Real Characters Episode 39 Democrat strategy meeting

It is July 2016, and John Brennan calls his friend Richard Dearlove.  Dearlove is the head of MI6 in London England and has been friends with the CIA director Brennan for a while now as the two countries share intelligence as they work together to try to keep the world safe.  Brennan starts, “Richard, I need a favor.”

                “What can I do for you?”

                “As you know, Donald Trump is running for President and we need to stop him by any means necessary.  The about queries on our NSA database can only do so much.  I need the invasive power of the United Kingdom’s surveillance network to go after him.”

                “It’s going to be hard to get Donald Trump to London as he is campaigning for president.”

                “I know, that’s why I want to go through his satellite people; the people that work for his campaign.  I’m sending you a list of them now.”

                “Is there anything specific you want me to do to them?”

                “I need to paint a picture that they are tied with Russia.”

                “In that case, you should talk to Christopher Steele.  He’s the go to guy for Russia and a superb former MI6 agent of mine.”

                “You think he’d be able to help me?”

                “Most certainly.  He has already been hired by an American firm named Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Donald Trump so it’s right along what he’s already doing.”

                “Yea, I know all about Hillary Clinton laundering money through the law firm Perkins Coie to Fusion GPS.”

                “I believe your missions are aligned then and if we’re successful, you’ll have the thanks and gratitude of the President of the United States.”

                “I agree.  This is a good idea.  Let me have his contact information and let him know I’ll be reaching out to him.”

                “Jolly good.”

                Brennan ends the phone call and then calls one of his confidential human sources commonly known as ‘spies,’ Stefan Halper.  “Steve, I’m going to need your campus.”

                Stefan Halper is a professor at the University of Cambridge, which he uses to lure people in order for the CIA and British government to spy on them.  There are various Russian professors that he works with; namely Victor Surkov and Vyacheslav Trubnikov.  He responds, “I figured you’d be calling soon.  I already saw the list of names demasked for who will be on the Trump campaign.”

                “Anything good?”

                “Yes.  Paul Manafort is the big one.  He was very instrumental in Viktor Yushchenko’s campaign.”

                “The ousted Ukrainian president that was pro-Rusisa?”

                “Same one.”

                “Oh this is really good news.”

                “I got more.”

                “I’m listening.”

                “Well, you already know I know Mike Flynn as he’s been on our campus before in 2014 when I spread the rumor he was having an affair with my Russian student Svetlana Lokhova.”

                “Not one of your finer moments as she has been living in England for over a decade and that’s about half her life.”

                “Cute though.”

                “Yes, but turns out she wasn’t as naïve as you thought and saw through those private dinners you wanted at your house to further link her to Flynn.”

                “It did keep Flynn’s mouth shut about the Iran deal didn’t it?”

                “Yes, that I will admit.”

                “Anyway, I know Carter Page too.”

                “Yes, I know him too as he worked with us in a sting operation in Russia.”

                “I know but in this business, friends become enemies pretty quickly.”

                “We’re on the same page with this one. The public doesn’t know he was working for us so I want you to use his Russian contacts, which he only has because of us, to tell the FBI that he’s a Russian agent.”

                “The FBI doesn’t know it was a CIA sanctioned mission?”

                “No, they do not.  If they ask, we’ll admit it but I’m going to wait for them to ask.  By then, Trump will be nowhere near the White House.”

                “What do you need me to do?”

                “I’m going to have the FBI call you.  Reach out to those three members and bring them to London and monitor them to see if they say or do something we can use.”

                “You got it.”

                Stefan Halper then invites George Papadopoulos, Sam Clovis, Carter Page and Paul MAnafort to London to meet.  As soon as he does that, he calls the FBI.  Even though the IG report will later say that no spying happened before July 31, 2016, it is a couple weeks before the end of July, and a CIA spy, Stefan Halper, is talking to the FBI about people associated with Donald Trump’s campaign.  The FBI special agent in charge has flown to London to meet with Halper personally. Halper begins the conversation, “I’d like to talk to you about Carter Page, Mike Flynn and Paul Manafort.”

                “It is so serendipitous that you know them.  I can’t believe my luck that someone as highly respected and useful to us in the past as you happens to know all these people that we are suspicious of.”

                “When you’ve been in this game long enough, people keep reappearing.”

                “Right, so we intercepted a call between George Papadopoulos and an Australian Diplomat Alexander Downer.  Apparently a Maltese professor named Joseph Mifsud told Papadopoulos that he has dirt on Hillary in the form of thousands of e-mails.  Papadopoulos then told Downer about this in May and he came to us.”

