Talk:Conspiracy theories related to the Trump–Ukraine scandal/Archive 2

Interference by Some Ukrainians in the 2016 Election Appears Well Documented and is Currently Under Investigation - Are You Sure This is Just a 'Conspiracy Theory'?
I'm confused - how is Ukrainian interference in the 2016 American presidential election a ‘conspiracy theory’? The links below date back to 2016 and are in chronological order. They all discuss the possibility and this is just a brief search restricted only to mainstream media sources. In relation to the Russia Investigation, alleged 2016 Ukrainian interference is also currently under investigation by John Durham. The phrase 'conspiracy theory' in relation to this alleged interference appears rather strong given how widely reported the issue has been these past four years. RBWilson1000 (talk) 03:45, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Financial Times - 2016 https://www.ft.com/content/c98078d0-6ae7-11e6-a0b1-d87a9fea034f Politico - 2017 https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446 NYT - 2018 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/12/world/europe/ukraine-paul-manafort.html The Hill - 2019 https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/435029-as-russia-collusion-fades-ukrainian-plot-to-help-clinton-emerges WSJ - 2019 https://www.wsj.com/articles/john-durhams-ukrainian-leads-11569786611

RBWilson1000 (talk) 03:45, 23 November 2019 (UTC)


 * , See false equivalence. Individual Ukrainians expressing a preference for the candidate who was not expressing support for Russia's invasion of Crimea is not in any way equivalent to the systematic and well funded Russian election interference campaign, which involved troll farms, covert operators in the US, undeclared illegal foreign funding (e.g. through the NRA) and more.
 * It is the conclusion of every Western intelligence agency that Russia interfered in the 2016 US election, and the Brexit vote in the UK as a sort of trial-run. There is no credible evidence of systematic or organised interference by Ukraine, nor is it likely because Hillary would have continued to pursue the anti-corruption agenda that jeopardised Ukrainian oligarchs. Moving Ukraine towards Western not Russian interference is essentially an anti-oligarchy operation, and Trump was probably the only candidate likely to push the other way, helping Putin in his efforts to bring Ukraine back into his Russian empire.
 * Also note that one of your sources (note in passing: cherry-picking is a thing) is John Solomon, who was the conduit for the Yovaovich smears.
 * John Solomon is not your favorite guy, Guy, but that does not mean he is unreliable. Your criticism is irrelevant to the issue. As for the "Yovaovich" (sic!: Jovanovich) "smears," the same holds. You clearly want to smear critics of your prefered people, but that does not necessarily mean in itself that you are always wrong. Neither does that mean your unfavorite people who criticise your favorites are always wrong either. Again, evidence decides. As for you yourself, Guy, please practise writing down a hundred times, "NPOV rules!"122.111.212.235 (talk) 09:24, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Finally, there's the small matter of testimony in the past two weeks. Every single witness who has been asked if there is any foundation tot he idea that Ukraine interfered in the US election in 2016 has said: no. Fiona Hill noted that this false narrative "has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves".. So we call it what it is: a conspiracy theory and a lie. Guy (help!) 11:01, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
 * RBWilson1000, you seem to be confused about true election inteperence and the chance discovery/exposure of crimes (which were intended to help Russia) by Trump's campaign manager which had the potential for influencing (but didn't seem to make any difference) Trump's electability. Manafort's actions were part of the collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, which was the true election interference.
 * I'm not saying we shouldn't ever mention this blip (except the Hill/Solomon source He is not reliable.), but it has very low due weight here and should be done so it doesn't muddy the waters. The real election interference was Russia/Trump against America. Any Ukrainian factors had no effect and were incidental, a form of own goal by the Trump campaign which could hurt itself. This was part of their collusion, and it was exposed. -- BullRangifer (talk) 16:48, 23 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Even if the Hill Source is questionable, you still have the New York Times, Politico, Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal. Also - I excluded a lot of other sources that have previously reported purposely because many consider them right wing. Election interference isn't a zero sum game. There is no reason to believe more than one country didn't interfere in 2016 (I wouldn't be surprised if it's not quite common) so I don't understand why Russian and Ukrainian interference are somehow tied together. RBWilson1000 (talk) 06:12, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
 * They are tied together because of an overarching red thread that runs through the whole Russia/Trump interference in the 2016 elections, and that is to lift the sanctions. That's what the Trump Tower meeting was about.
 * Those sanctions (two sets of them) were imposed because of Russian aggression in Ukraine and election interference by the Russians. That's why Manafort and Carter Page, both very pro-Russian and anti-sanctions, were chosen by Trump. They aligned with his own POV and agenda. -- BullRangifer (talk) 23:56, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
 * , No, what you are doing is called novel synthesis. Some Ukrainians, proabbly in the belief that Hillary would win but certainly on the basis that Trump was alarmingly supportive of Russia, made statements favouring Hillary. The idea that Ukraine was systematically favouring the "female candidate" comes from Vladimir Putin, in person. Guy (help!)


