Is Trump a Manchurian Candidate like the Democrats say?

Before we examine this question you should ask yourself an important question, "Does that change in any way the content of those emails?" No, it does not.

DNC emails reveal a Clinton campaign that’s shady and dishonest, not to mention corrupt. Its secret dealings with Hillary’s opponents—whether Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump—have been distasteful and possibly illegal. To say this is an unflattering portrayal of Team Clinton is like saying the Titanic had issues with ice.

A hacker named Guccifer 2.0 had already claimed credit for the hack a month ago. According to Guccifer, who gave a magazine interview, “i’m a hacker, manager, philosopher, women lover. I also like Gucci! I bring the light to people. I’m a freedom fighter! So u can choose what u like!”.

He again denied being affiliated with Russia, saying, “No because I don’t like Russians and their foreign policy. I hate being attributed to Russia.” He said he hacked the DNC server in summer 2015 and remained inside it until the DNC rebooted its system in June, 2016.

So then the question isn't whether Guccifer 2.0 hacked the DNC. He did.
The question is "Is Guccifer who he says he is?"
To determine that, let's look at the counter-claim - that Putin's men hacked the DNC.

On June 15, 2016, CrowdStrike’s co-founder and CTO Dmitri Alperovich announced in a blog post that two Russian hacker groups were responsible for the DNC breach: Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear; and that both hacker groups worked for competing Russian intelligence services.
Other cybersecurity companies including FireEye, Kaspersky Lab, ESET, TrendMicro, Microsoft, iSight Partners, and AlienLab have made similar claims of attribution to the Russian government. The question that this article seeks to answer is, are those claims grounded in evidence or guesswork?
I chose to look at Fancy Bear (APT28 in FireEye’s ecosystem). The most comprehensive report on that threat actor was written by FireEye and released last October, 2014 so I started with that. To my surprise, the report’s authors declared that they deliberately excluded evidence that didn’t support their judgment that the Russian government was responsible for APT28’s activities:

“APT28 has targeted a variety of organizations that fall outside of the three themes we highlighted above. However, we are not profiling all of APT28’s targets with the same detail because they are not particularly indicative of a specific sponsor’s interests.” (emphasis added)

That is the very definition of confirmation bias.

Democratic allies are in danger of looking like crazy people.
Jeff Stein at Newsweek asks “Does Donald Trump have a subversive partnership with Vladimir Putin’s propaganda machine?”

Jeffrey Goldberg claims "The Republican nominee for president, Donald J. Trump, has chosen this week to unmask himself as a de facto agent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, a KGB-trained dictator who seeks to rebuild the Soviet empire by undermining the free nations of Europe, marginalizing NATO, and ending America’s reign as the world’s sole superpower.”

The Daily Beast says “Trump Invites Putin to Invade Melania’s Home Town.”

The Observer says "Wikileaks has been an obvious Kremlin front for years."

Hillary has already likened Putin to Hitler.

Consider how Putin has almost supernatural powers to influence events around the globe in his favor.
Brexit. Jeremy Corbyn. Hungary’s Victor Orban. Europe's Far Right. Europe's Far Left.

This is some seriously bizarre shit! It's beyond the pale. Or as the NY Times puts it:

It was a remarkable moment: Even at the height of the Cold War, it was hard to find a presidential campaign willing to charge that its rival was essentially secretly doing the bidding of a key American adversary.

In many ways this is McCarthyist, but without communism.

The FBI is investigating now, and I believe that they will be a lot more cautious about throwing around accusations that can't be proven.
It's long past time the Democrats get a grip on reality before they wind up as laughing stocks.

“The entire premise of the piece relies on the paranoid assumption that Putin wants to "destroy the West": ‘Vladimir Putin has a plan for destroying the West – and that plan looks a lot like Donald Trump.’
“Wait, what? Putin may want to undermine the West. He may want to curb the expansion of NATO, but destroy it? Is he Magneto? This is the type of unhinged, over-the-top language that goes unchallenged when discussing the US favorite Eastern menace.”
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who he or she is or where she or he is from, No it does not change the content of the emails. It cant be said enough.

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been said but if I were team clinton I wouldn't be crying that the Russians leaked these to elect trump. If they tapped into the DNC then they certainly tapped into hillary's cobbled together basement server. That's the way trump will start spinning it anytime now and it's only going to make clinton look like a bigger liar and fool than she's already proven to be...

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importer's picture

RT- Television, funded by the Russians. They back tracked to Gucifer's computer and subsequently found he had access to Hillary Clinton's home brew server, which led them to the DNC and to "government" computers, which would imply the State Department.

This happened in 2011 and Russia kept a lid on the fact that they had full access to everything running through Hillary's server, so as to maintain access and to be able to use the information later to blackmail her should she become president. That means Russia has five years worth of highly classified information through Hillary. That alone should be enough to send her to jail. Comey carefully sidestepped the issue of whether others had hacked her server. It is clear now that others did, including Russian. Gucifer himself said that he was aware of "several" other hackers digging through Hillary's stuff while he was there.

The fact that Hillary is claiming now the Russians hacked her server, is crazy on her part, she is admitting that they did and she knew about it.

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Not Henry Kissinger's picture

First he was Bill's plant.

Now he's Vlad's?

Personally, I have a hard time seeing anybody with Trump's massive ego as anybody's toady.

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The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

Alphalop's picture

that now that he sees he has a chance of actually winning his ego would NEVER let him back off or deliberately self destruct.

I have a family member that is actually "Friends" with Trump (They did lots of business together and went to at least 2 of his weddings) and his opinion is that Trumps ego is too big for any possibility of that being likely and he actually likes the guy... {Shudder}

His whole image is based on his "Winning" and other people being "Losers".

