No politics, please, we’re here to solicit $$$$

Feb 18th, 2018 3:35 pm | By

Paul Ryan doesn’t want to “talk about politics” at his own fundraiser. That’s his version, at least; what he apparently means is that he doesn’t want to talk about gun control – way too political, that.

Two protesters chanting “no more guns” were removed from a Republican fundraiser in Key Biscayne Friday night after confronting Speaker of the House Paul Ryan about the mass shooting that happened days earlier and miles up the road.

Maria Thorne, a Key Biscayne activist, said she noticed motorcade traffic clogging up her commute home from her job as a fifth grade teacher at iPrep Academy, where she spent the day reassuring scared students that she could keep them safe from a shooter.

Thorne, 49, heard a rumor that the motorcade might belong to Ryan, so she took a friend into the Ritz to investigate. She said men with lanyards at the entrance of a private area confirmed that it was a fundraiser for Ryan.

The National Republican Congressional Committee — the national fundraising arm for House Republicans — lists a 2018 Winter Meeting held in Key Biscayne this weekend.

And Ryan was there.

Thorne said she found Ryan in the middle of the room — “I shook his hand and everything,” she said — and introduced herself as a teacher and Key Biscayner.

“Nice,” the Republican congressman replied.

“Nice?” Thorne said. “You’re here celebrating the death of 17 children.”

At that, Thorne said, Ryan told her he “didn’t want to talk politics” or argue. When Thorne tried to continue, security escorted her out.

He doesn’t want to talk politics, he just wants to raise money, including from the National Rifle Association.



To defy the PC goblins passes as radical truth-telling

Feb 18th, 2018 1:13 pm | By

Virginia Heffernan on John Kelly and “political correctness”:

How good it feels; it’s almost a high. When we can’t be bothered to temper our provincialism — or lechery and racism — we get to dress up ignorance as bravery, rebellion. To defy the PC goblins passes as radical truth-telling. In a flash, our existential terror about being obsolete and left behind — at being a “dinosaur,” as Harvey Weinstein once described himself — turns into bravado about that very same backwardness.

We know the type.

John Kelly, the beleaguered White House chief of staff, despises political correctness.

And he doesn’t just hate it on behalf of geezers who can’t get girls to laugh at their off-color jokes anymore. He hates it on behalf of violent men like former White House aide Rob Porter, a “man of true integrity and honor” with a straight part and squared shoulders, whom Kelly advised to weather the storm of emerging evidence that he had choked, dragged and punched his former wives.

That’s even though the FBI told him Porter was a security risk. Bros before…national security? That’s the motto now?

In December 2016, when Kelly accepted Trump’s nomination for the head of the Department of Homeland Security, his first post with this administration, he promised to put a stop to what he saw as the world’s two worst scourges: terrorism and political correctness.

“The American people voted in this election to stop terrorism, take back sovereignty at our borders, and put a stop to political correctness that for too long has dictated our approach to national security.”

For “political correctness” read “respect for human rights.”

Anyone who heard that statement knew what Kelly meant, and it was terrifying. Kelly’s contempt for political correctness had, years earlier, lurched into contempt for the law itself.

Kelly acted on this odd ideology when he ran the United States Southern Command, which put him in charge of Guantanamo Bay from 2012 to 2016. He was so keen on his private war on political correctness that he — a general whose status as a Marine seems to be the most important thing to him — subverted Obama, his commander in chief, by sabotaging the president’s efforts to resettle detainees. Under Kelly, Gitmo guards had no time for PC concepts like international norms; they subjected prisoners to what the rest of the world considers cruel and unusual punishment, including force-feeding and solitary confinement.

No wonder Trump chose him. No fucking wonder.



Derelict

Feb 18th, 2018 11:53 am | By

Ruth Marcus at the Post points out that National security adviser H.R. McMaster wrote a book titled “Dereliction of Duty.”

