Thoughts on the Trump Word Cloud

 

The story has been in the news quite a bit.  Someone did a survey on what words readers most associated with Donald Trump and created a word cloud.  The lead word was Revenge.  Economy, Power, Dictatorship and America were next.  Donald Trump liked the survey enough to post the cloud on his own social media.

But I think at least as important as economy, power, revenge, dictatorship, and America are the smaller words associated.  Freedom, peace, nothing, success, border, dictator and corruption come next, although it is unclear whether "corruption" is an accusation that he is corrupt, or a promise to fight a corrupt system.  

Furthermore although the cloud above is not sharp enough to show all the words, the still smaller ones are even more significant -- and disturbing.  Destruction, vengeance, safety, greatness, wealth, respect, glory, rebuild, status, restoration, legacy, justice, borders, secure, fame, retribution, success, security, immigration, restore, autocrat, reset, win, American, win, wall, fix, unity, strong, mucho, control, people, king, patriotism, USA, redemption, pride, restore, prosperity, stability, winning, autocracy, country, change, popularity, inflation, gaining.

Those sound, on the whole, like favorable words.  At the very least, they are power words.  There are a few exceptions.  Chaos, unsure, and crazy are also in there, but they are not dominant.  

Quite simply, Trump is being associated with strength, power, success, restoration, and the like.  I think we may assume a Biden word cloud would be more associated with words like senile, dementia, old, inflation, and crime.  Not good.  We will know Trump is failing if he comes to be associated with words like bankruptcy, failure, loser, crazy, toddler, whiner, man-baby, clown, tantrum, unhinged, deranged, and ketchup.  

And this poses a real dilemma for how to oppose him.  On the one hand, if we paint him as a dictator that will have the advantage of pointing to the real danger.  And if he ends up winning, at least we will know what they are getting into and there will be no doubt that they really were intentionally turning away from democracy.  

But at the same time, it is clear that one reason people like Trump is that they perceive him as strong and decisive and what can be stronger and more decisive than a dictator.  Portraying him as a weak man, a spoiled brat throwing a temper tantrum might actually undermine his popularity.  It is also true.  But if his image of strength proves too well established to unseat, then the people may vote against democracy without knowing the worst.

Volume V: The DNC Hack and the FBI Response

 

Volume V from the Senate Intelligence Committee then turns from "Counterintelligence Concerns" to the government response, and once again it gets interesting and significant.  There are two sub-sections, one on the DNC hack and the FBI's response and the other on Christopher Steele and his infamous dossier.

The first part is by far the shorter, taking up only 35 pages, from 811 to 845.  Or rather, 815 to 835, with the first few pages serving as a general introduction.  The introduction cites now familiar facts about the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign.  It began with a tip from a friendly foreign government, name redacted, but known to be Australia.  The FBI gave the Trump campaign its usual counter-intelligence briefing without mentioning that four members of the campaign were under FBI investigation. It also said that the Mueller investigation, being criminal, did not address all counterintelligence concerns.

Longer and more interesting is the discussion of the FBI's interactions with the Democratic National Committee (DNC).  The report discusses at length the failures to communicate between the two entities, with each blaming the other.  The details need not concern us.  The FBI attempted to warn the DNC starting in August, 2015 that they were targets for hacking.  Recall at the time, the hacker was Cozy Bear a/k/a the SVR a/k/a Russia's civilian intelligence agency, which limited itself to intelligence gathering and did not publicly release any information.  That was seen as normal intelligence gathering -- undesirable, of course, but not particularly alarming.  The FBI issued warnings to the DNC's cyber security director, but he did not find anything.  The FBI asked for DNC cyber logs and apparently saw the request as a sign of alarm, but the DNC did not recognize the request as alarming.  Fancy Bear, a/k/a the GRU a/k/a Russian Military Intelligence, the agency that did publish DNC e-mails, did not successfully break into the DNC system until April, 2016. 

It was the Fancy Bear hack that the DNC discovered first, on April 28, 2016, only ten days after Fancy Bear broke in.  It was only after that that the DNC began to take alarm and make logs available to the FBI.  However, the DNC did not invite the FBI to examine its system, and instead reached out to CrowdStrike, a private security firm. It was CrowdStrike that discovered the Cozy Bear hack.  The DNC swapped out its system on June 10, 2016 and publicly reported the matter on June 14, 2016.  It was only after the matter became public that the FBI reached out to request copies of the malware CrowdStrike had collected.  The Committee concluded that communications were inadequate on both sides, and that the FBI should have been more forceful in conveying the gravity of the situation, even resorting to subpoena or other compulsory process.

Volume V also emphasizes the high level of distrust on the part of the DNC, and that this is quite common among victims of hacking.  This is important to keep in mind, since right wing revisionist history claims there was a conspiracy between the Clinton campaign and the FBI to frame Donald Trump.  In fact, Hillary Clinton was under FBI investigation and deeply distrustful of the FBI, an distrust that extended to the DNC.  

But this distrust is by no means limited to Hillary Clinton or the DNC.  The FBI's experience is that very often the targets of hackers are uncooperative.  Most organizations do not want to publicize the fact that they have been hacked for fear of losing public trust. Most organizations also do not want the FBI searching through their computer systems and looking at private and proprietary data.  They prefer to hire private security to deal with the hack as privately as possible.  The FBI, in turn, does not know how to navigate most organizations' computer systems and depends on the organization to guide them.  A grand jury subpoena is an option, but rarely used.  The report quotes the FBI as saying that in "a majority of cases" (p. 817) or "half the time" (p. 818) the victim does not want to cooperate.  

Next up:  The Steele Dossier

Volume V, Part 12 Wraps Up the Trump Campaign

 

The final part of the sub-part of the Senate Intelligence Committee Volume V labeled "Counter Intelligence Concerns" is a sort of a wrap-up of what the Committee apparently considers minor matters.

Like the overall report, this final wrap-up begins with the juiciest part -- attempts by Republican operative Peter Smith to locate the missing Clinton e-mails on the dark web.  Placing Smith's attempts in the final section and devoting a mere ten pages (pp. 777-787) suggests that the Committee considers this a minor matter and not important.  I disagree.  Granted, the Committee, like the Mueller Report, found that Smith was on a wild goose chase and never came close to any non-public documents.  All he ever found were a bunch of conmen who believed that a fool and his money were soon parted and tried to shake Smith down.

But it is significant in the sense of showing a clear criminal intent on the part of the campaign. Of course, criminal intent is not by itself a crime.  There has to be a criminal act, or at least a criminal conspiracy or attempt.  Smith is safe from prosecution, being dead, and the Mueller Report did not find grounds to charge anyone else.  The Committee appears to consider criminal intent without criminal capacity to be unimportant.  

Again, I disagree.  Volume V confirms the finding of the Mueller Report that Smith was not a lone wolf operator.  He was acting at the behest of Michael Flynn who, in turn, was responding to Trump's repeated demands to find Hillary's deleted e-mails.  There is no need to follow all the details of Smith's cruising the dark web, willing to obtain the e-mails from anyone, Russian spies included, so long as they were authentic. The one thing he wanted to avoid was presenting what purported to be Hillary's deleted e-mails and having them exposed as a fraud.  Also significant -- Smith discussed his activities with campaign officials Sam Clovis (senior policy advisor) and David Bossie (Deputy Campaign Manager).  

