“Over the past few weeks, my office has been inundated with calls referring to the Jade Helm 15 military exercise scheduled to take place between July 15 and September 15, 2015. This military practice has some concerned that the U.S. Army is preparing for modern da martial law.”
—Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-Texas), May 5, 2015. [Gohmert is the same one who claims he contracted the coronavirus from his mask—the same one, apparently, that he refused to wear until he tested positive.]
“The eight-week exercise starting in July and planned for locations in Texas, New Mexico, California and other Southwestern states, (right-wing bloggers and commentators) say, is part of a secret plan to impose martial law, take away people’s guns, arrest political undesirables, launch an Obama-led hostile takeover of red-state Texas, or do some combination thereof.
“…Gov. Greg Abbott issued a directive … to Maj. Gen. Gerald Betty, commander of the (Texas) Guard, … that he wanted Jade Helm 15 monitored because it was ‘important that Texans know their safety, constitutional rights, private property rights and civil liberties will not be infringed.’”
—The New York Times, May 6, 2015, explaining how right-wing conspiracy mills like Media Wars were claiming that the military was constructing tunnels beneath closed Walmart stores as part of a Pentagon-led takeover. [And some called me a fear monger for my theory that Trump was trying to disrupt the November election. You think maybe Gohmert, Clay Higgins, Jim Jordan and Devin Nunes are drinking buddies?]
REPORTER: “President Trump, you’ve said many times that the number of coronavirus cases is going up because testing is increasing, do you acknowledge that it’s going up for other reasons too, for example, that it’s actually spreading and what are you going to do to stop the spread?”
TRUMP: “Well do you know that we have one of the lowest mortality rates,…anywhere, if you know that Biden and Obama stopped their testing, they just stopped it and you probably know that but don’t want to report it, but uhm, they stopped testing uh, right in the middle, they just went no more testing.”
—A confused Donald Trump, claiming that the Obama administration ceased testing before the coronavirus was ever known. [He apparently was thinking of testing for Ebola, which killed two Americans, compared to 151,000 coronavirus deaths—and counting. But again, he was obviously confused, or maybe just being sarcastic.]
“Scooter Libby found not guilty of lying to FBI investigators.”
—Fox (“we report, you decide”) News crawler right after I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, chief of staff to Dick Cheney, was found not guilty on one count of making false statements, but guilty on four other counts: one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury, one count of making false statements on March 6, 2007, related to the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. [An oldie but goodie because some things never change and while some might reasonably call that “fake news,” George W. Bush commuted his sentence in June 2007, sparing him of any jail time and Donald Trump issued a full pardon on April 13, 2018. Yep, some things never change.]
Louisiana Voice 
Since I never took it seriously, I guess I had repressed the whole stupid Jade Helm thing cooked up to stir up fear among people already very unhappy about who was president, though a friend who lives near Austin and I corresponded daily about it at the time. I’m sure Trump is in hope everyone in the 60% not actively singing his praises will forget his daily blunders and the fact he is trampling many of the things they personally hold dear, destroying our international reputation, and endangering our citizens, just as 40% have managed to completely repress all these things and more their adoration and delusion.
With regards to Scooter Libby, by coincidence I just watched the movie “Fair Game” on Amazon which was based on the life of Valerie Plame. Plame’s identity as a CIA officer was leaked to and subsequently published by Robert Novak of the Washington Post. In the aftermath of the scandal, Richard Armitage in the U.S. Department of State was identified as one source of the information, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted of lying to investigators.
Her husband, Joe Wilson, was an American diplomat who was best known for his 2002 trip to Niger to investigate allegations that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase yellowcake uranium [to make nuclear bombs]. His New York Times op-ed piece, “What I Didn’t Find in Africa”; and the subsequent leaking of information pertaining to the identity of his wife Valerie Plame as a CIA agent demonstrated the extent to which the Bush administration would go to discredit Wilson’s allegations. Cheney and his gang were trying to show that Hussein had WMD and Wilson was sure there was no way that was true and said so. Political skullduggery followed and almost ruined Joe and Valerie’s life. Highly recommend either the book or the movie by the same name – Fair Game.
BTW, no one was ever formally charged of leaking her identity – a federal crime.
Yep Tom “some things never change.”
Back in 2015 a friend here in Louisiana was losing his mind over the Jade Helm plan for President Obama to take over several states and impose martial law. Plus Obama was “coming for the guns!” I asked this person why the feds would take over states that I was pretty sure were already part of the US, and were not trying to secede (well, that WAS a point of discussion in Texas) or otherwise cause mayhem. Jade Helm, I said, was just a long-planned, announced training exercise. He was very quiet when those states were not invaded.
And he was all upset about the tunnels under Walmart stores and the FEMA camps where everyone who disagreed with Obama was going to be taken to disappear.
Sooo, no states were overtaken by Obama, no one was disappeared. Turns out it was all an Infowars plan to stir up people susceptible to the idea that President Obama was going to turn Amurica into a communist socialist fascist Muslim black theology (Pastor Jeremiah Wright) country where right-thinking people would be killed or imprisoned for mind control.
So when Obama left office and I asked him if he still had all his guns (I have mine, no one “came” for them) and he asserted that they were still in his possession, but said Obama wanted to do it, he just never got around to it. He does not know anyone who was killed, disappeared or subjected to mind control. But he knows it’s coming, just watch, the Left will do it asap.
As for me, I’m still waiting to hear the hysteria from right wing acquaintances over actual attacks on “freedom” including trump’s stormtroopers, voter suppression, interference with the election, etc. etc. I guess it’s okay if it’s a republican takes your rights; the world as we know it would end if a left socialist communist Democrat did all this bad stuff. And they call us “libtards.”
They do seem to believe to “decide what they want to believe and what they do not” don’t they. Some of the email stuff I get from tRump supporters is so far off base I can only shake my head. I should just delete it, but I can’t help myself. I have to fact check it and send them back the facts/truth. They never respond.
I’ve got some bat-sh*t crazy family & friends, but none that are that far off their rockers, lol. I hope your friend has someone close that can get help for him.
The irony of Jade Helm was that the FBI eventually discovered Russia was operating social media pages to fuel the conspiracies, no doubt as part of their larger attempts to destabilize the US. Like you, I didn’t give it a second thought. I’m not at all surprised that Infowars/Breitbart/Facebook followers seemed to have great difficulty scrutinizing their information adequately.