NEWSWATCH: “Carter Page, Useful Idiot; The demonization of Carter Page highlights the most alarming aspect of our recent domestic political turmoil – a disturbing conviction that basic standards of truth or fairness must not be allowed to deflect from the paramount objective of toppling Trump” – The American Interest/Kirk Bennett

February 14, 2018 JRL Russia List United States, U.S.-Russian Relations

Vladirmir Putin and Donald Trump Sitting in Chairs with Flags Behind, adapted from image at whitehouse.gov

“… Reading some of the recent hyperventilating headlines (‘Carter Page admits to advising the Kremlin’), one could be forgiven for wondering whether Page’s years in Moscow were spent working from an office adjoining Putin’s. The reality is disappointingly pedestrian. What Page actually wrote in a 2013 letter is that, ‘over the past half year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for their Presidency of the G-20 Summit next month, where energy issues will be a prominent point on the agenda.’ Color me underwhelmed. * * *

It’s hardly a secret that, for a broad swath of the U.S. political classes and the American press, the removal of Trump has become the Holy Grail, the goal to which all other things must be subordinated. In this sacred endeavor, Carter Page is useful in ways that even the most cynical Russian handlers could hardly have imagined. And if his dignity and reputation must be utterly trashed in the process-well, so much the worse for Page.

Responsible journalism dies in darkness. Or is it dankness?

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