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Curious - why are you so sensitive to any criticism of Trump when you only support 20% of what he stands for?

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16 Fake News Stories Reporters Have Run Since Trump Won

Daniel Payne
February 6, 2017

Since at least Donald Trump’s election, our media have been in the grip of an astonishing, self-inflicted crisis. Despite Trump’s constant railing against the American press, there is no greater enemy of the American media than the American media. They did this to themselves.

We are in the midst of an epidemic of fake news. There is no better word to describe it than “epidemic,” insofar as it fits the epidemiological model from the Centers for Disease Control: this phenomenon occurs when “an agent and susceptible hosts are present in adequate numbers, and the agent can be effectively conveyed from a source to the susceptible hosts.”



The “agent” in this case is hysteria over Trump’s presidency, and the “susceptible hosts” are a slipshod, reckless, and breathtakingly gullible media class that spread the hysteria around like—well, like a virus.

It is difficult to adequately sum up the breadth of this epidemic, chiefly because it keeps growing: day after day, even hour after hour, the media continue to broadcast, spread, promulgate, publicize, and promote fake news on an industrial scale. It has become a regular part of our news cycle, not distinct from or extraneous to it but a part of it, embedded within the news apparatus as a spoke is embedded in a bicycle wheel.

Whenever you turn on a news station, visit a news website, or check in on a journalist or media personality on Twitter or Facebook, there is an excellent chance you will be exposed to fake news. It is rapidly becoming an accepted part of the way the American media are run.

How we will get out of this is anyone’s guess. We might not get out of it, not so long as Trump is president of these United States. We may be up for four—maybe eight!—long years of authentic fake news media hysteria. It is worth cataloging at least a small sampling of the hysteria so far. Only when we fully assess the extent of the media’s collapse into ignominious ineptitude can we truly begin to reckon with it.



Since Trump’s election, here’s just a small sampling of fake news that our media and our journalist class have propagated.

Early November: Spike in Transgender Suicide Rates

After Trump’s electoral victory on November 8, rumors began circulating that multiple transgender teenagers had killed themselves in response to the election results. There was no basis to these rumors. Nobody was able to confirm them at the time, and nobody has been able to confirm in the three months since Trump was elected.

Nevertheless, the claim spread far and wide: Guardian writer and editor-at-large of Out Zach Stafford tweeted the rumor, which was retweeted more than 13,000 times before he deleted it. He later posted a tweet explaining why he deleted his original viral tweet; his explanatory tweet was shared a total of seven times. Meanwhile, PinkNews writer Dominic Preston wrote a report on the rumors, which garnered more than 12,000 shares on Facebook.

At Mic, Matthew Rodriguez wrote about the unsubstantiated allegations. His article was shared more than 55,000 times on Facebook. Urban legend debunker website Snopes wrote a report on the rumors and listed them as “unconfirmed” (rather than “false”). Snopes’s sources were two Facebook posts, since deleted, that offered no helpful information regarding the location, identity, or circumstances of any of the suicides. The Snopes report was shared 19,000 times.



At Reason, writer Elizabeth Nolan Brown searched multiple online databases to try to determine the identities or even the existence of the allegedly suicidal youth. She found nothing. As she put it: “[T]eenagers in 2016 don’t just die without anyone who knew them so much as mentioning their death online for days afterward.”

She is right. Just the same, the stories hyping this idea garnered at least nearly 100,000 shares on Facebook alone, contributing to the fear and hysteria surrounding Trump’s win.

November 22: The Tri-State Election Hacking Conspiracy Theory

On November 22, Gabriel Sherman posted a bombshell report at New York Magazine claiming that “a group of prominent computer scientists and election lawyers” were demanding a recount in three separate states because of “persuasive evidence that [the election] results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have been manipulated or hacked.” The evidence? Apparently, “in Wisconsin, Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic-voting machines compared with counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots.”

The story went stratospherically viral. It was shared more than 145,000 times on Facebook alone. Sherman shared it on his Twitter feed several times, and people retweeted his links to the story nearly 9,000 times. Politico’s Eric Geller shared the story on Twitter as well. His tweet was retweeted just under 8,000 times. Dustin Volz from Reuters shared the link; he was retweeted nearly 2,000 times. MSNBC’s Joy Reid shared the story and was retweeted more than 4,000 times. New York Times opinion columnist Paul Krugman also shared the story and was retweeted about 1,600 times.



It wasn’t until the next day, November 23, that someone threw a little water on the fire. At FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver explained that it was “demographics, not hacking” that explained the curious voting numbers. “Anyone making allegations of a possible massive electoral hack should provide proof,” he wrote, “and we can’t find any.” Additionally, Silver pointed out that the New York Magazine article had misrepresented the argument of one of the computer scientists in question.

At that point, however, the damage had already been done: Sherman, along with his credulous tweeters and retweeters, had done a great deal to delegitimize the election results. Nobody was even listening to Silver, anyway: his post was shared a mere 380 times on Facebook, or about one-quarter of 1 percent as much as Sherman’s. This is how fake news works: the fake story always goes viral, while nobody reads or even hears about the correction.

December 1: The 27-Cent Foreclosure

At Politico on December 1, Lorraine Wellert published a shocking essay claiming that Trump’s pick for secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin, had overseen a company that “foreclosed on a 90-year-old woman after a 27-cent payment error.” According to Wellert: “After confusion over insurance coverage, a OneWest subsidiary sent [Ossie] Lofton a bill for $423.30. She sent a check for $423. The bank sent another bill, for 30 cents. Lofton, 90, sent a check for three cents. In November 2014, the bank foreclosed.”

The story received widespread coverage, being shared nearly 17,000 times on Facebook. The New York Times’s Steven Rattner shared it on Twitter (1,300 retweets), as did NBC News’s Brad Jaffy (1,200 retweets), the AP’s David Beard (1,900 retweets) and many others.

The problem? The central scandalous claims of Wellert’s article were simply untrue. As the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Ted Frank pointed out, the woman in question was never foreclosed on, and never lost her home. Moreover, “It wasn’t Mnuchin’s bank that brought the suit.”

Politico eventually corrected these serious and glaring errors. But the damage was done: the story had been repeated by numerous media outlets including Huffington Post (shared 25,000 times on Facebook), the New York Post, Vanity Fair, and many others.

January 20: Nancy Sinatra’s Complaints about the Inaugural Ball

On the day of Trump’s inauguration, CNN claimed Nancy Sinatra was “not happy” with the fact that the president and first lady’s inaugural dance would be to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” The problem? Nancy Sinatra had never said any such thing. CNN later updated the article without explaining the mistake they had made.