 * Please elaborate on why Solomon/TheHill reporting is to be considered unreliable. Solomon meticulously and consistently cites primary sources for his statements, including official documents. John Solomon has (according to his Wikipedia page) won several awards, and has worked for other reputable outlets, which are considered reliable sources.
 * Furthermore Solomon's reporting on the FISA Abuse, which has been dismissed as "right-wing conspiracy theories" and "unsubstantiated" by uncountable media outlets, happened to be mostly corroborated by the release of the IG report on the matter. It seems Wikipedia editors are consistently dismissive of reporting that does not fit their narrative.Milanbishop (talk) 18:38, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Winning awards doesn't make you immune to being misled. It is documented Solomon had meetings with Rudy and his indicted friends, and subsequently wrote his piece for The Hill. This piece and Solomon himself have subsequently been criticised in multiple reliable sources for misrepresentation of facts and the spreading of misinformation. That he might be right or vindicated regarding FISA is not mutually exclusive of being wrong about other things (such is the nature of investigative journalism). Koncorde (talk) 10:23, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Koncorde thinks that simply having had meetings with Rudy Giuliani automatically disqualifies his research as being unreliable. Wow. Afraid not. Investigative reporting requires interviewing all sorts of people, including if relevant Giuliani. The reporting would be unreliable on this matter if it did not include interviews with Giuliani, in fact. If just meeting with Giuliani leads inexorably to being "misled," Giuliani is indeed a mystically seductive and sinister sorceror entirely unlike all other mere human beings - apparently he's Satan? No, everything turns on the evidentiary record. On this Solomon insists, and is solid. May I remind Koncorde, besides, that Giuliani is not accused of any crime, nor has he been found guilty of any falsehood. He has actually penetrated pretty deeply into these matters, has direct knowledge of them now, and is a prime source.122.111.212.235 (talk) 09:07, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * , We have multiple sources pointing out that Solomon was the conduit for the Kremlin-sourced conspiracy theory of Ukrainian interference, and was also the conduit for the campaign to oust the anti-corruption ambassador Yovanovich, which was pushed by corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs and mobsters with connections to the Trump administration. Kent's testimony established this: https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/george-kents-testimony-destroyed-right-wing-conspiracy-theories-central-impeachment Guy (help!) 11:08, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, Kent is not a reliable witness. He is Jovanovich's deputy, and her own role in the Ukraine scandal is presently under serious investigation. The NABU agency Kent set up, even if it actually worked effectively on anti-corruption, is problematic because it is literally an American government interference in Ukrainian affairs on the face of it, not an Ukrainian initiative nor bureau, and if we are concerned about the Swamp and foreign interference in our own government, we have to be concerned about our government's interference in other countries' affairs too. According to information from Ukrainian anti-corruption crusaders in the Ukrainian Parliament, NABU has not had any sucessful anti-corruption prosecutions since it was created (I think in 2015, if I recall correctly). Its sole activity of note seems to consist of facilitating the movement of billions of illicitly obtained dollars from the Ukraine to the U.S., which the Ukrainian government now has officially declared it wants restored to it. On this, see Chanel Rion's one-hour-long investigative report, "One America News Investigates: Ukrainian Witnesses Destroy Schiff's Case (Part 3)," OAN Dec. 16, 2019, featuring interviews between Rudy Giuliani in the Ukraine and six Ukrainian government officials and political figures, including two successive Chief Prosecutors and three whistleblowers, all prevented from travelling to the U.S. to present their testimony by Ambassador Jovanovich's refusal to issue them visas. See the Youtube video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRFtijtoV6I - it can also be accessed from the OAN website.122.111.212.235 (talk) 09:07, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * From One America News Network:
 * One America News Network (OANN), also known as One America News (OAN), is a far right[1][2][3] news and opinion channel owned by Herring Networks, Inc., launched on 4 July 2013.[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][excessive citations] The network is headquartered in San Diego, California, and operates news bureaus in Washington, D.C.[14] and New York City.
 * The channel targets a conservative and right-of-center audience.[15][16] Its prime time political talk shows have a conservative perspective,[17][18][19] and the channel regularly features pro-Donald Trump stories.[17][20] The channel has been noted for promoting falsehoods and conspiracy theories.[18][21]
