From Russia with love

Yesterday, Newsweek's Kurt Eichenwald explained how stupid Vladimir Putin is. Eichenwald had spotted a Sputnik (Russian propaganda) story on the latest pathetic Wikileaks dump with a SMOKING GUN! Clinton pal Sidney Blumenthal had said in an email,

"Clinton was in charge of the State Department, and it failed to protect U.S. personnel at an American consulate in Libya. If the GOP wants to raise that as a talking point against her, it is legitimate."

According to Sputnik, this was "putting to rest the Democratic Party talking point that the investigation into Clinton's management of the State Department at the time of the attack was nothing more than a partisan witch hunt."

But had Sidney Blumenthal said that? (And even if he had, is random guy Sidney Blumenthal in charge of determining what does and doesn't put to rest charges of partisan witch hunts? And does anybody actually care what the hell Sidney Blumenthal says?) Well. No. They were two sentences from a 10,000-word article, by Eichenwald, that Blumenthal had forwarded.

(The very same thing happened in a tweet Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo retweeted and then quickly deleted; Hillary Clinton did not call anyone a "sand n***er." She had asked to have printed out a newspaper article about a Palestinian man murdered by Israeli cops. That story included a fictionalized account of what was going through the cops' head, and the author inserted the slur for them, which seems like a reasonable inference as they kicked the man -- who had just been released from the hospital -- and left him out in the desert, in his hospital gown and without food or water, to die. If forwarding a quote was Hillary Clinton calling people "sand n***ers," then by that logic Maria Bartiromo was too.)

Now that we're all caught up on the context: Who was repeating the charge in Pennsylvania -- a charge that had appeared nowhere else but in this Sputnik story -- which, once Eichenwald pointed out how stupid it was, had been quickly deleted?

At a rally in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, Trump spoke while holding a document in his hand. He told the assembled crowd that it was an email from Blumenthal, whom he called “sleazy Sidney.”

“This just came out a little while ago,’’ Trump said. “I have to tell you this.” And then he read the words from my article.

“He’s now admitting they could have done something about Benghazi,’’ Trump said, dropping the document to the floor. “This just came out a little while ago.”

But where had it "just came out," Donald Trump? In Sputnik, the Russian propaganda vehicle founded by Putin. And how did it get slipped to Trump so very quickly, just hours after it was published?

Hell, half Trump's advisers seem to be on the Kremlin's payroll, so who knows? Whoever it is, Donald Trump is getting his disinformation straight from the Motherland.

Guess when Putin forwarded Trump his copy, he forgot to let him know he'd already DQed it -- not for being wrong, but for getting caught out.

[Newsweek]