Trump, Golden Showers and the Dangers of Feuding with Intelligence Agencies

Donald Trump was doing fine.

Just like Sarah Palin a decade earlier he was leading the corporate media by the nose through his early morning tweets. 140 characters at a time.

Since the elections, all his rubbish pronouncements made the headlines with reporters feverishly speculating about the upcoming Twitter Administration.

He criticized the sitting president, belittled his presidential record, sided with foreign powers against him, including with Russia over US sanctions, incited his trolls to make death threats to anyone who criticized him and viciously responded to any negative comments, regardless of the person's stature.

As we all know, if this was a Democratic President-elect, she would have been crucified, excoriated and accused of treason. But with the Republicans and especially with Trump there is the IOKIYAR principle at work and none of it caused any concerns or led to any serious discussions in the corporate media.

They wouldn't even bring up the point.

In any event, all was going swimmingly and the Orange Man began to feel emboldened.

When CIA and NSA went public with their concerns about Russian role in swaying the election to Trump, the thin-skinned buffoon assumed that this was an effort to minimize his electoral victory and went into attack mode.

First he made fun of them as incompetent fools who made serious errors leading to Iraq war. Then he ridiculed their conclusions and their questioning of Russia and worst of all, he made veiled threats about reforming and cutting down these vast bureaucracies.

Next thing we know, we have lurid descriptions of Donald Trump being peed on (which is what a golden shower is) by some Russian prostitutes in a Moscow hotel as an annex to a classified intelligence report submitted to the Gang of Eight.

Which ensured its becoming public in no time.

The corporate media which was treated by Trump not like a watchdog but like a stray dog to be kicked jumped in with glee. The word "kompromat" quickly became an essential part of the pundit lexicon, giving them an air of erudition.

In the ensuing breathless coverage, no one wanted to know the answers to some obvious questions:

1) Is Trump stupid enough to engage in such activities in Moscow hotels when he has access to many properties around the world which he could use much more safely for whatever fetish he might have?

I 'm not even questioning the implausibility of a scenario where a man with the most convoluted combover in history would pay to have it destroyed by warm bodily fluids.

Though, as one article noted, if true, it might explain the strange hue.

2) Secondly, if the allegations were true and the FSB taped him in compromising positions, would Kremlin be stupid enough to reveal their hand days before the inauguration?

Or to put it in terms we all understand: if you or I had material to blackmail the US President would we make it public before we had a chance of using it? And lose all leverage?

These allegations were known for at least six months by everyone in Washington. Every media outlet was approached with the dossier and none would use it or even mention it in their reporting.

If the content of the dossier was too weak to publish for corporate media who deals in falsehoods routinely, why would the intelligence agencies elevate these rumors that originated from opposition research into a classified report and share it with the Gang of Eight?

That is the question.

National Security State in Action

Here is what I think.

Trump may be a racist and misogynist buffoon but he is not stupid. He knows that his business is his brand. I don't believe for a second that he would engage in salacious activities in such a risky setting.

Because if the name goes so does the business.

Moreover, even if FSB managed to videotape him in one of his own hotels doing funny stuff, they would never in a million years talk about it. Especially if Russia was really behind the DNC hack and had a strong desire to see him becoming POTUS.

I don't have inside information, I am just going by Occam's Razor. It just doesn't make sense.

What is much more likely is the possibility that the US intelligence agencies, the cornerstone of the National Security State, (also known as the "Deep State") felt sufficiently threatened by the Orange Man to come out in the open with these innuendoes.

As Robert Parry notes, this was a move right out of Edgar J Hoover playbook. The message to Trump seems to be "look we know these allegations are bogus but we know of other stuff about you and we might have incriminating evidence on those."

They and not the Russians are the ones with the motive and opportunity. After all, they are the ones who attached it to a report and made sure it was leaked.

According to Glenn Greenwald, this is a perfectly plausible operation as CIA and other intelligence agencies were solidly behind the hawkish Hillary Clinton who was planning to let them loose in Syria. Whereas Trump was defending a rather isolationist and perhaps selective (Mafia-style) intervention policy.

There is also the fact that according to many media outlets, the "FBI was Trumpland."

And the non-stop leaks about her mail servers and Comey's double stunt about claiming "excessive carelessness" in handling her email server and announcing a fresh investigation weeks before the elections seem directly related to this animosity.

(In case you are wondering whether his judgement was warranted read my post on Clinton, as the email server story was pure, unadulterated BS from the beginning )

In any event, if, as I suspect, the golden shower story was leaked by the intelligence agencies to damage the President-elect, it points to a troubling trend.

For one thing, it indicates that these supposedly neutral bureaucracies are now quite politicized. There is no other term to describe a situation where the CIA supports one candidate and the FBI stands by her rival.

Also, it shows that they are no longer reticent about intervening directly into the political process and even altering the outcome of elections. While a new investigation was launched to determine whether James Comey the Director of the FBI acted inappropriately, since he was supporting the winner, I can safely predict that he will not be found guilty.

At this point I have two more questions.

What happens if the Donald decides to shrink the CIA and NSA and Homeland Security apparatus, as he has already announced? Will they quietly accept their fate, as they did in the past, or will they retaliate?

Thanks to Edward Snowden we know that these are enormously powerful organizations which acquired far reaching capabilities after 9/11.

And if these shenanigans are any indications, they are not likely to take anything lying down. I don't remember another situation the director of the CIA telling the next President "to watch his tongue."

So if I were the Orange Man, I would make nice with them, as Dixie Chicks put it.

And do so pronto.

Or we will very soon hear many more lurid stories about the Donald and his various proclivities.

As I keep saying, we live in interesting times.