 * The problem here is that not only are your sources unreliable, but your mechanism for determining reliability and telling fact from fiction appears to be fundamentally broken. Guy (help!) 11:49, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Guy, I am not surprised that you, as a person of open and marked bias whom some might (rightly or wrongly) call far leftist, heatedly seek to discredit the admittedly (even self-styled) "conservative and right-of-center" focus of OAN News (gasp!), as therefore by definition already unacceptably "far right." It must be, because it is as you say conservative, right-of-center, and worst evil of all, actually "pro-Donald Trump"! QED. But your biases are not determinative, Guy. They are just your problem and should not be Wikipedia's. OAN very vigorously and emphatically stands for American democracy, minority and personal rights and freedoms, the Constitution and the rule of law; it does not promote authoritarianism, violence or racism, is not fascist, and so is not far-right. (I notice that the sources ultimately cited by your obviously hostile and itself leftist Wikipedia article for that libelous characterisation come from leftist or even let's say for some pretty far leftist news media like The Daily Beast and The Guardian, as well as more generally left centrist ABC News and NBC News, which naturally seek to discredit OAN investigations in general, including those made by Rudy Giuliani. These are not reliable non-partisan sources for their claims, but partisan ones.) And your claim that "the channel has been noted for promoting falsehoods and conspiracy theories" applies as well to the entire mainstream media, notably including The Daily Beast, The Guardian, CNN, MSNBC, the NYT and the Washington Post, just to name a few media outlets with particularly blatant false news and mixing expressions of editorial bias with straight reporting again and again, according to their innumerable critics around the country and abroad, so the assertion is vapid on the face of it. You see, anyone who dislikes the orientation of a news channel can claim the same thing, that it "promotes falsehoods and conspiracy theories." That cuts no ice at all and may reveal more about the accuser than the accused. There is a double standard that peeps out in such accusations. How about the mainstream media's constant obsessive falsehoods and blatant conspiracy theories about Trump and first his impeachment offenses against the "emoluments" clause, misuse of campaign finances, blah blah blah, etc. and most persistently the ongoing outrage about his alleged "Russian collusion," which carried on with serial "bombshells" and "explosive revelations" for three whole years, with one dud accusation and conspiracy theory after another evaporating in the light of the next day or week with nary a subsequent full acknowledgement of its error and invalidity in the paper or TV news, no follow-up examination of what went wrong with the reporting, no retraction, apology nor least of all admission of extreme partisanship. The whole claim of Russia conspiracy only ended recently with a whimper with the long-delayed, reluctant publication of the Mueller Report that made clear there had never been any evidence of "Russia collusion" and even suggested that this had become clear to the investigators in the very first months of the Mueller investigation, as evidenced in the hackneyed repetition and continued intentional mispresentation of the same invalid sources of evidence in the repeated FISA applications, and the fact that none of those arraigned before it were charged over those three years with Russia-related offenses, only for other purely personal alleged crimes. Nevertheless, all of the mainstream media has been inundated non-stop with falsehoods and conspiracy theories and still is doing so, with the current hullabaloo relating to the Ukraine. None of the mainstream media, so far as I am aware, have shown themselves to be reliable non-partisan sources that fairly and equally report on all sides of these issues without wilful partisan omissions, distortions or untruths. So the only standard can be the evidentiary one, relying on the facts alone fully examined in context, as assessed by common sense, logic and knowledge of law and the Constitution (in this case) as the Senate Republican lawyers defending Trump have so very clearly and eloquently demonstrated in their detailed trenchant but quiet review of the items of information omitted, distorted, or simply invented by the House Democratic Impeachment managers. That is the sort of standard that should rule Wikipedia too. It is appropriate to the NPOV standard. 122.111.212.235 (talk) 13:43, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * OAN is not a reliable source for use on Wikipedia - see WP:DEPS. The fact that you consider it reliable is prima facie evidence that your judgment of what constitutes a reliable source is out of line with Wikipedia's, almost certainly because your information comes from the right-wing media bubble, which rewards ideological "Truth" in the way mainstream media rewards factual accuracy.
 * If your reading of the Mueller report leads you to conclude that there was "no collusion", then again your evaluation of sources is incompatible with Wikipedia norms. Mueller clearly states that the Trump campaign welcomed interference from Russia and then obstructed investigations of that interference. The "no collusion" narrative relies ion a bait-and-switch: Mueller did not find the necessary combination of both knowledge and intent that's necessary to prove conspiracy (which has been characterised as the "too dumb to crime" defence); in the conservative media, no prosecution for criminal conspiracy means no collusion, despite the evidence of actual collusion (e.g. the "I love it" message from Don Jr).
 * I am amused by the idea of Senate Republicans being eloquent though. That places quite a high value on variations on "laa laa laa I'm not listening". Guy (help!) 14:43, 27 January 2020 (UTC)


