Last night I wrote that it was a problem that Senator Sanders sat on the information that Vladimir Putin was interfering in the Democratic primaries to elevate his candidacy for a month. That by waiting, by not finding a way to get the information released or even leaked in a manner that he could control to get ahead of the information, he placed himself at the mercy of someone else leaking it. Someone else did leak it. And that leak was not done to assist Senator Sanders or his campaign. By sitting on the information, Senator Sanders made himself vulnerable to the other two principal leaders who also had the information: the President and Vladimir Putin. Neither of whom wants Senator Sanders to be the nominee because they want him to become President. Rather the President wants Senator Sanders to be the nominee because he has determined that Senator Sanders will be the easiest of the Democratic primary candidates to defeat. Vladimir Putin wants Senator Sanders to be the nominee because he has assessed that Senator Sanders is the most likely to create chaos within the Democratic Party, which furthers his goal of seeing the President reelected.
As was easily predictable, the information is now being weaponized by the President’s surrogates.
National security adviser Robert O'Brien tells ABC in interview to air tomorrow that he hasn't seen any evidence of Russia seeking to help Trump. Asked whether Russia might be helping Sanders, he says reports could be credible. "That's no surprise. He honeymooned in Moscow."
— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) February 22, 2020
Assistant to the President-National Security Advisor (APNSA) O’Brien’s statement clearing the President of suspicion, but reaffirming the negative information against Senator Sanders will just be the first of many. Expect the Acting DNI, Ambassador Grennell, to make similar statements. Likely backed up by further leaks and/or official disclosures. US intelligence will be weaponized to dirty up Senator Sanders by the political loyalists the President has placed in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The narrative will be to tie the information that Putin is interfering in the primaries on behalf of Senator Sanders with Senator Sanders long history of support for hard socialist and communist leaders and officials in Central and South America, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, and parts of Asia. This may not be fair, but this is what is going to happen.
This influence campaign, one which will be carried out not just by surrogates and supporters outside of government, but by actual appointed senior officials in the President’s administration like APNSA O’Brien has done with his statement today are not really intended to effect Senator Sanders’ core supporters. Nor is it really intended to influence the Democratic primary. What it is intended to do is create material for Facebook ads to micro-target more moderate Democrats, Democratic leaning Independents, and formerly Republican leaning Independents, as well as to provide material that can be weaponized to reach these same people on Twitter and other social and digital media platforms. The point of doing this will be to depress Democratic turnout, as well as the turnout of non Democrats that will be needed to ensure an Electoral College victory against the President should Senator Sanders be the Democratic nominee. It is also intended to effect down balance races to maintain the Republican majority in the Senate, flip the House majority back to the Republicans, and capture as many Democratic held governorships and state legislatures as possible before the next round of redistricting after the 2020 census.
I’m not writing this to harm Senator Sanders. I guarantee that there is a similar influence operation already planned for each of the potential Democratic nominees. Whichever Democrat gets the nomination is going to face something similar. We’ve been watching the operation against VP Biden for well over a year now. And we know, because I’ve put it on the front page at least eight times, that the seeds of that influence operation against VP Biden were first sown in 2o14. And that should be a concern to Senator Sanders, his campaign, his key surrogates, and his supporters because Senator Sanders has over 40 years of taking controversial, hard left positions and supporting some of the worst hard left, socialist, and communist leaders outside the US. And because the Soviet Intelligence Services were collecting video and audio on him the entire time he was in Soviet Russia for his honeymoon; video and audio that Vladimir Putin will weaponize if and when he feels the need too. And that’s before the President, his campaign, and his surrogates decide to juxtapose the now leaked intelligence that Putin is acting to aid Senator Sanders in the Democratic primary with Senator Sanders voting record regarding Russia – a voting record that leaves a lot to be desired. He voted against the Magnitsky Act in 2012, the sanctions against Russia in 2014 and 2017, and didn’t vote at all when the sanctions against Russia bill came up in 2019. This voting record combined with the now leaked intelligence that Putin is interfering in the Democratic primary on his behalf is all the President, his campaign, and his surrogates need to argue that the President is the one who has and will continue to stand up to Putin, not Senator Sanders who always votes in Putin’s favor. That’s not my argument, that is me anticipating the President’s argument.
This is the reality of the 2020 election. I warned everyone who reads Balloon Juice that the 2020 election was going to be open information warfare back in March 2019. What is happening should not be surprising to anyone. And if Senator Warren or Mayor Buttigieg or Senator Klobuchar were the front runners right now, we would have different weaponized information to produce influence being deployed against them right now. And if one of them should become the front runner, we will.
Open thread.
The (Blog) Doctor Is In. Tell Me What Ails You.
