Seth Abramson lamenting lack of journalism in today's media re Collusion

[Roland99]

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1077670786062864385.html

There is simply no question left—*none whatsoever*—that the Trump campaign was secretly negotiating future U.S. foreign policy throughout the 2016 campaign in order to win covert (and illegal) financial and other support from Russia, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Hungary, Israel, and Egypt.

2/ That Trump knew this was wrong is shown in substantial part by the fact that he used proxies not directly associated with the campaign—Flynn, Prince, Trump Jr., George Nader, Joel Zamel, Mohammed Dahlan, and others—to conduct the negotiations. But he slipped up several times.

3/ He let his son admit Nader, Prince, and Zamel to Trump Tower in August 2016. He let Papadopoulos overstep by coordinating his September 2016 meeting with Egypt's Al-Sissi while giving interviews about sanctions with Russian media. He permitted secret negotiations with Russia.

4/ He let his advisers Schmitz, Gordon, Prince and Page all make secret visits to Hungary pre-inauguration. He made stupid public statements about Russia during the campaign and stupidly transparent foreign policy statements as soon as he was elected. Flynn knows the whole story.

5/ I've now been researching Trump's "grand bargain" long enough to say conclusively that the contours of that pre-election bargain are substantially more complex than pre-election Trump-Russia collusion. It turns out Trump-Russia collusion is but one quadrant of a larger story.

6/ The larger story encompasses Trump's corrupt transition and inaugural committee, the Khashoggi assassination, the Syria pull-out, Trump's military deal with Saudi Arabia, the Seychelles meeting Prince lied repeatedly to Congress about, and Flynn's secret lobbying pre-election.

7/ I don't know yet if I'll be in a position to be the one to tell this story fully—though I'm prepared to. What I can say without any doubt is that the Trump presidential campaign was the most corrupt and fundamentally un-American US political operation the nation has ever seen.

8/ The pre-election collusion story will widen—not contract. We're not nearing its end—though I wish like hell we were. Mueller has been forced to expand his probe into Trump-Saudi, Trump-Emirati, Trump-Israeli and Trump-Egypt collusion because it's part of the Trump-Russia plot.

9/ I've been reading major-media articles from Israel, Russia, Hungary, Egypt, the UK, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and elsewhere, and *based on those stories*—*not* conjecture—the scope of what Trump agreed to participate in pre-election is... I don't have the words. It beggars belief.

10/ A month ago, I spent 2 hours on the phone with a reporter from The Sunday Times (UK) discussing this story. We agreed that it's far greater in scope than Trump-Russia collusion—which was already a generationally complex story. American media is way, *way* behind on all of it.

11/ One reason I've become frustrated by Twitter is that—as you all know—I was hanging by the skin of my teeth trying to use Twitter to tell the Trump-Russia story. That's why I put it in a book—Proof of Collusion.

So let me say plainly: I can't tell the larger story on Twitter.

12/ I've pretty much operated for three years now on the assumption that Twitter as a *platform* can be "hacked"—I mean that term in the *conceptual sense* only—to allow it to tell any story. And now I've encountered a story too big for the platform—and that's really frustrating.

13/ It's frustrating because if a story's too big for Twitter, it's also too big for cable news—whose window on the world is now (incredibly) *narrower* than social media. Essentially, this story can only be told in a book. But the vagaries of publishing may make that impossible.

14/ You can't write or publish a book like this without a team of fact-checkers (at least 3); an affiliated law firm to perform a thorough legal review; and at least one extremely talented editor. But it's hard to access that level of resources if one is not a celebrity author.

15/ You may be reading this thread thinking I have some implicit, even passive-aggressive point—perhaps a self-aggrandizing one. I *don't*. I've lately come to fear that this story is *not* going to be told before the primary season starts in 6 months. And that *terrifies* me.

16/ I also know that this story is too big and complex to be told through today's conventional nonfiction-writing process—a process that develops scenes and characters and maybe even makes up fake dialogue for some of them. This story can only be told via a report-style document.

17/ Mueller is a long way from sending his report to DOJ—and even once he does, court battles, unreviewable over-redactions, and political wrangling may keep much of it from America for many months after that. And the report may or may not seek to tell the entirety of the story.

18/ Trump conspired pre-election with agents of 8 nations to remake global geopolitics in a way that enriches him and his family and offers no benefit to America—in fact, endangers us and our alliances immeasurably. And we may go to the polls without ever getting the full story.

