Newsweek: Donald Trump helped spread Russian disinformation about Hillary Clinton

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Glenn Greenwald, who has never been a fan of what he has called New McCarthyism, posted a strong rebuke of this angle and the Newsweek article in particular. I'd say it may be too kind to Sputnik and perhaps Wikileaks, but I think the core of the argument holds up.

In the Democratic Echo Chamber, Inconvenient Truths Are Recast as Putin Plots

Donald Trump, for reasons I’ve repeatedly pointed out, is an extremist, despicable and dangerous candidate, and his almost-certain humiliating defeat is less than a month away. So I realize there is little appetite in certain circles for critiques of any of the tawdry and sometimes fraudulent journalistic claims and tactics being deployed to further that goal. In the face of an abusive, misogynistic, bigoted, scary, lawless authoritarian, what’s a little journalistic fraud or constant fear-mongering about subversive Kremlin agents between friends if it helps to stop him?

But come January, Democrats will continue to be the dominant political faction in the U.S. – more so than ever – and the tactics they are now embracing will endure past the election, making them worthy of scrutiny. Those tactics now most prominently include dismissing away any facts or documents that reflect negatively on their leaders as fake, and strongly insinuating that anyone who questions or opposes those leaders is a stooge or agent of the Kremlin, tasked with a subversive and dangerously un-American mission on behalf of hostile actors in Moscow.

To see how extreme and damaging this behavior has become, let’s just quickly examine two utterly false claims that Democrats over the past four days – led by party-loyal journalists – have disseminated and induced thousands of people, if not more, to believe. On Friday, WikiLeaks published its first installment of emails obtained from the account of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. Despite WikiLeaks’ perfect, long-standing record of only publishing authentic documents, MSNBC’s favorite ex-intelligence official Malcolm Nance, within hours of its release, posted a tweet claiming – with zero evidence and without citation to a single document in the WikiLeaks archive – that the archive was compromised with fakes:

Official Warning: #PodestaEmails are already proving to be riddled with obvious forgeries & #blackpropaganda not even professionally done. https://t.co/UuJZrurHAA

— Malcolm Nance (@MalcolmNance) October 7, 2016

As you can see, more than 4,000 people have re-tweeted this “Official Warning.” That includes not only random Clinton fans but also high-profile Clinton-supporting journalists, who by spreading it around gave this claim their stamp of approval, intentionally leading huge numbers of people to assume the WikiLeaks archive must be full of fakes, and its contents should therefore simply be ignored. Clinton’s campaign officials spent the day fueling these insinuations, strongly implying that the documents were unreliable and should thus be ignored. Poof: just like that, unpleasant facts about Hillary Clinton just disappeared, like a fairy protecting frightened children by waving her magic wand and sprinkling fairy dust over a demon and causing it to scatter away.

Except the only fraud here was Nance’s claim, not any of the documents published by WikiLeaks. Those were all real. Indeed, at Sunday night’s debate, when asked directly about the excerpts of her Wall Street speeches found in the release, Clinton herself confirmed their authenticity. And news outlets such as the New York Times and AP reported – and continue to report – on their contents without any caveat that they may be frauds. No real print journalists or actual newsrooms (as opposed to campaign operatives masquerading as journalists) fell for this scam, so this tactic did not prevent reporting from being done.

But it did signal to Clinton’s most devoted followers to simply ignore their contents. Anyone writing articles about what these documents revealed was instantly barraged with claims from Democrats that they were fakes...
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About this article in question:

More insidious and subtle, but even worse, was what Newsweek and its Clinton-adoring writer Kurt Eichenwald did last night. What happened – in reality, in the world of facts – was extremely trivial. One of the emails in the second installment of the WikiLeaks/Podesta archive – posted yesterday – was from Sidney Blumenthal to Podesta. The sole purpose of Blumenthal’s email was to show Podesta one of Eichenwald’s endless series of Clinton-exonerating articles, this one about Benghazi. So in the body of the email to Podesta, Blumenthal simply pasted the link and the full contents of the article. Although the purpose of Eichenwald’s article (like everything he says and does) was to defend Clinton, one paragraph in the middle acknowledged that one minor criticism of Clinton on Benghazi is possibly rational.

