“The people who cast the votes don’t decide an election, the people who count the votes do.”
– Joseph Stalin
September 9, 2024 – Over the weekend, Nate Silver published his latest polling data showing Mr. Trump ahead by a nose early in the home stretch of the 2024 election.
Silver’s poll gets particular attention by The New York Times because he forecast Barack Obama’s 2008 win down to the precinct level, nearly.
Polls don’t mean much. But, like Fed minutes, they give journalists something to talk about. Even then, past performance is no guarantee of future success.
In a perfect world, the presidential debate scheduled for tomorrow would feature too well-meaning candidates. Each would articulate how their policies differ. And what their leadership could deliver. An informed voter could then, ostensibly, choose which vision for the future most closely aligns with their own.
Heh. It’s Monday… too early in the week for sarcasm.
Matt Taibbi was among the journalists who discovered the actual facts about “Russiagate” back in 2016, when Russia supposedly swayed the 2016 election in Trump’s favor.
When all the facts were settled, Russian operatives spent less than $60,000 in ads on Facebook. Later, Putin said, sardonically, if he’d wanted to influence the election, he’d have conjured Hilary Clinton into the Oval Office.
Today, the sums being spent are higher. A story broke last week that nearly $9.7 million has been paid by Russia Today (RT) to Tenent Media, and its founders, Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan to produce content since early 2022.
In turn, the money was given to conservative influencers in what is being described as a Russian influencing operation. Big-name influencers who received payments include Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and Dave Rubin.
Writer Scott Ritter, whom we featured last week, has been paid for work with RT himself. Ritter:
The value of my interaction with Russian media, both in terms of publishing with RT and Sputnik, as well as appearing on programs of a wide range of other Russian media outlets, came from the connections made, and the resulting ability to meet and interact with Russian officials, politicians, diplomats, academics, military officers, analysts, experts, and people on the street.
I view my Russian media interaction as part and parcel of my entire Russia experience—a critical aspect of the immersive activities I engaged in when traveling to Russia in 2023 and early 2024.
The Russian journalists I encountered were professionals in every sense of the word, and by subjecting myself to their queries, I learned much about the Russian mindset and how it shaped Russian sensibilities and priorities.
How dare he? Doesn’t he know U.S. foreign policy needs a global villain?
Ritter’s pesky desire to actually understand their perspective makes casting the Russians in the role of Reagan’s “Evil Empire” so much more difficult.
These podcasters are annoying, at best. Criminals, if lawyers for the Department of Justice get their way. Benny Johnson, among the targeted, claims he didn’t know where the funds had come from. Or care.
In 2024, Russian meddling in U.S. elections won’t go gently. Daniel Medina, a colleague of Matt Tiabbi at Racket News, takes a look at the mechanics of “Russiagate 2.o” below and how it fits into the Harris’ trial narrative, below. Enjoy ~~ Addison
Embracing the Joy
Daniel Medina, Racket News
I got in a shouting match last night on Cuomo with former FBI honcho Peter Strzok. I didn’t know he’d be on and the sight of his Cheshire grin as Chris described the new federal conspiracy indictment against former RT officials was a disorienting surprise; I was imagining feeding him his tie before dicussion started.
When he said something about the case tying with with government fight against “misinformation,” I exploded:
There’s no allegation of misinformation! I yelled. Nor had there been in 2017, I stammered, when the “Intelligence Community Assessment” that triggered the Russiagate frenzy teed off at length about RT coverage. The ICA complained that RT “described the current US political system as corrupt and dominated by corporations,” discussed “widespread infringements of civil liberties, police brutality, and drone use,” and even, no kidding, covered “alleged Wall Street greed.” The hardworking folk at the CIA, FBI, and NSA uncovered that RT “runs anti-fracking programming” and even claimed it “impacts public health.”
The yelping about RT encouraging “popular dissatisfaction with the US Government” was nearly the entire official argument that Russia conducted an “influence campaign” in 2016 to “help President-elect Trump’s chances” at the ballot. There was almost nothing else in that Assessment, apart from a classified annex of Steele dossier hokum about pee and “cultivation” that leaked days later, kicking off one of the longest actual disinformation campaigns this country has seen. The reported author of that ICA? The same Peter Strzok now plaintively wringing hands over “misinformation.”
