Wikileaks’ Julian Assange is quite the character. Vilified by some, especially on the right, when he released a deluge of documents relating to the Iraq and Afghan wars—all of this thanks to former Private First Class Chelsea Manning. He’s been in the news due to the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of Seth Rich, who some have speculated was the leak in the recent Democratic National Committee email fiasco that pretty much forced the resignations of everyone at its executive level. We don’t know who murdered Rich, but Assange has been cryptic in his suggestions that he could be the leak, and that he was murdered for it.
Now, Assange is warning American media that Hillary Clinton is a “demon,” who will place nooses around our necks should she win the presidential election (via The Hill):
The American liberal media is falling over themselves to defend Hillary Clinton,” he told The New York Times during a Facebook video interview Wednesday.“[They are] erecting a demon who is going to put nooses around everyone’s necks as soon as she wins this election, which she is almost certainly going to do.”
Assange, whose organization released internal emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) believed to have been stolen by Russia, said it is particularly troubling that the Democrat's campaign has linked her critics to Russia.
“[It’s] that attempted reframing by Hillary Clinton, to declare media organizations that are publishing material that shows illicit behavior in the [Democratic National Committee] to fix the election for her, as somehow being Russian agents,” he said.
“Her campaign has effectively called, or maybe even directly called Donald Trump, the opposition leader in this case, a Russian agent,” Assange added of the GOP’s presidential nominee.
“Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, the fourth candidate effectively in terms of numbers, has also been called a Russian agent. This is a neo-McCarthyist hysteria.”
In July, The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald, who broke the story of the National Security Agency’s activities due to information obtained by Edward Snowden, also acknowledged that the American media is 100 percent against Trump in an interview with Slate. He’s okay with that since he feels that Trump’s positions are dangerous. Yet, he’s also unwilling to go along with every fact-free slander out there against the man, namely that he’s a traitor who called on Russia to hack into Clinton’s email server:
OK, so, I am glad you asked about that because this is the conflict that I am currently having: The U.S. media is essentially 100 percent united, vehemently, against Trump, and preventing him from being elected president. I don’t have an actual problem with that because I share the premises on which it is based about why he poses such extreme dangers. But that doesn’t mean that as a journalist, or even just as a citizen, that I am willing to go along with any claim, no matter how fact-free, no matter how irrational, no matter how dangerous it could be, in order to bring Trump down.So, literally, the lead story in the New York Times today suggests, and other people have similarly suggested it, that Trump was literally putting in a request to Putin for the Russians to cyberattack the FBI, the United States government, or get Hillary Clinton’s emails. That is such unmitigated bullshit. What that was an offhanded, trolling comment designed to make some kind of snide reference to the need to find Hillary’s emails. He wasn’t directing the Russians, in some genuine, literal way, to go on some cybermission to find Hillary’s emails. If he wanted to request the Russians to do that, why would he do it in some offhanded way in a press conference? It was a stupid, reckless comment that he made elevated into treason.
A liberal who wants to fight fair—I’m not necessarily against that principle. And Greenwald has gone after both parties with equal fervor. Nevertheless, it’s interesting that both men who are vilified by the Right, seem to be trying to be the canary in the coal mine over Clinton’s possible nature, or warning against media outlets going off the rails to attack a person they don’t like by using “unmitigated bulls**t” as ammunition. Also, the fact that Assange called Clinton a demon is somewhat satisfying.