The Monster They Created Is Now Attacking Them

The Political Cartoon above is by Rick McKee at Cagle.com.

MAGA world is very unhappy with the Trump administration right now and they have a right to be.

For the last 10 years, Trump and his minions have happily fed into the conspiracy theory about Epstein's files. They have agreed with MAGA world that Epstein had a list of people who attended his sex parties (many of them with underage girls).

The implication they gave was that the rumored list contained the names of well-known Democrats, and the MAGA cult salivated at the thought of the list being released. It obviously doesn't name any Democrats, or it would have been released by now. Trump doesn't avoid any opportunity to attack Democrats - who he recently said he hates.

If it had, most Democrats would have happily watched as the politicians twisted in the wind, and if any were still in office would have corrected that. While Republicans bend over backwards to cover for their politicians, Democrats don't.

Since Trump's return to office, MAGA has been demanding the release of the Epstein files (especially the list of clients), including members of the Trump administration. Just a few weeks ago, AG Pam Bondi teased the MAGA cult by saying the list was on her desk and would be released after she examined it,

But this last week, the Trump administration has changed its tune. Now Bondi says there is no list. MAGA world is not accepting that. They are demanding the list (and the whole of the Epstein files) be released.

There are only two possible reasons for not releasing a list. First, it really doesn't exist. If that's true, them Trump and his followers have been lying about it for the last 10 years (since Epstein was arrested during Trump's first term). They have been lying for political advantage.

Second, the list contains the names of Republicans - maybe even Trump himself (since he and Epstein were once good buddies, and there is testimony from girls at the parties that Trump was there).

The only way to clear this up is to release the entire Epstein file to the public. But it cannot contain any redactions. Any redactions would just cause the public duffer to continue - among those on both the right and the left.

I don't see a good way out of this mess for the Trump administration. But it is a mess of their own making. They created this monster and now its attacking them. That's what happens when you lie and try to play politics with the justice system.

Musk Made Twitter A Right-Wing Propaganda Platform

The following is part of a post by Robert Reich:

Twitter started to become a right-wing media hot spot when Elon lifted bans on thousands of accounts that had spread disinformation about the pandemic and the 2020 elections.

More recently, Tucker Carlson has said he would revive his show on Twitter after losing his Fox News slot (Musk has denied that Twitter has signed a deal with Carlson). It’s also been reported that The Daily Wire, a right-wing, anti-democracy media outlet, will make Twitter the home for all its podcasts.

Unquestionably, Twitter is benefiting from the dissatisfaction of the anti-democracy movement with Fox News. Elon can claim to be outside the mainstream media world of Rupert Murdoch.

But Elon wants to be a force on the right because he wants total control. That’s been his business MO since the start, and it’s now his political MO. 

Not content to be the (or among the) richest on the planet, not satisfied with taking over one of the biggest media machines in the world, Elon wants to impose his will on America and the world directly. Like … the former guy.

Elon said Tuesday he isn’t formally backing any Republican candidate. But his eye is focused on Trump. Right now, Elon wants to send Trump the message that he — Elon — has the power to make life difficult for Trump if Trump so much as hints at making life difficult for Elon. 

Elon knows that the best way to deal with a bully is to bully him — show unremitting force and ally with other opposing forces. Which is why Elon is helping DeSantis. And why, earlier this week, Elon retweeted a campaign kickoff video for Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. 

Elon is only 51. He’s barred from becoming president (he was born in Pretoria, South Africa), but otherwise there’s no end to the power he can wield over America and the world during the next decades. And make no mistake: He plans to wield it. 

What should be done? 

Start with what America did at the turn of the last century to the robber barons of the Gilded Age: We enforced the antitrust laws. We busted up the giant railroads and oil companies. Now we should bust up media monopolies like Twitter. 

But don’t stop there. Musk is a walking illustration of the damage exorbitant wealth can do. We need a wealth tax on billionaires.

Fox Viewers Are More Likely To Believe Conspiracies

 It has been known for a while now that Fox News viewers are more ignorant of what is really happening in this country. That has been shown by several respected polls and studies. That's because Fox News doesn't bring viewers all the news -- just the news they think makes Republicans look good.

But it is even worse than that. As the charts above show (from the Washington Post / University of Maryland Poll), the Republicans that watch Fox News are more prone to believe conspiracies than Republicans that don't watch Fox -- and the difference is statistically significant.

