Every year, we find out that some long standing “conspiracy theories” are true. This year, there were some real whoppers. Now that they have been exposed, people are beginning to adjust to the “new normal,” which is surprisingly different than the new normal that seemed so true just last year when Donald Trump entered the White House. Here is the WebLineNews list for 2017.
- Julian Assange was Working With Republicans on a Coup Plan.
WikiLeaks and its leader Julian Assange spent years disclosing leaked information to make government more transparent. In 2016, strange things happened. WikiLeaks disclosed unfavorable leaks about Democrats, including a slow drip of the “DNC Leaks” that revealed inside the Democratic campaign. WikiLeaks appeared to be working with Republican Rudy Giuliani. Donald Trump declared his “love” for WikiLeaks more than 100 times. Julian Assange played cryptic games to create the perception that Democrats killed Seth Rich. Julian Assange became fast friends with Fox News host Sean Hannity. WikiLeaks looked too cozy with Donald Trump and his famous supporters.
Right before the election, operative Steve Pieczenik released a viral video declaring that he “initiated a counter-coup through Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.” There was no coup to counter, so really, Steve Pieczenik was instigating a coup in America.
November, 2017, the bombshell dropped: WikiLeaks was working directly with Donald Trump Jr. on the campaign while at the same time trying to fabricate a “perception of our impartiality.” WikiLeaks even went so far as to suggest that Donald Trump “NOT conceed [sic]” if he loses the election, confirming the coup plan.
2. “Outsider” Donald Trump is Pure Republican Establishment.
During the 2016 election, Donald Trump promised to drain the swamp, to reduce taxes for middle class people and increase taxes on wealthy people, to save Social Security and Medicare, to befriend LGBT people, to end the wars, to deport “illegals,” to build a border wall, and much more, thus gaining the description “populist” or “outsider.”
Upon taking office, he moved in Goldman Sachs bankers directly from the swamp, assembled the richest cabinet ever, appointed head positions to people who oppose the departments, signed onto a 1.5 trillion dollar tax cut where 83 percent of the benefits go to the top one percent with mandatory Medicare cuts built into the tax cut under the “sequester” law, attempted to purge transgender people from the military, spoke the standard PNAC language of war while increasing bombing campaigns, and deported fewer non-citizens than Barack Obama did the year before. Donald Trump supporters are still waiting for the wall.
Donald Trump’s legislative agenda is identical to standard establishment Republican deconstruction of society. Republicans grumble and flip flop about Donald Trump’s dirty mouth, but when it comes to substance, they stick together — except maybe for that wall. As per an earlier report:
Donald Trump was cast into the role of the vulgar outsider willing to shake up the establishment in stark contrast to 17 other candidates. Many seemed to know that Donald Trump would have the advantage against a divided group, but the establishment refused to gather the others together to pick just a few candidates to provide some chance of blocking Donald Trump.
Republicans created the “outsider” illusion because they knew that there was no other way to get a Republican back in the White House. It worked.
3. The 2016 Presidential Election was Rigged by Republicans.
While Donald Trump was complaining very publicly that Hillary Clinton would steal the election, the deepest and most important conspiracy circulating in 2016 was the opposite: that Donald Trump would steal the election. This conspiracy received very little coverage — certainly not in the Republican press, but also not in the mainstream media. Before the election, Democrats actively denied the possibility. After the election, Democrat Hillary Clinton would not demand recounts in swing states until followers of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein funded recounts. Two of those recounts were not completed, and the third was done just by running ballots back through the same machines. Republicans undermined the process every step of the way.
Meanwhile, Greg Palast not only predicted that the 2016 election would be stolen, but he published a book and movie to warn people, complete with a full explanation of methods. Despite his strong credentials as a news investigator and particularly upon election issues, his report was largely ignored. Greg Palast focused mostly upon the CrossCheck system, handled by Republican Governor of Kansas Kris Kobach. Ostensibly to prevent people from committing voter fraud by casting multiple votes, the system blocked more than the margins in key states, making Donald Trump the “winner.”
