Last night, I watched Fareed Zakaria's one hour show on CNN entitled, "Vladimir Putin-The Most Powerful Man in the World". On the surface, it was dedicated to the idea that Putin is a malevolent dictator, but one who is crafty, shrewd, and more than a match for Trump. It was also designed to convince the viewer by implication that Putin, indeed, swung the election to Trump. The reason, according to Zacaria, is that Putin despised Hillary Clinton, mostly because she spoke out against him and how he won election as Russia's president.
The soft-spoken Zacaria is a clever talking head. He comes across to the casual viewer as reasoned and fair. He is anything but. He is very adept at getting the viewer to draw inferences from his statements.
Last night's show was very adept at portraying Hillary Clinton as a great woman who stood up to Putin. The visuals of Hillary were impressive. She was all but portrayed as riding in on a white horse, the great leader who would have been a match for Putin on the world stage.
If only Putin hadn't swung the election for Trump, who, in Zacaria's own words is "no Vladimir Putin".
I also noted that Hillary's clips were short because, as we all know, the longer you see and hear Hillary speak (like anything more than ten seconds), the faster you are turned off by her.
Is Putin the world's most powerful man? Debatable since Russia is not the world's most powerful country.
Is Zacaria correct when he says that Trump is no Putin? It depends and remains to be seen. Trump is not a dictator. He has never ordered anyone to be killed as it is widely believed that Putin has. Trump presides over a democracy. He may show public contempt for the press, but he cannot shut them down. CNN and Zakaria are free to produce dishonest programs such as the one last night whose real purpose was not to slam Putin, but to glorify Hillary Clinton and tear down Trump.
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2 comments:
This story about Trump and/or his staff colluding with the Russians to effect the election is a continuing source of amusement to guys like me. I used to believe that only God can create something from nothing. Now I see that the MSM can do it as well. Somehow, the Left is convinced SOMETHING happened with Trump and the Russians that caused HRC to lose the election.
It has become like Captain Ahab's pathological destructive obsession with Moby Dick. In the Dems' case, there is no name... you don't know if it is even a fish...you can't say what it it is ... just that, without evidence, you are convinced it is there. There is an example of this in the field where someone completely believes in his soul that there is a jeweled island out there somewhere and all you have to do is to sail out and find it.
It should cause Dems pause that nobody on their side can say what the supposed effort was. I'm reading the book, Shattered, about the ins and outs and history of the HRC campaign. I recommend it. We followed the campaign and we know that nothing the Russians could have done actually happened. They didn't create Benghazi or cause her to lie about it. They didn't conspire to set up the improper email setup and go from lie to lie about it throughout the campaign. They didn't give her the wrong notion about abuse of power or fiduciary duty. The Russians did not inflict her with her blindness to conflicts of interests.
In the meantime, look at all the time and money this conspiracy theory has wasted. Look at the diversity it has exasperated.... sad!
It is highly unlikely that anything Putin did could have swung the election. Voting and tabulation are too decentralized and have too much built in redundancy for hacking to change the national vote totals effectively or reliably. There weren't many voters who would have swung from one candidate to the other because Russia offered some new dirt -- they were both covered in muck already, and their hard core supporters wouldn't have believed any new tales anyway. What Putin likely did want was simply to create some disruption and make American democracy look weak and ineffective. In that, he seems to have had some success, at least in the short term.
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