The CIA has publicly announced that it has “high confidence” that the Russians not only attempted to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election, but that they did so in order to help elect Donald Trump. To anyone who has been paying attention this does not come as a surprise. Nor is it a surprise that the Trump Mafia is twisting and spinning in order to slip out from under the implications of such a conclusions. Whether or not they are able to do so will ultimately be a function of press and media coverage and their willingness to cover this issue fully and keep it alive in a way that leads to government action — preferably a bipartisan, independent investigative commission.
If Americans are to understand this issue, they must be given the essential context which is the job of the media. A significant part of that context involves Trump’s Russian ties along with those of his associates and potential appointees:
1. Trump, in common with those on the right of the GOP who seem to hunger for an authoritarian leader, early expressed admiration for the Russian strongman.
2. Trump himself is known to have been entangled in various financial dealings involving influential Russians and to have had (and, presumably still has) aspirations to bring the Trump “brand” to Russia. Trump’s son is on the record stating that the family business makes lots of money from Russia.
3. Trump’s one-time campaign manager and current unofficial advisor, Paul Manafort, has in the past been involved in multi-billion dollar business dealings with Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs close to Putin. The FBI was known to be investigating his ties to Putin as recently as last November.
4. Trump’s putative pick for Secretary of State, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, not only has a very close business and personal relationship with the Russian leadership, but ExxonMobil stands to realize a huge windfall if sanctions imposed against Russia in the aftermath of its incursion into Crimea are lifted.
Trump’s responses to Russian meddling with U.S. domestic politics along with that of his associates must also be put into context and evaluated. There’s a reason why they are pooh-poohing this potentially explosive issue when any loyal American worthy of their salt would be concerned about the national security implications.
What the Trumpiverse has said to date has been both laughable and desperate — but it still needs to be evaluated and presented for what it is to a public that up to this point has been willing to accept Trump’s tweets as substantive commentary. Media has to provide the context that will allow citizens to cut through the BS. To date, the Trump Mafia has tried to:
1. Create a “fog of uncertainty” about the CIA’s conclusion: Vanity Fair’s Tina Nguyen referenced some of Trump’s assertions exhibiting this line of defense:
I think it’s just another excuse. I don't believe it,” Trump said in an interview Sunday with Fox News, calling the allegations “ridiculous.” In a series of follow-up tweets Monday, Trump argued that it is “very hard” to determine the source of a cyberattack if the hackers are not caught “in the act”—a claim that experts quickly judged untrue—and asked why such questions about Russian interference hadn’t been raised before the election (they were).
2. Deflect the issue at hand: Trump et al.are claiming that since the CIA got it wrong on weapons of mass destruction during the Bush administration, we shouldn’t trust them now. But, of course, as Josh Marshall argues— without trying to entirely vindicate the CIA - that statement considerably simplifies what happened. Bush, Cheney et al. pressured the CIA for over a year to give them an excuse to invade Iraq that was related to terrorism since the existence of weapons of mass destruction had been widely accepted for many years and were deemed insufficient cause:
So there was a year long process in which the Bush administration pressured the CIA and other intelligence agencies to come up with evidence. To some degree, the CIA did do that, but never as much as the White House and key appointees at the Pentagon wanted. But through the roughly 18 months between the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Iraq there was a running war within the US government. Indeed, CIA and other intelligence agency officials ran an on-going effort to prevent the President and other high level administration officials from publicly disclosing misleading or erroneous claims about US intelligence. One of the biggest fights was over statements about intelligence about nuclear weapons - uranium, certain high tolerance parts which could be used for nuclear weapons.
3. Raise a false flag by claiming that the CIA report is a false flag: Politico defines“false flag” as “a term for a cover-up or distraction orchestrated by the government or other powerful figures.” Sunday, aggressively looney-toons John Bolton, a potential state department appointee in the Trump administration accused the Obama administration of doing just that, accusing them of orchestrating the hacks in order to delegitimize the Trump presidency. This refrain has been picked up by other members of Trump’s gang. As Steve Benen notes, such a claim “qualifies as hair-on-fire insanity”:
Think about this on a conceptual level: Bolton, the Bush/Cheney ambassador to the United Nations, believes it’s possible that the Obama administration hacked into DNC and Clinton campaign computers, stole documents, and leaked them to anti-Clinton websites in order to embarrass the Obama administration’s preferred candidate – on purpose – before Election Day. President Obama’s team did this, the argument goes, in order to give the appearance of Russia helping Trump win the election.
After this tactic created much hilarity, Bolton shifted gears, denied he ever said it (but see this link to put him to the lie) and is “now arguing that this could’ve been a ‘false flag’ operation launched by a different foreign government.” Whoopee! Here we go again.
Do innocent people or those concerned about national security behave this way, like a bunch of children caught raiding the cookie jar? Me thinks the Trumpiverse doth protest to much — and they’re directing their protests at the wrong targets hoping we won’t see what is right before our eyes.
I think that keeping Americans focused on this issue will be one of the main jobs of the political media. We’ll be able to measure their willingness to serve their most important function by the way they keep attention focused on the two dimensions of the RussiaGate crisis — the roots of the Trumpiverse’s desire to do good for Russia, and the paltriness of their disavowals of that interest. The stakes are big. As Nancy LeTourneau observes:
This is all part of the huge con job these guys are trying to pull off. They convinced a lot of Americans that they are a populist movement on behalf of the American worker when in reality it is all about an attempt to improve the fortunes on the very global elite they rail against. If ties to Putin and his brand of authoritarianism are part of the bargain…that’s a “great advantage.”