where he oversaw the operations but did not engage in interrogating witnesses or actually writing the report.”

Elizabeth Harrington

✔@LizRNC

James Clapper, one of the originators of the Collusion Hoax, suggests Mueller was just a figurehead, who was not involved in writing his report

Then who did?

Anti-Trump zealots who went to Hillary's Election wake, & represented the Clinton Foundation & Hillary's hammer man

(Dit is een still van een video die ik niet kan overnemen en waar na het voorgaande niets nieuws wordt verteld dan het CEO verhaal in het begin van dit artikel op Zero Hedge, zie het origineel)

And naturally, as the article asks, if Mueller didn't write the report, was it left to the anti-Trump zealots that filled his team? The piece notes that nearly "every single prosecutor on Mueller’s team was a Hillary/Obama donor."

Lead prosecutor Andrew Weissman was with Hillary Clinton on election night and praised acting AG Sally Yates for not enforcing Trump's travel ban. Aaron Zebley, another Mueller team member, represented the IT aide that smashed Clinton's Blackberrys while under subpoena. 

Zebley was next to Mueller on Wednesday to "advise" him on questions and was clearly more well versed on the report than Mueller himself was. 

Mueller's embarrassing testimony - during which he admitted he wasn't even familiar with Fusion GPS - is being panned not only by conservatives, but also by Democrats, as we reported yesterday. 

Conservative columnist Byron York wrote yesterday:

"Mueller’s performance raised questions that reached far beyond one appearance before one committee. It called into doubt the degree to which Mueller was in charge of the entire special counsel investigation.” 

Tag Politics

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

* Zie: 'Michael Moore Joins Chorus Of Defeated Democrats Panning "Frail, Forgetful" Mueller Testimony'

Zie ook:
'WaPo waarschuwt voor Russische digitale controle over de hersenen van VS burgers'

'Federale rechter stelt ten overvloede dat DNC geen grond heeft voor zaak te tegen Trumps verkiezingsteam'

''Geheime diensten in westen geven toe dat spioneren via het G5 netwerk praktisch onmogelijk is........'

'Britse regering weigert RT en Sputnik voor conferentie over persvrijheid..... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'1984 het boek van George Orwell: niet langer fictie.......'

'Het westen vervolgt journalist Assange, Rusland laat journalist vrij na onrust over diens gevangenschap' (zie daarin ook de links naar andere berichten over Assange)

'De sterkste beïnvloeding van de VS presidentsverkiezingen wordt als volkomen 'legaal' en normaal gezien'

'Avaaz valt met fake news en desinformatie 'fake news en desinformatie' aan......' (zie in dat bericht ook de link naar een ander artikel met een smerige rol van Avaaz)

'Rob Jetten (D66 fractievoorzitter) liegt een fikse slag in de rondte in EU verkiezingspraatje'

'EU verkiezingen: manipulatie ook door lobbyisme is misdadig, zelfs Bas Eickhout (GroenLinks) doet hieraan mee'

'Intel processors al 10 jaar zo lek als een mandje, Intel niet een bedrijf uit Rusland of China, maar uit..... de VS!'

'Facebook stelt klimaatsceptisch Daily Caller aan als 'factchecker...' ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Russiagate: nog overtuigd van bestaan daarvan? Lees dit!'

'Putin vraagt en Trump levert: een lijst met 'alle goede zaken die Trump voor Rusland 

'Russiagate: VS en buitenlandse geheime diensten hebben de VS presidentsverkiezingen in 2016 gemanipuleerd'

'Obama gaf toe dat de DNC e-mails expres door de DNC werden gelekt naar Wikileaks....!!!!'

'WikiLeaks belooft The Guardian 1 miljoen dollar als het haar leugens i.z. Assange en Russiagate kan bewijzen.......'

''Banden van Trump met Rusland' gebaseerd op FBI operatie om VS 'burger' (CIA) in Iran vrij te krijgen......'

'Putin vraagt en Trump levert: een lijst met 'alle goede zaken die Trump voor Rusland regelde''

'Russiagate? Britaingate zal je bedoelen!'

'New York Times 'bewijzen' voor Russiagate vallen door de mand......'

'BNR 'denkt' als één van de vele mediaorganen nog steeds dat Russiagate werkelijk plaats vond'

'BBC topman waarschuwt dat de BBC haar geloofwaardigheid en reputatie kwijtraakt...... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Geen rectificaties voor meer dan 2 jaar brengen van fake news over het kwaadaardig sprookje Russiagate'

'Bedrijf dat voor 'Russische bots' waarschuwde, heeft een leger met nep-Russische bots'

'Britse militaire geheime dienst bedient zich van moddergooien en andere manipulaties om Europese en VS politiek te manipuleren, zo blijkt uit gelekte documenten'

'Politico rapport bevestigt: Russiagate is een hoax'

'BBC: Rusland 'misbruikt humor' om Russiagate te ontkrachten..... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Uitgelekte telefoongesprekken tussen Trump en Putin bewijzen dat 'Russiagaters gelijk hebben......''

