Trump Is Going to Thank MSNBC Until November 2020
March 25, 2019
Peddlers of Russia-gate have boosted the U.S. presidents re-election
campaign, writes Caitlin Johnstone.
By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com
After news broke that Robert Mueller had turned in his final report without
recommending any further indictments, MSNBCs Rachel Maddow began
frantically retweeting blue-checkmarked Twitter pundits who claimed that
since nobody knows the contents of the report yet, the news that the number
of Americans indicted for conspiring with the Russian government is set at
zero doesnt matter.
Well guess what, Rachel? We know what the report contains now.
U.S. Attorney General William Barr has sent a letter to congressional
officials which you can read here. It contains the following unequivocal
quote:
The Special Counsels investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or
anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its
efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As the report
states: [T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump
Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its
election interference activities.
A footnote on the document clarifies that the Mueller investigation defined
coordination with the Russian government very broadly, to include not just
overt coordination but any agreement tacit or express between the Trump
Campaign and the Russian government on election interference. No such
agreement, tacit or otherwise, was found to have taken place.
So thats it then. The central and foundational claim of the Russia-gate
conspiracy theory has been found to have been completely baseless. The
report asserts that Russia hacked and distributed Democratic Party emails (a
claim for which the public has yet to see any hard evidence), and did not
draw a conclusion one way or the other whether Trump committed
obstruction of justice in the investigation of baseless collusion
allegations. But the central and foundational Russia-gate claim that Trump
and the Kremlin conspired to steal the 2016 election has been killed.
Finito. Case closed. Debate over.
And Trump is loving every second of it.
No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION. KEEP AMERICA
GREAT! tweeted Americas reality TV star president exactly as you would
expect him to, taking some creative license with the actual contents of
Barrs letter.
This is your life for the next 594 days, America. You can expect to hear
over and over and over again, from today until November 2020, that the
president was victimized for over two years by a WITCH HUNT which was
COMPLETE and TOTAL FAKE NEWS! All Trump will have to do to get re-elected
is keep his economy narrative going and repeat the claim that hes been
unjustly persecuted by the establishment swamp.
It Will Work
And it will work, because that claim will not be unfounded. As much of a
corrupt establishment crony as Trump has proven himself to be, he does
indeed have all the facts he needs to successfully sell the narrative that
the political/media class has spent over two years pushing a baseless
conspiracy theory that the highest levels of the U.S. government had been
infiltrated by the Kremlin, and he can indeed claim persecution and
victimization in the process. He can easily leverage this into sympathy and
support in his reelection campaign, and can use it to reinforce his
tarnished image as an enemy of the beltway swamp. Those whove been selling
the Russia-gate narrative handed him this weapon.
So thanks, Rachel Maddow. Thanks Adam Schiff, Maxine Waters and Eric
Swalwell. Thanks CNN and MSNBC, Washington Post and New York Times. Thanks
supposed progressives like Bernie Sanders and The Young Turks. Thank you to
everyone who spent the first half of Trumps term helping to push the
Russiagate narrative, thereby helping to ensure another four years of this
asshole advancing longstanding establishment agendas of war, nuclear
brinkmanship and ecocide. Thank you so much for helping to inflict that upon
our planet with no regard for the inevitable consequences of your actions.
So are any of the aforementioned offenders admitting any fault on this?
Actually, its a surprisingly mixed bag.
Sure, youve got more Russiagaters than I can count moving the goalposts to
possible financial crimes and frantically grasping at the straws of
Muellers words in Barrs letter regarding potential obstruction of justice,
while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime,
it also does not exonerate him. Youve got MSNBC analyst and Saint Mueller
Preserve Us t-shirt salesman Malcolm Nance starting up a whole new
conspiracy theory that Barr has committed the greatest scandal in history
to coverup the greatest scandal in history, I guess implying that Barr is
lying about the contents of a report that will with absolute certainty will
be viewed and verified by other people. Youve got some trying to pretend
that Russia-gaters never cared about Russia-gate at all anyway.
Notable Admissions
But youve also got CNNs Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter sharing Matt
Taibbis excellent article titled Its official: Russiagate is this
generations WMD, which describes the mass medias spectacular failures to
ask the questions that needed to be asked and demand the evidence that
needed to be demanded for the claims advanced in the Russiagate narrative.
Youve got NBCs Ken Dilanian, an actual CIA asset who has been eagerly
advancing the establishment Russia narrative, saying that this is a total
legal exoneration of the president. Congress will want to know more, of
course. But the topline: No conspiracy, no obstruction. This is highly
unusual behavior from such stalwart empire loyalists, and it may be taken as
a turning point of sorts on this particular aspect of this particular
subject, due solely to the total destruction of any basis for their previous
narrative.
But, of course, the damage is already done. Trump has been handed a powerful
political weapon which may have ensured his reelection to the White House,
and, far, far worse, a new Cold War with Russia is now underway which
threatens the life of every organism on this earth, facilitated by a
political/media class who convinced the public that they could hurt the
president by demanding that he take a more hawkish posture toward Russia.
That Pandoras box wont be un-opened by these new revelations.
This should be the end of the mass media. In anything resembling a sane
world, Rachel Maddow would be unloading her desk into a cardboard box today,
and Aaron Maté would become the most respected and highest-paid journalist
in America.
This should be the end of the Democratic party. This dismal state of affairs
is their fault, from the content of the leaked emails to their handling of
it. They have had choices on the way to clean up their act but, they have
blankly refused at every juncture. Not one thing has changed since the
emails revealed that the DNC rigs its primaries, and yet here we are in the
middle of another fake primary with everyone going along with it like its a
real thing. Its weird. In a healthy democratic republic the party would be
dead already, and a new one wouldve taken its place fueled by fresh energy
and enthusiasm but the donor-class corruption is so deeply entrenched that
that possibility has seemed like a fantasy.
For now. The next couple of days are going to be very important. As the
clamoring din of Russia-gate falls into the memory hole, a large empty space
will open up. As the pundits scramble to find the Next Big Thing to blare
through the screens, the people will be left to their own devices for a few
precious moments. They wont know what to think. They may even have some of
their own thoughts for once. The media landscape will resemble a demolition
site. So why not use this space to push forward some new exciting ideas.
Space means possibilities. Space means something new can be built. After the
crushing disappointment of finally finding out that the whole thing was a
bust, two years have been lost to the bumbling ineptitude of Pelosi and
Schumer, and now impeachment is off the table, what has anyone got to lose?
Lets try something new.
