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After we wake up and stop playing this bizarre “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” game with Trump, the hangover from what the FBI (and the CIA) did in OUR ele

After we wake up and stop playing this bizarre “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” game with Trump, the hangover from what the FBI (and the CIA) did in OUR elections is going to be massive. Make distrusting the intelligence agencies cool again!

tehjoker 6y ago
It's crazy how the intelligence agencies used Trump to make themselves look like knights in shining armor to liberals while their true nature is torturing people in dark rooms. 100% that if they were doing this stuff in 1974, they're still doing some version of it today.
- krapp 6y ago
  >It's crazy how the intelligence agencies used Trump to make themselves look like knights in shining armor to liberals That's not a thing that actually happened - "liberals" don't trust the intelligence agencies any more or less than they did before Trump. And I don't know why this article has people suddenly running defense for Trump when it doesn't even mention him. But interesting play nonetheless.
  - tehjoker 6y ago
    Remember all the intelligence people, like former CIA director Brennan that became MSNBC pundits? Remember the time they made a big deal of Trump offending the CIA in front of the wall of fallen heroes? For the record, I despise Trump. I am not defending him, but I don't like people thinking highly of the longstanding dark institutions that have been at the heart of American politics since WW2. Trump = Bad does not mean any other part of the American state is good.
    - stretchcat 6y ago
      The wall of fallen spooks.
    - AndrewBissell 6y ago
      It's not just the intelligence agencies. Gallup polling shows liberals' trust in the media skyrocketed after Trump's election and has remained persistently high despite the whole Russiagate farce.
      - triceratops 6y ago
        > Russiagate farce You mean when the DoJ indicted, charged, or successfully prosecuted a number of Russian nationals and members of the Trump administration for election-related crimes or obstruction of justice? That farce? Like someone said, "For a purported witchhunt, they sure found a lot of actual witches."
        AndrewBissell 6y ago
        If all that was on offer from the beginning was taking out a few lackeys like Manafort and Stone obviously it wouldn't have captured liberals' attention the way it did. They were expecting a big break of evidence that Trump was a Manchurian candidate installed by the master Svengali Putin. It was a classic psychological deflection tactic on liberals' part, "Trump's election can't be a symptom of any real institutional rot in America, it's just a result of dirty foreign tricks that will be exposed and easily rectified by removing Trump." Even the New Yorker was finally forced to admit "maybe we went too far with this." https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/14/is-russian-meddling-as-dangerous-as-we-think https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/14/is-russian-med...
        triceratops 6y ago
        > They were expecting a big break of evidence that Trump was a Manchurian candidate installed by the master Svengali Putin "It couldn't be proved to be bad as some people said" is not the same thing as "farce". The stuff that was proven was bad and illegal. The Mueller report concluded that there was some evidence of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.[1] The investigation achieved multiple convictions and indictments. > "Trump's election can't be a symptom of any real institutional rot in America, it's just a result of dirty foreign tricks that will be exposed and easily rectified by removing Trump. It's not an either-or. Trump was only ever a competitive candidate due to real, deep problems and widespread disillusionment with the establishment. But it's also possible that Russian social media campaigns, the DNC email hacks, and the Comey letter tipped the scales (80k votes in 3 states) in his favor in 2016. We'll never really know. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#Redacted_report_findings_compared_to_Barr_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#Redacted_report...
  - Zetaphor 6y ago
    James Comey and Robert Mueller were popular among the left (of which I consider myself a part) because of their resistance to Trump
    - munk-a 6y ago
      "among the left" is a really wide net to throw and I don't think it really does any favors to your statement to be so overly general. I think it's pretty much the mirror image of the Benghazi investigations. Some investigating needed to happen, but politics got involved and turned the whole thing into a circus. This isn't particularly surprising since the US's two party system usually leads to extremely incompatible "truths" now that social media bubbles exist.
    - krapp 6y ago
      > James Comey and Robert Mueller were popular among the left (of which I consider myself a part) because of their resistance to Trump Because of their resistance to Trump. That doesn't translate to the left, in general, suddenly being in favor of and trusting the three letter agencies or the military industrial complex. You know, the side of the political spectrum with all of the anti-war protestors and socialists. The narrative is bizarre. Edit: never mind, I see this is about discrediting Russiagate for whatever reason, I get it now.
    - AndrewBissell 6y ago
      Both of these guys have been involved in really shady stuff in America's past, they are career company men and never represented or mounted any real threat to Trump. Comey may even be a big part of how Trump even became POTUS in the first place.
    - bee_rider 6y ago
      "The left" is multiply defined. If you mean Democrats generally, the party has become the number one home of middle class people with college degrees. They are naturally going to be more comfortable with the FBI than, say, old school left wing labor activists. It seems less likely that opinions are changing, and more likely that people with certain opinions are moving.