But the biggest bombshell probably comes from Smith's correspondence with Charles Johnson, a political operative who was not part of the Trump campaign, but was in contact with Wikileaks.  Smith revealed his attempts to get the e-mails to Johnson, who responded (p. 787):

I talked to Steve who will compel you to turn over to us all 30,000 emails you located and referred to Wikileaks.  BB wants to publish them first.  We do not give a rats ass what happens to you and will turn you over the the (sic) Feds for prosecution if you do not comply.

The Committee believes that "Steve" referred to Steve Bannon, then Trump's Campaign Manager.  (It does not speculate who BB is, probably Breitbart, Bannon's magazine).  It is possible, of course, that this was a bluff, or that Bannon was not in on it.  But it looks very much as though the Trump Campaign considered Smith's actions to be illegal and still wanted to benefit from them.*

Again, to me this looks serious.  It looks like the strongest proof that outreach between the Trump Campaign and Russia was not entirely on the Russian side, and seems like the strongest evidence of criminal intent, although it did not transmute into criminal activity.  My assessment was:

[Smith's activities are] less equivalent to Smith and Ledeen going to steal the cash from the drawer at the Corner Convenience Store than to Smith and Ledeen going to the Corner Convenience Store to steal the Maltese Falcon. No matter how often the (sic) cased the joint, poked around and tried to find the hiding place, they would never find the Maltese Falcon because it wasn't there. Is it a criminal conspiracy to try to steal the Maltese Falcon from the Corner Convenience Store? I must admit to not knowing. But it does seem to me that if some con man at the Corner Convenience Store thinks that a fool and his money are soon parted, claims that the Maltese Falcon is there, and offers to steal it and sell it to you, some sort of crime is being committed.

In this I was influenced by Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare, who said:

[E]ven as a real hacking operation was going on, Trump personally, his campaign and his campaign followers were actively attempting to collude with a fake hacking operation that wasn’t going on. It is not illegal to imagine stolen emails and try to retrieve them from imagined hackers. But it’s morally little different from being spoon-fed information by Russian intelligence. The Trump campaign was seeking exactly the spoon-feeding it was accused of taking; it just couldn’t manage to find the right spoon, and it kept missing . . . its mouth.

The report goes on the the Alfa Bank server story and finds nothing of significance.  Some computer scientist found an unusual pattern of communications between Trump Tower and Russia's Alfa Bank. Neither the Trump Organization IT department or the IT department at Alfa Bank knew what it was about.  The Committee appears to believe that it was a spam marketing scheme of some sort, but two paragraphs are blacked out, so it is not clear.

During the campaign, there was considerable speculation in the press about why the Republican Party removed a call for providing lethal aid to Ukraine from its platform and suspected something sinister.  The Intelligence Committee, like the Mueller Investigation, found this to be nothing but an innocent attempt to comply with Trump's public speeches, done in coordination with some low-level campaign staffers who had no insight into Trump's thinking beyond what he said in public.  Neither the Russians nor any high level of the Trump campaign had anything to do with it.

There is also some discussion of Russian support for the Green Party.  Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, said she gave interviews to Russia Today and appeared at a RT dinner in Moscow because she wanted to get her message out any way she could.  The Committee found nothing sinister in her motives, although, of course, the Russians presumably had motives of their own.

And that is the end of the sub-section on counterintelligence concerns. But we are still only on page 810 of a 952 page report.  Coming up next is the government response to all this, some of which is quite interesting.

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*I suppose it is also possible that Johnson thought it was somehow a crime for Smith to withhold the e-mails.  The Committee believes the threat to "compel" referred to a civil lawsuit.  But I really don't see how.

Volume V, Parts 10 and 11: Still Not Much Going On

 

The next two parts of Volume V are also not notably significant.

Part 9, Social Media Influence Companies

Part 9 (pages 663-701) deal with tech companies that worked with the Trump campaign, or attempted to work with the Trump campaign doing the sort of datamining and micro-targeting that will presumably be routine in politics from now on.  Although some of these companies were foreign, it found no evidence of Russian involvement. The British firm, Cambridge Analytica, drew the most attention, both because it clearly worked with Team Trump and because it has had shady Russian ties in the past. Cambridge Analytica has done international work, including a survey in 2014 doing focus groups in the US testing people's attitudes toward Putin and Russian expansion.  Steve Bannon and Konstantin Kilimnik were involved in these surveys.  No similar surveys were done on any other foreign country or leader.  Cambridge Analytica offered its services to almost all of the Republican Presidential primary candidates in 2016 and started out working for Ted Cruz, later transferring to Trump.  It appears also to have reached out to Wikileaks regarding Hillary Clinton's missing e-mails.  Nothing case of the outreach since Wikileaks did not have the e-mails.  

An Israeli company called Psy-Ops also reached out to the Trump Campaign, but did not end up working for it.  Psy-Ops' other clients include Eric Prince (founder and leader of Blackwater military contractors) and Oleg Deripaska the Russian Oligarch with ties to Paul Manafort.  A Psy-Ops employee wrote an e-mail that referred to Trump creating masses of fake accounts on social media, but the Committee found nothing to substantiate the allegation.  And another such organization, called Colt Ventures, and apparently American, did some social media work for Team Trump.  On the whole though, this section is a giant nothing burger.

Part 10: Contacts during the transition

Russian government and oligarchs scrambled to establish contacts with Team Trump after the election.  It is not, after all, inappropriate for a foreign government to reach out to an incoming administration.  Indeed, what ultimately convinced me there was no secret, hidden channel of communication during the election campaign was the frantic scramble to establish such a channel after the election.  (Jared Kushner made similar comments p. 764).

The unexpected election of Trump, and his desire to make considerable policy changes from the Obama Administration, the incoming team and the Russians reached out to each other, both through official channels and back channels.  Jared Kushner reached out to the Russian Ambassador, Sergei Kislyak.  Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian financier, reached out to Erik Prince, founder of Black Water.  Robert Foresman, a banking executive with experience in Russia, reached out to the transition team as an unofficial spokesman for Russia.  And, most famously, Michael Flynn contacted the Russians.  On one occasion, Flynn sought to delay a UN resolution condemning Israel that the Trump team intended to veto and the Obama Administration abstained on. (He was not successful).  Flynn also reached out to persuade the Russians not to retaliate against the US for the Obama Administration's large scale expulsion of diplomats over Russian election interference.  In that he was successful, and was ultimately prosecuted for lying to the FBI about the conversation.

Most of this was already well known, or is to obscure to be of any apparent significance.

But fear not.  The report has has a sort of catch-all provision about what Trump associates were up to that is interesting, and then describes the US government response -- also interesting.  More on that later.

Any Suggestions?

 

Look, I think a lot of criticisms of Israel invading Gaza are well-taken.

Yes, I agree, ordinary Gaza residents did not take part in the attacks and should not be subject to collective punishment.  And this will be, at best a long, hard slog of brutal urban warfare against an entrenched enemy.  And there is no coherent exit strategy.  And there is a very real risk of all this spreading into a wider war.

But at the same time, shrugging and saying oh well, we deserved this and continuing business as usual is NOT and option.

