The far right, with a little help from Russian bots, are gunning for McMaster

When news broke that members of the U.S. intelligence community were in possession of recordings proving that, contrary to what he’d said to the FBI, Michael Flynn had been in direct communication with Russian operatives prior to Trump’s inauguration, he was forced out as White House national security adviser, and ultimately replaced by Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who many welcomed as a voice of sanity. Unfortunately, not everyone agreed – namely the white nationalists who helped propel Donald Trump into the White House.

Flynn, it would seem, had endeared himself to the so-called “alt-right” when he took to the campaign trail alongside his racist, conspiracy theory espousing son to yell about how Sharia law was already spreading across the United States, and lead enthusiastic chants of “Lock Her Up.” McMaster, I think it’s safe to say, was seen as a poor substitute – a man who wouldn’t even say the phrase “radical Islam,” let alone rant about “Islamism (being a) vicious cancer inside the body of 1.7 billion people,” as Flynn had been known to. [McMaster has also cautioned that we not just tear up the nuclear agreement with Iran negotiated by the Obama administration without first having a new strategy to take its place, which is apparently pissing off many on the far right. He also apparently had the audacity to once weigh in with the obvious and state that former national security adviser Susan Rice hadn’t done anything wrong by “unmasking” the names of individuals noted in intelligence reports.]

And, it would appear that this longstanding dissatisfaction with McMaster has finally come to a head, in large part thanks to Gen. John Kelly having recently been named White House chief of staff. [Kelly, as you’ll recall, replaced Reince Priebus, who was forced out by Anthony Scaramucci, who, coincidentally enough was in turn fired a few days later by Kelly.] As I understand it, Kelly only took the position of chief of staff when he was assured by Trump that he, and he alone, would decide who who would be hired to serve in the White House, and who would be fired. And, it would seem, Kelly apparently told McMaster that he could begin removing some of Flynn’s more questionable hires, without fear of reprisal from the White House.

So, with this, McMaster fired Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the National Security Council’s (NSC) senior director for intelligence programs, who, among other things, was apparently responsible, along with Devin Nunes, for the now thoroughly debunked “unmasking” story involving the Obama administration; and Derek Harvey, the NSC’s senior director for the Middle East, who, among other things, had attempted to force “Obama holdovers” out of the NSC. And that’s not all. McMaster, a week or so before, had also fired Rich Higgins, the NSC’s director for strategic planning, who, right before his firing, had circulated a memo suggesting that Trump’s presidency was being undermined by a cabal of globalists, bankers, Islamists, and various members of the “deep state”… So, in a relatively short period of time, McMaster got rid of three of the craziest, most dangerous, most paranoid, most racist members of the Trump administration – individuals who, up until recently, had been able to stay in office due to the protection of men like Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner.

So, with three of the more delusional members of the NSC having been forced out, members of the far right have started gunning for McMaster. It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that Trump just had to weight in. “General McMaster and I are working very well together,” he said in a statement sent to The New York Times. “He is a good man, and very pro-Israel. I am grateful for the work he continues to do serving our country.” [Trump, it would seem, said this in repose to speculation that he might reassign McMaster to Afghanistan, and replace him with current CIA Director Mike Pompeo.]

But the attacks have not only continued, but intensified in recent days. This, in large part, is due to the involvement of rape advocate Mike Cernovich, the blogger who, as you may recall, helped Trump during the campaign by pushing the conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton was involved in the operation of a subterranean child sex ring. Cernovich, who just launched a website called McMasterLeaks.com, has apparently made it his new mission to push the general from the NSA. [The image at the top of the page, which many see as being anti-Semitic, was taken from the first post at McMasterLeaks.com, a site promoting, among other things, the theory that McMaster works for Jewish financier George Soros.] The following clip comes from Think Progress.

…“MCMASTER PURGES NSC STAFFER FOR WARNING OF ISLAMIST-LEFTIST THREAT,” conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich tweeted on Wednesday, before proceeding on a tirade about the national security adviser.

Cernovich subsequently claimed that McMaster had “been leaking information to David Petraeus” and “had direct contact with George Soros.” Those claims, plus at least a dozen more, were all published on McMasterleaks.com, a website Cernovich created. The site features an anti-Semitic illustration of Soros and McMaster by right-wing cartoonist Ben Garrison, according to Newsweek.

On Twitter, Cernovich kept the party going. “McMaster’s butler’ [Army intelligence officer] Joel Rayburn is running off the books intelligence operation against Trump loyalists,” he claimed. “Joel Rayburn is spying on people including me, but McMaster will not investigate leaked transcripts. Says it all.” Rayburn did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a YouTube video, Cernovich also accused McMaster of being a “Deep State plant” who was “intent on replacing Trump loyalists with Deep State operatives.”…

But it’s not just Cernovich out there, saying “(McMaster) needs to be removed immediately.” The hashtag #FireMcMaster has blown up these past several days. And, interestingly, according to the New York Times, it sounds as though Russian bots might be helping to make that happen… Here’s a clip.

…The #FireMcMaster hashtag was tweeted more than 50,000 times since Wednesday. Echoing the drumbeat were social media organs tied to the Russian government. According to the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan group created to focus attention on Russian interference in the West, the top hashtag among 600 Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence operations at one point on Thursday was #FireMcMaster…

While, at least in theory, I’m not terribly keen on the idea of members of our military stepping in take control over our civilian government, I think, given our options at this point, I’m glad to have McMaster in the White House… Anyone who Cernovich and the Russians want out, I think it’s pretty safe to say, is someone who’s probably doing pretty good work on behalf of our nation.