Fox doesn't just cherry pick the news it likes, it also gives air time to conspiracy theories from right-wing Republicans. This makes their viewers not only ignorant, but conspiracy theory believers. The truth is that Fox is not a news channel. It is a propaganda channel for the Republican Party.

A Big Lie Works Only If It Is Built On Many Smaller Lies

 

If you are like me, you probably wonder how so many people could believe Trump's lie about winning the election (and having it stolen from him by the Democrats). Are these people just stupid? Do they not care about the truth and facts?

In an article for CNN, Ruth Ben-Ghiat tries to explain this conundrum. She says its just how propaganda works -- that a big lie only works if its built on many smaller lies. She writes:

"We won this election and we won it by a landslide," said Donald Trump at his "Save America" rally on January 6, which incited the assault on the Capitol. This is Trump's "Big Lie," a brazen falsehood with momentous consequences.

Trump's accusation that "radical left" Democrats stole his victory is certainly a whopper. But the focus on his Big Lie misses something fundamental about how propaganda works. A leader's Big Lie has no power and makes little sense on its own. It has traction only if the public has been fed many, many smaller lies. It relies on a larger network of falsehoods told by the leader and reinforced by his government officials and compliant media.

The Big Lie works because it is part of an established alternate belief system -- an edifice of lies, assembled piece by piece.

Trump, a leader of authoritarian intentions and tendencies, had disadvantages with respect to the foreign autocrats he so admires. He had no state media, like China's Xi Jinping. He could not rule by decree, like Hungary's Viktor Orbán. He had to govern and run for reelection in an open society with a relatively robust free press. Moreover, although he succeeded in making journalists into hate objects for many of his followers, he could not revoke or destroy the First Amendment.

So Trump took a different tack, unleashing a barrage of disinformation common in authoritarian states but without precedent in the history of the American presidency. He told more than 30,000 documented lies in public (30,573 was The Washington Post's final tally), on Twitter, at rallies and in interviews. If taken as an average, it would come out to 21 lies per day over his four-year term.

Let's break down the smaller lies that prepared Trump's followers to accept the Big Lie. Each of these was highly damaging and consequential, and most were repeated endlessly by Trump and his co-conspirators in and out of government and replicated on social media, right-wing TV and radio, and more.

Some were not expressed directly by Trump but were connected to the personality cult he built -- though he did make overt claims that he would "save the United States," and pronounced that "I alone" can fix the country's ills (an allegedly fraudulent election system among them). Personality cults enable the spread of propaganda by allowing an autocrat to forge a special bond with followers, one based on faith and emotion rather than reason. Put simply, they believe -- and help amplify -- his lies because they believe in him.

Indeed, Trump's claims to a unique competence to rescue America got an assist from a cadre of evangelical Christian preachers, authors, and government officials, former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders among them, who contended that he ruled by divine benediction -- that God installed him to do His will. This encouraged followers to believe that Trump's destiny was to stay in office, priming them for the moment when Trump's asserted that a second term was rightfully his.

The events of January 6 cannot be understood without this structure of blind belief and all the small lies that supported it. For his supporters, Trump was a victim of the "Deep State" and other enemies -- his reelection had been foiled by their treachery, so it was up to his believers to fight back, to fix a rigged system with the only tool left: direct action.

The Big Lie seemed convincing because Trump had been lying about American elections for years. He started drumming up suspicion about rigged elections in 2016, when it looked like he would lose to Hillary Clinton. The ensuing four years of relentless propaganda aimed to erase all confidence in this fundamental institution of democracy.

It's not surprising that Trump's lying had a dramaticuptick in 2020, when he was campaigning for reelection during a pandemic that he mismanaged with lethal results. He needed to discredit the main thing that threatened his power -- the vote. He worked overtime to throw doubt on every single aspect of voting. He told lies about dead people voting, about fraudulent mail-in ballots, about votes illegally counted, not counted at all, or invented.

In his January 6 speech, he falsely accused Democrats of pulling "suitcases of ballots out from under a table." He lied that the news media had declared Biden the winner even though "they still don't have any idea what the votes are."

