Jonathan Chait
The kookification of the "mainstream" continues, with none other than Jonathan Chait - the most conventional sort of boring corporate liberal - producing
an unhinged diatribe purporting to prove
that Donald Trump has been a Russian agent since 1987 - and that his path to the presidency was paved by his Russian handlers, who were planning it all along. And not to be outdone, formerly rational person Marcy Wheeler, whose investigations as "emptywheel" won her some renown,
is now claiming that she not only has definitive proof of Trump's collusion with the Kremlin, but that, as a result, she was forced to turn one of her sources into the FBI for some vague cloak-and-dagger-ish reason.
I looked in on the Chait production, and came upon his reiteration of the Alfa Bank computer link - this was a story, you'll recall, that claimed there was a stream of communications between this "Kremlin-connected" bank and the Trump organization. This, we were told, was almost certainly Vladimir Putin sending instructions to his zombie-agents in the Trump White House. Yes, this was actually the story, backed up by several computer "experts" - except it turned out to be
advertising spam. Chait repeats this story, adding it on top of the several dozen other conspiracy factoids he throws in the mix - but without mentioning that the computer signals were simply ad-bots. On the basis of this, and a string of other "interactions" with Russians, we are supposed to believe that the omnipotent Russian intelligence agencies hatched a plot 30 years ago to put Trump into the White House.
This is a conspiracy theory that's so shoddy and far-fetched that not even Alex Jones would touch it with a ten-foot pole.
Which brings us to an interesting question: do these people really believe their own craziness?
Comment: Elon Musk to go on tap for polluted water repairs. See also: