The Trump campaign's oppo-researched "JD Vance Dossier"

Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein obtained the Trump campaign's opposition-research dossier on JD Vance, compiled when the infighting was raging over who should be named the Golden Child, the possible heir to the heaven-sent throne, the poor bastard whose reputation will never recover.

I say prospective poor bastard not bitch only because the mere idea of Donald having to work with a woman most assuredly hurled him and those who would suffer terribly with him into frequent episodes of severe seizures coupled with clinical depression.

The title of Klippenstein's post: "Read the JD Vance Dossier," subtitled "We're publishing the supposed Iran-hacked document." He links to it five-paragraphs down, which I twice mistook for an inserted ad. And it's a link, not the full document, on his website, since the full monty is 271 pages long.

In his post, Klippenstein's content is mostly about why he chose to publish and why arguments against publishing — primarily "the government’s campaign against 'foreign malign influence'" — don't hold up. One argument he makes in favor of light is, I think, incontrovertible: "If the document had been hacked by some 'anonymous' like hacker group, the news media would be all over it." To this he adds: "I’m just not a believer of the news media as an arm of the government."

I'll note that The NY Times, for one, got a bellyful of that practice in 1961, as did President Kennedy. When the paper acquired top-secret info on America's imminent Bay of Pigs invasion, before going to print it let the president know it had the goods. Kennedy pleaded silence on the Times' part in the name of national security. The Times agreed and the invasion was an embarrassing bust for POTUS, who later told the Times reporters that he wished they had proceeded with publication, thus nixing the CIA's boneheaded plan. 

As for the Trump campaign's top-secret info on JD, Klippenstein does us a favor by reducing the document's "highlights" to a few bullet points in its own wording. His introduction: "The Vance Dossier is factual and intelligently written. No Jason Bourne style capers appear, and there’s no sleaze. Instead, the Vance Dossier enumerates pretty reasonable liabilities as a then-contender for VP nominee, including:

• “Vance has been one of the chief obstructionists to U.S. efforts to providing [sic] assistance to Ukraine.”

• “Vance criticized public health experts and elected officials for supporting Black Lives Matter protests while condemning anti-lockdown [Covid] protests.”

• “Vance ‘embraced non-interventionism.’”

• “In 2020, Vance criticized President Trump’s airstrike killing Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, worrying it would continue to bog down America in the Middle East to the advantage of China. Vance suggested that the country had been entangled in wars in the Middle East so ‘financial elites’ could profit from the rise of China.”

Pretty dry, penetratingly dull — especially when compared to the reply that hack-inquiring Klippenstein received from the Trump campaign's uncommunicative communications hatchet-man Steven Cheung: "The terror regime in Iran loves the weakness and stupidity of Kamala Harris, and is terrified of the strength and resolve of President Donald J. Trump." Oh how I wish he had written the dossier.

Politico's Marc Caputo was struck not by "what’s in the 271-page file" — that, I'd say, was a given, for there's nothing striking about it — "but what was left out." The omission is indeed a rather curious one: the warm, personable JD Vance's observation about "childless cat ladies." He made the off-the-point-of his-head remark in a 2021 interview on Fox News, the host, Tucker Carlson.

Writes Caputo: "The exclusion suggests that Trump campaign researchers either missed Vance’s incendiary remarks or thought they were no big deal. The former, however, seems implausible as the document posted by Klippenstein included dozens of other citations of Vance’s appearances on Carlson’s show." 

I agree. The oppo-research was conspicuously deep, 271 pages deep. That the diggers happened to overlook this one interview as they were lifting material from other Fox News interviews is, in the word's true sense, unbelievable. Yet there's a prima facie case to be made in advocacy of the "no big deal" alternative.

Trump has cocooned himself with 100 percenters, which is to say, those who think in unconditional conformity with the whats and whys of that which passes for his thinking. Caputo doesn't advance the perfectly "plausible" case I'm making, probably because he'd see it as unseemly of an upper-ranks, among-the-elites journalist.

I'm unburdened by such august monikers, hence I can say without fear of reputation harm and with the highest of confidence that the oppo people of the Trump-cloned absence of sophisticated cognition watched JD's Fox interview and gave it no thought — precisely because, at most, they chuckled a bit at his "childless cat ladies" punching-down routine (another characteristic of TrumpThink), thought maybe What a guy, what a real man, and went on, unconcerned about a soundbite that would do the campaign its greatest damage.

But in any case, the much-mysterious super-secret Trump documents could have remained so, while in no way subtracting from the sum of whatever might have been interesting — excepting my proffered, unilateral and unmitigated guesswork, which you're welcome to rip into pieces. 

Comments

[Anne J]

I think his vile remarks directed at women were what clinched their decision to choose him.

It obviously wasn't a deal breaker. My wild guess is that it was a deal sweetener.

[Anne J]

I wonder if Trump's oppo research team saw this interview:

https://youtu.be/Bm_Ozma50Ao?si=y8PffKMKYSJAiaVZ

[PM]

Thank you for the ad heads-up, Anne. It needs more exposure and I'll do my small part soon.