Once WikiLeaks announced that this second email batch was online, many news organizations (including the Intercept, along with the NYT and AP) began combing through them to find relevant information and then published articles about them. One such story was published by Sputnik, the Russian government’s international outlet similar to RT, which highlighted that Blumenthal email. But the Sputnik story inaccurately attributed the text of the Newsweek article to Blumenthal, thus suggesting that one of Clinton’s closest advisors had expressed criticism of her on Benghazi. Sputnik quickly removed the article once Eichenwald pointed out that the words were his, not Blumethal’s. Then, in his campaign speech last night, Trump made reference to the Sputnik article (hours after it was published and spread on social media), claiming (obviously inaccurately) that even Blumenthal had criticized Clinton on Benghazi.

That’s all that happened. There is zero suggestion in the article, let alone evidence, that any WikiLeaks email was doctored: it wasn’t. It was just Sputnik misreporting the email. Once Sputnik realized that its article misattributed the text to Blumenthal, it took it down. It’s not hard to imagine how a rushed, careless Sputnik staffer could glance at that email and fail to realize that Blumethal was forwarding Eichenwald’s article rather than writing it himself. And while nobody knows how this erroneous Sputnik story made its way to Trump for him to reference in his speech, it’s very easy to imagine how a Trump staffer on a shoddy, inept campaign – which has previously cited InfoWars and white supremacist sites among others – would have stumbled into a widely-shared Sputnik story that had been published hours earlier on the internet and then passed it along to Trump for him to highlight, without realizing the reasons to be skeptical.

In any event, based on the available evidence, this is a small embarrassment for Trump: he cited an erroneous story from a non-credible Russian outlet, so it’s worth noting. But that’s not what happened. Eichenwald, with increasing levels of hysteria, manically posted no fewer than 3 dozen tweets last night about his story, each time escalating his claims of what it proved. By the time he was done, he had misled large numbers of people into believing that he found proof that: a) the documents in the WikiLeaks archive were altered; b) Russia put forgeries into the WikiLeaks archive; 3) Sputnik knew about the WikiLeaks archive ahead of time, before it was posted online; 4) WikiLeaks coordinated the release of the documents with the Russian government; and 5) the Russian government and the Trump campaign coordinated to falsely attribute Eichenwald’s words to Blumenthal.

In fact, Eichenwald literally has zero evidence for any of that. The point is not that his evidence for these propositions is inconclusive or unpersuasive; the point is that there is zero evidence for any of it. It’s all just conspiracy theorizing and speculation that he invented. Worse, the article, while hinting at these claims and encouraging readers to believe it, does not even expressly claim any of those things. Instead, Eichenwald’s increasingly unhinged tweets repeatedly inflated his insignificant story from what it was – a misattribution of an email by Sputnik that Trump repeated – into a five-alarm warning that an insidious Russian plot to subvert U.S. elections had been proven, with Trump and fake WikiLeaks documents at the center
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Not sure if I posted too little or too much, but the article is probably worth reading in whole. Anyway, I have wondered, as Greenwald does in his conclusion, what will happen once we are pass the prospect of a Trump presidency. All the "yas queen" enthusiasm, the "Russian agent" theories, the occasional complicit twisting of facts to find another dig at Trump (as if there weren't enough), etc., will that just evaporate over night?
 
Riposte said:
Glenn Greenwald, who has never been a fan of what he has called New McCarthyism, posted a strong rebuke of this angle and the Newsweek article in particular. I'd say it may be too kind to Sputnik and perhaps Wikileaks, but I think the core of the argument holds up.

In the Democratic Echo Chamber, Inconvenient Truths Are Recast as Putin Plots
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Philip Bump has his own story in the Post here. Bottom line, this is straight-up terrible reporting on Eichenwald's part; the misattributed Blumenthal email had already gone viral on the right well before Trump repeated it at a rally, and it's far more plausible that Trump picked up on it through those channels than through direct ties to the Kremlin. In fact, a viral tweet with thousands of RT and likes, tweeted hours before the rally, contains the exact language Trump quoted.

While any actual ties between Trump's campaign and Putin are worth looking into, I have to say that the seeming eagerness of Clinton supporters to buy into Cold War-era Manchurian Candidate conspiracy theories, no matter how thin the evidence, is one of the stranger subplots of this election.
 
