Alternative Insight
Who Checks the Fact Checkers?
Misreporting The Mueller Investigation
There are political websites that do not recite facts; they check facts. This welcoming exercise has its complications – sometimes the fact checker needs to be fact checked.One fact checking website, appropriately named Fact Check, played loose with its facts and interpretations of events in its criticism of a Trump tweet that said, “Russia, if they were at all for me – and by the way, if you look at all of the things, they were sort of for and against both, not just one way.”
Fact Check called President Trump’s tweet misleading. This may be true for most of Trump’s tweets, but not this one.
Fact Check’s observations:That is misleading. As we have written, indictments handed down in February 2018 against 13 Russians and three Russian organizations for interfering in U.S. elections show their efforts clearly sought to support Trump over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential general election.
Checking the facts from Fact Check’s complaint reveals the following:
- Trump said Russia, meaning the government. The mentioned indictments are not against the Russian government; they are against Russian citizens and businesses.
- Fact Check made it seem as if there was a vast conspiracy involving thirteen separated persons and three distinct businesses. However, they are all, one and the same. Concord Management and Concord Consulting are related Russian entities, of which Internet Research Agency (IRA) is an effective subsidiary. All thirteen indicted persons are employees of IRC.
- These are only indictments, which does not mean they are proven true. Indictments also bend evidence to one side and do not present the counter arguments.
- The indictments make it seem as if these Russians greatly favored Trump. Other evidence shows this is only appearance and may not be entirely correct.
From USA Today at https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/12/17/russia-social-media-senate-report/2334382002/
We read every one of the 3,517 Facebook ads bought by Russians (ED: Not Russian government, and only 3,517 of many millions by others during the election). Here's what we found. Only about 100 of the ads overtly mentioned support for Donald Trump or opposition to Hillary Clinton. A few dozen referenced questions about the U.S. election process and voting integrity, while a handful mentioned other candidates like Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush.
Only about 100 ads in overt support for Trump! Let's be real. Is that interference?
From USA Today at
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/05/11/what-we-found-facebook-ads-russians-accused-election-meddling/602319002/Some of the more than 3,000 ads denounced Donald Trump, others his Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton.
The crushing argument is that it has been assumed that the ads and demonstration arrangements were done to enhance the Trump campaign – hardly likely. Could a single foreign public relations agency compete with the hundreds of American public relation firms that are more aware of the American public and its use of social media and have been previously engaged in election campaigns? Could IRA even make a dent in the vast campaign, being less than minor additions to the millions of ads and hundreds of demonstrations? It is more likely that IRA, a public relations agency, inserted the ads and arranged the demonstrations for commercial reasons – to obtain feedback in order to ascertain Trump’s popularity and sell the information to news sources.
Fact Check's inability to absorb and properly present the facts are a clue to the misreadings of the Mueller report. Take another miscreant -- Daily Beast at https://www.thedailybeast.com/barr-to-release-redacted-mueller-report-on-trump-obstruction-russia-election-interference-collusion?ref=scrollThe report unveils a 2016 meeting between Trump’s campaign chairman and a former Russian intelligence officer, Konstantin Kilimnik.
It was later revealed that Manafort had shared polling data with Kilimnik during the campaign.
The Special Counsel’s Office did not say that Konstantin Kilimnik is a former intelligence officer. It said that "Kilimnik has links to Russian intelligence." These vague and unidentified links might signify they have the same dentist. Konstantin Kilimnik is a dual Ukrainian and Russian citizen who worked for Paul Manafort’s political consulting firm and ran its office in Ukraine. So, Manafort shared crude polling data, which would eventually be made public, with an associate; what does that have to do with the Russian government?
Those who insist that the Russians (government) influenced the 2016 presidential campaign never explain the obvious contradictions and the flimsy amount of evidence used to substantiate their claims. The accusation that the Russian government organized a vast conspiracy of one private organization, which had no relation to any government, that tossed a pebble of miniscule effort into a roaring ocean, making no waves and accomplishing nothing, and conspired with a Russian intelligence agency that operates outside of government and certainly would not coordinate its activities with any private firm to influence the U.S. presidential election and get Trump elected, is an unsupported and conspiratorial judgment. The Russian intelligence agency, admittedly by illegal hacking, uncovered a nefarious action by the Democratic National Committee (DRC), in which "Many of the most damaging emails suggest the committee was actively trying to undermine Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign." The email exposure may have modified the election, but the DNC subverted the election process and deserved a major reproach. Compare the Russian government dubious interference in the 2016 American presidential election with U.S. overt intention to overthrow the elected Venezuelan government, and the truth shall be told.Anyone who understands President Putin knows that the last person, he, or any rational leader of a world power wanted as the U.S. Chief Executive is an irrational, immature, egotistic and manic- depressive person named Donald A. Trump. Enough of this madness.
alternative insight
april 17, 2019HOME PAGE MAIN PAGE 
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