Updated 3/17/17: Family Plots and the Collapse of Russiagate

A recent poll conducted by USA Today revealed that Americans have recently reached a consensus on two topics related to politics and the public sphere in general. The first is that we universally have an unfavorable view of virtually every individual and institution related to such things. We do not have a favorable view of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, the Congress, the Republican or Democratic Parties, many prominent Congress people and especially the media.

So, as far as unity goes, we have that. 

But we may be closing in on a consensus concerning something else, as well: as far as politics go, the one individual Americans may be warming up to is Vice-President Mike Pence. Of these developments, USA Today noted:

"Vice President Pence stands alone.

"In a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll, Americans say they have mostly unfavorable impressions of just about everybody on a list of public figures and institutions — except, that is, for the vice president, who has become a familiar figure in interviews on Sunday TV shows and elsewhere as he explains and defends President Trump.

"Only Mike Pence scored a net positive rating, with 47% of those surveyed saying they had a generally favorable impression of him and 35% a mostly unfavorable one. The rest were undecided. That 11-point advantage sets him apart from everyone else on the survey, including his boss. Trump's favorable rating has improved a bit since our December poll, but it's still narrowly in negative territory: 45% favorable, 47% unfavorable."

Mike "Teflon" Pence

Its developments like these that have spurred me to start referring to Pence around the homestead as "Teflon." This moniker was originally selected due to the inability of any scandals surrounding the Trump White House to stick to Pence. As my girlfriend pointed out to me, this nickname is most apt in another sense as well: Teflon is highly toxic and poisonous, especially when things start to heat up.

A Curious Statement

And it would appear that things are certainly starting to heat up in certain circles that would prefer a Pence presidency to the current occupant of the West Wing. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange recently dropped some bombshell revelations in this regard on Twitter (where else). He stated:

" 'Clinton stated privately this month that she is quietly pushing for a Pence takeover. She stated that Pence is predictable hence defeatable,' Assange wrote. 

" 'Two IC officials close to Pence stated privately this month that they are planning on a Pence takeover. Did not state if Pence agrees,' he further added."

Julian Assange

As can be expected, Pence himself was quick to denounce, Assange's claims, stating:

" 'I would find all of that dialogue to be absurd and frankly offensive,' Pence told radio host Laura Ingraham. 'It is the greatest honor of my life to serve shoulder-to-shoulder with the 45th President of the United States. To see his leadership every day, to see the compassion that he has for the American people every day. I would dismiss that out of hand and tell you that I'm just, I'm so excited about the progress that we've been made strengthening this country, protecting this country, reviving this country's economy and all credit goes to President Donald Trump.' "

Equally predictable is the blogosphere's reaction. No doubt Byzantine narratives are being painstaking compiled to chart Hillary's emergence as the new president once Trump and Pence have been brushed aside.

I, however, believe Hillary's political fortunes are deader than the Wicked Witch of the West. It is far more likely that these developments are being driven by the Christian fundamentalist network variously known as "The Family" or "The Fellowship," a powerful if little acknowledged group with extensive ties to the US deep state. The Family has been considered in depth on this blog before.

The Family sponsors the National Prayer Breakfast which every president since Eisenhower has dutifully attended annually

As was noted before here, Mike Pence is himself a member of The Family, as are other key members of Trump's cabinet such as Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. What's more, there is a strong Christian fundamentalist current in Trump's cabinet that could easily fall in line behind the Family members if Trump and the current junta of generals is ousted.

Hillary and The Family

That Hillary would now join the fray on the side of Pence is hardly surprising as she has had dealings with The Family before.

"Hillary may well be God's beautiful child, but she's not a member of Coe's Family. Rather, I've been told at Ivanwald, she's a 'friend,' less elect than a member, but more chosen than the rest of us. A fellow traveler but not a sister. Her goals are not their goals; but when on occasion they coincide, Hillary and the Family can work together. Such collaborations, as much as the endeavors of true believers such as Brownback, are a measure of the mainstreaming of American fundamentalism. The theology of Jesus plus nothing is totalitarian in scope, but diplomatic in practice. It doesn't conquer; it infects, as Abram used to preach. Within the body politic, it doesn't confront ideas, it coexists with them, it cells multiplying by absorbing enemies rather than destroying them...

