Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Will Conservatives Give Russia a Pass?
The conservative media world, along with all but a few Republican members of Congress, are in the process of handing Vladimir Putin his greatest victory yet. They are ignoring the copious evidence in the Mueller report that Russia interfered in our election and continues to do so. Pace Jared Kushner, it was a whole lot more sinister than a “couple of Facebook ads.”
The narrative has now taken hold that the Mueller investigation originated with the Steele dossier. On Fox News, Ed Henry said that the FBI relied on the dossier to “get this whole thing going.” Breitbart referred to the “debunked Russia hoax,” and a Wall Street Journal editorial demanded to know how “the partisan propaganda known as the Steele dossier become the basis for an unprecedented FBI probe of a presidential campaign . . . “
As the Mueller report makes clear, and as even the infamous “Nunes memo” of 2018 conceded, the investigation did not begin with the dossier. It began when a foreign government (believed to be Australia) “informed the FBI about its May 2016 interaction with [George] Papadopoulos and his statement that the Russian government could assist the Trump Campaign.”
Sixteen members of the Trump campaign had direct ties with Russians or Russian agents, including President Trump. Some of these were benign. Some were not. Paul Manafort was sharing polling information and plans for winning midwestern states with Konstantin Kilimnik, who has ties to Russian intelligence. Is it the received Republican wisdom now that this was not, at the very least, eyebrow raising?
As for Trump’s connections to Russia, we now know that throughout most of the campaign, even as he was issuing tweets like this one on July 26, 2018 “‘[c]razy’ to suggest that Russia was dealing with Trump . . . [f]or the record, I had ZERO investments in Russia.” In fact, he had been negotiating one of his largest real estate projects ever, for a Trump Tower Moscow, until just the previous month.
But even if the investigation had begun with the Steele dossier, so what? As they say in legal circles: res ipsa loquitor — “the thing speaks for itself.” The Mueller report is sober and meticulous. The dossier is hardly mentioned. If Republican partisans skip over the documentation of Russian meddling because they’ve internalized Donald Trump’s sense of grievance, they are disserving the nation.
The Russian interference was and is far more extensive than a few Facebook and Twitter posts, though those were noxious enough. The IRA (Internet Research Agency), an arm of the Russian intelligence services, along with the GRU (Russia’s foreign intelligence service), also organized “dozens” of actual rallies, hacked into the computers of the Democratic Party, maliciously spread falsehoods, stoked already existing divisions between Americans of different races and ethnicities, and planted malware. More worrying, the report notes that the Russians aimed at actual voting infrastructure:
Victims included U.S. state and local entities, such as state boards of elections (SBOEs), secretaries of state, and county governments, as well as individuals who worked for those entities. The GRU also targeted private technology firms responsible for manufacturing and administering election-related software and hardware, such as voter registration software and electronic polling stations.
In August 2016, GRU officers targeted employees of [redacted], a voting technology company that developed software used by numerous U.S. counties to manage voter rolls . . .
The independent counsel did not further investigate these attempts to subvert elections because “The Office understands that the FBI, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the states have separately investigated that activity.”
Or perhaps not. According to the New York Times, former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen wanted to make blocking Russian interference in the 2020 election a top priority. She was warned off by Trump’s chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, who made it clear that the president still regards any mention of Russia as a personal slight.
In a continuation of patterns established under communism, Russia has exerted malign influence on elections in many nations. Throughout the democratic world, they seek to sow the kind of division and distrust they enjoy in mother Russia. Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, Hungary, and other former Soviet captives have been particularly hard hit, but the Russians have also stirred the pot of Catalan succession in Spain, boosted Marine Le Pen in France, and helped Brexit in Great Britain. In 2017, the Netherlands switched to all paper ballots to prevent Russian hacking of its election.
What is the difference between other democracies and the U.S.? Only here does dismissing the threat of Russian interference now equate with loyalty to the president.
Published in General
To say that some Republicans and the “conservative media world”–BTW, don’t all of us on Ricochet resemble that remark?–are in the process of giving Putin “his greatest victory yet” is flabbergasting.
Two plus years of wasting millions of dollars on yet another fruitless special prosecution, relentlessly and aggressively pursued by both politicians and media speculators, seriously damaged American cohesion and morale long before the Mueller report was submitted late on a Friday afternoon. Putin has long since won, and big–thanks much more, it seems to me, to Barack Obama’s desire to have Putin help him pull off the Iran deal than to the ordinary electoral machinations of Ukrainian bots.
Anyone on the ground of America can see that this administration has resulted in numerous good events for regular folks as well as conservatives. But apparently that’s not good enough for politics. Never mind what’s on offer when the other side gets back in charge. Trump will never be anything other than what he is and has always been, no matter how many columnists get the vapors from him–while seeing nothing at all insidious in the actions of many other bad actors, a group in which I include Mueller precisely because he did not make a recommendation on obstruction, one of the tasks he was hired to do, but, instead, tossed it over the fence to the vicious, laughing hyenas in Congress and what remains of journalism.
I’m awaiting what would seem to be an inevitable column, Mona’s determination that the president should be impeached. Short of that, after all this time, what else is there to say?
Is Mona proposing that the United States pass a law that prohibits non-Americans from expressing opinions about US politics, and/or banning campaigns from employing non-citizens on either a paid or volunteer basis?
That’s the only (barely) plausible way I see for “blocking foreign interference in the 2020 election”, but maybe I lack imagination.
In 2004, the Grauniad ran “Operation Clark County” to get its readership to call voters in Clark County, Ohio to convince them to vote for Kerry for president. Did we take a bunch of soft-headed Labour twerps attempting to influence our election lying down.
