Huffington Post article predicts Trump election October 19, 2016, three weeks before election day.

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HuffPost Contributor predicts Trump election 21 days before history was made while HuffPost predicts 98% chance of Hillary victory.

The following article appeared in the Huffington Post from a Contributor, myself, which positioned the HuffPost to be right about the shocking, stunning and demoralizing 2016 election result.  At the same time a Trump election was predicted, the HuffPost was running the first of two polling articles claiming after "9.8 million computer simulations" Hillary Clinton had a 98% chance of winning.  The second time this claim of a Hillary victory was posted was on November 8, election day, in the HuffPost.

Here is what appeared in the Huffington Post October 19, 2016, three weeks before the electrifying Trump victory, a series of News Bulletins for the upcoming election night coverage.

Jim Putnam, Contributor

Publisher Coltons Point Times

Into the Future - Presidential Election Results November 8 and 9, 2016

10/19/2016 05:49 pm ET

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Into the Future - Presidential Election Results November 8 and 9, 2016

News Bulletin!

Dateline: Washington, D.C.

November 8, 2016 - 10:00 pm EST

Polls Close in East - Hillary Declared Winner

The polls just closed in the East while remaining open in the Midwest and West, but the mainstream media has already declared Hillary Clinton the 45th and first female in our nation’s history President.

Based on the results of Exit Polls throughout the country, most media declared Hillary the decisive winner. The Exit Polls are interviews with actual voters leaving the voting booths.

Unlike other political polls of which there are many, only one presidential Exit Poll exists and is taken. Since the poll is owned by a coalition of the major television networks, and it is not released in it’s entirety to the public, there is no way to validate or verify the results.

In spite of the tremendous media bias against Donald Trump and media devotion to Hillary Clinton, it still seems a bit odd the networks declared her the winner with just below 5% of the national vote cast and counted.

Over 50% of the public still has time to get out and vote. One might suspect there is media collusion in trying to discourage possible Trump supporters in these states to give up and not vote for Trump.

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News Bulletin!

Dateline: Washington, D.C.

November 9, 2016 - 1:00 am EST

Historic Hillary Victory a Tidal Wave claim Pundits

The polls have now closed in the continental United States as the nation and world await the results of the presidential election. So far just 22% of the popular vote has been reported.

Early absentee voting tallies indicate a record number of Americans cast their ballots before election day. Political pundits say it is another great sign for a Hillary landslide. “Banner headlines” in the major newspapers early editions, along with a never ending stream of “braking news” bulletins on television networks rejoice in the Clinton victory over Donald Trump, as projected by the media.

No results are official until certified by the election boards in each state. None have been certified yet and the national tracking map indicates no electoral votes have been awarded.

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News Bulletin!

Dateline: Washington, D.C.

November 9, 2016 - 5:00 am EST

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

The national media continues to tout the Exit Polls and a Hillary landslide but the release of actual vote totals is at an excruciatingly slow pace by the states.

Those votes reported to the media indicate a much closer race than the Exit Poll blowout projection. No pattern is emerging in voting other than a near dead heat in national vote total while the seven key swing states remain too close to predict at this time.

Could it be the national news media Exit Poll is wrong? Early indications suggest if the TV networks actually reported the results received in Exit interviews, the voters were giving misleading answers to the media.

Perhaps voters believe they have a right to keep silent when it comes to elections, an exercise of their right to privacy.

At the same time, there are reports of much higher new voter totals than expected, and the turnout among Independents and Republicans is up significantly.

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News Bulletin!

Dateline: Washington, D.C.

November 9, 2016 - 10:00 am EST

Clinton Landslide fails to Materialize - Exit Polls Wrong - but How Wrong?

A haunting silence has overcome the nation as Americans wake up and go to work expecting to hear from our new President Hillary Clinton. Instead, there is a heightened sense of anxiety on the part of those prematurely declaring Clinton the victor.

After late night calls for a Clinton victory celebration, her failure to pull away in the electoral count has stunned and silenced her Establishment friends.

While all seven key swing states hang perilously in the balance, the leader in popular votes swings wildly from Clinton to Trump and back like a pendulum on steroids.

Perhaps the Populist Revolution did not fade away as predicted by the Establishment and their news media. Maybe the election has nothing to do with Donald Trump but is a referendum on Clinton and the Establishment.

If proven true, it will be the greatest upset in election history far surpassing the Truman - Dewey race in 1948.

