Administration By Alchemy: Trump's Team is Laundering Russian Propaganda For Political Profit
The Impeachment Trial fraud perpetrated by the Republican Party was destined to have consequences. From the moment Mitch McConnell announced his intentions to betray his oath to remain an impartial juror and admitted planning with the White House to construct a prompt and baseless acquittal, a course was set in which the defense of Donald Trump would establish longlasting precedents, including the normalization of a criminal presidency and the all-out destruction of the rule of law.
It’s not surprise then that Attorney General William Barr is already rolling out new features of the Trump Administration in the Post-Impeachment Era that make use of the victory. In this case, Barr is openly discussing a new mechanism by which Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani will present the “evidence” he’s come across in Ukraine that might be of interest in further examinations of former Vice-President Joe Biden and other targets of Trump’s wrath.
Of note, however, is that Giuliani’s freelance work, the impetus for the impeachment crisis in the first place, is in pursuit of conspiracy theories that have been designed by Russian intelligence with the express purpose of destabilizing American politics, helping Trump’s political fortunes, and, most importantly, furthering the goals of Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical agenda. For the past twenty years Putin has used a team of technologists and propagandists to control Russian political reality, and has moved in the realm of international interference. What we have watched has been a well-orchestrated, cutting-edge manipulation with roots in Russian resurgence at the expense of the United States of America and Great Britain.
What’s most disturbing, however, is how it has worked. America is currently as divided as any moment since at least the 1960’s if not the 1860’s, and England has wrenched itself loose from the European community. Now, with Trump clear of impeachment, the administration is actively digging through Russian mud and laundering it for political purposes. Russia is continually shoving out mistruths and propaganda designed explicitly to harm America, and Trump and Barr have constructed an apparatus by which to bring it in, receive a shine via the Department of Justice, and a means to wield it against political enemies.
When impeachment loomed, everyone was aware there would be consequences and longstanding repercussions, but this move has been headspinningly fast. Republicans enabled this shift and even this weekend Trump sycophant Lindsey Graham was extorting the values of the new system. Graham, as always, gets the stories wrong.
It’s never been about sorting fact from fiction.
It’s about tarnishing reality with the blot of malicious lie and using the new element it creates.