'Russiagate haat- en angstcampagne samenzweerders als FBI en Clinton moeten strafrechtelijk worden vervolgd'

'Russiagate en Assange: The Guardian wordt nu zelfs door collega's voor zot uitgemaakt'

'WikiLeaks toont aan dat VS en GB een gezamenlijke gewelddadige en bedrieglijke buitenlandpolitiek voeren'

En over het grote slachtoffer in het Russiagate verhaal, Julian Assange:
'Belangrijk account voor de verdediging Julian Assange geblokkeerd door Twitter'

'Britse regering weigert RT en Sputnik voor conferentie over persvrijheid..... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Julian Assange: Speciaal VN rapporteur martelen heeft grote twijfels bij onafhankelijkheid rechter'

'Het westen vervolgt journalist Assange, Rusland laat journalist vrij na onrust over diens gevangenschap' (en nog hadden de reguliere media een grote bek over Rusland, media die niet anders hebben gedaan dan collega Assange besmeuren.....)

'VN rapport: Assange is gedemoniseerd en psychisch gemarteld'

'Media wakker geschrokken en ontwaken in Assange nachtmerrie'

'Julian Assange weer vervolgd wegens 'verkrachting', waarvoor het Zweedse OM eerder geen bewijs kon vinden......'

'Dag van Persvrijheid: Assange wordt zoveel mogelijk uitermate hypocriet gemeden door de pers'

'Julian Assange (brekend nieuws) veroordeeld tot 50 weken gevangenisstraf......'

'Chelsea Manning blijft voor onbepaalde tijd in de gevangenis'

'Julian Assanges vervolging is de genadeklap voor klokkenluiders en (echte) journalisten' (zie ook de iets oudere links in dat bericht)

'Julian Assange gedemoniseerd door media die hem zouden moeten steunen, waren ze bevolkt geweest door echte journalisten........'

'WhiteHouse: US, Ecuador Coordinating About Future Of Assange Asylum'

'De prijs op het hoofd van Julian Assange: 1 miljard dollar.....'

'Assange kan niet voor spionage worden vervolgd, immers hij is journalist >> aldus Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers) in een video'

'Assange is journalist en zou alleen daarom al niet mogen worden vervolgd, een artikel o.a. voor de huidige 'journalisten' van de reguliere media en de gebruikers van die media'

'WhiteHouse: US, Ecuador Coordinating About Future Of Assange Asylum' 

'Stop de isolatie van Julian Assange!'

Stephen Colbert probeerde zonder enige humor Tulsi Gabbard in het rechtse kamp te drukken n.a.v. de illegale VS oorlog tegen Syrië

De show van Stephen Colbert is een propaganda orgaan voor de rechtse democraten en is dat in feite al heel lang. Daarmee staat Colbert ook achter de illegale oorlogen die onder de democratische 'vredesduif' Obama werden aangegaan, dit onder regie van zijn rechterhand destijds Hillary Clinton (minister van BuZa), een oorlogsmisdadiger van formaat.....

Colbert had onlangs de democraat Tulsi Gabbard in zijn show en in tegenstelling tot de omgang met andere politici van de Democratische Partij, was dit geen gesprek met opgeklopte 'humor'.

Colbert probeerde Gabbard zelfs in het kamp te duwen van fascist David Duke (voormalig Ku Klux Klan top), en dat van rechtse rotzakken als Steve Bannon en Matt Gaetz......

Wat betreft de illegale oorlogen van de VS, liet Colbert ten overvloede in zijn gesprek met Gabbard blijken dat hij die volledig steunt, ondanks het enorme aantal doden en landen die in puin achterblijven als de VS klaar is met haar grootschalige terreur tegen in feite de bevolking van de landen die het illegaal aanvalt.....

Ook de illegale oorlog van de VS tegen het bewind van Assad kwam ter sprake, waar Gabbard Colbert fijntjes liet weten dat de CIA in 2011 de 'opstand' tegen Assad heeft georganiseerd en geregisseerd en dat de oorlog van de VS in dat land niet gericht was tegen IS, maar tegen het bewind van Assad, waar ze ook de wapenleveringen aan terreurgroepen als IS en militaire training door de VS aan die terreurgroepen noemde..... 

Jammer dat ze Assad wel een dictator noemt, terwijl hij met grote meerderheid democratisch tot president werd verkozen in 2014, een verkiezing die door internationale waarnemers als eerlijk en goed werd beoordeeld...... 

