Our nation’s sanity is in jeopardy:
In early 2017, some of Donald Trump’s advisers concluded that they faced a sophisticated threat responsible for “coordinated attacks” on the new Administration. They circulated a memo, titled “The Echo Chamber,” which read like a U.S. military-intelligence officer’s analysis of a foreign-insurgent network. Instead of being about enemies in a distant war zone, however, the network described in the memo consisted of former aides to President Barack Obama.
The memo claimed that the “communications infrastructure” that the Obama White House used to “sell Obamacare and the Iran Deal to the public” had been moved to the private sector, now that the former aides were out of government. It called the network the Echo Chamber and accused its members of mounting a coördinated effort “to undermine President Trump’s foreign policy” through organized attacks in the press against Trump and his advisers. “These are the Obama loyalists who are probably among those coordinating the daily/weekly battle rhythm,” the memo said, adding that they likely operated a “virtual war room.” The memo lists Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national-security adviser to President Obama, as “likely the brain behind this operation” and Colin Kahl, Vice-President Joe Biden’s former national-security adviser, as its “likely ops chief.” Rhodes and Kahl both said in interviews that the allegations are false and no such organization exists.
The memo is unsigned and undated, and Trump Administration officials familiar with it offered conflicting accounts of who authored it and whether it originated inside or outside the White House. The officials said that it was circulated within the National Security Council and other parts of the Trump White House in early 2017. They said the memo may have had additional pages. A National Security Council spokesperson declined to comment.
First off, this sounds like something Flynn and his dimwitted son have a fascination with and cooked up. I feel like I am talking to myself, but I am curious how long before this kind of insanity will tear that city down and take the rest of the country with it. Someday there will have to be a reckoning. Second, they forgot to blame the Pentaverate.
Fucking lunatics.
Steve in the ATL
Wow that is so effing dishonest.
DCrefugee
— In January 2017, Trumpistas couldn’t even find the washroom.
— I fucking hope ex-Obama staffers formed a network to fight back. How does one join it? Asking for a friend…
debbie
This would be right up Stephen Miller’s alley.
FlipYrWhig
@debbie: I was thinking Bannon. Isn’t he the one who wants to describe everything as a war?
Tim C.
Does the memo describe how this even reaches the definition of a “conspiracy”? They are acting like now-private citizens aren’t allowed to talk to people…. this.. wow.. the dumb hurts.
Mike in NC
Memo sounds like it came from the Axis of Assholes: Bannon, Miller & Gorka
Cckids
They left out “unhinged”. JFC what nuts.
satby
Someone just told me that another RW conspiracy making the rounds is that TOTUS is a plant designed to year apart the Republican party from within.
That one reeks of desperation.
debbie
@Mike in NC:
Could be. The wording, though, is Miller’s. “Cosmopolitan” is lurking in the spaces between the words.
FlipYrWhig
BTW weren’t Kahl and Rhodes being named jointly as part of some other crazy-ass Trump story a few months back?
Mary G
Rhodes and Kahl are the two that somebody hired the black box Israeli spies to get dirt on. They approached Kahl’s wife to try to get dirt on the family. They were hoping to get ammunition against the Iran deal. Guardian article from last May:
Looks like that failed, so maybe they are rebranding it. Has Stephen Miller & Bibi Netanyahu’s fingerprints all over it.
SiubhanDuinne
@Steve in the ATL:
You sound surprised. Why you sound so surprised?
FlipYrWhig
@Mary G: There it is, I knew it was something…
debbie
@satby:
That’s those Q folks, right?
SiubhanDuinne
@FlipYrWhig:
Bannon was my first thought as well.
JPL
Trump has a foreign policy? Who knew.
Steve in the ATL
@SiubhanDuinne: I’ve been bargaining all week so I’m not accustomed to being lied to?
SiubhanDuinne
@DCrefugee:
Took their aggregated brainpower a full week to figure out how to turn the West Wing lights on and off.
Major Major Major Major
Oh for fuck’s sake.
