"A Soft Coup, or Preserving Our Democracy?" by Giraldi

 

"Coup or legitimate political pushback depends on which side of the fence one is standing on. There are two competing narratives to choose from and there is inevitably considerable gray area in between depending on what turns out to be true. One narrative, coming from the Trump camp, is that President Obama used the nation’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies plus judicious leaks of classified information and innuendo to the media to sabotage Trump during and after the campaign. This was largely done by spreading malicious claims about the campaign’s associates, linking them to criminal activity and even suggesting that they had been subverted to support Russian interests. As of this date, none of the “Manchurian candidate” allegations have been supported by evidence because they are not true. The intention of the Obama/Clinton campaign is to explain the election loss in terms acceptable to the Democratic Party, to hamstring and delegitimize the new administration coming in, and to bring about the resignation or impeachment of Donald Trump. It is in all intents and purposes a coup, though without military intervention, as it seeks to overturn a completely legal and constitutional election.

The contrary viewpoint is that team Trump’s ties to Russia constitute an existential national security threat, that the Russians did steal information relevant to the campaign, did directly involve themselves in the election to discredit U.S. democracy and elect Trump, and will now benefit from the process, thereby doing grave damage to our country and its interests. Adversarial activity undertaken since the election is necessary, designed to make sure the new president does not alter or eliminate the documentary record in intelligence files regarding what took place and to limit Trump’s ability to make serious errors in any recalibration with Moscow. In short, Trump is a dangerous man who might be in bed with an enemy power and has to be watched closely and restrained. Doing so is necessary to preserve our democratic system."  Giraldi

----------------

 This article is a balanced view of the political disaster emerging in the US.  As such it may suffer from the basic flaw often contained in "balanced" views.  The two partisan views are mutually exclusive.  Either the Obama Administration sought information useful to HC's campaign or they did not.  Either civilian career employees conspired to destroy Trump's candidacy or they did not.  Either the IC chiefs conspired to get GCHQ to produce "evidence" against Trump or they did not.

Trump is certainly a less than optimal president.  Impetuous, ignorant of other than his narrow business interests, grossly vain, ridiculous haircut, gold plated apartment in a building named for him.  Yes!  He is bloody awful in many ways, but he IS president of the United States and if he is removed from office by what will be seen by the "Deplorables" as an agitprop driven conspiracy of the bi-coastal elites, the long term political stability of the United States will be damaged.   The question Mika raised by saying on national TV that it is the job of the MSM to dictate the content of the collective national mind will be answered in the negative by many.

And then there was the performance of the Germans at the White House presser.  The presumption and arrogance displayed by German journalists in daring to lecture the President of the United States  was breath-taking.   I am not a big fan of NATO, and have not been since the fall of the Soviet Union.  I certainly have been opposed to the eastward expansion of NATO to Russia's doorstep.  This expansion seems to me to be driven by a mindless jingoism that seeks an enemy.  Angela Merkel does not seem to share my opinion.  She stated clearly in her prepared remarks that NATO is very important to Germany, but at the same time she told us all that Germany, a rich country, will not be able to reach a 2% of GDP level of expenditure on its own defense until 2025.   Say what?   

I suppose the left and the foreign policy Borg imagines that President Pence will be manageable.  Perhaps he will be. Or perhaps he won't be.  Both statements cannot be true.  pl  

 

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/a-soft-coup-or-preserving-our-democracy/?mc_cid=2f82659492&mc_eid=101f318c4e

Comments

[Laura]

David, I agree. I think Obama was too much of of an optimist to even feel the need. He was wrong to be optimistic but certainly there was no particular reason to wire-tap.

[Laura]

Farmer - What do the two sides see in the video of Trump ignoring the handshake request/Merkel's suggestion?

[charly]

Trump trying to dodge paying taxes is not a negative. It is the expected behavior of a businessman.

[charly]

Nato is a defense organization. It is there to not have war. If Germany had a 2% defense budget the change of war would have been greater so spending the 2% is unwise and absolutely not a failure.

[raven]

You do understand that "the left" is just as convinced that the "borg" media was crucial to Trump winning the election?

[sid_finster]

The real estate developers I know are *always* being audited, *always* in at least one spv workout or bankruptcy, *always* in litigation.

[charly]

I doubt she would need an earpiece to understand what he was saying

[Bandolero]

confusedponderer

Trying to impeach Trump based on taxes is based on the assumption that Trump used illegal methods to evade taxes. I doubt he did that.

I think the reality is that rich persons have so many legal ways to evade taxes that they pay very little, if at all, taxes anyway, if they use them. And I think that's what Trump did: using every rule in the book to reduce his taxes in legal ways. Using all legal ways to reduce taxes may not look good to an electorate, but I think that's quite a usual procedure for all business people.

So far I haven't seen any evidence for Trump using illegal methods to evade taxes, and I don't think he did. Why should he have used illegal methods to reduce taxes when there are so many legal ways to reach the same goal? So, as I politically understand the tax accusations against Trump for violating some ethics, I don't think they hold water regarding violations of law.

[Seamus Padraig]

Don't be silly. For those gazillionaires who want to shrink their tax bills, there are plenty of perfectly legal tax shelters available. There are also plenty of lawyers and accountants who specialize in precisely that.

