Thread: Trump backers realize they’ve been played as WikiLeaks fails to deliver Oct. surprise

Trump backers realize they’ve been played as WikiLeaks fails to deliver October surprise

By Griff Witte October 4 at 7:37 AM

Assange says Wikileaks will publish U.S. politics information before elections

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"We have on schedule, and it's a very hard schedule, all the U.S. election-related documents to come out before Nov. 8," Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said in a video news conference on Oct. 4. (AP)

LONDON — The expectations were breathless.
For weeks, backers of Republican nominee Donald Trump have hyped the tantalizing possibility that the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks was on the verge of publishing a set of documents that would doom Hillary Clinton’s chances in November.

“@HillaryClinton is done,” longtime Trump associate Roger Stone tweeted Saturday. “#Wikileaks.”

The group’s founder, Julian Assange, did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm, suggesting to Fox News hosts that his scoops could upend the race with documents “associated with the election campaign, some quite unexpected angles, some quite interesting.”

[Julian Assange won’t say whether a foreign government was involved in DNC email leak]

The announcement by WikiLeaks that it would host a major news conference Tuesday only seemed to confirm that the bombshell was ready to burst. The pro-Trump, anti-Clinton media world rippled with fevered speculation.

But if an October surprise about the Democratic nominee really is coming, it will have to wait a little longer.

Over the course of two hours Tuesday — with the world’s media and bleary-eyed Trump die-hards across the United States tuning in — Assange and other WikiLeaks officials railed against “neo-McCarthyist hysteria,” blasted the mainstream press, appealed for donations and plugged their books (“40 percent off!”).

[Trump may like these remarks made by Putin about the U.S.]

But what they didn’t do was provide any new information about Clinton — or about anything else, really.

The much-vaunted news conference, as it turned out, was little more than an extended infomercial for WikiLeaks on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of its founding.

Assange, whose group released a trove of hacked Democratic National Committee documents on the eve of the party’s convention this summer, breezily dismissed the idea that anyone should have expected any news at his news conference.

[Snowden and WikiLeaks clash over leaked Democratic Party emails]

“If we are going to make a major publication about the U.S., we wouldn't do it at 3 a.m.," Assange said at one point, referring to the Eastern daylight start time for the event.

That didn’t go over well with Trump backers who had stayed up through the night, thinking they’d be watching live the unveiling of the death blow to the Clinton campaign.

Assange, as it turns out, had taken a page from Trump’s own playbook by drawing an audience with a tease, only to leave those tuning in feeling that they’d been tricked.

Infowars, the pro-Trump and virulently anti-Clinton media vehicle launched by Texas radio host Alex Jones, had touted the WikiLeaks news conference as “historic” and promised that “the Clintons will be devastated.”



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infowars @infowars

The Clintons Will Be DEVASTATED: Infowars Historic LIVE COVERAGE Of #Wikileaks10 Press Conference - Share this link! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-sVGIp6E9g …
4:07 PM - 3 Oct 2016

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Before Assange took the stage, Jones — who broadcast through the wee hours of the American morning — told viewers and listeners he was so excited he was worried his heart couldn't stand it.

But by the end, Jones realized he’d been played — or in his words, “#wikirolled.”

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Alex Jones
✔@RealAlexJones

Release the documents NOW @wikileaks! We only have a month before #Election2016 comes to an end! #Wikirolled#TrumpvsHillary
2:37 AM - 4 Oct 2016

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He wasn’t the only one. Sleep-deprived Trump backers and Hillary-haters all across the country took to Twitter to convey their displeasure.

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DeplorableScottErnst @RealScottErnst

#OctoberSurprise! #JulianAssange is mean Willy Wonka!
2:31 AM - 4 Oct 2016

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Tim Black ™ @RealTimBlack

Did #julianassange just make me stay up 20 hours straight for him to say see you in November? #wikileaks
2:21 AM - 4 Oct 2016

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Matt Dougan @Americooligan

Best troll ever: Assange asking why I'm up at 4am, while I'm wondering why I'm up at 4am, after he told me to be up at 4am. #OctoberSurprise
2:18 AM - 4 Oct 2016

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But perhaps those waiting for an October surprise shouldn’t lose all hope just yet. Or at least, that was the message from Assange, who spoke via video link from the Ecuadoran embassy in London, where he’s been holed up for the past four years as Swedish authorities seek his extradition on sexual assault charges.

