No, not that president. Not the one who’s been in office since 1/20/2009. The other one, which has the Washington Post Editorial Board Very Concerned
Trump refuses to face reality about Russia
ALTHOUGH PRESIDENT Obama’s sanctions against Russia for interfering with the U.S. presidential election came late, his action on Thursday reflected a bipartisan consensus that penalties must be imposed for Moscow’s audacious hacking and meddling. But one prominent voice in the United States reacted differently. President-elect Donald Trump said “it’s time for our country to move on to bigger and better things.†Earlier in the week, he asserted that the “whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on.â€
No, Mr. Trump, it is not time to move on. U.S. intelligence agencies are in agreement about “what is going onâ€: a brazen and unprecedented attempt by a hostile power to covertly sway the outcome of a U.S. presidential election through the theft and release of material damaging to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The president-elect’s dismissive response only deepens unanswered questions about his ties to Russia in the past and his plans for cooperation with VladiÂmir Putin.
That’s cute, as there’s still no concrete proof that Russia swayed the election, and, really, if the DNC and Hillary Clinton, along with John Podesta, were competent, it wouldn’t be a problem. It wasn’t Russia which implemented an unsecured server outside the control of the federal government, nor did they place material on the laptop of Huma Abadin’s pervert husband, Anthony Weiner.
What the WPEB is attempting to do is the same as other Democrats, and Mr. Obama: delegitimize Trump’s win, because they’re sore losers. And, where was this concern over Russia the past 8 years? The Washington Post certainly made fun of Mitt Romney and his concern about Russia back during the 2012 elections. Here’s what Claudia Rossett has to say
Obama from his first year in office pursued policies of appeasement and retreat that invited Russian aggression.
Just connect the dots, from Obama’s 2009 fawning “reset†with Putin, to his 2012 confidential promise, caught on an open microphone, of post-reelection flexibility, to his 2013 handover of his “red line†in Syria to the ministrations of Putin.
Then came Obama’s 2014 de facto acceptance of Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea, and Obama’s de facto deference right up to the present date of Russia’s increasingly bold reach back into the Middle East, including air strikes in Syria.
Having declared in 2011 that it was time for Syria’s President Bashar Assad to go, Obama today — following the rise of ISIS and more than 400,000 deaths in Syria’s war — leaves the U.S. sidelined as Russia, Iran and Turkey seek a deal that would strengthen Assad’s grip on power. Small surprise if along the way Putin concluded he could at no serious cost cyber-meddle with the U.S. itself.
With just three weeks left in office, Obama is flat out of time to remedy his eight-years of failure to contain Russia. But Obama does have time, if he harps chiefly on Russian hacking, to smear doubts across the legitimacy of Trump’s election.
The WPEB wonders if Trump’s dismissal is from a lack of experience. What of the guy who’s been president since 2009, and has the above track record? They even write
Mr. Trump has been frank about his desire to improve relations with Russia, but he seems blissfully untroubled by the reasons for the deterioration in relations, including Russia’s instigation of an armed uprising in Ukraine, its seizure of Crimea, its efforts to divide Europe and the crushing of democracy and human rights at home.
Who was president while that occurred?
Crossed at Right Wing News.
But, but, but, I thought that the editors approved of our attempts to improve relations with Russia. Remember when the new Secretary of State presented Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov with the famous “reset button”?
The Democrats are simply appalled that Russian intelligence tried to hack the DNC, and may ave succeeded, and they want to do everything that they can to try to cast Donald Trump’s victory as somehow illegitimate. Naturally, Mr Trump is fighting back against that.
And, quite frankly, the incoming President is more mature than the Democrats. He realizes, as anyone with any common sense does, that of course the Russians are trying everything they can to hack everything they can in not only the United States, but Germany, France, the UK, Argentina, China, Japan, every country on the globe. And he also realizes that the United States is trying cyber-espionage against every country in the world, friend and foe alike, just like every competent intelligence service is doing. That’s the modern world, and pretending that everyone isn’t doing it is immature and stupid.
We were happy — well, at least sensible people were happy; liberals probably were not — when a (supposedly) joint US and Israeli cyber-weapon called Stuxnet damaged Iran’s nuclear program. If we can find new ways to do such things in the future, I hope that we’ll have the balls to use them.
The only crime is getting caught, the way we got caught tapping Angela Merkel’s cell phone.
Just like the DNC got caught rigging the nomination process.
