Saturday, October 15, 2016

From Russian intelligence to Trump's lips in less than a day

By Mark Sumner
Tuesday Oct 11, 2016 · 8:14 AM EDT

How can you tell what Vladimir Putin is thinking? Listen to Donald Trump.

The latest round of Russian intelligence hacks involved emails captured from the account of Hillary Clinton’s election chair, John Podesta. On Monday, portions of the latest Wikileaks discharge were published by the Russian news service Sputnik, including what seemed to be a particularly damning sequence in an email from long-time adviser Sidney Blumenthal.

The email was amazing—it linked Boogie Man Blumenthal, Podesta and the topic of conservative political fevered dreams, Benghazi. This, it seemed, was the smoking gun finally proving Clinton bore total responsibility for the terrorist attack on the American outpost in Libya in 2012.
Here’s how that email was reported in Sputnik.

In an email titled "The Truth" from Hillary's top confidante Sidney Blumenthal, the adviser writing to undisclosed recipients said that "one important point that has been universally acknowledged by nine previous reports about Benghazi: The attack was almost certainly preventable" in what may turn out to be the big October surprise from the WikiLeaks released of emails hacked from the account of Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta.

And by evening, what had started the day with Russian intelligence had gone from them, to Wikileaks, to Sputnik, to Donald Trump.

At a rally in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, Trump spoke while holding a document in his hand. He told the assembled crowd that it was an email from Blumenthal, whom he called “sleazy Sidney.”
The whole thing was a lie, composed by carefully clipping the email to find the damning phrase. But Donald Trump did his job. He spread the message from Russian intelligence to his followers, where it can fester and do the most damage to America.

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“He’s now admitting they could have done something about Benghazi,’’ Trump said, dropping the document to the floor. “This just came out a little while ago.”

The crowd booed and chanted, “Lock her up!”

And of course Trump, who used to just grin smugly while the chant went on, is now joining in to promise that winning in November means putting his political opponent behind bars.

The quote actually came from an article by Newsweek author, Kurt Eichenwald. Blumenthal had simply forwarded the article to Podesta. But Sputnik chopped away the identifying information, and sliced down the remains to a sentence fragment that doesn’t capture the tenor of the article. Then put it out as Blumenthal’s words.

Russian intelligence ? Wikileaks ? Sputnik ? Donald Trump ? Trump’s followers … all in just a few hours. The process was almost certainly greased by having Sputnik know in advance what the intelligence team had hacked for the latest Wikileaks agitprop, but that’s still impressively fast movement of talking points from Putin’s desk to the Mohegan Sun Arena outside Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

Good mouthpiece. Good Trump.

The Russians have been obtaining American emails and now are presenting complete misrepresentations of them—falsifying them—in hopes of setting off a cascade of events that might change the outcome of the presidential election. The big question, of course, is why are the Russians working so hard to damage Clinton and, in the process, aid Donald Trump?

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/11/1580806/-From-Russian-intelligence-to-Trump-s-lips-in-less-than-a-day

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