It looks an awful lot like a textbook case of gaslighting, doesn’t it? Let’s break it down.
‘Gaslighting’ is a psychological term drawn from the 1944 movie Gaslight.
Here’s what it means”
Gaslighting, an elaborate and insidious technique of deception and psychological manipulation, usually practiced by a single deceiver, or “gaslighter,” on a single victim over an extended period. Its effect is to gradually undermine the victim’s confidence in his own ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, right from wrong, or reality from appearance, thereby rendering him pathologically dependent on the gaslighter in his thinking or feelings.
Why do we open with Gaslighting? Because in this roughly 1-minute clip between James Clapper and Anderson Cooper he throws in an interesting bait-and-switch.
Once the Mueller investigation wrapped up, Barr was free to begin investigating the factors, people and events that led to surveillance resources being deployed against a Presidential campaign without any chance of it being misread as an attempt to undermine or obstruct the Mueller investigation.
Barr was upfront from the beginning that he did not know whether the spying that had been done was for legitimate and lawful reasons or not, but he was interested to learn the providence of this highly unusual step. This was clearly telegraphed months ago.
With that in mind have a look at the Clapper clip and see if you notice what he did there:
💥💥💥
My, oh my. Clapper seems a little nervous.Buddy, it’s called sedition and treason when you try to overthrow a sitting US President. #Coup pic.twitter.com/Kbgdvowrn0
— Amy Kremer (@AmyKremer) October 25, 2019
He guesses he’s one of those under investigation, and he just heard about this. He’s mystified, really, as to what he could possibly be investigated FOR, though. Unless the list of possible incidents of malfeasance is REALLY a lot longer than we thought, this is difficult to believe. It is, after all, an investigation into the ORIGIN of the Russian Collusion hoax and he was right in the thick of it.
But that’s not the juicy bit. Look at this line:
“I found the timing interesting, given the increasing heat of the impeachment inquiry, and so, the timing interesting, I’ll just let it go at that.”
(As an additional weasel move, the former DNI director threw another agency — the FBI — under the bus, too, immediately after that point.)
So the idea he is trying to plant in the mind of the audience is that he is innocent, but Barr and Durham are on some kind of a, what’s the right word… witchhunt?… that’s motivated by political animosity for the other side, weaponizing the tools of justice against innocent parties.
And he is specifically juxtaposing it against the Democrats’ impeachment circus that’s been unfolding.
Does that theory hold any water?
Not really.
In order to believe that, you would have to also believe that Republicans sat on their hands through the entire Mueller investigation because they didn’t CARE about these same underlying issues, not because they were intentionally avoiding any possible accusation of obstruction.
You would have to believe that it was malice that led them to open investigations into the origin of the Russian Collusion hoax (in which Mueller specifically said there was ZERO American cooperation with Russian attempts to impact our election).
You would also have to believe that — as far back as this SPRING — we could anticipate that Pelosi would cave to the demands of the pro-impeachment block in her party over the Summer.
That we would anticipate the Democrat coup attempt conveniently coordinating meetings between Schiff’s staffers, the Intelligence Community, and rogue diplomats in Ukraine with an ax to grind to set up a fake crisis.
We would have to ignore the fact that investigations due to wrap up in the summer were extended after meeting with Christopher Steele, and a criminal investigation opened after some of the very same foreign players that featured so prominently in the Spygate drama (including Joseph Mifsud?) were interviewed overseas.
But Clapper would have us believe this is just some kind of a corrupt attempt at deflection and distraction.
We’ll all get to see where the corrupt really is after key players have their day in court, shall we?
Do you have your lawyer ready there, Jim-bo?
You’re gonna need one.