 * But "laa laa laa I'm not listening" is just what you have been saying all along, Guy ... as you well know. The Mueller Report itself declared in so many words that it found no evidence of collusion with Russia by any Trump team member. Check it out. You must have missed that page. It is in the summary conclusion. The sneering wilful mischaracterisation of the Republican rebuttal of House Democrat claims tells us you consider Republicans or anyone challenging the Swamp not even worthy to listen to and certainly not to take seriously, or you have decided you are to be permanently incapable of doing so anyway, beyond debate. Your definition of "Wikipedia norms" sounds suspiciously limited only to "people who agree with me." Others do not get a look-in. But I must grant that that sort of thing is true of a lot of Wikipedia articles on controversial subjects such as this. I have noticed long ago that Wikipedia is not a reliable non-partisan source on such subjects, which include surprisingly many topics. (Speaking of Russia, I remember years ago when the Russians were still in the process of taking over east Georgia reading an amazing Wikipedia article on that tragic and bloody episode in Georgian history. The article was obviously dominated by Russian troll editors both in the article and the talk page: the entire narrative justified the Russian invasion, and the few Georgian commentators were simply driven off the pages, over-run by the trolls. Authoritarian/totalitarian groups regularly fund these trolling enterprises. Much the same can be observed for example of Middle-Eastern Muslim-related and Chinese topics, in-house Christian ones, and others; Christians in turn are run off in articles significant to secularists, Jewish topics are invaded by very many hostile others, etc. In such matters Wikipedia is simply not a trustworthy source but just like an opinion survey: the most numerous and aggressively motivated group constituency or set of bullies carry the day and embody the final "consensus." Polite editors and minorities few in numbers like the Georgians are erased and their causes traduced. It is analogous to the bullying in school yards.) So smug mockery is not surprising. 122.111.212.235 (talk) 17:24, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * No, you're referring to the Barr letter, not the Mueller report. Barr's letter materially misrepresented the report. Mueller's testimony to the House reinforced his finding that the Trump campaign actively welcomed assistance from Russia.
 * Actually not to Barr, but to Mueller's Report. Barr's letter did not materially misrepresent that report. It was frank in dissenting from the report regarding obstruction - not collusion. It's worth remembering as well that Rosenstien agreed with Barr and signed the letter as well. However, your comment shows again that you didn't actually listen for example to the Republican response Saturday morning in the Senate. Mueller's conclusion, in the Report itself, was read out, that "ultimately the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities." Obviously, you would not bother to actually listen seriously to the Republicans, of course. So maybe I can refer you to the Wikipedia article written by fellow-travellors on "Special Counsel investigation": "The investigation "identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign", and determined that the Trump campaign "expected it would benefit electorally" from Russian hacking efforts. However, ultimately "the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities." Footnotes to the pages follow.
 * The idea that the Guardian is "hard left" is another example of the ridiculous speed with which the Overton window has moved. The Guardian is centre-left. Trump is demolishing policies introduced by Nixon, decrying them as radical far left socialism. Guy (help!) 17:37, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * One of the traits of echo-chambers restricted only to our own sort is that the "center" tends irresistably to be redefined in one's own terms. It slides away drastically from the center actually out there. "We" are the center. So from a Guardian perspective such as you Guy may share, it represents the center left. Actually, it is far left, as a comparison with the voting population today and/or positions taken by center left parties quite recently and certainly a decade or two ago would immediately reveal. Much the same thing has happened in the American Democratic Party, and this is at the root of its present difficulties both in the presidency candidacy and in Congress. It has lost sight of the center. The reference to Nixon's policies as now being seen by Trump as "radical far left socialism" is a systemic and extreme distortion, but I won't argue it here. 122.111.212.235 (talk) 18:12, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * See https://www.adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/. The reality-based media is quite open about the editorial and content biases of various forms of media. You'll notice from that chart that conservative media has coalesced around the more extreme and less accurate sources. That's the echo chamber effect. If the CNN runs a false story, even if it is ideologically pleasing, it has a strong incentive to correct it. Fox News does not. Fox news is actively penalised by its listeners if it broadcasts accurate stories that conflict with the conservative narrative, per painstaking analysis by Benkler and others. This is almost certainly why Shep Smith is no longer with Fox.
 * Your error is to assume that the bias is symmetrical. It's not. Conservative media has different incentives, so delivers a different type of outcome. The continuum of mainstream sources now includes virtually no right-leaning publications - the WSJ is about it. The only large scale conservative source that's within the zone of mainly accurate reporting is IJR.
 * Obviously it won't seem like that to those who live in the bubble, because they've been conditioned to reject facts that conflict with the conservative narrative as "fake news" or liberal bias. That is a situation that was consciously designed by climate change deniers and creationists. Guy (help!) 18:56, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * In your unself-conscious bubble, Guy, you end up confessing to important truths you are simply unaware you say. So you admit the basic point I have been making all along, that you are very heavily, in fact totally oriented to the left in your editing. You even insist that there are "virtually no right-leaning publications" that can be cited in the Wikipedia articles you edit. Only leftist mainstream media can be cited such as the openly and very strongly Democratic Party boosters The Washington Post and New York Times (naturally, you deny that they are left-wing), although both of these have carried on a ceaselessly false heatedly Democratic Party and anti-Republican narrative in all things to the point of self-parody. As I showed in regard to Trump's actual actions and policies in July 2018, the facts just by themselves simply refute the 3-year-long false "Russia Collusion" obsession of the mainstream media, among other delusions. So facts must be dismissed as "Fox News Talking Points" even though they are not drawn from there, with even transient mainstream media reporting of those events overwhelmed by selective highly emotive focus on manufactured "outrages" in the WaPo, NYT, The Guardian, etc. There is a very long list of discarded "bombshells" littering the mainstream media landscape for the past three years without any significant self-criticism, correction or apology by WaPo, NYT, or other leftist sources. So those media organizations are definitely not self-correcting nor reliable, as you claim. In any case the nearly blanket ban on right-wing sources can only mean that in regard to politicised topics dividing left and right, no Wikipedia articles you edit will be neutral. NPOV is impossible by definition. 122.111.212.235 (talk) 11:03, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * You're wrong, as usual, and for the usual reason.
 * It's not about right-leaning versus left-leaning, it's about factual accuracy. It is an unfortunate truth that, just as banning racists from Twiitter disproportionately affects conservatives, so banning sources that publish conspiracy theories and other falsehoods disproportionately affects conservative sources.
 * I have explained the reasons multiple times, and you seem rather determined to ignore them.
 * I apply this in a bipartisan way. I got Occupy Democrats deprecated, for example.
 * It's a real world problem that we can't fix, and we're certainly not going to fix it by pretending that sources that publish conspiracy theories are somehow accurate. Guy (help!) 11:29, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

