For Democrats, the Enemy Is Russia

A new McCarthyism may be taking root as the Democratic Party can’t seem to let go of an obsession with Russia and theories that Russian hackers were responsible for Donald Trump’s surprise victory in the presidential election of 2016.

This idea, which was first introduced during the campaign season in relation to hacked emails of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) prior to its national convention, has only gained ground since then. Not only were DNC emails leaked, but messages from John Podesta and others in Hillary Clinton’s ill-fated campaign for the presidency were also released by whistleblower organization WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks has denied that Russian hackers were the source of the emails. But the Democrats won’t let that stand in the way of a good story. The Director of the CIA, John Brennan, a former aide and campaign advisor to President Obama, has stated his agency believes the Russians were behind the hacking.

Trump disagreed with the CIA claim, tweeting that “these are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.”

Donald Trump’s new chief of staff Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), has said the government’s intelligence agencies have “been all over the map” regarding who was doing the hacking. “I think that these guys should be straight with the American people and come out and say it. I don’t think they’ve been clear about it.”

Some Congressional conservatives, such as Representative Peter King of New York, have stated the CIA assertions are politically motivated. “There is no CIA report; there is no CIA conclusion,” claimed King in a recent radio broadcast. “This is somebody in the CIA or somebody in the intelligence community or someone in the House or the Senate who’s taken some piece of information and is saying this. This is a lie.”

In an interview on Fox News, Trump himself stated that the charges are “ridiculous” and that “I think the Democrats are putting it out because they suffered one of the greatest defeats in the history of politics in this country.” Trump later tweeted, “Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and WE tried to play the Russia/CIA card. It would be called conspiracy theory!”

Still, Congress will likely be holding hearings looking into the matter. Certainly, Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta has had a lot to say about the affair. “I would argue it’s very much unknown whether there was collusion. I think Russian diplomats have said post-election that they were talking to the Trump campaign. [Republican strategist] Roger Stone in August foreshadowed the fact that they had hacked my e-mails and those would be forthcoming when he said he was in touch with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks,” Podesta opined.

“So I think it’s really not what Mr. Trump knew, but what did Trump Inc. know, and when did they know it? Were they in touch with the Russians? I think those are still open questions. The electors have a right to know what the answers are if the U.S. government had those answers before the election.”

Some Congressional Republicans have vowed they will not act as a rubber stamp for President-Elect Trump; those include Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Senator John McCain of Arizona. McCain has issued a call for a special committee to investigate the matter while Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he doesn’t believe that step will be necessary. McConnell said he believed the existing Senate Intelligence Committee is “more than capable of conducting a complete review of this matter.”

For many Congressional Republicans, any investigation is simply a matter of giving lip service to the Democrats’ claims. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana said there was “nothing wrong with an investigation that looks at all sides of what Russia did.”

Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine added that an inquiry might be “useful toward achieving an objective accounting of any alleged meddling by foreign adversaries.” But Collins was quick to say that she believes the purpose of any investigation shouldn’t be “to question or relitigate the results of any past or present presidential election.”

In addition to the hacked emails, there were also concerns prior to the election being held that Russians were going to try to directly hack into electronic voting machines to alter the results. But after the election was held, President Obama and others dismissed this concept. Obama even tried to claim credit for potentially stopping such attacks.

“In early September when I saw President Putin in China, I felt the most effective way to ensure that that didn’t happen was to talk to him directly and tell him to cut it out, and there were going to be some serious consequences if he didn’t… Our goal continues to be to send a clear message to Russia or others not to do this do to us because we can do stuff to you.”

And the trail of supposed Russian interference doesn’t end there. After Trump’s win, angry Democrats returned to the Russian hacker story by claiming that the Russians had sponsored fake news stories that manipulated Americans into voting for Trump.

But as Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager, said on MSNBC, “[Russian President] Vladimir Putin did not discourage Hillary Clinton from going to Michigan and Wisconsin. [The Democrats] ran a terrible campaign with a not so great candidate and … I mean they need to get over it.”

At the same time, Trump hasn’t helped matters by nominating Rex Tillerson, CEO of oil giant ExxonMobil, to be his administration’s Secretary of State. Tillerson is known for his extremely close relationship with Putin. Trump’s pick for national security advisor, retired Marine Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, attended a 2015 gala dinner honoring Russian broadcasting company RT and reportedly sat at Putin’s table.

In addition, Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort did political consulting work for the former president of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovych, who was strongly supported by Putin.

On a number of occasions, Trump has stated he believes the U.S. should have closer ties with Russia, unlike the Obama administration, which has made aggressive military moves against Russia in recent months. In fact, prior to the election, Hillary Clinton was quoted as saying she believed that a military response to Russia in Syria was forthcoming, and some political observers, including third-party candidate Jill Stein of the Green Party, believed that under Clinton, the U.S. was unavoidably heading to a nuclear confrontation with Russia.

It also hasn’t helped that Putin has praised Trump in the past, calling the real estate magnate “brilliant” and “talented.”

But at the end of the day, all of these allegations are unlikely to bear any meaningful consequences, and the Democrats will probably just have to bite their lip and wait until the midterm elections of 2018 to try and gain any further ground.


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