So I would ask for any criticism of Israel's actions to be combined with some sort of realistic alternative.

Can We Be Realistic?

 Look, I personally believe that the House Republican Clown Show has proven that House Republicans shouldn't be trusted to operate a blender, let alone the US Congress.  But anyone thinking they will pay an electoral price for their antics is deceiving themselves.

By the next election, this whole episode will be long forgotten. It has always happened that way.

Volume V, Parts 8 and 9: Nothing of Any Importance

 

Volume V of the Senate Intelligence Committee continues to wander further and further afield in Parts 8 and 9, as it spends nearly 100 pages (pp. 586-662) to matters peripheral to the 2016 election.

Part 8

Part 8 (pages 568-635) addresses attempts by Alexander Torshin and Maria Butina to exercise influence on behalf of Russia with the NRA.  Torshin appears to have been a person of some importance in Russia -- vice chairman of the Russian Senate for a time, and a deputy governor of its central bank.  Butina (pronounced BOOTina, not BooTEENa), by contrast, does not appear to have had any particular influence in Russia.  She was born in Siberia and learned to hunt from her father.  She does appear to have done some gun advocacy in Russia, where private gun ownership is severely restricted.  

Butina, acting on behalf of Torshin, approached the NRA as a Russian gun rights activist.  The report gives a detailed chronological account of her activities from 2013 to 2016, none of which appear to have had any bearing on the 2016 election.  Butina attended NRA events, had an affair with one of its leaders, and attempted to establish an informal back channel between the NRA and the Russian government.  At least some of the NRA leaders understood what she was doing and accepted it.  Butina also wrote regular reports of her activities and observations on American politics and the influence of the NRA to Torshin.  On a number of occasions, she asked NRA leaders not to publicize their ties, giving as her reason the fear that she would be discredited in Russia for too strong American ties.  As is often the case, it is not always clear who is manipulating who. 

Maria Butina

Probably the most significant revelation in the report is that Russian intelligence targeted the NRA because it considered the NRA the most influential organization in the US and the key to any influence with the Republican Party.  (Not mentioned:  Whether Russian intelligence sought similar influence with the Democrats, and, if so, what organizations they considered important.  Also significant: NRA leaders appeared to understand that Butina was establishing a back channel to the Russian government and had no objections.  They seemed to value the influence this offered.  Butina's only contacts with the Trump campaign appear to have been meeting with Donald Trump, Jr. (an avid big game hunter) at an NRA dinner and various outreach to the campaign that went nowhere.

The obvious question is whether any of this was a crime.  After all, Butina did not seek out any classified information.  Her reports back on US politics do not appear to have been any more than a journalist might have written.  Her main role appears to have been establishing a back channel of communication with Russia.  She was charged as a spy.  Reports referred to her as a sexy siren whose beauty overbore men's judgment.  Looking at her picture, I could never see it.  Closer was someone's comment (don't remember where, can't find link) calling her the kind of sort-of pretty girl that men might think they had a chance with.  Even that seems generous.  I have included her picture.  Decide for yourself.

Part 9

Part 9 (pages 636-662) deals with whether there was any evidence that the Russians had a sex tape on Trump, apart from Christopher Steele's allegations.  Part 3 traces Trump's 2013 visit to Moscow for the Miss Universe contest in excruciating detail and finds only two gaps in which he could have held an orgy with local prostitutes -- one during the night he stayed, at which time his bodyguard turned away such offers, and during the afternoon the next day when he was waiting to see if he could get a visit with Putin.  It seems unlikely that Trump would have engaged in an orgy with Russian prostitutes while waiting by the phone for Putin to call -- what if Putin had actually called after all -- but I suppose with Donald Trump there is no telling.

In any event, even if nothing happened when Trump visited Russia in 2013, he also had visits in 1996 and one other occasion that Volume V does not identify.

The main evidence Volume V offers is that a Trump associate, David Geovanis, Trump had an affair with a Russian woman (name redacted).  Geovanis had contacts with the Russian intelligence services and loose lips, so the intelligence services might have found out.*  Geovanis also had ties to Oleg Deripaska, Manafort's sponsor.  Geovanis did not cooperate with the Committee, so information here is limited.

In addition, a former executive of Marriott International reported overhearing two employees with the Moscow Ritz Carlton discussing what to do with a video that showed Trump in an elevator "involved with several women who the discussant implied to be "hostesses.'"  Michael Cohen also said that following the 2013 visit, he got calls from six people claiming to have compromising tapes.  Trump denied that such tapes were real, and Cohen never received any verification.  The Committee also reported the existence of a realistic and well-sourced but fake tape.  

All this is nothing more than rumor, with nothing concrete to support it.

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*Geovanis, by the way, appears to have done the same sort of work as Hunter Biden -- offering contacts in the West and serving as a front man in dealing with the contacts, and getting paid vastly out of proportion to the actual work he did.

Some Unoriginal Thoughts on Israel-Hamas

 

Some unoriginal thoughts on the latest war in the Mideast:

Coward that I am, Hamas's crimes are so horrific that I cannot bear to read about them, much less view videos.  This is much worse than 9-11, not only in the sense that the killings are much larger relative to population, but also in the send that of being much more up close and personal, with the kind of gratuitous sadism impossible in the more impersonal act of crashing a plane into a building.

To anyone who says that Israel should strike back against Hamas, but not target the people of Gaza in general, I can only say, that would be great. Any idea how?  Hamas is sufficiently rooted in Gaza that plucking it up will necessarily cause massive collateral damage.  Any number of people have also commented that Gaza is extremely densely populated and that fighting there, much less an long-term occupation will be extremely difficult.  That is why Israel withdrew in the first place.

The Iranian government has threatened to intervene if Israel invades Gaza. Since Iran is two countries away, it seems a safe assumption that such intervention would not take the form of ground troops.  It could take the form of an attack by Hezbollah, or by proxies in Syria, or even by firing missiles at Israel.  Scary stuff.

Naturally Trump has blamed Biden and at least some people have suggested Trump is to blame.  The obvious answer is that not everything is about us.  But I think that is only partly true. There has been considerable continuity in US policy toward the Middle East.  We have been trying for a long time to normalize relations between Israel and Arab countries.  Jimmy Carter brokered a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.  Bill Clinton brokered a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan.  And, to give the devil his due, Donald Trump was highly successful at brokering a normalization of relations between Israel and the smaller Gulf states, as well as Israel and Morocco.  The Biden Administration followed up on these successes and was preparing a normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.  The Hamas attacks appear to have been planned to thwart such an outcome, and to have been successful.  So, yes, to that extent this is about us, and would probably have happened if the Trump Administration had been on the verge of a similar success.  That Hamas was able to derail the process so easily raises disturbing questions about just how solid it was to begin with.

Israel's general improvement in relations with Arab countries has taken place against the backdrop of a strong rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and also serious democratic backsliding by Israel.  These things are probably related.  Clearly, Israel and Saudi Arabia were moving closer largely in response to a shared fear of Iran.  And I am inclined to think that democratic backsliding by Israel facilitated the improvement.  Israel because less of an alien entity, less of a living moral rebuke to Arab countries and more just another country.  Israel and Arab countries could reach a cynical accord -- Arabs would ignore Israel's violation of human rights on the West Bank and Gaza in return for Israel ignoring Saudi Arabia's much worse violations of human rights in Yemen, or Morocco in West Sahara.  

