– For those not up to speed with the circus surrounding the 2016 presidential race, here’s a quick summary of one of the biggest developments in the last week and a half. On July 22nd, Wikileaks leaked emails showing top figures of the Democratic National Committee worked to knock Bernie out of the primary and manipulate the media. Clinton’s campaign responded to the leaks the next day by blaming Russia, and it has since been theorized the Russians did it to help Donald Trump’s campaign.
by Josie Wales
This article first appeared at Antimedia
Trump spoke to the press about his alleged involvement with the email leaks. Though he denied any involvement, he also redirected attention back to the content of the documents and their implications, going on to say he hopes they find the rest of the emails missing from Clinton’s server. He was immediately labeled a traitor and a threat to national security by the Clinton campaign, as well as by all the media outlets in her pocket.
Yet Trump is not the one who was reckless with classified information, Hillary — that was you. He’s not the one who was exposed leading his party on a mission to squash anyone in the way — that was the woman you just hired as honorary chair.
Hillary’s team has turned her scandal into a terrifying foreign policy issue because generating fear is the only thing the government and its establishment politicians know how to do, and they do it well. Hillary isn’t responsible for any of this mess — Russia did it; Russia is scary; Russia is working with Donald Trump; Donald Trump is scary; Hillary can save you; vote for her.
The FBI and “cyber security experts” have implicated Russia, but there is no proof other than speculation and what experts are calling “circumstantial evidence.” So let’s play devil’s advocate: say we know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Russia did it. There is no proof whatsoever linking Donald Trump to the Russian government. Hillary’s campaign is using a common smear tactic used to manipulate popular opinion: the promotion of baseless accusations. It’s simple, yet extremely effective.
The media keeps pumping out headlines regarding Russia and Donald Trump and national security, and as a result, people will naturally start associating those things in their minds — proof or not. We saw that in the Silk Road trial, where Ross Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison for running a website. He was publicly accused of soliciting the services of hitmen, meaning the FBI intentionally made public what they thought he might have done before he even got to court. No charges were brought related to this accusation, but it didn’t matter. Ross walked into that courtroom painted as a killer. An accusation like that immediately makes someone untouchable; no one wants to defend a murderer — or a traitor, for that matter.
Take whistleblower Edward Snowden, who was formally charged by the United States government after he leaked the NSA’s PRISM Surveillance program, proving American citizens were — and still are — being spied on by their own government. Snowden’s the bad guy — not the government. The government keeps you safe by secretly stockpiling all of your private information, and Edward Snowden is stopping them from keeping you safe. Be mad at Edward Snowden. Trust the government. Don’t think. Trust us.
This is absurd. If the email leak is a threat to national security, the government has much larger problems than Donald Trump. First, there should be no correspondence from the Democratic National Committee that contains any information threatening to the national security of this country. Second, if there’s an implication somewhere that Russia could be hacking into other U.S. agencies for classified information, why would the American government announce that government’s ability to do so, compromising their channels to all of our information? Doesn’t this mean the government will be going through and examining its cyber security programs, looking for ways to improve them? Doesn’t sound much like a desired outcome. Third — and most important — we should not have to be dependent on hackers to tell us the truth about our government.
None of this means Donald Trump is any more suited to be president than Hillary Clinton. It just means that right now, he’s standing back with hands up, playing innocent and enjoying every moment of this trainwreck. Meanwhile, Clinton’s campaign is scrambling to twist this email scandal into something that will scare people to divert attention away from the fact she is steeped in corruption and lies. And the FBI has played right into the Clinton diversion. Instead on an investigation being initiated into the fact the DNC was caught red-handed rigging the Democratic primary, it’s looking into the hypothetical scenario that Russia hacked into the DNC.
And we’re just supposed to believe what she and her experts say is true. She would never…mislead people…would she? Yet that’s pretty much the only thing she does well; she lies and gets caught. It’s almost unbelievable the people who work for her haven’t gotten sick of cleaning up after her messes.
(This article (FBI Opts to Investigate Source of DNC Leaks Rather Than Rigged Primary) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Josie Wales andtheAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article toedits@theantimedia.org).
