By
awarding itself the title of the « 4th Estate », the US Press has claimed
equality with the three Democratic Estates, although it is devoid of popular
legitimacy. It is waging a vast campaign, both at home and abroad, to denigrate
President Trump and provoke his destitution – a campaign which began on the
very evening of his election, in other words before he even arrived at the
White House. It won huge success amongst the Democrat electorate and in the
allied states, whose population is convinced that the President of the United
States is deranged. But Donald Trump’s electors are holding fast, and he is
proving able to fight efficiently against poverty.
The
International Press campaign aimed at destabilizing President Trump continues.
The smear machine, set up by David Brock during the transitional period [1], plays up, as much as it possibly can, the
hot-tempered and often vulgar character of the Presidential Tweets. The media
entente, organized by the mysterious NGO First Draft [2], repeats tirelessly that the Justice
Department is investigating the links between the President’s campaign team and
the dark conspiracy attributed to the Kremlin.
A study by
Professor Thomas E. Patterson of the Harvard Kennedy School has shown that the
US, British, and German Press have quoted Donald Trump three times more often
than previous Presidents. and that, during the first 100 days of his
presidency, 80% of their articles were clearly unfavorable to him [3].
During the
FBI campaign [4] aimed at forcing President Nixon to resign,
the US Press awarded itself the qualifier of « 4th Estate », thereby signifying
that their owners had more legitimacy than the People. Far from folding under
the pressure, Donald Trump, well aware of the danger represented by the
alliance between the medias and the 98% of senior civil servants who voted
against him, declared a « war on the Press », during his speech of 22 January
2017, one week after his inauguration. Meanwhile, his special advisor, Steve
Bannon, declared to the New York Times that,
de facto, the Press had become the « new opposition party ».
In any case, the President’s electors did not withdraw their
confidence in the President.
Let’s
remember how this affair began, during the period of transition, which is to
say before Donald Trump’s inauguration. An NGO, Propaganda
or Not ?, launched the idea that Russia had organized hoaxes during
the Presidential campaign in order to scuttle Hillary Clinton and make sure
Donald Trump would be elected. Àt the time, we underlined the links between
this mysterious NGO and Madeleine Albright and Zbigniew Brzeziński [5]. The accusation, repeated at length by the
Washington Post, denounçed a list of agents of the Kremlin, including the
Voltaire Network. And yet so far, nothing, absolutely nothing, has surfaced to
support this Russian conspiracy theory.
Everyone
has noticed that the arguments used against Donald Trump are not simply those
which are usually deployed in political combat, but clearly those employed in
war propaganda [6].
The Oscar
for bad faith must go to CNN, which is handling this affair obsessively. The
channel was forced to apologize after they had broadcast a report accusing one
of Donald Trump’s close collaborators, the banker Anthony Scaramucci, of being
paid indirectly by Moscow. Since this accusation was invented, and since
Scaramucci is rich enough to take them to court, CNN apologized, and three
journalists from their investigation team « resigned ». Then journalist James
O’Keefe’s Project Veritas published three video sequences filmed via
spycam [7]. In the first, we see a CNN supervisor
laughing in an elevator, saying that these accusations of the President’s
collusion with Russia were « bullshit » broadcast in order to boost the «
audience ». In the second, a star presenter and ex-collaborator of Obama
confirms that the information was « drivel ». In the third, a producer declares
that Donald Trump is mentally sick and that his electors are « dumb as shit »
(sic). In reply, the President posed a video montage created from images, taken
not from a Western movie, but dating from his work with the US Wrestling
Federation, the WWE. He can be seen pretending to beat up his friend Vince
McMahon (husband of his Secretary of State for Small Businesses and Consumer
Affairs) whose face was covered by the CNN logo. The video ends with an altered
CNN logo reading Fraud News Network.
Apart from the fact that this event demonstrates that in the
United States, the President does not have exclusive rights to vulgarity, it
shows that CNN – which has raised the question of Russian interference more
than 1,500 times in the space of two months – does not practice journalism and
cares nothing about the truth. We have been aware of this for a long time
concerning its reports on international politics – we are discovering it today
about those concerning interior politics.