    - 6y ago
  - jeffreyrogers 6y ago
    Liberals tripped over themselves to push a story about Russian bounties that can't be corroborated[0] and that was criticized by people like Glenn Greenwald, hardly a right-winger. It's fine to hate Trump I guess and if you think the ends justify the means, that's your right, but it's demonstrably true that people who in normal years would be highly skeptical of anything coming out of the intelligence agencies are eager to promote anything that makes the Trump administration look bad. Edit: Another aspect of this story is that it was pushed after bipartisan support for exiting Afghanistan was emerging. So basically this "information" was put out there to keep us in a war no one likes and the putatively anti-war party eagerly promoted it because Trump is bad. Edit 2: I fully expected this comment to be downvoted, but I hope some of you downvoters will engage with my argument in the replies, since most of you have no argument against my claims, which are factually true. [0]: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/top-pentagon-officials-russian-bounty-program-corroborated/story?id=71694167 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/top-pentagon-officials-russi...
    - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
      Anyone claiming the Russian bounty program was a certainty or a hoax is misinformed. Some credible agencies had a high degree of confidence; others, such as the NSA, disagreed [1]. “Can’t be corroborated” reflects the NSA’s view, but not the CIA or NIC’s, who found it “credibly sourced and plausible, but falling short of certainty.” [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_bounty_program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_bounty_program
      - AndrewBissell 6y ago
        The tone of the initial NYT story that broke the scoop certainly didn't reflect any of this uncertainty. Would have been a good idea for them to check in with the NSA or the DoD first!
      - cheaprentalyeti 6y ago
        I can't even say this without sounding like a "whataboutism," but the main material support for the Taliban in Afghanistan, for the last nineteen years, roughly two decades of war, has been Pakistan, and we've done NOTHING about it but keep shoveling them money in exchange for the transit rights to ship material through to support our troops in a rearguard fight against their minions. WE are paying people to kill US troops by ignoring what Pakistan does with the money. And that they were harboring Osama Bin Laden for a decade. But we need to chase rumors that Russia does the same. Yeah, right. Maybe we need to stop sending troops to countries where they're not accomplishing anything besides being hostages?
dragonwriter 6y ago
Maybe, but news from 1975 that already was part of revelations of that nature that triggered their backlash, legislative responses, and every other kind of “hangover” they could, before many people voting today we're even born, probably aren't much of a factor in that except as precedent and context, not news or triggering events.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  If you thought it was bad in 1975, wait until you learn about the patriot act, FISA courts, and FVEYS!
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    There weren't “FISA courts” before the revelations in the 1970s because there was no judicial oversight or legal limits with penalties applied to surveillance by the national security apparatus at all. FISA, the courts it created, and the criminalization of domestic surveillance outside of specified limitations were part of the backlash against the abuses that were revealed in the mid-1970s.
    - ed25519FUUU 6y ago
      I miss the days when “wiretapping” someone literally required you to physically tap into a wire. It’s so much easier to do it now.
jancsika 6y ago
> Make distrusting the intelligence agencies cool again. How about "make citing sources and referring explicitly to documented acts of corruption cool again."
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  My first experience being “black pilled” with the Russia hoax was finally getting to the bottom of what that whole “trump tower computer backchannel to Russian Alfa bank” thing was all about[1] (this link will not give you the answer, just allegations) As a technical person it made me curious. A direct “connection”? Was it an IRC channel? Was trump talking directly to a Russian bank over AOL instant messenger?? Lol what a joke it turned out to be. Good luck to you as you wade through mountains of MSM excrement in search of answers. It’s easy to find the allegations and hard to find the truth. Is that by accident? Make distrusting the intelligence agencies great again! 1. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-server-tied-to-russian-bank/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-server-tied-to-russi...
  - VintageCool 6y ago
    It was three servers doing DNS lookups on each other. One was Alfa Bank. One was in Trump Tower. One was at Spectrum Health, which is owned by the DeVos family. Notable members include Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Blackwater founder Erik Prince. Erik Prince is known to set up backchannel meetings between the Trump team and Putin associates in the Seychelles.
    - ed25519FUUU 6y ago
      You’re leaving out the crucial details as to why any DNS queries or connections were made, while also still clinging to some allusion of malfeasance. Also you might want to let Snopes know. They still have it as “unproven”
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  By this line of reasoning you would not have distrusted the FBI up until the moment these stories broke in the mid 70s, long after the point where that distrust would have been useful in the present moment.