And all of this places undermines the narrative some people are presenting, that this is a confrontation between liberal democracy and an Axis of Autocracy.  Israel, after all, has been backsliding from liberal democracy for the past 20 years. That would also mean including Saudi Arabia and its satellites among liberal democracies, a suggestion I am not willing to credit.  It is really the same criticism that we regularly had during the Cold War -- just because our opponents are evil does not necessarily mean that our allies are good.

And here is where Donald Trump really does matter.  While I believe that Hamas would have acted to derail normalization regardless of who was in the White House, the invasion of Ukraine is another matter.  I suspect it would not have happened, or would have happened differently.  And no, not because, as Trump claims, he told Putin he would nuke Moscow if Russia invaded Ukraine.  Obviously I can't prove or disprove their private conversations, but by all accounts, Trump was generally hostile to Ukraine for very Trumpian reasons -- Ukraine had opposed him as President.  Nonetheless, I do think Putin would have been reluctant to jeopardize his friendship with a US President.  At the very least, he would have waited until the US withdrew from NATO (as Trump wanted to do) before invading, and the invasion would no doubt have been easier.  

I do think that a new Cold War has been brooding for some time -- with the terrifying possibility of turning into a hot war.  Trump postponed it for a time, and hoped to avoid it altogether, essentially by switching sides and backing autocracies over democracies.  To be clear, it is hard to say whether Trump disliked democratic governments because they were democracies or because they were allies. He was decidedly opposed to the whole idea of having allies, which he saw as encumbering our freedom of action.*  So whether he wished to switch sides, or merely to sit it out is not clear.  Be that as it may, there can be no doubt that any leader who does wish to back democracy against autocracy will have to contend with a new Cold War -- or worse.

______________________________
*It is my suspicion that what so-called isolationists really oppose is not so much war -- they had no objection in the past to regularly intervening in Central America and the Caribbean, and have no objection to invading Mexico now -- but to having allies because allies force us to take other countries into consideration.

Resisting the Urge to Catastrophize

 

Catastrophizing is a well-known psychological phenomenon whereby people imagine the worse possible outcome and obsession it until it seems inevitable.  

I am much prone to catastrophizing.

When the war in Ukraine broke out, the worst possible outcome was global thermonuclear war.  After all, Russia had nuclear weapons and no one knew when they might use them.  For the first few months of the war, my fear was so all-consuming that it really made it hard for me to function.

The removal of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House and discussion of Donald Trump as an alternate candidate raised another fear.  Suppose Donald Trump threw his hat into the ring.  What Republican would dare gainsay him?  And when the current continuing resolution ran out, how long till Trump realized that he was third in line to the and had the country by the jugular?  Why, he could refuse to bring any funding bill the the floor, shut down the government, and refuse to let it open until Biden and Harris both resigned so he could be President.  Again, what Republican would gainsay him?

Apparently the Republicans told Trump that nomination would be by secret ballot, so Republicans could defy him behind the cloak of anonymity, and seek the safety of numbers.  So Trump withdrew as a candidate and endorsed Jim Jordan.  And much as I hate the prospect of Jim Jordan as Speaker, at least I am not afraid that he will do that.

That allowed me about a day of relief, and then Hammas launched its ghastly slaughter of Israeli citizens, and now there is a whole new thing to catastrophize.

So what is the worst case scenario here?  Not as bad as the war in Ukraine.  Israel's opponents do not have nuclear weapons.  So if the Israelis decide to bomb Lebanon and take out Hezbollah's rockets, or to invade and crush Hezbollah once and for all, they will not have to fear nuclear retaliation.  The worst case scenario appears to be a region-wide war, presumably between Israel and Iran, with other powers swept in.

Maybe I am being wildly optimistic here, but that seems unlikely, given the distance between the two powers.  But no one doubts that things will get a lot uglier in the very near future.

To get through the crisis in Ukraine, I distracted myself by binge watching Gilbert and Sullivan and took solace in, of all things, C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters -- a series of letters by a senior devil giving a junior devil advice on how to tempt a Christian soul.  The particular "patient" in the correspondence is a young man in London during WWII -- a highly anxiety-provoking time.  Two of the letters, numbers 6 and 15, address the issue of anxiety and why a Christian should not worry about the future (or place too much hope in it).  The point here is not that God will send you to Hell for worrying too much, but that constant fear and anxiety is deadening to the spiritual life, which seems fair to say.*

Letter 6 deals with the "patient" facing the anxiety of not knowing whether he would be drafted.  

We want him to be in the maximum uncertainty, so that his mind will be filled with contradictory pictures of the future, every one of which arouses hope or fear.  There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human's mind against the Enemy [God]. . . . It is your business to see that the patient never thinks of the present fear as his appointed cross, but only the things he is afraid of.  Let him regard them as his crosses: let him forget that, since they are incompatible, they cannot all happen to him, and let him try to practice fortitude and patience to then all in advance.  For real resignation, at the same moment, to a dozen different and hypothetical fates, is almost impossible, and the enemy does not greatly assist those who are trying to attain it.

Letter 15 takes place during a lull in the war, with a corresponding lull in the "patient's" anxiety.  It introduces a concept I really cannot wrap my head around -- that spirits live in an eternity that exists outside of linear time, and thus do not have a past, present and future.  "For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.  of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which our Enemy has of reality as a whole."  

But the whole premise of the novel presupposes linear time.  The devils seek to tempt the "patient," not knowing what outcome will be, either in the short run as to how he will respond, or in the long run whether he goes to Heaven or Hell.  (Spoiler alert: The "patient" escapes his tempter and makes it to Heaven).  

The author goes not to say that even the past, because it is known and fixed, bears some resemblance to eternity.  The future, being unknown, is the least like eternity.  Thus a lull in anxiety spiritually healthy if it means the "patient" is focusing solely on the present and letting the future take care of itself.  It threatens the "patient's" soul if it means he is convinced that the current lull is permanent "because it is only piling up more disappointment, and therefore more impatience, for him when his false hopes are dashed."  

The ideal spiritual state is to focus on the present, but be aware that disaster may strike again and pray for the strength to face whatever lies ahead. That is an extremely difficult balance to maintain and not tip over into anxiety or complacency.  It is an even harder balance to strike for a non-believer like myself.  The nearest I can come to that is the reminder that:

1. There is nothing you can do about the situation.  Focus on what you can do something about.
2. Anxiety does no good; it only makes you miserable; and
3. Anxiety of that kind really is self-centered.  (I am surprised that Lewis did not raise the point, since he sees self-centered-ness as being the root of all sin).

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*I was myself struck by how self-centered my anxiety was.  A massive catastrophe was unfolding in a faraway country, and I was making it all about myself.

An Afterword: What Was Hunter Doing?

One follow up, which emphasizes the point that the Washington bureaucracy -- or most bureaucracies, really -- is much larger than Republican conspiracists recognize.  Hunter Biden has been much criticized for taking a job with Burisma that paid approximately $50,000 per month for minimal work.  His detractors acknowledge that Hunter is by no means unique.  The powerful and well-connected, offspring of leading politicians in countries across the world see doors open for them because of their family ties.  