Focusing only on the Big Lie misses the big picture. It fails to convey the scope and gravity of the institutionalized lying that was Trump's biggest weapon. And it obscures the way minds were worn down, day after day, by one lie after another after another. Trump's aim in his ceaseless lying was to get his followers to trust him alone as the arbiter of reality and to distrust everyone and everything else -- especially the democratic system that stood in the way of his amassing sufficient power to become untouchable.

It's the authoritarian way. While Trump is now gone from the White House, millions of his supporters still cling fiercely to his lies. Each lie deserves our attention as we seek to combat the mass disinformation that threatens our democracy.

The GOP "Convention" Was Full Of Propaganda And Lies

If you wanted some truth about what is happening in America, this week's Republican convention was not the place to go. It was nothing more than a festival of lies and propaganda -- portraying Trump as the savior of this country (and Western Civilization).

Here is just part of McKay Coppins described it in The Atlantic:

Americans who tuned in to this week’s Republican National Convention were treated to a slickly produced, four-day dispatch from an alternate reality—one in which the president has defeated the pandemic, healed America’s racial wounds, and ushered in a booming economy. In this carnival of propaganda, Donald Trump was presented not just as a great president, but as a quasi-messianic figure who was single-handedly preventing the nation’s slide into anarchy.

Every presidential-nominating convention is, to a certain extent, an exercise in hype and whitewashing. But Trump’s 2020 convention went further—rewriting the history of his first term with such brazenness that it seemed designed to disorient. The setting of the convention’s final night reinforced the surreality: the made-for-TV stage on the White House’s South Lawn; the cheering, unmasked audience of more than 1,000 standing shoulder to shoulder; the speakers blaring Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” loud enough to drown out protesters at the gate. . . .

Many of the Republican strategists I spoke with this week flatly acknowledged that their party was presenting a version of recent events that veered toward fan fiction. But given the bitter mood of the country and the dire state of the race, they said, the campaign’s desperation was understandable. . . .

The rat-a-tat of distortions and conspiracy theories began with Trump’s address to delegates on Monday, when he accused Democrats of trying to rig the election with universal mail-in voting, which he called “the greatest scam in the history of politics.” (It is not.) Later, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana claimed that Joe Biden had “embraced the insane mission to defund” the police. (He has not.) Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida warned that Democrats would “disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home, and invite MS-13 to live next door.” (They will not.) And Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee said Democrats wanted to “keep you locked in your house until you become dependent on the government for everything.” (They do not.) . . .

The myth that Trump has already beaten the virus pervaded the convention. As my colleague Russell Berman has noted, the pandemic was repeatedly referred to in the past tense. “It was awful,” Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow said in his speech on Tuesday. . . .

Much of the Republican convention seemed to be organized around erasing the national memory of Trump’s bigotry. He presided over a naturalization ceremony. He surprised an ex-felon with a presidential pardon. A slate of Black speakers was invited to say nice things about the president, defend him against accusations of racism, and tout his role in passing a criminal-justice-reform bill.

Of course, in between these feel-good stunts and testimonials were bleak warnings about the “Marxist revolutionary” forces that are wreaking havoc in American cities—and could be coming for you next. The most potent of these segments featured the McCloskeys, an affluent Missouri couple who went viral after pointing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters outside their house in June. “Make no mistake,” Patricia McCloskey told viewers, “no matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats’ America.” Protesters, she said, are “not satisfied with spreading chaos and violence into our communities. They want to abolish the suburbs altogether.” Police brutality—the issue at the heart of this summer’s unrest—received only glancing mentions during the convention. . . .

The programming may have been glossier, softer, more savvily pitched to certain demographics. But the goal seemed the same—not to persuade or convert, but to disorient and demoralize. Americans have spent the past four years watching the Trump presidency unfold, and they are not overwhelmingly impressed by what they’ve seen. His campaign appears determined to make voters second-guess themselves. As the political theorist Hannah Arendt once wrote, the purpose of propaganda “has never been to instill convictions, but to destroy the capacity to form any.”

U.S. Voters Are Not Buying The GOP Lies About Ukraine

These charts reflect the results of the new Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between December 1st and 3rd of a national sample of 1,200 registered voters, with a 2.9 point margin of error.

In an effort to justify his election and obfuscate Russian involvement in the 2016 election on his behalf, Donald Trump is still trying to float the lie that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the election.