Corner Stone
Papa Doc’s wife is none too bright but boy is she some kind of sexy.
rikyrah
Mensch Fontana (@problemwthat) Tweeted:
Now Edward Snowden, who actually put American lives in danger, was branded a hero by Greenwald and his Intercept
Reality Winner, who tried to save the democracy, was arrested because of the Intercept and is now being ignored by them.
?? https://t.co/VkR0B1Woxi https://twitter.com/problemwthat/status/1032658134400036865?s=17
Corner Stone
@Mary G: I wish I had been named Jack Straw.
Matt McIrvin
Didn’t this whole business go public in the wingnutosphere at the time? Some nonsense about Obama running the opposition from a secret bunker in DC?
rikyrah
These muthaphuckas ? are crazy
NotMax
When the bigotry buffet is laid out in the open, even some Rs in Texas won’t swallow it.
Baud
Can we be part of the Echo Chamber?
Alain, maybe a permanent banner?
Cheryl Rofer
@FlipYrWhig: This is the same dumbass comspiracy. Long thread from Colin Kahl putting the pieces together:
Baud
@rikyrah: No surprise.
FelonyGovt
Wasn’t there some wacko suggestion that the Obama Foundation was some top secret plot to undermine Shitgibbon and his administration?
Cheryl Rofer
@Baud: You will have to work for that honor. For defending the Iran deal on Twitter, I was named part of Ben Rhodes’s Echo Chamber a while back.
Although that was a different Echo Chamber.
I think.
MobileForkbeard
@satby: So they’re going back to “The liberals MADE US be stupid and racist! Not our fault!”
Don’t see that getting a lot of traction unless Trump implodes really badly and the party as a whole distanced itself from him. Because this explanation means admitting they shouldn’t have voted for him.
jl
@rikyrah: Hey, they encouraged the BS for so long, maybe Obama really actually was a shape shifting super intelligent space alien with a time machine. And Cheney’s 1 percent doctrine turned into the 0.00000000000000000000001 doctrine.
SiubhanDuinne
@Corner Stone:
Sounds like a character from a fairy tale or a Mother Goose rhyme or something.
JPL
@rikyrah: Her family wanted her moved to a prison closer to home in Texas, and I hope they at least do that. She is going to serve the longest term ever for turning over information about Russian interference into our elections, and thanks to Glenn Greenwald.
Corner Stone
@debbie:
“Cosmopolitan: A new fragrance for men who know too much about the world. Cosmopolitan: Your way to get and stay ahead of the competition. Cosmopolitan: The power to glide between the spaces of the world.”
Cosmopolitan. Available at all your finer (((stores))).
MCA1
@satby: I might be almost OK with that one, were it to be true. Too much actual, irreversible damage done to make it worth it, though.
At the end of the day, the simple, boring, obvious explanation is usually the right one. Like in this case: after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russians played a long con on the U.S. to weaken the Western Alliance, succeeded in co-opting one of our two major parties entirely, and we’re now effectively a client state of a third-rate kleptocracy.
Wait a second…
Cheryl Rofer
In a scandal from an earlier thread today, you might want to check out this amusing thread.
NotMax
Bannon? Miller?
My figurative money’s on Anton, he of The Flight 93 Election*, at least for germination (emphasis on germ) of the concept.
*Staunchly refuse to link.
sukabi
@satby: that’s the GOP grasping the situation they’re in and their desparate attempt to disown their own shitshow.
randy khan
@DCrefugee:
Heck, they couldn’t even find the light switches.
Timurid
Speaking of conspiracies…
BlueGirlFromWyo
@Mary G: Every accusation is a confession. Every one. All you need to remember.
Platonailedit
@Cheryl Rofer:
It’s juvenile from tapper, the tool. But still, I liked these.
From grabbing pussies to dodging Peckers.
Everyone’s Cohen to Prison
Hungry Joe
Even if every word in that document were true it would amount to no more than “The people who were in a former administration have organized to coordinate opposition to policies they disagree with.” Of course, it’s great fun to call their office (if it exists) a “war room” and someone who contributes to the effort “a likely ops chief,” in the same way it’s fun to say “intel” instead of “intelligence.” But mostly it makes you sound like a Randian gamer boy who’s been trying to grow a John Bolton mustache.