January 20: The Nonexistent Climate Change Website ‘Purge’

Also on the day of the inauguration, New York Times writer Coral Davenport published an article on the Times’s website whose headline claimed that the Trump administration had “purged” any “climate change references” from the White House website. Within the article, Davenport acknowledged that the “purge” (or what she also called “online deletions”) was “not unexpected” but rather part of a routine turnover of digital authority between administrations.

To call this action a “purge” was thus at the height of intellectual dishonesty: Davenport was styling the whole thing as a kind of digital book-burn rather than a routine part of American government. But of course that was almost surely the point. The inflammatory headline was probably the only thing that most people read of the article, doubtlessly leading many readers (the article was shared nearly 50,000 times on Facebook) to believe something that simply wasn’t true.

January 20: The Great MLK Jr. Bust Controversy

On January 20, Time reporter Zeke Miller wrote that a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. had been removed from the White House. This caused a flurry of controversy on social media until Miller issued a correction. As Time put it, Miller had apparently not even asked anyone in the White House if the bust had been removed. He simply assumed it had been because “he had looked for it and had not seen it.”

January 20: Betsy DeVos, Grizzly Fighter

During her confirmation hearing, education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos was asked whether schools should be able to have guns on their campuses. As NBC News reported, DeVos felt it was “best left to locales and states to decide.” She pointed out that one school in Wyoming had a fence around it to protect the students from wildlife. “I would imagine,” she said, “that there’s probably a gun in the school to protect from potential grizzlies.”

This was an utterly noncontroversial stance to take. DeVos was simply pointing out that different states and localities have different needs, and attempting to mandate a nationwide one-size-fits-all policy for every American school is imprudent.

How did the media run with it? By lying through their teeth. “Betsy DeVos Says Guns Should Be Allowed in Schools. They Might Be Needed to Shoot Grizzlies” (Slate). “Betsy DeVos: Schools May Need Guns to Fight Off Bears” (The Daily Beast). “Citing grizzlies, education nominee says states should determine school gun policies” (CNN). “Betsy DeVos says guns in schools may be necessary to protect students from grizzly bears” (ThinkProgress.) “Betsy DeVos says guns shouldn’t be banned in schools … because grizzly bears” (Vox). “Betsy DeVos tells Senate hearing she supports guns in schools because of grizzly bears” (The Week). “Trump’s Education Pick Cites ‘Potential Grizzlies’ As A Reason To Have Guns In Schools” (BuzzFeed).

The intellectual dishonesty at play here is hard to overstate. DeVos never said or even intimated that every American school or even very many of them might need to shoot bears. She merely used one school as an example of the necessity of federalism and as-local-as-possible control of the education system.

Rather than report accurately on her stance, these media outlets created a fake news event to smear a reasonable woman’s perfectly reasonable opinion.

January 26: The ‘Resignations’ At the State Department

On January 26, the Washington Post’s Josh Rogin published what seemed to be a bombshell report declaring that “the State Department’s entire senior management team just resigned.” This resignation, according to Rogin, was “part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior Foreign Service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era.” These resignations happened “suddenly” and “unexpectedly.” He styled it as a shocking shake-up of administrative protocol in the State Department, a kind of ad-hoc protest of the Trump administration.

The story immediately went sky-high viral. It was shared nearly 60,000 times on Facebook. Rogin himself tweeted the story out and was retweeted a staggering 11,000 times. Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum had it retweeted nearly 2,000 times; journalists and writers from Wired, The Guardian, the Washington Post, Bloomberg, ABC, Foreign Policy, and other publications tweeted the story out in shock.

There was just one problem: the story was more a load of bunk. As Vox pointed out, the headline of the piece was highly misleading: “the word ‘management’ strongly implied that all of America’s top diplomats were resigning, which was not the case.” (The Post later changed the word “management” to “administrative” without noting the change, although it left the “management” language intact in the article itself).

More importantly, Mark Toner, the acting spokesman for the State Department, put out a press release noting that “As is standard with every transition, the outgoing administration, in coordination with the incoming one, requested all politically appointed officers submit letters of resignation.” According to CNN, the officials were actually asked to leave by the Trump administration rather than stay on for the customary transitional few months. The entire premise of Rogin’s article was essentially nonexistent.

As always, the correction received far less attention than the fake news itself: Vox’s article, for instance, was shared around 9,500 times on Facebook, less than one-sixth the rate of Rogin’s piece. To this day, Rogin’s piece remains uncorrected regarding its faulty presumptions.

January 27: The Photoshopped Hands Affair

On January 27, Observer writer Dana Schwartz tweeted out a screenshot of Trump that, in her eyes, proved President Trump had “photoshopped his hands bigger” for a White House photograph. Her tweet immediately went viral, being shared upwards of 25,000 times. A similar tweet by Disney animator Joaquin Baldwin was shared nearly 9,000 times as well.

The conspiracy theory was eventually debunked, but not before it had been shared thousands upon thousands of times. Meanwhile, Schwartz tweeted that she did “not know for sure whether or not the hands were shopped.” Her correction tweet was shared a grand total of…11 times.

January 29: The Reuters Account Hoax

Following the Quebec City mosque massacre, the Daily Beast published a story that purported to identify the two shooters who had perpetrated the crime. The problem? The story’s source was a Reuters parody account on Twitter. Incredibly, nobody at the Daily Beast thought to check the source to any appreciable degree.

January 31: The White House-SCOTUS Twitter Mistake

Leading up to Trump announcing his first Supreme Court nomination, CNN Senior White House Correspondent Jeff Zeleny announced that the White House was “setting up [the] Supreme Court announcement as a prime-time contest.” He pointed to a pair of recently created “identical Twitter pages” for a theoretical justices Neil Gorsuch and Thomas Hardiman, the two likeliest nominees for the court vacancy.

Zeleny’s sneering tweet—clearly meant to cast the Trump administration in an unflattering, circus-like light—was shared more than 1,100 times on Twitter. About 30 minutes later, however, he tweeted: “The Twitter accounts…were not set up by the White House, I’ve been told.” As always, the admission of mistake was shared far less than the original fake news: Zeleny’s correction was retweeted a paltry 159 times.

January 31: The Big Travel Ban Lie

On January 31, a Fox affiliate station out of Detroit reported that “A local business owner who flew to Iraq to bring his mother back home to the US for medical treatment said she was blocked from returning home under President Trump’s ban on immigration and travel from seven predominately Muslim nations. He said that while she was waiting for approval to fly home, she died from an illness.”

