I’ve never heard of Aaron Rupar before, but his specious argument against Trump in an article at Vox on Friday is so misleading that he has made himself a candidate to replace Jim Acosta as the poster boy for Fake News.
Way to go, Aaron! Knock yourself out!
Rupar is associate editor for politics and policy at left-wing Vox, which was founded by former Washington Post reporter Ezra Klein, who previously created the Journolist, where Fake News reporters could go to get their talking points straight about how wonderful Barack Obama was.
He has also worked for the left-wing propaganda site Think Progress and was digital media coordinator for the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party’s House caucus. Just so you know where he’s coming from.
Let’s start with the initial whiny complaint in Rupar’s long list of whiny complaints. He called his story “Trump’s reckless ‘treason’ accusation against the FBI, explained,” and then rises to Trump’s bait and proceeds to marshal the defense against the treason charge by obfuscating and lying. The president talks like an ordinary American; Rupar talks like a lawyer. Guess who wins?
Here’s what President Trump tweeted on Friday:
“My Campaign for President was conclusively spied on. Nothing like this has ever happened in American Politics. A really bad situation. TREASON means long jail sentences, and this was TREASON!”
Here’s Rupar’s rebuttal: “Was not. Was not.”
As Rupar and anyone with average reading comprehension could tell you, treason is defined by the US Constitution very narrowly as “levying War against [the United States], or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” He quotes another Vox reporter as saying that therefore “basically nobody apart from maybe al-Qaeda members” could be charged with treason.
A lovely sophomoric argument, but does Rupar really believe that the constitutional definition somehow magically precludes people from engaging in treasonous behavior against the United States?
That would be ludicrous, right? In fact, based on the article he wrote, I’m pretty sure that Rupar believes Trump has engaged in treasonous behavior himself. But instead of saying so, he makes himself look like a pedantic hypocrite by focusing on the constitutional definition of treason instead of acknowledging what millions of Americans know to be true — a cabal of Deep State bureaucrats in the FBI, Justice Department, Intelligence Community and White House intervened in a presidential election and then tried to force the winning candidate out of office.
Sounds like treason to me.
But not to Rupar:
For Trump … the legal merit of his accusation isn’t what’s important. The most important thing is the narrative he’s pushing about the FBI purportedly being out to get him. But that narrative, like his treason accusation, is baseless.
How do we know it’s baseless? Because Rupar tells us so. He repeats disproven talking points as if they were Gospel truth.
- “Trump has resurrected the baseless claim he first made in March 2017 about the Obama administration ‘spying’ on his campaign.”
- “[Attorney General] Barr also misrepresented the origins of the Russia probe, suggesting it began with the partially unverified Steele dossier when in fact it began with then-Trump campaign official George Papadopoulos bragging to an Australian diplomat about having foreknowledge that Russian hackers had obtained Hillary Clinton’s emails.”
- “As was the case two years ago, there remains no evidence that anyone associated with Trump was improperly surveilled during the 2016 election, let alone the victim of ‘spying.’ Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants were taken out against onetime Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page after he left the campaign, but the warrant applications went through standard processes and were authorized by four judges appointed by Republican presidents. The FBI used information from the Steele dossier to obtain warrants to surveil Page, but it wasn’t their only source of information, and law enforcement officials had good reason to be suspicious about Page’s contacts and activities in Russia.”
These claims by Rupar are blatantly false and ignore all the accumulated knowledge about the 2016 campaign that does not appear in the Mueller Hoax Report. The question of whether Trump was “improperly” spied on is never answered by Mueller because (unbelievably) he never investigated it. And Rupar, the “politics and policy editor,” just blindly accepts that because the FISA court issued warrants, there was nothing amiss. (If only I had a bridge in Brooklyn to sell this guy, but Mueller already bought it!)
Rupar, moreover, says that Trump is engaging in trickery himself:
“Trump’s plan appears to be to turn a weakness — his campaign’s secretive dealings with Russia during a campaign in which Russia allegedly committed crimes to help him win — into a strength. He wants people to believe that he was the victim of an illegitimate investigation and overcame FBI malfeasance to win an election, then began ‘draining the swamp’ once he took office by firing Comey and others.”
By secretive meetings, it’s unclear whether he is talking about Jeff Sessions saying hello to the Russian ambassador or to Don Jr. being set up by Fusion GPS into meeting with a Russian lawyer to lay the groundwork for a false collusion narrative. Either way, it’s just another example of how the left-wing media is toting the barge of bilge for the Deep State.
Too bad the First Amendment protects treasonous reporters, but the rest of the Dump Trump squad should be requesting comfy cells in federal prisons before they are all gone. Doesn’t matter if you call it treason or not. Pretty sure Attorney General Barr will find appropriate charges in the criminal code to cover all the abuses levied against the president, his campaign and the United States of America.
My new book is “The Media Matrix: What If Everything You Know Is Fake,” which offers many examples of the press being the enemy of the truth. To support my work, please consider buying “The Media Matrix” or my “Why We Needed Trump” trilogy, which documents the downward spiral of the USA before Trump arrived on the scene. The books are available at Amazon in paperback or Kindle editions. Go here for a free sample: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/sitb/B07PDQBJM4
These guys have left anger and gone to madness. These acts by them would certainly be treasonous in time of War and they would be put before a firing squad. It appears to me they have not been in the military and do not understand the seriousness of acts perpetrated by them upon the country. I, too, believe Barr is serious and Mueller delved into nothing that investigated spying upon an American citizen with a false FISA Warrant. The deep state is in for a rude awaking. RLS
In fact, there is a big Barr bill coming up for each of them. I have gone on a health kick to stick around long enough to see it and the payments they will have to make. Many years for each in an upscale Fed lockup would still not be enough. They have put the whole country and every citizen at risk. RLS
Stay healthy my friend! We need you!