"Republican Senators sabotage Trump with final Russiagate Report (Video)"
The Duran Quick Take: Episode 638 (August 20, 2020)
https://theduran.com/republican-senators-sabotage-trump-with-final-russiagate-report-video/

Alex Christoforou: ". . . If it wasn't for Jim Jordan, Devin Nunes, Matt Gates. The rest of them are just absolutely useless."

[1:43] Alexander Mercouris: "Yeah. I mean, I think the first thing to say about the Republicans, as we've been talking recently, most recently about how the Republican leadership in Congress, and certainly in the Senate has been extremely unhelpful to Donald Trump. In fact, they've bee frankly hostile to him. This report confirms that absolutely. I mean, it is simply a rehash of Robert Mueller talking points, if I can put it in that simple way. I read through it, all 990 pages, but it didn't take very long because I was able to just tick it all off. So, you know: Paul Manafort. Counter Intelligence threat. Danger. He's far too close to the Russians. Which Russians is he close to? As we've discussed many times on these programs, Paul Manafort worked in Ukraine. He didn't work in Russia. And he worked in Ukraine on behalf of the United States. He was one of the people responsible for pulling Ukraine away from Russia."

[2:51] Alex Christoforou: "On behalf of Obama and Biden."

[2:55] Alexander Mercouris: "Correct. Absolutely. That's entirely right. But, you know, here we are back to the story about Manafort, he's some kind of counter-intelligence risk. We see again the Trump Tower meeting. Veslilitskaya, you know, this ludicrous lawyer who comes from Russia who, by the way, no one in Russia takes seriously. She's obviously connected with the Russian government. There was some kind of massive outreach going on by the Russians. And this Trump Tower meeting was all somehow very suspicious, very wrong, that nobody can quite say how or why. It's absolute nonsense. There's absolutely no truth to that. It's been completely discredited. And, of course, you know, all the interactions during the transition period. Basically, that means Flynn with the Russian Ambassador. Something, you know, very sinister and mysterious was going on. The Russians were taking advantage of the inexperience of the Trump people. And, you know, they didn't realize they were being manipulated by the Russians. Again, all absolute and complete nonsense."

[4:12] "A few very gentle raps on the wrist of the FBI. You know, they took the Steele Dossier rather too seriously. And that's what it says. They didn't understand, you know, the hacking issues particularly well with the DNC because, you know, they are so oriented to protecting the victims that they don't quite carry out the investigation processes properly. It's absolute nonsense. It's complete rubbish of a report, frankly. The one thing I would say, the only good thing about it is that it admits there was actually no active collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. But in all other respects it's a whitewash. It's an attempt to revive the whole Mueller narrative that the Russians were up to no good, and they found all kinds of people in the Trump campaign to interact with, but there was no actual collusion. I mean, that's what it's all about."

[5:11] "And what is so bizarre about all of this, what's so weird about all of this is that, of course, since Mueller published his report -- between the publication of the Mueller Report and the publication of this report -- that entire narrative has disintgegrated. I mean, Papadopolous, another person who comes out badly from this, if I can put it like that, he is, again, this rogue operator who is supposedly getting in deep involved with the Russians, Mifsud is, of course, a Russian asset. All of these tropes and themes and memes that we've spent so many hours on our programs, going through, showing how flawed they obviously are, they're all there.

[5:53] "So, clearly, the Republicans in the Senate are not friends with Donald Trump, that -- as you correctly say -- they are covering their backs [i.e., backsides] and they're just perpetuating this mythology. That's all it is now. The problem is, as the indictments roll in from Durham, which I predict they will, what are these people going to do? Presumably, look the other way? Say how 'shocked' they are? Say how surprised they are? But still stick with the same essentional narrative? I mean, this Republican leadership in the Senate, they allowed Russia-gate to continue for three years, even though they knew, everybody was coming along and telling them that there was nothing in this, and they still let it go, let the Mueller investigation continue for all that time. These people are obviously of no use to Donald Trump at all. And, frankly, if I was a Republican voter out there who supports the Republican president and wants to believe in the Republican Party, if I knew about this report, I'd be furious. Fortunately for the people in the Senate, very few of them will."