I guess I am still dumbfounded by the claim that interference by Ukrainians in the 2016 American presidential election is a “conspiracy theory” and any investigation into it is “politically motivated”. What happened in 2016 is as easy as 1, 2, 3 to understand. I'm a registered Independent and didn't vote for the president but I remember when his campaign chairman resigned and don't like other countries interfering in our elections. RBWilson1000 (talk) 1-21-2020
 * 1. During the 2016 American presidential campaign, news of an investigation into Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in Ukraine broke in the New York Times on August 14 2016 (see 1st link). The allegations stemmed from an alleged 'secret ledger' listing payments from a pro-Russian political party to the campaign chairman and were quickly picked up by other press. Paul Manafort resigns a few days later on August 19 2016.
 * https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/politics/what-is-the-black-ledger.html
 * https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/15/politics/clinton-slams-trump-over-manafort-report/index.html
 * https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/paul-manafort-resigns-from-trump-campaign-227197
 * News flash: Manafort was not in the end accused of being involved in any foreign government interference in the U.S., whether Ukrainian or Russian, to the deep disappointment and even anger of FBI interrogators. He ended up being indicted on tax evasion or similar financial misdeeds irrelevant to this topic.122.111.212.235 (talk) 09:24, 27 January 2020 (UTC)


 * 2. Politico reports a Ukrainian-American DNC consultant, Alexandra Chalupa, worked with the Ukrainian embassy in Washington DC to facilitate dissemination of this and other information related to Paul Manafort.
 * https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446


 * 3. In 2018, Artem Sytnik of the head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, issued a statement in court that the Ukrainian prosecutor's public release of the alleged records “resulted in meddling in the electoral process of the United States in 2016."
 * https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/12/world/europe/ukraine-paul-manafort.html
 * RBWilson1000 02:17, January 22, 2020‎ (UTC)