Now, in the White House in which McMaster serves, the dereliction of duty starts at the top. And, as the past several days have shown, President Trump’s failure is dereliction on a grand, unprecedented scale: We find ourselves at war without a commander in chief; in national mourning without a consoler in chief; and in political gridlock without a negotiator in chief.

The first is the most appalling and most terrifying. “Incontrovertible,” McMaster said, and so it is for anyone who bothers to read the indictment of 13 Russians for running a massive operation not only to disrupt the election but to do so to Trump’s benefit. But of course Trump never has and apparently never will be able to accept this. Is it his fragile ego that cannot tolerate the implicit challenge to his legitimacy? Is it something more sinister?

Russia will, if it can, turn us into a subordinate replica of itself: an authoritarian oligarchy that tolerates no dissent.

We are at war with an enemy plotting to undermine our democracy, and our supposed leader, far from working to halt this, seems determined to ignore it.

Trump’s anger is directed against the democratic institutionsthat have rallied to discover what happened and seek to prevent its recurrence: “If it was the GOAL of Russia to create discord, disruption and chaos within the U.S. then, with all of the Committee Hearings, Investigations and Party hatred, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They are laughing their asses off in Moscow. Get smart America!”

But there is no depth to which Trump will not sink in defense of the only thing he holds dear: himself. And so, the nation witnessed a tweet in which the president, a leader to whom the country once looked for healing in times of national tragedy, instead used innocent victims, high school children mowed down in their own school, to make his bogus, self-interested point: “Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign – there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!”

Did he? Did he really use dead children to attack an investigation into his campaign and his conduct in office? Yes, he did. This is a person devoid of empathy. He can experience the world only through the prism of his own ego. He can read the requisite words from a teleprompter — “To every parent, teacher, and child who is hurting so badly, we are here for you — whatever you need, whatever we can do, to ease your pain” — but he is incapable of feeling them. No one who imagines the shattered heart of a grieving parent could have written that despicable tweet.

Or grinned like someone who just won a lottery while standing next to the hospital bed of one of the survivors.



The interim

Feb 18th, 2018 11:38 am | By

David Frum too is underwhelmed by Trump’s attempt to show sympathy for the student of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas high school.

As the rest of America mourns the victims of the Parkland, Florida, massacre, President Trump took to Twitter.

Not for him the rituals of grief. He is too consumed by rage and resentment. He interrupted his holidaying schedule at Mar-a-Lago only briefly, for a visit to a hospital where some of the shooting victims were treated. He posed afterward for a grinning thumbs-up photo op. Pain at another’s heartbreak—that emotion is for losers, apparently.

I don’t think there was even that much thought involved. I think he completely forgot what he was there for, because there’s not room in his brain for both concern for himself and the details of what just happened to other people.

Having failed at one presidential duty, to speak for the nation at times of national tragedy, Trump resumed shirking an even more supreme task: defending the nation against foreign attack.

There again: not enough space. Focusing on the foreign attack on the nation would interfere with his focus on himself. It’s a kind of discipline, in a way –  he never ever loses that laser-like focus on his own wants and rages.

Trump has systematically attempted to shut down investigations of the foreign-espionage operation that operated on his behalf. He fired the director of the FBI to shut it down. His White House coordinated with the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to misdirect the investigation. He mobilized the speaker of the House to thwart bipartisan investigations under broadly respected leadership. He has inspired, supported, and joined a national propaganda campaign against the Mueller investigation.

And all the while, Trump has done nothing—literally nothing—to harden the nation’s voting systems against follow-on Russian operations. On Sunday, he publicly repudiated his own national-security adviser for acknowledging at the Munich Security Conference the most incontrovertible basics of what happened in 2016.

We’re in an interesting interim state right now – plummeting towards an authoritarian disaster, but with many of the institutions of a liberal democracy still functioning, so that newspapers and tv news and individuals on Twitter and Facebook can still point out what’s happening. That can’t go on forever; if the plummet towards an authoritarian disaster continues to its goal, all that will be shut down or so hindered and crippled it might as well be shut down. But for now, we can still talk about what’s being done to us.

