MountainMornings

Imagine coming home, after nine days with no news of any sort, only to find out that our new political reality has become dissecting Mr T’s Tweets. So you naturally tune this out of your consciousness. You might tune up your classical music that magically erupts from a radio station in Seattle via your wireless Sonos speaker and an Ipad App.  http://www.sonos.com/en-us/products/wireless-speakers

You could probably get Radio Free Europe on there?!

And then, by reflex, you tune into NPR in your car. Big mistake, because you hear that all hell broke loose yesterday in a Mt T press conference over a sex tape that either does or does not exist! Let’s say our Intel thought it was important enough to brief both POTUS and PEOTUS last week.

In a climate that sends a shooter to a pizza place in DC over some far-fetched conspiracy theory about sex trafficking; and when Rolling Stone is taken to task over a fake rape allegation, it would behoove us to decipher what is real and what is fake news, dontcha think? Critical Thinking skills were all the rage when my kids were in high school. Young people today are better at reading #RealNews on the Internets than most of our peers.

I was taught in Catholic School that we received First Holy Communion at the age of seven because that’s when we could tell the difference between right and wrong, true and false. Monsters are not real. There is no Santa Claus, no unicorns, no pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. But then we are supposed to believe that little wafer we’re about to eat is the body and blood of Christ, so the margin of reality becomes fluid. And a lot depends on what particular belief system we inculcate from our parents…

Still, lawyers can build a case in support of a theory by proving a “pattern” of behavior. Courtrooms love this stuff, people are convicted on their patterns all the time. Maybe this guy was nowhere near his wife when she disappeared, BUT here are all the pictures and phone calls and witnesses to prove that he liked using his wife as a punching bag for years.  You don’t always need a body to convict a murderer.

So let’s look at all this shall we:

Mr T said he liked going backstage at the Miss Universe Pageant, and he was in Moscow for that event in 2013, the year an “alleged” tape in question was made. In fact there are pictures of him there, smooching the contestants.

An ex-MI6 operator, Christopher Steele, who prepared the dossier on Mr T’s tape has left his home and is in hiding. Mr Steele runs a London-based security and intel firm that deals mostly with Eastern Europe. Among his allegations, which are unsubstantiated because this tape has not surfaced, “…are that Moscow has a video recording of Mr Trump with prostitutes and damaging information about his business activities.” http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-38591382

Last April the CIA Director was shown evidence of money flowing from the Kremlin to the US Presidential campaign – it worried him enough that he convened “…six agencies or departments of government. Dealing with the domestic, US, side of the inquiry, were the FBI, the Department of the Treasury, and the Department of Justice. For the foreign and intelligence aspects of the investigation, there were another three agencies: the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Agency, responsible for electronic spying.”

And in other #RealNews, Mr T’s business partner, Tevfik Arif, in the early 2000s was a Turkish citizen, born in Russia, with some very interesting ties.

In 2010, Mr Arif was arrested in Turkey on charges he helped arrange an orgy on a yacht that had once belonged to the country’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. In 2012, the charges were dropped, a company spokeswoman says. Today, Mr Arif is believed to be living in Turkey. His spokeswoman said he was the “sole owner” of Bayrock during the time it did business with Mr Trump. She declined to provide details, citing litigation and confidentiality agreements.  https://www.ft.com/content/549ddfaa-5fa5-11e6-b38c-7b39cbb1138a

That yacht secured teenage “models” from Russia and the Ukraine, as “singers and dancers.” Google it.

This morning I heard that Mr T said CNN trafficked in fake news, because they reported about said dossier that was published on Buzzfeed. He also said he would only discuss his grandkids with his sons over the next four years. And yet, Republicans looked askance when Mr Clinton said he had only discussed his grandkids for 20 minutes on a plane with the AG! I sometimes think that indeed, Mr T could get away with saying and doing anything he wants, which is downright chilling. After all, we have the Billy Bush/Pussy Gate tape, and that didn’t mean a thing.

Let’s hold all journalists to the same standard. If this tape does exist, we have just elected a Manchurian candidate. We actually don’t know the truth, yet… It’s true, US Intel was not involved, the Brits started this fire and we are now obligated to put it out.

Is it real, or is it Memorex?