Like most other sensational news incidents, this one took off, big-time: it was shared countless times on Facebook, not just from the original article itself (123,000 shares) but via secondary reporting outlets such as the Huffington Post (nearly 9,000 shares). Credulous reporters and media personalities shared the story on Twitter to the tune of thousands and thousands of retweets, including: Christopher Hooks, Gideon Resnick, Daniel Dale, Sarah Silverman, Blake Hounshell, Brian Beutler, Garance Franke-Ruta, Keith Olbermann (he got 3,600 retweets on that one!), Matthew Yglesias, and Farhad Manjoo.

The story spread so far because it gratified all the biases of the liberal media elite: it proved that Trump’s “Muslim ban” was an evil, racist Hitler-esque mother-killer of an executive order.

There was just one problem: it was a lie. The man had lied about when his mother died. The Fox affiliate hadn’t bothered to do the necessary research to confirm or disprove the man’s account. The news station quietly corrected the story after giving rise to such wild, industrial-scale hysteria.

February 1: POTUS Threatens to Invade Mexico

On February 1, Yahoo News published an Associated Press report about a phone call President Trump shared with Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto. The report strongly implied that President Trump was considering “send[ing] U.S. troops” to curb Mexico’s “bad hombre” problem, although it acknowledged that the Mexican government disagreed with that interpretation. The White House later re-affirmed that Trump did not have any plan to “invade Mexico.”

Nevertheless, Jon Passantino, the deputy news director of BuzzFeed, shared this story on Twitter with the exclamation “WOW.” He was retweeted 2,700 times. Jon Favreau, a former speechwriter for Barack Obama, also shared the story, declaring: “I’m sorry, did our president just threaten to invade Mexico today??” Favreau was retweeted more than 8,000 times.

Meanwhile, the Yahoo News AP post was shared more than 17,000 times on Facebook; Time’s post of the misleading report was shared more than 66,000 times; ABC News posted the story and it was shared more than 20,000 times. On Twitter, the report—with the false implication that Trump’s comment was serious—was shared by media types such as ThinkProgress’s Judd Legum, the BBC’s Anthony Lurcher, Vox’s Matt Yglesias, Politico’s Shane Goldmacher, comedian Michael Ian Black, and many others.

February 2: Easing the Russian Sanctions

Last week, NBC News national correspondent Peter Alexander tweeted out the following: “BREAKING: US Treasury Dept easing Obama admin sanctions to allow companies to do transactions with Russia’s FSB, successor org to KGB.” His tweet immediately went viral, as it implied that the Trump administration was cozying up to Russia.

A short while later, Alexander posted another tweet: “Source familiar [with] sanctions says it’s a technical fix, planned under Obama, to avoid unintended consequences of cybersanctions.” As of this writing, Alexander’s fake news tweet has approximately 6,500 retweets; his clarifying tweet has fewer than 250.

At CNBC, Jacob Pramuk styled the change this way: “Trump administration modifies sanctions against Russian intelligence service.” The article makes it clear that, per Alexander’s source, “the change was a technical fix that was planned under Obama.” Nonetheless, the impetus was placed on the Trump adminsitration. CBS News wrote the story up in the same way. So did the New York Daily News.

In the end, unable to pin this (rather unremarkable) policy tweak on the Trump administration, the media have mostly moved on. As the Chicago Tribune put it, the whole affair was yet again an example of how “in the hyperactive Age of Trump, something that initially appeared to be a major change in policy turned into a nothing-burger.”

February 2: Renaming Black History Month

At the start of February, which is Black History Month in the United States, Trump proclaimed the month “National African American History Month.” Many outlets tried to spin the story in a bizarre way: TMZ claimed that a “senior administration official” said that Trump believed the term “black” to be outdated. “Every U.S. president since 1976 has designated February as Black History Month,” wrote TMZ. BET wrote the same thing.

The problem? It’s just not true. President Obama, for example, declared February “National African American History Month” as well. TMZ quickly updated their piece to fix their embarrassing error.

February 2: The House of Representatives’ Gun Control Measures

On February 2, the Associated Press touched off a political and media firestorm by tweeting: “BREAKING: House votes to roll back Obama rule on background checks for gun ownership.” The AP was retweeted a staggering 12,000 times.

The headlines that followed were legion: “House votes to rescind Obama gun background check rule” (Kyle Cheney, Politico); “House GOP aims to scrap Obama rule on gun background checks” (CNBC); “House scraps background check regulation” (Yahoo News); “House rolls back Obama gun background check rule” (CNN); “House votes to roll back Obama rule on background checks for gun ownership” (Washington Post).

Some headlines were more specific about the actual House vote but no less misleading; “House votes to end rule that prevents people with mental illness from buying guns” (the Independent); “Congress ends background checks for some gun buyers with mental illness” (the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette); “House Votes to Overturn Obama Rule Restricting Gun Sales to the Severely Mentally Ill” (NPR).

The hysteria was far-reaching and frenetic. As you might have guessed, all of it was baseless. The House was actually voting to repeal a narrowly tailored rule from the Obama era. This rule mandated that the names of certain individuals who receive Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income and who use a representative to help manage these benefits due to a mental impairment be forwarded to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

If that sounds confusing, it essentially means that if someone who receives SSDI or SSI needs a third party to manage these benefits due to some sort of mental handicap, then—under the Obama rule—they may have been barred from purchasing a firearm. (It is thus incredibly misleading to suggest that the rule applied in some specific way to the “severely mentally ill.”)

As National Review’s Charlie Cooke pointed out, the Obama rule was opposed by the American Association of People With Disabilities; the ACLU; the Arc of the United States; the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network; the Consortium of Citizens With Disabilities; the National Coalition of Mental Health Recovery; and many, many other disability advocacy organizations and networks.

The media hysteria surrounding the repeal of this rule—the wildly misleading and deceitful headlines, the confused outrage over a vote that nobody understood—was a public disservice.

As Cooke wrote: “It is a rare day indeed on which the NRA, the GOP, the ACLU, and America’s mental health groups find themselves in agreement on a question of public policy, but when it happens it should at the very least prompt Americans to ask, ‘Why?’ That so many mainstream outlets tried to cheat them of the opportunity does not bode well for the future.”

Maybe It’s Time to Stop Reading Fake News

Surely more incidents have happened since Trump was elected; doubtlessly there are many more to come. To be sure, some of these incidents are larger and more shameful than others, and some are smaller and more mundane.

But all of them, taken as a group, raise a pressing and important question: why is this happening? Why are our media so regularly and so profoundly debasing and beclowning themselves, lying to the public and sullying our national discourse—sometimes on a daily basis? How has it come to this point?

Perhaps the answer is: “We’ve let it.” The media will not stop behaving in so reckless a manner unless and until we demand they stop.

