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And Finally Artist News Beef Of The Week
Beef Of The Week #388: Moby v Donald Trump
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 19 January 2018
Donald Trump gave out some Fake News Awards this week, for reasons I’m not sure he’s even entirely clear on. The criteria for the prizes are difficult to get a handle on. One thing’s for sure, in the year he’s been in charge of the fucking United States Of America, the world has been a pretty weird place. One where Moby – MOBY – has been accused of being recruited by the CIA to destabilise Trump’s authority. Once again, please note, that’s an actual thing Moby has actually been accused of.
The origins of this story date back almost a year to February 2017, when Moby claimed on Facebook that he had insider information on Trump. This was shortly after Buzzfeed published that unverified dossier of information making various claims about the new US president’s connections to Russia. Buzzfeed may not have been able to verify it, but Moby was apparently in a position to confirm that it was all “100% real”.
“He’s being blackmailed by the Russian government”, wrote Moby. “Not just for being peed on by Russian hookers, but for much more nefarious things. The Trump administration is in collusion with the Russian government, and has been since day one”.
He added that Trump was looking to shore up public opinion by starting a war. “Probably with Iran”, he said at the time, although I suppose North Korea will do. Iran is an ally of Russia, after all.
Anyway, Moby discussed that whole thing in an interview earlier this month, in which he said that he’d been given the lowdown on Trump and Russia by a number of “active and former CIA members” over dinner. They then encouraged him to share this information online because he had a bigger social media following than them.
“I’ve made a few friends in the intelligence community”, he said. “I guess about a year ago, we were having dinner and they were really concerned … [that] we have a Russian agent as the president of the United States. So they passed on some information to me and they said, look you have more of a social media following than any of us do, can you please post some of these things”.
He added that when he posted that information, he was fairly optimistic that something would happen to address everyone’s concerns. However, since then his feelings have changed.
“You have so much evidence pointing to the fact that the Trump administration is really in bed with the Russians in a very pernicious way”, he said. “Unfortunately I just don’t see people in Congress holding the administration accountable. It’s really disturbing, and it’s going to get quite a lot darker”.
I’m not really sure what sort of political influence Moby has these days. Or ever had. But the interview nevertheless rang alarm bells for some Trump supporters – not least shouty conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. His YouTube channel published a report, tying Moby’s claims about having dinner with CIA agents to an alleged long-term programme in which sinister figures in the security services use the media and celebrities to spread “fake news”.
Moby responded to this on Facebook by saying that his comments in the interview had been misconstrued, and that “the CIA didn’t ask me to post about Trump and Russia, as much fun as that would be”.
However, he added: “For what it’s worth, I do have some friends at other intelligence agencies who have told me that there is genuine concern, globally, that Trump is desperate for a war, either with North Korea or Iran. He needs a distraction as the Russia probe gets closer to home”.
He added that the “broad consensus” is that the dossier published by Buzzfeed last year is “quite accurate”.
“Trump is a dirty foreign agent”, he concluded. “One way or another the depths of his, and his campaigns, collusion (and treason) will be revealed. Just watch”.
I’m not sure Moby is really handing out much in the way of information that people couldn’t come up with themselves, but it would be fun if it did turn out that he was – in fact – a font of insider knowledge on the future fate of Donald Trump. In fact, I haven’t been this excited since there was an outside possibility that Courtney Love had discovered the location of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
Trump’s Fake News Awards claimed that reports of collusion between the current president’s administration and Russia is “perhaps the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people”. “THERE IS NO COLLUSION”, emphasised an article on the Republican Party website unveiling Trump’s awards.
This does not mean the Russia story is going away though. Yesterday, the House Intelligence Committee in US Congress released a transcript of an interview with Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS, the company behind the dossier published by Buzzfeed last year. There were plenty of allegations in there to ensure that this story will stay in the headlines for some time to come, whatever Moby may do, say, know or believe.
