Weapons of mass distraction

Don't be fooled

There is a lot going on these days. At least to some extent, I think that’s by design.

Take yesterday, for instance. National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard (it’s hard to type that without either laughing or crying) claimed that there was “irrefutable evidence” that the Obama Administration manufactured false intelligence connecting Donald Trump with Russia back in 2016. Gabbard further said that she was referring the documents to the DOJ and FBI “to investigate the criminal implications of this for the evidence.”

However, the evidence presented by Gabbard seemed underwhelming upon close inspection. For example, she cited a 2020 report by House Republicans that disputed previous claims that Vladimir Putin preferred that Trump win in 2016. Left unsaid is that this document is contradicted by a Senate report, written by a bipartisan committee that included now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The Senators concluded that Russia had interfered with the 2016 election and was likely to do so again, confirming numerous intelligence assessments.

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Gabbard also ignores the findings of the Mueller report. Far from being the “total exoneration” claimed by Donald Trump, the Mueller investigation found that not only did Russia dabble in the 2016 election, but that there were numerous illicit contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, as well as attempts to cover up these contacts and obstruct the investigation.

You might be asking yourself why Gabbard is rehashing the 2016 election, declassifying five-year-old partisan reports, and focusing on a man who has not been president for eight years. That would be the right question.

Gabbard’s press conference was almost certainly related to the fact that the Wall Street Journal dropped a bombshell the same day with a report that Donald Trump had been told as early as May that his name was mentioned in the DOJ’s Epstein files. Per this report, Trump was informed that his name appeared along with the names of many other high-profile people and that the mere mention did not imply wrongdoing, since much of the information seemed to be unverified hearsay.

The WSJ report fits the timeline of the Administration’s attempts to downplay expectations about the Epstein files. These attempts culminated with Attorney-General Pam Bondi’s denial that the long-sought-after Epstein client list did not exist… months after she claimed the list was on her desk.

In the weeks since Bondi’s bombshell, there have been new revelations about Trump’s relationship with Epstein. These include the fact that Epstein attended Trump’s wedding to Marla Maples in 1993, the claim that Trump sent Epstein a bawdy poem and a drawing of a naked woman for his 50th birthday in 2003, and numerous pictures of the two men together. File these under the category “Things That Would Have Been Nice to Know Before the Election.”

As a friend on the internet observed, if the whole world thought I was buddies with a guy who used minors as sex slaves and I had evidence to prove my innocence, I’d move heaven and earth to bring the evidence to light. Trump’s instinct is to suppress and distract from the Epstein files. It makes you wonder why.

The Epstein revelations have been extremely damaging to Trump, but they aren’t the only problems he faces. The president was elected largely on promises of reducing prices and inflation, yet Trump’s trade policy of increasing taxes on imports is causing inflation to reverse its decline. The consumer price index (CPI) increased in June to an annualized rate of 2.7 percent. Home prices hit a record high in the same month as the economy slowed and inventories grew.

The Administration finally seems to have a few pending trade deals to tout, but the fine print of the deals is not great for consumers. While the deal with Japan is better than a growing trade war, it increases tariffs on Japanese imports to 15 percent. Trump called this a “reciprocal tariff,” but Japanese tariffs on US imports were only about four percent. The president essentially jacked up tariffs to 25 percent, then lowered them to 15 percent in the deal and called it a tax cut. It’s like when a store increases its prices in order to mark them down for a sale.

Increasingly, it seems like a 15 percent tax on imports will be Trump’s default trade position. The taxes will ultimately be paid by American consumers and will necessarily result in price increases and a slowing economy, but a locked-in tax increase is probably better than the uncertainty of tariff rates that change wildly at a presidential whim. The bottom line is that Trump calls increased import taxes for American consumers a win.

The list of things that the Trump Administration wants to distract Americans from is long. There is the war on immigrants (legal and illegal) that is increasingly snaring American citizens, draconian cuts to Medicaid (this chart by the Kaiser Foundation shows exactly what changed), and cuts to popular education programs like Head Start. Amid the kerfuffle, there are increasing doubts that the Supreme Court will limit Trump’s overreach and hold him accountable when he violates laws passed by Congress.

Essentially, Trump is finding that it is a lot easier to demagogue than to actually govern. When it comes to accountability for his actions, Trump chooses to distract and point the finger at Democrats, including ones who have been out of office for almost a decade.

If Gabbard and the Trump Administration had any new evidence that Barack Obama engaged in treasonous activities, they would be shouting it from the rooftops and splashing it across headlines rather than promising new documents “tomorrow” and forming a task force to investigate her claims. This is putting the cart before the horse. In America, allegations by government officials have typically come after evidence is gathered and presented, not before. Gabbard’s game is transparent, and I confidently predict that her “evidence” against Obama will continue to consist of nothingburgers.

Rush Limbaugh had an axiom that whatever Democrats accused Republicans of was a tell as to what Democrats were really up to. I believed it of Democrats at the time, but the rule of thumb has never been so true as it is with the Trump Administration that consistently weaponizes disinformation to distract from its own scandals and abuses of power.

Don’t fall for it. Don’t be distracted by the shiny object and the sleight of hand.

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