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Neocon Democrats' Smear Against Trump as ‘Putin’s Puppet’

by Eric Zuesse

On November 1st, The Intercept headlined  “Here’s the problem with the story connecting Russia to Donald Trump’s email server”, and the reporting team of Sam Biddle, Lee Fang, Micah Lee, and Morgan Marquis-Boire, revealed that:

Slate’s Franklin Foer published a story that’s been circulating through the dark web and various newsrooms since summertime, an enormous, eyebrow-raising claim that Donald Trump uses a secret server to communicate with Russia. That claim resulted in an explosive night of Twitter confusion and misinformation. The gist of the Slate article is dramatic — incredible, even: Cybersecurity researchers found that the Trump Organization used a secret box configured to communicate exclusively with Alfa Bank, Russia’s largest commercial bank. This is a story that any reporter in our election cycle would drool over, and drool Foer did.”

The Intercept team concluded their detailed analysis of the evidence by saying:

Could it be that Donald Trump used one of his shoddy empire’s spam marketing machines, one with his last name built right into the domain name, to secretly collaborate with a Moscow bank? Sure. At this moment, there’s literally no way to disprove that. But there’s also literally no way to prove it, and such a grand claim carries a high burden of proof. Without more evidence it would be safer (and saner) to assume that this is exactly what it looks like: A company that Trump has used since 2007 to outsource his hotel spam is doing exactly that. Otherwise, we’re all making the exact same speculation about the unknown that’s caused untold millions of voters to believe Hillary’s deleted emails might have contained Benghazi cover-up PDFs. Given equal evidence for both, go with the less wacky story.”

However, they failed to dig deeper to explain what could have motivated this smear of Trump: was it just sloppiness on the part of Slate, and of Foer? Hardly — it was anything but unintentional.
A core part of the Democratic Party’s campaign for Hillary Clinton consists of her claim that Donald Trump is secretly a Russian agent. This is an updated version of the Republican Joseph R. McCarthy’s campaign to “root communists out of the federal government,” and of the John Birch Society’s accusation even against the Republican President Dwight Eisenhower that, “With regard to … Eisenhower, it is difficult to avoid raising the question of deliberate treason.”
Neoconservatives — in both parties — are the heirs of the Republican Party’s hard-right, which now, even decades after the 1991 end of communism and the Soviet Union, hate Russia above all of their other passions.  Neoconservatism has emerged as today’s Republican Party’s Establishment, and (like with the Democratic Party’s original neocon, U.S. Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, the “Senator from Boeing”) they’ve always viewed Russia to be America’s chief enemy, and they have favored the overthrow of any nation’s leader who is friendly toward Russia, such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Viktor Yanukovych, and Bashar al-Assad. Hatred and demonization of Russia is the common core of neoconservatism — the post-Cold-War extension of Joseph R. McCarthy and the John Birch Society.
Both Slate and especially Foer have long pedigrees as Democratic Party neoconservatives — champions of U.S. invasions, otherwise called PR agents (‘journalists’) promoting the products and services that a few giant and exclusive military corporations such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Dyncorp, and the Carlyle Group, offer to the U.S. federal government. I’ll deal here only with Foer, not with his latest employer (in a string, all of which are neocon Democratic ‘news’ media).
Foer wrote in The New York Times, on 10 October 2004, against ‘isolationist’ Republicans, who regretted having supported George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, and he headlined about them there, “Once Again, America First”, equating non-neoconservative Republicans with, essentially, the pro-fascist isolationists of the 1930s. He concluded that they would come to regret their regret: “Conservatives could soon find themselves retracing Buckley’s steps, wrestling all over again with their isolationist instincts.” That’s how far-right Franklin Foer is: he’s to the right of those Republicans.
On 7 June 2004, Foer, in a tediously long, badly argued, article in New York Magazine, “The Source of the Trouble”, described the downfall of The New York Times’s leading stenographer for George W. Bush’s lies to invade Iraq, their reporter Judith Miller. He closed by concluding that the problem was that Miller was simply too earnest and tried too hard — not that she was a stenographer to power:

People like Miller, with her outsize journalistic temperament of ambition, obsession, and competitive fervor, relying on people like Ahmad Chalabi, with his smooth, affable exterior retailing false information for his own motives, for the benefit of people reading a newspaper, trying to get at the truth of what’s what.

