Trump and McCartney: Dubious Rumors

Right From the Start

You may remember when The Beatles Paul McCartney died in 1966 as a result of injuries sustained in the fiery crash of his Aston Martin sports car. It was all over the news. The car was never recovered and neither was Mr. McCartney’s body. There were no photographs of the scene, no accident report filed and no death certificate issued. There was also no confirmation from spokesmen for the Beatles or from friends and family of Mr. McCartney. The lack of denial was sufficient proof for the media – Paul McCartney was dead.

The release of their Abbey Road album three years later in 1969 featuring Mr. McCartney on virtually every cut served as proof positive not that he was alive but rather that he was, in fact, dead. The evidence was overwhelming. For instance:

The Abbey Road album cover showed Mr. McCartney walking barefoot – symbolic of how the dead are buried in some Eastern cultures – and John Lennon is in white – symbolic of funeral attire in some Eastern cultures – while Ringo Starr is in black – symbolic of funeral attire in England.

Overlays of facial images SHOWED that Mr. McCartney’s pictures on the album were those of an imposter, Billy Pepper, who had undergone reconstructive surgery and whose original likeness was displayed on the Beatles’ White Album. Subsequent examinations by facial imaging experts revealed that the pictures were actually Mr. McCartney but that did not deter the conspiracy theorist nor the media even in the slightest. (Is this sounding familiar?)

But the real proof of Mr. McCartney’s death was found in the words and music of the Beatles themselves. For instance:

Reference to “Billy’s here” in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, is, in fact, a slurring of the words Billy Shear – referring to Billy Shear Campbell– the alleged look-a-like that replaced Mr. McCartney.
Lovely Rita refers to the meter maid who distracted Mr. McCartney thus causing the crash that took his life.
In Strawberry Fields Forever John Lennon is heard singing ”I buried Paul.”
On All You Need is Love again Mr. Lennon is heard to sing: “Yes, he dead” (Subsequent examinations however show that Mr. Lennon is actually saying “Yesterday”)
And the most telling one is found on the White Album’s I’m So Tired where the ending refrain when played backward at altered speeds says “Paul is dead, man, miss him, miss him.” (Again subsequent examination shows that it unintelligible gibberish.)

The above are just a sampling of the lyrics supposedly confirming Mr. McCartney’s death. The more often these myths were debunked, the deeper that those dedicated to the conspiracy dove and the more murky and tangential their connections and proofs became – they would never be deterred. (Again, is this sounding any more familiar?)

Then there were the people knowledgeable about what “actually occurred” – the insiders, the people in the know, the well-placed sources, the bona fide loons. These were the people who “actually” witnessed the crash, or witnessed the team of men in black vans who removed all evidence of the crash – including the body of Mr. McCartney, or witnessed the burial of Mr. McCartney in a remote escarpment in the Scottish Highlands complete with a mysterious veiled woman. But when questioned, we find out that they didn’t actually witness this at all; rather it was a third cousin who got it from a neighbor who heard from a man who delivered flowers to the woman living across the street from Mr. McCartney’s one-time neighbor. But they were not deterred and the more one pressed the more imaginative the story became and the more certain the teller that it actually occurred. All of this without a single fact. (Are you sure you haven’t heard something similar recently?)

Despite the absolute certainty of those promulgating the grand conspiracy, the truth of the matter is that Paul McCartney did not die in a fiery car crash and that, in fact, he is still very much alive. But still many are not deterred and never will be.

Fast forward fifty years and you now have the grand conspiracy wherein President Donald Trump engaged, in person, with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a conspiracy to rig the 2016 presidential election. That is the first iteration – personal communications between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin. When it turned out that Mr. Trump had never met Mr. Putin, never talked to Mr. Trump and particularly was not in Moscow for the alleged “sex party” organized by Mr. Putin for Mr. Trump, the accusers were not deterred.

