EDITOR’S NOTE, February 16, 2024: On February 15, Justice Department Counsel David Weiss indicted FBI informant Alexander Smirnov on two felony counts of making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record for claims made to the bureau. The charges are in relation to June 2020 FD-1023 form alleging President Joe Biden and son Hunter Biden received a combined $10 million in a bribery scheme involving the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma.
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MSNBC propagandist Nicolle Wallace on Monday’s Deadline: White House engaged viewers in a bizarre and creepy “thought experiment” where she insinuated former President Donald Trump taking classified documents after losing the 2020 election was equivalent to Vladimir Putin fleeing a coup in a car loaded up with documents to sell for leverage.
Wallace borrowed this comparison from a piece in The Atlantic that, despite the lack of any charges against Trump for espionage, treason, or attempted sale of the classified documents, insisted the situation was comparable to one where Putin was overthrown by a coup in Russia and decided to betray his country to foreign powers to save himself:
“To understand the severity of the charges against Trump, consider a thought experiment. Imagine that Vladimir Putin is one day driven from the Kremlin, perhaps in the coup or the face of a popular revolt. He jumps into his limo, and heads into self-imposed exile in a remote dacha. His trunk is full of secret documents that he decided belonged to him, including details of the Russian nuclear deterrent and Russia's military weaknesses. Now imagine how valuable those boxes would be to any intelligence organization in the world”
The implications in this thought experiment were indeed terrifying. First, the comparison of Trump to a murderous dictator was disgusting, and a lie the media has shamelessly echoed.
The accusation that former President Trump was a traitor actively trying to sell America’s national security secrets to the highest bidder has long been debunked. There so far has been no indication from the indictment or from reporting that Trump had any monetary motive for keeping the documents.
That means this was a pathetic attempt at gaslighting and fearmongering against the public by the press, most likely trying to distract the public from President Biden’s foreign bribery scandal or the articles of impeachment just introduced.
Trump being Putin in Wallace’s thought experiment also raised another subtle issue. In it, Putin was overthrown by a “coup or popular revolt”, and this led to him deciding to steal Russian state secrets. But this directly contradicts reality. Was Trump a dictator? Was he overthrown by a coup? Was democracy fake this entire time? Wallace seemed to suggest, yes. MSNBC and the rest of the liberal media have insisted the only insurrection was January 6, and Trump losing power was a triumph for democracy. So why then imply now that it was more like a revolution or coup instead of a peaceful, democratic transfer of power?
Perhaps this was a Freudian slip about the left’s own election interference, or just the usual Trump Derangement Syndrome. Either way, what was certain was that MSNBC got so caught up in its own lies they couldn’t keep their story straight.
Nicolle Wallace’s fearmongering was sponsored by E-trade. Their contact information is linked.
The transcript is below, click “expand” to read:
MSNBC’s Deadline: White House
06/12/23
4:30 PM ET
(…)
NICOLLE WALLACE: What we know now guarantees that this is a white-knuckle moment for our nation for one reason, because of what the Atlantic calls the ‘National-Security Nightmare’ that we find ourselves in, because that is what allegedly hoarding some of the country’s most sensitive intelligence secrets in an unsecured club, in bathrooms, and ballrooms, and showers for more than a year and moving and around it around to all those places causes a national security nightmare.
Here’s more from The Atlantic, reporting, quote, “To understand the severity of the charges against Trump, consider a thought experiment. Imagine that Vladimir Putin is one day driven from the Kremlin, perhaps in the coup or the face of a popular revolt. He jumps into his limo, and heads into self-imposed exile in a remote dacha. His trunk is full of secret documents that he decided belonged to him, including details of the Russian nuclear deterrent and Russia's military weaknesses. Now imagine how valuable those boxes would be to any intelligence organization in the world.”
That thought experiment is certainly enough to keep anybody up at night, no less national security professionals, who, when they read that 38-count indictment saw deadly serious nuances and ramifications that may be invisible to civilians like you and me. Make no mistake, national security experts have been shaken by what the indictment lays bare for the very first time.
Politico reports this, quote: “The unsealed indictment on former President Donald Trump's handling of classified documents has current and former national security officials claiming the case is devastating against him and that damage may have been done to U.S. national security. The classified documents described in the indictment are some of the most sensitive information we possess,” said Mick Mulroy a senior Pentagon official in the Trump administration. “This type of information should never be removed from a secured facility and once discovered should have been immediately returned.”
(…)