That being said, there are two possible outcomes to this fake news crisis: our media can get better, or they can get worse. If they get better, we might actually see our press begin to hold the Trump administration (and government in general) genuinely accountable for its many admitted faults. If they refuse to fix these serial problems of gullibility, credulity, outrage, and outright lying, then we will be in for a rough four years, if not more.

No one single person can fix this problem. It has to be a cultural change, a kind of shifting of priorities industry-wide. Journalists, media types, reporters, you have two choices: you can fix these problems, or you can watch your profession go down in flames.

Most of us are hoping devoutly for the former. But not even a month into the presidency of Donald J. Trump, the outlook is dim.

Daniel Payne is a senior contributor at The Federalist. He currently runs the blog Trial of the Century, and lives in Virginia.


Betsy DeVos Donald Trump drive-by media fake news Josh Rogin Mainstream Media Media media bias Media Criticism Steve Mnuchin the press viral news


http://thefederalist.com/2017/02/06/16-fake-news-stories-reporters-hav
e-run-since-trump-won/

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And how do you explain that according to you the MSM was being lead around on a leash by the US government when Putin took Crimea, but now they seem to be attacking Trump? What happened?

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I read your post here and I have to laugh. You're against the law sort of. That's followed up by your fallacy of relative privation. Your attempts to suggest that what goes on in Russia should be ignored because there are more important problems in the world. Even though the issues you list are completely unrelated to the subject under discussion.

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I read your post here and I have to laugh because we have years of threads started by you. Threads where you are outraged about things going on in the world that don't rise to the level of what just transpired in Russia

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You don't get a "pass" from me because you claim to have had good intentions while you promoted killing hundreds of thousands of people, or because you claim that all of those killings were "by accident".

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I read your post here and I have to laugh because we have years of threads started by you. Threads where you are outraged about things going on in the world that don't rise to the level of what just transpired in Russia- THUGR

Prove it. Bring me some quotes of mine where I'm "outraged" about something trivial (except when I lose my temper at someone on the board)-SIGNY

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
What just transpired in Russia?

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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I read your post here and I have to laugh because we have years of threads started by you. Threads where you are outraged about things going on in the world that don't rise to the level of what just transpired in Russia- THUGR

Prove it. Bring me some quotes of mine where I'm "outraged" about something trivial (except when I lose my temper at someone on the board)-SIGNY

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So far.... crickets.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
Do you trust a 'well-established source'? How about a 'reliable reporter'? Or 'on the ground media'? You might find them here - yes, the BBC, NYTimes, WaPo, AP, and Reuters (to name a few), and Twitter and Facebook, and luminaries like Paul Krugman - that THUGGER and 'G' would call 'good sources' - have all been caught pushing FAKE NEWS.

Stripped down to dates, events and 'sources', this is what the article looks like:


November 22: The Tri-State Election Hacking Conspiracy Theory
SOURCE
New York Magazine
VENUE
Facebook/ Twitter
Politico, Eric Geller
Reuters, Dustin Volz
MSNBC, Joy Reid
New York Times, Paul Krugman

December 1: The 27-Cent Foreclosure
SOURCE
Politico
VENUE
Facebook/ Twitter
The New York Times, Steven Rattner
NBC News, Brad Jaffy
AP, David Beard
many others

January 20: Nancy Sinatra’s Complaints about the Inaugural Ball
SOURCE
CNN

January 20: The Nonexistent Climate Change Website ‘Purge’
SOURCE
New York Times website, Coral Davenport
VENUE
Facebook

January 20: The Great MLK Jr. Bust Controversy
SOURCE
Time reporter Zeke Miller
VENUE
Twitter

January 20: Betsy DeVos, Grizzly Fighter
SOURCE
accurately reported by NBC News
SOURCE of FAKE NEWS
Slate
The Daily Beast
CNN
ThinkProgress
Vox
The Week
BuzzFeed

January 26: The ‘Resignations’ At the State Department
SOURCE
Washington Post, Josh Rogin
VENUE
Facebook/ Twitter
Washington Post, Anne Applebaum
Wired
The Guardian
Washington Post
Bloomberg
ABC
Foreign Policy
Vox
other publications
PERSONS
Washington Post, Josh Rogin

January 27: The Photoshopped Hands Affair
SOURCE
Observer, Dana Schwartz
VENUE
Facebook/ Twitter

January 29: The Reuters Account Hoax
SOURCE
Daily Beast (Aapparently the Daily Beast didn’t bother to take the most elementary step and check the original. If they had they would have realized it was a Reuters PARODY.)

January 31: The White House-SCOTUS Twitter Mistake
SOURCE
CNN, Senior White House Correspondent Jeff Zeleny
VENUE
Twitter

January 31: The Big Travel Ban Lie
SOURCE
Fox affiliate
VENUE
Facebook
Huffington Post
PERSONS
Christopher Hooks
Gideon Resnick
Daniel Dale
Sarah Silverman
Blake Hounshell
Brian Beutler
Garance Franke-Ruta
Keith Olbermann
Matthew Yglesias
Farhad Manjoo

February 1: POTUS Threatens to Invade Mexico
SOURCE
Yahoo News
VENUE
Twitter/ Facebook
Time
ABC News
BuzzFeed, Jon Passantino
ThinkProgress, Judd Legum
BBC, Anthony Zurcher
Vox, Matt Yglesias
Politico, Shane Goldmacher
Michael Ian Black
Jon Favreau

February 2: Easing the Russian Sanctions
SOURCE
NBC News, national correspondent Peter Alexander
VENUE
Twitter
CNBC, Jacob Pramuk
CBS News
New York Daily News

February 2: Renaming Black History Month
SOURCE
TMZ
BET

February 2: The House of Representatives’ Gun Control Measures
SOURCE
Associated Press
VENUE
Twitter
Politico, Kyle Cheney
CNBC
Yahoo News
CNN
Washington Post
NPR

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Originally posted by THGRRI:
In a rush to judgement some mistakes were made in the press.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

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Originally posted by THGRRI:
In a rush to judgement some mistakes were made in the press.

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You have to admit, this happens ALL THE TIME.

That's the problem with 24 hour news networks and "celebrity" reporters. There's no actual News on any of these networks. It's just a bunch of speculation and opinions all day long. Depending on which network you watch the news will sound different because somebody is pushing their own bias, or the bias of their network.


I haven't watched the Daily Show in years, but I do remember when John Stewart was on it that they were better at bringing you actual news than any of the networks ever were, and I say that even knowing that it had a liberal bias back then. I'm sure it's just an SJW shit show now. That has nothing to do with the fact that Trevor Noah is black. It's just a fact that all late night comedy news shows out there today are SJW shit shows today. ESPECIALLY that Seth Meyers d-bag.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
What just transpired in Russia?