She was anything but “trying to get at the truth of what’s what.” She was the opposite: a mere stenographer to George W. Bush and to the Administration’s chosen mouthpieces, such as the anti-Saddam exiled Iraqi Ahmad Chalaby.
On 20 December 2004, when the question of whether to bomb Iran was being debated by neoconservatives, Foer, who then was the editor of the leading Democratic Party neoconservative magazine, The New Republic, headlined in his magazine, “Identity Crisis: Neocon v. Neocon on Iran”, and he introduced a supposed non-neocon from the supposedly non-neocon Brookings Institution, Kenneth Pollack, to comment on the conflict among (the other Party’s) neocons:

In part, the lack of neocon consensus [on whether to, as John McCain was to so poetically put it, ‘Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran’] can be attributed to the nature of the problem. Nobody — not the Council on Foreign Relations, not John Kerry’s brain trust — has designed a plausible policy to walk Iran back from the nuclear brink. Or, as Kenneth M. Pollack concludes in his new book, The Persian Puzzle, this is a ‘problem from Hell’ with no good solution.”

But, actually, both Pollack and Brookings are Democratic Party neocons themselves; and among the leading proponents of invading Iraq had been not only Pollack but Brookings’ Michael O’Hanlon.  Brookings had no prominent opponent of invading Iraq.
(Brookings has a long history of neoconservatism and routinely leads the Democratic Party’s contingent of neocon thinking, even urging a Democratic administration to have its stooge-regimes violate international laws.)
The real reason why neocons (heirs of the far-right extremists’ Cold-War demonization of Russia, even after communism was gone) wanted to conquer both Iraq and Iran, was that both countries’ leaders were friendly towards Russia.  They were opposed by the Saud family, who own Saudi Arabia, and who quietly worked not only with the U.S. government but with Israel’s government, too, against both Iraq and Iran, as well as against Syria — those three nations (Iraq, Iran, and Syria) all being friendly toward Russia, which both the Saudi aristocracy, and not only the U.S. aristocracy, hate.
It’s not just the conservative ‘news’ media that are neoconservative now. The so-called ‘liberal’ media are so neoconservative that, for example, Salon can criticize Donald Trump for his having condemned Hillary and Obama’s bombing of Libya. Salon condemned Trump for having said “We would be so much better off if Qaddafi were in charge right now” — as if Trump weren’t correct, and as if what happened after our overthrow and killing of Qaddafi weren’t far worse for both Libyans and the world than what had existed in Libya before 2011.   CBS News and Mother Jones condemned the Trilateralist Joseph Nye for having veered temporarily away from his normal neoconservatism.
Then, Nye wrote in the neocon Huffington Post saying that David Corn of Mother Jones and Franklin Foer of The New Republic had misrepresented what he had said, and that he was actually a good neocon after all.  Nye closed: “In any case, I have never supported Gaddafi and am on record wishing him gone, and also on record supporting Obama’s actions in recent weeks. We now know that Gaddafi’s departure is the only change that will work in Libya.” Sure, it did. Oh, really? It’s Trump who is crazy here?
More recently, Foer headlined at Slate, “Putin’s Puppet: If the Russian president could design a candidate to undermine American interests — and advance his own — he’d look a lot like Donald Trump.”  Foer proceeded to present the view of Trump that subsequently became parroted by the Hillary Clinton campaign (Trump=traitor).  Wikipedia has a 450-person ”List of Republicans opposing Donald Trump presidential campaign, 2016″, and it’s almost entirely composed of well-known neoconservatives — the farthest-right of all Republicans, the people closest to Joseph R. McCarthy and the John Birch Society.
Foer cited many neoconservative sources that are not commonly thought of as Republican, such as Buzzfeed; and he even had the gall to blame the Russian government for having made public its best evidence behind its charge (which was true) that the overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 was no authentic ‘democratic revolution’ such as the U.S. government and its ‘news’ media said, but was instead a very bloody U.S. coup d’etat in Ukraine, which was organized from the U.S. Embassy there, starting by no later than 1 March 2013, a year beforehand. Foer wrote:

The Russians have made an art of publicizing the material they have filched to injure their adversaries.  The locus classicus of this method was a recording of a blunt call between State Department official Toria [that’s actually ‘Victoria’] Nuland [a close friend of both Hillary Clinton and Dick Cheney] and the American ambassador to Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt.  The Russians allegedly planted the recording on YouTube and then tweeted a link to it — and from there it became international news.  Though they never claimed credit for the leak, few doubted the White House’s contention that Russia was the source.”