"In her memoir Living History, Hillary describes her first encounter with the Family. It was at a lunch organized on her behalf in February 1993 at the Cedars, 'an estate on the Potomac that serves as the headquarters for the National Prayer Breakfast and the prayer groups it has spawned around the world. Doug Coe, the longtime National Prayer Breakfast organizer, is a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God.'..."

(The Family, Jeff Sharlet, pgs. 272-273) 

A few pages later Jeff Sharlet, the journalist who first exposed The Family and remains its leading authority, goes on to note:

"The Family wants to 'transcend' left and right with a faith that consumes politics, replacing fundamental differences with the unity to be found in submission to religious authority. Conservatives sit pretty in prayer and wait for liberals looking for 'common ground' to come to them in search of compromise. Hillary, Rob Schenck noted, became a regular visitor to the Family's C Street House in 2005. 'She needs that nucleus of energy that the Coe camp produces.' That summer, she appeared as part of the threesome that shocked old school fundamentalist: Bill, Hillary and Billy, live in New York for Graham's less crusade. Before tens of thousands, the patriarch of Christian conservatism said Bill 'ought to let his wife run the country.' Bonhomie and cheap blessing, maybe, but it was the kind of endorsement that Bill never won, despite Graham's custom of speaking sweet nothings to power." 

(The Family, Jeff Sharlet, pgs. 276-277) 

Hillary

Is this then an instance of Hillary and The Family finding "common ground"? No doubt Hillary and her backers are not thrilled with the prospect of a religious extremist like Pence securing the presidency, but they do not seem especially concerned with his longevity. Most bloggers will latch onto this confidence as further evidence of a return of the Hillabeast as being a fait accompli.

But recent history suggests that Hillary is not the best judge of such things. Consider these revelations in the wake of her defeat:

"Republican Donald Trump, a far-right demagogue who campaigned on a slew of bigoted, xenophobic policies, has won the 2016 presidential election in a shocking victory few people predicted.

"What was not often acknowledged in Trump’s heated race against Democrat Hillary Clinton, however, was how her campaign fueled his rise to power.

"An email recently released by the whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks shows how the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party bear direct responsibility for propelling the bigoted billionaire to the White House.

"In its self-described 'pied piper' strategy, the Clinton campaign proposed intentionally cultivating extreme right-wing presidential candidates, hoping to turn them into the new 'mainstream of the Republican Party' in order to try to increase Clinton’s chances of winning."

Needless to say, this strategy did not work out especially well for Hillary and her backers. As such, her instincts about Pence being "defeatable" seem no less credible. And if the above-mentioned USA Today poll is any indication, Pence would presently crush Hillary in a general election in the kind of lopsided victory the MSM was projecting Hillary to have over Trump.

Thus, it is far more likely that this is yet another instance of Hillary's friend Doug Coe's Machiavellian manipulations to put one of his soldiers within a heartbeat of the presidency. And Hillary seems poised to do her part to remove that last remaining heartbeat, even if she is being driven by her own delusions.

Meanwhile Pence continues to do and say the right things. He's avoided any fallout from the numerous controversy's surrounding Trump and has contentiously rejected any presidential aspirations of his own. Every day the American public sees him as more and more "presidential." Doug Coe recently shed his mortal coil, but his lifelong ambition of putting a Family man in the Oval Office has never been more attainable. His followers may well believe they are witnessing prophecy unfolding before their eyes.

Douglas "Doug" Coe, 1928-2017

UPDATED 3/17/17: Russiagate Collapses

The back and forth continues with no end in sight. The opposition has hammered Trump relentlessly with the Russian allegations for months on end with little effect until the ousting of National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn on February 13 due to communications he had had with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December of 2016. Flynn did not resign over any wrongdoing, but reportedly because he lied to Vice-President Mike Pence.

Flynn's departure was quickly followed by another body blow when Attorney General Jeff Sessions was accused of lying to Congress concerning contacts that he had had with the same Russian ambassador in 2016. Over the course of that year Sessions reportedly met twice with Mr. Kislyak as part of his functions as a US Senator. The Sessions matter is currently ongoing and he has rescued himself from any further investigations into Russian connections to the Trump campaign.

Just as Trump appeared to be facing the first real setbacks in his agenda, an effective counterattack has left the opposition a little dazed. It began when Mr. Trump brazenly accused Barrack Obama of wiretapping him in Trump Tower prior to the election of 2016. No doubt leveling such accusations against the sainted Obama ruffled more than a few feathers, but The New York Times had already done its part in letting the cat out of the bag:

This was not the only instance of the Grey Lady being sloppy of late, either. Consider musings such as these from March 1:

"But it wasn’t until after the election, and after more intelligence had come in, that the administration began to grasp the scope of the suspected tampering and concluded that one goal of the campaign was to help tip the election in Mr. Trump’s favor. In early December, Mr. Obama ordered the intelligence community to conduct a full assessment of the Russian campaign.

"In the weeks before the assessment was released in January, the intelligence community combed through databases for an array of communications and other information — some of which was months old by then — and began producing reports that showed there were contacts during the campaign between Trump associates and Russian officials." 

And as Wikileaks had already pointed out well over a year ago, the Obama White House has an extensive track record of bugging various heads of state and other VIPs. Really, the question isn't some much as to whether communications from Trump Tower were intercepted (the surely were) but if such actions were run-of-the-mill actions or if they were personally ordered by outgoing President Obama, or a combination of both.

Needless to say, this turned into a real black eye for the former president whose legacy has been carefully constructed by elements of the globalist hierarchy since prior to his election. Needless to say, it does not look good for the Anointed One, the champion of the Liberal Global Order or some such shit, to be bugging his political opponents.

As can be expected, both the House and the Senate Intelligence Committees have denied finding any evidence of Trump's allegations. The Hill notes:

"The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee has seen no evidence that the Obama administration 'wiretapped' Trump Tower, according to a brief statement issued Thursday. 

" 'Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016,' Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said, providing no other details. 

"Burr joins a steady drumbeat of Republicans who have explicitly contracted President Trump's explosive claims that he was surveilled during the campaign.

"The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), also disavowed the claim on Wednesday, calling any literal interpretation of Trump's tweet 'wrong.'

" 'As I told you last week about the issue with the president talking about tapping Trump Tower, that evidence still remains the same, that we don't have any evidence that that took place,' Nunes told reporters."

Senator Richard Burr (top) and Representative Devin Nunes (bottom)

Despite the fact that evidence of wiretapping has been casually acknowledged by The New York Times on more than one occasion, it is hardly surprising that Congress is circling the wagon on this one. Further revelations could flush whatever remaining credibility the United States government ha left totally down the toilet.

But even with both parties denying Trump's allegations at the top of their respective lungs, the damage is done. The cover-up is only going to strengthen the support of Trump's backers while further damaging the credibility of the mainstream media in the eyes of the general public.

Nor were the wiretap allegations the only salvo fired off of late. There was also the Wikileaks Vault 7 revelations that further exposed the extent of CIA eavesdropping (naturally at a time when it is especially relevant). Some have gone so far as to argue that these revelations will totally exonerate Trump of any Russians ties as it is reputed the CIA has software that can make their own cyber attacks appear to be ones conducted by another state, such as Russian. Just how credible these particular claims are is debatable, however.

And of course there was the bombshell revelation noted above of Assange claiming that backers of Hillary Clinton in the intelligence community are conspiring to remove Trump and replace him with Mike Pence. That would be the same Mike Pence, as noted above, who reportedly forced the resignation of longtime military intelligence veteran General Michael Flynn, BTW. Payback is a bitch as the say and I don't think it is at all coincidental that Assange is airing Pence's dirty laundry.

