Trump TV is alive and well and coming soon to a local station near you.

Courtesy of Press Herald:  

In the midst of the local news, a taped commentary from President Trump’s former special assistant Boris Epshteyn appeared on the screen, trumpeting the administration’s position with what he thought selective use and abuse of facts. 

McCutcheon, a small-business owner and political independent, describes the experience as “surreal,” “extremely jarring” and “so out of place with the friendly, local broadcast from news people I’ve come to trust over the years.” There was no rebuttal, no context, no alternate point of view – a situation he found concerning. 

WGME-TV (Channel 13) and WPFO-TV (Channel 23) each carry the segments nine times a week on orders from their owner, the Maryland-based Sinclair Broadcasting Group, the nation’s largest owner of local television stations and an aggressive, unabashed disseminator of conservative commentary supporting the Trump wing of the Republican Party.

......

Portland’s WGME, a CBS affiliate, and its sister station WPFO, a Fox affiliate, are required to air them. They are the only stations in Maine that are forced to run editorial commentary by their corporate parent. 

“It’s unheard of to have one company pushing one specific agenda reaching so many people and doing it in a way designed to evade local input,” says Craig Aaron, president and CEO of Free Press, a Washington-based group that opposes media consolidation. “The idea of having local stations offer an array of viewpoints is great, but what we get with Sinclair is one set of political leanings being broadcast everywhere.”

Yes, Sinclair Broadcasting is the same conservative news outlet that John Oliver warned us about at the beginning of this month.

What may be even more troubling than the fact that Trump TV will now be broadcast into our homes while camouflaged as local news coverage is how they ended up with so many local TV stations under their control.

Courtesy of The Stern Facts: 

Sinclair Broadcasting is buying dozens of local television stations from the Tribune Company, which will expand their reach to create the largest local news broadcast empire our country has ever seen on TV. 

It’s taken some very special help from the Trump Administration. 

With the addition of one of Trump’s top surrogates, the stage has been set to distribute Administration propaganda nationally, without telling the audience that they’re watching biased local news, even though it’s branded ABC, CBS or NBC. 

Sinclair says it has 173 television stations in 81 markets, broadcasting 514 channels and having affiliations with all the major networks. 

By 2013, Sinclair Broadcasting owned more TV stations than anyone else in the country. 

Now, they will vastly exceed the FCC’s cap on how much local television market share a single corporation — 39% of the national viewing market to be precise — is allowed to hold after purchasing the Tribune company’s 42 stations and 14 more in a separate deal. 

But first, they cut a deal with during the campaign with Jared Kushner for “good” coverage of the Trump Administration, which seems to have paid off with a major regulatory change in their favor. 

What was that regulatory change?

This:

The FCC caps broadcast licensees from reaching more than 39% of Americans to limit the amount of power concentrated into the hands of a single television broadcaster. 

It took a vote on changing regulations initiated by the FCC’s fiercely partisan Trump appointee Ajit Pai who resurrected a regulation that the Obama Administration killed in 2016, reinstating rules about UHF TV signals to enable the $3.9 billion dollar deal that will take Trump TV from 30% of America’s television households up to 72% of local viewers. 

That folks is one of the most egregious examples of "pay for play" that I have ever seen.

But even though that was a major clarion call for Tea Party conservatives, and their queen Sarah Palin, back in the day they won't utter a peep about it.

Why?

Because it helps further their agenda, that's why.

Face it my friends, journalism, facts, and even the fabric of our reality are now under constant assault. And the only defense we have on our side is the truth.

Here's hoping that will be enough.

CNN reports that the Russians used Trump advisers to attempt to infiltrate campaign. I'm sorry, "attempt?"

Courtesy of CNN: 

The FBI gathered intelligence last summer that suggests Russian operatives tried to use Trump advisers, including Carter Page, to infiltrate the Trump campaign, according to US officials. 

The new information adds to the emerging picture of how the Russians tried to influence the 2016 election, not only through email hacks and propaganda but also by trying to infiltrate the Trump orbit. The intelligence led to an investigation into the coordination of Trump's campaign associates and the Russians. 

These officials made clear they don't know whether Page was aware the Russians may have been using him. Because of the way Russian spy services operate, Page could have unknowingly talked with Russian agents.