 * The Crowdstrike claims are incoherent nonsense. Expressing a preference against a candidate who is clearly compromised by your country's mortal enemy is not "interference". Expressing concern that Donald J. Trump, with his well-known history, is unfit for office, is also not interference. The black ledger was real, Manafort is in jail because of his connections to corrupt Ukrainians, Parnas and Fruman are under indictment for the same, and let's not forget that while Russia's interference had an effect, the alleged interference by Ukraine did not. Guy (help!) 17:20, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
 * If there was anything to the 'black ledger' why didn't Manafort face charges based on it from the Mueller Investigation? I do agree and haven't followed all this Crowdstrike stuff but that still doesn't change the fact that the Ukrainian prosecutors office leaked information regarding an investigation into the Campaign Chairman of an American presidential candidate a few months prior to the election to the New York Times in 2016. RBWilson1000 (talk) 18:31, January 22, 2020‎ (UTC)
 * You'd have to ask Robert Mueller, but I'm guessing that the charges on which he was convicted were easier to prosecute with the evidence they already had.
 * A conspiracy theory, as commonly understood, is a false narrative of conspiracy. The claims that Ukraine hacked the US election, that Crowdstrike is a Ukrainian company, that "the server" is now in Ukraine, and so on, is conspiracist claptrap. The fact that certain Ukrainian politicians expressed a preference for anybody-but-Trump over Trump is neither a conspiracy nor particularly surprising, given that he was pushing Kremlin talking points even during the campaign. The election of loose cannons with a predilection for your mortal enemies is not something most politicians would be sanguine about, and in fact politicians in many countries expressed profound reservations about Trump during his campaign.
 * As to Chalupa, as far as anyone can tell she was not working directly for the DNC but someone suggested she ask certain questions that - and I cannot stress this enough - were relevant only because Manafort was known to be compromised. That's the thing we have to keep sight of: nothing aboutt he Trump campaign or the 2016 election was remotely normal. We had FBI leaks about the Clinton email investigation, causing Comey to make his ill-judged remarks, we had the Internet Research Agency targeting social media, we had microtargeting based on Facebook data stolen by Cambridge Analytica, we had unprecedented amounts of dark money feeding the social media trolls, we had Russia funnelling money into GOP campaigns via the NRA and Parnas and Fruman. It was insane, and anyone with access to real intel data knew it. It's likely that hints from HPSCI will have made it to the ears of both GOP and DNC campaign staff, we know Nunes leaks like a sieve and he's probably not the only one. So I invoke Hanlon's Razor: never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.
 * So I guess that's why reliable sources - and thus we - describe the Kremlin-sourced and GOP driven theories as conspiracy theories, and the ones based on fact, as something else. Guy (help!) 19:10, 22 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Well, Guy, I am a bit confused too, like R. Wilson at the start of this thread. Given that Trump is Putin's puppet and was according to you "pushing Kremlin talking points even during his (Presidential) campaign," and that Russia colluded with Trump secretly or independently on its own to support Trump against Clinton, we get the following: Clinton continued Obama's policies. So she as Secretary of State naturally supported Obama's whispered promise to Medvedev, Putin's deputy, in late 2012, at the back of the auditorium after a news conference in Europe, caught on camera and by microphones, that he would of course certainly accommodate Putin's demands to withdraw anti-missile systems from eastern Europe (defending Poland and Europe generally), but could only do so after the coming election (since the American people could naturally criticise what some might call this collusion/capitulation), and he hoped Putin would understand. Obama never supplied Ukraine with weapons to defend itself; Clinton as his Secretary of State agreed to that. After all, following massive donations to her Clinton Foundation, she had already released or permitted the sale of one-fifth of American uranium resources to Russia during her time in office. And she supported Russia's take-over of the former central power-broker role of the U.S. in the Middle East, allowing the trespass over the faux "red line" Obama drew in the air in regard to Syria. This has given a huge slab of the Middle East to Russia, which even has finally gained a seaport of its own on the Mediterranean, something sought since the Tsarist period. How very Machiavellian Putin was, then, in preferring Trump over the seemingly supine and easily controlled Clinton! That the Obama administration as usual did nothing to restrict or counter Russian influence during the election, and the bagatelle that the Steele Dossier paid for by Clinton's DNC was sourced from a Russian agent and was designed utterly to discredit Trump are all details we need not consider. And look what happened when Trump took over. Those pre-election Trump campaign promises and Kremlin talking points were all acted on, right up to the present. As Putin's puppet, Trump showed the fiendish cleverness of the plan when he ordered cruise missile strikes against a Syrian air base housing many Russians in his fourth month in office. Russia's outraged formal statements threatening reprisals were of course just for show. In July of 2017 to huge crowds of cheering Poles, Trump gave an important, rousing pro-Polish, pro-American and strongly anti-Russian speech in Warsaw promising firm military and other support to Poland, which clarified his foreign policy objectives generally, all obviously according to you, Guy, and John Brennan et al., secretly obeying Moscow's dictates and designed for sinister Russian goals. A year later, in July 2018, Trump under Kremlin direction was reported by mainstream media to have travelled to Europe again and to have boasted to cheering English crowds of his expulsion of record numbers of Russian diplomats from the US following the poisoning of the Skripals in England. He then went on to the Continent, meeting with EU and NATO leaders, excoriating them for not building up their NATO forces to the promised levels in ensuring defense of Europe against Russia, and especially lambasting Germany's Angela Merkle for agreeing to a gas pipe line from Russia that threatened to make Germany permanently hostage to Russian policies and objectives. The puppet then went to Helsinki, and seemed to equivocate in one misspoken phrase (he failed to insert a negative in the phrase as he intended) in a long press conference about Russian interference in American elections, proving openly to his critics' enormous satisfaction and anger that he was (as John Brennan put it) a "traitor" under Putin's control (even though Trump corrected the statement the next day). Notwithstanding the media uproar at this major betrayal the traitor then returned to Washington, D.C., where he calmly ordered an almost $300 million military aid program to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia. Furthermore, still of course secretly obeying Putin's inscrutably clever orders according to you, Guy, and most of the leftist mainsteam media, Trump strangely enough actually withdrew (as he had promised in his Kremlin-directed presidential campaign talking points) from the Iran Nuke Deal, and imposed very heavy sanctions on that terrorist and genocidal regime despite its being an ally of Russia in Syria. Yes, it is evident that Putin the Puppet-Master is indeed a very clever and Machiavellian fellow. He obviously sees far into the future, where we lesser mortals cannot go. Maybe you can instruct me on what his plans are with his little mouthpiece Trump. All of the above events, by the way, are massively documented even in left-wing media sources, and follows much of their analysis, too. -- 122.111.212.235 (talk) 02:35, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * That's a remarkable collection of Fox News talking points you have there. We have articles on most of that stuff, so feel free to read them and come back when you've corrected some of your more egregious errors. Guy (help!) 09:14, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Hey man, that's all from mainstream media reports. You mean, Trump never did go to Europe in July 2018 and brag about expelling lots of Russian diplomats? He never insisted on strengthening NATO defense forces against possible Russian aggression, stopping the Russian gas-line project into Germany, or ordering after his return to D.C. hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine (the first significant military assistance from the U.S. that country received since the Russian invasion of east Ukraine)? Was it all just a media fantasy? I thought it was all solid facts, Guy, irrefutable to any honest person. There you go, I just trust the NYT, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC too darn much. They said it happened, but it didn't. It was not reported by them at all. For according to you, all these events, and accusations, were just "Fox News talking points," which are of course automatically not worthy of attention since they are not leftist. How about that? But of course you really know better, Guy, deep in your heart of hearts. However, your response is politically very consistent indeed, even if it manifestly makes you unreliable as an editor in Wikipedia. In any case, Fox News is every bit as reliable and non-partisan as the NYT, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, etc., since I agree with you they are very partisan sources, just leftist when Fox News is rightist. So what? It's the hard evidence of facts that matter, and that's all I listed. You actually have not refuted them, just wished them away. 122.111.212.235 (talk) 09:48, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