And how did this allegation of a conspiracy between Mssrs. Trump and Putin? Well, it appears that it arose from the fertile mind of former President Barack Obama’s Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), John Brennan. Mr. Brennan who had previously committed perjury before Congress in order to protect Mr. Obama noted in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee that he had heard from unnamed sources (probably the man in the mirror) that Mr. Trump had conspired with Mr. Putin to rig the election and turned that information over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The Washington Times reported on May 29:

“What caused the Barack Obama administration to begin investigating the Donald Trump campaign last summer has come into clearer focus following a string of congressional hearings on Russian interference in the presidential election.
“It was then-CIA Director John O. Brennan, a close confidant of Mr. Obama’s, who provided the information — what he termed the “basis” — for the FBI to start the counterintelligence investigation last summer. Mr. Brennan served on the former president’s 2008 presidential campaign and in his White House.
“Mr. Brennan told the House Intelligence Committee on May 23 that the intelligence community was picking up tidbits on Trump associates making contacts with Russians. Mr. Brennan did not name either the Russians or the Trump people. He indicated he did not know what was said.
“But he said he believed the contacts were numerous enough to alert the FBI, which began its probe into Trump associates that same July, according to previous congressional testimony from then-FBI director James B. Comey.”

The allegations were bolstered by a dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele and included a “sex party” that Mr. Trump had attended in Moscow. Mr. Steele subsequently was forced to acknowledge that the dossier was a hoax when it was demonstrated that Mr. Trump had never met Mr. Putin, had never talked to Mr. Putin and was not in Moscow during the times alleged in the dossier and further that the “Trump people” referenced in the dossier had not participated in meetings alleged in the dossier, did not know “the Russians” mentioned in the dossier and in several instances were elsewhere in the world than where the dossier claimed. The Washington, DC based firm with ties to the campaign of Ms. Hillary Clinton has refused to release records showing who financed the creation of the dossier.
But the repudiation of the dossier and the actual meetings between Mssrs. Trump and Putin did not deter those alleging conspiracy in the slightest.

The conspiracy theorists simply shifted to “Trump’s people” – a purposefully vague reference in hopes that the Democrats and their publicists in the mainstream media could find someone that could serve as proof of their already determined narrative – a narrative without a single fact. Every turn that the Democrats and the mainstream media made, every “rabbit hole” they went down and every “startling revelation” upon which they pounced turned out to be as hollow as the original allegations brought by Mr. Obama’s man, Mr. Brennan. In short, after nearly a year of investigating Mr. Brennan’s allegations, there is simply no “there” there. But has that deterred the Democrats and the mainstream media? Absolutely not.

The fact that the Democrats and the mainstream media cannot find a single fact to support their narrative has led them to the conclusion that there must be a giant cover-up to repress all of those facts that they cannot discover. In other words, the lack of evidence is evidence itself. And as with the conspiracy theorists surrounding the narrative on Mr. McCartney’s death, the less they can prove the more convinced that they are.

I get it when it comes to the inane beliefs of the entertainment industry – these are people who will say anything and do anything for public adulation. They are mono-dimensional and have IQ’s to match. But here we are talking about the entire leadership of the Democrat Party and virtually every newsreader in the mainstream media. There is Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), former Democrat presidential aspirant Sen. Bernie Sanders (Socialist-VT), Democrat Party Chairman Tom Perez, Democrat firebrand-without-a-clue Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), would be vice-presidential contender Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), and dumb-founded chief House conspiracy theorist Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA). And there are the newsreaders from NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, CNN and the journalists of The New York Times and The Washington Post – none worse than the smug Rachel Maddow who has been wrong at every turn since her stunned acknowledgement that Mr. Trump actually won the presidency.

I don’t know whether the Trump campaign conspired with the Russians. I doubt it and I do know that as of today there is not a single piece of verifiable evidence supporting that allegation. When all is said and done the probable connection between Mr. Trump and “the Russians” is that he once had Russian dressing on his Rueben sandwich.

At some point you just have to say, “Indict him or shut the eff up.”

Oregon Catalyst