This TrumpWorld Grab-Bag post (available wherever TrumpWorld Grab-Bag posts are sold, which is here, for the exact price of "free") is going to be short and sweet, because, honey, I already feel like we've been over this stuff before.
Take the information that we got from the report recently released by US Senators to the effect that the Russian support of the Trump campaign was waged largely on social media and targeted certain demographics, like African-Americans, with the aim of voter suppression. That is very interesting, because, for one thing, people realized the presence of "bot" accounts and disinfo in real time back in 2016, but also because this strategy by Russia paralleled the Trump campaign strategy actually discussed publicly by Brad Parscale.
The same strategy--interesting, right? But I feel like we should have known that by now.
Two associates of Mike Flynn's, Bijan Kian and Ekim Altepkin, were indicted for their involvement in seeking the extradition of Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, which shouldn't feel like a surprise, because that's pretty dodgy, but you know, Flynn was in the room when that was discussed. And it seems like a whole bunch of principals in the Trump Administration knew about it, too, as it was happening. Just like they probably knew he was talking with Kislyak, and they also sounded like they knew the election had received Russian assistance.
It seems to me like we all should have known this much. Also, the released 302 on Flynn's wee talk with the FBI basically backs up what Mueller was saying in response to Flynn's defense sentencing memo: he had been lying, stuck by his lie, was given reason to know that the FBI knew he was lying, kept lying, and didn't step up until he really had no choice--that's not a perjury trap, that's a bunch of bad life decisions. And his sentencing deal looks like either Mueller is a fool and gave him a featherbed (nah!) or Flynn rolled on somebody well up the chain.
And both the Flynn and digital strategy stories tie in with the investigation opening up to Wikistrat. The cast of characters here is fascinating. (I am but a poor blogger and there feels like there's a grift in there that hoovers money for vague results, but who knows?) But Don Jr and Flynn mentioned in the same breath with UAE is nothing, because we already know about Erik Prince and George Nader meeting in the Seychelles for...some reason. (From a security standpoint, these folks were talking about nuclear nonproliferation pertaining to the Middle East. From a hustle standpoint, Flynn at least at some point wanted to spread nuclear power plants in the Middle East. I have nothing to say about that, because screaming myself hoarse before bed makes me so wretched to be around the next day, you know?)
Anyway, for people just tuning in, these are all really interesting developments that would have been great if we knew about them way earlier and in some cases, we could have. I hope we have a nice national discussion about them now. I don't know why I selected the picture above. Maybe recalling a simpler time in the White House, hm?
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