An excellent article in the New Yorker pointed out that a weak country being invaded by its more powerful neighbor and heavily dependent on the US for assistance is not realistically going to prosecute any company with a US Vice President's son on the board of directors.  Perhaps Hunter was naive on this score, but his father had no such excuse and should have warned his son to stay away.

Nonetheless, Congress's recent deposition of Hunter's business partner, Devon Archer has shed some light on what Hunter was actually doing for Burisma.  And it appears that Hunter was doing some actual work and rendering services that had some value.  Hunter knew nothing at all about oil and gas, but a great deal about how to navigate Washington.  Hunter's role was access peddling. Archer has been much quoted as saying Hunter was selling "the illusion of access" to his father, but he was also offering plenty of lower level, more mundane sorts of access, such as knowing what public relations firm to hire, or who to approach in Washington to get things done.  Is it any surprise that a man who was only two years old when his father was elected to the Senate knows a great deal about the ins and outs of Washington, DC and how to network.

It seems fair to assume that networking of this kind had real value to Burisma.  It also seems fair to assume that what Burisma paid for it was grossly disproportionate to the actual work Hunter was doing, and that Hunter was engaging in what economists call rent seeking behavior.  And many people would no doubt consider it corrupt.  It is also true, however, that the definition of corruption in such cases can be extremely broad.  Is all networking corrupt?  Is it corrupt for personal relationships to enter into business decisions and not just cold, hard considerations of the bottom line?  People who seek to exclude such things are essentially saying that human nature itself is corrupt, and that we should be ruled by computers.

Other points that Archer made:

• He (Archer) ran a company, Burisma Eurasia, with 50 employees that made servicing contracts in Kazakhstan and bought drills in Texas.  This was a real company and not a shell. He also mentioned a company called Rosemont Realty with over 300 employees.  
• Earnings were divided three ways
• Hunter was eager to take credit for his father's actions but made clear that he did not control his father.  He was selling the "Biden brand."
• There was constant "pressure" on Burisma, but he did not attribute it specifically to Shokin. Hunter would call to "Washington" for help, but mostly he was calling lobbyists.  Hunter was an experienced lobbyist.*
• Hunter talked on the phone to his father every day and often had business associated with him and introduced them to his father.  The conversations did not consist more than a vague exchange of pleasantries.  (Republicans have made much of the existence of these conversations and called into question Archer's statement that they had no substance).
• Archer was "spun a narrative" that Shokin was protecting Burisma.  This narrative came mostly from Washington lobbyists and public relations people than from Ukrainian business associates.  Archer seemed skeptical, but did not know either way.  He also recalled Biden meeting associates at charity dinners and talking more than five minute and less than three hours, but without any real substance.
• Hunter and Archer both attended a Burisma Board of Directors meeting in Dubai on December 4, 2015.  Burisma was feeling "pressure" over the $23 million under dispute in London and over being denied visas to visit the US or Mexico.  CEO Mykola Zlochevsky and his associate Vadym asked Hunter to make a call to "Washington," which Hunter did. The call lasted more than 5 minutes and less than an hour.  Archer did not hear the conversation.  He believes it was to lobbyists, but Hunter definitely also called his father.  Naturally the Republicans made much of this call and pointed out that Biden visited Ukraine later in December.  Not mentioned -- the visit was planned before the phone call.
• There was also discussion of Rosemont Realty, a company Hunter Biden did not belong to, nonetheless buying Hunter an expensive car.
• He denied any knowledge of a $5 million bribe paid to Hunter and "another Biden" and said that he believed he would be the "other Biden."  So there is some self-interest here.
• There were a lot of mind-numbing financial details.

In short, Devon Archer was far from a neutral witness and had his own motives to exculpate himself, but he did not testify to anything incriminating, unless one counts the phone call after the Dubai meeting.

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*One possible charge against Hunter Biden is failing to register as an agent for a foreign entity.

Uranium One and Ukrainian Two

 When Republicans announced that they were yet again investigating scandals involving Hunter Biden's Ukrainian ties, I was at least slightly curious to see what else they had come up with.  The answer turned out to be nothing at all. They were just going back to the discredited and debunked scandal from 2019 alleging that Joe Biden pressed for the firing of Viktor Shokin, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General to protect his son's investment in Burisma.

This scandal has the same flaw as the Uranium One scandal that Republicans deployed against Hillary Clinton -- it ignores how the Washington DC bureaucracy -- the deep state if you will-- works, how large and powerful it is, and how difficult the system makes the sort of individualized corruption Republicans are alleging against both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.

We have discussed the Uranium One "scandal" at some length.  Short version: The Obama Administration approved the sale of a US uranium company to a state-owned Russian corporation.  Republicans attempted to blame this on Hillary Clinton, since she was Secretary of State in charge of foreign policy at the time, and to say that she approved the sale because the Russians made donations to the Clinton Foundation.  Problems:  (1) nearly all the donations were by Americans or Canadians and were made before Hillary became Secretary of State, (2) the State Department was one of nine agencies needed to approve the sale and (3) approval by the State Department was a subordinate with no input by Hillary whatever.  In short, a large bureaucracy with many moving parts approved the sale. Hillary's sole role in the Uranium One sale was one of passive acquiescence.  She would not have been able to undertake a policy of this type on her own as a favor to donor because the need for consensus among so many agencies would have stopped her.

Fast forward to Joe Biden pressing for the Prosecutor General to be fired.  Let us concede one important difference here.  Biden's role was not limited to passive acquiescence  He was the Administrations point person on Ukraine. The Administration sent Biden to Ukraine to put pressure on the government, and he did with considerable vigor.  Unlike Clinton, Biden played a major role in setting and implementing policy.  Did he do it for personally corrupt reasons?

And here I do recognize that no Republican will be impressed with the argument that Biden was carrying out the Obama Administration's policy.  They will presumably argue that Biden persuaded Obama to adopt a policy of removing the Prosecutor General in order to benefit Biden's son, and that Obama went along with it.

That argument does not stand up to serious scrutiny.  

In February, 2014, a popular uprising overthrew Ukraine's pro-Russian government let by Viktor Yanukovich. All accounts agree that Ukraine under Yanukovich was rife with corruption, including having a natural resources minister -- Mykola Zlochevsky -- who also operated Ukraine's largest independent gas company -- Burisma.  What I have not heard anyone even attempt to address is how large a portion of Ukraine's total corruption Burisma is.  Is Burisma just one part of a massive puzzle, or is it the hub of the whole system?  (Or one of many such hubs).  This article gives at least one suggestion. In 2013 Zlochevsky was estimated to be the 86th richest man in Ukraine.  In April, 2014, Britain froze some $23 million in assets Zlochevesky had stashed in that country.*  The court case was met with vigorous litigation by Zlochevsky's lawyers and obstruction by the Ukrainian Prosecutor General, led by Viktor Shokin.  In January, 2015, the British courts released the funds, finding insufficient evidence.  Also contributing to dropping charges -- a letter from some high-ranking official in the Prosecutor General's office saying that Zlochevsky was not under criminal investigation.   In March, 2015, the Deputy Prosecutor General alleged that charges were dropped due to a bribe.**

It is not clear how large a role any of this had in Shokin's fall from grace.  Shokin appears to have lost the backing of the US embassy in July, 2015 when a raid of two high-ranking prosecutors revealed bags of diamonds, cash, and documents linking them to Shokin. Unsurprisingly, Shokin blocked further investigation.  During his time in office, not one major figure was convicted.  If he made an exception for Burisma, evidence for it is sorely lacking.  In September, 2015, then-ambassador Greg Pyatt*** gave a speech denouncing the Prosecutor General's office for refusing to fight corruption, specifically naming the refusal to reclaim Zlochevsky's assets from Britain (the only specific instance named), but still blaming the problem on subordinates and treating Shokin as a good-faith actor.  If this was meant as a shot across Shokin's bow, he failed to take the warning.  By October 31, 2015 anti-corruption activists staged a protest. Outside of Ukraine, a wide range of individuals and institutions were calling for Shokin's resignation, including members of the US Congress of both parties, the European Union, and the IMF.  Presumably not all these players were motivated by having a son on the board of Burisma.