[Farmer Don]

I know, the whole incident seems to have been forgotten. Salon.com even charges that he is blurting out "State Secrets"!!!

http://www.salon.com/2017/03/18/oops-he-did-it-again-donald-trump-just-cant-stop-himself-from-blurting-out-state-secrets/

I'm also wondering.
1 Trump wants everyone in Nato to pay their fair share.
2 As a businessman he knows the Golden Rule. (He who pays the gold makes the rules)
3 He realizes that if this happens Nato nations will be less willing do the US's bidding
4 Therefore, he must have no plans for "Nation building" or "Regime change" that will require Nato members to tow the line.

[Eric Newhill]

Edward,
Your leftist buddy Michael Moore says that your goofy resistance has the goal of removing Trump from office.

http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/sarah-stites/2017/02/20/michael-moores-resistance-calendar-our-goal-his-removal

Sometimes I almost hope you guys are successful. Then we can just get on with the civil war that looks more inevitable all the time and rid the country of the leftists once and for all and start over with the republic with the lessons of the past written in stone to hopefully never be repeated. I mean you don't seriously think you guys would win do you? And you don't seriously think that us deplorables are going to just sit there and watch it happen? Right? Or is this more leftist magical thinking in which things work out as you say because you say. Who's got all the guns, Edward?

[robt willmann]

David Habakkuk mentioned Larry Johnson in his comment above. The loquacious and boisterous Alex Jones, who tends to interrupt his guests and push them in a different direction, had Johnson on as a guest on 17 March, I think it was. Johnson does manage to talk about the issue of surveillance of Trump, and other things--

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FScz1wJ8JD0

Recently, on 10 March, radio talk show host Laura Ingraham, who has a pretty large audience, had former NSA Technical Director of the World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group, Bill Binney, on as a guest. Ingraham went to law school and was a law clerk for a federal appeals court judge and for Judge Clarence Thomas on the U.S. Supreme Court. She worked for a law firm for a short while before moving to what she does now. Late in the interview, she mentions that she spent some time in Russia (early 1980's), and after returning to the U.S., her Russian friends told her that they were hauled in later by the MVD/KGB for questioning after her visit with them--

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxwMgCZlOjk

[Richard Armstrong]

If the efforts of the "soft coup" allegedly in progress lead to the removal of Trump by the Constitutional processes of impeachment or the 25th Amendment are those efforts still n attack on our institutions??

[Richard Armstrong]

David,

Anonymous source gives information to reporter who appears on cable news and repeats that information.

Anonymous source gives information to Larry C. Johnson who appears on cable news and repeats that information.

Why is Larry C. Johnson felt to be more credible??

[Swami Bhut Jolokia]

The presumption and arrogance displayed by German journalists in daring to lecture the President of the United States was breath-taking.

pl, I thought they were engaging in robust questioning, something our journalists don't do enough of. We need more people asking tough questions of our elected officials, at all levels. Part of the deal when running for and holding public office is that you will be challenged about what you do and say.

[Bandolero]

pl

What I find deeply ironic is that the German mood is quite different to what Merkel says. I am quite convinced that large numbers of Germans, likely a majority, do neither want a large increase of German defense spending nor a sharpening of troubles with Russia.

It's quite the opposite: entrenched Borgist forces, most of them located in the US, pressure Merkel for more defense spending and for renewed conflict with Moscow. German business mode is neither so. There people would like to see Northstream part II. How much influence the US president really has on Germany I don't know, but I tink Trump could do more to counter the US influence in Germany putting Germany on a war path versus Russia.

[turcopolier]

Bandolero

you know that I oppose jingoism against Russia. Perhaps Germany should withdraw from NATO or repudiate its commitment to spending 2% of GDP on defense. pl

[turcopolier]

Swami

There is a big question between asking hard questions and arrogantly lecturing. pl

[turcopolier]

Farmer Don

Nobody forced the member states of NATO to commit to a 2% commitment to their own defense. pl

[turcopolier]

raven

Absolutely not! They opposed him every step of the way. pl

[turcopolier]

charly

OK. Then Germany should repudiate the commitment it made to 2%. pl

[turcopolier]

TTG

In this case the IC leaders specifically asked the head of GCHQ for material that would be useful against Trump. pl

[Farmer Don]

Sorry, I should have made clear, the clip showing him say that they may have something in common, ie being wire tapped.

[MRW]

They didn’t need GCHQ. They could have asked the Israelis who invented NARUS in the late 90s, the interface between NSA and the backbone. (Plausible deniability anyone? Remember Alex Klein and the San Francisco facility in 2007? And the ridiculous claim that it only involved one location?)

NARUS, now owned by Boeing--after complaints of Israeli (foreign) access to NSA dumps--hoovers e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. [Israel had already designed a pipe of this info--the stuff NSA sends to their current Utah location--to their computers in-country.] Nevertheless, the Israelis would know the interface fields and how they operate, something I taught NSA in the 80s when NSA was still in direct control of the nodes attached to AT&T’s 10 (then) backbone nodes nationwide. It was called the Private Line Network (PLN) then and only 100 AT&T scientists knew how it worked. I had to learn it, and I can tell you definitively that NSA attached its hoovers to each backbone node and copied every domestic and foreign telephonic and electronic communication in its entirety. Everything. Don’t ever believe the 'only metadata’ or ‘call-record data' horseshit; it’s bogus.

There are any which way to glean that info without involving Five Eyes, which in my view would be ludicrous to attempt because it would leave a trail. The secret lies in Utah. That’s why they put their facility there: the Mormons are accommodating as long as you don’t bitch about their marriage practices, now considered illegal, but still practiced just east of NSA's facility.

[MRW]

He must by now owe the US somthing like half a billion or that.

Based on what? Some assumption you pulled out of your ass? What a ridiculous statement. It’s beneath you, confusedponderer.