"From" being the operative word.

Yes, with determination you can synthesise something from reality based reporting that looks, if you squint hard enough, something like the conservative narrative. But that only works if you ignore the full facts of the issues. We follow reliable sources in characterising things like Crowdstrike and "Ukraine hacked 2016" as conspiracy theories, and the rest as things that either happened or, in some cases, provably didn't despite insistence to the contrary. Like Biden wanting Shokin fired to protect Hunter, which makes no sense at any level. Guy (help!) 11:46, 27 January 2020 (UTC)


 * If Shokin was not actually pursuing corruption issues at Burisma as Biden claimed, you are entirely right, Guy, it would make no sense at any level for Biden to get him fired: his son's corruption would not be revealed to anyone nor made an issue of in his own political circles and future. But if directly contrary to Biden himself Shokin actually was pressing on with corruption investigations and indicating this to Burisma itself just the week or so before Biden's visit, there was on the contrary every reason in the world for Biden urgently to insist he must go, now, immediately, in 6 hours or else: a quid quo pro theatrically boasted of before the world that you seem oblivious of. Your quote from Benkler seems to me to well describe the leftist media bubble as aptly or more so than the rightist version. The so-called professional journalism of the mainstream leftist media has notably displayed itself before all of us these past four years, actually, as astonishingly incompetent, truly unprofessional in ethics and standards, unable for example to correct itself due to political bias that ends up confusing straight reporting with editorial opinionising, unwilling to investigate contrary evidence seriously and thoroughly, etc., etc., etc. These past years have been a bitter revelation of how base the media can go, without remorse or any of the self-correction Benkler boasts of. Have a read of that Mark Levin book, Unfreedom of the Press, that I recommended to you. He lays out the case very well. Benkler obviously could learn something too. It is a misfortune for our Republic. 122.111.212.235 (talk) 18:50, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * There is no evidence of corruption re. Hunter Biden. He was a figurehead director appointed for purely political reasons, all the issues around Burisma predated his appointment, and the evidence clearly shows that Shokin was not pursuing this case. There was an international consensus that Shokin should be removed, it was official US policy and was supported by a bipartisan consensus at the time.
 * I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole of your false assertion that mainstream and leftist are synonymous, other than to point you again at https://www.adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/?v=402f03a963ba and Network Propaganda. Right wing media has excised itself from the continuum of fact-based journalism. If you refuse to acknowledge that, you have no place here. Mainstream is the antonym of bullshit, not of conservative. Guy (help!) 23:14, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Ever so clear, Guy, thank you. It simplifies matter enormously. The entire conservative establishment and its entire right-wing media can be ignored, and must be, as must all the news that favors it. Everything it publishes is bullshit, not fact-based, so it must not be given any attention. If an editor is conservative and right-wing, as are almost all Republicans, "you have no place here." Only Democrats or further left lefties (people at least vaguely like yourself) need apply.
 * By the way, this attitude to facts that might possibly indicate the truth of "right-wing" assertions was already lucidly and definitively indicated in your response to all those actions by Trump I detailed in an earlier post on this page relating to events surrounding the Helsinki meeting between Trump and Putin in July 2018, actions that according to you did not have any relevance and need not be considered because - you said - they were merely "Fox News talking points." Thus they vanished from the screen, and Trump remained plausibly culpable as "Putin's puppet." This very well showed your real attitude to the facts, and treatment of evidence as a Wikipedia editor responsible for this article, even evidence that as I had shown, was stated in mainstream media accounts. You could not deny it, but you could ignore it. If even simply reporting public events themselves became inconveniently confirmative of "right-wing conservative" views that Trump could never have been Putin's puppet and the whole "Russia collusion" claim was a hoax from the start, they simply were removed from discussion.
 * Another by-the-way, your cited source on right vs left media can be critiqued and reversed by other research, since there is plenty out there showing mainstream media unreliability, bias and elision of non-left views over the decades and especially from 2008 on. I've read such research studies over the years, but realise nothing will be accepted that does not agree with you so it is not worth the effort to compile a list. We still see it every day, nevertheless. Take for example, reporting of the present Senate trial and the statements from Trump's lawyers ... how many of those media reports focus on and detail the documentation by the Trump lawyers in the Senate trial on Monday the 27th showing how incorrect are the House Dem's assertion of the "baselessness" of criticisms of Hunter Biden's eager involvement in a profoundly corrupt corporation and being paid millions of dollars for no evident work at all in that corporation? How many detail the Trump lawyers' demonstration of the literal quid quo pro forced on Ukraine by Joe Biden at the threat of withdrawal of a billion dollars in aid, money allocated by Congress itself, simply to defend Biden's son and his own reputation? Crucially, how many note the presumption by Joe Biden that Obama himself would certainly endorse that no matter how serious the consequences for Ukraine's survival? How many devote their columns to describing the public presentation of the open-and-shut case of real and serious and even treacherous Russia collusion between Obama in person and Putin-Medvedev back in 2012, with no real media or Dem outcry or scandal although it had been caught on camera despite Obama thinking it was secret, clearly violating basic American security interests, putting at risk the defense of the whole of NATO including US bases there, for the sake of Russia, and also in passing revealing how Obama intended to hide this from Americans before an election? Where were the media and Dem outcries then about impeachmable treachery and treason, or even news sympathetically reporting Republican objections and criticisms? It is not just an illustration of the hypocrisy of the mainstream media and the House Dems case now, and their lack of interest in these matters back in 2012. It also shows a lot about this allegedly objective and non-partisan mainstream media itself: are we to expect it to issue breathlessly detailed outraged commentaries on these points raised by Trump's lawyers? Of course not. As you and the House Democrats would put it, that was all "baseless." Just "Bullshit." "Fox News talking points." Not news fit to print. So the "baseless" claims in your article before will remain definitively "baseless" and without permissible objection even now. Got it. 122.111.212.235 (talk) 01:42, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I would like to inform you, Guy, that I have called for "Dispute Resolution" relating to what seems the totalitarian-trend of your editorial control and management of this politically oriented topic. The outright banning of non-left-wing views, sources, and media really was a step too far. I went to your "User" page but could not find a way to put the message there. I also found the basic outlook that blocks contrary views on this article explained and justified from your point of view in your discussion on a separate page within your User file relating to your political views. Just as I thought, you are definitely of the Guardian newspaper mentality. The far left nature of this is present for all to see. I am sure that it has infected very many indeed of the articles you have edited. Too bad for Wikipedia. Anyway, I have other things to do with my time and it may be that this may cause Wiki editorial supervisers to drop the case, I don't know, but I do think that if Wikipedia is in fact to preserve a "neutral" point of view (admittedly, this becomes very difficult in many areas of contentiousness, political, religious and social), it has its own very good institutional reasons to monitor and correct many of your blatantly discriminatory and overweening actions, and even to ensure that articles like this are managed by less doctrinaire persons. I will check in from time to time, I suppose, but for now so long. 122.111.212.235 (talk) 03:08, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
 * 122.111.212.235, please provide a link to that DR request. I don't find anything at WP:DR/N. Also, please register an account. Your editing history does not include any links to that DR request, so who are you? Who filed the request? You're not supposed to edit from more than one account. -- BullRangifer (talk) 15:53, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
 * You make the common mistake of assuming that the right wing media bubble is dismissed because it's right wing. That's not the case. It's dismissed because it is habitually inaccurate, for example publishing conspiracy theories in support of an agenda. Counterpunch, Daily Kos, Occupy, Alternet, Bipartisan report and many other leftist sites are also excluded. Bias and accuracy are both important, but accuracy is the more important of the two by a wide margin. Guy (help!) 19:32, 29 January 2020 (UTC)


