Source: Antiwar.com
by Ron Paul
“The ‘Russiagate’ crisis was invented by the Hillary Clinton campaign as a dirty trick to use against Donald Trump in the 2016 election campaign. It may not have defeated Trump, but it hobbled his presidency. The result of this manufactured claim that the Russians (and Chinese and Iranians, etc) are meddling in our affairs and manipulating our elections is that the federal government determined that the First Amendment no longer applies to us. … They even created an entire government entity within the State Department – the ‘Global Engagement Center’ (GEC) … to ‘recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States …’ As it turned out, this ‘Center’ was not at all about countering foreign ‘bad actors’ but about silencing Americans who held views the powers-that-be in DC do not like.” (01/08/25)