Trump's Lies About China Are Having Deadly Consequences For Asian-Americans
Trump suggested China rigged the election for Biden. He called Covid-19 "The China Virus". Now Asian-Americans are being targeted by his supporters.
image: Georgia spa shooting targeted Asian-Americans
by Bob Cesca
WASHINGTON, DC -- In the course of a single day this week, the treachery of Donald Trump was perfectly and tragically illustrated, even after being exiled to Mar-a-lago nearly 60 days ago. Seldom have we observed the consequences of Trump’s lies and demagoguery so clearly as what happened on Tuesday, March 16.
It began with the publishing of a report culled from the entire U.S. intelligence community and released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). The document’s main purpose was to confirm that Russia continued its online influence attack against the United States throughout the 2020 election, repeating most of the active measures deployed in 2016, proving without a doubt that Donald Trump failed to do anything to stop the attacks. And why would he? The point, once again, was to help Trump get re-elected.
The report also indicated that American officials were duped by familiar pro-Putin agents like Konstantin Kilimnik:
“[Kilimnik and] associates sought to use prominent US persons and media conduits to launder their narratives to US officials and audiences.”
It’s fair to assume these “US persons” included Rudy Giuliani and Fox News Channel, among many others. You might also recall that Kilimnik was heavily involved in the 2016 attack while in contact with Paul Manafort -- Kilimnik was, indeed, Manafort’s “man in Kyiv” and served as a fixer between the Trump campaign and Oleg Derapaska, an oligarch with close ties to Putin. It’s also worth noting that Trump pardoned Manafort for his part in the Trump-Russia affair. Along those lines:
“A key element of Moscow's strategy this election cycle was its use of proxies linked to Russian intelligence to push influence narratives-including misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against President Biden-to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration.”
While the report doesn’t specifically mention Hunter Biden’s laptop, it certainly included mentions of phishing attacks against Burisma, the energy company that employed Hunter on its board. I wonder why Russia was interested in Burisma while simultaneously engaged in an attack that was intended to hurt Joe Biden.
Likewise, the report shows that, contrary to what Trump said during the election, China did not engage in similar influence campaigns during the election. Repeat: did not. But that didn’t stop Trump and his henchmen from suggesting throughout the 2020 campaign that China was rigging the election for Biden.
Bill Barr told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that China was helping Biden win. John Ratcliffe, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, said in August, “I can’t get into a whole lot of details, other than to say that China is using a massive and sophisticated influence campaign that dwarfs anything that any other country is doing.” That was a whopper lie, obviously. Same goes for Trump’s National Security Adviser, Robert O’Brien, who said, “China, like Russia, like Iran — they’ve engaged in cyberattacks and phishing and that sort of thing with respect to our election infrastructure, with respect to websites.” Another lie. Even Christopher Wray, the FBI Director appointed to replace Jim Comey, said, “China is engaged in a highly sophisticated malign foreign influence campaign, and its methods include bribery, blackmail, and covert deals.”
As far back as 2018, Trump told the UN: “We learned that [China is] trying to meddle in our elections and we’re not going to let that happen…”
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Meanwhile, there was COVID. For the better part of a year, Trump blamed China for the pandemic in order to distract from the reality that he himself failed to protect the American people from the virus by taking responsible steps to contain it. Instead, Trump reopened the economy at the initial height of the infection curve and proceeded to downplay the threat. Even more insidiously, Trump began to call it the “China Virus,” a nickname that hasn’t quite caught on outside of the Red Hat cult, but which goes a long way toward radicalizing the violent, racist extremists who compose much of Trump’s fanbase.
It should come as no surprise, then, why a gunman murdered eight Asian-Americans in Atlanta on Tuesday. It should come as no surprise why Trump’s terrorist disciples are routinely attacking Asian-Americans across the country. The ex-president is almost exclusively responsible for instigating not just the hate crimes against Asian-Americans, but at least several insurrections including the invasion of various state government buildings last Spring and, naturally, the invasion and occupation of the U.S. Capitol in January. Fox News and the Red Hat entertainment complex is also responsible since it amplifies all of Trump’s inciting blurts.
And, once again, these bigoted assailants are acting on Trump’s lies, much like various Republican state governments that are actively passing new election laws that disenfranchise voters based on Trump’s conspiracy theories. We might be done with Trump, but Trump isn’t done with us -- and Americans are still dying due to his recklessness, irresponsibility, insecurity, and vile racism.
