Tag: media

McCain, the FBI, and Showergate

The Fake News Showergate saga just keeps getting better. Now McCain and Carl Bernstein are involved.

Sworn Donald Trump enemy John McCain admitted Wednesday that he passed the dossier of claims of a Russian blackmail plot against the president-elect. The Arizona senator issued a public statement amid mounting questions of his exact role in the affair – and how a document riddled with errors and unverifiable claims came to be published.

‘Late last year, I received sensitive information that has since been made public,’ he said. ‘Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information to the Director of the FBI.’

The chain of how the document reached the FBI is not officially known. However Carl Bernstein, the Watergate reporter who contributed to the first story about its existence, published by CNN on Tuesday afternoon, suggested that McCain was handed it by a former British ambassador to Moscow.

Bernstein told CNN: ‘It came from a former British MI6 agent who was hired from a political opposition research firm in Washington who was doing work about Donald Trump for both republican and democratic candidates opposed to Trump.

‘They were looking at Trumps business ties, they saw some questionable things about Russians, about his businesses in Russia, they in turn hired this MI6 former investigator, he then came up with additional information from his Russian sources, he was very concerned by the implications of it, he then took it to an FBI colleague that he had known in his undercover work for years, he took it to this FBI man in Rome who turned it over to the bureau in Washington in August.

‘And then, a former British ambassador to Russia independently was made aware of these findings and he took the information to John McCain – Senator John McCain of Arizona – in the period just after the election, and showed it to McCain – additional findings.

‘McCain was sufficiently disturbed by what he read to take it to FBI director James Comey himself personally, they had a five minute meeting the two men, very little was said, McCain turned it over to him and is now awaiting what the FBI’s response is to that information.’

The identity of the former British ambassador has not been disclosed.

Only one former British ambassador to Washington remains in UK government service, Sir Tim Barrow, who went on to be Foreign Office political director and is now Britain’s ambassador to the European Union.

Obama was a terrible president. No doubt about it. Dreadful. But it really does appear that McCain would have been considerably worse. Anyhow, by the time this is over, I won’t be surprised if Lee Harvey Oswald, Madonna, and Woodstock all somehow factor in.

Meanwhile, the God-Emperor Ascendant himself is giving a press conference that will presumably address this. He’s every bit as combative as during the campaign; now he’s talking about the DNC vulnerability to hackers and “the horrible things” that John Podesta said about Hillary.

The media is addressing him as “Mr. President-Elect”. Feels good. HOLY CATS! He just announced that both the President and the Vice-President are NOT governed by conflict-of-interest laws and has been for several administrations.

I don’t think the media is ready for this level of openness.

“I am not going to give you a question. You are fake news” 
– President-Elect Donald Trump to CNN

This is what EIGHT YEARS OF WINNING is going to look like.

Metafake news and golden journalism

Apparently it’s not that hard to provoke the mainstream media into eviscerating itself:

The saga over alleged Russian interference in the U.S. elections took another sinister turn Tuesday, as it was claimed that U.S. intelligence officials provided President-elect Donald Trump with a charge that the Russians had obtained dirt on him.

U.S. officials allegedly included a two-page synopsis of ‘kompromat’ – Russian for compromising material – as part of their security briefing of Trump on Friday.

The material was based on memos compiled by a British intelligence operative who was considered ‘credible’ by the U.S. intelligence community, CNN reported. Disclosure FBI sat on damaging allegations will enrage Democrats after Comey went public with Anthony Weiner material just before election

What is believed to be the 35-page document itself was published by Buzzfeed, which pointed out that it contained errors. Little of its contents can be independently verified, while there has been no official confirmation of the details of the briefing and Donald Trump has branded the claims as ‘fake’.

The document claims Russian sources told the operative that they had extensive material on the now president-elect – including a secret film of him in the suite where President Obama stayed in Moscow, watching prostitutes committing degrading sex acts on the bed where the president slept.

Trump himself has already dismissed the claims, tweeting: ‘FAKE NEWS – A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!’

See, now THIS is how you mock the media and take away its credibility and power, not NAZI-Larping. Let’s just say any time you manage to get Rick Wilson, the CIA, and CNN to bite – and inspire a formal denial from the Kremlin – you have achieved MegaTroll status. One simply has to give the media what they desperately want in a multilayer package that sounds sufficiently believable to them.

MILO himself is looking on with appreciation and thinking, “damn, this guy is good! I mean, like ME good!”

It’s really rather remarkable that neither the conservative nor the mainstream media have developed any ability to scent the presence of channers at work yet. This tends to support the notion that they mostly consist of hypersolipsistic women and socially challenged gamma males, neither of whom have any idea how humans actually work.