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Originally posted by THGRRI:
Shit Jack. First of all to suggest the news is never right is ignorant. Second, John Stewart said himself he was a comedy show and not a news outlet. It's a shame his fans would listen to him as thought he was delivering actual news, and not listen to him when he would say he is a comedy opinion show.

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Originally posted by THGRRI:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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I read your post here and I have to laugh because we have years of threads started by you. Threads where you are outraged about things going on in the world that don't rise to the level of what just transpired in Russia- THUGR

Prove it. Bring me some quotes of mine where I'm "outraged" about something trivial (except when I lose my temper at someone on the board)-SIGNY

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So far.... crickets.

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You hear crickets SIG. Everyone else just nodded their heads in agreement.

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Curious - why are you so sensitive to any criticism of Trump when you only support 20% of what he stands for?- GSTRING

Because I hate lies. The so-called "criticisms" of Trump are mostly fake news ... yanno, like the "WMD" scare. They're mean to drive a response in most people, NOT to bring anyone the truth. Didn't you read THUGR'S post about FAKE NEWS? ...- SIGNY

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by THGRRI:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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I read your post here and I have to laugh because we have years of threads started by you. Threads where you are outraged about things going on in the world that don't rise to the level of what just transpired in Russia- THUGR

Prove it. Bring me some quotes of mine where I'm "outraged" about something trivial (except when I lose my temper at someone on the board)-SIGNY

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So far.... crickets.

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You hear crickets SIG. Everyone else just nodded their heads in agreement.

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PUT UP OR STFU, YOU NASTY FUCKING LIAR.

Yep; that's you: EVIDENCE-FREE ACCUSATION is your stock-in-trade. You're a big phat phucking LIAR. You have been since you started posting here. You're a troll and a propagandist, and I wouldn't be surprised if YOU were getting $$$ for your idiot posts.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Trump's election is, IMHO, simply a conflict between the American Industrialists and the Global Financialists. Nationalists versus the international spy-cartel. Instead of figuring out how WE - the average person - can parlay this Clash of the Titans to our advantage, we are transfixed ... transfixed, I tell you! ... into how big Trump's hands are, iPhones, and other ghafla.

Surely, we can focus on more important things than fake news and lies!

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Surely, we can focus on more important things than fake news and lies!

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My goodness such language. That and your spelling suggest you are completely out of control. SIG what's going on between us is simple. You troll, I point it out. There is a difference. Put another way SIG. Troll, troll hunter.-

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Trump's election is, IMHO, simply a conflict between the American Industrialists and the Global Financialists. Nationalists versus the international spy-cartel. Instead of figuring out how WE - the average person - can parlay this Clash of the Titans to our advantage, we are transfixed ... transfixed, I tell you! ... into how big Trump's hands are, iPhones, and other ghafla.

Surely, we can focus on more important things than fake news and lies!- SIGNY

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

SECOND, aside from THUGR you're one of the biggest offenders here with your hyperventilating hysteria. In your case, it's all about Trump, and all things that others imagine about Trump, or make up about Trump, or fear about Trump in their fervid paranoid imaginings.

In fact, I'm not even going to reply your post here because it's just more hysterical ranting on your part. . . . YOU have PTSD about Trump's election and are just as delusional about that. I've found that it's just no good discussing anyone's delusions with them.

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SECOND, aside from THUGR you're one of the biggest offenders here with your hyperventilating hysteria. In your case, it's all about Trump, and all things that others imagine about Trump, or make up about Trump, or fear about Trump in their fervid paranoid imaginings.

In fact, I'm not even going to reply your post here because it's just more hysterical ranting on your part. . . . YOU have PTSD about Trump's election and are just as delusional about that. I've found that it's just no good discussing anyone's delusions with them.- SIGNY

You write too much, Signym,

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revealing your misunderstandings about the simplest things. Have you forgotten that after the crash of 2008, there was broad consensus that something had to be changed?

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The Obama administration, joined by a handful of Republicans, put together the Dodd-Frank act to overhaul financial regulation in the United States. Now Trump is dismantling Dodd-Frank. Can you understand that Trump is laying the groundwork for the next financial crisis, Signym?

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It is not about Trump

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it is about the next few years of Trump's Presidency, years which will enrich Trump’s banker friends. The same enrichment that will happen for Trump's friends has already happened during Bush's Presidency before Crash of 2008.-SECOND

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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My goodness such language. That and your spelling suggest you are completely out of control. SIG what's going on between us is simple. You troll, I point it out. There is a difference. Put another way SIG. Troll, troll hunter.-

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Uh huh. THUGR, YOU'RE A LIAR. You haven't even backed up your own statement about the "years" of posts where I supposedly get upset over trivial things. Well, you've had YEARS of my posts to prove your point, so- go! Fetch! FIND THOSE QUOTES! you LIAR.

Some of what you've said about me is delusional, and some are outright deliberate lies. Since you're an inveterate LIAR, why should anyone believe anything you say about yourself, me, or anything else?

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Oh, SECOND, I forgot: Also at the feet of The Fed ... Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen et al.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh, SECOND, I forgot: Also at the feet of The Fed ... Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen et al.

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Originally posted by SECOND:
I never forget that you are just as loudly opinionated as Trump, who you said would save your tiny life from Hillary's inevitable nuclear holocaust.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
SECOND

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh, SECOND, I forgot: Also at the feet of The Fed ... Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen et al.

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Originally posted by SECOND:
I never forget that you are just as loudly opinionated as Trump, who you said would save your tiny life from Hillary's inevitable nuclear holocaust.

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SECOND, that would be me, not SIGNYM. Please try to unscramble yourself.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh, SECOND, I forgot: Also at the feet of The Fed ... Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen et al.

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Originally posted by SECOND:
I never forget that you are just as loudly opinionated as Trump, who you said would save your tiny life from Hillary's inevitable nuclear holocaust.

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An Alleged Muslim Spy Ring - Is This Why Rex Tillerson Cleaned House?

Shortly after Trump took office, and before Rex Tillerson was even confirmed as Secretary of State, a slew of State Department officials were removed from their positions (or were forced to resign) as part of an effort to “clean house” at the State Department. The whole affair was haphazardly covered by the media, especially by Jeff Bezos’s blog, which insinuated that the departures were “an ongoing mass exodus of senior Foreign Service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era.”