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News Bulletin!

Dateline: Washington, D.C.

November 9, 2016 - 6:00 pm EST

Populist Momentum Carries Trump to 270 electoral votes as America’s Version of the UK Brexit Vote Stuns the World

http://coltonspointtimes.blogspot.com/2016/10/into-future-presidential-election.html

Here are stories from the Huffington Post, Reuters, nd Time Magazine at the same time covering the election status. 

FORECAST

PRESIDENT

SENATE

By Natalie Jackson and Adam Hooper
Additional design by Alissa Scheller

PUBLISHED MONDAY, OCT. 3, 2016 12:56 P.M. EDT

UPDATED TUESDAY, NOV. 8, 2016, 12:43 A.M. EST

CLINTON  98.0%

TRUMP  1.7%

In the event of a tie, the newly elected House of Representatives will elect the president, and the newly elected Senate will elect the vice president.

Possible Electoral Vote Counts

When you vote, you don’t elect the president: You tell your state’s electoral-college electors how to vote. In most states, all electors vote with the state’s popular opinion. If 51 percent of voters in California choose Hillary Clinton, all 55 of California’s electors will vote for Clinton — and none will vote for Donald Trump.

(Historically, a few so-called faithless electors have voted against popular opinion. They never changed the outcome of an election, so we don’t model them.)

We simulated a Nov. 8 election 10 million times using our state-by-state averages. In 9.8 million simulations, Hillary Clinton ended up with at least 270 electoral votes. Therefore, we say Clinton has a 98.0 percent chance of becoming president.

Election Day

November 8, 2016

POLITICS 

11/08/2016 08:22 am ET

HUFFPOLLSTER: It’s Finally Election Day, And Things Look Good For Democrats

Go vote, and then read on for poll-based projections and a look back at 2016.

By Natalie Jackson, Ariel Edwards-Levy, and Janie Velencia

·          

HuffPost’s poll-based forecasts give Hillary Clinton the win and the Democrats a narrow Senate majority. Many Americans are going to be unhappy regardless of the outcome. And we take a look back at the campaign. This is HuffPollster for Tuesday, November 8, 2016.

POLL-BASED PROJECTIONS GIVE CLINTON THE WIN - HuffPollster: “The HuffPost presidential forecast model gives Democrat Hillary Clinton a 98.2 percent chance of winning the presidency. Republican Donald Trump has essentially no path to an Electoral College victory. Clinton’s win will be substantial, but not overwhelming. The model projects that she’ll garner 323 electoral votes to Trump’s 215. For all of 2016’s craziness, that projection actually follows a fairly traditional electoral map…. Florida, Nevada and North Carolina have leaned toward Clinton in the polling averages. The forecast in recent weeks, along with the strength of early voting numbers, makes it seem very likely that these will stay with her….  [Ohio is] the closest [state], according to the HuffPost forecast model. Trump leads by just 1 point, and the polling trend has moved toward the GOP in the last few weeks. The HuffPost model gives Trump about a 70 percent chance of winning the state. In the event that Clinton’s ground game stimulates turnout and pulls Ohio in her direction ― which is not out of the question ― she’ll get 341 electoral votes.” [HuffPost]   

#POLITICS

OCTOBER 15, 2016 / 1:55 PM

Clinton heavily favored to win Electoral College: poll

Maurice Tamman

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - After a brutal week for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, Democrat Hillary Clinton maintained a substantial projected advantage in the race to win the Electoral College and claim the U.S. presidency, according to the latest results from the Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation project released on Saturday.

If the election were held this week, the project estimates that Clinton’s odds of securing the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency at more than 95 percent, and by a margin of 118 Electoral College votes. It is the second week in a row that the project has estimated her odds so high.

Donald Trump Continues to Dip in Polls as Hillary Clinton Firms Her Lead

By MAHITA GAJANAN 

October 16, 2016

Hillary Clinton is ahead of Donald Trump by 11 points, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, which comes a little more than three weeks before the presidential election.

Conducted after the second presidential debate, the NBC News/WSJ poll finds Clinton leading Trump among likely voters 48% to 37%. Trump’s support in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll remained roughly the same since controversy exploded over Trump’s treatment of women. The two candidates remain close in that poll, with Clinton polling at 47% to Trump’s 43% because of partisan preferences.