tehjoker 6y ago

It's crazy how the intelligence agencies used Trump to make themselves look like knights in shining armor to liberals while their true nature is torturing people in dark rooms. 100% that if they were doing this stuff in 1974, they're still doing some version of it today.

krapp 6y ago
>It's crazy how the intelligence agencies used Trump to make themselves look like knights in shining armor to liberals That's not a thing that actually happened - "liberals" don't trust the intelligence agencies any more or less than they did before Trump. And I don't know why this article has people suddenly running defense for Trump when it doesn't even mention him. But interesting play nonetheless.
- tehjoker 6y ago
  Remember all the intelligence people, like former CIA director Brennan that became MSNBC pundits? Remember the time they made a big deal of Trump offending the CIA in front of the wall of fallen heroes? For the record, I despise Trump. I am not defending him, but I don't like people thinking highly of the longstanding dark institutions that have been at the heart of American politics since WW2. Trump = Bad does not mean any other part of the American state is good.
  - stretchcat 6y ago
    The wall of fallen spooks.
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    It's not just the intelligence agencies. Gallup polling shows liberals' trust in the media skyrocketed after Trump's election and has remained persistently high despite the whole Russiagate farce.
    - triceratops 6y ago
      > Russiagate farce You mean when the DoJ indicted, charged, or successfully prosecuted a number of Russian nationals and members of the Trump administration for election-related crimes or obstruction of justice? That farce? Like someone said, "For a purported witchhunt, they sure found a lot of actual witches."
      - AndrewBissell 6y ago
        If all that was on offer from the beginning was taking out a few lackeys like Manafort and Stone obviously it wouldn't have captured liberals' attention the way it did. They were expecting a big break of evidence that Trump was a Manchurian candidate installed by the master Svengali Putin. It was a classic psychological deflection tactic on liberals' part, "Trump's election can't be a symptom of any real institutional rot in America, it's just a result of dirty foreign tricks that will be exposed and easily rectified by removing Trump." Even the New Yorker was finally forced to admit "maybe we went too far with this." https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/14/is-russian-meddling-as-dangerous-as-we-think https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/14/is-russian-med...
        triceratops 6y ago
        > They were expecting a big break of evidence that Trump was a Manchurian candidate installed by the master Svengali Putin "It couldn't be proved to be bad as some people said" is not the same thing as "farce". The stuff that was proven was bad and illegal. The Mueller report concluded that there was some evidence of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.[1] The investigation achieved multiple convictions and indictments. > "Trump's election can't be a symptom of any real institutional rot in America, it's just a result of dirty foreign tricks that will be exposed and easily rectified by removing Trump. It's not an either-or. Trump was only ever a competitive candidate due to real, deep problems and widespread disillusionment with the establishment. But it's also possible that Russian social media campaigns, the DNC email hacks, and the Comey letter tipped the scales (80k votes in 3 states) in his favor in 2016. We'll never really know. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#Redacted_report_findings_compared_to_Barr_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#Redacted_report...
- Zetaphor 6y ago
  James Comey and Robert Mueller were popular among the left (of which I consider myself a part) because of their resistance to Trump
  - munk-a 6y ago
    "among the left" is a really wide net to throw and I don't think it really does any favors to your statement to be so overly general. I think it's pretty much the mirror image of the Benghazi investigations. Some investigating needed to happen, but politics got involved and turned the whole thing into a circus. This isn't particularly surprising since the US's two party system usually leads to extremely incompatible "truths" now that social media bubbles exist.
  - krapp 6y ago
    > James Comey and Robert Mueller were popular among the left (of which I consider myself a part) because of their resistance to Trump Because of their resistance to Trump. That doesn't translate to the left, in general, suddenly being in favor of and trusting the three letter agencies or the military industrial complex. You know, the side of the political spectrum with all of the anti-war protestors and socialists. The narrative is bizarre. Edit: never mind, I see this is about discrediting Russiagate for whatever reason, I get it now.
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    Both of these guys have been involved in really shady stuff in America's past, they are career company men and never represented or mounted any real threat to Trump. Comey may even be a big part of how Trump even became POTUS in the first place.
  - bee_rider 6y ago
    "The left" is multiply defined. If you mean Democrats generally, the party has become the number one home of middle class people with college degrees. They are naturally going to be more comfortable with the FBI than, say, old school left wing labor activists. It seems less likely that opinions are changing, and more likely that people with certain opinions are moving.
  - 6y ago
- jeffreyrogers 6y ago
  Liberals tripped over themselves to push a story about Russian bounties that can't be corroborated[0] and that was criticized by people like Glenn Greenwald, hardly a right-winger. It's fine to hate Trump I guess and if you think the ends justify the means, that's your right, but it's demonstrably true that people who in normal years would be highly skeptical of anything coming out of the intelligence agencies are eager to promote anything that makes the Trump administration look bad. Edit: Another aspect of this story is that it was pushed after bipartisan support for exiting Afghanistan was emerging. So basically this "information" was put out there to keep us in a war no one likes and the putatively anti-war party eagerly promoted it because Trump is bad. Edit 2: I fully expected this comment to be downvoted, but I hope some of you downvoters will engage with my argument in the replies, since most of you have no argument against my claims, which are factually true. [0]: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/top-pentagon-officials-russian-bounty-program-corroborated/story?id=71694167 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/top-pentagon-officials-russi...
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    Anyone claiming the Russian bounty program was a certainty or a hoax is misinformed. Some credible agencies had a high degree of confidence; others, such as the NSA, disagreed [1]. “Can’t be corroborated” reflects the NSA’s view, but not the CIA or NIC’s, who found it “credibly sourced and plausible, but falling short of certainty.” [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_bounty_program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_bounty_program
    - AndrewBissell 6y ago
      The tone of the initial NYT story that broke the scoop certainly didn't reflect any of this uncertainty. Would have been a good idea for them to check in with the NSA or the DoD first!
    - cheaprentalyeti 6y ago
      I can't even say this without sounding like a "whataboutism," but the main material support for the Taliban in Afghanistan, for the last nineteen years, roughly two decades of war, has been Pakistan, and we've done NOTHING about it but keep shoveling them money in exchange for the transit rights to ship material through to support our troops in a rearguard fight against their minions. WE are paying people to kill US troops by ignoring what Pakistan does with the money. And that they were harboring Osama Bin Laden for a decade. But we need to chase rumors that Russia does the same. Yeah, right. Maybe we need to stop sending troops to countries where they're not accomplishing anything besides being hostages?