Although
it is far less significant, a new dispute is now opposing the President and the
presenters of MSNBC’s morning show, Morning Joe. They
have been criticizing him violently for months. It so happens that Joe
Scarborough is an ex-lawyer and parliamentarian from Florida who fights against
the right to abortion and for the dissolution of « useless » Ministries such as
Commerce, Education, Energy, and Housing. On the contrary, his partner (both
on- and off-screen) Mika Brzeziński, is a simple prompter-reader who supported
Bernie Sanders. In a Tweet, the President insulted them by calling them «
Psycho Joe » and « low I.Q. Crazy Mika ». No-one doubts that these
characterisations are close to the truth, but setting them down in this way is
obviously aimed only at damaging the journalists’ self-esteem. In any case, the
two presenters wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post calling
the President’s sanity into question.
Mika
Brzeziński is the daughter of Zbigniew Brzeziński, one of the string-pullers
of Propaganda or not ?, who died a month ago.
The vulgarity of the Presidential Tweets has nothing to do with
insanity. Dwight Eisenhower, and especially Richard Nixon, were far more
obscene than Trump and were nonetheless two grand Presidents.
Furthermore, the impulsive nature of his Tweets does not
necessarily mean that the President is himself impulsive. In reality, on each
subject, Donald Trump reacts immediately with aggressive Tweets. Then he throws
ideas around in all directions, unhesitatingly contradicting himself from one
declaration to the next, and then closely observes the reactions they provoke.
Finally, having formed his own opinion, he meets the opposing party and
generally comes to an agreement with them.
Donald Trump does not possess the good Puritan education of
Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton but incarnates the resilience of the New World.
Throughout his electoral campaign, he continually presented himself the man who
would clean up the innumerable dishonesties that this good education serves to
disguise in Washington. And it was he and not Madame Clinton that the United
States voted into the White House.
Of course, one might take the President’s controversial
declarations seriously, choosing one that’s shocking and ignoring those that
state the contrary. We should not confuse the Trump style with his policies. On
the contrary, we must examine his decisions – and their consequences – closely.
For example, let’s take his decree aimed at refusing entry to the
United States to foreigners whose Secretary of State has been unable to confirm
the identity.
It was observed that the population of the seven countries for
which he limited access to the United States is in the majority Muslim. We
compared this fact with the declarations of the President during his electoral
campaign. Finally, we created the myth of a racist Trump. There were a number
of showboat trials aimed at repealing this « Islamophobic decree », until the
Supreme Court confirmed its legality. Then we moved the goal-posts by affirming
that the Court had based its decision on a second draft of the decree, which
included several flexibilities. This is true, except that these flexibilities
were already set out (with different wording) in the first version.
Arriving at the White House, Donald Trump did not deprive the US
citizens of their health insurance, nor declare the Third World War. On the
contrary, he opened a number of economic sectors which had been stifled for the
benefit of certain multinationals. Besides which, we have witnessed a
disengaging of the terrorist groups in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, and a
noticeable calming of the tension in all of the Greater Middle East, with the
exception of Yemen.
How much further will this go – what will be the outcome of the
confrontation between the White House and the medias, between Donald Trump and
certain moneyed powers?
Notes
[1] “The
Clinton system to discredit Donald Trump”, by Thierry Meyssan,
Translation Pete Kimberley, Al-Watan (Syria), Voltaire Network, 28 February 2017.
[2] “The
New Media World Order”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete
Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 7 March 2017.
[3] «News Coverage of Donald Trump’s First 100 Days»,
Thomas E. Patterson, Harvard Kennedy School,
May 18, 2017.
[4] We only learned thirty years after the fact
that the mysterious « Deep Throat » who fed the Watergate scandal was none
other than W. Mark Felt, the ex-assistant of J. Edgard Hoover, who was himself
the number 2 of the FBI.
[5] “The
NATO campaign against freedom of expression”, by Thierry Meyssan,
Translation Pete Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 5
December 2016.
[6] “Anti-Donald
Trump: war propaganda”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete
Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 7 February 2017.
[7] « Project
Veritas dévoile une campagne de mensonges de CNN », Réseau Voltaire, 1er juillet 2017.
French
intellectual, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace
Conference. His columns specializing in international relations feature in
daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last
two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.
The articles
on Voltaire Network may be freely reproduced provided the source is cited,
their integrity is respected and they are not used for commercial purposes
(license CC BY-NC-ND).
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