 * "Accuracy" is crucial? So you say, but you don't walk the walk. Even in your chosen Media Bias Chart cited above, OAN is placed on the same level with MSNBC on the left in terms of accuracy. But your chart puts MSNBC into the "Hyper-Partisan Left" column, while OAN is simply in the much less partisan "Skews Right" column along with the Washington Free Beacon, Newsmax, Fox News, and your other banned sources. So, although I still have a lot of unanswered questions about the survey criteria and methodology, people involved in making it, etc., its assignment of weighting and especially its presumption that the AP is at the summit of centrist "Neutral or Balanced Bias" along with the NYT, WaPo, CNN and The Economist, whereas in fact all are definitely left-tending in outlook and as is typical of such views even pro-terrorist on crunch issues (cf. Matti Friedman, http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/183033/israel-insider-guide), even in its terms you don't really care about accuracy, Guy. The same level of "accuracy" is differently treated if it is on the left or the right. Bias carries the day. Accuracy would have granted all those clear proofs I listed of Trump's strongly anti-Russian actual policy decisions back in July 2018 and later, things Obama never would have done, clearly proving Trump was never Putin's puppet. The mainstream media has been going on for three solid years with endless phoney news about Russia Collusion, Trump "antisemitism" and "racism," Kavanaugh "sexual abuse," and similar daily flop fake items, all ultimately disproved despite all the desperate measures taken by the NYT, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, Guardian, etc. Who can ignore amongst those desperate measures the misleading reporting of events like those in Charlottesville last year (snippets cut from videos to convey the opposite of what happened), giving a pass to coarse hate-speech by sometimes violent anti-Trumpists but pretending outrage for doctored anodyne statements by pro-Trump sources, relying almost solely on anonymous but clearly Obama-tied Swampland sources for policy (including Russia collusion) leaks, sources that by their very nature could never be checked and may have been sometimes wholly imaginary for all we know but whom even the FBI-DOJ Swamp dwellers finally have had to confess, in Congressional testimony itself and before the world, had no foundation in truth. No media apologies have been offered for those highly consequential systemic media lie crusades. Lies also can be shown in a source's strategic omissions, where the source knows the omitted facts are irrefutable and favour the hated other. For example, this article on the Ukraine scandal is filled with such omissions, as Wilson and other editors have noted. Remarkably, your supposedly "accurate" news sources in their reporting on Trump, according to one survey of last year's mainstream media, found that about 95% of the MSM devoted their news reports and commentary to their "bombshell" mythical negativities, but only about 5% to Trump's actual domestic and foreign triumphs, including in taxes, regulation, employment, his role in Dow-Jones records broken, deals with China, S. Korea, Japan, Mexico, and Canada, creating a more muscular NATO, and so on, now even his "Deal of the Century" relating to Israel and the Palestinians -- in all, nearly a new remarkable achievement every day -- all effectively minimized or ignored. If admitted at all, it is usually only to give chief attention to iron-clad critics, e.g., Paul Krugman on the economy, a man proven wrong on just about every point over the past three years. So much for impartial reporting and accuracy. It turns out, in regard to your claim about the "habitually inaccurate" right-wing "media bubble," that that was the sector that in the final analysis was habitually accurate and told the truth about all these things all along, Guy, not your favored leftist media. 122.111.212.235 (talk) 05:38, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Please feel free to identify any place I have cited, or advocated citing, MSNBC.
 * I was the one who got Occupy deprecated. I have removed every citation to Alternet I have found. You are arguing with a straw man.
 * There are, however, two critical differences between, say, Maddow, and OAN. First, Maddow openly admits to being partisan. Second, Maddow cites sources and is anchored to fact not Truth&trade;. Even Maddow, an opinion journalist, draws a clear distinction between fact and opinion, in a way the right wing media now basically does not. As noted above, there is an imbalance of incentives. Right wing media are punished for lack of ideological purity, mainstream media are punished for lack of factual accuracy. The difference is real, and it matters. It matters especially when assessing sourcing for Wikipedia.
 * But hey, if you want OAN declared a reliable source, WP:RSN is second on the left diown the hall. Guy (help!) 12:23, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi, this is to inform you that the request to the Dispute Resolution forum was "closed" by the editor Nightenbelle, on the grounds that the opposing editor at this Conspiracy theories article had not been informed by me the complaintant, the items requesting adjudication were not specified, and another forum might be more appropriate. Of course, the first two reasons are not correct, but there may have been some misunderstanding by Nightenbelle or other snafu: clearly you have been informed, Guy, here and on your talk page, and we have specifically disagreed on the title wording, the reliability of John Solomon, use of Rudy Giuliani as an informant and the rejection of Solomon simply because he interviewed Guiliani, OAN, and other issues. But perhaps another forum would be better: any suggestions? I will also post this note on Guy's talk page. 122.111.212.235 (talk) 12:25, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The problem is much more fundamental. You do not accept Wikipedia's definition of source reliability. We can't fix this here, or at any other article. Guy (help!) 14:19, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Putin
According to Maddow, "Rachel Maddow traces where Donald Trump picked up the conspiracy theory that Ukraine hacked the 2016 election, spotting it being pushed by Paul Manafort, and highlighting a portion of Marie Yovanovitch's Trump impeachment hearing testimony in which Vladimir Putin is quoted pushing the theory."

I'll watch for this in independent sources. Guy (help!) 09:58, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, a step by step run down, from start til present, of the people in that chain would be valuable content. -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:31, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Guy, another thing to watch for is something we can use to change the title of this article to Cover-up of the Trump–Ukraine scandal. The impeachment inquiry is painting that picture quite clearly. Just sayin'... All these conspiracy theories are part of the cover-up. They attempt to create a counterfactual narrative for Trump's base. -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:31, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
 * , we already have that: Impeachment trial of Donald Trump Guy (help!) 19:27, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * LOL! Yes, that's what the Senate mockery-of-a-"trial" amounted to, but normally a "cover-up" is designed to hide wrongdoing. In this case, it was blatant and open. When the lawyers in a trial know of evidence, no judge would ever allow the lawyers for the defense to block that evidence and not allow the proper people to be subpoenaed, especially the actual defendant, which is Trump. All evidence must be used, and all witnesses and the defendant must be used.
 * Here we have everyone knowing that there are first-person witnesses and evidence, and that Trump is blocking the release of his own emails which prove his involvement, and yet Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. did not do his duty and force them to allow the witnesses and evidence. The GOP was allowed to tell everyone "We know who knows what really happened, and we refuse to let them witness." They gave us the finger. The trial was a sham, but the people know and will remember. -- BullRangifer (talk) 20:23, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Now, after that trial, it is even more important that we use the title Cover-up of the Trump–Ukraine scandal, now that the trial made it official. -- BullRangifer (talk) 20:25, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * There are more than enough RSs to back "Cover-up" title. X1\ (talk) 23:53, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

add 60 Minutes item on "Ukraine server"?
X1\ (talk) 00:45, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Scott Pelley, Why President Trump asked Ukraine to look into a DNC "server" and CrowdStrike; The consensus view of the CIA, NSA, FBI and a Senate investigation is that Russians interfered in the 2016 election. But those findings don't line up with the ever-evolving story President Trump has been telling about Ukraine. February 16, 2020 60 Minutes
 * X1\, yes. I saw it. -- BullRangifer (talk) 02:02, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Do you see it as useful here? X1\ (talk) 22:00, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes. It can be used as an EL, and if there is some particularly relevant quote, that could be used at the appropriate spot in the article. -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:40, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

A possibility above (here). X1\ (talk) 23:48, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Wikileaks
I reverted this huge text dump by, who has no other edits. It looks like WP:SYN at best. I am mindful of the fact that the Assangites are in full-on damage limitation mode due to extradition proceedings, so this may be off-wiki coordination. Guy (help!) 22:20, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Actually it's worse than OR: it's copy-pasted from Conservapedia. Guy (help!) 22:42, 19 March 2020 (UTC)