Americans who cherish democracy and national sovereignty need to start discussing a bigger and darker question.

Authoritarian nationalist parties across the western world have outright cooperated with the Russians. Russian money has helped to finance the National Front in France, and the election and re-election of the president of the Czech Republic. In Germany, Russia first created a hoax refugee-rape case—then widely publicized it—in an effort to boost its preferred extremist party in that country’s 2017 election, the Alternative for Germany. Russia supported pro-AfD comment in media favored by Germany’s surprisingly substantial Russian-speaking communities.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo predicted to the BBC at the beginning of 2018 that Russia “will be back” to help its preferred candidates in November 2018. To what extent does President Trump—to what extent do congressional Republicans—look to Russian interference to help their party in the 2018 cycle?

And how the fuck do we stop them?



Don’s bumpy morning

Feb 18th, 2018 11:12 am | By

That was just one of many deranged tweets from “the president” today. He’s more bonkers than ever, he’s more self-obsessed than ever, he’s as recklessly indifferent to the fate of the country and the world as ever. He’s also very very cross.

President Trump, in a series of angry and defiant tweets on Sunday morning, sought to shift the blame to Democrats for Russia’s virtual war to meddle in the 2016 election, saying that President Barack Obama had not done enough to stop the interference and denying that he had ever suggested that Moscow might not have been involved.

Mr. Trump, who has said little to publicly acknowledge a threat to American democracy that even one of his top aides called “incontrovertible” on Saturday, asserted that the efforts to investigate and combat the Russian meddling had only given the Russians what they wanted, saying that “they are laughing their asses off in Moscow.”

They are, of course, but not for the reason Trump claims. They’ve been doing it ever since November 8, 2016.

The president has repeatedly seized on the fact that the efforts started before he became a candidate, but has glossed over the conclusion that they evolved toward supporting his candidacy.

By “glossed over” they mean “totally and mendaciously ignored.”

In another tweet on Sunday, Mr. Trump, who has tried since the campaign to sow doubts about who was behind the election intrusions, said that he had “never said Russia did not meddle in the election,” quoting a comment he made in a 2016 presidential debate.

“I said ‘it may be Russia, or China or another country or group, or it may be a 400 pound genius sitting in bed and playing with his computer,” Mr. Trump wrote. “The Russian ‘hoax’ was that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia — it never did!”

Yet he has repeatedly denied that Russia was behind any meddling, even going so far in November as to suggest that he believed President Vladimir V. Putin’s denials of interference over the conclusions of American intelligence agencies.

“Every time he sees me he says, ‘I didn’t do that,’ and I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it,” Mr. Trump said at the time, calling questions about Moscow’s meddling a politically motivated “hit job.”

He blew kisses to Putin at the dinner table, he went over and had a cozy intimate chat with him with only the Russian interpreter for a third.

Mr. Trump has long fought the idea that Moscow’s efforts might have influenced the election, viewing it as a threat to his legitimacy. He has made little if any public effort to rally the nation to confront the Russians for their intrusion.

Always hedging. He has made zero effort, and he has made strenuous effort to do the opposite.

On Saturday, the president’s national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, said, referring to the Russian meddling, “With the F.B.I. indictment, the evidence is now really incontrovertible and available in the public domain.”

In a late-night tweet on Saturday, Mr. Trump criticized General McMaster for not saying at the security conference in Germany where he was speaking that the election results had not been changed as a result of the Russian interference. The nation’s intelligence agencies believe that it is not possible to make such a conclusion.

Trump is apparently too stupid even to grasp why it is not possible to draw such a conclusion.



What it’s all about

Feb 18th, 2018 10:47 am | By

Trump. Today.



Special rules

Feb 18th, 2018 9:59 am | By

Not at all scary or abnormal or reckless.

Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, whose inability to obtain permanent security clearance has come under renewed scrutiny in recent weeks, requests more information from the intelligence community than any other White House employee who isn’t working on the National Security Council, according to an unnamed source who spoke with the Washington Post. Kushner continues to only have interim security clearance after 13 months in the White House, since his background check still isn’t finished, most likely because he has had to repeatedly revise his disclosure form regarding foreign contacts to add information he had previously omitted.

And for extra added bonus alarm, he has no foreign policy or intelligence or diplomatic expertise of any kind; he’s a real estate manager; he’s there because he’s married to the corrupt ignorant president’s daughter.

Also…he agreed to that meeting with the Russians. How do we know he’s not just plain feeding them the information he requests and gets?

At this point, it’s reasonable to wonder if the president’s son-in-law will ever merit permanent security clearance, yet in the meantime he enjoys access to classified briefings, top-secret and sensitive compartmentalized information, foreign leaders on behalf of the country, and, according to the Post, more requested intel than anyone who isn’t a member of Trump’s National Security Council.

Kelly did some belated tidying up last week but Team Trump says that won’t hinder Prince Jared at all.

Kelly’s new stricter policy would theoretically revoke Kushner’s access to classified information as of next Friday, but considering his position and relation to Trump, an exception will probably be made for him by either Kelly or the president. Kushner’s lawyer seems pretty sure of that too, telling the Post that Kelly’s new policy “will not affect Mr. Kushner’s ability to continue to do the very important work he has been assigned by the president.”

Why would anyone assign important foreign policy work to a callow real estate manager? No one but a reckless cynical idiot.



17 CHILDREN MURDERED

Feb 17th, 2018 4:14 pm | By



Incredible job, and everybody is talking about it

Feb 17th, 2018 4:09 pm | By

Josh Dawsey in the Post on the nightmare zombie visit of Trump to the Florida hospital yesterday.

President Trump, as he often does while responding to natural disasters, mass shootings or unfolding crises, spent much of his time congratulating the responders instead of memorializing the victims of Wednesday’s school shooting during a visit here Friday.

Trump, in two quick stops at a hospital and sheriff’s office near the school where 17 were killed and scores were injured, praised the doctors, police officers, fire officials and others who responded quickly to the mass shooting in Parkland, casting their response as heroic and record-setting.

“Incredible job, and everybody is talking about it,” Trump said of the response, with dozens of officers flanking a large circular conference room table on the fifth floor of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.

No, what everybody is talking about is the horror of what happened, the students and teachers who were killed, the grief and terror and loss and anguish. The fact that emergency personnel responded quickly is not the core of the story.

“They were in really great shape,” he said of the families.

Yeah I’m sure they were ecstatic that their kids were in the hospital after being shot at school, and that some of their kids’ classmates are dead. I’m sure they’re in fabulous shape, ready to run a marathon, in peak tip-top happy condition.

“The job they’ve done is incredible, and I want to congratulate you,” Trump said as he shook the hand of Dr. Igor Nichiporenko at the hospital.

Not exactly. He thrust his hand out at the doctor, and when the doctor slowly took it, he yanked it hard.

He said he was impressed with the speed with which first responders reacted, calling it “record-setting” and “in one case, 20 minutes” from the school to the hospital.

“It’s an incredible thing,” Trump said. He later said the officers deserve a raise.

It’s a wonder he didn’t talk about what kind of gas mileage they got.

He did not give an emotional or rousing commemoration to the victims — like President Barack Obama’s after a mass shooting at a Charleston, S.C., church — nor did he publicly greet any families whose children were killed in the attack. Speaking at a funeral or a large vigil was not on the agenda. There were no calls for American resolve. There were no tears.

The visits were quick. For instance, Friday night, he was in the hospital for about 35 minutes, speaking to the news media for about 45 seconds.

