Грабли главнокомандования

[tijd]

Перелом в избирательной кампании 2016 наступил на второй неделе сентября. Обстоятельства того времени разбирались раннее, но имеет смысл к ним вернуться.

Первым знаковым событием стало мероприятие 7 сентября 2016 под названием “Commander-In-Chief Forum”, организованное NBC News на борту музейного авианосца Interpid. Трансляцию смотрело около 15 миллионов американцев. Трамп и Клинтон появлялись не одновременно, но в одном месте перед одной аудиторией и отвечали на вопросы одного ведущего, чтобы продемонстрировать, кто из них более приготовлен к службе главнокомандующим.



Ведущим был Мэтт Лауэр, позже уволенный из NBC после разоблачения длинной истории сексуальных домогательств к сотрудницам. Но ещё до этих разоблачений по тону, который Лауэр взял с Клинтон, было понятно, что ему противна сама мысль о женщине-главнокомандующей. Основное время было потрачено на вопросы о емайлах, о остальное испорчено грубыми перебиваниями. Это контрастировала с подобострастным тоном, которым Лауэр занял с Трампом, позволяя тому заниматься обычным враньем. Прозвучали и славословия в адрес Путина, которым тогда не уделяли должного внимания на фоне всего остального: “I think I would have a very, very good relationship with Putin”.

Таким образом из-за кулис политического спектакля выглянула зловещая гримаса мизогинии. По свежим следам писательница Siri Hustvedt писала:

Would our “fair-minded” journalist have treated a male candidate the way he treated Hillary Clinton? I ask you to search your souls, men and women alike. My answer is no.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2016/09/the-subtle-misogyny-in-matt-lauer-s-interview-with-hillary-clinton-was-appalling.html

Джонатан Чайт тогда же написал колонку “Matt Lauer’s Pathetic Interview of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Is the Scariest Thing I’ve Seen in This Campaign“:

“I had not taken seriously the possibility that Donald Trump could win the presidency until I saw Matt Lauer host an hour-long interview with the two major-party candidates. Lauer’s performance was not merely a failure, it was horrifying and shocking.”
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/09/lauers-pathetic-interview-made-me-think-trump-can-win.html

Признаюсь, что испытал тогда похожие эмоции и поэтому стал писать о выборах. Что касается центральной прессы, то она продолжила двигаться по опасной траектории нормализации Трампа и подстёгивания интриги выборов, как будто речь не шла об опасном клоуне, которого нельзя было На пушечный выстрел подпускать к власти.



Какого главнокомандующего мы получили в итоге, стало особенно заметно потом.

When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.
Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.
Belleau Wood is a consequential battle in American history, and the ground on which it was fought is venerated by the Marine Corps. America and its allies stopped the German advance toward Paris there in the spring of 1918. But Trump, on that same trip, asked aides, “Who were the good guys in this war?” He also said that he didn’t understand why the United States would intervene on the side of the Allies. <...>
On Memorial Day 2017, Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery, a short drive from the White House. He was accompanied on this visit by John Kelly, who was then the secretary of homeland security, and who would, a short time later, be named the White House chief of staff. The two men were set to visit Section 60, the 14-acre area of the cemetery that is the burial ground for those killed in America’s most recent wars. Kelly’s son Robert is buried in Section 60. A first lieutenant in the Marine Corps, Robert Kelly was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan. He was 29. Trump was meant, on this visit, to join John Kelly in paying respects at his son’s grave, and to comfort the families of other fallen service members. But according to sources with knowledge of this visit, Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” Kelly (who declined to comment for this story) initially believed, people close to him said, that Trump was making a ham-handed reference to the selflessness of America’s all-volunteer force. But later he came to realize that Trump simply does not understand non-transactional life choices.
“He can’t fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than himself,” one of Kelly’s friends, a retired four-star general, told me. “He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker. There’s no money in serving the nation.” Kelly’s friend went on to say, “Trump can’t imagine anyone else’s pain. That’s why he would say this to the father of a fallen marine on Memorial Day in the cemetery where he’s buried.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-americans-who-died-at-war-are-losers-and-suckers/615997/