Kind of. Mostly we just pointed and laughed. If the Russians were all that good at monkeying with elections, they would have won the Cold War.
National American elections are too decentralized to fix. You can win one state by a million votes but lose the state next door because Jethro couldn’t get the pickup truck started that morning.
The Left’s working on that. Probably one of the reasons behind the push to abolish the Electoral College.
That’s exactly what they have in mind.
Ah, Mona’s just in it for the bagels.
Plus, she’s:
( x ) Concerned
( ) Not Concerned
The article is a must read, in the LA Times, no less along with Ace of Spades’ take:
The Nevertrump Movement Is On Life-Support
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-azerrad-end-of-nevertrump-20190424-story.html
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=381025
To count as “foreign interference”, a campaign needs to meet two criteria:
;-)
I have one quibble with that article:
I’m inclined to think that the NeverTrump membership includes a pretty high proportion of FiCons for whom slaying the federal deficit is near the very top of their policy priority list. In that regard, President Trump is still a disappointment (as has been every other Republican president since Eisenhower).
This is my opinion of how the NeverTrump breaks down. There are two camps: people like Jonah Goldberg and Kevin Williamson that have a high level of libertarian sensibilities. They also want a guy that understands civics and government. I get that, and I’m fine with it.
The other group is the Bill Kristol types. Tom Nichols. The Bulwark and the ones that signed that goofy Niskanen Center list. They are basically neocons or closet Rockefeller Republicans. They also have lifestyles or jobs that require things to be a certain way. Well that way is gone. None of that stuff works anymore. They need to get up to speed.
The big culprit in all of this is the discretionary Fed, but nobody cares. Because of that it’s really hard to control spending with political will. Trump isn’t more of a statist than the average GOP.
I realize that no one cares…but is Trump really that bad?
http://financialrepressionauthority.com/2017/07/26/the-roundtable-insight-george-bragues-on-how-the-financial-markets-are-influenced-by-politics/
Seems to me that Rockefeller Republicans should love President Trump, considering how liberal he is on social issues, moderate on the use of military force (if not the rhetoric of potentially using military force), amenable to protecting legacy industries via tariffs, and his history of working with rather than against trade unions.
If you look past his ostentatious aesthetic preferences and bombastic oratory (which clearly clash with the traditional RR image of the “quiet buttoned-down New Englander”) he’s always struck me as a quintessential Rockefeller Republican.
I guess I meant it less in the sense of social stuff, but I realize that goes with it.
I have a judgmental punk on my Twitter feed that thinks he’s anti-statist and Trump is statist. He thinks all trump supporters are RINO statists. Well I think he’s pretty fond of centralized power, and everything he comes up with is pretty stupid and simplistic.
If you look at the interview of representative Ken Buck on full measure news and any speech given by representative Massie of Kentucky, YOU TELL ME WHAT IS CONSERVATIVE. You tell me how to get out of this mess. Everything moves left all the time. In the end, Mises.org will be right about everything.
Rockefeller Republicans were also pretty fond of centralized power. Were they not the ones who convinced Nixon to do things like establishing the EPA and imposing wage and price controls?
That’s my point. Look at what Tom Nichols babbles about on twitter.
No one is selling or can politically effect actual conservatism, with very few exceptions.
Why does John Boehner think that pot needs to be legalized? When did he change his mind?
I have credible evidence that Russian agents have been messin’ with Jethro’s gas lines.
Well, we were over at Rick’s house watching a video and his parents left and Rick said, ‘dude, I got some kush’ and Boehner was all, ‘I don’t know, man, what if your parents come home?’
Anyway, Ricks parents didn’t come home until, much later.
Almost all of them behave according to how they can get paid the best.
How else can you explain Joe Scarborough?
Mika
He was already an alcoholic and nicotine addict. Pot is a more benign happy medium. But I’m sure he still drinks scotch and smokes… my guess…Virginia Slims.
My point is, everything is about money over principles, when it comes to national politics, and most state level politics. Being idealistic is not helpful. Gary is way too idealistic.
I can’t imagine the Russians were desperate to see a Trump Presidency: I can well imagine they would delight to put us at loggerheads with one another, to start a dogfight and then sit back and enjoy the show, and at that they have likely far exceeded even their wildest dreams.
Every time someone starts this kind of conversation seems to me they are aiding and abetting the conspiracy against the Republic.
Nobody expected to see a Trump Presidency, Russian interference – or anyone else’s – was designed to weaken the Hillary Presidency. She’d have been an active interventionist, as she’d proven with the Libya misadventure (Overthrowing and killing Qaddafi) she’s not a strategic nor tactical thinker. More willing to do “something” just for the optics of being active on the world stage rather than thinking through where her actions would lead. Gnome underpants diplomacy. Step 1, do something Step 2, Step 3 success!
By weakening her the Russians hoped this would force her to expand her domestic agenda and minimize her internationalist adventures. Their worst nightmare would have been a President Hillary with strong majorities in both houses of congress.
Actually that was my worst nightmare.
Not sure if the Russians would have felt that way. I’m sure ol Putty has tons of juicy stuff on both Clintons. Real stuff.
Going back decades.
The Russians not only have the contents of the DNC server, they have the contents of Hillary’s private email server too. The file on Hillary is inches thick, and it is not labelled “yoga routines.”
Ok, maybe nightmare might have been the wrong imagery, it would be their least preferred out come of the election.
See, that’s just right – there’s really no way for ‘Russia’ – there are various factions in any polity or government – to know what candidate would most benefit them unless they really did own him. Which is pretty unlikely.
The chaos does benefit them.
Russians Hacked My Nightmares!