Further analysis revealed that the officials were actually removed from their positions shortly after Tillerson visited the State Department office in Foggy Bottom prior to his confirmation:

“Any implication that that these four people quit is wrong,” one senior State Department official said. “These people are loyal to the secretary, the President and to the State Department. There is just not any attempt here to dis the President. People are not quitting and running away in disgust. This is the White House cleaning house.”

And, just a few weeks after the fact, it appears we know why Tillerson was so quick to purge existing staffers: he just didn’t trust them. It also appears his mistrust was more than justified.

On January 29th, United States Special Forces executed an operation inside Yemen, against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), with the aim of gathering intelligence and killing leaders of the group. The raid was planned under the Obama administration, but the decision to execute the raid was “punted” to Trump, using the pretext of waiting for a “low loom” (moonless) night to execute the raid with maximum secrecy:

While the operation had been proposed, it was never green-lighted. Kahl said Obama felt going the mission would mark a “significant escalation” in Yemen and should be left to the next administration to decide.



“Obama … believed this represented a significant escalation of U.S. involvement in Yemen, and therefore … thought the next administration should take a careful look and run a careful process,” he told the WSJ.

In addition, defense officials expected the Trump administration to be more willing to approve dangerous missions, something that was almost certainly known by any remaining personnel who stayed on after Obama left office:

While seemingly indicative of a more aggressive stance by Trump, one official described the raid and new proposal as an outgrowth of earlier Obama-era operations that have pushed al-Qaida militants from their sanctuaries into areas and provided more opportunities for U.S. strikes.



“We expect an easier approval cycle [for operations] under this administration,” another defense official said.


Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens

Though the Trump administration attempted to push the raid as a success, at very best, the mission was anything but, resulting in the death of Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens, as well as injuries to three other servicemen. While the commandos did everything necessary to maintain the element of surprise, it appears as though AQAP adversaries on the ground had advance warning of the attack:

“Initial reports are always wrong, but it doesn’t appear to be a failure of planning or intelligence,” said the former special forces officer.



Almost immediately, the raiding force on the ground took intense fire, according to the briefing paper and a senior military official. Occupants of the targeted house and its compound, along with their guard force, moved to a separate cluster of houses nearby where families, including women and children, were staying. Armed women fired on the U.S. and Emirati forces.



“There were a lot of female combatants who were part of this,” said Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, on Monday. “We saw during this operation, as it was taking place, that female fighters ran to pre-established positions — as though they had trained to be ready, and trained to be combatants — and engaged with us.”

While most know about the Yemen raid, most do not know about the dismissal of the three Aman brothers, Abid, Imran, and Jamal Awan. On February 2nd, they were abruptly removed from their positions of managing information technology for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Though they were initially suspected merely of stealing equipment, a connection with the previously-hacked computers of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) revealed something far more sinister:

Three members of the intelligence panel and five members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs were among the dozens of members who employed the suspects on a shared basis. The two committees deal with many of the nation’s most sensitive issues and documents, including those related to the war on terrorism.

As Mad World News reported, the Aman brothers were hired by the Obama administration, and access to top secret information regarding military operations. The committees they allegedly worked for had access to “the most sensitive and secretive government intelligence, including covert anti-terrorism activity… including the Yemen operation”:

The House Oversight Committee

The brothers were assigned access to three members of the intelligence panel and five members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs along with dozens of congressmen who employed the suspects on a shared basis. This gave them direct access to our military secrets, like missions carried out by Navy SEAL Team Six.



They retained their jobs after Obama left, which is not unheard of since their positions were not seen as political appointments. However, they were fired by Trump’s administration within hours after Navy SEAL William Ryan Owens was killed in Yemen during the top secret raid on Al-Qaeda operatives.

So, in case you’ve gotten lost, here’s a recap of the timeline of events:

Jan 20 – Trump takes office, and DoD officials are expecting him to be more willing to approve dangerous missions
Jan 26 – Rex Tillerson visits State Department headquarters prior to his confirmation, and either terminates or forces the resignation of many existing State Department personnel
Jan 29 – The botched Yemen raid is executed, resulting in the death of Navy SEAL Owens
Feb 1 – Rex Tillerson is confirmed by President Trump as Secretary of State
Feb 2 – The Awan brothers are terminated on suspicion that they accessed congressional computers without permission

As Mad World News previously stated,

“…it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to connect the dots. The firing of the Awan brothers is linked to the Yemen raid where al-Qaeda knew we were coming, and it tragically ended with Navy SEAL Owens being killed in action.”

The mainstream media seemed far more interested in obfuscating the details regarding the Tillerson terminations than they were in covering what could be one of the most dangerous intelligence leaks in years, of which there has been but a peep out of any major news outlet. Captain Joseph R. John (Navy-Ret.) has stated that he believes the Muslim Brotherhood “fifth column” has “infiltrated U.S. Government,” and if he is correct, the Awan brothers could very well be a part of this infiltration.

Yet, there as been but a peep of information about the Awan brothers from nearly all major news outlets. Are they in jail? What are they accused of? Does the Trump administration suspect them of leaking details about military operations to terrorist organizations? And most importantly, if so, did these three men directly or indirectly contribute to the death of Owens during the Yemen raid?

One thing is for certain – as Politico seemed to take delight in stating, “Trying to nail down who the leakers are is like trying to count the cockroaches under the couch.” However, it seems most of the “leaks” are coming from Obama holdovers. Which makes Tillerson’s “cleaning house” look like not just the correct move, it leaves you wondering if he did enough cleaning house.

Just don’t expect to hear that from the mainstream media anytime soon.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Okay, so THUGR is a troll and doesn't deserve a response. Got it.

Back to our regularly-scheduled topic.

There was no "mass exodus" from the State Department, it was, apparently, more like a mass housecleaning. IMHO, since the State Department was infested with neocons and pro-Wahhabist traitors, a few hundred MORE should be fired. But that's just me.

Here is a speculative article about what might be going on behind the scenes at the State Department

Quote:

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An Alleged Muslim Spy Ring - Is This Why Rex Tillerson Cleaned House?

Shortly after Trump took office, and before Rex Tillerson was even confirmed as Secretary of State, a slew of State Department officials were removed from their positions (or were forced to resign) as part of an effort to “clean house” at the State Department. The whole affair was haphazardly covered by the media, especially by Jeff Bezos’s blog, which insinuated that the departures were “an ongoing mass exodus of senior Foreign Service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era.”

Further analysis revealed that the officials were actually removed from their positions shortly after Tillerson visited the State Department office in Foggy Bottom prior to his confirmation:

“Any implication that that these four people quit is wrong,” one senior State Department official said. “These people are loyal to the secretary, the President and to the State Department. There is just not any attempt here to dis the President. People are not quitting and running away in disgust. This is the White House cleaning house.”

