Of course, Trump is on tape calling the late John McCain a “loser” because he was captured by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. I thought when he said that it would be the end of this then primary campaign, but it barely budged him a notch, the first sign of how he could get away with outrageous statements and actions that would do in other politicians. But his base viewed McCain as a “RINO” traitor to their cause, so it was OK to diss him hard. But now this new report is hitting Trump hard, especially given the widespread reporting of polls showing active military members supporting Biden over him and reports of retired Marines who has Trump signs in their yards throwing them in the garbage. The dead at Aisne-Marne did not run against Trump in a primary or contest for control of the Republican Party. They died in a crucial battle that stopped the final German effort to conquer Paris in the WW I.
So Russia was not a hoax, but what about that infamous Steele dossier? Of course for those who get all their news from Fox, where Trump is also having a problem with their national security reporter supporting some of the Goldberg article, referring to the Steele dossier as “dirty” is a regular button to push to make the faithful sit up and bark their support. It is like “Benghazi,” something pounded on so often the faithful are fully indoctrinated that there is something there. About every other night Hannity reminds the suckers that it “has been completely discredited” and “was bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton.”
Regarding “being discredited,” this has not happened despite various GOP congress people repeating this line endlessly in various hearings. Indeed, well over 70% of it has been verified. Most of it is true. It accurately reported on some of the activities of Trump associates later reported on in the Mueller Report and now the Senate Intelligence Report. But, of course, that some of that material appeared in the “dirty dossier” is supposed to be why we are not supposed to accept either of those reports.
As it is, a few items in it have been disproven. Curiously most of those had to do with Carter Page, exaggerated claims that he was going to get a big payment from Gazprom, although he did in fact meet with their officials as reported in the dossier. The FBI investigation of Page is indeed the one place where all the hysterical Trumpist conspiracy theorists have something: there were inaccuracies in one of the petitions for renewal of the FISA application for the FBI to investigate Page, who had been investigated in the past for his activities with Russians. The biggest blooper, not due to the dossier, was the failure of the FBI to note that Page had been used as a CIA informant, and one low level FBI official has been indicted for this Clinesmith, probably the only person who will be indicted, even though Hannity keeps calling for John Durham to come forth with his report and indictments of all the Obama/Biden people who were “spying on the Trump campaign,” something that Trump himself has called “treason.” Barr has made it clear he will dump whatever there is onto us in in October, but as of now it looks like this Clinesmith messing with the FISA app is about all there is. In any case, the Page investigation was a bust and it was briefly supported by some erroneous material in the Steele dossier, but this does not amount to much.
There are other items in the dossier which the truth or falsity of remain unestablished. The most notorious one is the item that caught initial attention when the dossier was first publicly revealed, the “pee tape” claim about Trump and some prostitutes. This was considered outrageous, but given that we have since learned that Trump has paid off prostitutes to keep quiet, this no longer seems like much of a big deal, and indeed there are apparently a number of observers who claim it probably happened. So the item that makes the dossier “dirty” is probably true, but now who cares? and it does remain unverified. But the bottom line remains that over 70% of it has been verified. The claims that it has been “discredited” are simply false. But what is another lie coming out of Trump anyway?
On the matter of being “bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton,” there is some truth to that. The initial investigation of the possible Trump/Russia connection was initiated by the Jeb Bush primary campaign. When he withdrew it did eventually come to funded by the DNC and the Clinton campaign. But, in the end, this becomes a so what? That in and of itself does not prove that what was reported in the dossier is false. And, indeed, a solid majority of what is in it has been verified, and the fundamental claim that the Trump campaign was operating in a cooperative manner, whatever wording one wants to use, has also clearly been established. The “dirty dossier” is not a hoax, and “Russia, Russia, Russia” is also not a hoax, with them openly at it again for 2020, with Trump’s flunky DNI Chief now refusing to testify before Congress on the matter, and specific allegations of such interference being made, such as Russians being behind a lot of the social media accounts of Biden supposedly suffering from dementia, poor “sleepy Joe,” which increasingly looks to be just totally fake news.
So, sorry, Mr. Trump, this line of argument does not remotely get you off the hook for having called US war dead “losers” and “suckers.”