The CrossCheck system finally gained mainstream media coverage with The Washington Post noting, “This anti-voter-fraud program gets it wrong over 99 percent of the time. The GOP wants to take it nationwide.” Coverage was induced when Donald Trump decided to create a national Election Integrity Commission headed by the man behind CrossCheck, Kris Kobach. By December, it came out that the commission itself was refusing to work with its Democratic members.
Update: Donald Trump’s Election Integrity Commission Shuts Down Thanks to Government Secrecy
Further, significant media attention finally came to voter suppression laws. In 2013, a 5-4 Supreme Court overturned the portion of the 1965 Voter Rights Act that required jurisdictions with a history of targeted purges to submit changes in voting regulations to the Justice Department for approval. After this decision, there was a rush of states to pass restrictive voter laws.
For example, in Wisconsin, speculation suggested that as many as 300,000 did not have the identification necessary to cast a vote. The state government issued a report finding, “17,000-23,000 eligible voters in those counties were prevented or deterred from voting by Wisconsin’s voter ID law” where the vote margin was 22,748. Author of the study, Kenneth Mayer, said that the number could be as high as 45,000, with Democratic districts most affected. CBS News found, “Wisconsin voter ID law proved insurmountable for many voters.” A full study of the situation revealed that some 200,000 actually were unable to vote.
Though the outcome of the election remains disputed, election integrity is back on the agenda for future elections.
4. Pizzagate was Never About Protecting Children.
For more than a year, Republicans and their supporters cried crocodile tears for poor children who were victims of pedophilia. There were no actual victims, but that did not matter: Hillary Clinton and John Podesta were the masterminds of a worldwide Democratic child sex trade organization using coded language about a pizza place.
Enter “Judge” Roy Moore, running to become a Republican Senator from Alabama. In November, nine woman accused him of child molestation. Allegations were corroborated by people at the YWCA and the shopping mall. Roy Moore issued blanket denials: He never met the girls, he never went to a diner involved, etc. But his denials fell apart so badly that he just looked more guilty. Nevertheless, top Republicans including Donald Trump supported his candidacy anyway, and he received 651,972 votes, losing by less than two percent.
There was a mini-conspiracy inside the Roy Moore Pizzagate conspiracy. Once accusations came out about Roy Moore, some Republicans were claiming that it was all a set up by moneybags George Soros. This too fell apart when The Washington Post caught Donald Trump funded Republican operative James O’Keefe trying to plant a fake accusation against Roy Moore in the newspaper to discredit all of the accusations and to discredit the paper itself — and published all of the details of the attempted scam.
Anyone who would summarily dismiss the allegations against Roy Moore or who would fake pedophilia charges to undermine the credibility of real ones is a friend to pedophiles. Some are now calling Republicans the party of pedophilia.
5. Russian “Collusion” is Everywhere.
As late as September, 2016, the Barack Obama administration was still trying to work with Russia on a ceasefire in Syria. As the election neared, things turned sour quickly. There was “outsider” candidate Donald Trump suggesting that we ought to be “friends” with Russia. By the time November came around, Vice President Joe Biden was making wild threats against Russia including an ominous warning of Russians in “body bags.”
In 2017, Russian “collusion” seemed to headed from conspiracy “theory” to conspiracy fact as the Robert Mueller investigation nabbed four Donald Trump campaign members, two with plea bargains and two with indictments. Along the way, 31 contacts and 19 meetings have been exposed with many in the Donald Trump campaign admitting the contacts. 2018 is likely to be the year that the “collusion” scandal reaches full blown “criminal conspiracy” level.
Ironically, Donald Trump’s policies have not been so warm to Russia:
Trump not only declined to lift Obama-era sanctions on Moscow, as many feared he would, but expanded them … This administration closed Russian consulates and annexes in the United States. It has targeted Putin allies . . . under the Magnitsky Act — the same act that Kremlin cutout Natalia Veselnitskaya lobbied the Trump campaign to scuttle. Trump has even gone so far as to open US arms sales to Ukraine, representing a significant blow to Putin’s ambitions in Europe…
Happy New Year and keep watching for “conspiracy theories” coming true, but make sure they actually become true.