Veterans Day November 11 - Will President Donald Trump Fight for the Defenders of the Flag? So far so good…

They have done enough for us - it is time we take care of them!

With petty politics still dominating our national debate, confusion over our war policy, partisanship again dominating our headlines, and predator interest gouging from our banks and credit card companies, how does that make those returning from the war zone feel about what little we do as a nation to honor our veterans upon whose back we have built this temple to the Gods of greed and malicious behavior. Don't you think we could do a little better?

Since hot air and no substance have ruled in our nation's capitol  for years, it seems the least we could do is take a few moments to pause and ask what have we done for those who risk their lives to defend us. If we were truly in to soul searching as opposed to partisan babble the answer would be clear. Our failure to address the cost of government, rising debt and deficit spending, greed mongering by the very banks we bailed out with tax payers money, and the entire specter of empty promises and political lies is a sorry testament to leadership, concern, compassion and honesty toward veterans.

Our new President Donald Trump, the so called People's President, has the opportunity to turn the page and get on with the business of helping save those who saved us.  To date he has delivered on his promises to our nation's Veterans and to strengthening our national defense.  It is a good start. 

These past eight years after Obama took his Nobel Peace prize and then made mistake after mistake in foreign policy and war management as his Administration catered to the progressives.  Trillions of dollars in Obama stimulus spending accomplished nothing more than to add $10 trillion more to the national debt.  At the same time, billions and billions of dollars wasted on failed war policies of the Obama administration have sucked the lifeblood out of our domestic programs.

During that time not only did we lose several thousand brave men and women defending a bizarre foreign policy and a non-existent war strategy, but America brought back over 700,000 disabled veterans, meaning we now have over four million disabled veterans from wars since World War II.

What happens to them, they get lost in a bureaucratic maze at the Veterans Department where far more often than should happen, a veteran can die before they get through the waiting period to see a doctor.  Not because they do not need the treatment, but because they cannot get an appointment for weeks and months because of so called administrative issues.  Any administrative issue that costs us the death of a veteran, especially an injured veteran, is a disgrace to our character, ability, and broken promises to those willing to risk their lives to protect us.

Perhaps our new president can finally fulfill the empty promises to our heroes and their families which have been so long neglected.

Let us vow to not let our political failures of the past continue to harm our veterans, those proud souls who answered the call to arms and now cannot get help for risking and often giving their lives.  

Let us not let the malaise of failure continue to punish our veterans, and especially our wounded warriors and those suffering the many stressful results of war against terrorism.  

These brave men and women and their families who depended on them should be the first priority for our government, before big bankers, big pharmaceuticals, and those who profit from the fruits of war.

Our government has demonstrated nothing to give people confidence, certainly nothing to indicate it is any different than business as usual, and even less to demonstrate they have a clear policy and the ability to implement the strategy. Our veterans and the people deserved much better.

Eight years ago we opened the door to change and got little in return. We the people have been short-changed and many are truly suffering.  This year we opened the door to change again, through the election of populist Donald Trump.  He has vowed to fix the mess facing veterans, and never let it happen again.  Godspeed.

The time is now to act.

Trump has promised to be the president of all Americans and we need him to be. He needs to be president of all the people.  We don't anoint presidents we elect them and once elected we are their boss.

If our government wants to honor the veterans, truly honor the veterans, then stop playing politics with war and foreign relations and give our new president the chance to make decisions, act bold, and demonstrate leadership.

Every day we should wake up and remember that it is our Constitution our president pledged to defend, the people's Constitution. The president must be held accountable.

So Washington, DC, stop the partisanship. Stop the bickering over ideological nonsense. Stop taking care of special interests and protecting people who should be prosecuted. Listen to the pulse of the country, listen to the heartbeat of America and you will see how far you have strayed from our expectations.

When we reach that point we have honored our veterans by honoring their families and friends. To our new President Trump, be American, take responsibility, and fix this mess and you will have all the support you need.
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The Coltons Point Times predicts Emmanuel Macron will be the next President of France

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The Coltons Point Times predicts Emmanuel Macron will be the next President of France when the dust settles from this Sunday's French election.

The French election this Sunday is a rare opportunity to see what happens in France when the two candidates who are not from the two dominant political parties square off.  It will be Emmanuel Macron versus Marine Le Pen.

At this late stage, Macron has a lead but remember the American election where Hillary Clinton was ahead of Trump in the polls the closing days, up to a double-digit lead in some polls.