JPL
Unless the democrats coalesce behind one moderate candidate, the primary is pretty much over. I’m not saying that Bernie will win or lose in the general, but I am saying his base isn’t that big.
Raven Onthill
Thank you. I suspect, however, that matters are likely to go wrong for Putin which, unfortunately, doesn’t mean they will go wrong for Trump. Information warfare shares something with biological and chemical warfare: aim as you will, one is never quite sure where the information will go.
Brachiator
My repost from an earlier thread:
As MattF previously noted
Trump’s big lie, put out by his own staff, is that claims that Russia loves Trump are false, but evidence that Russia loves Bernie are absolutely true. Moscow rules.
Trumps’ well known ties to Russia and praise of Putin does not matter, but Sanders’ honeymoon is proof of being anti-American.
ETA: I wondered how they might do some of this, and now I have an answer. Trump’s lackey doesn’t say that Sanders has “ties to the Soviet Union,” which no longer exists. It is that he has “ties to Moscow.”
I think, however, that Trump played his hand too soon. Now we see what a big piece of the anti-Sanders GOP effort will look like.
MagdaInBlack
Thank you, Adam. Ive been waiting for/expecting this post.
Adam L Silverman
@Raven Onthill: And to answer your question from early yesterday morning after I’d gone to bed:
Xi favors the President’s reelection. Not because he likes the chaos, as a neo-Confucian it freaks him out, but because it provides an opportunity for China to advance its interests within the existing global system, which is to ultimately take over as the hegemon and rule maker in that system.
Bibi favors the President because the President lets him do whatever he wants. MBS in Saudi and MBZ in the Emirates do to for the same reasons. And this has let them partner with Bibi on some things.
Adam L Silverman
@MagdaInBlack:
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
It seems early to play this hand. Why not wait until the convention or later if Bernie gets the nomination ?
Adam L Silverman
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937: The more you can rip the Democratic Party apart now and distract from the larger news that the IC has assessed that Putin is once again interfering in the election on the President’s behalf, the better. That’s why.
zhena gogolia
@Adam L Silverman:
So what do we do?????
Adam L Silverman
@zhena gogolia: Other than staying informed and doing what I recommended the other night before the debate, there is nothing you can do. Each of the campaigns should have a dedicated counterinfluence operations team in place, but none of them do.
MagdaInBlack
@Adam L Silverman:
Calmness of spirit firmly in place?
MomSense
@zhena gogolia:
Hydrate?
zhena gogolia
@Adam L Silverman:
I don’t know what you said before the debate.
Adam L Silverman
@zhena gogolia:
https://balloon-juice.com/2020/02/19/a-few-thoughts-before-tonights-debate-nobody-really-knows-much-of-anything-yet-so-we-all-including-me-need-to-chill-the-fuck-out/
Adam L Silverman
@zhena gogolia: I’m going to have to start giving pop quizzes aren’t I?
Cheryl Rofer
@zhena gogolia: I would add
anarchoRex
Has Sanders voted for sanctions before? My understanding is that he’s against them on principal. I know at least one of those votes included sanctions against Iran which violated our nuclear agreement with them, which I believe was one of his stated answers for why he didn’t vote for it.
Cheryl Rofer
I am dubious about the wisdom of attacking the front-runner now. There’s time for a recovery or for someone else to break out. Also, if Bernie is perceived by Putin and Trump to be the weakest opponent for Trump, why attack him at all? That last could make sense if they believe the Democratic Party is in a death march to nominate Bernie, I guess.
There’s a lot of to-and-fro possible in responses to these questions. I am also dubious about the subtlety Putin or Trump is capable of, so no, I don’t accept the approaches invoking even 4-dimensional chess.
zhena gogolia
@Cheryl Rofer:
You don’t regard Sanders as being virtually equivalent to Tulsi?
Betty Cracker
I’m sure this is how the Trump admin will play it if Sanders is the nominee, but I wonder if it’ll be as devastating as they assume. FL skews old and has a lot of immigrants and their descendants with ties to failed socialist states, so it’ll work here. Socialist scaremongering will probably hand the state’s 29 EC votes to Trump, but I’m not sure any Dem will win FL regardless.
But I think that tactic has lost a lot of its sting over the past couple of decades for most Americans who aren’t already Trump voters. And Trump, the beneficiary of Russian interference himself, doesn’t have standing to criticize anyone on that score, nor do his flunkies.
If Trump confronted Sanders about it at a debate, Sanders could just point out that Trump all but gave Putin a tuggie in Helsinki in front of the whole fucking world, so who gives a shit where Sanders spent his honeymoon 40 years ago?