Father_Brain said:

Philip Bump has his own story in the Post here. Bottom line, this is straight-up terrible reporting on Eichenwald's part; the misattributed Blumenthal email had already gone viral on the right well before Trump repeated it at a rally, and it's far more plausible that Trump picked up on it through those channels than through direct ties to the Kremlin. In fact, a viral tweet with thousands of RT and likes, tweeted hours before the rally, contains the exact language Trump quoted.

While any actual ties between Trump's campaign and Putin are worth looking into, I have to say that the seeming eagerness of Clinton supporters to buy into Cold War-era Manchurian Candidate conspiracy theories, no matter how thin the evidence, is one of the stranger subplots of this election.
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That's a more to the point article that lays it out briefly. As far as people buying into things with little evidence, that's always going to be the case when people want to believe something. Greenwald believes the mechanisms of twitter interaction also plays a role.
 
SapientWolf said:
Why not go with Mandarin Candidate though?
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You're correct of course, but the expression Tangerine is a synonym for color as well as fruit. Whereas Mandarin is not a synonym for color, but is a better substitute for regionality - a la Manchurian.

The ultimate balance being that color is the easiest shorthand for Trump.


I spent too much time on this.
 
ColdDeckEd said:
Ken Bone said he is still not sure who to vote for earlier today on CNN.
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Is he for real? He literally got to stand in a room with the two of them and ask them a question directly. After a year-long campaign, after dozens of hours of interviews and rally speeches, after gallons of ink have been spilled on two of the most highly recognizable people on EARTH, after all that. After all that, and being able to SPEAK TO THEM DIRECTLY, people are STILL undecided?

I remember watching some undecided voter being interviewed in 2000, saying they will enter the voting booth and "pray."

I'm sorry, some people should not be voting, the same way some people shouldn't drink. Most people can handle it, some people get sloppy and hurt themselves.
 
Father_Brain said:
While any actual ties between Trump's campaign and Putin are worth looking into, I have to say that the seeming eagerness of Clinton supporters to buy into Cold War-era Manchurian Candidate conspiracy theories, no matter how thin the evidence, is one of the stranger subplots of this election.
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I mean, it's a crazy theory at a glance, but here's some facts that do not require intent or plotting or collaboration:

1. Putin very much wants Trump to win to weaken the US and rile up the right wing. that's his primary strategy in Europe too.

2. Trump is both a casual admirer of Putin AND in up to his neck with Russian backers.

3. Russian hackers at Putin's direction are undermining Democratic candidates.

4. Trump (and his following) is extraordinarily easy to manipulate.



Point is that trump wasn't hypnotized, conditioned and planted, he's a useful idiot. But that's still ultimately the same device as the fictional Manchurian Candidate, just less sci-fi. An Accidental Manchurian Candidate, if you will.
 
Eichenwald shouldn't have been the one to cover this "story" even if he felt personally involved due to his writing of the article. He got way too triggered and worked himself into a frenzy.

I held off on sharing this "smoking gun" for numerous reasons last night and most of all was the fact that it was shared on /r/the_Donald roughly six hours before Trump went on stage, so the claim it came straight from Sputnik's mouth to Trump's ears held no water.
 
Riposte said:
Glenn Greenwald, who has never been a fan of what he has called New McCarthyism, posted a strong rebuke of this angle and the Newsweek article in particular. I'd say it may be too kind to Sputnik and perhaps Wikileaks, but I think the core of the argument holds up.

In the Democratic Echo Chamber, Inconvenient Truths Are Recast as Putin Plots



About this article in question:



Not sure if I posted too little or too much, but the article is probably worth reading in whole. Anyway, I have wondered, as Greenwald does in his conclusion, what will happen once we are pass the prospect of a Trump presidency. All the "yas queen" enthusiasm, the "Russian agent" theories, the occasional complicit twisting of facts to find another dig at Trump (as if there weren't enough), etc., will that just evaporate over night?
Click to expand...

Wait, where are these claims saying that the e-mails themselves were fake? That isn't at all what the Newsweek article is about. Isn't the claim about Trump (or his campaign) taking in misinformation from a Russian propaganda organization?
 