19/ I don't even know what to say. I don't have a solution. Anyone who's put in the time to read hundreds of *major-media reports* from *around the world* dating back *20 years*—this has nothing to do with a "theory"—knows that Trump is perhaps the greatest villain in US history.

20/ But what if America doesn't have the right media or publishing culture to tell a story? What do we do if a story comes along—I'll freely admit this could only happen once a century or less—that's too big for the structures now extant in our culture to encompass? I don't know.

21/ I know this: dozens of subnarratives in this story should've—*in themselves*—been days of media coverage. Trump's "coffee boy" Papadopoulos—who Trump falsely says he's never had a one-on-one with—*introduces Trump to the President of Egypt* and *no one* says, "Wait, *what*?"

22/ The former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (Flynn) takes a secret trip to Israel and Egypt in June 2015 that he later lies about on federal forms, and within 60 days is summoned to Trump's lair to be his shadow NatSec adviser—and 120 days later is dining with Putin?

23/ Trump's shadow adviser Erik Prince goes before Congress and lies over and over and over about who even ATTENDED a meeting Trump sent him to in January 2017? His lies about that meeting.... I think his testimony may be the most criminal testimony Congress has seen in 50 years.

24/ I have the pedigree, training, knowledge, experience and research to not *speculate* that what I'm saying is correct, but to *know* it is. Anyone can read my bio. But that also means that Mueller and his team *definitely* know all this and many in the fulltime media *should*.

25/ I'm just going to stop this thread here—as I don't know what to say right now except that we need more people who have seen the scope of the story to speak up. There are many who know the scope of Trump's treachery and they'll remain politic about it until it's too late. /end

PS/ Some additional thoughts (deep-diving into just one
small corner of the larger story) here:
Unroll available on Thread Reader

Seth Abramson
✔
@SethAbramson
Major-media reporting has the UAE—thus Saudi Arabia—secretly aiding the attempted 2016 coup in Turkey. When the coup failed, the UAE—thus Saudi Arabia—needed to get on Erdogan's good side. Now you know why Flynn simultaneously lobbied for UAE/Saudi Arabia and worked for Erdogan.

775
5:10 PM - Dec 25, 2018

[Cha]

1. KR!!

[Hermit-The-Prog]

2. CSPAN and democracynow can tell it

Live hearings in the House can go a long way toward educating the electorate before the primaries.

Priority 1: Educate the electorate.

[erronis]

3. I agree with "Educate the electorate", but many of them don't care or don't want to know.

It's the old buy-in bias - many of them have bought MAGA caps or trashed the dems/Hillary and can't bring themselves to admit they made a mistake.

Even if that mistake means losing their country, losing their rights, losing a livable place for their children and families.

The few conscientious conservatives (I don't think that's necessarily an oxymoron), have either walked away from the repuglicon party or refashioned themselves. The actual repuglicon congress will do anything it can to stand in the way of an educated electorate.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

5. the Fox cult is large, but it's not the majority

Once upon a time, a liberal was one who believed it is the duty of government to use its power and resources, all granted to it by the governed, to act to improve the lot of its citizens. A conservative was one who believed such changes should not take place faster than the public can accept, nor without due consideration of the consequences of interference by the government into private lives.

These terms have been co-opted by a propaganda machine and the meanings distorted. Newt Gingrich, Roger Stone, Roger Ailes, Lee Atwater, and Rupert Murdoch share most of the blame and shame for the size, reach, viciousness and destructive power of that propaganda machine. "Conservatives" now are simply a regressive, destructive coalition of extremists who consider the only legitimate function of the Federal government to be national defense.

For contrast to today, listen to a couple of old politicians (their political identities were formed decades before the recorded discussion) discuss conservativism vs liberalism:

[erronis]

6. Thanks for that "blast from the past"! It reminds me of why I felt visceral dislike of Goldwater

even as a 20+ year old. Goldwater was already towing the lines from a book-of-lies. Much of what he spouted was not based in fact.

But I also remember my discomfort with McGovern and his presentation, altho I agreed with his position and voted for him.

Goldwater: "Vietnam War was the stupidest thing we got into." Agreed.

Goldwater: It's just politics (the language, the campaigns).

[erronis]

4. That's a powerful set of points that could be the basis for a new investigative hero and publication

I hope someone can pick these up. Someone that has broad national and international coverage. Someone who isn't afraid of the threats and smears that will be forthcoming.

[gademocrat7]

7. K&R!

[Hermit-The-Prog]

8. kick, for the tangled web