                “I don’t really know Papadopoulos.  I’ve worked with Mifsud before.  He’s based in the Linq campus in Rome but he’s in London frequently meeting with British intelligence officials.  I wanted to talk to you about Carter Page though as I just had a dinner that he attended in London and I found some things you may want to know.”

                “So, you think we should be looking at Carter Page?”

                “Yes”

                “Why?”

                “Well, he was in Russia a few times meeting with people close to Putin in the Kremlin a couple years back.  I found it odd that he was asking me for a foreign intelligence position given his questionable contacts.  I’m not sure if he realizes I know who he’s connected with but I found it weird that he would come out of the blue and ask me this; especially since he’s working for the Trump campaign so if they’re successful, the new president could just give it to him.”

                “Maybe he’s hedging his bets because there’s no chance that Donald Trump becomes president.”

                Later, Carter Page will deny ever asking Halper this.  The FBI handler responds, “Right now our focus is on Papadopoulos.  What can you tell me about him?”

                “He’s young and he’s done some work in the Mediterranean.  Like I said, I don’t really know him but he doesn’t have any significant Russian contacts.  There’s a rumor going around that Donald Trump is a Russian asset so I think you should be looking into the people on his campaign that have Russian contacts.  Carter Page has the deepest ties but Manafort was friendly with a pro-Russian Ukrainian president.  I’d focus on those two guys.”

                It appears that this advice was partially taken.  A couple weeks after this conversation, on July 31, the FBI opened an investigation into whether or not Donald Trump colluded with Russia and claimed that the Downer and Papadopoulos conversation from two months earlier was the predicate and not the meeting with Halper a couple weeks before.  On July 29, the FBI raided and arrested George Papadopoulos when he landed at Dulles airport flying in from Greece.  He was supposed to take a connecting flight to Chicago but never made his flight as they frantically looked for 10,000 dollars that was given to him in Cyprus.  Papadopoulos was very suspicious of the money so left it with a lawyer in Greece with the intent of informing the American government to send someone there to see if the bills are marked.  As they couldn’t find the money, they arrested him anyway for probable cause without specifying what the cause was.  Later, they would indict him for lying to the FBI because he got the exact date of when he met with Joseph Mifsud months ago wrong.  At face value, it seems peculiar that that would be the probable cause sparking you to arrest a man at 2AM at an airport on a Sunday when the FBI offices are closed. 

                Almost four years later, Donald Trump is president as Brennan, the FBI, Halper, among other’s plan has failed.  The DNC is having a strategy meeting as it is 2020 so they have a second chance to beat Donald Trump. Even though they have been focused on the election for a while now, things need to ramp up.  There are three main talking heads in the meeting.  There is the establishment Democrat representing Democrats prior to 2008.  His name is ‘establishment.’  The next attendee is the woman known as ‘leftist’ for she represents the far-left and socialists of the Party.  Lastly, you have outlier who is not as extreme as the leftists but has no political experience named ‘outlier.’  The head of the meeting is Hillary Clinton as she is the mob boss for the largest mob in the country; the United States Department of Justice including the FBI, CIA and deep state swamp.  Hillary starts the meeting, “Let’s talk about Soleimani and speak with one voice on this issue.”

                Establishment blurts out, “The narrative needs to be that we don’t go around the world killing people we don’t like.”

                Hillary responds, “Nobody is really saying that.  Soleimani killed 600 Americans.”

                “Doesn’t matter.  We don’t want the American people to give President Trump credit for anything.  Since we can’t argue against the point that Soleimani specifically isn’t bad; we frame it to a general story of killing people we don’t like.  Once the opposing argument is framed that way, then you can counter it.”

                “That is our old tactic.  Since we control the media and means by which people get news, we can tell people what the opposing side is and then insulate them from actually meeting someone of the opposite side.  Sadly, even with social media banning conservatives and doing all they can to stop people from posting, the message still gets out.  It’s not working anymore.” 

                Outsider opines, “Soleimani is responsible for at least 600 deaths.  I think it’s important that we don’t try to be Iran’s lawyers on this.  We can admit that he was a bad guy and his death is good but we don’t want war with Iran.”

                Establishment piggybacked with, “I agree that we don’t want war.  Even the Republicans aren’t bringing that up.  The important thing is that we can’t appear to be weak either.  I think with Obama trying to appease them with money was a mistake.  Americans don’t like war but they don’t like weakness either.”

                Leftist fired back, “It is not weak to not want to be the world’s police.”

                “I’m not saying that.  Look at history, McCarther, McGovern, Dukakis and Kerry all seemed weak and ran on blaming America and they all got destroyed in the elections.”

                “Kerry didn’t get destroyed.”

