It hit me while having a smoke outside.
Look at it this way:
- Pompeo announces speech
- Trump announces speech right after Pompeo
Now JUST BEFORE Pompeo starts his speech, there is this thing about Trump term having ended "right now" (assuming Zulu time).
What does it sound like to you?
To me, it sounds like they put all the conditions together for any actors to believe that shit was about to hit the fan... and then it did not.
- Pompeo's speech was kind of lame, just words, nothing special
- Trump's speech has been reported by a day
- the state.gov page was a "hack" or a "disgruntled employee" (yeah sure...)
Pretty much equates to telling everyone "hey we're gonna do it now, look!". And then crickets.
Why? My theory is that they wanted to see what would happen. Who would come out. Would there be any military movements. Would there be any surge in DS communications.
As an additional benefit, now if/when they do effectively trigger this for real, DS will be wary to put all their forces in the battle immediately — and thus exposing themselves — thus giving Trump some solid advance once shit really hits the fan.
In combat sports it's called a feint. Used to bring the opponent off balance or to create an opening elsewhere which to strike.
If the opponent is smart, then they usually catch on to the individual feinting style of their opponent and use it to their advantage to riposte into the feint. So far, the communists have shown themselves to be as dumb as a pile of rocks.