All of this is essential to make a point.  Biden was in no way a rogue actor. He was pursuing a policy supported by the Ukrainian anti-corruption activists, the US embassy in Ukraine, US politicians from both parties, the EU, and the IMF. I have seen the argument that Shokin was at least holding open the possibility of prosecution, that Biden had him replaced with someone who closed the prosecution altogether, and that the broad consensus is a distraction. But the broad consensus cannot be a distraction. It is significant in the if Biden had declined the role of point man on Ukraine or (better yet) if Hunter Biden had declined the job with Burisma, US policy would still have been to remove Shokin.

Biden does appear to have been responsible for the decision to take a more aggressive approach. In December, 2015, he took a plane to Ukraine, originally planning to sign a billion dollar loan guarantee and call for Shokin's removal. Biden appears to have taken the lead -- and convinced others in the Obama Administration -- to make the billion dollar loan guarantee conditional on removing Shokin.  

Neither action occurred during Biden's December, 2015 visit.  It was not until February, 2016 that Shokin was fired, and not until June of that year that the US signed the loan guarantees.  It is fair to point out that Shokin's successor, Yuri Lutsenko, was no better in fighting corruption (in Burisma or elsewhere) than Shokin was. Biden's critics make much of a 2018 appearance with the Council on Foreign Relations in which he said:

I said, nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said—I said, call him. (Laughter.) I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. (Laughter.) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.

Biden is being a bit crude here.  He is also compressing into six hours an event that took several months and exaggerating his influence. But can one make an obvious point here?  If he was acting out of corrupt motives, one would not expect him to exaggerate his role so much, or to brag about it in a public forum.

In short, both Uranium One and Ukrainian Two (the second go-round of trying to create a scandal around the firing of Shokin) make the same mistake -- they assume decisions are made entirely at the top and ignore just how big the US bureaucracy is and how many moving parts go into such a decision.  Ironically, this point was actually illustrated in the first Trump impeachment. After Congress duly appropriated military aid for Ukraine, Trump put a hold on it.  Numerous agencies called for the release of the aid.  Only the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) supported the hold, for reasons unknown. Clinton and Biden were not rogue actors making decisions out of personally corrupt motives; they were acting in concert with the larger bureaucracy (the deep state if you will).  Trump, by contrast, was acting out of personally corrupt motives, and found himself at odds with numerous federal agencies.  And yes, a US President does have authority to override bureaucratic agencies, but not the authority to withhold funds duly appropriated by Congress.

And just to be clear, this is not intended to say that the federal bureaucracy is infallible, or that no one is ever justified in defying it. Requiring a bureaucratic consensus in policy making is effective in preventing actions motivated by personally corrupt motives.  It can still be corrupt in the sense that institutional interests are not necessarily the same as the national interest. Bureaucratic consensus is notably rigid and tends to stifle innovation.  It leads to a degree of group think that tends to suppress dissent. (Hence Obama officials who referred to it as the "Blob.")  It is no guarantee whatever that the policy decisions will end up being good ones. But it is effective at reigning in rogue actors acting for personal gain.  

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*Again, in terms of the total scale, another Ukrainian oligarch was mentioned as having $217 million in assets frozen abroad in various countries.  The article mentions 220 million British pounds' worth of assets frozen across Europe.
**This article was written in 2017, before any allegations were made that Joe Biden was acting on behalf of his son.  It does, nonetheless, mention Hunter Biden and the extremely damaging impression he created.  Incidentally, Shokin is never named in the article.
***Marie Yovanovitch became ambassador in 2016.

"Network Propaganda": How to Stir Up a Scandal

 

Network Propaganda give three case studies of the Rightwing Noise Machine stirring up scandals that are wholly without substance, but leave an impression of corruption.  One, regarding allegations that Seth Rich stole the DNC e-mails, is well documented elsewhere and was ultimately withdrawn when Fox News' sole source retracted his statement.

I do want to go into more detail about the other two -- one about Bill Clinton's flights on Jeffrey Epstein's flight, and one about Uranium One.  There is no substance to either story; they are of interest solely as propaganda exercises.  But I am particularly interested in Uranium One because it resembles the allegations that Republicans are now making about Joe Biden. Both stories contain some of the same errors about how Washington works.  Although neither ginned-up scandal definitively proves that Biden is innocent, they are significant background and ample proof that we should treat such stories with skepticism.

Bill Clinton, Jeffrey Epstein, and the "Lolita Express"

Both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump had long histories of promiscuity and some association with the disgraced billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, notorious for luring teenage girls to his private island for sexual abuse by powerful men, who Epstein could then blackmail.  Clinton flew on Epstein's plane while traveling on behalf of the Clinton Foundation, while Trump went to Epstein's parties.  There is no evidence that either man engaged in sex with underaged girls procured by Epstein.

During 2016, an unidentified woman filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump, alleging that he raped her at one of Epstein's parties when she was 13 years old. This surfaced briefly in the leftwing media during the 2016 election, but was largely dropped after the decidedly left-of-center outlets the Guardian, Daily Beast and even Jezebel investigated further and raise serious questions about the story's accuracy.  (See Network Propaganda, pp. 91-92).

Matters were altogether different on the right (see pp. 92-97).  Network Propaganda notes that Fox first raised the issue on March 13, 2016, the day before the New York Times ran a story about Trump's crude behavior toward women. It is accepted journalistic practice to call the subject of such a story ahead of time, so Trump knew what was coming and presumably alerted Fox. As with the rape story, several mainstream publications criticized the New York Times piece, and it never went anywhere.  

The underlying basis for these stories were flight logs for the Epstein plane that showed Bill Clinton took 26 flights on the plane -- none of them to Epstein's private island or any of his other residences (he had homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach and a ranch in New Mexico).  So, was sexual activity taking place on Epstein's plane?  It seems a safe assumption that there was no sexual activity on at least 20 of the flights. Clinton's Secret Service guards were present.  We also have the account of one of Epstein's captives who saw Clinton  onboard one of Epstein's flights that no sexual activity took place.  

Network Propaganda then goes on to show how the six trips without Secret Service present were then described as six trips to Orgy Island (contradicted by the flight logs).  Later stories claimed over 20 trips to the island, six involving Hillary.  Actual number of trips to the island, as shown by flight logs:  None.  Network Propaganda goes on to say that no rightwing outlet ever questioned any of these stories, even though many were clearly false.