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9 Comments

  1. anonymous
    Posted August 7, 2017 at 7:04 am | Permalink

    Roger Stone on Twitter:

    “McMaster is a Deep State pawn -tasked with @realDonaldTrump take down.”

  2. Meta
    Posted August 7, 2017 at 7:49 am | Permalink

    Daily Beast: “White House ‘Enemies List’ Drove McMaster-Bannon Feud”

    An internal White House enemies list of alleged Obama loyalists to be fired early in the Trump administration is a key contributor to a long-running feud between the National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster and White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, two senior administration officials tell The Daily Beast.

    Team Trump never acted on the list, the officials said, and now those employees have finished their tenure at the National Security Council and returned to their home agencies.

    But fallout over the list—and questions about loyalty to Bannon versus McMaster—led the three-star general to fire two of his top aides, an act that’s landed McMaster in the firing line of Bannon’s alt-right media allies and Russian troll bots, both calling for his ouster.

    It’s the kind of personality clash and conflicting lines of authority that ret. Marine Gen. John Kelly has been brought in to quiet as chief of staff. He gave McMaster the go-ahead to remove people whose loyalty he questioned, including NSC intelligence director Ezra Cohen-Watnick and ret. Col. Derek Harvey, the NSC Mideast director. Both had meetings with Bannon throughout their tenure, described as hushed national-security related “chats,” by one senior White House official, without seeking McMaster’s permission beforehand.

    Multiple administration sources confirmed to The Daily Beast that these “chats” between Bannon and Harvey and Cohen Watnick vexed Trump’s national security adviser, and contributed to McMaster’s desire to “finally make moves against” them, as one senior official recounted.

    Read more:
    http://www.thedailybeast.com/white-house-enemies-list-drove-mcmasters-bannon-feud

  3. M
    Posted August 7, 2017 at 8:08 am | Permalink

    Speaking of bots, Trump thanked one of them yesterday on Twitter.

    https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/893989147534295040

  4. Michael McFaul‏ by proxy
    Posted August 7, 2017 at 8:11 am | Permalink

    When I hear “nationalists” are out to get 3-star general, scholar & warrior HR McMaster, I wonder what is their definition of nationalism?

  5. Meta
    Posted August 7, 2017 at 8:24 pm | Permalink

    Now the Russian bots are turning on the Republican party.

    Newsweek: “RUSSIAN BOTS ARE STARTING TO ATTACK THE REPUBLICAN PARTY”

    Russian-linked bots and trolls have caused a surge in use of the hashtag #ResignPaulRyan on Twitter over the last 48 hours, just as the Republican speaker of the House was returning to his home state of Wisconsin for a month-long respite from Washington, D.C.

    The unusual boost in Russian bots targeting a Republican lawmaker was first observed by the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy, created after the 2016 presidential election to “defend against, deter, and raise the costs on Russian and other state actors’ efforts to undermine democracy and democratic institutions.”

    A monitoring dashboard established by the Alliance noted the uptick Monday morning. It coincided with surges in the use of other hashtags by Russian bots, including #TrumpTV, #Magnitsky, #Fake and #ConfessYourUnpopularOpinion.

    Read more:
    http://www.newsweek.com/russian-bots-attacking-republican-party-paul-ryan-mcmaster-breitbart-647528

  6. wobblie
    Posted August 8, 2017 at 4:11 am | Permalink

    I confess I know next to nothing about twitter. But 600 Russian robot retweets out of 50,000 retweets does not seem very significant.

  7. M
    Posted August 8, 2017 at 5:41 am | Permalink

    As I understand it, those were just the known Russian bots. That doesn’t mean there weren’t more. Plus, it doesn’t take a ton to get things trending.

  8. wobblie
    Posted August 8, 2017 at 2:33 pm | Permalink

    Since we seem to be lemmings running head long over the cliff ( I mean retweeting what ever is trending) I guess the russian robots have doomed us.

  9. Meta
    Posted August 14, 2017 at 7:46 am | Permalink

    Politico: “Breitbart’s war on McMaster bites Bannon”

    The conservative news site Breitbart has waged a nonstop campaign against national security adviser H.R. McMaster, but so far it seems to have done the most damage to someone else: Steve Bannon.

    A Wall Street Journal editorial earlier this week accused Bannon of using the right-wing media to go after his ideological foes, questioning his loyalty to the president and placing blame for White House dysfunction squarely on his shoulders.

    The attacks on McMaster have put Bannon in an especially awkward position with his new boss, retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, who has been increasingly defensive of McMaster, a longtime friend and fellow general, according to interviews with 10 administration officials and people close to the White House. McMaster, who pushed Bannon off the National Security Council principals’ committee, hasn’t spoken to Bannon in weeks, one senior administration official said.

    Trump’s chief strategist has been suspected in the past of orchestrating stories against his colleagues in Breitbart, which he ran before joining Trump’s campaign last August. Kelly has told West Wing staff that he won’t tolerate the infighting or anonymous comments to the press that characterized the tenure of Kelly’s predecessor Reince Priebus.

    The continuing flood of negative stories targeting McMaster has served as a constant reminder that the problem was bigger than Priebus, who resigned two weeks ago.

    Read more:
    http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/11/breitbart-war-on-mcmaster-bites-bannon-241517

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  1. […] as “Javanaka” behind their backs, as well as White House national security adviser H.R. McMasters, who he believes is, among other things, too soft on Islam. [There’s another article on […]

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