He promised to reveal documents every week for the next 10. He said some will have a direct bearing on the U.S. election.
“We think they’re significant,” he coyly informed his worldwide audience.

But what will they reveal? And when will they come? Assange wouldn’t say.

Karla Adam contributed to this report from London.

What Donald Trump is doing on the campaign trail


View Photos
The GOP presidential nominee is out on the trail ahead of the general election in November.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ober-surprise/

Read more:
Putin denies that Russia hacked the DNC but says it was for the public good
A Trump interview may be crowning glory for RT, a network funded by the Russian government
Trump and Putin are using the same tactic to deflect questions about the DNC hack

WikiLeaks Trolls Trump World, Delivers Nothing on Hillary

Roger Stone and Alex Jones predicted Julian Assange would end the Clinton campaign on Tuesday with a hyped announcement. October surprise, indeed.

SHANE HARRIS
10.04.16 6:15 AM ET

If Hillary Clinton’s die-hard opponents were hoping for an October surprise, they’re going to have to wait.

A Tuesday morning press conference by WikiLeaks, which Clinton antagonists and conspiracy theorists had hoped would spell the beginning of the end of her presidential campaign, turned out to be a celebration-cum-infomercial for the website, which celebrates its 10th anniversary today and is promoting a new book.

Either WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, never really had the goods on Clinton, or Donald Trump and his supporters just got wickedly trolled.



For months, WikiLeaks has been hinting that it would release damaging documents about Clinton in the home stretch of the presidential campaign. The group had posted embarrassing emails stolen by hackers from the Democratic National Committee in July, leaving the world wondering, what else does Assange have in his hard drive?


Egged on by the apparently unfounded claims of Trump adviser Roger Stone that WikiLeaks had a campaign-ending document dump in store, anticipation reached a fever pitch. According to Google, the top trending question about Trump’s opponent on Monday was “What could WikiLeaks have on Clinton?”

Turns out, probably not much. There was no spectacular release of private emails. No bombshells about the Clinton Foundation or brain tumors. Instead, Assange and some of his WikiLeaks colleagues used the press conference to make a pitch for donations and to note the remarkable quantity of the site’s work—10 million documents published, containing more than 10 billion words, which the group claims is “more secret documents than the rest of the world’s media combined.”

With legions of Trump supporters and Clinton haters feeling deceived, Stone claimed that Assange had never promised a big reveal.

"Not at all what he said," Stone wrote in an email to The Daily Beast, adding that journalists had engaged in "wishful thinking."

Stone had already seemed to tamp down expectations ahead of the press conference, which was streamed live at 4 a.m. Eastern time.



“Assange correctly fears for his life because he has the deep secrets of the Deep State and he’s getting ready to spill the beans,” Stone said on The Alex Jones Show on Monday, explaining why Assange must have changed his earlier plans to hold the press conference from the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he lives in a self-imposed exile. WikiLeaks held the event in Berlin instead, and Assange joined via video.

“Bill and Hillary Clinton know that it’s handcuff time and they’re apoplectic,” Stone said.

What now appears more likely is that there was never an October surprise, at least not of the magnitude that Stone had been promising when he tweeted Sunday, “Wednesday@HillaryClinton is done. #Wikileaks.”

Some Clinton opponents took that as gospel, perhaps because Stone has said he’s in contact with Assange, whom he recently described as “my hero.”

WikiLeaks, however, batted down the suggestion that Tuesday was some kind of D-Day.

“Regarding upcoming elections...We hope to be publishing every week for the next 10 weeks,” Assange said, alluding to a more prolonged and less-decisive document drip. Assange said that the “significant” disclosures would cover the U.S. election and Google, but he gave no precise details about when they would occur.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...n-hillary.html

So far much ado about nothing. Guess we'll see.

Alex Jones loses faith in WikiLeaks after underwhelming #OctoberSurprise