In one account, the president told senior advisers that he didn’t understand why the U.S. government placed such value on finding soldiers missing in action because they had performed poorly and gotten caught and deserved what they got, according to a person familiar with the discussion.
Trump believed people who served in the Vietnam War must be “losers” because they hadn’t gotten out of it, according to a person familiar with the comments. Trump also complained bitterly to then-Chief of Staff John F. Kelly that he didn’t understand why Kelly and others in the military treated McCain, who had been imprisoned and tortured during the Vietnam War, with such reverence. “Isn’t he kind of a loser?” Trump asked, according to the person familiar with Trump’s comments.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-said-us-soldiers-injured-and-killed-in-war-were-losers-magazine-reports/2020/09/03/6e1725cc-ee35-11ea-99a1-71343d03bc29_story.html



9 сентября 2016 Трамп выступает на “ Values Voter Summit”, тем самым консолидируя поддержку белых евангелистов и доминионистов.

Кроме обещаний, которые ожидались подобной аудиторией - о назначении консервативных судей, отмене поправки Джонсона и т.п. в выступлении нашло место и обещанию подружиться с Россией.

“My administration will work with any country that is willing to partner with us to defeat ISIS and halt radical Islamic terrorism. And by the way, that includes Russia. If they want to join us on knocking out ISIS, that is just fine as far as I’m concerned. It’s a very imperfect world, and you can’t always choose your friends. That’s life.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/full-text-trump-values-voter-summit-remarks-227977

Дополнительно христианский Талибан был заверен про единого Бога в единой нации (ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer).

After heaping praise upon the late Phyllis Schlafly, whose last name he mispronounced as “Chafly,” Trump really started to pour on the God talk.
“We’re all equal and we all come from same Creator,” Trump said. “There’s a biblical verse that I’ve often read and I want to repeat it again because I think it is so important to what we’re trying to achieve right now for our country. It’s from 1 John: 4: No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us.”
“So true,” Trump said. “So True.”
“Imagine what our country could accomplish if we started working together as one people, under one God, saluting one flag,” Trump concluded, apparently anticipating a future in which every American, regardless of religion, is required to worship Jesus Christ.
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/donald-trump-imagines-an-america-where-everyone-lives-under-one-god/



День 11 сентября 2016 мог бы стать поводом поговорить о том, как липовый миллиардер не пожертвовал ни копейки на помощь пострадавшим в 9/11 или как в день теракта он стал хвастаться своими небоскребами.

Вместо этого главные газеты и новостные телеканалы были забиты истерикой про обморок Клинтон во время пневмонии и обсуждением того, доживет ли она до выборов. Как позже выяснилось, тема здоровья Клинтон активно раскручивалась российскими троллями и была дополнительно подсказана избирательной кампании Трампа доброжелателями ГРУ через контакты Роджера Стоуна.

In the course of informing Stone about the body of materials in Wikileaks’ possession and Assange’s plans for releasing them, Corsi wrote on Aug. 2: “Time to let more than [the Clinton Campaign Chairman] to be exposed as in bed w enemy if they are not ready to drop HRC. Would not hurt to start suggesting HRC old, memory bad, has stroke - neither he nor she well. I expect that much of next dump focus.” And, indeed, what followed was a pivot in the Trump campaign toward a focus on Clinton’s health-so much so that Chris Matthews observed on Aug. 16, 2016, that a series of recent remarks by Trump on the campaign trail showed that a new “target seems to be the health of his opponent, Hillary Clinton.” Matthews was puzzled, “Well, why are they onto this? Why are they onto - what do they know? Is there something we don’t know in the health records, something - something that could change this election around?”
By the end of August, other news outlets observed the same pattern: “Trump surrogates-people chosen by the campaign to speak on his behalf-have told voters that Mrs Clinton suffered a stroke and has seizures.” A stroke - exactly what Corsi’s email to Stone on Aug. 2 suggested they emphasize in coordination with a coming Wikileaks’ release.
As an aside, we should note that the Kremlin’s influence campaign also considered Clinton’s health a focal point, according to the U.S. Intelligence Community’s January 2017 report. The report highlights the same month of August: “In August, Kremlin-linked political analysts suggested avenging negative Western reports on Putin by airing segments devoted to Secretary Clinton’s alleged health problems.”
https://www.justsecurity.org/61652/jereome-corsi-roger-stone-wikileaks-yes-collusion-legal-significance-mueller-revelations/