Platonailedit
It will be karma when the sleazy tabloids bring down this sleazy mofo.
burnspbesq
@Corner Stone:
From Wichita?
Gelfling 545
@JPL: well, in the sense that policy of any kind is foreign to him.
piratedan
is hopeful as the stones get kicked over and the bugs are exposed, that this latest trail also ropes in those Faux News toadies and we can then watch Shep Smith provide commentary while Sean hannity is being walked off the set of his show in handcuffs. Not sure that there would be enough popcorn to sustain me…
sukabi
@Cheryl Rofer: I posted the headline I want to see on the last thread. “Trump Goes Down After Pecker’s Dick Moves “
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Major Major Major Major:
Did you expect anything less from these fools?
Martin
Can’t wait to tell my grandkids what it was life to live during the Dunning-Kreuger administration.
Bobby Thomson
Bannon, Miller, there’s a wealth of fucking morons.
Platonailedit
Corner Stone
God damn but I am sick of hearing from Emily Jane Fox, the Vanity Fair “Cohen Whisperer”. Geez, just go away.
NotMax
@sukabi
Shall go with a less blue version of what I threw into the mix earlier.
Pecker Pwns Putz
Kobekid
Greg likes this thread title…
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: I wish Reality had figured out that Greenwald is a Russian stooge and Trump apologist and reacts it to the Washington Post or even the NYT. She’s a hero in my books.
Kobekid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAJNwPWVmNc
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: Having you tried leading a Peasant’s Revolt?
jl
@Cheryl Rofer: OK, how about they cover exciting news about NATIONAL WAFFLE DAY.
Thanks to Tapper for an amusing tweeter thread, but there are a lot of those. I’ll register my opinion that Tapper should spend less time on twitter and more time researching his news spots and interviews. But his corporate bosses understand his job description better than I do.
SRW1
This time the cellar under that building is for realz. Steven Miller swears to god.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s Common’s Revolt, sir. TYVM.
Hungry Joe
@Martin: Consider “Dunning-Krueger administration” stolen.
Platonailedit
JMG
@jl: He is actually a good interviewer. It is his chief reporting skill.
Platonailedit
Yup. All traitorous thugs.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
Oh goody, the white supremacist klaxon is on full blast now. Trump is now claiming “large-scale killing” of white farmers in the Republic of South Africa.
Anonymous At Work
This is why I’m glad I’m not Mueller. I’d be tempted to stray into asking Flynn, et alia, “WTF DUDES?!?!” almost every other hour.
boatboy_srq
@Steve in the ATL: It’s so effing predictable. You didn’t really expect that they would view competence in the public sector, or in the newly-private, as anything but a conspiracy against them and their
whitenessentitlement, did you?different-church-lady
Nearly half the fuckin’ voters went for a guy they KNEW was an insane paranoid and would bring a bunch of insane paranoids with him. The nation’s sanity is not “in jeopardy,” it’s already gone.
Fair Economist
@satby: QAnon has shown that the gullibility of rightwingers can be used against them. Throw up a bunch of crazy conspiracy theories and watch the nuts tear themselves apart.
Patricia Kayden
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: It’s a total lie. Trump hates Black people so of course he jumped all over it.
jl
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Which is a complete pack of lies. it’s not current policy, the major parties are split on how to proceed on land reform (in particular, debate over affect of not giving compensation on business climate). Farmers of all races are worried about growing crime problem in rural areas.
So, other than that, everything Trump says about it is true.
The political maturity of many aspects of South African politics is inspiring. I guess I could type some BS about recent presidential corruption, but.. um… well, I should have gotten that in before we elected Trump.
Ben Cisco
@burnspbesq:
You sent me down a YouTube rabbit hole. Check this: https://youtu.be/fmsdzbNH5o8
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@burnspbesq: Beat me to it ;)
Gravenstone
@satby: Someone recognizing the likely outcome and trying desperately to rationalize how it’s all going to go down.
