Tag Archives: Rachel Maddow

News

FBI notes reveal doubts about Steele dossier promoted by news media leftists

1 Comment
Left to right: Comey, Lynch, Clinton, McCabe
Left to right: Comey, Lynch, Clinton, McCabe

The mainstream media is being silent about revelations that the FBI had major doubts about the Steele dossier. So, let’s take a look at the newly-released FBI notes.

Here’s the latest from the Wall Street Journal:

A Senate committee released newly declassified documents that showed the Federal Bureau of Investigation was wary in early 2017 of a dossier compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele that helped stir a narrative, later debunked, that the Trump campaign had close ties to Russian intelligence.

The documents released Friday by the Senate Judiciary Committee included FBI notes from three days of interviews with a primary source of Mr. Steele who cast doubt on some of the dossier’s contents. FBI notes from the interview in early 2017 indicated that Mr. Steele’s source had told him information about Mr. Trump’s alleged sexual escapades was “rumor and speculation” that he was unable to confirm.

Also released were notes of a former high-level FBI agent, Peter Strzok, who wrote that Mr. Steele himself “may not be in a position to judge the reliability of his subsource network.’’

Reacting to a New York Times report in February 2017 that said the Trump campaign and people around the candidate had repeated contacts with Russian intelligence officials, Mr. Strzok wrote in the margins of a printed copy of the article that “we are unaware of any Trump advisors engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials.”

Actually, Strozk wrote a lot more than that.

I found more FBI notes here:

Document number two, also withheld from public view until now, takes apart a New York Times article written by Michael Schmidt, Mark Mazzetti, and Matt Apuzzo.

Comments made by then-FBI agent Peter Strzok undercut a litany of claims made in the Times article, which was entitled: “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contact With Russian Intelligence.”

Claim in NYT article: “Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.”

Note by Strzok: “This statement is misleading and inaccurate as written. We have not seen evidence of any individuals in contact with Russians (both Governmental and non-Governmental)” and “There is no known intel affiliation, and little if any [government of Russia] affiliation[.] FBI investigation has shown past contact between [Trump campaign volunteer Carter] Page and the SVR [Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation], but not during his association with the Trump campaign.”

Claim in NYT article: “… one of the advisers picked up on the [intercepted] calls was Paul Manafort, who was Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman for several months …”

Note by Strzok: “We are unaware of any calls with any Russian government official in which Manafort was a party.”

Claim in NYT article: “The FBI has obtained banking and travel records …”

Note by Strzok: “We do not yet have detailed banking records.”

Claim in NYT article: “Officials would not disclose many details, including what was discussed on the calls, and how many of Trump’s advisers were talking to the Russians.”

Note by Strzok: “Again, we are unaware of ANY Trump advisers engaging in conversations with Russian intel officials” and “Our coverage has not revealed contact between Russian intelligence officers and the Trump team.”

Claim in NYT article: “The FBI asked the NSA to collect as much information as possible about the Russian operatives on the phone calls …”

Note by Strzok: “If they did we are not aware of those communications.”

Claim in NYT article: “The FBI has closely examined at least four other people close to Mr. Trump … Carter Page … Roger Stone… and Mr. Flynn.”

Note by Strzok: “We have not investigated Roger Stone.”

Claim by NYT: “Senior FBI officials believe … Christopher Steele … has a credible track record.”

Note by Strzok: “Recent interviews and investigation, however, reveal Steele may not be in a position to judge the reliability of subsource network.”

Claim by NYT: “The FBI’s investigation into Mr. Manafort began last spring [2016].”

Note by Strzok: “This is inaccurate … our investigation of Manafort was opened in August 2016.”

Claim by NYT: “The bureau did not have enough evidence to obtain a warrant for a wiretap of Mr. Manafort’s communications, but it had the NSA closely scrutinize the communications of Ukrainian officials he had met.”

