Steve Bannon and Paul Manafort already “knew” in advance which surprise swing states Donald Trump would win

| 5:23 pm EDT September 10, 2017
Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.

With new evidence surfacing each day that Donald Trump and his campaign conspired with the Russian government to rig the election in Trump’s favor, one of the keys to understanding that collusion is that two of Trump’s top campaign advisers seemed to know in advance precisely which swing states would see Trump pulling off shocking upsets – and in particular, Michigan. The source for these revelations: their own words.

Michael Wolff of the Hollywood Reporter has revealed that during the summer of 2016, he spoke with Steve Bannon, who was in the process of taking over the Donald Trump campaign (link). At that time, Bannon told Wolff that Trump was going to win the states of Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. It’s not shocking that the head of the Trump campaign was confident his candidate was going to win, even when things were looking bleak. But for him to have known months in advance that Trump would win these specific states, including the impossible-to-win Michigan? That’s stunning. He’s not the only Trump adviser who “knew” Trump would win Michigan.

Bloomberg has revealed that long after Donald Trump had officially chased Paul Manafort away from his campaign, the two were still in contact throughout the election (link). In fact Manafort knew enough to call up Trump just before election day and tell him to head to Michigan. Again, this was a state that Trump had no chance of winning, and campaigning there, when other swing states like Florida and Pennsylvania were still in play for Trump, was a very stupid idea. This is, of course, unless there was a reason Manafort (and Bannon) knew Michigan was rigged in Trump’s favor. In such case, it would have made sense for Trump to campaign a bit there, just so he’d have some explanation for how he magically “won” it.

You don’t have to look far to figure out why these two advisers in particular might have known that Donald Trump was going to “win” Michigan. Paul Manafort took millions of dollars in Kremlin money when he was getting Putin’s puppet elected in Ukraine. Steve Bannon ran the statical company Cambridge Analytica, which is suspected of having plotted Trump’s strategy by using voter data that had been stolen by Russian hackers. Sure enough, it was Manafort and Bannon who somehow knew for certain that Trump would win Michigan, even at a time when there was no evidence whatsoever that this was remotely possible. Contribute to Palmer Report