All the focus is now shifted to the revelation that it was George Papadopoulos, not Christopher Steele’s CX reports, who triggered the FBI investigation into Trump/Russia collusion. But there was a very important part of the recent New York Times bombshell revelation that was largely overlooked, which is the Trump campaign’s responsibility for creating (or attempting to create) fake news.
In a small paragraph buried half-way through the story, a rather disturbing plot is brought to light:
Mr. Mifsud proposed to Mr. Papadopoulos that he, too, serve as a campaign surrogate. He could write op-eds under the guise of a “neutral” observer, he wrote in a previously undisclosed email, and follow Mr. Trump to his rallies as an accredited journalist while receiving briefings from the inside the campaign.
Not only was Papadopoulos considered an important asset to the Trump campaign for claiming to have the capability of connecting campaign officials with Kremlin officials, he also proved to be a viable manipulator of the media. He employed his contacts to shade themselves in the cloak of ‘neutral observervation.’ While getting inside information into the campaign itself, they reported it under the facade of being on the outside looking in.
So who is Papadopoulos’ contact, Professor Joseph Mifsud? According to Newsweek, he wasn’t just a professor who could offer the campaign Op-Ed coverage as a ‘neutral observer,’he was also a critical component in bridging the Trump Campaign with the Kremlin:
Within two weeks of joining Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, George Papadopoulos met a professor while traveling in Italy. Their encounter took place on March 14, 2016, after Trump had named Papadopoulos a foreign policy adviser earlier that month. The London-based professor apparently told Papadopoulos he had ties to Russian officials, and over the next weeks and months, the adviser spoke with campaign leaders about arranging a meeting with those officials.
This revelation begs the question: how many other ‘neutral observers’ did members of the Trump campaign attempt to hire?
Whether it’s hiring armchair journalists to generate biased op-eds under the guise of an unbiased outsider, or hiring fake crowds to attend your rallies, the Trump campaign is largely responsible for the genesis of ‘fake’ everything in the current media atmosphere.
This isn’t just gonzo journalism or yellow journalism, it’s outright falsity. But from a man who’s on the public record lying at a rate of 5.5 lies a day, should we really expect to find anything other than disturbing truths, such as the Mifsud revelation, when the spotlight is finally turned on?