Note by Strzok: “This is inaccurate …”

Basically, everything the New York Times wrote was judged by Peter Strozk – the anti-Trump FBI adulterer – as inaccurate. Keep that in mind the next time you read something in the New York Times. It’s just fake news, from front to back, top to bottom. Every day. People read it for feelings – not for an accurate view of the world.

There is a nice re-cap of left-wing news sources trumpeting the Steel dossier as genuine in this Twitter thread. Make note of the names, and don’t trust these news sources in the future. CNN, MSNBC, Brian Stelter, Rachel Maddow, New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait, Catherine Rempell, Katy Tur, Mother Jones, David Corn, Newsweek, Slate, Rick Wilson, Joy Reid, Jennifer Rubin, Max Boot, Charles Blow, Seth Abramson, Matthew Dowd, Kurt Eichenwald, The Daily Beast, The New Yorker, etc.

The Federalist had some details about the source for the Steele dossier.

The Primary Subsource was in reality Steele’s sole source, a longtime Russian-speaking contractor for the former British spy’s company, Orbis Business Intelligence. In turn, the Primary Subsource had a group of friends in Russia. All of their names remain redacted. From the FBI interviews, it becomes clear that the Primary Subsource and his friends peddled warmed-over rumors and laughable gossip that Steele dressed up as formal intelligence memos.

On Twitter, I found a thread that presented a case that the source of the dossier was a PRESS SECRETARY. Not an intelligence agent.  Not a “veteran spy”. A PRESS SECRETARY. I guess we’ll find out if this is correct soon.

News

Romney won the presidential debate – according to left-wing MSNBC hosts

9 Comments

From the left-wing Politico, no less.

Excerpt: (links removed)

Left-leaning commentators hit President Barack Obama hard on TV and the Internet after the first presidential debate in Denver on Wednesday night, saying GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney handily defeated his more experienced opponent.

MSNBC hosts were “stunned” by Obama’s performance, suggesting the president was rusty for not having debated in four years.

“I don’t think he explained himself very well on the economy. I think he was off his game. I was absolutely stunned tonight,” Ed Schultz said.

“Where was Obama tonight?” Chris Matthews asked.

Matthews said Romney addressed Obama “like the prey. He did it just right. I’m coming at an incumbent. I’ve got to beat him. You gotta beat the champ, and I’m gonna beat him tonight. And I don’t care what this guy moderator, whatever he thinks he is, because I’m going to ignore him. What was Romney doing? He was winning.”

“It does remind you that the last debate Mitt Romney had was seven months ago and the last debate that Barack Obama had was four years ago,” said Maddow.

The Daily Beast’s Andrew Sullivan called Obama “tired,” “bored” and wrote that he might have even lost the election.

“He choked. He lost. He may even have lost the election tonight,” Sullivan wrote, later adding, “Obama looked tired, even bored; he kept looking down; he had no crisp statements of passion or argument; he wasn’t there. He was entirely defensive, which may have been the strategy. But it was the wrong strategy. At the wrong moment.”

Sullivan, an Obama supporter, was even more vicious on Twitter, calling Obama’s performance “terrible” and “political malpractice.”

“This is a rolling calamity for Obama. He’s boring, abstract, and less human-seeming than Romney!” he wrote. “He’s throwing the debate away.”

Another Obama supporter, liberal comedian Bill Maher, went on a similar Twitter rant, firing off such comments as, “Obama made a lot of great points tonight. Unfortunately, most of them were for Romney.”

A post-debate CNN poll found that:

According to a CNN/ORC International survey conducted right after the debate, 67% of debate watchers questioned said that the Republican nominee won the faceoff, with one in four saying that President Barack Obama was victorious.

“No presidential candidate has topped 60% in that question since it was first asked in 1984,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

While nearly half of debate watchers said the showdown didn’t make them more likely to vote for either candidate, 35% said the debate made them more likely to vote for Romney while only 18% said the faceoff made them more likely to vote to re-elect the president.