And, just a few weeks after the fact, it appears we know why Tillerson was so quick to purge existing staffers: he just didn’t trust them. It also appears his mistrust was more than justified.

On January 29th, United States Special Forces executed an operation inside Yemen, against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), with the aim of gathering intelligence and killing leaders of the group. The raid was planned under the Obama administration, but the decision to execute the raid was “punted” to Trump, using the pretext of waiting for a “low loom” (moonless) night to execute the raid with maximum secrecy:

While the operation had been proposed, it was never green-lighted. Kahl said Obama felt going the mission would mark a “significant escalation” in Yemen and should be left to the next administration to decide.



“Obama … believed this represented a significant escalation of U.S. involvement in Yemen, and therefore … thought the next administration should take a careful look and run a careful process,” he told the WSJ.

In addition, defense officials expected the Trump administration to be more willing to approve dangerous missions, something that was almost certainly known by any remaining personnel who stayed on after Obama left office:

While seemingly indicative of a more aggressive stance by Trump, one official described the raid and new proposal as an outgrowth of earlier Obama-era operations that have pushed al-Qaida militants from their sanctuaries into areas and provided more opportunities for U.S. strikes.



“We expect an easier approval cycle [for operations] under this administration,” another defense official said.


Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens

Though the Trump administration attempted to push the raid as a success, at very best, the mission was anything but, resulting in the death of Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens, as well as injuries to three other servicemen. While the commandos did everything necessary to maintain the element of surprise, it appears as though AQAP adversaries on the ground had advance warning of the attack:

“Initial reports are always wrong, but it doesn’t appear to be a failure of planning or intelligence,” said the former special forces officer.



Almost immediately, the raiding force on the ground took intense fire, according to the briefing paper and a senior military official. Occupants of the targeted house and its compound, along with their guard force, moved to a separate cluster of houses nearby where families, including women and children, were staying. Armed women fired on the U.S. and Emirati forces.



“There were a lot of female combatants who were part of this,” said Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, on Monday. “We saw during this operation, as it was taking place, that female fighters ran to pre-established positions — as though they had trained to be ready, and trained to be combatants — and engaged with us.”

While most know about the Yemen raid, most do not know about the dismissal of the three Aman brothers, Abid, Imran, and Jamal Awan. On February 2nd, they were abruptly removed from their positions of managing information technology for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Though they were initially suspected merely of stealing equipment, a connection with the previously-hacked computers of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) revealed something far more sinister:

Three members of the intelligence panel and five members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs were among the dozens of members who employed the suspects on a shared basis. The two committees deal with many of the nation’s most sensitive issues and documents, including those related to the war on terrorism.

As Mad World News reported, the Aman brothers were hired by the Obama administration, and access to top secret information regarding military operations. The committees they allegedly worked for had access to “the most sensitive and secretive government intelligence, including covert anti-terrorism activity… including the Yemen operation”:

The House Oversight Committee

The brothers were assigned access to three members of the intelligence panel and five members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs along with dozens of congressmen who employed the suspects on a shared basis. This gave them direct access to our military secrets, like missions carried out by Navy SEAL Team Six.



They retained their jobs after Obama left, which is not unheard of since their positions were not seen as political appointments. However, they were fired by Trump’s administration within hours after Navy SEAL William Ryan Owens was killed in Yemen during the top secret raid on Al-Qaeda operatives.

So, in case you’ve gotten lost, here’s a recap of the timeline of events:

Jan 20 – Trump takes office, and DoD officials are expecting him to be more willing to approve dangerous missions
Jan 26 – Rex Tillerson visits State Department headquarters prior to his confirmation, and either terminates or forces the resignation of many existing State Department personnel
Jan 29 – The botched Yemen raid is executed, resulting in the death of Navy SEAL Owens
Feb 1 – Rex Tillerson is confirmed by President Trump as Secretary of State
Feb 2 – The Awan brothers are terminated on suspicion that they accessed congressional computers without permission

As Mad World News previously stated,

“…it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to connect the dots. The firing of the Awan brothers is linked to the Yemen raid where al-Qaeda knew we were coming, and it tragically ended with Navy SEAL Owens being killed in action.”

The mainstream media seemed far more interested in obfuscating the details regarding the Tillerson terminations than they were in covering what could be one of the most dangerous intelligence leaks in years, of which there has been but a peep out of any major news outlet. Captain Joseph R. John (Navy-Ret.) has stated that he believes the Muslim Brotherhood “fifth column” has “infiltrated U.S. Government,” and if he is correct, the Awan brothers could very well be a part of this infiltration.

Yet, there as been but a peep of information about the Awan brothers from nearly all major news outlets. Are they in jail? What are they accused of? Does the Trump administration suspect them of leaking details about military operations to terrorist organizations? And most importantly, if so, did these three men directly or indirectly contribute to the death of Owens during the Yemen raid?

One thing is for certain – as Politico seemed to take delight in stating, “Trying to nail down who the leakers are is like trying to count the cockroaches under the couch.” However, it seems most of the “leaks” are coming from Obama holdovers. Which makes Tillerson’s “cleaning house” look like not just the correct move, it leaves you wondering if he did enough cleaning house.

Just don’t expect to hear that from the mainstream media anytime soon.

---

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"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake

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Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Okay, so THUGR is a troll and doesn't deserve a response. Got it.

Back to our regularly-scheduled topic.

There was no "mass exodus" from the State Department, it was, apparently, more like a mass housecleaning. IMHO, since the State Department was infested with neocons and pro-Wahhabist traitors, a few hundred MORE should be fired. But that's just me.

Here is a speculative article about what might be going on behind the scenes at the State Department

Quote:

---

An Alleged Muslim Spy Ring - Is This Why Rex Tillerson Cleaned House?

Shortly after Trump took office, and before Rex Tillerson was even confirmed as Secretary of State, a slew of State Department officials were removed from their positions (or were forced to resign) as part of an effort to “clean house” at the State Department. The whole affair was haphazardly covered by the media, especially by Jeff Bezos’s blog, which insinuated that the departures were “an ongoing mass exodus of senior Foreign Service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era.”

Further analysis revealed that the officials were actually removed from their positions shortly after Tillerson visited the State Department office in Foggy Bottom prior to his confirmation:

“Any implication that that these four people quit is wrong,” one senior State Department official said. “These people are loyal to the secretary, the President and to the State Department. There is just not any attempt here to dis the President. People are not quitting and running away in disgust. This is the White House cleaning house.”

And, just a few weeks after the fact, it appears we know why Tillerson was so quick to purge existing staffers: he just didn’t trust them. It also appears his mistrust was more than justified.