Macron, a banker, is a candidate for his own En Marche party and if elected, will be the youngest French president in history, and also one who has never held elective office.  Le Pen is a candidate of the National Front party, formerly known as a rather radical minor party, and she has injected new enthusiasm and life into it.  

With former President Obama's last-minute endorsement of Macron today, the American Democrats hope to tie their wagon to a rising foreign leader's star, but the link is pretty weak considering the Democrats have always been backers of the major party socialist or left leaning parties.  President Trump has stayed out of the race.

Ironically, the candidate Obama endorsed, Macron, would be far more comfortable with Trump than Le Pen, and the traditional French left wing parties should be upset the former American Democratic president did not help them.

What are the main political parties in France that self-destructed in the primary?

UMP - Union for a Popular Movement - (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire)

PS - Socialist Party - (Parti Socialiste)

MoDem - Democratic Movement - (Mouvement démocrate)

PCF - French Communist Party - (Parti Communiste Français)

Verts - The Greens - (Les Verts)

NC - New Centre - (Nouveau Centre)

Just remember that these are the major parties and France has a seemingly endless number of legitimate parties for a multitude of causes.

  

The following quotes from The London Telegraph provide a rather good assessment of the candidates and race.

"As for the two candidates for president, Emmanuel Macron is a member of the En Marche! party while Marine Le Pen is a member of the National Front.  Needless to say, none of the top French parties can take credit for either candidate which makes this election unique..

One outcome of the French presidential election on Sunday is certain: Europe won't be the same.

The choice between candidates, however, could hardly be more stark.

A victory by far-right candidate Marine Le Pen would shake the foundations of the Western world. President Trump's victory was seen as consequential in Europe, but a Le Pen win would be incomparably more significant, some liberals say. Whereas Trump has frequently changed his mind on issues, Le Pen's agenda has remained virtually unchanged for years. She has vowed to pull France out of NATO's military command, the euro zone and the European Union. Few doubt that she would deliver.

Her centrist opponent, Emmanuel Macron, who is leading in the polls, takes an opposing view: His pro-European agenda is based on a neoliberal economic approach and on a moderate stance on social issues. He would also be the most pro-American French president in a long time.

With Macron as French president, the U.S. will encounter a much stronger, strategic, self-confident, forward-thinking France and therefore Europe,” said Nicholas Dungan, a senior fellow at the D.C.-based Atlantic Council who works in France. “The U.S., whether it understands it or not, needs a strong Europe.”

Americans who live in France say there are several reasons that a Macron victory could benefit the United States. France is a strong NATO ally and has recently conducted airstrikes against the Islamic State alongside the United States and other nations. French forces have also participated in NATO operations in Afghanistan. Le Pen, however, wants to cooperate more closely with Russia instead of the United States."

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The Great Deception - Russia Just Hacks Us - The Truth - We Invented Hacking!

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One thing you have to love about the media, they will always be so preoccupied with their agenda they will have no time for historical analysis, research, and cross checking facts.  So we remain focused on how those dastardly Russians hacked us in the 2017 elections when we hacked them almost two decades ago.

Wikileaks has once again shown why they are the most loved and hated web site on Earth. Yesterday they dumped another batch of secret documents into the media charade and it showed how the Master developer and user of hacking programs of our world is none other than our very own CIA.

Fancy that, we set the standard for not simply hacking everyone, but for embedding our little packages in abut every computer in the world so it could report back to us.  Now the futuristic technology has been extended to iPhones and Smart TVs.

Did it ever occur to the media that Russian hacking might just be in retaliation for what we have already done to everyone else?  Was it not Wikileaks that spilled the beans on the USA monitoring the phones and emails of foreign leaders, friend and foe alike a few years back?

Here are two current articles about what Wikileaks leaked this time, and a third article on why our hands are not clean on hacking, we wrote the book and our own people were among the victims.

Technology

WikiLeaks publishes massive trove of CIA spying files in 'Vault 7' release

 Andrew Griffin,The Independent 

WikiLeaks has published a huge trove of what appear to be CIA spying secrets.

The files are the most comprehensive release of US spying files ever made public, according to Julian Assange. In all, there are 8,761 documents that account for "the entire hacking capacity of the CIA", Mr Assange claimed in a release, and the trove is just the first of a series of "Vault 7" leaks.

Already, the files include far more pages than the Snowden files that exposed the vast hacking power of the NSA and other agencies.

