Thread by @bmarcois

1/10 I was the first foreign policy professional in America to say on national television that Russia collusion by @realDonaldTrump was a hoax. It was on Tucker Carlson’s show in February of 2017 — see my pinned tweet. My source? State-controlled Russian media.
🧵@DonaldJTrumpJr

2/ I had been following Russian media as part of research for a series of articles in The Hill about President Trump and Putin. The first was

thehill.com/blogs/pundits-…

3/ The second was about what kept Putin awake at night: worrying about the threats to his power from the Islamists in the old Russian empire, and from the hard core Russian nationalists who just wanted him to seize territory. Here:

thehill.com/blogs/pundits-…

4/ The third article was what caught the eye of @TuckerCarlson. I had heard evidence among my contacts in Eastern and Central Europe that Putin’s surrogates were vigorously promoting the idea that @realDonaldTrump was a Putin puppet. This was a real change from the initial attitude toward Trump right after his 2016 election victory.
Initially, the Russian media were worried about President Trump’s hardline Cabinet appointments, but they quickly pivoted as the Kremlin line shifted.

5/ Putin, a smart KGB officer from the Brezhnev era, suddenly had to contend with America-First President Trump, instead of the leftist, globalist, weakened Hillary Clinton he’d expected.

6/ So what does a smart KGB officer from the Brezhnev era do?  He turns to the tools of his trade: disinformation, misinformation, propaganda, and more. He pivots, and claims that he installed President Trump and controls him – and he leverages his propaganda machine in Russia and Europe to promote the claim. He manipulates the American media too, using half-truths and feeding into the narrative they are eager to write.  His claims undermine the confidence of the security structure in Washington, NATO capitals, and around the world.

7/ All Putin needed was to have people believe he controlled Trump, so he pushed that story. The American media poured gasoline on it and it nearly destroyed the Trump presidency.
But I called it a lie from the start: “But if Putin were pulling the strings, we would see administration policy that favors Russian interests. Instead, Trump and Mattis are demanding an immediate increase in NATO defense spending, and Trump reiterated his demand that Russia give the Crimea back to Ukraine…”
“These are not the policy positions of a Russian puppet; they suggest that Putin is only posturing, hovering around Trump, pretending to be in control. Instead, it’s quite the reverse: Trump’s actions are undermining Putin abroad and at home, where he has ordered media coverage of Trump to cease. Look at the results, and not the noise: Trump is forcing NATO to its greatest defense spending in decades and is demanding the return of Crimea.”

8/ Tucker had me on his show later that month, where I told him what I had found. See my pinned X post for the clip. It was my first time on TV, and in an embarrassing moment I learned not to lean back in my chair — the chair back wasn’t locked, and I almost fell over backwards!

9/ I’m proud of those articles, that research, and that interview (in spite of the near-accident with the chair). I only wish I’d had more chances to tell more media outlets what I had seen and heard. I really thought it was so obvious that the whole thing was a hoax that it would collapse of its own accord. I knew how evil and determined Leftists were, but I didn’t reckon with how willing the GOP Establishment was to cripple the Trump presidency. It was their collusion with Democrats and the media that kept that story alive.

10/ Now everyone knows, though, and the remnants of the Establishment have been put on notice: Trump won’t ever let them sneak up on him again. And neither will we, the American people.

Here is that link: thehill.com/blogs/pundits-…

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