Vergeet voorts niet dat onder Assad alle geloven hand in hand naast elkaar leefden, een zaak die door handelingen van de VS bijna de nek werd omgedraaid.... Gelukkig leven de teruggekeerde vluchtelingen, in de gebieden die door het reguliere Syrische leger worden gecontroleerd, weer vreedzaam naast elkaar, ongeacht het geloof dat men aanhangt......

Helaas voor Colbert, maar hij is geen partij voor Gabbard die hem flink bij de lurven had >> lezen en zien mensen!!

Colbert Smears Tulsi Gabbard To Her Face While Telling Zero Jokes

by Caitlin Johnstone

Hawaii Congresswoman and Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard recently appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where instead of the light, jokey banter about politics and who she is as a person that Democratic presidential candidates normally encounter on late night comedy programs, the show's host solemnly ran down a list of textbook beltway smears against Gabbard and made her defend them in front of his audience.

Normally when a Democratic Party-aligned politician appears on such a show, you can expect jokes about how stupid Trump is and how badly they're going to beat the Republicans, how they're going to help ordinary Americans, and maybe some friendly back-and-forth about where they grew up or something. Colbert had no time to waste on such things, however, because this was not an interview with a normal Democratic Party-aligned politician: this was a politician who has been loudly and consistently criticizing US foreign policy.

After briefly asking his guest who she is and why she's running for president, Colbert jumped right into it by immediately bringing up Syria and Assad, the primary line of attack employed against Gabbard by establishment propagandists in American mainstream media.

Colbert: Do you think the Iraq war was worth it?

Gabbard: No.

Colbert: Do you think that our involvement in Syria has been worth it?

Gabbard: No.

Colbert: Do you think that ISIS could have been defeated without our involvement and without our support of the local troops there?

Gabbard: There are two things we need to address in Syria. One is a regime change war that was first launched by the United States in 2011, covertly, led by the CIA. That is a regime change war that has continued over the years, that has increased the suffering of the Syrian people, and strengthened groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS, because the CIA was using American taxpayer dollars to provide arms and training and equipment to these terrorist groups to get them to overthrow the government. So that is a regime change war that we should not have been engaging.

Colbert: So, but if it is someone like Bashar al-Assad, who gasses his own people, or who engages in war crimes against his own people, should the United States not be involved?

Gabbard: The United States should not be intervening to overthrow these dictators and these regimes that we don't like, like Assad, like Saddam Hussein, like Gaddafi, and like Kim Jong Un. There are bad people in the world, but history has shown us that every time the United States goes in and topples these dictators we don't like, trying to end up like the world's police, we end up increasing the suffering of the people in these countries. We end up increasing the loss of life, but American lives and the lives of people in these countries. We end up undermining our own security, what to speak of the trillions of dollars of taxpayer money that's spent on these wars that we need to be using right here at home.

Like I said, this is not a normal presidential candidate. How often do you see a guest appear on a network late night talk show and talk about the CIA arming terrorists in Syria and the fact that US military interventionism is completely disastrous? It just doesn't happen. You can understand, then, why empire propagandist Stephen Colbert spent the rest of the interview informing his TV audience that Tulsi Gabbard is dangerous and poisonous.

Caitlin Johnstone  ⏳‏ @caitoz

Caitlin Johnstone  ⏳Retweeted Suzann

This was unwatchable. Colbert just went down the list of scripted Gabbard smears (Assad, David Duke) then sermonized about how US military intervention is a force for good in this world. All without telling a single joke. Late night "comedy" shows are propaganda for livestock.

Caitlin Johnstone  ⏳added,

Suzann @cmputrwiz

Colbert twice interjected the State Dept.’s line about the alleged Assad chemical attack on his own people; Tulsi then corrected him saying several of the groups, including al Qaeda & ISIS, had been trained by the US and had been reported as being a part of those alleged chemical https://twitter.com/DraftTulsi/status/1105323025489121280 …

3:33 PM - 12 Mar 2019

Colbert: You got some heat for meeting with Bashar al-Assad. Do you not consider him a war criminal? Why did you meet with that man?

Gabbard: In the pursuit of peace and security. If we are not willing to meet with adversaries, potential adversaries, in the pursuit of peace and security, the only alternative is more war. That's why I took that meeting with Assad. In pursuit of peace and security. 

Colbert: Do you believe he is a war criminal? Do you believe he gassed his own people or committed atrocities against his own people?

Gabbard: Yes. Reports have shown that that's a fact.

Colbert: So you believe the intelligence agencies on that. Because I head that you did not necessarily believe those reports.

