Luke Harding - The Neocon blame Russia flavor of the month

The radio is mostly on when driving.  If out in the morning, two of the most powerful stations out here in nowheresville have Glenn Beck on in the morning.  Usually, he is not worth listening to.  

On the day in question, he was not worth it, but he was working at a higher level of disinformation.  He was interviewing Luke Harding, author of Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win.

The two lads were having a lovefest with each other and a hatefest over Trump and Putin.  That's not that horrible as Beck is not taken seriously by the cool people.

Ah, but Terri Gross is a certified heavy hitter.  Her show on NPR is important.  She speaks with the interviewee with a serious, if low key tone.

Though I hear her not infrequently in the car, it is hard to say if she has ever been adversarial with guests.  With Mr. Harding it was certainly not that (link to transcript).  It may have not been the near French kissing that Beck seemed to be doing, but it did seem to agree with Luke in a let's get to the bottom of this tone.  She truly seems to be on team collusion in the exchange below.

But actually, if I'm honest with you, Terry, I mean, this book was quite easy to write because it is such a compelling story. It is like a thriller, but with bizarre elements, but just a kind of relentless plot. And I kind of wrote each chapter as sort of character by character so that there's a chapter on Steele, there's a chapter on Michael Flynn - who jokes to a Russian that he met that he was actually General Misha, which is Russian for Michael - and Paul Manafort, whom I met, and so on. And I - you know, the book, I think, came together in record time.GROSS: You know, you're right. Initially, Trump was happy to have the Russia investigation deflect attention away from his business dealings in China and other emerging markets because you say, unlike in Russia, these were substantial and involved the payment of large bribes and kickbacks.

HARDING: Well, again, we can't prove this. But this is what the Steele dossier alleges. And it's based on Steele's own secret sources. And by the way, no one knows who they are, these secret sources. But I think one point, which is kind of very important on the sources, is that I've talked to friends of Steele's. And what they point out is that these sources were not new. They're not people that he kind of discovered yesterday. They are trusted contacts who essentially had proven themselves in other areas.

Notice after Ms. Gross gives him the you go guy, he does say, it can't be proven.  The whole tone is it's true even if there is not absolute (or any) evidence.

The session ends with,

There may be some errors there. But broadly, I think people in British and American intelligence think the dossier is correct, which means that Donald Trump is compromised.GROSS: Well, Luke Harding, thank you so much for talking with us. And thank you for your reporting.HARDING: Thank you, Terry. It was great.

You bet it was.
I am not a Trump fan.  Some of his campaign statements I liked.  Wanting to get along with Russia and not make more of a mess in Syria were good.  He is too supportive of Saudi Arabia in Yemen and making noise with the Norks is a waste of time.
But,

Messing around with the constitutional order and doing what you can to take back an election because the guy is not one of the elite smacks of the late Roman Republic.  Responsible people would be wanting to shore that up rather than crashing it.

Luke Harding and his book have their fans for what it says about Trump.   Yeah, Terri, who is part of the Ministry of Information is all for him as are, no doubt, others of that brand.

There was a fellow who did ask Harding a few questions that were a bit less than smooches.  Look at the video below.

As it says on the intro page,

The Real News Network's (TRNN) Aaron Maté politely and professionally dismantles shameless Guardian reporter and author Luke Harding.

Aaron is a class act. Don't expect to see Mr. Maté on CNN or MSNBC, Fox, or dare one say it, NPR.