I have seen a few interviews with this Page guy and it seems likely that he is either a gifted actor able to lie right to your face without raising suspicions, or a complete idiot easily manipulated by just about anybody who spends five minutes talking to the guy.

I would however point out that the report specifically says "advisers" which leads me to think that Page was not their only "useful idiot."

That could mean that Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, and perhaps a few others could also have been compromised.

At the end of the article was also this rather interesting nugget: 

Intelligence analysts and FBI investigators who analyzed various strands of intelligence from human sources to electronic and financial records have found signs of possible collusion between the campaign and Russian officials. But there is not enough evidence to show that crimes were committed, US officials say. 

Part of the problem for investigators has been that they lost their opportunity to conduct the investigation in secret after several leaks last year revealed FBI was looking at people close to the Trump campaign. After those reports, people that the US was monitoring changed their behavior, which made it more difficult for US officials to monitor them.

So that means that there likely IS evidence of some collusion between some in the Trump campaign and the Russians, but because those under investigation were made aware that they were under investigation that they may have destroyed data needed to charge them with actual crimes.

That kind of sounds to me as if the FBI knows that the Russians were actually successful in infiltrating the Trump campaign, but just can't prove it yet.  

Of course if the FBI can prove they destroyed evidence after being notified of an investigation that is enough on its own to charge them with a crime.

So fingers crossed.

The Intercept obtains the FBI Counterterrorism Policy Guide which details how the agency ferrets out white supremacists who have infiltrated police departments around the country.

Courtesy of The Intercept: 

White supremacists and other domestic extremists maintain an active presence in U.S. police departments and other law enforcement agencies. A striking reference to that conclusion, notable for its confidence and the policy prescriptions that accompany it, appears in a classified FBI Counterterrorism Policy Guide from April 2015, obtained by The Intercept. The guide, which details the process by which the FBI enters individuals on a terrorism watchlist, the Known or Suspected Terrorist File, notes that “domestic terrorism investigations focused on militia extremists, white supremacist extremists, and sovereign citizen extremists often have identified active links to law enforcement officers,” and explains in some detail how bureau policies have been crafted to take this infiltration into account. 

Although these right-wing extremists have posed a growing threat for years, federal investigators have been reluctant to publicly address that threat or to point out the movement’s longstanding strategy of infiltrating the law enforcement community. 

No centralized recruitment process or set of national standards exists for the 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States, many of which have deep historical connections to racist ideologies. As a result, state and local police as well as sheriff’s departments present ample opportunities for white supremacists and other right-wing extremists looking to expand their power base.

The article also references a 2006 FBI internal intelligence assessment, which we talked about here back in July, that essentially reveals that the white supremacist groups’ have a “historical” interest in “infiltrating law enforcement communities and recruiting law enforcement personnel."

The intercept further reveals a couple of examples, such as a Chicago police detective, identified as a KKK member, referring to a device that delivered electric shocks as a "nigger box,"  while in Cleveland, officials found that a number of police officers had scrawled “racist or Nazi graffiti” throughout their department’s locker rooms.

In Texas, two police officers were fired when it was discovered they were Klansmen. One of them said he had tried to boost the organization’s membership by giving an application to a fellow officer he thought shared his “white, Christian, heterosexual values.”

The assessment also identified the term "ghost skin" which essentially meant a white supremacist who hid their racist tendencies so as to blend in at local police stations, allowing them to recruit like minded officers from within at their leisure.

The article further points out that things became much worse after President Obama was elected, with the white supremacists using the newly invigorated racism bubbling to the surface to recruit a large number of new members, often singling out “disgruntled military veterans” as likely targets for recruitment.

The article also points out that DHS has essentially stopped doing any investigation into white supremacist infiltration of the police, while the police do not screen applicants for membership in hate groups, which left the FBI to do the vast bulk of the work.

And that of course begs the question of whether or not the FBI will still feel compelled to continue these investigations in Trump's America, or if they will now also find themselves targeted by the newly energized white supremacist movement?

Or perhaps an even better question to ask is, have they already been infiltrated?

Trump just literally blew a kiss to James Comey at a WH reception for law enforcement pic.twitter.com/HwVq9DNdZd

— Richard Hine (@richardhine) January 22, 2017

If you get my meaning.