Bill Arnold
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937:
We don’t know (well, I don’t know) who played the hand, or their motive. If it was to spike the Sanders nomination, then it might have been by some entity that does not/might not want D.J.Trump to win.
Cheryl Rofer
@zhena gogolia: No. Tulsi promotes a number of things that are contrary to fact, most notably that Bashar al-Assad is not guilty of chemical attacks against the Syrian people. She’s a member of a cult, and it’s not clear how many more things than have come out in public she believes that are contrary to serving in a public position. She interviews on Fox regularly.
anarchoRex
@zhena gogolia: lmao
Betty Cracker
@Cheryl Rofer: Agree. Tulsi is a kook.
Chris Johnson
Actually I’m now wondering if Trump is behind the Sanders reveal… too early.
Could be yet another example of ‘everything Trump touches, dies’. A LOT of effort has gone into trying to set up Sanders and only Sanders (this, in spite of the superior choice Liz Warren being right there) as the one getting the entire young/left Democratic primary vote. Some of it is because the Democratic party absolutely has to get closer to reality about attracting real human voters (and not just oligarchs and donors), but SOME of it absolutely is because Putin has his thumb on the scale for Bernie, same as last time.
‘Cos I’m watching them now that I know what to look for, and it’s obvious, and I’m not seeing a lot of real Left humans that I’ve known for extended periods of time who don’t also like Warren. Yet, there’s a bunch of anonymous trolls pretending to hate Warren and everybody else who’s not Bernie. I figure some of that is trolls, and some of it is people I know who are just straight up hotheads.
So it’s a setup: get Bernie to be the nominee because there is in fact a lot of support for an actual progressive standard-bearer, but THEN hit him with reveals about how he was backed by Putin the whole time, while having the ‘Bros’ absolutely flip out and alienate the rest of the Dems.
BUT he is not the nominee yet. And that’s why you’re seeing people so desperate to anoint him the winner NOW NOW NOW: someone jumped the gun. And I wonder if it’s a certain orange someone who was also privy to the information (or indeed knew all along, as another Putin stalking horse) and wasn’t disciplined enough to wait until the Trojan Sparrow actually won the nomination.
Brachiator
@Bill Arnold:
Part of this was straight out of the White House, or at least amplified by them.
And we know Trump has no impulse control.
Cheryl Rofer
Slightly OT, but Bloomberg is playing fast and loose on Twitter.
JPL
@Cheryl Rofer: haha He did get the important man who speaks to empty chairs endorsement today though. (hint Clint) I do wonder if he doesn’t secretly support trump because is only damaging the democratic party
Mike in NC
As others have mentioned, Trump has zero self-control, so as soon as he’s given dirt on anybody it winds up on FOX & Friends. Bernie will get slammed hard, and he’ll react the only way he knows: shouting louder and wagging his finger.
Not expecting Mayor Pete to go anywhere, but Mike Pence has to be salivating to push his anti-gay attacks, which most of the MAGA crowd will approve of.
ThresherK
Hey, ABC, wanna play a game of three card monte?
Raven Onthill
@Adam L Silverman: has Xi studied the Chinese classics, then? (Wikipedia hints that he has.) And he apparently takes them seriously.
I suppose it is no stranger than the vogue for stoicism or for that matter Qabbalah, but Xi is one of the most powerful people in the world and I would prefer he paid attention to something after the developed after the Tang dynasty.
And perhaps, something less sexist?
Nah, nah, no, no.
Another Scott
Yup.
Donnie is trying to make the whole US Government an arm of his campaign (and personal fiefdom). Of course he will use everything in his power to damage any Democrat and win in the fall.
Cheers,
Scott.
debbie
Why do you hesitate to harm him, Adam? He sat on this for a month! He sat on it because he didn’t want anything to hurt his fucking “movement”! He’s as much a danger to this country as Trump is.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: Because there isn’t anything I could do to harm him or any of the other candidates. No offense to Cole, the other front pagers, our commenters, and our readers/lurkers, but nothing any of us write here has the ability to really impact anything. With the exception that Dave Anderson was able to leverage his posts and the social media around them to a better job for himself. If I could figure out how to do that, I’d be golden. But I can’t, so I’m not.
Procopius
Oh, surely the intelligence community wouldn’t lie to us. /s
zhena gogolia
@Chris Johnson:
Interesting.
Bill Arnold
@Another Scott:
That tweet is a ref of the O’Brien story,
Trump’s NSA Robert O’Brien blasted for ‘weaponizing’ classified intel against Bernie Sanders as Nevada caucuses (February 22, 2020, Bob Brigham)
Thin. Is there evidence the WH leaked the Sanders/Russia story? Maybe the White House is stupid and/or arrogant enough to believe they can pull this off in the non-Murdoch parts of the press. Or maybe somebody else leaked and the WH is just trying to do what damage/damage control it can with it.