From Writeup for Cernovich:

On january 10, Buzzfeed posted a story under the byline of Ken Bensinger, Mark Schoofs and Miriam elder titled “these reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties To Russia” and posted a link to a document alleging, among other things, that russia has been cultivating trump for 5+ years, that trump has been in constant contact with the kremlin for information on his opponents, and perhaps most inflammatory, that there are many recorded instances of blackmail of trump in sexual misconduct. A prominent claim is that trump rented the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel in moscow, where he knew that the Obamas had slept in; he them hired a number of prostitutes to perform a ‘golden shower’ (pissplay) on the bed and in the room.

Noted #nevertrump voice Rick Wilson later commented on twitter, stating that the report “gave a new meaning to Wikileaks” and that the report was the reason everybody was fighting so hard against the election of Trump.

The remarkable thing? It’s all fake. And not only fake; it’s a prank perpetuated by 4chan, on Rick Wilson himself. A post on 4chan on october 26 stated “mfw managed to convince CTR and certain (((journalists))) on Twitter there’ll be an October surprise on Trump this Friday” along with a picture of a smug face with a hash name.


on november 1, a person without a picture but is assumed to be the same person posted “So they took what I told Rick Wilson and added a Russian spy angle to it. They still believe it. Guys, they’re truly fucking desperate – there’s no remaining Trump scandal that’s credible.”

on january 10, moments after the story broke and began to gain traction on social media, a person with the same smug grin face, and the same hash title for the picture, stated “I didn’t think they’d take it so far.”

This story has taken on something of a life of it’s own. Going through Rick Wilson’s twitter, you can find many different stories from the time that he had shown the story to a wide number of anti-trump news sources, trying to find a news organization that would actually publish the story. During that time period, he referred to it often as ‘the thing’, and often playing coy with followers on the content with the story with anybody who was not also a #Nevertrumper. Unconfirmed sources has people as high up as John McCain giving the story to FBI Director James Comey to attempt to verify the story. Given that Rick Wilson runs in Establishment circles, it is not an impossible scenario that long-serving senators are falling for what amounts to a 4chan troll trump supporter creating an ironic October Surprise out of wholecloth to punk a GOPe pundit who derogatorily referred to them as single men who masturbate to anime.

I remember Rick Wilson’s “October Surprise” hints and assuming that they would amount to nothing. But I was wrong. /pol/ rickrolled him. This truly exceeds expectations.

UPDATE: The Kremlin has officially denied the story.

UPDATE: Even a cursory read should have been sufficient to determine the report was fake. From Instapundit: British intelligence describes events surrounding the “World Cup Soccer tournament.” This is a dead giveaway. First, the Brits don’t say “soccer”. Second, as far as the Brits are concerned, there is only one World Cup. “World Cup Soccer tournament” sounds about as credible as “The National Tackle Football Premier Cup”.

UPDATE: Jake Tapper was involved in CNN pushing the story. He must be really desperate to move the focus away from Pizzagate. I wonder why?

UPDATE: Downing Street sought to distance itself from a report – apparently compiled by a former MI6 operative – claiming the Russians have a file of incriminating material on the president-elect.

All your rhetoric are belong to us

A GamerGate tactic goes mainstream and the mainstream media backs down fast.

When Jim DeMint wanted to dis a TV interviewer’s suggestion that Obamacare has merits as well as flaws, the former senator and tea partyer used a handy putdown: “You can put all that under the category of fake news.”

When conspiracy theorist Alex Jones wanted to deny a CNN report that Ivanka Trump would take over the East Wing offices traditionally occupied by the first lady, he used the same label.

And when a writer for an arch-conservative website needed a putdown for ABC’s chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl, he reached for the obvious: “fake-news propagandist.”

Fake news has a real meaning — deliberately constructed lies, in the form of news articles, meant to mislead the public. For example: The one falsely claiming that Pope Francis had endorsed Donald Trump, or the one alleging without basis that Hillary Clinton would be indicted just before the election.

But though the term hasn’t been around long, its meaning already is lost. Faster than you could say “Pizzagate,” the label has been co-opted to mean any number of completely different things: Liberal claptrap. Or opinion from left-of-center. Or simply anything in the realm of news that the observer doesn’t like to hear.

“The speed with which the term became polarized and in fact a rhetorical weapon illustrates how efficient the conservative media machine has become,” said George Washington University professor Nikki Usher.

As Jeremy Peters wrote in the New York Times: “Conservative cable and radio personalities, top Republicans and even Mr. Trump himself . . . have appropriated the term and turned it against any news they see as hostile to their agenda.”