One last thing about the ODNI report.
It’s as much a damning indictment of Russia, Iran, and other foreign governments, as it is a tragic statement about many Americans as well. The overseas active measures wouldn’t exist if Americans weren’t seen as utterly ripe for the deception. Our enemies see our fellow citizens as gullible dupes -- easily deceived suckers who are incapable of digesting the glut of information on social media and elsewhere. And they’re not wrong. These kinds of cyber-attacks will surely continue, and perhaps become more sophisticated over time, as long as so many of us suck down the propaganda like water.
I wish I had a simple solution for you but there isn’t one. A solid half of us continue to bungle our way into full-blown idiocracy, and telling the idiocrats that they need to wise up will only make them further entrench in their Q-cultivated slagpiles of nonsensical conspiracy theories and racist Tucker Carlson memes. In the meantime, we can petition our government to further regulate social media to make sure it’s less fertile ground for hostile intelligence agencies and, regarding the anti-Asian hate crimes, a slate of expanded gun control laws are long past due. And, of course, it can’t hurt to make sure Trump himself isn’t still at-large. As I said, there’s no simple solution but the urgency of the crisis mandates we do something. Like, now.
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Biden Has Accomplished More In Fifty Days Than Trump Did In Four Years
If you want to understand why MAGAs hate Joe Biden, look no further than his astonishing track record over the past seven weeks.
Photo: AFP
by Justin Rosario
Because it’s never a good idea to live inside an echo chamber, I regularly engage with MAGA supporters even though it’s terrible for my blood pressure and peace of mind. Some of the MAGAs I talk to are recurring conversations and others are transients but all of them are filled with incoherent rage.
Part of that rage is, naturally, Fox, OAN, AM Hate Radio, and right wing hate sites pumping out white nationalist propaganda 24/7. Another part is Trump spewing hate speech and his Big Lie, and another the uppity women, Blacks, and LGBTQ people daring to tell the vaunted White man “No”.
But a key component of the MAGA rage is that Joe Biden is everything Donald Trump isn’t. Aside from being president.
President Joe Biden
Put aside the reflexive “I hate Democrats!” reaction of your typical MAGA. We’re all aware, or should be by now, that MAGAs despise every Democrat for the crime of existing. That’s a given. What’s a little less clear is why they hate Biden so much. He’s just...a guy. And kind of a nice guy at that.
Biden has been in the public eye just as long as Trump and people just like him. They don’t always agree with what he does or says but the closest he’s ever been to cruel or malicious was during the Anita Hill hearings. He’s...Joe.
His personality and lack of artifice led to the right’s total inability to smear Biden during the campaign. Not for lack of trying, mind you. They tried every single page in their big bad playbook of scumbag politics. Biden is corrupt. Biden is incompetent. Biden is too old. He’s sick and frail. He’s racist. He’s a rapist. He’s a pedophile. The right’s smear machine went into overdrive and still came up short.
All the bile poured on Biden just sluiced off of him, leaving rank and file Republican voters not loving Biden but certainly not hating him. The press commented on this regularly as they also couldn’t seem to generate any scandals that lasted long enough to make a difference. It must have been infuriating for journalists (Chuck Todd) whose entire business model is predicated on creating false equivalences. What was so simple to do in 2016 turned out to be nigh impossible in 2020….
Continuing reading here.
This particular incident involves the toxic combination of evangelical Christianity, guns and MAGA delusion. They all go perfectly together. This week's MAGA Idiocracy poster boy was the leader of his Christian youth group run by his pastor father. He hunted animals, just like any real American man. He was also a frequenter of massage parlors and mass consumer of internet porn. Instead of just masturbating or deciding the Christian male role model inculcated into him was a bunch of made-up garbage, he did what any good MAGA would do: he went out and bought a gun. Then he went down to the massage parlor--all run by Asians--and eliminated them, thereby "solving" his problems. Only one problem with this massage: there isn't a happy ending.
It becomes more appalling, the behavior of these racist Drumpf lickers, when you consider that Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, and other Asian Americans are being violently attacked for being Chinese. Any excuse these lowlife deplorables can find for hurting people that don't look like them!