Epstein was found hanging in his jail cell on August 10, 2019.  Immediately, stories began circulating that it was not suicide. And most of these stories automatically assumed that Hillary Clinton was the prime suspect.

Uranium One

Far more relevant to the workings of the federal government (the "deep state") and to current accusations against Joe Biden were accusations against Hillary Clinton in the Uranium One scandal (addressed in Network Propaganda, pp. 166-187).  The original accusation was "Hillary Clinton’s State Department approved the transfer of 20 percent of America’s uranium holdings to Russia, while nine investors in the deal funneled $145 million to the Clinton Foundation."

The accusation originates with Clinton Cash, a book that (correctly) identified donations to the Clinton Foundation, (correctly) identifies decisions by the US government when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, and then draws very dubious connections between the two. The largest such accusation involved the sale of Uranium One.  

Prior to 2007, Frank Guistra, a Canadian businessman, was CEO and major shareholder of Uranium One.  In 2007 (at which time George W. Bush was President and Condaleeza Rice was Secretary of State), Guistra sold his stake in Uranium One, stepped down, and donated $131 million of the total $145 million.  This is a very large portion of the Clinton Foundation's total assets.  Nonetheless, the donor had no ties and no interest in Uranium One at the time the deal was made. Eight other donors with ties to Uranium One made donations to the Clinton Foundation ranging from $250,000 to $5 million.  Only one of these donors was a Russian (Sergey Kurzin, donated $1 million). All but one of these donations took place before the Uranium One deal and, indeed, before Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State.  It is true that Bill Clinton took a $500,000 speaking engagement in Russia while the deal was going on, which is not a good look.

In 2009, Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State and followed the Obama Administration's policy of seeking to improve relations with Russia.  Part of that policy included approval of approval of the Russian state-owned company Rosatom increasing its interest in Uranium One from 17% to 51%.  To be clear (1) this would give Rosatom a controlling interest in Uranium One, (2) Rosatom was not licensed to export uranium, only to receive profits, (3) the US is a uranium importer, but finally (4) uranium is nonetheless a strategic material and special approval is required to allow a foreign investor to acquire an interest in US uranium.

The State Department is, in fact, one of nine agencies to approve such a transfer.  All nine such agencies approved the deal.  Nor did Hillary made the decision on behalf of the State Department.  That decision was made by Jose Fernandez, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy and Business Affairs, who said that Hillary made no attempt to influence him, either in favor or against the deal.  In short, Hillary's sole role in the sale of Uranium One was one of passive acquiesence.  She took no active role, let alone leading role in the sale.  Her alleged fault was not being a lone dissenting voice protesting the sale.

None of which is to say that Hillary Clinton should be exempted from criticism.  There are serious questions any time anyone in high office runs, or has a spouse run, a major enterprise, including a charitable foundation. And one can certainly question the wisdom of the Obama Administration's attempted "reset" of relations with Russia.  A "normal" Republican candidate might say, "The Clinton Foundation creates too many conflicts of interest.  The Clintons should choose -- the office, or the foundation."  Or "Hillary Clinton was part of the Obama Administration's failed policy of appeasement of Russia."  These accusations would be true.  Pre-Trump, that latter accusation would be a Republican staple.

But there is an obvious problem with Donald Trump making either of these accusations.  Does it make sense to say that the Clinton Foundation creates conflicts of interest -- so you should choose Trump, who has more conflicts of interest than any candidate for President ever thought of before?*  Or to denounce Hillary for participating in Obama's failed policies of appeasement of Russia, so you should elect an even more pro-Russia candidate?

A normal candidate can afford to stick to normal lines of attack.  One so defective as Trump can do so only by extraordinary catastrophizing of his opponents.

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*Actually, he has argued exactly that, so maybe.

Brief Comments on the Trump Fraud Case

 

So, what do I think about the New York civil action for fraud, which has just ordered the shutdown of Trumps (New York) business empire?

To be honest, it is hard for me to care. Yes, this is more serious than payoffs to mistresses, though less serious that rape or theft of classified documents, to say nothing of election subversion.  And frankly, it is long overdue, but too late to matter.

Trump's business empire has been a giant fraud from day one.  If someone (Rudy Giuliani, maybe, or Elliott Spitzer, both of whom prided themselves in being the scourge of white collar crime) had moved against the Trump Organization before he got a job with The Apprentice, Donald Trump would long (and deservedly) forgotten.

If someone had moved against Trump when he was a reality TV show host, no doubt there would be anger and outcry, but it would have kept him from launching a political career.

If someone had launched an action, or a thorough-going expose of Trump's business practices in 2016 -- well, it is hard to say.  It could be a little hard to dismiss as political persecution, given that Hillary Clinton was also under FBI investigation.

I don't think being exposed as a fraud would have hurt Trump with his hardcore supporters.  I think that a lot of his hardcore supporters liked that he was a fraud.  He appealed to the sort of people who see the system as hopelessly corrupt and rigged and believed that only someone low down and dirty would be able to fight back.  He actually made his crookedness a selling point for that very reason.  He also appealed to people why saw everyone as crooked and Trump at least as our crook

It might have made a difference to people who genuinely believed that Hillary Clinton was the more crooked of the two candidates.

But what I think might actually have made a difference is 2016 was not so much showing Trump up as a crook, as showing him up as an incompetent businessman.  Because I do believe that a lot of Trump's appeal outside the really hardcore was the sort of mystique a lot of people have about businessmen -- the believe that they are competent while government is incompetent and that businessmen will get everything done and especially run the economy much better than politicians.  And Trump, being very rich, was seen as especially successful and therefore especially competent.  I think it might have mattered to his less hardcore supporters to know that he wasn't.  That is, after all, a standard page from Karl Rove's playbook -- hit your opponents where they are strongest.  Trump's greatest strength was supposed to be his supreme competence and business acumen.  It might have made a difference to show that up as false.

But of course, it is too late now.  His supporters will simply see this as persecution. And they will have a point.  The fact that he got away with it up till now really does show that no one would have made any attempt to hold Trump accountable if he hadn't decided to run for President.  And even to me, it seems a bit like piling on.

Why People Are Shrugging at Trump's Latest Posts

 

It's very simple, really.  People are ignoring the horrible things Donald Trump is threatening on Twitter Truth Social because they see them as so much hot air -- empty threats that he has no intention of acting on.

A lot of people opposed Trump in 2016 out of fear, seeing him as a dangerous loose cannon and wondering if he would be a Joe Arpaio, or imprison his opponents, or start a nuclear war, or default on the national debt or something equally crazy.  He didn't do any of those things.

People on our side say the reason he didn't do those things is that the grownups in the room stopped him, and he won't have the grownups this time.

I think there is some truth to that.  I also think he will not be able to go as far as some people fear.  He won't be able to lock up his political opponents because we still have an independent judiciary and trial by jury.  He won't be able to shut down hostile media outlets because he lacks the mechanism to do so. And plenty of his other nuttier pronouncements will also fail.  And there are numerous state and local governments and independent institutions to resist.