So, here’s a modest proposal for the truth-based community.

Let’s get out the hook and pull that baby off stage. Yes: Simply stop using it.

The Alt-Right and conservatives managed to jujitsu the rhetorical term “fake news” so easily because the best rhetoric is rooted in truth. And because it is readily observable that no one reports more false information than the mainstream media, there were far more examples that could be reasonably described as “fake news” to be found in the mainstream media than were being spread around social media by the Right. Ergo, it stuck to them rather than to their targets, and blew up in their faces.

That doesn’t mean the tactic will work every time, only when the truth is more in line with the Right’s use of the rhetorical term than the Left’s. Of course, that will be most of the time, as the shameless dishonesty in this piece demonstrates:

“the label has been co-opted to mean any number of completely different things: Liberal claptrap. Or opinion from left-of-center. Or simply anything in the realm of news that the observer doesn’t like to hear.”

No, it hasn’t, as it was instead applied to mean false information presented as accurate news by the mainstream media. Notice that Left can’t afford to be completely honest even when they are affecting to do so, which is why they will always be vulnerable to rhetorical jujitsu of this sort. And on a tangential note, observe that this is why larping and “mocking” the media by playing along with its narrative is always a mistake, as doing so strengthens their rhetoric and eliminates the possibility of turning it around on them.

If you don’t understand the tactic’s connection to #GamerGate, it is an application of the frequently used GG tactic of taking over enemy hashtags, also known as “all ur hashtag are belong to us”. I even described this specific tactic in modest detail in SJWs Always Lie.

Latvia should stand up to Russia too

Idiot Hollywood actress calls for the press “to stand up to” the God-Emperor Ascendant:

Donald Trump has slammed Meryl Streep as ‘one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood’ after she used her Golden Globes acceptance speech to publicly slam the President-elect.  The Cecil B. DeMille honoree took aim at Trump, without mentioning him by name, by calling the moment he mocked a disabled reporter the most stunning performance of the year.

But Trump has hit back on Twitter, dismissing the actress as a ‘Hillary flunky’. He tweeted: ‘Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn’t know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes. She is a Hillary flunky who lost big.”

Trump came under fire in 2015 for mocking New York Times investigative reporter Serge Kovaleski by impersonating the journalist’s physical handicap. It was an incident replayed frequently in campaign advertising.  Streep, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention, also called for the press to stand up to Trump and hold him to account going forward.

What on Earth does she think the media was doing throughout the general campaign? The only way the press could have been more all-in for Hillary would have required a deathmatch with Huma first. The God-Emperor Ascendant knows the media are his avowed enemies, and he’s already informed them that they will henceforth be his bitches whether they play along or not, so one wonders what on Earth the washed-up old hag thinks the press is going to accomplish by failing harder.

By the way, it may interest some to note that Serge Kovaleski is not only the aforementioned handicapable journalist, he’s also the incompetent reporter who requested, and then promptly buried, my answers to his questions about the Alt-Right, because they did not suit his preconceived narrative.

The 2nd Law of SJW in action

They always double down, even if it requires eating one of their own. Glenn Greenwald appears to be somewhat surprised that they would turn on him, of all people.

I’ve done some, you know, pretty controversial and polarizing reporting in the past decade when I’ve been writing about politics. And when you do that, you obviously get attacked in lots of different ways. It’s not just me; it’s everybody who engages. It’s just sort of the rough and tumble of politics and journalism. But I really haven’t experienced anything even remotely like the smear campaign that has been launched by Democrats in this really coordinated way ever since I began just expressing skepticism about the prevailing narrative over Russia and its role that it allegedly played in the election and, in particular, in helping to defeat Hillary Clinton. I mean, not even the reporting I did based on the Edward Snowden archive, which was extremely controversial in multiple countries around the world, not even that compared to the attacks now.

And the reason is very, very obvious, which is that it has become exceptionally important to Democratic partisans to believe that the reason they lost this election is not because they chose a candidate who was corrupt and who was extremely disliked and who symbolized all of the worst failings of the Democratic Party. It’s extremely important to them not to face what is really a systemic collapse on the part of the Democratic Party as a political force in the United States, in the House, in the Senate, in state houses and governorships all over the country. And so, in order not to face any of that and have to confront their own failings, they instead want to focus everything on Vladimir Putin and Russia and insist that the reason they lost was because this big, bad dictator interfered in the election. And anyone who challenges or anyone who questions that instantly becomes not just their enemy, but now, according to their framework, someone who’s actually unpatriotic, that if you question the evidence, the sufficiency of the evidence to support this theory, that somehow your loyalties are suspect, that you’re not just a critic of the Democratic Party, you’re actually a stooge of or an agent of the Kremlin.