And in an effort to cover for Trump's criminal conduct and prevent his impeachment, Republican members of Congress are spreading that same lie. They know it's not true, and don't seem to care that it's Russian propaganda to cover their own criminal involvement in the 2016 election. They also don't seem to care that the Russian propaganda has been debunked by all of our intelligence agencies (and an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee).

Fortunately, American voters are not buying the Trump/Republican lies. Note that only 22% of registered voters think Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, while 50% say that did not happen (see the chart above).

Americans do think a foreign power did interfere in the 2016 election. About 60% of registered voters say Russia interfered, while only 25% say they did not (see chart below).

The congressional Republicans are just destroying their own credibility with the voters.

Trump And Congressional GOP Are Doing Putin's Bidding

Putin has to be a very happy man these days. He has convinced Donald Trump that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. And Trump is now repeating that Russian propaganda to his base.

In the past, the Republicans would have been horrified by any president, especially a Gap one, doing the bidding of Russia. But Republicans have changed. They have decided that Donald Trump can do no wrong, even if he is spreading Russian propaganda -- and they are destroying their party's future and reputation to protect him.

Here is how Jennifer Rubin describes this GOP treachery in The Washington Post:

Republicans are not “merely” violating their oaths of office for failing to support impeachment of a president who arguably has committed more serious “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” and acts of bribery than all his predecessors combined. None of them sacrificed national security to obtain a political advantage. President Trump has been disloyal to the United States, not only in giving Russia a leg up in its war against Ukraine, but also in broadcasting his propaganda. And for that, Republicans are just as guilty.

The New York Times reports that “Fiona Hill, a respected Russia scholar and former senior White House official, added a harsh critique during testimony on Thursday. She told some of Mr. Trump’s fiercest defenders in Congress that they were repeating ‘a fictional narrative.’ She said that it likely came from a disinformation campaign by Russian security services, which also propagated it.” While that did not slow Republicans one bit, we now know that they are neither dupes nor Fox News pawns; they are deliberately assisting in a Russian propaganda operation.

If congressional Republicans have evidence our intelligence community is wrong, they need to present it. Otherwise, they need to be called out for deliberately assisting a hostile foreign power. It is up to mainstream media interviewers and every Democrat on the ballot in 2020 to directly challenge Republicans who, yes, engage in un-American activity.

In the case of Trump, he not only picks up the propaganda from domestic sources carrying Russian President Vladimir Putin’s water, which “worked its way into American information ecosystems, sloshing around until parts of it reached Mr. Trump”; he was duped right from the source speaking “with Mr. Putin about allegations of Ukrainian interference.” Whether the president is being blackmailed is unknown; what we do know is that he is a malleable puppet whose strings are pulled in the Kremlin.

Ironically, it was Republicans during the Cold War who routinely and falsely accused every liberal of aiding communists. Now, we have a case in which the “useful idiots” are in the White House and Congress, spreading Putin’s lies far more effectively than the Russian leader could do on his own. . . .

Republicans must bear full responsibility for raising a specious defense of Trump that aids Russia, and the president should be held responsible for his inability to defend our national security by virtue of his susceptibility to Russian propaganda. The former, presumably, have not lost their powers of reason, and therefore, must be denounced and voted out of office for perpetuating known propaganda from a hostile power. As for Trump, there are plenty of grounds for impeachment, but let’s not forget a big one: He is intellectually incapable of recognizing reality. He cannot carry out the responsibilities of commander in chief.

Trump Repeats Russian Propaganda Intended To Hurt U.S.

In her testimony before Congress, Dr. Fiona Hill made it clear that Ukraine did not interfere in the 2016 U.S. election. Just a day later, intelligence officials briefed senators that it was Russia that interfered in the 2016 election -- not Ukraine. And they emphasized that Russia had tried to frame Ukraine in a disinformation campaign. In short, the idea that it was Ukraine that interfered in our presidential campaign has been thoroughly debunked.

But Donald Trump doesn't seem to care what the truth is, or is too stupid to recognize the truth when he sees it. He is still repeating the Russian propaganda. He is still doing Putin's dirty work.

Here is what Steve Benen had to say about it at The MaddowBlog:

Yesterday, Dr. Fiona Hill, the former top Russia expert on the White House National Security Council, implored Republicans to stop echoing propaganda created by the Kremlin to undermine the United States and help Moscow. “In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interest,” she testified.”

