IN ADVANCE of Trump's presser after #Helsinki, remember this indictment that came down from Mueller just last week against 12 MEMBERS OF RUSSIAN MILITARY OFFICIALS:
Trump calls Helsinki Summit "our most successful visit."
"We've never been in a worse relationship with Russia than we were a few days ago. I think that's going to be better now."
Um, Cold War?
Trump, AGAIN, says nuclear weapons are the reason to be friendly with Russia.
As @sarahkendzior and I have said before, when he talks about nuclear weapons, you should always hear an underlying threat.
He WANTS to use them.
"In a key sentence in my remarks, I said the word 'would' when I should have said 'wouldn't'...I should have said 'I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be Russia."
That's literally Trump's excuse.
He forgot to include "not".
Trump's lead up to the big reveal about his supposedly accidentally leaving out the word "not" would be familiar to anyone who has or who works with teenagers:
The more words they use and the more details they, the more obvious it is they are lying.
Trump told a whole story about how confused he supposedly was about why everyone was upset about the Helsinki presser. Claimed he asked for a transcript and read the transcript so he could understand why folks were upset. Then talked about how he noticed he didn't say "not". 🤔
Trump talks about Syria and the Middle East. Saying Putin and Netanyahu are going to "help".
Now he's going back to repeating the word "nuclear" over and over again, talking about what a threat the weapons pose and the millions of lives that would be lost.
(That's a threat.)
"I just wanted to clear up I have the strongest respect for our intelligence agencies headed by MY PEOPLE..."
Big stress on HIS appointees.
That is thinly-disguised delegitimization of the institutions themselves.
Watch this. Trump literally stresses "would" and obviously did not "misspeak":
Trump has the U.S. bully pulpit now and is doing a better job sowing domestic and international division than Putin could have ever hoped for.
There are more mechanisms in place that would result in retaliation for direct interference.
3/3
No matter what the results are on November 6th, I would anticipate there will be a POST-election psy ops effort to try to cast doubt on the outcome and integrity of the electoral process.
Again: I would anticipate that no matter the results. It’s low-hanging fruit for Putin.
Trump campaign aide Rick Gates sought proposals for social media manipulation (including creation of fake online personas) and opposition intelligence gathering from Psy Group, an Israeli intel firm
(Those of you who’ve followed me a long time know I have speculated in the past about Israeli versus/in addition to Russian involvement in the social media psy-ops during the 2016 election. Remember all those hashtag “MAGA” troll/bot accounts that had hashtag “StandWithIsrael”?)
@RadioFreeTom Similar to Trump admin stripping immigrant children from parents: the message is “we can and will target anyone.”
@JKhashoggi didn’t identify as a “dissident,” was supportive of the monarchy, and only sought reform.
MBS apparently believes Trump and Bibi will turn a blind eye.
@RadioFreeTom@JKhashoggi (And MBS is likely correct he will do this with impunity. The context, of course, is the recent imprisonment of numerous female human rights advocates and charging them with serious crimes, seeking the death penalty for at least one - all without meaningful U.S. response.)
If news re @JKhashoggi proves true, his assassination is an dramatic expansion of Saudi Arabia’s already Draconian war on dissent.
If MBS gets away w doing this w impunity (meaning Trump/Bibi turn a blind eye), some others in the region will follow suit. middleeasteye.net/news/turkish-p…