To a neoconservative, even defensive measures (such as Russia’s exposing the lies that America uses to ‘justify’ economic sanctions and other hostile acts against Russia) — indeed, anything that Russia does against America’s aggressions against Russia, and against Russia’s allies (such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad, and Viktor Yanukovych) — anything that Russia does, is somehow evil and blameworthy.  And, of course, America’s aggressions are not.
The U.S. government and its neocon propagandists are outraged that some people are trying to expose — instead of to spread — their lies. The American government isn’t yet neocon enough, in the view of such liars.


Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

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tommytcg
tommytcg
Nov 4, 2016 12:02 AM
Reply to  lolathecur

My response on that blog
For an accurate picture of JC you need to read The Talmud Jmmanuel, published by Wild Flower Press Oregon. It’s the previously unpublished, ‘unedited’, chapters of the bible found encased in resin, in a jar in a cave in Palestine. Read also The Pleiadian Mission by Randolph Winters to learn just who was Jmannual. He was the son of Gabriel, (et), his advanced spirit form specially incarnated to teach the Creational Laws, he was renamed JC in 189AD, lived to just over 100, died in Srinigar, today’s India.

tommytcg
tommytcg
Nov 3, 2016 12:58 AM

Just 2 Qs. If HRC wins the circus, will the sprightly, younger HRC be POTUS? Then.. if HRC is indicted, will the new, fresh, longer-nosed actress serve time? http://rense.com/general96/doublefnl.htm

joekano76
joekano76
Nov 2, 2016 10:37 PM

Reblogged this on TheFlippinTruth.

Willem
Willem
Nov 2, 2016 9:40 PM

I take issue with the: ‘Otherwise, we’re all making the exact same speculation about the unknown that’s caused untold millions of voters to believe Hillary’s deleted emails might have contained Benghazi cover-up PDFs.’ from the intercept authors.
One difference between Trump’s e-mails and Hillary Clinton’s mails is intent: Hillary’s mails were intentionally deleted, while there is no evidence whatsoever that Trump’s mails were deleted from the record by intent.
So the intercept authors implicate here that a thief who rubbed out her crimes is actually an honest person because she was succesful in rubbing out the evidence. In other words: because there is now no more evidence of crimes, crimes were not committed by Hillary et al in Benghazi.
And another difference is this: ‘It is known now, through the subsequent email and cable releases, that the responsibility for the [Benghazi] attack was claimed by Ansar al Sharia, al Qaeda’s affiliate on the Arabian Peninsula. In an email to her daughter Chelsea, sent at 11:12 pm the night of the attack, Hillary Clinton wrote: “Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al Queda-like group.”
Not by a spontaneous mob, protesting a YouTube video. But by a group which has already been exposed as having deep and covert ties to the United States intelligence agencies.’ https://off-guardian.org/2016/06/06/hillarys-lies-and-the-benghazi-attack/
Authors from the Intercept know all of this perfectly well. But they are not allowed to say so (and you can check this if you like) as almost all articles at the intercept must be pro-Clinton and anti-Trump (Jill Stein is rarely, if ever, mentioned). See for instance also the wording of: ‘his shoddy empire’s spam marketing machines’ putting Trump in a bad perspective.
This makes the authors proud propagandists for the other evil. Or pityfull is probably a better word. Or sad, especially for Lee Fang, who really is a good journalist (I think), but must follow the orders from the Intercept, as every mainstream media journalist must follow the orders from their oligarchic masters.
To end with a positive note: commenters at the intercept know this and trolls excluded react quite sceptical to political articles at the intercept of which, I believe, the interview of Naomi Klein by Glenn Greenwald (talking trash on Julian Assange because Wikileaks publishes mails from the Clinton clique that MAY reveal private matter, while NOT discussing that Clinton et al used private e-mail adresses to cover-up government crimes and corruption, see http://themillenniumreport.com/2016/10/the-top-100-most-damaging-wikileaks/) was really the worsed article of all.
But perhaps this is just a strategy from the intercept to learn their readers to know which news is real and which is not in a practical way. (I did say that I would end this comment with a positive note ).