Over the weekend, which marked the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Clinton fell ill at a memorial event commemorating the victims of the 2001 attack and later revealed she had been diagnosed with pneumonia two days earlier.
The same weekend, The Washington Post published an investigative report by David Fahrenthold revealing that Trump had “retooled” the Donald J. Trump Foundation to transform it “from a standard-issue rich person’s philanthropy into a charity that allowed a rich man to be philanthropic for free.” The report detailed how Trump has stopped donating to his own foundation, instead filling its coffers with donations from business partners and others; that he uses the money as he pleases, including potentially illegal purchases for himself; that he lies to other charities and the public by suggesting that the foundation’s donations are his own money; and that the foundation has broken both the law and IRS rules.
On Monday, September 12, the two issues drew immensely disproportionate coverage. CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC devoted 13 hours, 41 minutes, and 41 seconds of combined airtime between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. to discussing Clinton’s pneumonia. The same networks devoted less than an hour of combined airtime to the Post’s revelations about the Donald J. Trump Foundation.
https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/study-cable-news-devotes-13-times-much-coverage-clinton-health-trump-foundation

С тех пор Клинтон поправилась, Trump Foundation распустили за мошенничество, а избирательная кампания Трампа 2020 продолжает получать подсказки от кремлевских кураторов и отвлекать внимание прессы набросами мусора на вентилятор.



Новое в игре - «административный ресурс», в частности контроль над разведкой, министерством юстиции и министерством национальной безопасности.

In early July the Department of Homeland Security withheld publication of an intelligence bulletin warning law enforcement agencies of a Russian scheme to promote “allegations about the poor mental health” of former Vice President Joe Biden, according to internal emails and a draft of the document obtained by ABC News.
The draft bulletin, titled “Russia Likely to Denigrate Health of US Candidates to Influence 2020 Election,” was submitted to the agency’s legislative and public affairs office for review on July 7. The analysis was not meant for public consumption, but it was set to be distributed to federal, state and local law enforcement partners two days later, on July 9, the emails show.
Just one hour after its submission, however, a senior DHS official intervened.
“Please hold on sending this one out until you have a chance to speak to [acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf]," wrote DHS Chief of Staff John Gountanis, according to an email obtained by ABC News.
That was nearly two months ago. But the bulletin was never circulated.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dhs-withheld-july-intelligence-bulletin-calling-russian-attack/story?id=72747130

When and how to vote in all 50 stateshttps://t.co/lJGD2qMUfa
- Axios (@axios) September 4, 2020

Особое удовлетворение Путину и его опричникам приносят попытки подорвать доверие к системе подсчета голосов на выборах.

Russia has sought to “amplify” concerns over the integrity of U.S. elections by promoting allegations that mail-in voting will lead to widespread fraud, according to an intelligence bulletin obtained by ABC News, again echoing a frequent and unfounded complaint raised by President Donald Trump.
Analysts with the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence branch issued the warning on Thursday to federal and state law enforcement partners after finding with “high confidence” that “Russian malign influence actors” have targeted the absentee voting process “by spreading disinformation” since at least March.
“Russian state media and proxy websites in mid-August 2020 criticized the integrity of expanded and universal vote-by-mail, claiming ineligible voters could receive ballots due to out-of-date voter rolls, leaving a vast amount of ballots unaccounted for and vulnerable to tampering,” the bulletin notes.
“These websites also alleged that vote-by-mail processes would overburden the U.S. Postal Service and local boards of election,” it continues, “delaying vote tabulation and creating more opportunities for fraud and error.”
President Trump has long sought to undermine public confidence in the upcoming election with baseless warnings that mail-in-voting could lead to widespread voter fraud. With the ongoing coronavirus pandemic expected to keep many voters from casting their ballots in-person, more Americans than ever are expected to vote absentee.
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/russia-amplifying-claims-mail-voter-fraud-intel-bulletin/story?id=72799959

Помимо хаоса в стане противника это позволит в будущем отметать американские упреке в мухлевании с подсчетом голосов в РФ - подобно тем, за которые поплатилась Хиллари Клинтон четыре года назад:

“The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted. And that means they deserve fair, free, transparent elections and leaders who are accountable to them.”