Hill added, “I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary – and that the Ukraine, not Russia, attacked us in 2016.” She went on to take aim at the “fictional narrative” that Kyiv was somehow responsible for the attack, a discredited claim “being perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services.”

House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), a sycophantic White House ally, tried to push back, insisting that Republicans didn’t need the reminder because they had already acknowledged the truth. And yet, one day later, Donald Trump appeared on Fox News’ morning program, where he ignored Hill’s warnings, contradicted Nunes, and echoed Russian propaganda.

TRUMP: You know, it’s very interesting. They have the server, right, from the DNC, Democratic National Committee, you know.

KILMEADE: Who has the server?

TRUMP: The FBI went in and they told them, get out of here, you’re not getting – we’re not giving it to you. They gave the server to Crowdstrike, or whatever it’s called, which is a country – which is a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian. And I still want to see that server. You know, the FBI has never gotten that server. That’s a big part of this whole thing. Why did they give it to a Ukrainian company? Why?

DOOCY: Are you sure they did that? Are you sure they gave it to Ukraine?

TRUMP: Well, that’s what the word is. That’s what I asked actually in my phone call, as you know.

To the extent that reality still has any meaning, we already know that everything the president said about this conspiracy theory is both wrong and crackpot nonsense. There is no ambiguity: the claim Trump keeps peddling, publicly and to national audiences, is just crazy. Even White House officials have urged the president not to believe it. He doesn’t care.

But it’s not just factually incorrect. In the shadow of the impeachment inquiry, it’s also an example of Trump asking people to believe a discredited claim, that is, in Fiona Hill’s words, “being perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services.”

Or put another way, the American president is helping advance Kremlin propaganda intended to hurt the United States.

Indeed, Trump wouldn’t let it go. “Don’t forget, Ukraine hated me,” he added this morning. “They were after me in the election. They wanted Hillary Clinton to win.”

I don’t honestly expect the president to have watched Fiona Hill’s testimony, and he obviously wouldn’t read a transcript if it were handed to him. But there’s probably room for a public conversation about why Trump seems so eager to stick to the Russian script Hill urged officials to avoid.

Dan Rather Responds To Sinclair Broadcasting Propaganda

(The local affiliates above are all owned by Sinclair Broadcasting.)

Right-wing (and Trump-loving) Sinclair Broadcasting has recently forced the news people at the stations they own read a corporate-approved message to their viewers. Here is journalist Dan Rather response to Sinclair's atrocious action.

Let's be clear, news anchors looking into camera and reading a script handed down by a corporate overlord, a script meant to obscure the truth not elucidate it, isn't journalism. It's propaganda. It's Orwellian. And it is on a slippery slope towards some of history's most destructive forces. These are the means by which despots wrest power, silence dissent, and oppress the masses. 

To those who say this rhetoric is hyperbolic, I submit that attacking the press as honest brokers of information has been one of the constants of this Administration and all those who normalize it. But this is not normal. This is not how the freedoms enshrined in our Constitution, that beloved First Amendment, is supposed to operate. 

Many of you by now have seen the video mashup of news employees on Sinclair-owned TV stations delivering the same talking points to their viewers. For those who haven't, I have included the link below. And a big tip of the Stetson to Timothy Burke, the video director at Deadspin, who edited the string of video clips into a powerful sequence that puts the dangers of our time into visceral relief. 

The faces of the men and women you see delivering this chilling message are befitting those of a hostage video. Maybe some of these local anchors took to it with gusto, but I believe that number is few. That's not why people are drawn to journalism. And maybe you will say that they should have refused or even resigned in protest, but I know that one can grasp in desperation for rationalizations and compromise when one feels their livelihood is at risk. That is the bet that Sinclair and its allies in media and government are betting on - that they can chip away, with small strikes of the chisel, at the bedrock of American democracy. I suspect that the vast majority of the journalists you see in this video want to be in an environment where they can do their jobs, reporting the news fairly, without favor or bias. They need our support. 

That is why it is incumbent for Americans of all political persuasions to say this is intolerable. Congress should hold hearings and call the executives of Sinclair to account, but one suspects that is highly unlikely in the current political environment. Will this spur citizens to elect representatives who recognize that this is a clear and present danger? Will enough people be outraged to bombard stations, and advertisors, with letters, phone calls, and tweets to suggest this is unacceptable? 