                “Right, but look who he was running against.  George Bush was despised by the nation but John Kerry couldn’t beat him because Americans preferred the bumbling, stuttering war-hawk Bush to the weak Kerry.”

                “We didn’t have the media influence we do now back then.  Social media is a lot more involved and established and the mainstream media is less inclined to even pretend not to be on our side.”

                “That’s actually the problem.  You got Chris Matthews, who is usually not crazy he just talks forcefully, comparing the killing of Soleimani to Princess Diana and Elvis.”

                “His only point was that he was a beloved military leader just how Elvis and Princess Diana were beloved.”

                “We didn’t declare war on France because French paparazzi killed Princess Diana.”

                “That’s not the point, the point is what were our military leaders doing killing a beloved man.”

                Outlier interjected, “That point was lost with the ridiculous comparison.  Of course one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter but remember your audience is the American people and they’re not going to care what the Iranians thought of him.  They care more that he was responsible for killing 600 people.  Our mission isn’t to make Soleimani beloved here.  It’s to beat Donald Trump and if we are seen siding with terrorists over the president, that may be more difficult.”

                Leftist screeched back, “President Trump is responsible for killing 147 innocent people who were just trying to fly on a passenger plane out of Iraq.”

                “You do know that Iran shot down that plane right?”

                “Only because of the civil unrest that we caused.  Their blood is on Trump’s hand”

                “Again, tough sell.”

                “Don’t have to.  Our congresswoman Jackie Speier already said it on CNN.”

                “Which goes back to my previous point that the media isn’t doing us any favors by taking extreme positions that Middle America doesn’t sympathize with.”

                “Nobody cares about fly over states.”

                “It’s that thinking that led Donald Trump to victory in the first place.  Spieier really messed up because she admitted that she was briefed so the plausible deniability is wrong.  These representatives of our party is really hurting us.”

                “Those representatives are winning elections!  Your same American people that say we’re not resonating with are electing these people.”

                “Don’t give them a reason to regret it.”

                “Iran shooting down the plane was an accident.”

                “That’s the point.  You’re saying the Iranians are so inept, that they mistook a passenger plane for a missile.  It’s either that, or they deliberately targeted innocent people.  I’m not even sure which is worse.”

                “Or, they fired the missile at an American base and the plane got in the way and it was collateral damage.”

                “What’s a passenger plane doing taking off in Iran anyway in the middle of a back and forth bombing campaign by the Iranians and the Americans?”

                “Don’t blame the victims.”

                “It’s stupid!  The Iranians were stupid; the pilot of the plane is stupid for taking off.  It was just very poorly done.”

                Hillary had enough of the back and forth and announced, “Enough! You all raised some interesting points but the Iran conflict has de-escalated so let’s focus on the issue at hand.  What is our strategy to beat Donald Trump?”

                Leftist offered, “I saw an article that the poorest states are Republicans.  Maybe we can look at that.”

                “We tried that and the Republicans pointed out that if you break it down by counties, the Democrat counties are bringing down the Republican counties to make an overall picture of a poor state.”

                “People resonate with the debt.  Let’s look at how much in debt Republican states are vs. Democrat.  Mississippi is the poorest state in the nation and they’re heavily Republican.”

                “The issue is debt per person.  Overall wealth and debt is kind of meaningless.”

                “That helps us because Democrat states have the most population so it spreads the debt amongst more people.”

                The other people in the room sighed as they were trying to think of a delicate way to explain something to Leftist.  Establishment tried, “These facts and data never really go our way.”

                She gave him an incredulous look, “Sure they do!”

                Hillary put on a calm tone as if she was talking to a child, “There have been studies and the states with the highest debt per person are run by Democrats.”

                “What are you talking about?”

                “Nine of the top 10 have Democrat controlled legislatures and most have Democrat governors.  Kentucky is the only exception.”

                “Fine, so we look at the other side and look at the states doing the best.”

                “You get the opposite effect.  Nine of the 10 have Republican controlled legislatures.  Oregon is the only exception.”

                “Mitch McConnell is from Kentucky, we can use that to discredit him.”

                “And then bring down nine other states and hurt the party just to attack one Republican.  It also builds up nine other ones.  It’s a very poor strategy.”

                “Well, then why does everyone want to live in those states?”

                Establishment took a deep breath and could tell Hillary was getting frustrated and was about to take the kid gloves off.  He commented, “People are leaving high tax states in droves.”

                “No they’re not.”

                “Yes, the states with the most money leaving are California, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin.  The top four have liberal policies.”

                “Where are they going?”

                “Top money going into are Florida, Arizona, Texas, North Carolina, Nevada, Colorado, Washington, and Idaho.  Again, most of them are dominated by Republican/conservative politics.”

