Truth is truth, unless you're a Conservative
Then you get to invent the version of truth that works for you
How can you tell that Donald Trump is a sore loser? Because he never shuts up about all of the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama acolytes who are still out to get him, more than a year after the 2020 election. Yes, THAT election- the one that was stolen from him by Joe Biden and his evil minions.
Sure, Biden won the popular vote by seven million votes. Still, between the Italian satellites, Romanian hookers, and Zimbabwean mercenaries, Democrats stole the election from the REAL winner- Donald Trump. Truth be told- because he never stops telling us- Trump won by a landslide, don’tchaknow? If you don’t believe him, you’re too ignorant to follow the trail of evidence and bread crumbs that lead inevitably to only one conclusion- Joe Biden, in cahoots with the Freemasons, Girl Scouts, and Canadian sex workers, stole the election.
When Trump isn’t whining about being screwed out of his deserved victory in 2020, he indulges his fever-brain in all manner of conspiracy theories. The most recent one was that Democrats spied on him.
Never mind the absurdity of the argument that someone in the Obama Administration gave one of Hillary Clinton’s partners-in-crime access to the Trump Administration’s White House computers. Of course, the chronology alone doesn’t work, but let’s not let a little thing like the truth get in the way of a perfectly good conspiracy theory, shall we??
How do we know this? Because what Trump and his minions are proclaiming to be a “bombshell,” conclusively proof of spying, is nothing of the sort. John Durham, a Trump-era special counsel and a darling of the Far-Right,
filed a pretrial motion alleging that Michael A. Sussmann, a cybersecurity prosecutor, lied about his connections to the Clinton campaign in a September 2016 meeting with the FBI in which Sussmann provided testimony about Trump's alleged ties with Russia. These alleged ties, according to The Washington Post, involved "possible evidence of a secret communications channel between computer servers associated with the Trump Organization and with Alfa Bank, a Kremlin-linked financial institution."
The motion also claims that in February 2017, Sussman told the FBI that one of his own clients, technology executive Rodney Joffe – whose company apparently maintained internet-related servers for the White House at one point – "exploited" his access to these servers to dig up dirt on Trump.
Durham never directly stated in his motion that Clinton coordinated a campaign to “spy” on Trump, even though many Conservatives have been quick to come to that conclusion and run with it. This accounts for Conservatives who’ve been accusing mainstream media outlets of “bias” for “ignoring” such a “major” story.
Donald Trump, characteristically, accuses the “LameStream” media of ignoring a story “being talked about all over the world.” After all, it’s “a story so big, so powerful and so important for the future of our nation.” So every news outlet should be shouting it from the rooftops, right?
Except for the fact that it’s not nearly the story the Far-Right would have us believe it is.
While there may be reason to investigate Sussmann, there is still little basis to believe that Joffe's work was part of a grand scheme to smear Trump.
As the Times' Charlie Savage noted, the White House data allegedly "mined" from the White House was targeted before Trump took office.
Additionally, the incitement alleges that Joffe's company "had come to access and maintain dedicated servers for the EOP [Executive Office of the President] as part of a sensitive arrangement whereby it provided DNS resolution services to the EOP." So if Joffe's firm did record the web addresses of White House users, the Post's Glenn Kessler noted, then that may have simply been part of a pre-arranged contract rather than a politically-motivated breach of conduct.
In other words, nothing to see here, people. Move along, y’all.
Of course, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and other voices on the Far-Right are treating this as if it’s the Scandal of the Millenium, but they’ve built their house on the soft sand of emotion, outrage, and paper-thin evidence. What they’re counting on is inflaming the anger of their viewers, who prefer being told what to think over critical thinking.
Trump and his supporters have yet to come to grips with the reality that he lost the 2020 election fair and square. Yes, the “F—k Your Feelings” crowd has had trouble processing complicated feelings. You’d think that after 15 months, they’d be mature enough to face reality and move on. After all, what was it they told those of us who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016?
GET OVER IT!! TRUMP WON!!!
Yeah, the “F—k Your Feelings” crowd meant it about YOUR feelings, not theirs…and it shows.
So, to recap. It IS a conspiracy theory. Trump’s claims AREN’T true. Democrats WEREN’T spying on him, “not just as a candidate but as President of the U.S. in the White House as well as in his own home.” It didn’t happen, period- except in the fever brains of Trump and his “yes men.”
Not that the truth won’t stop Conservatives from working to pass off various iterations of the Big Lie. As long as Donald Trump is driving the bus, it’s what they’ll continue to do.
And America will continue to be poorer for it.
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