Independent journalist Michael Shellenberger reacts to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray's joint press conference on Russian interference in the 2024 election. Shellenberger said the Department of Justice is using the weaponization of the government to influence the election and that "all of the discredited characters" are involved.
"The idea that Trump and MAGA Republicans are controlled by Russia is the craziest conspiracy theory of them all. But apparently it works with some people or it's the best they've got," Shellenberger concluded.
MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: That's a great question. If you actually believe everything in the indictment, and I read every word of it just now, this is really small ball stuff, there's no evidence that any Russian money changed anybody's opinion. They say in the indictment that two of the influencers that were targeted did not know that it was Russian money. There's no evidence that really there was any serious amount of media coverage to influence anything measurable in terms of opinion. All that being said, the main issue here is that we have this continued -- this record of the Department of Justice running Russian disinformation hoaxes twice, not once. The first time claiming that the Russians favored Trump when we now know that they favored Clinton, and then the second time, the Hunter Biden laptop where we now know that the FBI ran a disinformation effort to make people think that it was about the Russians. So nobody should trust blindly the Department of Justice when it says anything about Russia.
JESSE WATTERS: So now we have the United States government interfering and three elections in a row, 16, 20 and 24, on behalf of Democrat candidates, weak Democrat candidates, Hillary, Biden and Harris. What does it say about the Harris campaign that they need to do this right now?
SHELLENBERGER: Yeah, I mean look, I think it's -- this is the best they've got. I think that says something, that they are having to do this. Like you said, it's all of the discredited characters with all of the discredited messages from the past. So it's not going to -- I mean it's clearly not going to have much impact at all. You know, I think there is some reason for concern which is that it feels like it's another effort to program people, if we use the crude word, brainwashed people and get them to stop thinking about these issues. So we should always be concerned when we see situations where there may be the weaponization of the government going on in order to, in this case, because it's always projection, influence the elections. The timing alone is curious.
WATTERS: You can't have the FBI, and this is probably CIA laundered, and the Department of Justice spilling this out through press conferences and through leaks to mainstream media reporters on the eve of an election and then have a 24-hour, maybe 48 hour news cycle on CNN, MSNBC, and it's just going to wash over the people, even the casual viewers that are just looking around. That does have an impact. That is more election skulduggery than what the Russians are doing.
SHELLENBERGER: Yeah, and I would say too, I think it's important why they keep focusing on Russia, it's clearly an effort to undermine the nationalist and populist appeal of Trump and the MAGA Republicans. They are trying to say that they are not authentically supported in the United States, they are not about America First, they are secretly, I mean it's a conspiracy theory, the idea that Trump and MAGA Republicans are controlled by Russia is the craziest conspiracy theory of them all. But apparently it works with some people or it's the best
they've got.
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