Tag Archives: Russian interference

Donald Trump

Grist for propagandists …

Take a good look at this picture. I don’t know who these fellows are. I only know that they’re wearing clothing that can be used as grist for propagandists.

The shirt says “I’d rather be Russian than a Democrat.”

Funny, huh?

Do you think Vladimir Putin, sitting in his Kremlin office in Moscow, is going to use this shirt as a way of declaring victory in his effort to sow discord, distrust and despair among Americans?

Yes. He undoubtedly is enjoying the sight of guys like these two fellows and the sound of the anger being expressed throughout the United States of America.

International news, national news, political news

Just how can they tolerate being undermined?

This is as baffling and confusing a circumstance as any I can find within the Donald Trump administration.

Several key intelligence and national security officials — including at least two Cabinet-level authorities — declare for all the world to hear that the Russians attacked our electoral system in 2016; they all say the same thing, that the Russians acted alone and that they are in the process of doing the same thing to our 2018 midterm election. They enter the White House press room, listen to press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders say a few words, then they all speak in unison.

Then the president of the United States, Donald John Trump, flies to a campaign rally and declares the Russian attack a “hoax.” He blames Democrats and the so-called “fake and disgusting news” for fomenting the notion that the Russians interfered in our election, that they sought to manipulate the outcome.

The baffling and confusing part?

How do these individuals charged with administering our intelligence and national security agencies tolerate being undermine, undercut and undone by the commander in chief?

How in the name of their sacred oaths do they stay on their jobs while the president continues to disparage and disrespect them? He undermines their work, insults their intelligence and does damage to our national security.

Surely they cannot all be without principles. Surely they must understand what Donald Trump is doing to their credibility and that his insistence that the Russia attack is a “hoax” gives aid and comfort to a hostile foreign power.

I won’t call it “treason,” at least not yet … but damn!

It is inching very close to it.

national news, political news

POTUS turns back on intelligence chiefs

The nation’s top intelligence and national security gurus stood before the nation this week at the White House and declared what many of knew already.

The Russians attacked our democratic system in 2016 and are engaging in a similar attack at this moment, trying to disrupt the 2018 midterm election.

All of them said the same thing. They sang in perfect harmony.

Then the president of the United States jetted off to a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. He rambled on for more than an hour. He trashed the “fake news” media. He railed against Democrats. The president called the Russian attack a “hoax.”

Do you think Donald John “Stable Genius” Trump Sr. would deign to offer some perspective or context about what the nation’s intelligence hierarchy had said just a little earlier in the day in the White House? Heavens no!

Trump was intent on whipping up the crowd that gathered to hear his campaign pitch. Mission accomplished, Mr. President.

He continues to dismiss this Russian attack. He continues to give short shrift to the need to protect our democratic process against future attacks. He ignores the “blinking red lights” that Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said are warning us of impending peril at the hands of hostile-power cyber warriors.

As I listen to the president’s voice keep rising, and as I watch him rant and rail against his foes, my fear keeps getting reaffirmed.

The president is not living up to the sacred oath he took to protect the government and, thus, our nation, against our enemies.

national news

Waiting for a full-throated defense of our system

The president of the United States takes a simply worded, yet eloquent, oath of office.

It goes like this: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

It’s written in Article II of the U.S. Constitution, which means the founding fathers wrote it intending for every president who takes office to follow it to the letter.

Forty-five presidents later, we continue to wait for the man in the office now to affirm that oath in the wake of the Russian attack on our electoral system.

Donald J. Trump hasn’t done that. He has yet to declare that Russia — a hostile foreign power — has launched the attack. The Russians’ intent has been to sow discord among Americans. They intended to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

One of many questions remains to be answered: To what end did the Russians embark on this mind-blowing effort?

That brings me back to my original point. It is that Donald Trump has yet to join the chorus of condemnation of Russia for launching this attack. He has yet to declare his intention to do all he can to prevent it from recurring.

He has yet to provide every assurance he possibly can to Americans that he is working to “preserve, protect and defend” the nation against a hostile act.

national news

WH trots out intelligence officials to state the obvious

If we only could hear this kind of language come out of the mouth of the president of the United States.

Five top U.S. intelligence officials today stood before the media and declared in virtually a single voice that Russia interfered in our 2016 election; the Russians acted alone; they sought to undermine our democratic process; they are engaging in such electoral interference at this moment.

Stunning, eh? Sure it is! They all are telling Americans what millions of us know already.

“The threat is not going away. Russia attempted to interfere in the last election and continues to do so to this day,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said.

One key White House source, though, remains oddly tepid. The president of the United States himself cannot yet bring himself to condemn in the strongest language possible the actions of Russian intelligence officials.

Donald J. Trump needs to step up. He needs to weigh in. He needs to tell the public that he has laid down the law to Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and has told him — in no uncertain terms — that severe punishment will await the Russians if they persist in sabotaging our electoral process.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, moreover, still doesn’t know what Trump and Putin said behind closed doors in their summit in Helsinki, Finland. It’s been — what? — three weeks since the summit. The DNI, the nation’s top intelligence official, still doesn’t know what they said? That is unconscionable!

I am going to give credit where it is due. The intelligence chiefs are telling us the truth. They have confirmed what many of us have known all along.

The man at the top of the executive branch of government chain of command, though, needs to speak clearly and without equivocation about the things his top national security and intelligence advisers have declared.

media news

Facebook steps into election interference maelstrom

The social media platform known as Facebook has taken its share of hits regarding whether it has done enough to protect subscribers’ privacy.