The problem with that narrative is that there is no indication that happened. No one has come out with actual intelligence that the Russian government hacked the DNC.
The US Intelligence agencies have made no definitive link between the Russian government and the successful phishing (not hacking) of the DNC and the Hillary campaign.
It is therefore nothing but a lie that the DNC, Hillary, the Democrats and the President are pushing.
Now that’s odd. Who would have thought that crew would do that?
Here is USA Today’s chronology.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/12/30/russian-hacking-obama-putin-trump-timeline/95999250/
So they report what the CIA said and has backed away from.
Cute.
Still no evidence that the Russian government was behind the phishing scheme that the Democrats fell for.
No matter how you try and spin it, the DNC, Hillary, the left and Obama are putting forth a lie that is not supported by facts.
I don’t know that the Russians were the ones who spearphished John Podesta and hacked into the DNC’s emails, but I’m sure that they tried. I don’t know that if Russian intelligence services did get into those accounts that they were the ones who gave them to WikiLeaks, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that was the case.
But what the Democrats want to deflect is that even if the Rooskies did do those things, they wouldn’t have influenced the election if there hadn’t been some bad stuff in there; there was some bad stuff in there, such as Mr Podesta saying that Hillary Clinton needed to be sobered up at 3:30 in the afternoon, and Jennifer Palmieri’s denigration of evangelicals and Catholics, and Donna Brazile’s forwarding advance debate questions. Maybe it was the Russians who were somehow responsible for those e-mails getting leaked and published, but the Democrats’ problem is the content.
Dana,
While I understand what you are saying, without proof it is hard to make the case. There is evidence that Russians probed systems and that Russians phished the DNC. (The RNC had better firewalls and people that were smarter who knew the what the phishing attempts were.)
The problem comes in in making the connection between Russians and the Russian government. The Obama administration’s position is “hackers have worked for the Russian government in the past, so that means that these hackers worked for the Russian government this time.”
It just doesn’t fly.
It is also hypocritical of this administration complaining about outside influence in an election when they themselves tried to influence Israel’s elections.
I absolutely agree that the content of the emails and correspondence is the real problem for the Democrats, but as long as they have people who believe whatever they say and the media behind their lies, it is hard to get that absolute truth out there.
If you haven’t seen this, you should read IowaHawk’s demolition of the administration, the media and the DNC.
http://twitchy.com/sd-3133/2016/12/30/like-a-boss-iowahawk-expertly-dismantles-medias-election-hacking-b-s/
And in a somewhat related point, I was lucky enough to receive a direct letter today from Neil Trotter’s family! I would have helped, but Obama expelled diplomats from the EU.
Mr Carver, neither you nor I are placed to know if the evidence is strong or not, persuasive or otherwise. We both get our news through the filter of the media.
I’d say that it’s possible that the Russians, under the instructions of the government, were the ones who hacked the Democrats; it’s the kind of thing they would do. That’s just the way the world operates these days, and we play the same games that everyone else does. I simply object to the Democrats, or anyone else, whining that, horrors! they got hacked when everybody knows that there are bad guys out there trying this stuff. Maybe if the left, or anybody else, doesn’t want stupid things that they say published, they shouldn’t put it in an e-mail. Maybe they shouldn’t say it at all.
Perhaps, just perhaps, high-ranking government officials, such as Secretaries of State, ought to stop using the ‘convenient’ systems, and type out paper memos, to be delivered by couriers for sensitive things. It’s not like the world didn’t function before e-mail. Perhaps State and Defense and the White House could set up wholly internal communications systems, completely separate from anything else.
Dana,
Actually, we can get information from sources other than the media.
In this case, it makes sense for the Obama administration to put out information that they know and have proof that the phishing schemes were at the behest of the Russian government.
In an October statement from the USIC, we find this:
Hardly a definitive proof of anything.
Then in a joint statement from the NCCIC, Homeland Security, and the FBI, they go into detail about the phishing.
Once again, they say the attacks are “consistent” with other attacks directed by the Russian government, but offer no proof that this phishing attempt was from the Russian government. They offer no definitive statement that the Russian government was behind this.
In my opinion, this is playing politics and nothing more. The DNC, Hillary and Obama want to try and discredit the election of Trump,. In spite of actual information and proof, they are putting forth the narrative that the Russian government “hacked” the DNC. Even the narrative is not accurate because “hacking” is not the same as “phishing.”
I understand your point, but will stick with the idea that as of this moment, the Obama administration is lying about what happened.