And obviously we’ve seen this rhetoric for decades during the Cold War, although back then it was the far right using it against Democrats for wanting to have better relations with Russia. We saw it in 2002, when people who questioned the sufficiency of the evidence about Saddam’s WMDs were accused of being apologists for Saddam or agents of Iraq. We’ve seen it repeatedly through the war on terror. Whenever anyone questions the policies of the U.S. government, you get accused of being pro-terrorist or on the side of al-Qaeda. These are the kinds of bullying smear tactics that have become very common.

But because Democrats are so desperate to put the blame on everybody but themselves for the complete collapse of their party, they’re particularly furious at anybody who vocally challenges this narrative. And since I’ve been one of the people most vocally doing so, the smear campaign has been like none that I have ever encountered. I have been accused of being a member of the alt-right, of being an admirer of Breitbart, of being supportive of Donald Trump, of helping him get elected and, of course, of being a Kremlin operative. And it’s just this constant flow, not from fringe accounts online, but from the Democratic operatives and pundits with the greatest influence. In fact, Howard Dean, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, went on Twitter three weeks ago and said, “I think it would be really interesting to find out whether The Intercept is receiving money from Russia or Iran”—something that he obviously has zero evidence or basis for suggesting, but this is what the Democratic Party has become.

Welcome to the Alt-Right Neo-KKK, Mr. Greenwald!

This, and not dancing for the media, is how people are converted. They speak what they know to be truth, and are attacked for it. That is why we need to resolutely stand by the truth in every dialectic encounter.

All you need to know

One of the better mainstream media articles you’ll see on the Alt-Right was published by the Irish Times. Interesting to see that they got the Alt-Right/Alt-Lite distinction right, which virtually never happens in the US media, which keeps trying to anoint everyone from MILO to the corpse of Adolf Hitler himself the leader of the Alt-Right.

The alt-right is one part political movement, two parts subculture. This can make it difficult for outsiders to understand. To assist you in comprehending the chatter on Twitter hashtags such as #AltRight and #Frogtwitter, here’s a simple glossary.

Alt-lite: The more mainstream form of the alternative right, embodied by figures such as Vice founder Gavin McInnes or Breitbart Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos.

Alt-right: A young, energetic upstart faction of the Trump coalition heavily active on Twitter and underground forums. Characterised by nationalism, scepticism toward globalism and an irreverent sense of humour.

Blue hair: An aggressive, unpleasant feminist with brightly coloured hair, usually depicted as being overweight.

Cat lady: An older, less aggressive version of a blue hair. Cat ladies prefer MSNBC and Cosmopolitan, whereas a blue hair spends her life on social blogging platform Tumblr.

Cathedral: The ad-hoc post-second World War liberal-socialist alliance dominating western culture. Coined by pseudonymous neoreactionary blogger Mencius Moldbug, this includes everything from academia to media to government.

Chad: An alpha normie (see below). The alt-right seeks to appeal to Chads, a project known as Chad Nationalism.

Cuckservative: A portmanteau of “cuckold” and “conservative”, which was originally meant to imply that mainstream conservatives protected the welfare of foreign groups over Americans. Often shortened to “cuck” to describe any weak or feminine man. Conservative commentators Erick Erickson and Rick Wilson are exemplars.

About all that is missing is the 16 Points and the Alt-White.

He did not enjoy the smell of heresy

The God-Emperor Ascendant puts the fear of himself into the House Republicans:

The Trump effect has landed forcefully on Capitol Hill.

Less than two hours after President-elect Donald Trump criticized House Republicans — in a tweet, of course — for trying to gut an ethics investigative unit on the first day of business in the new Congress, those plans lay in shambles in the Republican conference’s meeting room…. By aiming his social-media fire hose on fellow Republicans — even as he assembles a Cabinet filled with billionaires and insiders — Trump made clear that he intends to continue giving voice to the anti-establishment outsiders who propelled him through the Republican primaries against much more seasoned politicians and to an electoral-college win against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

That may give Trump leverage over those members of the Republican conference who have claimed the “outsider” mantle for the past six years, a period when the most conservative Republicans have gained stature back home by flouting leadership, whether it was John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) as speaker or Ryan for the past 15 months.

These Republicans regularly turned their backs on party leadership and claimed ideological purity in their carefully crafted districts that were bastions of like-minded conservatives. They operated on the assumption that the only likely political penalty was a primary challenge from the right.