On January 29th, United States Special Forces executed an operation inside Yemen, against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), with the aim of gathering intelligence and killing leaders of the group. The raid was planned under the Obama administration, but the decision to execute the raid was “punted” to Trump, using the pretext of waiting for a “low loom” (moonless) night to execute the raid with maximum secrecy:

While the operation had been proposed, it was never green-lighted. Kahl said Obama felt going the mission would mark a “significant escalation” in Yemen and should be left to the next administration to decide.



“Obama … believed this represented a significant escalation of U.S. involvement in Yemen, and therefore … thought the next administration should take a careful look and run a careful process,” he told the WSJ.

In addition, defense officials expected the Trump administration to be more willing to approve dangerous missions, something that was almost certainly known by any remaining personnel who stayed on after Obama left office:

While seemingly indicative of a more aggressive stance by Trump, one official described the raid and new proposal as an outgrowth of earlier Obama-era operations that have pushed al-Qaida militants from their sanctuaries into areas and provided more opportunities for U.S. strikes.



“We expect an easier approval cycle [for operations] under this administration,” another defense official said.


Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens

Though the Trump administration attempted to push the raid as a success, at very best, the mission was anything but, resulting in the death of Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens, as well as injuries to three other servicemen. While the commandos did everything necessary to maintain the element of surprise, it appears as though AQAP adversaries on the ground had advance warning of the attack:

“Initial reports are always wrong, but it doesn’t appear to be a failure of planning or intelligence,” said the former special forces officer.



Almost immediately, the raiding force on the ground took intense fire, according to the briefing paper and a senior military official. Occupants of the targeted house and its compound, along with their guard force, moved to a separate cluster of houses nearby where families, including women and children, were staying. Armed women fired on the U.S. and Emirati forces.



“There were a lot of female combatants who were part of this,” said Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, on Monday. “We saw during this operation, as it was taking place, that female fighters ran to pre-established positions — as though they had trained to be ready, and trained to be combatants — and engaged with us.”

While most know about the Yemen raid, most do not know about the dismissal of the three Aman brothers, Abid, Imran, and Jamal Awan. On February 2nd, they were abruptly removed from their positions of managing information technology for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Though they were initially suspected merely of stealing equipment, a connection with the previously-hacked computers of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) revealed something far more sinister:

Three members of the intelligence panel and five members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs were among the dozens of members who employed the suspects on a shared basis. The two committees deal with many of the nation’s most sensitive issues and documents, including those related to the war on terrorism.

As Mad World News reported, the Aman brothers were hired by the Obama administration, and access to top secret information regarding military operations. The committees they allegedly worked for had access to “the most sensitive and secretive government intelligence, including covert anti-terrorism activity… including the Yemen operation”:

The House Oversight Committee

The brothers were assigned access to three members of the intelligence panel and five members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs along with dozens of congressmen who employed the suspects on a shared basis. This gave them direct access to our military secrets, like missions carried out by Navy SEAL Team Six.



They retained their jobs after Obama left, which is not unheard of since their positions were not seen as political appointments. However, they were fired by Trump’s administration within hours after Navy SEAL William Ryan Owens was killed in Yemen during the top secret raid on Al-Qaeda operatives.

So, in case you’ve gotten lost, here’s a recap of the timeline of events:

Jan 20 – Trump takes office, and DoD officials are expecting him to be more willing to approve dangerous missions
Jan 26 – Rex Tillerson visits State Department headquarters prior to his confirmation, and either terminates or forces the resignation of many existing State Department personnel
Jan 29 – The botched Yemen raid is executed, resulting in the death of Navy SEAL Owens
Feb 1 – Rex Tillerson is confirmed by President Trump as Secretary of State
Feb 2 – The Awan brothers are terminated on suspicion that they accessed congressional computers without permission

As Mad World News previously stated,

“…it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to connect the dots. The firing of the Awan brothers is linked to the Yemen raid where al-Qaeda knew we were coming, and it tragically ended with Navy SEAL Owens being killed in action.”

The mainstream media seemed far more interested in obfuscating the details regarding the Tillerson terminations than they were in covering what could be one of the most dangerous intelligence leaks in years, of which there has been but a peep out of any major news outlet. Captain Joseph R. John (Navy-Ret.) has stated that he believes the Muslim Brotherhood “fifth column” has “infiltrated U.S. Government,” and if he is correct, the Awan brothers could very well be a part of this infiltration.

Yet, there as been but a peep of information about the Awan brothers from nearly all major news outlets. Are they in jail? What are they accused of? Does the Trump administration suspect them of leaking details about military operations to terrorist organizations? And most importantly, if so, did these three men directly or indirectly contribute to the death of Owens during the Yemen raid?

One thing is for certain – as Politico seemed to take delight in stating, “Trying to nail down who the leakers are is like trying to count the cockroaches under the couch.” However, it seems most of the “leaks” are coming from Obama holdovers. Which makes Tillerson’s “cleaning house” look like not just the correct move, it leaves you wondering if he did enough cleaning house.

Just don’t expect to hear that from the mainstream media anytime soon.

---

-----------

"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

Quote:

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Originally posted by THGRRI:
They don't want to work for Trump

Senior officials are fleeing the State Department in the first days of President Donald Trump's administration, according to The Washington Post.

Patrick Kennedy, the State Department's undersecretary for management, and three of his top officials resigned abruptly recently, The Post reported. All are career diplomats who have served under presidents from both parties.

Two other senior leaders in the State Department left earlier this month. Post columnist Josh Rogin characterized it as an "ongoing mass exodus of senior foreign service officers who don't want to stick around for the Trump era."

David Wade, who was the State Department's chief of staff under Secretary of State John Kerry, told The Post that it's "the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember."

http://www.businessinsider.com/state-department-quitting-trump-2017-1

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That sounds like the best news of the week.
Finally get rid of all that Obama Clinton (and Swiftboat Ketchup) deadwood.

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Originally posted by THGRRI:
They don't want to work for Trump

Senior officials are fleeing the State Department in the first days of President Donald Trump's administration, according to The Washington Post.

Patrick Kennedy, the State Department's undersecretary for management, and three of his top officials resigned abruptly recently, The Post reported. All are career diplomats who have served under presidents from both parties.

Two other senior leaders in the State Department left earlier this month. Post columnist Josh Rogin characterized it as an "ongoing mass exodus of senior foreign service officers who don't want to stick around for the Trump era."

David Wade, who was the State Department's chief of staff under Secretary of State John Kerry, told The Post that it's "the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember."

http://www.businessinsider.com/state-department-quitting-trump-2017-1]

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T