So now we hear from Facebook that it has uncovered a widespread attack on our nation’s electoral process in advance of the 2018 midterm election.

The Hill reports: Facebook said in its post on Tuesday that ā€œwhoever set up these accounts went to much greater lengths to obscure their true identities than the Russian-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) has in the past.”

The IRA has gotten involved in this year’s election and Facebook is seeking to act as an Internet whistleblower.

The Hill continued: The social media company did say that while it lacked the ā€œtechnical evidenceā€ to attribute blame directly, it found that misinformation strategies carried the hallmarks of the IRAā€™s previous efforts.

ā€œSome of the activity is consistent with what we saw from the IRA before and after the 2016 elections. And we’ve found evidence of some connections between these accounts and IRA accounts we disabled last year,ā€ Facebook said explaining one case in which one of the inauthentic pages briefly had an admin who was also an admin in IRA page from 2016.

On a conference call with reporters, Facebook said that it used a ā€œrange of leadsā€ similar to this to detect inauthentic accounts.

I understand fully that we are talking about a tremendously complicated process that requires equally tremendous sophistication to prevent. How does the world’s most sophisticated nation remain so vulnerable to this kind of cyber assault?

I fear we are heading for a new kind of war against forces and interests that are intent on disrupting our democratic process. As elusive as the enemy has been in our “international war on terror,” the cyber foes that have declared war on us are going to take this fight into an entirely new realm.

national news

‘Not a crime,’ but yes, it does matter, Mr. POTUS

Donald J. Trump’s got a million of ’em, idiotic tweets and assorted proclamations, that is.

He said this via Twitter early today, for example: Collusion is not a crime, but that doesnā€™t matter because there was No Collusion (except by Crooked Hillary and the Democrats)!

Whoa! Mr. President, it damn sure does matter.

Robert Mueller’s team of legal eagles is examining whether the president’s campaign “colluded” with the Russians who hacked into our electoral system and launched an attack on our democratic process. I get that there isn’t a statute that covers such activity; absent a statute, there can be no crime.

Is it right? Is it normal? Does this kind of activity keep faith with the notion that our system should be immune from this kind of interference?

Collusion not a crime

And what about the very idea that a hostile foreign power would seek to influence a presidential outcome?

The notion that a major-party political campaign could have accepted, if not solicited, this kind of foreign intervention in a presidential election should send chills up the spines of those of us who want our electoral system protected from such activity.

Does it matter, then, that the Russians attacked us? Absolutely.

Does it also matter that there might be evidence that the Trump campaign cooperated with the attackers? Without question … yes!

national news

Welcome aboard the ‘anti-meddling’ bandwagon

“Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd is a man after my own heart.

He, too, says “meddling” is too mild a term to describe what the Russians did in 2016. That is, he says the Russians didn’t merely “meddle” in our presidential election.

Todd pointed out that “meddle” defines when someone takes an interest in something that is not their concern. Yep, that’s meddling. My American Heritage Dictionary says meddling is “to intrude into others’ affairs.”

Todd wants to know what term to use to describe what the Russians did. Interfere? Attack?

I prefer “attack.” It was a direct assault on our democratic process. They intended, according to U.S. intelligence analysts, to swing the election in Donald John Trump’s favor. Whether they had a tangible impact on the election result, of course, remains a wide-open question.

But I agree with Todd. “Meddling” doesn’t cut it as a term to define what the Russians did.

national news

Obama, Hillary … it’s all their fault?

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Donald John “Stable Genius” Trump Sr. fired off yet another in an infinite string of idiotic tweets.

This came out earlier today: So President Obama knew about Russia before the Election. Why didnā€™t he do something about it? Why didnā€™t he tell our campaign? Because it is all a big hoax, thatā€™s why, and he thought Crooked Hillary was going to win!!!

A big hoax. There you have it.

Why, then, is the president making such a big deal out of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged collusion between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Russian goons who attacked our democratic process?

Because … it’s not a hoax.

It’s real. Trump knows it. His team knows it. He is diverting attention from it.

Let’s stay tuned and hang on with both hands.

business news

Oh, those doggone tax returns

Pardon me for gloating for just a moment.

I have kept yapping about those income tax returns that Donald J. Trump has refused to release for public viewing. He has broken with a 40-year tradition laid out by presidential candidates of both major parties.

Now he has had that hideous press conference this past week with Vladimir Putin, calling into question yet again whether the Russians — and their president — have something, anything on Trump’s business dealings that the U.S. president might not want known to the public.

Thus, the tax return issue has returned. It’s back. Hey, it won’t go away.

The Hill reported this: The issue of Trumpā€™s tax returns had become less prominent in recent months. But that changed following last weekā€™s joint press conference with Putin in Helsinki when Trump questioned the findings of the U.S. intelligence community that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump continues to hide behind the lie that an Internal Revenue Service audit prevents the tax returns release. The IRS — which hasn’t commented on whether it is auditing Trump’s taxes — says no such audit would prevent the release of tax returns to the public.

For that matter, Trump hasn’t even produced a letter saying that the IRS is auditing him.

The questions and suspicion about Trump’s refusal to condemn the Russian attack on our election are valid. Does it have anything to do with Trump’s business dealings in Russia? Do the Russians have the “goods” on the president? If they do, what do those “goods” constitute?

I am happy to realize that others have suggested what some of us have been saying all along: Release those tax returns. The public needs to know what they contain. Do it! Now!