I have absolutely no idea what your point is and I doubt anyone else does either.
I think the point is that Taibbi et. al are coming by their tankie sensibilities honestly and in good faith. When you grow up, you too will realize Putin is simply acting in his own interests, like Biden and Macron.
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His point is that you sound like a raving lunatic alleging that already-rich US contrarian journalists are on the Putin payroll and your evidence is that they are being contrarian. Is your impression of Greenwald that he is having a normal one other than on Russia issues?
This board in general is incredibly credulous on Russiagate. A good check on whether you are falling for a conspiracy theory is to think about how the world would look different if your theory wasn’t true. Someone coming to the Trump Administration with fresh eyes and told it was in the pocket of some country or other would clearly come up with Saudi Arabia. There was the fawning reaction to the literal murder and dismemberment of a US journalist, there was the 2 billion dollar “investment” to Kuchner, there is nothing remotely that convincing for Russia. There’s just efforts to support the campaign of the candidate who, for a whole bunch of reasons (NATO skepticism, incompetence) was obviously the guy Russia would want to win the election.
The Twitter Files were mostly nothingburgers but the Hamilton 68 stuff was insane, endless media reporting on “Russian influence on social media” that was based on absolutely transparent bullshit. If you don’t know what I’m talking about here, it’s because you live in a bubble on this subject.
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Trump’s bizarre Putin slurping in 2016 is consistent with a conspiracy to secure a business deal (Trump Tower Moscow) and then once the Presidency seemed attainable, keep that deal secret and attack his opponent instead.
Did the conspiracy end once Trump’s own party and appointees became suspicious and launched Mueller time on him? Sure.
Helsinki.
ETA: Looking at Trump with fresh eyes means you see Saudi Arabia, Russia, North Korea, Turkey… whatever other dictators traded money and narcissist-fuel for favors.
Why can’t it be multiple countries?
Well it is. Trump is just generally corrupt. There’s no evidence for Putin having any control over him though. You would think the death knell for this theory would be Putin not invading Ukraine until Biden is in office, surely if a puppet President could help you out with anything it would be foreign policy.
Maybe Putin saw it as an easy win and a way to sink Biden’s approval rating also handing the house and senate back to the Republicans in the midterms, ensuring no increase in defense spending, and essentially paving the way for another Republican landslide in the 2024 election too.
All things are possible in your imagination I guess. I would just ask yourself, what exactly is your star piece of evidence that Trump was in Putin’s pocket? How does it compare to something like his speech after the Khashoggi murder? And if Putin not invading Ukraine while Trump was in power doesn’t count as evidence against the theory, what would?
This thread isn’t the place, I’ll write a complete post up on the failure of Russiagate another time. Taibbi is indefensible at this point but MSNBC also suck, both things can be true.
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There’s plenty of evidence that Russia seeds all kinds of disruptive stuff (anti-vaxx, anti-US govt, etc) online with the ultimate goal of promoting anything that destabilizes the US/West and sows dissent. Then it takes off and turns into profit-driven clickbait with a life of its own. Is this even a controversial take?
Russian state media quotes guys like Greenwald and Taibbi all the time. Why wouldn’t Russia want to go a step further and butter their bread? It doesn’t even have to be ever discussed. Just hinted at. Write an article Russia loves - oh look I just got 1000 new subscribers. Step out of line and attack Mother Russia - just lost 1000 subscribers. Still maintaining complete plausible deniability.
I’m not saying I know it’s happening or that I’d even bet on it. But Substack creates an interesting new possibility for something like this to happen. Is it really that much different than radio hosts or pundits in the US whose entire careers are supported by a few rich R donors?
Taibbi and Greenwald are both clearly fame/contrarian whores who have completely lost the plot. Greenwald is a Tucker cheerleader now. Taibbi’s always been a scumbag. But taking money from Russia in this manner would somehow be a bridge too far for their journalistic ethics?
I’m not sure which link in this chain is so unrealistic that it makes me sound like a raving lunatic, or what any of it has to do with Trump or the Steele Dossier.
Think of it this way - Russia is doing nothing different than the CIA did with information warfare in the Cold War, and is probably still doing in more subtle ways now. But the asymmetric nature of the internet battlefield favors Russia now. Does that make it more easier to swallow?
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there’s no “in the pocket of putin” other than trmlp campaigns know full well that putin’s disinfo farms help him, and if it were turned off he would lose a huge part of the base. it’s totally consistent with russian disinformation targeting french, german, british, and elections over half of eastern europe.
you keep saying that trmp never did anything for putin, yet it is clear that he tried to do enough damage to the unity of eu and nato, uncle vlad was probably happy and thought he was winning. could he have been even more deferential to putin? well of course he could have, governing institutions are much bigger than what trmp alone has room to destroy, there’s a lot he didn’t get to.
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Apparently Russian disinfo farms are a figment of our collective imaginations. The Steele Dossier proves it. o_O
According to Bob Woodward the Director of National Intelligence under Trump, Dan Coats, was convinced Putin had blackmail material on Trump. When the head of Intelligence has such remarkable misgivings, it’s not just idle speculation.
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Sure. The other clear case is Turkey. And Turkey did invade Syria when Trump was POTUS.
This is literally true but from my perspective in a different way than you probably mean. I’m curious what you perceive as his major sins here.
It’s time we stopped peddling this preposterous notion that Russia is somehow engaged in nefarious acts or is even close to parity with far more evil countries like Poland and England.
If you need to read more substacks to understand this, well, that’s on you.
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The US/west are far worse. Do you even know many countries they’re clandestinely invading as we speak?
But they weren’t doing this when Trump was President. Verycurious.