EDIT: Old. Lock 'er up.
Guess what? The Russians (via Wikileaks) found the real October Surprise! An e-mail from Sidney Blumenthal where he finally admits that Benghazi was preventable and was 100 percent Hillary's fault!
Oh my god! The Republicans were right all along! Michael Bay is vindicated! Burn the witch!
But... wait. Something doesn't feel right here... Something is.... off?
Awww... swing and miss, Sputnik. Nice try, though! Good hustle!
They eventually realized they did bad and went ahead and took the story down.
Except, the tale doesn't end there. Enter our orange-hued and tiny handed savior!
Now, ok. Maybe he had bad info? Surely this (mistaken) shocking revelation was reported everywhere, right?
Um, oops?
So there you have it. A non-story that is clearly a bit of propaganda designed to take down Hillary, advanced by the state media of Russia and nobody else somehow finds it way into Donald Trump's hands on a campaign stage in Pennsylvania. The real question is how Trump and his campaign learned about this farce. Do they have campaign staff that is perusing Russian media to find stuff like this?
Add it to the pile of funny coincidences about Russia doing whatever it can to get Trump elected.
Guess what? The Russians (via Wikileaks) found the real October Surprise! An e-mail from Sidney Blumenthal where he finally admits that Benghazi was preventable and was 100 percent Hillary's fault!
The documents that Wikileaks unloaded recently have been emails out of the account of John Podesta, the chairman of Clinton’s election campaign. Almost as soon as the pilfered documents emerged, Sputnik was all over them and rapidly found (or probably already knew about before the Wikileaks dump) a purportedly incriminating email from Blumenthal.
The email was amazing—it linked Boogie Man Blumenthal, Podesta and the topic of conservative political fevered dreams, Benghazi. This, it seemed, was the smoking gun finally proving Clinton bore total responsibility for the terrorist attack on the American outpost in Libya in 2012. Sputnik even declared that the email might be the “October surprise” that could undermine Clinton’s campaign.
To understand the full importance of the story—and how much Putin and his Kremlin cronies must have been dancing with delight—I have to quote the top few paragraphs:
In a major revelation from the second batch of WikiLeaks emails from Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta it was learned that Hillary's top confidante Sidney Blumenthal believed that the investigation into Benghazi was legitimate because it was "preventable" and the result of State Department negligence.
In an email titled "The Truth" from Hillary's top confidante Sidney Blumenthal, the adviser writing to undisclosed recipients said that "one important point that has been universally acknowledged by nine previous reports about Benghazi: The attack was almost certainly preventable" in what may turn out to be the big October surprise from the WikiLeaks released of emails hacked from the account of Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta.
Then came the money quote: "Clinton was in charge of the State Department, and it failed to protect U.S. personnel at an American consulate in Libya. If the GOP wants to raise that as a talking point against her, it is legitimate," said Blumenthal, putting to rest the Democratic Party talking point that the investigation into Clinton's management of the State Department at the time of the attack was nothing more than a partisan witch hunt.
Oh my god! The Republicans were right all along! Michael Bay is vindicated! Burn the witch!
But... wait. Something doesn't feel right here... Something is.... off?
Those words sounded really, really familiar. Really familiar. Like, so familiar they struck me as something I wrote. Because they were something I wrote.
The Russians were quoting two sentences from a 10,000 word piece I wrote for Newsweek, which Blumenthal had emailed to Podesta. There was no mistaking that Blumenthal was citing Newsweek—the magazine’s name and citations for photographs appeared throughout the attached article. The Russians had carefully selected the “of course” paragraph, which mentions there were legitimate points of criticism regarding Clinton and Benghazi, all of which had been acknowledged in nine reports about the terror attack and by the former Secretary of State herself. But that was hardly the point of the story, “Benghazi Biopsy: A Comprehensive Guide to One of America’s Worst Political Outrages.” The piece is about the obscene politicization of the assault that killed four Americans, and the article slammed the Republican Benghazi committee which was engaged in a political show trial disguised as a Congressional investigation—the tenth inquiry into the tragedy.
Awww... swing and miss, Sputnik. Nice try, though! Good hustle!
They eventually realized they did bad and went ahead and took the story down.
Except, the tale doesn't end there. Enter our orange-hued and tiny handed savior!
At a rally in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, Trump spoke while holding a document in his hand. He told the assembled crowd that it was an email from Blumenthal, whom he called “sleazy Sidney.”
“This just came out a little while ago,’’ Trump said. “I have to tell you this.” And then he read the words from my article.
“He’s now admitting they could have done something about Benghazi,’’ Trump said, dropping the document to the floor. “This just came out a little while ago.”
The crowd booed and chanted, “Lock her up!”
Now, ok. Maybe he had bad info? Surely this (mistaken) shocking revelation was reported everywhere, right?
This false story was only reported by the Russian controlled agency (a reference appeared in a Turkish publication, but it was nothing but a link to the Sputnik article).
Um, oops?
So there you have it. A non-story that is clearly a bit of propaganda designed to take down Hillary, advanced by the state media of Russia and nobody else somehow finds it way into Donald Trump's hands on a campaign stage in Pennsylvania. The real question is how Trump and his campaign learned about this farce. Do they have campaign staff that is perusing Russian media to find stuff like this?
Add it to the pile of funny coincidences about Russia doing whatever it can to get Trump elected.