In publishing the documents, WikiLeaks had ensured that the CIA had "lost control of its arsenal", he claimed. That included a range of software and exploits that if real could allow unparalleled control of computers around the world.

It includes software that could allow people to take control of the most popular consumer electronics products used today, claimed WikiLeaks.

"'Year Zero' introduces the scope and direction of the CIA's global covert hacking program, its malware arsenal and dozens of "zero day" weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products, include Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones," the organisation said in a release.

The public files don't include the cyber weapons themselves, according to a statement. The organisation will refrain from distributing "armed" software "until a consensus emerges on the technical and political nature of the CIA's program and how such 'weapons' should analyzed, disarmed and published", it said.

The files were made available by a source who intended for them to start a conversation about whether the CIA had gained too much power, according to the organisation.

"In a statement to WikiLeaks the source details policy questions that they say urgently need to be debated in public, including whether the CIA's hacking capabilities exceed its mandated powers and the problem of public oversight of the agency," a release read. "The source wishes to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons."

It also redacts the details of some of the names, locations and targets that are identified in the documents.

The organisation had teased the release in advance with strange messages about the release being "Year Zero", and references to "Vault 7". It had planned to release the files later on but that plan was thrown off when its press conference came under cyber attack, Mr Assange claimed.

Technology

WikiLeaks claims the CIA built special tools for hacking iPhones and other Apple products

 Kif Leswing,Business Insider

(AP) 
Documents published on Tuesday by WikiLeaks claim to be evidence that the "CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal." 

According to the WikiLeaks files, it appears that the CIA has teams specifically dedicated to breaking into Apple products, including iOS, the software that runs on iPhones and iPads, and even Apple's line of routers, AirPort. 

The WikiLeaks files suggest that the CIA may have access to undiscovered and unreported bugs, or exploits, in iOS, the iPhone operating system. 

"While our initial analysis indicates that many of the issues leaked today were already patched in the latest iOS, we will continue work to rapidly address any identified vulnerabilities," Apple said in a statement. 

Here's Apple's complete statement on the WikiLeaks files: 

"Apple is deeply committed to safeguarding our customers’ privacy and security.  The technology built into today’s iPhone represents the best data security available to consumers, and we’re constantly working to keep it that way. Our products and software are designed to quickly get security updates into the hands of our customers, with nearly 80 percent of users running the latest version of our operating system. While our initial analysis indicates that many of the issues leaked today were already patched in the latest iOS, we will continue work to rapidly address any identified vulnerabilities.  We always urge customers to download the latest iOS to make sure they have the most recent security updates.”

There is also evidence in the 7,818 web pages and attached files that the CIA has tools to gain unauthorized access to Android devices, smart TVs, and other computers. 

'Nothing interesting or new' about the published exploits

(A screenshot of purported exploits the CIA was aware of and documented.WikiLeaks)

 
Will Strafach, a security professional with extensive experience with iOS exploits and CEO of Sudo Security Group, cast doubt about the "leaked iOS stuff from CIA" on Twitter, saying that there appeared to be "nothing interesting or new."

"So far, there is zero cause for concern," Strafach told Business Insider. "They definitely have vulnerability research (looks very similar to my own company's internal wiki), but nothing which should be if any concern to a user on the latest iOS."

Apple regularly fixes the kind of bugs and potential exploits that the CIA purportedly developed and bought. For maximum security, you should update to the latest version of iOS on your iPhone or iPad in Settings > General > Software Update. 

In a statement accompanying the document release, Wikileaks claimed that there was a group inside the CIA specifically dedicated to hacking iPhones and iPads. Wikileaks wrote: 

Despite iPhone's minority share (14.5%) of the global smart phone market in 2016, a specialized unit in the CIA's Mobile Development Branch produces malware to infest, control and exfiltrate data from iPhones and other Apple products running iOS, such as iPads. CIA's arsenal includes numerous local and remote "zero days" developed by CIA or obtained from GCHQ, NSA, FBI or purchased from cyber arms contractors such as Baitshop. The disproportionate focus on iOS may be explained by the popularity of the iPhone among social, political, diplomatic and business elites.

The U.S. has a long history of hacking other democracies

By Mariya Y. Omelicheva, Ryan Beasley and Christian Crandall By Mariya Y. Omelicheva, Ryan Beasley and Christian Crandall

Monkey Cage

December 20, 2016

The former commander in chief of the Allied forces in Europe, Gen. Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower poses for a photographer at NATO Paris headquarters in 1951. (AFP/Getty Images)

Why do democratic governments so often engage in violent covert actions?

