Trump's Lies About China Are Having Deadly Consequences For Asian-Americans

[Celerity]

Trump suggested China rigged the election for Biden. He called Covid-19 "The China Virus". Now Asian-Americans are being targeted by his supporters.

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/trumps-lies-about-china-are-having



WASHINGTON, DC -- In the course of a single day this week, the treachery of Donald Trump was perfectly and tragically illustrated, even after being exiled to Mar-a-lago nearly 60 days ago. Seldom have we observed the consequences of Trump’s lies and demagoguery so clearly as what happened on Tuesday, March 16. It began with the publishing of a report culled from the entire U.S. intelligence community and released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). The document’s main purpose was to confirm that Russia continued its online influence attack against the United States throughout the 2020 election, repeating most of the active measures deployed in 2016, proving without a doubt that Donald Trump failed to do anything to stop the attacks. And why would he? The point, once again, was to help Trump get re-elected. The report also indicated that American officials were duped by familiar pro-Putin agents like Konstantin Kilimnik: “[Kilimnik and] associates sought to use prominent US persons and media conduits to launder their narratives to US officials and audiences.” It’s fair to assume these “US persons” included Rudy Giuliani and Fox News Channel, among many others. You might also recall that Kilimnik was heavily involved in the 2016 attack while in contact with Paul Manafort -- Kilimnik was, indeed, Manafort’s “man in Kyiv” and served as a fixer between the Trump campaign and Oleg Derapaska, an oligarch with close ties to Putin. It’s also worth noting that Trump pardoned Manafort for his part in the Trump-Russia affair. Along those lines:

“A key element of Moscow's strategy this election cycle was its use of proxies linked to Russian intelligence to push influence narratives-including misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against President Biden-to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration.” While the report doesn’t specifically mention Hunter Biden’s laptop, it certainly included mentions of phishing attacks against Burisma, the energy company that employed Hunter on its board. I wonder why Russia was interested in Burisma while simultaneously engaged in an attack that was intended to hurt Joe Biden. Likewise, the report shows that, contrary to what Trump said during the election, China did not engage in similar influence campaigns during the election. Repeat: did not. But that didn’t stop Trump and his henchmen from suggesting throughout the 2020 campaign that China was rigging the election for Biden. Bill Barr told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that China was helping Biden win. John Ratcliffe, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, said in August, “I can’t get into a whole lot of details, other than to say that China is using a massive and sophisticated influence campaign that dwarfs anything that any other country is doing.” That was a whopper lie, obviously. Same goes for Trump’s National Security Adviser, Robert O’Brien, who said, “China, like Russia, like Iran — they’ve engaged in cyberattacks and phishing and that sort of thing with respect to our election infrastructure, with respect to websites.” Another lie. Even Christopher Wray, the FBI Director appointed to replace Jim Comey, said, “China is engaged in a highly sophisticated malign foreign influence campaign, and its methods include bribery, blackmail, and covert deals.” As far back as 2018, Trump told the UN: “We learned that [China is] trying to meddle in our elections and we’re not going to let that happen…”

Meanwhile, there was COVID. For the better part of a year, Trump blamed China for the pandemic in order to distract from the reality that he himself failed to protect the American people from the virus by taking responsible steps to contain it. Instead, Trump reopened the economy at the initial height of the infection curve and proceeded to downplay the threat. Even more insidiously, Trump began to call it the “China Virus,” a nickname that hasn’t quite caught on outside of the Red Hat cult, but which goes a long way toward radicalizing the violent, racist extremists who compose much of Trump’s fanbase. It should come as no surprise, then, why a gunman murdered eight Asian-Americans in Atlanta on Tuesday. It should come as no surprise why Trump’s terrorist disciples are routinely attacking Asian-Americans across the country. The ex-president is almost exclusively responsible for instigating not just the hate crimes against Asian-Americans, but at least several insurrections including the invasion of various state government buildings last Spring and, naturally, the invasion and occupation of the U.S. Capitol in January. Fox News and the Red Hat entertainment complex is also responsible since it amplifies all of Trump’s inciting blurts. And, once again, these bigoted assailants are acting on Trump’s lies, much like various Republican state governments that are actively passing new election laws that disenfranchise voters based on Trump’s conspiracy theories. We might be done with Trump, but Trump isn’t done with us -- and Americans are still dying due to his recklessness, irresponsibility, insecurity, and vile racism.

One last thing about the ODNI report. It’s as much a damning indictment of Russia, Iran, and other foreign governments, as it is a tragic statement about many Americans as well. The overseas active measures wouldn’t exist if Americans weren’t seen as utterly ripe for the deception. Our enemies see our fellow citizens as gullible dupes -- easily deceived suckers who are incapable of digesting the glut of information on social media and elsewhere. And they’re not wrong. These kinds of cyber-attacks will surely continue, and perhaps become more sophisticated over time, as long as so many of us suck down the propaganda like water. I wish I had a simple solution for you but there isn’t one. A solid half of us continue to bungle our way into full-blown idiocracy, and telling the idiocrats that they need to wise up will only make them further entrench in their Q-cultivated slagpiles of nonsensical conspiracy theories and racist Tucker Carlson memes. In the meantime, we can petition our government to further regulate social media to make sure it’s less fertile ground for hostile intelligence agencies and, regarding the anti-Asian hate crimes, a slate of expanded gun control laws are long past due. And, of course, it can’t hurt to make sure Trump himself isn’t still at-large. As I said, there’s no simple solution but the urgency of the crisis mandates we do something. Like, now.

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