I wouldn't go so far as to claim Trump is some pre-programmed covert agent, but I certainly wouldn't put it past a "lawless authoritarian" to be coordinating with the Russians at least indirectly to his benefit. He's certainly at least the useful idiot, the end result being largely indistinguishable from a Manchurian Candidate, as Stinkles points out.
 
kaching said:
I wouldn't go so far as to claim Trump is some pre-programmed covert agent, but I certainly wouldn't put it past a "lawless authoritarian" to be coordinating with the Russians at least indirectly to his benefit. He's certainly at least the useful idiot, the end result being largely indistinguishable from a Manchurian Candidate, as Stinkles points out.
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Pretty accurate description of what this is.
 
Eichenwald's story didn't make sense to me last night when I was reading it, but I'd hardly cast that as proof that this Putin connection is being invented from nothing. The fact that Trump repeatedly insists that Russia was not involved in the hacks -- despite being told the exact opposite in his own intelligence briefings -- is enough evidence to me that he's taking a pro-Putin/pro-Russian tack here. And that's ignoring all the other ties (Manafort, eliminating the pro-Ukraine language in the party platform, etc.) between the two.
 
Poltergust said:
Wait, where are these claims saying that the e-mails themselves were fake? That isn't at all what the Newsweek article is about. Isn't the claim about Trump (or his campaign) taking in misinformation from a Russian propaganda organization?
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Well yes, but LOOK OVER THERE
 
Poltergust said:
Wait, where are these claims saying that the e-mails themselves were fake? That isn't at all what the Newsweek article is about. Isn't the claim about Trump (or his campaign) taking in misinformation from a Russian propaganda organization?
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I believe the Clinton surrogates were all over media when the latest emails were released casting doubts on the emails being real and/or un-doctored. I am not sure if this particular writer did that though.

EDIT: Here is a tweet from the Newsweek author. He implies that Russia changed the email and then he falsely claims those are the only two places where that information appeared. (It appeared all over twitter.)

Kurt Eichenwald ‏@kurteichenwald 14h14 hours ago
Russia govnt falsified an email. Then Trump recited the falsified email at a rally. Only those two knew it. How?
 
Jorok Goldblade said:
The Tangerine Candidate.
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I posted this in another Trump thread, but I couldn't remember where I'd seen the post that inspired it! Thanks for keeping me occupied on a boring morning, and I'm going to be cheeky and repost this here :-)

Tangerine%20Candidate.jpg
 
Father_Brain said:

Philip Bump has his own story in the Post here. Bottom line, this is straight-up terrible reporting on Eichenwald's part; the misattributed Blumenthal email had already gone viral on the right well before Trump repeated it at a rally, and it's far more plausible that Trump picked up on it through those channels than through direct ties to the Kremlin. In fact, a viral tweet with thousands of RT and likes, tweeted hours before the rally, contains the exact language Trump quoted.

While any actual ties between Trump's campaign and Putin are worth looking into, I have to say that the seeming eagerness of Clinton supporters to buy into Cold War-era Manchurian Candidate conspiracy theories, no matter how thin the evidence, is one of the stranger subplots of this election.
Click to expand...

It's really just their bloodlust to take him out any way they can. Being no fan of Trump myself, I can understand why.

Still, American journalism has been a massive failure this year when it comes to this election. The quality of reporting is awful, and bias--while understandable--is pretty much being flaunted brazenly.

What a mess this whole thing is. About as nasty as anything I've seen politically.
 
JohnsonUT said:
I believe the Clinton surrogates were all over media when the latest emails were released casting doubts on the emails being real and/or un-doctored. I am not sure if this particular writer did that though.

EDIT: Here is a tweet from the Newsweek author. He implies that Russia changed the email and then he falsely claims those are the only two places where that information appeared. (It appeared all over twitter.)

Kurt Eichenwald ‏@kurteichenwald 14h14 hours ago
Russia govnt falsified an email. Then Trump recited the falsified email at a rally. Only those two knew it. How?
Click to expand...

That's definitely poor wording on his part, since he makes no mention of the e-mail itself being falsified in the article. =/

That said, the best that Trump's campaign can come out of this is that they got this news from Reddit without checking the original source.
 
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