There was no feeling, no understanding, no sorrow, no empathy, no concern, no compassion, no normal human reaction of any kind. He might as well have been playing golf. The most he could manage was that “It’s saaad that a thing like this could happen” – but that’s his “sad,” the one he puts at the end of his angry tweets, and he cut himself off instantly with “but the speed with which they got there was incredible” – as if to say let’s not get all mawkish here.

It’s chilling to watch. We know he’s empty, but seeing him demonstrate it at times like this…it’s dreadful.



Theory and practice

Feb 17th, 2018 12:04 pm | By

Meanwhile Trump sticks to his policy of hiring foreign workers for his own enterprises.

A Vox analysis of hiring records for seasonal workers at three Trump properties in New York and Florida revealed that only one out of 144 jobs went to a US worker from 2016 to the end of 2017. Foreign guest workers with H-2B visas got the rest.

Why would that be? Because they accept lower pay and crappier working conditions.

The H-2B visa program allows seasonal, non-agricultural employers — like hotels and ski resorts — to hire foreign workers when they can’t find American ones. The Trump administration temporarily expanded this guest-worker program in 2017 while restricting other avenues of legal immigration, including the H-1B program for high-skilled workers.

The Trump Organization is exactly the kind of company that relies on the H-2B visa program for low-skilled workers.

And Trump is exactly the kind of human who is eager to pay his employees as little as possible.

Under the H-2B program, employers must first try to hire American workers — or legal immigrants already in the United States — at reasonable wages for their openings. If they can’t find qualified US workers, then employers can ask the Department of Labor for permission to hire foreign guest workers on H-2B visas. Documents show that hiring managers at the Trump establishments made the minimum efforts required by law to recruit US workers.

Remember that story last year? In which the Mar-a-Lago managers put a tiny ad in one obscure paper for about 5 minutes, and that was it. Also they interviewed one American worker but did not hire her.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for immigration restrictions, said he was “displeased” when Trump temporarily expanded the H-2B program in 2017. He said Mar-a-Lago is just using the program how other employers use it: as a way to avoid paying higher wages or offering more benefits to attract American workers.

“It’s a bullshit law written to ensure that employers don’t have to hire Americans,” said Krikorian, who normally applauds the president’s immigration agenda.

No doubt he still does; it’s the hiring practices he’s objecting to.

In the past five years, a few of Trump’s golf clubs and resorts on the East Coast have relied heavily on hiring foreign workers to serve patrons during the summer months (in New York) and the winter months (in Florida). The H-2B database shows requests from Mar-a-Lago dating back to 2013. This practice has clearly not stopped since Trump became president.

In fact, the Trump administration temporarily expanded the H-2B program. In July 2017, the Department of Homeland Security raised the cap on H-2B visas for guest workers from 66,000 to 81,000 for fiscal year 2017. (Three days later, Trump’s properties asked for permission to hire 76 workers through the program.)

Tactful of him to wait three whole days.



He voiced no concern

Feb 17th, 2018 11:10 am | By

Trump yesterday found time to make survivors of the Florida massacre smile in his photo op, but not to say anything about stopping Putin and gang trashing what there is of our democracy.

After more than a dozen Russians and three companies were indicted on Friday for interfering in the 2016 elections, President Trump’s first reaction was to claim personal vindication: “The Trump campaign did nothing wrong — no collusion!” he wrote on Twitter.

He voiced no concern that a foreign power had been trying for nearly four years to upend American democracy, much less resolve to stop it from continuing to do so this year.

None, zip, zero. His first concern was for himself, and his second concern was for himself, and then he had a plane to catch.

Rather than condemn Russia for its actions, Mr. Trump in the past has said he accepts the denial offered by President Vladimir V. Putin. Mr. Trump has not imposed new sanctions called for in a law passed by Congress last year to retaliate for the attack on America’s political system, or teamed up with European leaders to counter a common threat. He has not led a concerted effort to harden election systems in the United States with midterm congressional elections on the horizon, or pressed lawmakers to pass legislation addressing the situation.

