A New Right-Wing Disinformation Campaign: Biden Was Part of a Deep State Plot Against Trump

[Soph0571]

That didn’t take long. Joe Biden had barely joined the 2020 presidential race when the right-wing disinformation machine began cranking out the newest iteration of its Deep State conspiracy theory, with this version claiming the former vice president was part of a government cabal that cooked up a supposedly phony Trump-Russia scandal to keep the reality television celebrity from gaining the White House. This certainly is an easy charge to debunk—that is, if you care about facts—but it’s still likely that this unfounded notion will take hold in the fever swamp of Trump-encouraged and Fox-fueled conservative paranoia.

Days after Biden declared his presidential bid in late April, Restoration PAC, a conservative political action committee generously funded by a Republican billionaire, posted on Facebook a video titled “Joe Biden’s Involvement in the Fusion GPS/Steele Dossier.” For right-wingers, any Biden connection to this document would mean that the Democratic 2020 frontrunner was in the middle of the plot against Donald Trump, for the theory pushed by Fox Newsers and others holds that the memos written by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele during the 2016 campaign—which alleged Trump was directly in cahoots with Moscow—triggered the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe that morphed into special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation in 2017. The basic foundation of this conspiracy theory, though, is wrong: The FBI’s inquiry began in late July 2016 not because of the Steele memos but due to the US government receiving information from another government (the Australians) that a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, had been privately told that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton—a trove of emails—that could be used against the Democratic candidate. (Want a source for this? See the last page of the infamous Nunes memo.)

[link:https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/05/a-new-right-wing-disinformation-campaign-biden-was-part-of-a-deep-state-plot-against-trump/|

Swiftboating 101
Fuckers.

[MythosMaster]

1. Deep State Boogyman.

[still_one]

2. so glad to see FB has cleaned up their act

[The Genealogist]

3. "generously funded by a Republican billionaire"

This tells me all I need to know. Another billionaire fears paying taxes, and is willing to throw around his weight. Fuck the truth, fuck justice, fuck democracy. All that matters to these people is more money.

[MBS]

5. and power n/t

[The Genealogist]

6. The two are thoroughly entwined, aren't they?

Use power to get more money, use money to get more power.

[MBS]

8. you bet. n//t

[MBS]

4. Even more vigilance (and response effectiveness) will be required

. . .even more than in all previous elections combined. Saboteurs both domestic and foreign are hard at work, with RW media eager to spread the misinformation-

[Hortensis]

7. These RW extremist smears have a way of going RW mainstream

these days and are threatening to destroy our nation.

It'll help victims of this self-induced psychosis ignore things like food price inflation and prisoners too closely packed in border cells to be able to sit down. But hopefully, this and the blizzard of other agitprop to come will do little to firm up the few percent who are becoming increasingly disaffected. And who could change everything.

We are a solid and growing majority, just need to grow enough to overcome the right's electoral college advantage and get a senate majority.

[MBS]

9. "self-induced psychosis"

Perfect diagnosis.
Now all we need is the cure (or at least a re-hab program)

[Hortensis]

11. :) I think the closest we're going to come to a

national rehab program are laws forbidding the spreading of toxic lies to whole populations and requiring broadcast, cable, Facebook, etc., provide the equivalent of an hour a day of scrupulously accurate and broad coverage of the daily news.

It'd be fun to see the daytime cable shows followed by news that showed up their so-serious discussion for the systematic deception, and often outright lies, that it so often is. Of course, it'd force immediate changes.

Publicly funded, of course, so the Kochs couldn't buy it.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

10. Easy to believe if one is part of the derp state