America’s spook sector viewed reporting at odds with “US messaging” as illegitimate then, the kind of thing they’d ban if they could. Now, they’re doing it, or trying. Of course, if everything in the new indictment is true (a caveat too often forgotten across years of late-fizzling bombshells) a scheme in which sleazy foreigners funnel money to influencers like Tim Pool and Dave Rubin through shell companies would absolutely raise ugly questions. But I’ve watched this magic show too often not to see the palmed card in the story already.
“With charges and sanctions, US takes aim at Russian disinformation ahead of November election,” the AP blared this week. “Right-Wing Influencers Tied to Russian Disinfo Campaign Say They Are ‘Victims,’” countered Time. “Right-Wing Influencer Network Tenet Media Allegedly Spread Russian Disinformation,” chirped Wired.
Again, there’s no allegation that anyone in this case engaged in “disinformation.” The Justice Department has been tracking this case for nearly two years, almost certainly using tools like FISA, likely allowing spying on virtually every unorthodox media voice in America. Yet the most Attorney General Merrick Garland could say in annoucing the case was that videos of figures paid like Pool and Rubin were “consistent with Russia’s interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions.”
The government needs us to believe these figures must have engaged in “disinformation,” but there’s a big reason that’s not true. As was the case with RT in its pre-ban years, when it employed everyone from Thom Hartmann to Chris Hedges to Larry King, Russians didn’t need to issue guidelines to get American press figures to talk about “alleged greed” or “corruption.” RT’s American hosts “advertised third party candidate debates and ran reporting supportive of the political agenda of these candidates,” not because they were induced, but because those parties have legitimate gripes and are massively undercovered.
The likes of Hedges and Hartmann and Tyrel Ventura were already attracted to these issues and found audience precisely because there were few opportunities to cover such topics in American media. Obviously it was a devil’s bargain: Russians wanted to highlight America’s warts. That never made coverage wrong. Icky at times, maybe, but not incorrect.
The Pool/Rubin/Tenet story was hinted at in a recent New York Times piece called “U.S. Investigating Americans Who Worked With Russian State Television,” describing FBI raids on homes of former weapons inspector Scott Ritter and ex-Soviet pundit Dimitry Simes.
The Times called their takes “blunt attempts to influence November’s election” and said vaguely the government was “focused on individuals intentionally spreading disinformation.” There was no any explanation of why this should concern the FBI, since being wrong isn’t against the law. Simes told Sputnik that his bank accounts were frozen, which seemed odd, but nobody cared. “Pundit Raided” is not a story that requires a follow-up anymore.
We know the drill now. The next weeks will be filled with outpourings of disgust and demands for vigilance. Though I have frustrations about those who don’t practice safe sex in this media environment (the metaphor: if someone offers a grand for a massage, they want more than a massage), I’m keeping eyes on the endgame. It didn’t escape the attention of anyone on the non-bootlicking side of the media aisle that the Justice Department used the term “heterodox” in its indictment. Between that and Garland’s “divisions” comment, the state is saying it wants an information landscape peopled by orthodox promoters of unity, and will use any means to secure it.
“Joy” is the latest in a series of brilliant PR ploys designed to help enforce this. It’s not obedience if agreeing is easy. So we’re asked to endorse things that make no sense: parks are racist, girls have penises, etc. I’m learning not to take these tests personally.
The next craze could be anything, like kids are food or dolphins are traitors, though they actually did that one. The idea is to see who salutes the crazy thing sent up the flagpole, and who flinches. The adult willing to proclaim JOY over the Vice President he or she just spent three years ignoring is one who’ll also buy a Mueller votive candle or wear a mask during coitus.
You can decline that sensibility (most of us can’t help it), but then you go on the list. You become a “disinformation” risk, with all that entails, which increasingly is a lot.
It could be a knock on the door. I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll be that first domestic drone victim Walter’s always predicting. In a Philip K. Dick novel, I’d earn it by spreading disinformation about government plans to drone journalists. Or impure thoughts about Pete Strzok and a wood-chipper. One or the other. In a surveillance paradise, it could be anything. ~~ Daniel Medina, Racket News
So it goes,
Addison Wiggin,
Grey Swan
P.S. Time will tell how “Russia Gate 2.0” unfolds over the coming weeks, and what role, if any, it will play in the election. Perhaps the electorate has become jaded to these claims, having heard this version of the “boy who cried wolf” one too many times before.