Instead he’s done

  • nothing
  • nothing
  • nothing

We have plenty of photos of him grinning and poking his thumb up in front of his gut though.

Michael A. McFaul, an ambassador to Moscow under President Barack Obama, called Mr. Trump’s reaction to the indictments “shockingly weak” and said he should instead have criticized Mr. Putin for violating American sovereignty or even announced plans to punish Moscow.

“Instead, he just focused on his own campaign,” Mr. McFaul said. “America was attacked, and our commander in chief said nothing in response. He looks weak, not only in Moscow but throughout the world.”

And not just weak; also indifferent, also self-absorbed and self-serving, also incompetent, also clueless, also reckless and irresponsible, also profoundly stupid.

Mr. Trump’s own aides readily acknowledge the reality that he does not. Besides describing Russian interference as undeniable on Saturday, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, his national security adviser, speaking at the Munich Security Conference, said Mr. Mueller’s charges made clear that Russia had been engaged in a “sophisticated form of espionage” against the United States.

“With the F.B.I. indictment, the evidence is now really incontrovertible and available in the public domain,” he said.

But the stuffed dummy at the top just keeps watching tv and paying sadistic hospital visits.



Smile, god damn it

Feb 17th, 2018 10:36 am | By

You in the bed, you too.

Image may contain: 9 people, people smiling, people standing and indoor



Smile, all of you

Feb 17th, 2018 10:34 am | By

Smile as if you mean it.

Image may contain: 12 people, people smiling, people standing, suit and indoor



Gaze into the abyss

Feb 17th, 2018 10:32 am | By

How dare he.

Image may contain: 10 people, people smiling, people standing and indoor



Don has a festive day out

Feb 17th, 2018 10:16 am | By

Oh christ. You think he can’t go any lower and then…

My god he is standing there grinning and doing a thumbs up gesture!

He’s standing by a victim’s hospital bed in a sea of forced grins for his photo op!

He’s clapping his hands!

He collected all the nearby staff and made them grin next to him and his horrible thumb!

And, to top it off, he again treats the slaughter at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas school as if it were an earthquake or a tornado rather than a human act that better laws could have prevented.

Ugh god I have seldom seen such a disgusting quartet of photos.

Updating to add: I was wrong about the clapping. A larger version of the photo reveals that Melania is making an open hands gesture while listening to the white coat person, while Donald has his folded in front of him.



The lioness thwarted the wolves

Feb 17th, 2018 9:58 am | By

Tarek Fatah on Asma Jahangir’s final victory over the angry Islamists.

For over 40 years the lioness of Pakistan stood alone, surrounded by a snarling pack of hyenas circling her for the kill. But they never dared come close to Asma Jahangir whose stare alone used to send many a jihadi and military general packing with tails tucked between their rears.

Asma Jahangir didn’t ever wrap her head in hijab, the flag of misogyny that has enamoured so many white women of privilege. She knew the piece of cloth represented Islamic radicalism.

Only 66, she was also the UN Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran. While most Pakistanis, Indians and Iranians were shocked at the news of her death, Islamists of the region rejoiced.

But the lioness, even in death, left the wolves in agony.

Mullahs gossiped in glee that no matter what Jahangir did in life, after her death her body would end up in their hands. This, because burial ceremonies are a monopoly of mosque-run cemeteries, and Islamic traditions (not the Quran) forbids women from being present at funerals.

The plan was to bar her Canadian-educated daughters, female followers and non-Muslims who she often represented, from the ceremony in which they could then insult her through insinuations mumbled in incomprehensible Arabic prayers.

Not so easy ayatollah. Asma Jahangir would not go quietly.

Friends and family of Jahangir turned the tables by inviting the harshest critic of the Islamist establishment, Haider Maududi, who ironically is the son of the founder of the radical Jamaat-e-Islami (a Muslim Brotherhood sister group in the Indian subcontinent) to conduct the farewell prayers and rituals.