Barkley Rosser
Barkley:
When you go through Boot Camp at either Paris Island or San Diego, you do get a history lesson of the battles the Marine Corp was in and Belleau Wood was one of those battles emphasized. The Marine Corp earned and received the name of “Teufel Hunden” from the Germans during the capture of a hill.
Using the word “blooper” in relation to the FBI’s and DOJ’s treatment of Carter Page is a travesty. It is unquestioned that at the time of the first, second and third renewals the FBI/DOJ knew that their applications were grossly flawed as submitted and it requires turning the blindest of eyes to imagine they did not understand this at the original application also. The country has a pretty good understanding of what happened, although I suspect we will learn a bit more pretty soon. But it is not yet clear why this was done. My guess is simply that they were determined to use the FISA surveillance protocols allowing a capture of communications from up to the second-level from the warrant target. Was C. Page close enough to get at Don Jr.? At Ivanka? At Trump? Durham needs to shed some light on the other Americans who were spied on relying on the Page FISA warrants.
As for the dossier, one of the most intriguing elements in it is the Cohen to Prague story. This appeared in the dossier (which was a compendium of individual reports by Steele) very shortly after it was alleged to have taken place in very late August or very early September 2016. This is a crazy thing to have simply made up out of whole cloth. McClatchy reported that evidence of this visit was in the hands of the special counsel and they have never backed off that assertion, even after Cohen “re-denied” it after transitioning to Mr. Honesty. He plead guilty specifically to lying to Congress on some Trump Tower testimony, but his clear denial to Congress of Prague never was the cause for a charge. A plausible hypothesis is that US or allied intelligence captured telecoms data in late August or early September that was misunderstood. It got fed to Steele by someone in a western service before it was recognized as incorrect. It is called Mueller’s because the special counsel took over that investigation (see his appointment letter for confirmation). What is the upshot really? That Cohen in Prague had zero sourcing from Russia and probably was a feed from US or allied intelligence to Steele (or Fusion GPS and then Steele). It is important to understand if this was the case, even though Cohen in Prague is understood to be nonsense. How did it get to Hillary Clinton’s research guy?
Sorry, Eric, you are wrong. Ir is not “unquestioned” that the FBI “knew” at the time of the second and third applications for the FISA. The Horowitz study of how they operate shows that messed up FISA apps by the FBi happen all the time. They have just been incompetent on these things for a long time. That is a problem, but it is not remotely evidence of some great plot to get at Trump or his immediate circle. Page was a pretty low level figure who was not even in the incoming admin. This is just Fox News fake news baloney, although I do not know what the seriously messed up nobody Clinesmith was up to. As it is, he is likely to be the only person actually indicted in all this, a real nobody.
The Cohen to Prague matter is another item that was false in the dossier, but that is about it beyond the couple of items about Page that have been found to be false. It remains the case that over 70% of the dossier has been verified. The constantly repeated claim by Hannity and Trump et al that the dossier “has been totally discredited” that is just a total outright screaming lie, and your comment does not remotely begin to undo that hard cold fact.
Lost in all of this is when did the dossier become public knowledge? If after the election then it meant nothing. Just like the Russian investigation became public knowledge after the election clearly shows that there was no attempt by the FBI to discredit trump.
There was an oblique report of it in Rolling Stone about a week before the election that left out most of the dirt and that got almost no attention in the MSM, which was hyperventilating over the revived FBI investigation of Hillary’s emails. A few days later FBI decided there was nothing there after all again with HRC’s emails, but that was about three days before the election, and the damage was done. As for the RS story on the dossier, all commentary on it had completely disappeared. It has no impact at all.
It was only in January a bit before Trump got in office that it surfaced again. FBI brought it to Trump’s attention because of the then shocking “pee tape” part, assuming he would want to know about this probably scurrilous accusation. While that got a lot of the initial attention, aside from its secret use by the FBI to help support FISA apps on Page that in the end went nowhete with him let off (and him no longer on the campaign or in the admin when he was being watched), we still do not know the truth or falsity of the pee tape allegation, but by now it is who cares? given all the now-established reports of him paying off prostitutes.
For all the Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, Russian Trolls, Bannons, … it was Trump’s own calling, Hillary names, taking every chance to denigrate and assassinate her character that was the worst. He is such a despicable man. He simply has to cheat at everything.