BrennanNavalny
© Reuters/Kevin Lamarque/YouTube - vDud/screenshotFormer CIA Director John Brennan • Activist Alexey Navalny
Apparently ditching all tradecraft, former CIA chief and godfather of Russiagate John Brennan "imagined" Joe Biden in the White House and Alexey Navalny in the Kremlin as part of a (partisan) birthday tribute to John Lennon.

"Imagine prospects for world peace, prosperity, and security if Joe Biden were president of the United States and Alexei Navalny the president of Russia," Brennan tweeted on Friday, above the lyrics to the cult song 'Imagine,' on the occasion of Lennon's 80th birthday.

"We'll soon be halfway there," he added.
Brennan tweet

It is hardly surprising that Brennan is a Biden fan. President Barack Obama's homeland security adviser and CIA chief has been an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump from the beginning, both on Twitter and as an NBC/MSNBC pundit. Brennan went so far as to accuse Trump of "treason" for meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2018.

He was also directly involved in the attempt to smear Trump with accusations of "collusion" with the Kremlin, the conspiracy theory that enabled the FBI to spy on the president's campaign and the DOJ to appoint a special counsel. The foremost US expert on Russia, the late Prof. Stephen Cohen, dubbed Brennan the "godfather of Russiagate."

The truly baffling thing about Brennan's tweet is his apparent endorsement of Navalny as Putin's replacement in the Kremlin. While rank-and-file Democrats eagerly seconded his wishful thinking, people with an actual clue about Russia were quick to question Brennan's knowledge and expertise.

Brennan's tweet was "further proof the 'intelligence community' is neither intelligent nor communal," tweeted journalist Max Blumenthal.

Far from being "another Yeltsin who'd let the US freely exploit Russia," Navalny is a "nationalist" who opposes Western policies such as"returning" Crimea to Ukraine, Blumenthal pointed out.

Mark Ames, an American journalist who spent a decade in Russia, also brought up nationalism, noting that Navalny used to co-organize skinhead marches in Moscow.

Irish journalist and RT editor Bryan MacDonald argued it was "actually insane" that Brennan would tweet something like this. Not only does it suggest the US spies have "no actual expertise" and get all their information from the mainstream media, MacDonald said, but it compromises Navalny in Russia itself by making him look like a CIA stooge.

That impression was shared by former UN weapons inspector and retired US Marine Scott Ritter, who simply tweeted "Thanks for confirming that Navalny was, is, and always will be a CIA asset."

Time and again, mainstream media in the West have presented Navalny as the "Russian opposition leader" more so in the aftermath of his alleged poisoning by a "Novichok-related substance" in August.

As far as presidential elections go, in actual reality, the anti-corruption blogger is polling between one and three percent in Russia, meaning that the Libertarian Party candidate Jo Jorgensen has better odds of becoming the next US president.