During November, the persistent resurfacing of the Christopher Steele dossier put together about President Donald Trump uncovered more lies. This time, they were the lies of former foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, Carter Page, who always denied that he ever met with Russian officials.
Trump Pivot To Target Opponents
During a White House press briefing on October 30, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders made it very clear that the focus of the administration she represents was to blame Democrats for colluding with Russian officials. This was already a view introduced by the administration before Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy, Richard Gates was indicted on the same day of the press briefing.
In the months before those indictments, the Trump administration already set up its defense against Mueller, trying to connect him to Democrats through his prosecutors who had made donations to Democrats in the past. What’s most alarming as well as unprecedented about this is that the administration’s very public defiance against the special prosecutor. This is intended to troll and attack the rest of the nation and rattle the standards of civility.
Republicans also took this opportunity to form their wall of opposition against Robert Mueller in line with Trump. For instance, Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy (S.C.) already started attacking Mueller’s team for “violating the law.” They accused him of leaking information and were going to charge someone for it that coming Monday. Gowdy also provided ammunition to his party over the Russian dossier that, until recently, the conservative party and Trump were dismissive of.
Republicans Generate Opposition Toward Democrats
Much of the focus from conservative media in recent weeks has been about Fusion GPS and the political action group’s involvement with the dossier. As a research and strategic intelligence firm, according to The New York Times, The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative outlet, initially hired Fusion GPS to do opposition research on most of the Republican candidates. The conservative newspaper stopped funding the research in April of 2016, but an attorney for the Clinton campaign continued it.
This was after the Democratic National Committee servers were hacked and their emails published via Wikileaks.
It was during that time that Fusion GPS engaged with former MI-6 agent Christopher Steele to look for connections between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. Attention was drawn to the dossier late last year when Mother Jones reported on it. Before this, both then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (R-Ken.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) were reportedly aware of it, especially because it fueled Reid’s demands to the FBI that they investigate the connection between Trump and Russian officials.
Since then, Republicans and especially the Trump administration have attempted to discredit the graphic details described in the 35-page dossier. And this is what the Trump administration is leaning on to attack Democrats. Trump’s White House and Republicans are now redirecting the public’s attention towards false claims that Hillary Clinton and Democrats colluded with Russian officials.
In fact, Republicans began to gradually take an interest in dragging Democrats before a committee panel to grill them on the dossier. Again, a dossier that no Republican wanted to touch until they realized that it served their political agenda.
More Conservative Hatred Stoked Towards Mueller
Conservatives seem more willing to drink the President’s Kool-Aid with growing anger against Robert Mueller. According to The Hill, influential conservative media focused on creating reasons to call for Mueller’s recusal. One of these reasons is that his investigation is going off the rails into something unrelated. Meaning that rather than focusing on colluding with Russian officials, Mueller is focused on criminal activity in real estate.
While the dossier seems to have little to do with the recent results of the investigation, it did reveal that Carter Page had been lying and foreshadows other revelations of lies to come from Trump associates. Oddly, none of this seems to matter to supporters of the President’s agenda. This is why no one with an ounce of common sense should rely upon a foundation of reasoning established by the President and his Republicans to oppose Mueller. It’s clear that the anger is strictly an illusion created to oppose and weigh down criticism against President Trump.
It should be pointed out that the Trump administration’s focus on Democrats is to tie them in with a Uranium One deal. Conservative suspicions and frustrations have absorbed the fact that former President Obama approved a deal with the Uranium mining company. This is because the Canadian-based (headquarters are in Canada) mining company held licenses for 20 percent of the United States’ production capacity of the chemical element.
The Obama administration approved a deal between the company and Russian nuclear firm Rosatom. Mueller was FBI director at the time. But, to further verify the faulty structure of conservative conspiracies against Democrats, here’s Shepard Smith from the Trump administration’s own propaganda arm, Fox News, to completely debunk the conspiracy around Uranium One.
One will find that the vitriol from the Trump administration against Democrats is dependent on the ignorance of their base. It will then be obvious that the call to put select Democrats before a hearing will just be another waste of time over the dossier.
Featured image by Chayka1270/ PixaBay/Public Domain.
