Wildly Successful "Muh Russia" Psy Ops Campaign Winds Down

The Russian conspiracy theory is now right about a year old. The narrative began in June of last year when it became clear to most people that Trump had secured the Republican nomination and there would be no brokered convention. This was also after DNC emails -- which showed collusion between the DNC, the Clinton campaign, and the media to sway the outcome of the Democratic primary -- had been released by Wikileaks, and after Clinton campaign manager John Podesta's emails had been hacked, but prior to their release by Wikileaks.

The Muh Russia conspiracy theory includes 3 major components.

1. That Russia surreptitiously acted to sway the US election in favor of Trump, including by hacking the DNC emails and releasing them through Wikileaks.
2. That the Trump campaign somehow coordinated with the Russians in their activities.
3. That Trump committed obstruction of justice to hinder/stop investigations into Muh Russia out of fear that they would reveal his criminal activities.

The culmination of the media frenzy is the current investigation into the matter by the US Senate. The event has been hyped to Super Bowl levels by the media. The first major testimony, made yesterday by NSA Director Rogers, was disappointing to the left. Rogers not only flatly denied that he had received any sort of pressure to from the administration as suggested, but he even pushed back on the hysteria being laid on him by Senators such as California's Kamala Harris.

Similarly Comey's much-anticipated testimony today didn't deliver much of substance. Trump was never under investigation, he pressured Comey to go easy on Flynn, and he seemed to try to extract some sort of display of loyalty from Comey, which I believe to mean that Trump wanted Comey to publicly announce that Trump was not under investigation, which would be a fair request given that every left-winger in existence is saying Trump isn't fit for the presidency because he is "under investigation". (They certainly didn't hold that view when Candidate Clinton actually was under FBI investigation.)

The narrative is generally falling apart in the media. Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor with a reputation as a staunch liberal, argues that nothing Trump has done could be considered as obstruction of justice.

While the investigations are ongoing, there are clear indications that the media frenzy is subsiding. Some high-ranking Democrats are engaging in expectations management about the whole ordeal. The first aspect of the narrative -- that Russia worked to rig the election -- is defended by both Rogers and Comey. We have to believe they have some reason for those assertions. However the evidence that has been made public is highly lacking, and there's no evidence that the Russian publicly leaked any information to Wikileaks. In fact, the only evidence out there suggests that they did not. The second and third aspects, that Trump colluded with the Russians and is covering it up, are losing steam. The only aspect of all this that might be unethical is Trump encouraging Comey to lay off on Flynn. Unethical, perhaps, but legal. As Dershowitz tells us, even if Trump had ordered Comey to lay off Flynn, it would have been within his legal authority as head of the executive branch. Whether Trump's coercion was proper is a matter to be decided in the next election. However, it is a far cry from what is being alleged here: that Trump is a traitor for helping Russia rig the US election, and has sought to obstruct the subsequent investigation. Both charges are totally without merit. It seems likely he used his influence to try to protect Flynn, who had been a loyal and early support of Trump, joining him at times on the campaign trail. Perhaps that's improper, but let's look at it within context. The Democrats wanted to re-elect the Clintons to office. Their history of pay-for-pardon while in office is surely much more unethical than Trump's attempt to protect an ally from an investigation that only occurred in the first place due to widespread and misplaced media hysteria that was triggered by political opponents. This is all as if he was accused of murder, and it turns out he had just tried to sweet talk a cop to get out of a speeding ticket.

Because this is all so well documented, I suspect this entire incident will one day became a canonical case study in mass propaganda and delusion. When they teach the principle "if you repeat a lie often enough people will start to believe it", this will be the go-to example. It will be studied from a political science perspective as well because the Democrats were able to turn a reality where they were caught rigging an election to one where they were the victims of a rigged election, and they were able to bog down their political adversaries in the process. Many on the right are truly ecstatic at this point. The whole nonsense narrative is finally being destroyed through exposure to reality. They anticipate that they will be vindicated, and the leftist media discredited, in the eyes of the public. But why should anything change? If that was to be true, it would have happened in response to the DNC emails, over a year ago. The notion that the left will finally acknowledge objective reality is a fantasy. This whole ordeal will be rationalized or memory-holed. Don't believe me? Just ask a liberal about the Wikileaks or Trump's tax returns and see what kind of responses you get.

This narrative has failed in the sense that it didn't get Trump impeached. In many cities crowds gathered to watch the Comey hearing on TVs, like a political Super Bowl party. They truly believe something of substance against Trump was going to come out of this. However overall the whole fiasco has be a resounding success. No one is talking about Democrats rigging an election, or Obama spying on a political candidate, or the billions of dollars in political slush funds Trump just shut down, or the massive crackdowns on pedophilia and human trafficking, or the emails just released showing Hillary was advised by security experts not to run a private server, or Eric Holder being looked at for squashing the Fast & Furious investigation, or the murder of Seth Rich......

Those are all newsworthy items, especially the political slush fund. No, all eyes are turned onto a fake Trump scandal. If brainwashing and misdirecting the general public were the general goal, then this has been a wild success. Trump, the master of perceptions, certainly has his work cut out for him, and his greatly handicapped because the media is owned by the left.