For now, Sinclair is trying to explain away the controversy, and they have a powerful ally in the President. But as we saw with the advertisers bailing en masse from Laura Ingraham's Fox News show after she attacked a Parkland High School student activist in a Tweet, the voice of the people still matters. If enough people speak, they cannot be ignored.

A free and independent press must be part of #WhatUnitesUs

Here is the link to the video.

Republicans Spend $1.4 Million To Lie To Americans

(Cartoon image is by Adam Zyglis in The Buffalo News.)

Congressional Republicans are getting nervous about their plan to dismantle Obamacare. Many of them are now afraid that their repeated lies about Obamacare will be exposed once the plan is repealed. They could just abandon their nefarious plan and fix Obamacare (which is what the public really wants), but that would make too much sense. Instead, they have chosen another option.

They have decided that the answer is more propaganda. A group affiliated with the GOP (American Action Network) is spending $1.4 million dollars on advertisements on television and digital media. They are advertising the Republican plan that will replace Obamacare. The ads claim that plan has "more choices", "better care", and "lower costs".

There is only one thing wrong with this approach -- it's advertising a plan that DOES NOT EXIST! The congressional Republicans have been trying to come up with a plan to replace Obamacare for years now, and have been unable to do that. And they are no closer to developing a plan now than in the past.

There is only one way to describe the new GOP advertising campaign -- it is a LIE!

Is Donald Trump Just Vladimir Putin's Puppet ?

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump likes to present himself as a strong leader. He has even compared himself to Russia's Vladimir Putin. But his repeated praise for Putin makes it look like he is more of a puppet for Putin than a strong leader for America. Here is how the editorial board of The Washington Post puts it:

ON FRIDAY, while much of the country was preoccupied with the latest revelations about Donald Trump, the U.S. intelligence community made an alarming and unprecedented announcement: Russia was seeking “to interfere with the U.S. election process” through the hacking of political organizations and individuals, including the Democratic National Committee. The statement rightly alarmed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who said in Sunday night’s debate that “we have never in the history of our country been in a situation where an adversary, a foreign power, is working so hard to influence the outcome of the election.”

And Mr. Trump? Once again, the GOP nominee played the part of Vladi­mir Putin’s lawyer. “She doesn’t know if it’s the Russians doing the hacking,” he said of Ms. Clinton. “Maybe there is no hacking.” Mr. Trump is receiving classified intelligence briefings, so he is certainly aware of the evidence that hackers backed by Moscow have stolen email and other records from the DNC and tried to penetrate state electoral systems. So why does he deny it? Mr. Trump’s advocacy on behalf of an aggressive U.S. rival, and the opaqueness of his motivation, is one of the most troubling aspects of his thoroughly toxic campaign.

Experts differ on whether the Putin regime is trying to tip the election to Mr. Trump, as Ms. Clinton suggested, or merely to sow confusion and distrust about the integrity of U.S. democracy. But the leaks traced to Russia through the WikiLeaks website have been aimed at Ms. Clinton — most recently emails from her campaign chairman revealing excerpts from her private speeches on Wall Street. The timing of the WikiLeaks releases, clearly calculated to do maximum damage to the Democrats, confirms (again) that the website is not a crusader for transparency, but a willing political agent of the Kremlin.

Perhaps Mr. Trump knows nothing about all this, as he protested. But he has defended Mr. Putin and his crimes throughout his campaign. He brushed off the fact that journalists and other opponents of the Russian ruler have been murdered and claimed Russia had not invaded Ukraine. He has repeatedly called Mr. Putin a better leader than President Obama.

In Sunday’s debate, Mr. Trump reeled off a series of false statements about Russia’s intervention in Syria, saying it was aimed at the Islamic State even though almost all of Russia’s bombs have fallen on rebel groups fighting the regime of Bashar al-Assad, or on civilians. He then rejected the statement by running mate Mike Pence that “provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength” and the United States should consider using “military force to strike military targets of the Assad regime” if Russia’s bombing of Aleppo continued. (Abjectly, Mr. Pence on Monday attempted to deny that he said those words in the vice-presidential debate.) “I think it would be great if we got along with Russia because we could fight ISIS together,” Mr. Trump said at Sunday’s debate.