[7:14] Alex Christoforou: "Yeah, I mean, look, Lindsey Graham, for example, who's one of these guys in the report, and Marco Rubio, the same names we hear over and over again. These RINOs, Republicans In Name Only. Graham knew the [Steele] Dossier was phony. But he continued to say that this stupid Mueller is a man of integrity and if you stop this investigation then we are going to impeach President Trump because Mueller is a man of honesty and integrity and courage, even though he knew the entire Dossier and the entire investigation was bogus, that's Lindsey Graham.

"The Lawyer, Vesilnitskaya, her visa was given to her by the Obama administration, a very strange type of visa, something about unlimited entry, just come in whenever you want, no problem type of visa, that was Obama that gave it to her. How can you go off on Manafort -- and maybe, definitely, Manafort was doing some money-laundering in Ukraine, no doubt about it -- as is just about every U.S. politician involved in Ukraine (i.e., Hunter Biden, i.e, Joe Biden, i.e., Podesta). How can you go after Manafort and not go after Podesta. Podesta is walking free. He's strategizing with the Democrats, even though he was Manafort's partner in crime. They were partners, literally partners in Ukraine, those two guys, Podesta and Manafort. Both Podestas. Both brothers, John and Tony Podesta."

[8:49] "How can you go after Manafort and not bring up Podesta? And finally, this whole thing pisses me off because what this does is it once again throws a bone to the Rachel Maddows and the Chris Cuomos and the Anderson Coopers and all these dumb, dumb, idiots for them to sit there and say, 'Oh, you see? The Russians really did interfere. Republicans are saying it, too. Donald Trump's campaign manager was a Putin puppet and that means that Putin was one breath away from Trump.' And the Republicans? Just stop Republicans. You're not helping. You are useless. Incompetent. Useless. Corrupt.

[9:28] Alexander Mercouris: ""Well, indeed. Absolutely. Because even if you're not a Republican, you should care about the Truth. These people don't care about the Truth. They care, again, about perpetuating this narrative. And by the way, you mention Vesilnitskaya, who else was Vesilnitskaya meeting when she was in the United States meeting Donald Trump junior? She was meeting Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS with whom she was working. It is almost as if all of these things that we've discovered, they suddenly don't exist anymore. We're back to the same old story, the same ludicrous reports. Rachel Maddow and the New York Times and the Washington Post and any number of other people, LAWFARE, they've all been churning out all these last couple of years. Again, there's no ultimate bite here. They can't show this collusion because there clearly wasn't. And they can't show that anybody was a foreign agent, which is what the FBI was trying to do, which is really very sinister, and we talked about this in a program recently. They can't do all of that. But as you absolutely rightly say, they have given more steam to the Rachel Maddows and New York Times editorial page, those sorts of things. And that's ultimately what it seems these people are more concerned to do.

[11:04] "They want to protect themselves. They want to protect, clearly, various elements of the permanent state in the United States of which they seem to be very closely connected with. They don't like Donald Trump. By the way, that came out very clearly to me during the impeachment proceedings also. And they are not helping.

"Now, you know, I have read some comments and some people say that we are too partisan in this thing and we give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt. [But] There is no question here. This is the Truth. There was no Russia-gate. There was no Russian collusion. The whole story is a fiction. So why is the Republican leadership reanimating this corpse? Because a corpse is what it is."

[11:52] Alex Christoforou: "We'll leave it there. Do you have any final words on the stupidity that just does not end?"

Alexander Mercouris: "Well, at some point, the United States needs to move beyond this. It won't be able to until it finally confronts the truth. This thing will just go on hanging over the political system in the United States indefinitely until it is finally cleared up. That is one reason, by the way, why I want the Durham investigation to run its course, and why I want to see Donald Trump elected, and why I hope Durham does actually go after the Big Fish."