Barb 2
Trump most likely leaked the news of Bernie’s briefing – no impulse control.
Bernie’s campaign director is compromised – he has links to Manaford – worked for him in Ukraine and perhaps links to Russia as well?
Jane has some financial questionable stuff – that can be weaponized.
Bernie isn’t as transparent as he should be regarding his health and finances & Jane.
Bernie is not a Democrat and really doesn’t work well with Democrats. For the length of time he has been in the Senate he has a tiny portfolio of accomplishment.
Adam mention his voting pattern which seems to favor Russia’s interests. Plus Bernie’s support of the left wing rulers – this can be weaponized against him. Trump has this habit of being hyper critical of anyone who has similar faults. Look at that guy over there and ignore me – the louder Trump yells the more likely that he is guilty of the same crime. (Clinton’s emails – are nothing compared to Trump’s use of private phones and security violations.
Sanders plays dirty as well – we all lived through the dirty tricks of 2016.
This is war.
The US and Russia have been at war – data and technological warfare for decades. The US has been collecting Russian data for decades and Russia has been doing the same data collection from the west.
The dems campaigns should have an advisor(s) to combat Russian meddling it will only get worse.
Trump is telling his followers to switch over and vote for the weakest dem candidate – that would be Bernie. Sanders knows how to manipulate the caucus vote in his favor.
Bloomberg got in this race to stop Bernie. He needs to turn up the heat! Bernie with Putin’s backing is dangerous. I don’t care what Bernie says – he welcomes Putin’s help just like he did 4 years ago. Bernie still has the same campaign director.
J R in WV
Open Thread? Great!
I posted earlier in the week that our newly reestablished tiny water control pond had attracted frogs already! We were so excited to hear them croaking and splishing outside the front door that night.
Then we saw a small mound of frog eggs the next morning! Glistening with tiny black cores of tadpole life, the small mound was on a small log, not quite floating.
This morning, after a really clear night, with temps in the mid teens, the tiny pond was covered by a thin layer of ice. But I’m sure the newly arrived frogs were deep in the leaves on the bottom of the pond, and will show up soon, especially if we get some warm rain. We usually have 4 or 5 species of frogs, some before the ice clears, others only show up once the ground and water in the pond is really warm.
We will keep folks posted on the really important news, the progress of the frogs and their tadpoles in our little water control pond just outside the front door !!! ;-)
Politics is really stressing me out. I’m reading comic strips and racy fiction to keep my attention away from … the current affairs.
Pond life report complete, you al can go back to the all important political news. Mayor Pete is talking now…
Bobby Thomson
No other Democratic candidate comes close to his wealth of targets. The party is about to Corbinize itself. Get ready for full blown fascist authoritarianism.
markar
@J R in WV: Thank you for keeping it real, and reminding us to look around and appreciate the wonders around us.
Looking forward to going to see the snow geese tomorrow. There are around 100K at Middle Creek Wildlife Management area outside Ephrata, PA.
jl
Thanks to Adam for new post, which seems to be an amplification of his post last night. I understand what he is saying now, and I agree. Except that we don’t know about what sense Sanders ‘sat’ on the intelligence, but news giving more info about what his campaign did and what constraints it was under.
And I ask Adam, what is he suggesting about how other campaigns should respond to similar attacks. Trump has already accused Warren of some unspecified corruption in China. Suppose Warren campaign get some confidential or classified briefing, is she supposed to reveal it publicly immediately.
There is dirt on every human who ever existed. Or something that can be made to seem like scandalous dirt. So in a sense, every candidate is always susceptible to compromise. We need to support candidates who have the character and brains to know how to respond to eventuality of influence and extortion, not worry ourselves into a helpless puddle about it.
Mel
@J R in WV:
Thank you. It’s been a stressful week, and hearing about your frogs has made the evening considerably better.
Spring Peepers and Green Frogs are far and away my favorites. I love the banjo string “boink boink boink” call that Green Frogs make.
We started seeing wheel bugs in our garden a few years ago. Scary looking little devils, but a good sign for the health of the garden and surrounds, I think.
Adam L Silverman
@jl: The first thing they should do is if given news like this, news that could be and likely will be weaponized against them, is to figure out a way to get that information out as soon as possible and in a way that minimizes any potential damage. Basically just get the information out on your own terms. The other thing they need to do is set up counterinfluence operations teams to get ahead of this stuff. They should be staffed with people like me who do that work professionally. And they should have done it early last year. They didn’t then, they won’t now. But that’s what they should do.