Not only did an anti-Islamist lead her funeral prayer on Tuesday, but for the first time anywhere in the world, women of all ages joined the mixed-gender prayer, standing shoulder to shoulder with men in the front row — scores of them, some in the traditional Indo-Pakistani head cover ‘dopatta’, some even bare-headed, but not a single woman in hijab.

As Tarek says at the end – Farewell, sister.



It’s sad something like that could happen

Feb 16th, 2018 5:40 pm | By

Trump is back at Mar-a-Lago, and on the way there he stopped off at a hospital in Pompano Beach that took in eight of the victims of Nikolas Cruze.

The president and Mrs. Trump, visited the Broward Health North Hospital “to pay their respects and thank the medical professionals for their life-saving assistance,” according to a statement related by a White House spokeswoman on Friday evening.

When asked if he met with victims, President Trump said: “Yes, I did. I did indeed.”

“It’s sad something like that could happen,” he said.

Mr. Trump did not respond when he was asked if gun laws needed to be changed. He then walked into another room.

The Trumps, according to the statement, were also scheduled to travel to the Broward County Sheriff’s office to meet with “the law enforcement officials whose bravery helped save lives.”

Thanks, Mr President.



Dammit, Mo

Feb 16th, 2018 4:36 pm | By

Jesus thinks he has fixed the irony meter.

test

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Respite

Feb 16th, 2018 4:14 pm | By

Something pretty after a rough few days: from the last Winter Olympics, in Sochi:



The indictment

Feb 16th, 2018 10:41 am | By

Rosenstein announced the indictment about 2o minutes ago.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is announcing Friday the indictment of Russian nationals and entities accused of breaking U.S. laws to interfere with the 2016 presidential election, CBS News’ Paula Reid reports.

On Friday, a D.C. federal grand jury returned an indictment against the Internet Research Agency, a Russian organization which has connections to Russian President Vladimir Putin — it names 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities that accuses them of violating U.S. criminal laws to meddle in U.S. elections and political processes. According to a spokesman for the special counsel’s office, the indictment charges all of the defendants with conspiracy to defraud the U.S., as well as “three defendants with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and five defendants with aggravated identity theft.”

According to the indictment, “Some Defendants, posing as U.S. persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities.”

Working with the Internet Research Agency, the defendants “posted derogatory information” about several candidates, the indictment says, and by mid-2016, their efforts included “supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaging Hillary Clinton,” the indictment says.

In other words they did things that genuine US citizens were doing, but they gave those doings an artificial outside-actor boost…and given how tight the election was and how carefully targeted the boosting was, they are why we are stuck with this immoral empty hateful monster of a “president.”

Starting around 2014, the defendants began to track and study groups on U.S. social media dedicated to American politics and social issues.  They used metrics to track the performance of various social media groups. They then travelled to the U.S. (or in some cases, tried to travel to the U.S.) to collect intelligence for their interference operations.  They posted [probably “posed”] as Americans and contacted U.S. political and social activists and learned they should target “purple” states, those that were undecided in the campaign.

And by god it worked, damn them to hell.

They created hundreds of social media accounts and used them to develop fictitious U.S. personas into “leaders of opinion in the U.S.” The defendants worked day and night shifts to pump out messages, controlling pages targeting a range of issues, including immigration, Black Lives Matter, and they amassed hundreds of thousands of followers. They set up and used servers inside the U.S. to mask the Russian origin of the accounts. The Internet Research Agency employed hundreds of people for these purposes — administrators, creators of personas, technical support — and spent the equivalent of millions of dollars for these efforts.

In addition to disparaging Clinton, they denigrated other candidates, “such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio,” and they supported Bernie Sanders and then Donald Trump. In the latter half of 2016, they used groups to discourage minorities from voting in the 2016 presidential election.

They what?

They used groups to discourage minorities from voting in the 2016 presidential election. 

We’re living in Putin’s world.