He would never willingly lose at anything, it's bad for the brand.

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"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me

Not Henry Kissinger's picture

A massive FBI investigation into Hillary's homebrew server supposedly turns up no evidence of hacking.

Yet the Hillary campaign can claim with absolute certainty that they know it was the Russians who hacked the (more secure) DNC server.

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The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

moneysmith's picture

it makes about as much sense as their other excuses.

Either Hillary is a really shitty liar or she thinks we're incredibly naive/stupid. She reminds me of the little kid who stands in front of you with candy all over its face and insists it did not touch the candy jar. Riiiiight!

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Hell is empty and all the devils are here. William Shakespeare

... Either Hillary is a really shitty liar or she thinks we're incredibly naive/stupid. She reminds me of the little kid who stands in front of you with candy all over its face and insists it did not touch the candy jar. Riiiiight!

I'll take BOTH, and raise to the classic psychopath's notion that other, lesser people just don't matter - as long as they adulate the psychopath. If they don't, they'd better be able to duck fast.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

edg's picture

Shares of Alcoa tripled in price today as sales of it's flagship Reynold's Aluminum Foil surged 800% as demand for tinfoil hats by U.S. media companies rose to unprecedented levels.

"Recognition by reporters and editorialists at the New York Times, Washington Post and elsewhere as the top brand for three consecutive years is a tremendous distinction and proof of the brand health and continual appeal of Reynolds Wrap Aluminum Foil among the tinfoil hat brigade of American media," said Paul Thomas, Executive Vice President, Alcoa and Group President, Alcoa Packaging and Consumer Products.

/snark, but not by much

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Alphalop's picture

Shares of Alcoa tripled in price today as sales of it's flagship Reynold's Aluminum Foil surged 800% as demand for tinfoil hats by U.S. media companies rose to unprecedented levels.

And to think the fools over at TOP were calling us CT's because we were saying the election was rigged.

I guess it's only a theory until you prove it right. So now I guess it's just a regular C...

As curious as I am to see the cognitive dissonance in action at TOP right now over the events of this past weekend, I am not quite curious enough to actually go there to witness it. Smile

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"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me

It's a kindergarten tactic of the sort common in the pathological corporate culture. Monsanto/Bivings et al were notorious for this. Sneer at people pointing out your abuses and see how many people fall for being on the 'in' side. Works all too well, or did, at any rate. Overuse in the face of proof kinda spoils the strategy, once people finally become aware.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Bollox Ref's picture

Whatever! Has anyone denied the veracity of these emails?

And as fugwb says, if there was Russian inspiration behind all this, then HRC is in some serious shite when it comes to her Radio Shack server.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

sojourns's picture

Drumpf and crew are seen putting into service a fleet of fully loaded, Albanian made "Tartan Prancer" minivans for him and his entourage. I'm going to keep an eye on the stock price.

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

edg's picture

If Trump is able to convince Putin to hack DNC's server and is able to control Russian release of the emails to the most opportune time for Trump, then maybe Trump should become our president. We need someone that can pwn Russia rather than someone that gave them control of 20% of the world's uranium.

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sojourns's picture

of anything. Governments are hacking the crap out of each other everyday. This is not isolated incident save for the fact that the DNC is inept and dumb ass Wasserman Schultz in her infinite arrogance determined on some level that it couldn't happen to the DNC-- if she gave it any thought at all-- didn't bother to see to it in her role as chair, that the systems were secure.

There's millions of Guccifers out there running port sniffers 24/7 to seek out vulnerabilities. He got lucky in that the DNC is inept. Worse than Nixon's 3rd rate robbery of the Democratic Headquarters.

As to the timeliness of their release, well....

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

Or should I say, they went "McCaskill".

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I wasn't finished

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It should go over like a lead balloon.

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Alphalop's picture

I can't even imagine going over there right now, the level of self delusion has to be staggering.

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"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me

And you are right. The denial is extreme.

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Damn, got suckered into going there... and commenting... and having to come back here, out of that stale atmosphere...

Old thread, maybe I won't get flagged out of existence. Haven't so far, at any rate - still down as a frequent commenter!

Edit: hadn't commented for 30 days and picked up another follower?

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

sojourns's picture

It's like chumming a swimming pool full of sharks.

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

I hope the lead balloon lands on the very nastiest toes...

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0 users have voted.

Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

riverlover's picture

but no response from the H-team, IIRC. First you ignore.

Then Gucifer 2.0, different human, 1.0 got disappeared. Months ago.

Now Wikileaks, with a shitload of emails, more than the records of the Bank in Panama, dredged by mere humans, not Journalists, and the squealing begins. No action team there Hillary? Or are the fire suppression teams of bots spread too thin?

I am getting bitter, more G&T.

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

sojourns's picture

Herr Drumpf is far too narcissistic and has been since birth, to be made into an effective Manchurian Candidate.

Funny how when John Kennedy Jr.'s plane crashed, the Manchurian candidate was deemed ridiculous.

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

Big Al's picture

I remember when the Putin/Russia propaganda offensive heated up in 2012 prior to the Olympics. Being called a Putin apologist over at Daily Kos. People ate it up then and they're eating it up now. It's an insidious repetitive, at times subliminal pounding of a theme. Not just for Clinton and the DNC, the entire mass media and much of the alternative media has successfully created a new Cold War with the demonization of Putin and Russia.
All they have to do is suggest, it doesn't matter whether its true and they know it. That's how it works to the suspecting yet unsuspecting public that thinks they know better but they really don't. I've seen in on here.
Guccifer? Probably CIA or NSA. Why believe anonymous bullshit when we know they play those games.

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idiot.jpg

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