But he shows all intentions of evading the requirement for Senate confirmation of appointments by appointing "acting" officials and never submitting them for confirmation, and he can doubtless get a lot of cabinet picks who would never get past the Senate.  And it seems clear that Trump (or any Republican these days, frankly) has a serious plan in place to fire career professionals and replace them with political hacks.  This will leave considerable scope for harassment of political opponents, even if it stops short of criminal conviction.  It can also cause considerable damage to the efficiency of the federal government that will prove unpopular, but will also be much easier to cause than to cure.

I should also say that many people who support Trump today because they contrast the good times under his presidency with all the problems we have now have highly selective memories of the Trump presidency.  He had the longest government shut down so far, for instance.  Natural disasters, mass shootings, fentanyl, and countless other problems continued unabated.  And of course, there was 2020.  Yes, one can certainly argue that the disasters of 2020 were mere misfortunes and not Trump's fault.  But even so, they should be more than proof that Trump was not, by himself, any magical charm against bad things happening.  We have not recovered from 2020 as fast as one might wish.  But if 2020 could happen on Trump's watch, why should one think recovery on his watch would be any faster than it has been now?

Volume V, Parts 6 and 7: 40 Pages of Saying There is Nothing There

 

We are now reaching the un-juiciest part of the Volume V (it perks up in the end).  This part tracks down rumors of improper conduct that did not pan out.

First is Carter Page.  Carter Page formerly lived in Moscow, working for Merrill-Lynch in its dealings with Russian oil companies.  Page had dealings with both US and Russian intelligence and apparently gave proprietary information to the Russians and came under counter-intelligence investigation.  He also did work on behalf of the CIA, so it was not always clear who was spying on whom.  Much of this stage of his career is (understandably) redacted.  

Carter Page

Page's role with the Trump campaign was minimal.  He was considered the only foreign policy advisor who was an expert on Russia, but never met either Trump or Manafort.  He made one attempt to set a meeting with Putin that went nowhere, but was never as persistent as Papadopoulos.  His role appears to have been limited to writing a few pro-Russia papers and speeches.

Page did, famously, travel to Moscow in July, 2016 and give a speech to the graduating class condemning US calls for greater democracy and meddling. The Steele Dossier says that it was at this time that Page met with Russian officials to talk about compromat and a possible bribe.  Volume V assesses Page as too low-ranking and without sufficient connections to be of any value to the Russians, although the Russians did not necessarily know that.  Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov decided not to meet with Page because he was not important enough to bother with.  Page reported to the campaign that Russians from the corridors of power to the man on the street were all eager for improve relations. The Committee was unable to determine exactly what Page did in Moscow, but found no evidence of anything improper.

Nonetheless, Page's speech attracted unwelcome publicity. People with access to the Steele Dossier hinted at something sinister.  Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid dropped such hints in August, and Michael Isikoff of Yahoo ran a story accusing Page of meeting with sanctioned individuals while in Moscow.  The negative publicity was enough to persuade the Trump campaign to fire Page.  Approval for a FISA wiretap occurred nearly a month after Page was fired.

In short, if this were a spy movie or mystery novel, Page would be a classic red herring -- someone who looks sinister, but proves to be completely harmless.

Sergei Kislyak, not Jabba

Part 7 deals with a foreign policy speech Trump gave at the Mayflower Hotel.  The event was organized by a non-partisan think tank.  The speech included a few pro-Russian paragraphs and some disparagement of allies, but was completely standard fare for Trump.  It attracted attention only because Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak (not to be confused with Jabba the Hutt) was present and some people wondered if there were improper communications or influence.  Jeff Sessions was one of the people present and recused himself from investigation because of it.  The Mueller investigation already determined that the meeting was completely innocent.  Volume V agrees, saying that, at most, Team Trump had a general meet-and-greet that included Kislyak, and that none of them even knew who he was until later.

In short, these two sections take about 40 pages to say, "Nothing to see there.  Move along."

The Same, Continued

 Look, I know I should drop the subject, but Jeff Gerth's series about how unfairly the media hounded Trump over Russia has really annoyed me. I think there is a good case that the media got too carried away and were unduly gullible after the Steele Dossier came out.  (I certainly was).  But Gerth applies that criticism even to coverage before the election, making clear that the subject of any Trump ties to Russia was wholly inappropriate.  

See the graph above?  See the small bar at the very right end showing media coverage over Trump and Russia?  Gerth -- and as I understand it, the right wing in general -- sees that as outrageous persecution.

Hillary Clinton's ties to Russia, on the other hand, are entirely fair game.

So let's take out the names and just call them Candidate A and Candidate B and see if it makes any sense.

We will start at the simplest possible.  Both candidates have, at different times in their careers, favored improved relations with Russia.  Both have questionable ties to Russia.  Does it make sense that one candidate's ties are fair game and the other's are not?

Now let's get just a little more specific.  Candidate A is a former Secretary of State who attempted to improve relations with Russia, but was not successful and is now running as a hawk.  Candidate B is running on a platform of improving relations.  It would seem to me that Candidate B's ties to Russia are more important than Candidate A's, since he is currently seeking to improve relations.  Of course, if you believe that Candidate A is corrupt, she might change her mind later, so her Russia ties remain relevant.

And let's get more specific again.  Candidate A operates a charitable foundation that accepts donations from sometimes dubious sources.  At the time she was trying to improve relations with Russia, she accepted some Russian donations to her foundation, and her spouse accepted a $500,000 speaking engagement in Russia.

Candidate B is a real estate developer with far-ranging international ties, including to Russia, who has made frequent, though rarely successful, overtures to invest in Russia. He also hired a campaign manager whose last job was as a consultant to the pro-Russia party in Ukraine.

Does it seem reasonable to say that Candidate A's ties to Russia are an appropriate subject for investigation, while Candidate B's ties to Russia should be completely off the table?

Now suppose that Candidate A's failed attempt to improve relations with Russia took place within the framework of maintaining our traditional alliances.  Candidate B, by contrast, wants to ditch our traditional alliances, seems opposed to the whole idea of having allies, and does not seem interested in friendly relations with any country except Israel -- and Russia.

But still, apparently, according to the right wing in general and Gerth in particular, Candidate A's Russia ties are an appropriate subject for investigation, while Candidate B's Russia ties must not even be mentioned.

What justification can you possibly come up with for that?  Well, Gerth seems to offer that the information about Candidate A's Russia ties come from a book written by a partisan Republican opposition researcher, whereas the information on Candidate B's ties come from a freelance, hired gun opposition researcher and are therefore illegitimate.  How strange!

The other reason right wingers (including Gerth) offer is that Russian intelligence said that Candidate A was trying to stir up a scandal about Candidate B's ties to Russia, which clearly proves that he was completely innocent and had no sinister ties to Russia whatever.

Well, first of all, the media in 2016 didn't know about this memo and therefore could hardly be expected to take it into account.  And second, candidates routinely stir up scandals against their political rivals. The mere act of stirring up a scandal is no proof, one way or the other, whether the scandal has any legitimate underpinnings.  Only further investigation can determine that.

Apparently Gerth and other right wingers believe that the bar graph above shows an unconscionable persecution of Donald Trump, and that a more legitimate balance of reporting would look like this:

They appear to see that as a spectacular difference.

On the other hand, there may be an element of projection here.  Right wingers have ample experience in stirring up scandals that are wholly without substance.  Network Propaganda details three such attempts.  More on that later.