‘The Circus’ Tried To Warn Us About Trump/Russia In 2016

Can we finally talk about how Showtime’s The Circus tried to warn viewers about all this “Russia stuff” back in 2016?
As someone who enjoyed watching the almost “live” docu-series in tandem with the 2016 election, I’ve been wondering for a while if anyone else ever cottoned to what The Circus was quietly alleging way back when. Since Trump took office, the Russian conspiracy theories and the Mueller investigation have morphed into their own three-ring circus on nightly cable news. But The Circus seemed to be talking about it before anyone else.
While there were whispers about possible collusion back in 2016, and a recent New Yorker piece about Christopher Steele characterized his infamous dossier as an “open secret” in DC, The Circus was the one program that kept winking a little too much at the Trump/Russia connection.

Across the board, the interviews conducted over the course of the first season are eerie in retrospect. No matter the subject or the topic, they’re chilling in their so-called “prescience.” The hosts — specifically the since disgraced Mark Halperin — seem to know how all too well how to foreshadow the insanity that’s coming. For instance, when Halperin interviews Sean Spicer in Trump Tower, Spicer makes a seemingly innocuous statement. He compares the Trump campaign’s momentum to how his favorite football team, the Patriots, always rally and win the fourth quarter. Halperin quips, “You deflate the football?” And Spicer seems flustered by the allusion to cheating.
That moment comes in Season 1, Episode 18, “Closing The Gap.” That episode features another Halperin interview that seems a bit too clued in on what may be about to unfurl. For context, when that episode aired on September 11, 2016, Clinton was the overwhelming favorite. But when Halperin visited noted Trump crony (and person of interest in the current Mueller investigation), Roger Stone, the campaign fixer painted a different portrait.

Halperin asks Stone how he thinks the election will go, and Stone says non-chalantly: “Trump does extremely well in the debates. Julian Assange drops the darkest secrets of the Clintons. And Hillary’s candidacy collapses.”

When pressed on an alternative outcome, Stone says, “None of those things happen? She manages to sell the American people on a caricature of Trump. He’s a trigger-happy, he’s mentally incompetent, he’s crazy, he’s a bigot. I don’t think that will work. I think the people are too angry and they’re too skeptical. So we shall see.”

Stone hastens to add, “Let me put it this way: I hope he knows what he’s doing.”
At the time, I was perplexed by Stone’s confidence. Now, it feels like a massive clue – like a tiny detail you notice in the cold open of a detective drama. This all may feel a bit like conspiracy-peddling, but a few weeks later, The Circus devotes an entire episode to the Russian link to Wikileaks. It’s jokingly called, “From Russia With Love,” and it makes a strong argument that something is definitely happening between Russia, Trump, and Wikileaks. Do they ever confirm it? No, but again, they do just about all they can to draw a line between the camps.
In that episode, Halperin even attempts to explain the Wikileaks conundrum to his co-hosts: “We still don’t know — and there’s mixed opinion about this — the people who are releasing these, trying to win the election for Trump or are they just trying to create chaos?” He then adds, “The irony is if the election is undermined, the chances are better that it’s by Russia than by anybody else.”

Halperin gives Donald Trump, Jr. an on-camera interview about why Wikileaks matters to the Trump campaign. He says that the media should have given the hacked emails more coverage because the Trump campaign wants a fair fight. Immediately after he says this, Donald Trump, Jr. is caught in a conversation with Reverend Jesse James where it seems Trump, Jr. doesn’t necessarily want a fair election. The flip is in his tone, but it’s there. It’s right there in the “Russian” episode.
Later in this same episode, Halperin — again, it’s usually the conservative-leaning Halperin with these scoops – manages to communicate with someone in Assange’s camp in London. The one question Halperin is able to get to Assange? What part of the Podesta email hack has been underreported. Assange’s cheeky one-word answer is “everything.”

It wasn’t as though this was all The Circus was covering. The next episode is almost entirely devoted to Vice President Joseph Biden and it’s confirmed that Biden was close to running. We get campaign profiles of other politicians and, yes, interviews with rust belt Trump supporters. The Circus went out of its way to give viewers a comprehensive behind-the-scenes look at the tumultuous 2016 election.
But as the last year and a half has shown, all that Russia stuff might be the most important reporting The Circus did. I’m not saying it happened. I don’t know. But I feel like it was strangely telling that a docu-series with The Circus‘s level of access and insider knowledge, felt that it was important enough to draw attention to in the weeks and months before the 2016 Presidential Election. If nothing else, The Circus knew something was happening and that it was worth a spotlight way before it garnered a special investigation.

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