dragonwriter 6y ago

Maybe, but news from 1975 that already was part of revelations of that nature that triggered their backlash, legislative responses, and every other kind of “hangover” they could, before many people voting today we're even born, probably aren't much of a factor in that except as precedent and context, not news or triggering events.

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
If you thought it was bad in 1975, wait until you learn about the patriot act, FISA courts, and FVEYS!
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  There weren't “FISA courts” before the revelations in the 1970s because there was no judicial oversight or legal limits with penalties applied to surveillance by the national security apparatus at all. FISA, the courts it created, and the criminalization of domestic surveillance outside of specified limitations were part of the backlash against the abuses that were revealed in the mid-1970s.
  - ed25519FUUU 6y ago
    I miss the days when “wiretapping” someone literally required you to physically tap into a wire. It’s so much easier to do it now.

jancsika 6y ago

> Make distrusting the intelligence agencies cool again. How about "make citing sources and referring explicitly to documented acts of corruption cool again."

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
My first experience being “black pilled” with the Russia hoax was finally getting to the bottom of what that whole “trump tower computer backchannel to Russian Alfa bank” thing was all about[1] (this link will not give you the answer, just allegations) As a technical person it made me curious. A direct “connection”? Was it an IRC channel? Was trump talking directly to a Russian bank over AOL instant messenger?? Lol what a joke it turned out to be. Good luck to you as you wade through mountains of MSM excrement in search of answers. It’s easy to find the allegations and hard to find the truth. Is that by accident? Make distrusting the intelligence agencies great again! 1. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-server-tied-to-russian-bank/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-server-tied-to-russi...
- VintageCool 6y ago
  It was three servers doing DNS lookups on each other. One was Alfa Bank. One was in Trump Tower. One was at Spectrum Health, which is owned by the DeVos family. Notable members include Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Blackwater founder Erik Prince. Erik Prince is known to set up backchannel meetings between the Trump team and Putin associates in the Seychelles.
  - ed25519FUUU 6y ago
    You’re leaving out the crucial details as to why any DNS queries or connections were made, while also still clinging to some allusion of malfeasance. Also you might want to let Snopes know. They still have it as “unproven”
AndrewBissell 6y ago
By this line of reasoning you would not have distrusted the FBI up until the moment these stories broke in the mid 70s, long after the point where that distrust would have been useful in the present moment.