The United States is roiled by controversy over Russia’s broad covert operation to undermine the legitimacy of the 2016 presidential election and Western democracy in general. But the U.S. government has interfered in other democracies’ decisions with violent clandestine operations that go back generations.

[A new poll shows an astonishing 52% of Republicans think Trump won the popular vote]

During the George W. Bush administration, the American public learned about post-9/11 covert actions that many found disturbing, including secret memos authorizing torture of terrorist suspects; a highly secretive program of “extraordinary renditions,” which involved the government-sponsored capture and transfer of detainees from U.S. jurisdiction to other states without due legal process for purposes of detention and interrogation; and “black sites,” or secret prisons operated by the CIA.

But as our research has found, those operations were a continuation of U.S. policy, not a break with it.
Here’s how we did our research — and what we found
We examined unclassified Central Intelligence Agency documents and historical academic research on U.S. interventions to identify 27 U.S. clandestine operations carried out between 1949 and 2000.

Most U.S. “secret wars” were against other democratic states.

[How Hannah Arendt’s classic work on totalitarianism illuminates today’s America]

Unclassified documents published by the U.S. national security archive at George Washington University show that the British government helped the United States overthrow Mohammad Mosaddegh, a democratically elected prime minister of Iran, and tried to block the release of information about its involvement in the coup.

But that’s just one example. In 1954, an anti-Communist “army” trained and armed by the CIA deposed democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in Guatemala — leading to years of violent civil war and rightist rule. Fifty-seven years later, Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom, on behalf of the state, asked Guzman’s family for forgiveness.

And in 1981, President Ronald Reagan authorized the funding for the CIA-led “secret wars” against the democratically elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua. These are but a few examples of the U.S. covert operations abroad.

Kissinger: Trump has opportunity to make history in U.S. foreign relations

During an interview aired Dec. 18, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger said of foreign leaders' relationship to President-elect Donald Trump, "It is a shocking experience to them that he came into office, at the same time, an extraordinary opportunity." Kissinger says of foreign leaders of Trump, "It is a shocking experience to them that he came into office, at the same time, an extraordinary opportunity." (Reuters)

We also examined the nationality of detainees in the “war on terror” between 2001 and 2006, when the United States was casting the broadest net to find and detain prisoners. The individuals detained by the U.S. military on the orders of the U.S. administration were placed at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba or transferred to Abu Ghraib in Iraq. There is a public record of their detention.

In parallel to the U.S. military operations, the CIA seized several people in foreign territories suspected of hostile actions against the United States. Held incommunicado and without due process of law, these individuals were placed in the CIA’s secret prisons or sent to states known for forced disappearances and torture.

We compiled the list of individuals covertly detained by the CIA from reports by international human rights groups and independent news organizations providing investigative reporting on the CIA renditions program. Our analysis further confirmed that the United States was substantially more likely to use clandestine coercion against citizens of democratic states.

Why do democratic governments engage in frequent violent covert actions?

Policymakers worry whether their actions will be perceived as legitimate. Legitimacy comes in part from keeping policies consistent with citizens’ interests and expectations.

For instance, since wars and violence are inimical to citizens’ interest in self-preservation and freedom, policymakers are predisposed to value peace. Democratic governments will launch open violence only if they think they can persuade citizens that those actions are legitimate.

While working covertly to bring down democracies, the United States also worked to engineer public support for overt use of force, if necessary. For instance, in 1954, the Eisenhower administration spread fearmongering propaganda about the “communist leanings” of the Guatemalan president. The U.S. news media subsequently misrepresented the coup as a successful restoration of democracy in Guatemala, carried out by local freedom fighters.

The news media did not report what it did not know: that the CIA had masterminded and funded the revolt. Similarly, the British government used the BBC’s Persian service to spread anti-Mosaddegh attitudes before the 1954 Iranian coup.

When democratic governments can’t get their citizens to support coercive policies abroad, they — at times — can and do resort to covert force.

Mariya Y. Omelicheva is associate professor in the department of political science at the University of Kansas.

Christian Crandall is professor in the department of psychology at the University of Kansas.

Ryan Beasley is senior lecturer in the school of international relations at St. Andrews University.
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