The reason I call Colbert a propagandist and not simply a liberal empire loyalist who happens to have been elevated by billionaire media is because these are carefully constructed narratives that he is reciting, and they weren't constructed by him.

Trying to make it look to the audience as though Gabbard is in some way loyal to Assad has been a high-priority agenda of the mainstream media ever since she announced her presidential candidacy.

We saw it in her recent appearance on The View, where John McCain's sociopathic daughter called her an "Assad apologist" and demanded that Gabbard call Assad an enemy of the United States. We saw it in her recent CNN town hall, where a consultant who worked on Obama's 2008 campaign was presented as an ordinary audience member to help CNN's Dana Bash paint Gabbard's skepticism of intelligence reports about an alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government as something that is weird and suspicious, instead of the only sane position in a post-Iraq invasion world. We saw it in her appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe last month, where the entire panel piled on her in outrage that she wouldn't call Assad an enemy of the United States. It's such a common propaganda talking point that the New York Times' Bari Weiss famously made a laughingstock of herself by repeating it as self-evident truth on The Joe Rogan Experience without having the faintest clue what specific facts it was meant to refer to, just because she'd heard establishment pundits saying it so much.

This is an organized smear by the mass media attempting to marry Gabbard in the eyes of the public to a Middle Eastern leader whom the propagandists have already sold as a child-murdering monster, and Colbert is participating in it here just as much as the serious news media talking heads are. It's been frustrating to watch Gabbard fold to this smear campaign by acting like it's an established fact that Assad "gases his own people" and not the hotly contested empire-serving narrative she knows it is.

Gabbard is being targeted by this smear because she challenges US political orthodoxy on military violence (the glue which holds the empire together), so no amount of capitulation will keep them from trying to prevent the public from trusting her words.

(de video in het volgende Twitterbericht kan ik niet overnemen, zie hiervoor het origineel)

Rania Khalek‏Verified account @RaniaKhalek

The journalist interrogating Tulsi seems to believe that US forces in Syria are fighting Assad. Tulsi corrects her, says those troops were deployed there to fight ISIS. These people don’t even know what’s happening in the places they want the US to occupy

 Tom Elliott

2:11

640K views

8:10 AM - 6 Feb 2019

"I don't know whether America should be the policemen of the world," Colbert said after Gabard defended her position.

"It is my opinion that we should not be," Gabbard replied, causing Colbert to launch into a stuffy, embarrassing sermon on the virtues of interventionism and US hegemony that would make Bill Kristol blush.

"If we are not, though, nature abhors a vacuum, and if we are not involved in international conflicts, or trying to quell international conflicts, certainly the Russians and the Chinese will fill that vacuum. And we will step away from the world stage in a significant way that might destabilize the world, because the United States, however flawed, is a force for good in the world in my opinion. Would you agree with that?"

Again, this is a comedy show.

Gabbard explained that in order to be a force for good in the world the United States has to actually do good, which means not raining fire upon every nation it dislikes all the time. Colbert responded by reading off his blue index card to repeat yet another tired anti-Gabbard smear.

"You've gotten some fans in the Trump supporter world: David Duke, Steve Bannon, and, uh, Matt, uh, Gaetz, is that his name? Matt Gaetz? What do you make of how much they like you?"

This one is particularly vile, partly because Gabbard has repeatedly and unequivocally denounced David Duke, who has a long-established and well-known history of injecting himself into the drama of high-profile conversations in order to maintain the illusion of relevance, and partly because it's a completely irrelevant point that is brought up solely for the purpose of marrying Tulsi Gabbard's name to a former Ku Klux Klan leader. Colbert only brought this up (and made Newsweek totally squee) because he wanted to assist in that marrying. The fact that there are distasteful ideologies which also happen to oppose US interventionism for their own reasons does not change the undeniable fact that US military interventionism is consistently disastrous and never helpful and robs the US public of resources that are rightfully theirs.

This interview was easily Colbert's most blatant establishment rim job I've ever seen, surpassing even the time he corrected his own audience when they cheered at James Comey's firing to explain to them that Comey is a good guy now and they're meant to like him. Colbert's show is blatant propaganda for human livestock, and the fact that this is what American "comedy" shows look like now is nauseating.

When Tulsi Gabbard first announced her candidacy I predicted that she'd have the narrative control engineers scrambling all over themselves to kill her message, and it's been even more spectacular than I imagined. I don't agree with everything she says and does, but by damn this woman is shaking up the establishment narrative matrix more than anybody else right now. She's certainly keeping it interesting.

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Caitlin Johnstone | March 13, 2019 at 12:38 pm |

Tags: Colbert, Late Show, MSM, Politics, propaganda, Tulsi Gabbard | Categories: Article, News | URL: https://wp.me/p9tj6M-1AH

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