(I haven’t seen a thread about this, which surprises me somewhat, so if there already is one, please redirect me appropriately)
Yesterday, the Guardian published an article on a supposed leaked document from the Kremlin, detailing a plan to use manipulation and dissemination of false information to get Trump into office as a means of creating ‘social turmoil’ in the US and weaken its stand in international politics:
Additionally, they have reported on the sort of picture the leaked papers are painting of Trump as a “mentally unstable”, "impulsive” and “unbalanced” individual that would serve to “weaken” America:
Now, I don’t have any trouble imagining that something like this might be what has happened. But, and perhaps it’s just my jadedness thanks to, you know, having been on the internet for a while, it all seems just kinda, as the Washington Post put it, too neat:
If there were to be any indication of Kremlin-involvement to leak out, it seems rather dubious to me that they would be of this slam-dunk, yet vague nature, with many points that we can see to have been spot-on in hindsight, but that seem to demonstrate a scary level of prescience if the document is genuine.
So I’m really on the fence here, and I guess I’ll just have to wait for more information to come out. In the meantime, what do you think? Smoking gun of Putin’s plan to weaken the US by installing a buffoon at the top? A hoax? Perhaps even a double-bluff, which in time will be exposed by those who fabricated it to show the gullibility of those that believed it? Or just to sow chaos for chaos’ sake?
The original Pit thread for the Mueller Investigation got a bump with the info about this, which caused Discourse to automatically make a new thread. So there’s some discussion of it here:
That’s not to say we can’t have a non-Pit thread. But you might want to read in there. Some people are also suspicious, including the poster who bumped the thread. But there are also people talking about how apparently they’ve been vetting it for a while.
The Guardian consulted a number of security experts before publishing, and they all seem to think it’s genuine.
Anyway they got Trump’s character right!
There is a brief psychological assessment of Trump, who is described as an “impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual who suffers from an inferiority complex”.
Actually, that sounds like exactly the type of document that would be most effective at causing disruption, which is the likely objective (assuming the leak was deliberate).
OK, apparently I just suck at searching. I think three threads on the subject is one too many, so unless there’s anything anybody thinks should be discussed here, especially, I’d ask for this one to be closed.
The story doesn’t seem to be getting a lot of traction. The Washington Post ran one skeptical article about it, and the New York Times has ignored it entirely.
To be sure, this won’t change the mind of a single Trumper. But I care whether it’s true or not, because we’ve been through this sort of thing before. George W. Bush skipped out on his National Guard duty, but that potentially troublesome issue magically evaporated after Dan Rather fell for some faked documents. If Democrats hitch their wagon to this alleged Kremlin leak and it turns out to be a bust, it will be damaging for them and indirectly benefit Trump.
Not really. It was obvious that Trump was a fucking idiot long before he became president. I saw him interviewed about the birtherism thing and realized immediately that he was both a despicable person and a moron.
But by the time he was a candidate for the Republican nomination there were plenty of media outlets explaining everything awful about him, if not simply mocking him.
Knowing that he’d be an embarrassment to America was hardly something we needed to call Nostadamus in for.
Yes, this.
His base will either say the whole thing is fake news, or that Putin wanted Trump to be president because Trump’s great, and all the stuff about Trump being an idiot is either fake or Putin sticking it to the Libs.
Meanwhile for people like me who despise Trump, this is the least surprising headline ever.
The surprise would of course be the opposite of this: “Komrades, Trump is clearly a powerful intellectual and formidable adversary. And we’re not going to interfere in American elections in any way, because that would be wrong!”
Sure, but that’s not what I meant. Rather, I’m talking about the consequences for America the document allegedly predicts. I don’t think it was obvious, back in 2016, that a Trump win would ‘definitely lead to the destabilisation of the US’s sociopolitical system’ and produce ‘social turmoil’, for instance.