Here’s what we don’t know: Does Mr. Trump propose this collaboration with a regime obsessed with thwarting and weakening American power out of ignorance and naivete, or because of personal and business interests he has not disclosed? Mr. Putin surely knows the answer to that question — but U.S. voters do not.

Republican Candidates Have Accepted The "Big Oil" Lies

The chart above, from an AP survey, shows just how far from the truth the Republican candidates are when they talk about global climate change. They have either foolishly accepted the propaganda from the big will companies in their desire to please corporate America, or they have received (or hope to receive) a lot of money from the big oil companies -- primarily the Koch brothers and ExxonMobil.

It is the Koch brothers and ExxonMobil that have been most responsible for paying for and promoting the propaganda (lies) that deny global climate change. They have know for decades that the climate change is real (and is caused by overuse of fossil fuels), but they have funded a huge effort to fool the American people into believing that climate change is not happening. They don't care about the truth or the planet. They only care about their profits, and are perfectly willing to toss future generations under the bus to protect those profits.

And their propaganda effort has been pretty successful with Republican officials and the general public -- successful enough to create doubt in the minds of too many people, and keep the government from doing anything about the global climate change. Now there is a report showing just how successful the propaganda from the Koch brothers and ExxonMobil has been. Here is how that report is described by Natasha Geiling at Think Progress:

When it comes to climate deniers in the halls of Congress, some have suggested that their rejection of the scientific consensus on climate change stems from their financial ties to the fossil fuel industry. 

But it turns out that it’s not just members of Congress whose climate doubt may be traced back to corporate influence — a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that over the last 20 years, private funding has had an important influence on the overall polarization of climate change as a topic in the United States.

“The main thesis that corporate funding influences climate change issues is definitely something people have been writing about for a long time, but just not with the type of data to fully support these conclusions,” Justin Farrell, author of the study and a sociologist at Yale University, told ThinkProgress. “It confirms what we thought using comprehensive data and computational analyses.”

To understand how corporate funding has contributed to the polarization of climate change in the United States, Farrell looked at 20 years’ worth of data, analyzing articles, texts, and policy papers produced by 164 organizations and more than 4,500 individuals who do not accept the science of climate change (that climate change is either not happening or not a product of human activity). The study also looked at funding from two key contrarian entities: the Koch Family Foundationsand ExxonMobil. 

By analyzing both the networks of individuals and organizations that have participated in climate misinformation campaigns and the climate-related texts that those organizations produced between 1993 and 2013, Farrell found what he described to the Washington Post as an “ecosystem of influence” within groups that received corporate funding. Groups that received funding from Koch or Exxon were not only more likely to have written texts aimed at polarizing climate change, but were more likely to change the emphasis of their content over time. Beginning in 2008, groups that received funding were more likely than unfunded groups to produce texts stressing things like the idea that climate change is a long term cycle or that carbon dioxide is in fact good for the planet, key tenets of the climate misinformation campaign aimed at casting doubt on the scientific consensus. Groups that received funding consistently touted these themes, while groups with no funding didn’t show the same level of coordination.

“This funding has an impact on the nature and amount of what is going out in the climate misinformation effort,” Robert Brulle, a professor of sociology and environmental science at Drexel University who was not involved in the study, told ThinkProgress. “It’s stronger, and there’s more of it, and these organizations are at the core of the effort.”

The study comes out at a time when ExxonMobil is facing increasing public scrutiny for its role in misleading the public about climate change. Several prominent politicians have called for a Department of Justice investigation into whether or not Exxon purposefully mislead the public about climate change, based on information published in a recent Inside Climate News investigation which found that Exxon’s internal research confirmed in 1977 that climate change is caused by carbon emissions from fossil fuels. Earlier this month, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman issued a subpoena to Exxon, demanding records relating to its climate research.

“[The study] gives credence and empirical strength to the argument that ExxonMobil made a concerted effort to promulgate climate misinformation, which they knew from their internal research was false,” Brulle said. 

But beyond Exxon, Brulle praised the paper for proving with data something that climate activists have long suspected: When it comes to climate misinformation, corporate funding plays a crucial role.

“We sort of always suspected that this was the case, that the funders were building and creating this effort, but this really demonstrates it empirically,” he said. “This is a very, very robust and interesting paper.”