Now, their party’s leader wields a Twitter account with 18.5 million followers. As he prepares to enter the Oval Office in little more than two weeks, Trump is far more popular in their districts than they are. He employs as his chief strategist the former leader of Breitbart News, a conservative media outlet that has included among its top targets the skewering of Republicans not deemed suitably conservative.

As a result, the first day of the 115th Congress served as a sort of beta test of how some Republicans will react when Trump sics his media power on them. If the most conservative flank tries to buck Trump on a pricey infrastructure deal, how will they handle the heat from Trump’s Twitter feed? If moderate Republicans try to block his moves on health care, will they withstand the heat if Trump goes to Breitbart to attack them by name?

On Tuesday the answer came fast: Run for cover.

It is good to see Donald Trump putting the bully back in the bully pulpit. Someone needs to keep the corrupt bastards in line.

Want to get re-elected, Congressman? Then you’d damn well better play ball.

Con star or fighter?

Todd Kincannon explains the difference on Gab:

Todd Kincannon · @ToddKincannon
If you are ever wondering whether somebody is a real fighter or just a Conservative Media Star™ (or wannabe), ask me. Ann Coulter, fighter. A.J. Delgado, fighter. John Derbyshire, fighter. Everybody at Taki’s Magazine and @VDare, fighters. 99% of National Review, Conservative Media Stars™.

Todd Kincannon · @ToddKincannon
I’ve always thought military analogies in politics are lame, but here we go: I fought in the trenches to get Trump elected. The Trump people know who I am and what I did. All of them think Bill Mitchell is a useless clown who did nothing but run his mouth to people who were already voting Trump.

Todd Kincannon · @ToddKincannon
Tweeting “Rah Rah Sis Boom Bah” stuff all day does not tangibly help the cause. That’s all Bill Mitchell has ever done, and all he appears capable of doing, either due to a lack of brains, a lack of balls, or both. My money’s on both.

Todd Kincannon · @ToddKincannon
People who only preach to the converted are not useful allies in fighting the Left, especially when their entire goal is to become a Conservative Media Star™. That’s Bill Mitchell. People like that are useless and always have been. And there are a helluva lot of them.

Todd Kincannon · @ToddKincannon
Bill Mitchell, Erick Erickson, Jonah Goldberg, Kurt Schlichter, George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Glenn Beck, and many, many more, far too many to name. All each cares about is being a Conservative Media Star™. Not one of them actually cares if we accomplish anything in fighting the Left.

Todd Kincannon · @ToddKincannon
Seriously, the number one word associated with Bill Mitchell in real Trump operative circles is “clown.” The number two word associated with Bill Mitchell by actual Trump operatives is “who?”

Todd Kincannon · @ToddKincannon
There is a third category of people who are fighters but not for the things we believe in. Bill Kristol is an example. He’s a true fighter, but he fights for the globalists. I respect Bill Kristol, though I strongly disagree with him. I do not respect the Conservative Media Star™ crowd.

I’m not part of the Trump People, nor am I an actual Trump operative, but I have to confess, when this Bill Mitchell stuff blew up on social media as the post-election drama du jour, my reaction was most definitely “who?”

Followed by: “I don’t care.” I still have no idea who he is. NB: This is not an invitation to inform me. I rest content in my ignorance of the matter.

The banished slave-girl

After which the God-Emperor Ascendant sent her to NBC, shorn, dishonored, unwanted, and unloved. From the Carlos Slim blog:

Megyn Kelly, who arrived at Fox News 12 years ago as a television news neophyte but rose to become one of its two biggest stars, has decided to leave the network to take on a broad new role at NBC News for an undisclosed amount, people briefed on the negotiations said on Tuesday.

The NBC News chairman, Andrew Lack, wooed Ms. Kelly away from Fox News by offering her a triple role in which she will host her own daytime news and discussion program, anchor an in-depth Sunday night news show and take regular part in the network’s special political programming and other big-event coverage.

The move will herald a seismic shift in the cable news landscape, where Ms. Kelly had become the second-most watched host — after Bill O’Reilly of Fox News — and often helped define the national political debate, especially over the last year as Donald J. Trump regularly attacked her, at times in viciously personal terms.

On the radio

Today at 9 AM Eastern I’ll be appearing on Jesse Lee Peterson’s show. For details concerning where you can hear it, check @jlptalk on Twitter.

And for those who might be tempted to sperg about my “don’t talk to the media” policy, note that he’s a WND man. I am always pleased to speak with friends, allies, and colleagues, in public or in private.

UPDATE: the link to the recording.