During the campaign, an intelligence report that could not be corroborated was circulating. No one published because nothing could be confirmed. The report revealed that the Russians were in frequent contact with Trump to provide him dirt on his opponents. If this was to be believed, Trump is a traitor. The most spectacular bit in the report had Trump hiring Russian prostitutes to urinate on a bed in the Moscow Ritz Carlton because Barack and Michelle Obama had slept there. Still unable to prove any of it, Buzzfeed ran with the story and CNN covered Buzzfeed. Pranksters on 4Chan and Reddit reveled.
It turns out that a Trump supporter wrote the report and sent it out to see if anyone would report it. Weeks went by and no one took the bait. Responsible journalists desperately wanted to report something this juicy but none of it could be proved. In fact, some of it was demonstrably false. Even so, Buzzfeed finally decided to go with the story, even declaring that it was unproven hearsay from entirely anonymous sources. Trump pounced! A clearer case of fake news would be hard to find. By offering a fake story that was this outlandish, the media has shattered an already fractured credibility. If Trump now sells arms to Russia and China, he can just claim fake news again. As I have said in a previous post, trust is fragile and the media has been exposed through the Podesta email hacks (the contents of which have not been refuted) and now this. Why trust anything the media has to say about Trump?
Here is the opening of the BuzzFeed story:
A dossier, compiled by a person who has claimed to be a former British intelligence official, alleges Russia has compromising information on Trump. The allegations are unverified, and the report contains errors.
This is the kind of introduction that sees an editor kill the story, not print it. Of course, the story has over 5 million views. True or not, it has been a boon for the website.
Here is the opening of the BuzzFeed story:
A dossier, compiled by a person who has claimed to be a former British intelligence official, alleges Russia has compromising information on Trump. The allegations are unverified, and the report contains errors.
This is the kind of introduction that sees an editor kill the story, not print it. Of course, the story has over 5 million views. True or not, it has been a boon for the website.
6 comments:
Stop the presses!
Here I am hearing/reading everywhere that they've identified the former British intelligence agent that compiled the report (who is now in hiding). But that's just what the Lügenpresse tells us, so of course I don't believe that. The truth, as I have just learned here, is that it was written by a Trump supporter on a lark. Of course! Why have I been spending so much time believing the lamestream press when I could have just looked at this blog? Or perhaps those excellent sources of truth, reddit and 4chan?
Buzzfeed had sat on this for a long time, until it was found that the national intelligence community was taking the reports seriously enough to brief the president on the contents. That's a sensible decision: if it's known by the experts to be good enough for the president, it's good enough for the public to hear about.
I bet James Clapper will be pretty embarrassed when he reads here that he's been pranked, falling for fake news - a clearer case of which would be hard to find. Maybe he should have done his research on reddit and 4chan first!
- Jamie
Donald Trump is a noted germaphobe, a man who doesn't like shaking hands. When this was revealed during his flirtation of running for office in 2004, I thought that was a campaign killer. And yet, according to the dossier, he hired some prostitutes to pee on a bed. Germaphobe and Urolagnia don't mix. A guy who builds and manages hotels, who has surely encountered all sorts of vandalism in his rooms through the years, decided to inflict such vandalism on another hotelier? Not buying it.
The dossier says Michael Cohen went to Prague to meet with Kremlin officials. Trump says Cohen's passport shows no such trip. This should be an easy thing for intelligence to confirm. The media have had this for months and have been unable to confirm anything to print even certain sections of the dossier up to now. Even in the release, Buzzfeed admits it is unverified.
I have been to Prague; there is nothing on my passport to show it. The Schengen Zone has been around long enough that I wouldn't expect anyone to be fooled by him showing a passport without a Czech stamp - except that I've grown weary of expecting anyone not to be fooled by anything anymore. That Cohen pulled down such an obvious shade just shows his contempt for the public.
Yeah, the one prurient detail that's getting everyone excited does seem out of character for someone with a germaphobe reputation. But then, the same thing could be said for the forcible kissing of random women, yet that doesn't seem to stop him. Really, you'd think everything about sex is against a germaphobe's tastes, yet somehow people manage.
But really, I don't care about the titillation. I care about the treason - you were right when you said if this is true then Trump's a traitor. There are a lot of difficult questions in that document, and I'll have to have enough faith in the US spooks that they've put a lot of work into raising it from "speculation" to "worth briefing the president." I'm sure they have their reasons for taking it seriously, but as usual they prefer to hold those cards close to their chests, even as it becomes more apparent that a puppet is about to get the throne. That's a big problem with intelligence agencies - their priorities aren't usually the people's priorities.
But the real surprise here is how hard you fell for the fake news about the real news being fake. That's been the Breitbart crowd's playbook ever since the whole "fake news" thing made the headlines after the election.
Which real news did I fall for being fake? Buzzfeed says they can't prove any of it but it's real news? I've never been a fan of Piers Morgan but I think he has a good take on this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4110700/PIERS-MORGAN-hookers-story-cheap-lazy-journalists-ran-fake-Trump-sleaze-urinate-presidency.html
Obviously, that Putin and Trump deny everything is irrelevant and the weakest part of his argument but he offers some good points. If the media isn't going to serve as a filter of fact from fiction, why do they have jobs? I have stumbled on some wildly unlikely stories about Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Bill Clinton that no one in the media thought it was 'my job to decide.' No, they didn't even offer it, because it was crap. Even the rightwingers - the responsible ones - didn't publish that crap. Only fringe outlets had it, which is where that belongs. Unless you can verify it.
As for Cohen, was he in Europe at the time of the meeting? Yes, once in the Schengen Zone, he can wander most of Europe but show me he was in Europe when the meeting took place. That's at least a smidge of confirmation.
As for the presidential briefing, what if Obama said, "Brief me on all the most outlandish and unlikely rumors you've collected about Trump. And then let it be known that you briefed me." Obama has no love for Trump and this serves as a nice bit of sabotage. Why is that interpretation less likely than yours? BTW, I do not believe that is what happened but cannot verify one way or the other. I'll leave it to the American people to decide.
> Which real news did I fall for being fake?
That the report is an actual investigative report written by an actual investigator. Yes, the veracity of the report's contents is under question, but not the reality of the report itself. Except...
"It turns out that a Trump supporter wrote the report and sent it out to see if anyone would report it."
That's the hook right there, way out in right field. Maybe you were just being sarcastic, and I misread that as something you actually believed to be true.
Only the Golden Shower aspect of the report came from 4Chan. I read this here:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-10/4chan-claims-have-fabricated-anti-trump-report-hoax
The 4chan poster doesn't claim credit for anything else. My error.
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