Redshift
Sounds like the classic wingnut syndrome of “that’s what we would do, so we’re sure our enemies are doing it, even though we have no evidence!” Usually followed by “therefore we must do it in response, or they’ll have an unfair advantage!”
zhena gogolia
@Cheryl Rofer:
JPL has the best one in the thread below: “First they came for Weiner and I said nothing. Then they came for Pecker.”
cmorenc
@satby:
That theory could actually be true, if TOTUS is a Russian plant, whether wittingly or unwittingly or dim-wittingly. (I vote for the third alternative).
John Revolta
@burnspbesq: Their best song. Fight me.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: Wrong Jack Straw.
Gravenstone
@zhena gogolia:
And I pointed and laughed…
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: @Corner Stone: And yes, I knew which one was in the article. I just thought that you of all people might enjoy leading a Peasant’s Revolt. I am thoughtful that way.
Platonailedit
Dan B
@Cheryl Rofer: Trump Claims Pecker Never Worked for Him!
Genius..
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Jesus H. Tap-dancing Christ. These people have lost it. I don’t know if any of them ever had it, but if they were ever barely holding it together, they sure as shit aren’t any longer. This whole administration is like some kind of combined lunatic asylum and halfway house. There’s never been anything like this in American history.
Penn
@Redshift: If they accuse someone of doing it then either they have done it or they want to do it. It’s always projection.
Platonailedit
@Penn:
As some bj’er put it, all rethug accusations are confessions.
danielx
I’d say we’re way past jeopardy for a significant portion of the populace.
MagdaInBlack
Um…..?
Julia Davis
@JuliaDavisNews
#Russia’s state media reports that the President’s residence at the White House has a direct hotline to Moscow, utilizing exclusively Russian-made encryption equipment. The U.S.-Russia hotline was established in 1963, in the wake of the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
7:01 AM – Aug 23, 2018
Bill Arnold
@satby:
That one is old – the original was something like “Trump is a Democrat plotting to destroy the Republican Party”. And Bannon is actually on record advocating for the destruction of the current Republican Party. It is amazing how slowly these conspiracy turds can pickle in the American right wing intellectual cesspool. They can ferment quietly for decades, then float to the top.
E.g. I wrote this in May 21 2016 (and similar stuff elsewhere):
(Obviously rational people would not believe such wildly implausible theories! :) )
Yutsano
@jl: South Africa tore its guts out with the Truth and Reconciliation commission. Then Mandela died and they got…Zuma. Now that they’re finally rid of his corrupt ass they’re finally trying to make strides for a more equal society. But having one of their capitals in severe water distress isn’t helping.
khead
It’s pretty clear to me: Dan Rather wrote the memo.
Also, I lost on Jeopardy, baby.
James E Powell
@Platonailedit:
That’s because the Republicans figured out, sometime in the 90s it seems, that if they sit around and act like nothing happened, about half to two-thirds of the country will do the same. Similarly, they know that if they all jump up & down and scream about an unsubstantiated “scandal”, the entire press/media will apply the -gate suffix and make it a Big Story. Unless and until we throw them out for like six national elections in a row, they will continue to run the country like this.
jonas
“Sell Obamacare and the Iran Policy to the public”??
You mean like press conferences, press releases, and media appearances? Those monsters!
burnspbesq
@John Revolta:
No fight here. One of my faves. Not quite up there with “Box of Rain,” but close.
Sang it in a band in undergrad.
Uncle Cosmo
@Platonailedit: Actually it is long past time to ramp up the deep investigation of Mikey Dense, & I only hope Bobby 3Styx has had his eye on that particular incompetent godbothering bozo all the while. We need to agnewize the former SMOTHOR (Stupidest Member Of The House Of Representatives**) before we set about putting the Orangehaired Shitgibbon & his depraved spawn in jumpsuits of matching color.
** & with Louie “Louwee Louwhy” Gohmert in the HoR, that’s really saying something…
karen marie
I’m actually heartened by this news. It means, obviously, that not a single person who worked in the Trump administration will ever involve themselves in politics again for the rest of their and our lives. Hooray!
Right?
Ryan
Remember, stupid Watergate.