                Outlier articulated, “Maybe that’s a good thing.”

                “How could that be a good thing?” Establishment asked.

                “We have the numbers.  There are more of us than them so rather than concentrate in blue states, we move to red states and turn them blue.  If enough Democrats move to Texas, we can make it a blue state.  Beto O’Rourke almost beat Ted Cruz in Texas.  If we take Texas, Republicans will never win again.”

                “You know, you may be on to something as Democrats tend to keep voting Democrat even after fleeing high taxes.  They don’t seem to correlate what they’re leaving with us and vote for exactly the policies they’re running away from.”

                “We thrive on the ignorance of people.”

                Feeling like she was being left out, leftist uttered, “Why not talk about how Capitalism has left so many people behind.  Homelessness is rising across the country despite Donald Trump’s great economy.”

                Hillary yelled back “If you take out California, homelessness plummeted.  The problem was that California had their homelessness rise 16% so it brought the entire country down.  We can’t shine a light on things that if people look into, it’ll make us look bad.”

                “What about how great healthcare is in France and England with socialized medicine.”

                “Will you please travel or open a book.  The five year survival rates in the United States is higher than in France and the United Kingdom for all types of cancer except liver and that’s despite the shitty food and health that our country has!”

                “Medicine shouldn’t be for profit.”

                “Do you make a salary?”

                “Yes, but I devoted myself to public service to help people.”

                “And doctors didn’t spend a shitload of money and time getting certified and don’t try to help the public by treating diseases?”

                “People are dying”

                “They die more because of government rationing and price controls.  Remember, our health care, next to maybe education, is the most socialistic part of our economy.  You can’t use the rest of the world as an example because their medical care sucks!  Bottom line is, socialized healthcare costs people more money in taxes, destroys the country and kills you faster.  It’s best not to raise awareness about that to the American public.”

                “You know what?  I don’t need you people.  We are taking over the party.  Joe Biden is plummeting; Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are still going strong.  AOC and Ilhan Omar have more influence than Nancy Pelosi.  We are in charge now and you guys can either get on board or kiss my ass!” With that, Leftist got up and stormed out of the room.

                After that, the strategy session got saner.  When the meeting concluded, Hillary Clinton called the media conglomerates and repeated what was talked about in the meeting in that they need to stop acting like apologists for Soleimani.  The media executive responded, “We had to buy time and distract the public from what Facebook said.”

                “I thought Facebook is on our side.”

                “They don’t like the strong rhetoric by Elizabeth Warren so they’re a little wary.  They still are but their media manager was caught on tape saying that Trump didn’t win the election because of Russian Facebook ads.”

                “Did he give a counter-reason?”

                “That he ran the single greatest digital ad campaign he’s ever seen.”

                “Well, then he should know why we wanted them to ban political ads.  Twitter did it why couldn’t they?”

                “That’s why they may be upset with us.  We publicly praised twitter and condemned them.  They didn’t like that we played favorites.”

                “Tough shit.”     

                “I would agree but they are very delicate flowers.”

                “God, dealing with these snowflakes is exhausting.”

                “Yes, but these snowflakes have a lot of power, money and influence.”

                “Yea, still don’t know how that happened with such weak minded people.”

                “Mystery of our time.  Speaking about kids ruining shit. Nick Sandmann really hurt us.”

                “25 Million isn’t going to break us?”

                “No, it’s not that.  It’s the precedent that it set.”

                “Look, a 16-year-old kid isn’t going to translate to public figures.  I think we’re okay.”

                “You didn’t read the motion to dismiss from CNN’s lawyer.”

                “No, I didn’t but it obviously failed.”

                “In the motion, they claimed that calling someone ‘racist’ isn’t defamatory because it can’t be proven or disproven as it’s a matter of opinion.”

                “They argued it can’t be rationally argued in court but we announce it as news all the time.  If it’s determined that we believe it is impossible to be a fact, then we can’t use it against our political opponents anymore as news.”

                “Right”

                “Did anyone besides you pick up on this?”

                “Of course, there’s a media lawyer Glasser that published it.”

                “What specifically did the motion say?”

                “’Accusations of ‘racism’ is impossible to be news because it’s opinion by definition so a non-actionable opinion.  It’s so subjective, it’s unproveable by nature.”

                “I know we love double standards but this one’s hard to get out of.  If we lose calling people racist as a tactic, then we’re really in trouble.”

                “I would agree.”

                Hillary buried her head in her hands.  Despite her tentacles still being deeply entrenched in the government, she felt like she was losing her grip.  She put her head down and asked herself the same question she’s been asking for over three years; how did she let Donald Trump beat her?