damien
damien
Nov 2, 2016 10:36 PM
Reply to  Willem

One difference between Trump’s e-mails and Hillary Clinton’s mails is intent: Hillary’s mails were intentionally deleted, while there is no evidence whatsoever that Trump’s mails were deleted from the record by intent.
Oh gimmee a break. Trump’s emails spontaneously deleted themselves did they? Go and read Kurt Eichenwild’s devastating account of Trump business practices — his systematic destruction of business records and emails, of lies to the courts, of delays, prevarications, falsehoods and criminality. The guy is a flat out crook. Here’s the money quote:
“Data from everyone’s computers at Trump’s company was wiped clear every year.”
Hillary’s lawyers deleted her personal emails only after culling them as irrelevant to a Congressional subpoena. When they were later recovered (at Republican Party insistence) they were found to contain nothing of consequence.

damien
damien
Nov 2, 2016 10:40 PM
Reply to  Willem

So the intercept authors implicate here that a thief who rubbed out her crimes is actually an honest person because she was successful in rubbing out the evidence. In other words: because there is now no more evidence of crimes, crimes were not committed by Hillary et al in Benghazi.
The authors weren’t ‘implicating’ anything. They were ‘implying’ that the mere fact that some emails were deleted cannot be taken as ‘proof’ of criminality in any way.
FBI Director James Comey said the FBI “found no evidence” that she deleted emails intentionally to conceal them, saying it was “not surprising” that the FBI found emails that Clinton did not turn over to the State Department.
Once again, let us look at what really happened. Congressional investigators asked for all emails relevant to the State Department. Nothing else, just stuff related to the State Department.
Hillary’s lawyers — NOT Hillary — went through everything and picked out messages which they judged to be purely personal. They made this judgement based purely on the headers; they didn’t have time to read every single message.
“[Clinton] then was asked by her lawyers at the end, ‘Do you want us to keep the personal emails?’ And she said, ‘I have no use for them anymore.’ It’s then that they issued the direction that the technical people delete them,” Comey told lawmakers.
As the Republicans expanded their inquiry (which is to say, as they grew ever-more ravenous in their demands for dirt on Clinton), they decided that they wanted everything, including the personal messages. The FBI investigated, using their considerable forensic resources. They were able to retrieve at least half of the deleted material. None of it contained classified information. If those emails were anything other than innocuous, the FBI would have so stated.
Hillary deleted NOTHING! Her lawyers did. And that only in the context of responding to Congressional subpoena specifications.
On the Weiner emails, FBI Director James Comey confirmed that “the emails were not to or from Clinton, and contained information that appeared to be more of what agents had already uncovered.”
In other words a big fat nothingburger.

damien
damien
Nov 2, 2016 9:31 PM

So, we don’t want more wars or neocons but we are prepared to accept a child rapist who shows an unhealthy interest in the mechanics of firing off nuclear missiles.
Personally, I’m all for a mentally ill child rapists and women gropers to get to be President. That they stiff everyone they owe money to, destroy all their business records, lie about their health and taxes, defame, maliciously prosecute and abuse those who disagree with them and have ties to organized crime can only be counted as a plus.

damien
damien
Nov 2, 2016 10:50 PM
Reply to  damien

Apologies, web link error.
Trump child rape charges here and here.

pretzelattack
pretzelattack
Nov 3, 2016 11:56 AM
Reply to  damien

those aren’t charges, in the legal sense. those are allegations in a lawsuit. let’s see if these suits are dismissed. what about the much greater corruption of bill clinton’s ties to laureate university?

damien
damien
Nov 2, 2016 8:53 PM

The real reason why neocons (heirs of the far-right extremists’ Cold-War demonization of Russia, even after communism was gone) wanted to conquer both Iraq and Iran, was that both countries’ leaders were friendly towards Russia.
Revisionist history, Zuesse. The neocons always wanted to take down Iraq and Iran for the oil and gas reserves and to support Israeli aims to neuter any of its regional political opponents. The US also had an eye on controlling former Russian states. Following the Soviet breakdown there was never any fear of Russian expansion. It was all the other way.

archie1954
archie1954
Nov 2, 2016 7:02 PM

Just more reason to actively oppose Mme. Clinton and her same old, same old. The American people by now should have joined the rest of the World in stating categorically, no more wars, no more regime change, no more coups, no more interventions, no more interference in the internal affairs of various nations, no more invasions, no more executions, no more assassinations, no more destruction and most of all, no more blanket killings!