Oh Noes! There's a super sekrit memo that proves Hillary did it! Obama, too!
And the Democrats are blocking the release of the memo because conspiracy!
Here's what you have to understand about the Republican Playbook. It's based on all the Groundswell propaganda mind control they've been doing since back in the Grover Norquist days (h/t Karoli, and do check out our Groundswell Archive, worth the click)
1) Gather at least one representative from each right-wing organization along with at least ten lawmakers with extreme views (in today's instance Steve King, Mark Meadows, and Devin Nunes.)
2) Make sure Hannity is given advance wording so the base is firmly on board.
3) Use a central mailing list to create the appearance of a thing.
4) Disseminate on social media with a consistent and inflammatory message (Today's is "FISA Memo is Worse than Watergate") which misleads but accomplishes the purposes of distraction, anger and fear.
Add to that
5) Disseminate with help from Twitter nutjobs like Jack Probisec, Prison Planet, and Mike Cernovich.
And of course
6) 600 CONFIRMED Russian Bot accounts.
Republican lawmakers are pushing for the House Intelligence Committee to release a memo written by the panel's chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, that outlines purported surveillance against then President-elect Donald Trump by former President Barack Obama's administration during the transition period.
And Russia-linked Twitter bots have jumped on the bandwagon.
#ReleaseTheMemo is the top-trending hashtag among Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence operations, according to Hamilton 68, a website launched last year that claims to track Russian propaganda in near-real time.
The frequency with which the accounts have been promoting the hashtag has spiked by 233,000% over the past 48 hours, according to the site. The accounts' references to the "memo," meanwhile, have increased by 68,000%.
Summarizing @Susan_Hennessey's very helpful thread:
[The memo] appears to be some loose collection of Nunes's individual unfounded allegations related to unmasking, not clearly even endorsed by his fellow Republicans, now being seized on by opportunists looking for a Hail Mary to try to tank the 702 bill before Trump signs it.
I have no clue what game Nunes is playing at but this has nothing to do with 702. Furthermore, no one is "releasing" anything without an executive branch classification review. Even for four pages, that's a multi-week endeavor.
My prediction is that after causing completely unnecessary chaos today, this memo will be released in some redacted from in a few weeks and prove to be an utter embarrassment to Nunes personally, the HPSCI majority, and frankly to US House of Representatives.
As if they have any shame.
And while #ReleaseTheMemo trends and trends, everyone is supposed to ignore
- "The Potus wanted to be spanked with a Forbe's Magazine" story.
- The "Here's the LLC that paid hush money to the porn star for Potus" story.
- The Republicans run the government yet can't avoid a shutdown story.
- And "Potus is holding a for-profit party for millionaires while workers are furloughed" story.
And meanwhile no one in Congress is suggesting actually going after the FBI or the FISA court to actually investigate what is IN the MEMO because that would blow the whole ruse to smithereens.