More than six in ten said that president did worse than expected, with one in five saying that Obama performed better than expected. Compare that to the 82% who said that Romney performed better than expected. Only one in ten felt that the former Massachusetts governor performed worse than expected.

[…]The sample of debate-watchers in the poll was 37% Democratic and 33% Republican.

[…]Debate watchers thought Romney was more aggressive. Fifty-three percent said Romney spent more time attacking his opponent. Only three in ten thought Obama spent more time taking it to Romney. By a 58%-37% margin, debate watchers thought Romney appeared to be the stronger leader.

The problem with Obama is that he had four years to run the economy, and he ran it into the ground. You can’t defend failure like that by shifting blame and pointing fingers. He failed because his ideas are wrong. We need new ideas – a different approach. But that doesn’t explain why Obama performed so poorly. Obama performed poorly because he has been totally isolated from any disagreement or critical evaluation for the last 4 years. In his mind, it’s not just the private sector that’s fine. The unemployment rate is fine, the national debt is fine, the budget deficit is fine, the terrorist attack in Libya is fine, socialized health care is fine, poor education outcomes is fine, taxpayer-funded abortion is fine, Iran having nuclear weapons is fine, and gay marriage is fine. He just has complete and utter contempt for anyone who disagrees with him – he has been indoctrinated to think that anyone who disagrees with him is not just wrong, but evil. And maybe even that all disagreement with him is motivated by racism. He came across as a whiny, petulant child, because of his ideological rigidity and lack of humility.

The mask came off Wednesday night, and it was all Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers underneath. The media and the teleprompter could not protect him from his real self.

Videos

Are universities teaching students how to think critically?

6 Comments

Unionized teachers view the public school system as a way to indoctrinate children in anti-Americanism, socialism, moral relativism, pacifism, postmodernism, feminism, promiscuity and a host of other doctrines of the secular left. Professors collect the money taken from working parents through compulsory taxation, and then refuse to do what is best for the children’s future careers. Instead of educating children to be logical, open-minded critical thinkers, public schools indoctrinate children with the views of the secular leftist teachers.

And you can see the results of this left-wing indoctrination process in the videos below. (H/T Tina)

Affirmative Action

Redistribution of Wealth

Keynesian deficit spending

Free speech and fair debate

The only good thing about this sad turn of events is that the high unemployment rate for youth will help them to learn the way the world really is quite rapidly, after their exit from the Never-Never-Land of public school. A new study shows that only 25% of teens will be able to find jobs this summer. Imagine their surprise when everything enacted by the Obama administration, which they overwhelmingly supported, is shown to have failed to create economic growth. Who knew? They will learn that capitalism and corporations are good, and that lower taxes and less regulation are essential to job creation.

Eventually, young people will eventually realize that they have been played for suckers by the secular leftist academics. They will start to think critically about the Jon Stewart show, the Stephen Colbert show, the Rachel Maddow show, and the Ed Schulz show. They will realize that hatred and mockery are not arguments. They will learn that businessmen and economists know more about business and economics than comedians and opinion journalists. They will have to start from the bottom and unlearn everything they learned in the public schools. Unfortunately for them, that should be about the time that the austerity measures kick in to pay for the multi-trillion dollar national debt that the Obama administration ran up, thanks to their votes.

But these growing pains are only going to get worse as liberal government programs break up traditional families more and more. But again, it will be self-inflicted misery since the young people are big supporters of marriage-killing feminist, socialist and gay-rights policies. Fewer and fewer of them will grow up in traditional homes, with mothers and fathers who stick around to raise them. Won’t they be surprised to find out how much the traditional marriages they rejected as “sexist” and “intolerant” matter so much to their success. But by then it will be too late, and their meager salaries, should they be lucky enough to find a job that hasn’t been outsourced to a capitalist nation, will be automatically taxed to pay for the subsidized pensions of their wordsmithing professors. Naturally, those very entitlement programs will be bankrupt by the time they are ready to retire – too bad they opposed the privatization of those programs when they had the chance to vote to save their own futures.