General Michael Flynn

All of this is playing into the abrupt about-face telegraphed by the anti-Trump faction of the deep state in recent days concerning Russia. Effectively they are now acknowledging that there is no smoking gun about to be uncovered. The Intercept notes:

"Key Democratic officials are clearly worried about the expectations that have been purposely stoked and are now trying to tamp them down. Many of them have tried to signal that the beliefs the base has been led to adopt have no basis in reason or evidence.

"The latest official to throw cold water on the MSNBC-led circus is President Obama’s former acting CIA chief Michael Morell. What makes him particularly notable in this context is that Morell was one of Clinton’s most vocal CIA surrogates. In August, he not only endorsed Clinton in the pages of the New York Times but also became the first high official to explicitly accuse Trump of disloyalty, claiming, 'In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.'

"But on Wednesday night, Morell appeared at an intelligence community forum to 'cast doubt' on 'allegations that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.' 'On the question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians here, there is smoke, but there is no fire at all,' he said, adding, 'There’s no little campfire, there’s no little candle, there’s no spark. And there’s a lot of people looking for it.'

"Obama’s former CIA chief also cast serious doubt on the credibility of the infamous, explosive 'dossier' originally published by BuzzFeed, saying that its author, Christopher Steele, paid intermediaries to talk to the sources for it. The dossier, he said, 'doesn’t take you anywhere, I don’t think.'

"Morell’s comments echo the categorical remarks by Obama’s top national security official, James Clapper, who told Meet the Press last week that during the time he was Obama’s DNI, he saw no evidence to support claims of a Trump/Russia conspiracy. 'We had no evidence of such collusion,' Clapper stated unequivocally. Unlike Morell, who left his official CIA position in 2013 but remains very integrated into the intelligence community, Clapper was Obama’s DNI until just seven weeks ago, leaving on January 20. 

"Perhaps most revealing of all are the Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee — charged with investigating these matters — who recently told BuzzFeed how petrified they are of what the Democratic base will do if they do not find evidence of collusion, as they now suspect will likely be the case. 'There’s a tangible frustration over what one official called ‘wildly inflated’ expectations surrounding the panel’s fledgling investigation,' BuzzFeed’s Ali Watkins wrote.

"Moreover, 'several committee sources grudgingly say, it feels as though the investigation will be seen as a sham if the Senate doesn’t find a silver bullet connecting Trump and Russian intelligence operatives.' One member told Watkins: 'I don’t think the conclusions are going to meet people’s expectations.'

"What makes all of this most significant is that officials like Clapper and Morell are trained disinformation agents; Clapper in particular has proven he will lie to advance his interests. Yet even with all the incentive to do so, they are refusing to claim there is evidence of such collusion; in fact, they are expressly urging people to stop thinking it exists. As even the law recognizes, statements that otherwise lack credibility become more believable when they are ones made 'against interest.'

"Media figures have similarly begun trying to tamp down expectations. Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, which published the Steele dossier, published an article yesterday warning that the Democratic base’s expectation of a smoking gun 'is so strong that Twitter and cable news are full of the theories of what my colleague Charlie Warzel calls the Blue Detectives — the left’s new version of Glenn Beck, digital blackboards full of lines and arrows.' Smith added: 'It is also a simple fact that while news of Russian actions on Trump’s behalf is clear, hard details of coordination between his aides and Putin’s haven’t emerged.'..." 

Trump thus appears to have effectively parried this particular assault. Russiagate is collapsing upon its own absurdity, thanks in no small part to Trump's counterattack. While the MSM will continue to insist that Trump's wiretap allegations are baseless and that Wikileaks revelations are overblown, the reality is that Trump's opposition does not want the public looking to deeply into these topics. And they are surely willing to sacrifice the floundering Russiagate allegations to sue for a temporary reprieve.

fail