We already know that Trump’s presidential campaign staff — including his adult children — conspired with agents and groups from Russia, China, and the UAE to influence the American presidential election. While it’s hard to quantify that influence, we don’t have to try hard. The voting difference in the key battleground states — the areas where Russia focused — was only around 70,000 votes all told. Even if the Russian influence was in single digits, that was easily enough to make the difference and push Donald Trump to his victory. Even though it was only that last bit, Russia’s influence was critical in getting their preferred candidate elected.
We already know all this. The details are in the Mueller’s indictments and subsequent guilty pleas, and the FOIA documents released in the news and admitted publicly by Trump’s people. We’ve known it for months. (OK, maybe the UAE bit is new.)
The Department of Justice and several intelligence agencies already documented similar Russia interference during earlier American elections. Every single US intelligence service has concluded that Russia interfered — and continues to interfere — with US elections. Russia sees America as their main threat — rightly, I think — and Putin is working to weaken us. That makes sense, too, assuming you’re a corrupt authoritarian ruler whose nation is collapsing under your kleptocratic misuse.
Anyway, Russia is hacking our elections and we’re doing nothing about it. That seems odd, doesn’t it?
Here’s a small example. On Monday, Facebook published an ‘expose’ of “Child rape camps,” despite no evidence, and that directly contradicts the conclusions by Arizona police and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The usual dubious websites quickly spread the original lurid story, tying it to an even more dubious QAnon conspiracy. Interestingly, The Sun, the British tabloid run by Rupert Murdock’s News Corp, reprinted the story and invented false quotes that were the opposite of what Arizona authorities actually said. Hard to ignore a media lie that big. The story remains active as of this writing. There has been no Republican comment, unsurprisingly. Think that might influence a few dozen people’s feelings about immigration rights?
American intelligence agencies also describe Russian interference in elections in England, France, Italy, and many other American allies. We know that Russian President Putin wants to weaken the European Union, and was working to push the British vote to exit the EU (Brexit). Without more evidence, it’s hard to know how much Russian media influenced that election, but the Brexit vote was also very close. It is quite possible that Russia’s illegal influence was decisive there, as well.
And we’re doing nothing about that, either.
Let me walk that back a little. The American intelligence services are doing the best they can within their existing, generic mission directives, but they have to work without Presidential support. The problem is that this is new stuff, and it’s big. Our law enforcement agencies would need more resources, stronger authorization, and instructions on specific goals and methods from the executive branch. They’re still doing what they can, but right now, they can only nibble around the edges. As useful as it is to know how someone tampered with our last election, stopping the interference in our next election would be better. It’s a bit of a shame that’s not happening.
Trump’s answer is to lie. He frequently and reflexively trumpets “NO COLLUSION!” as if screaming it will at least hide his bald lie under some hair. Trump denies every accusation by wrapping himself in the flag and throwing out new, outrageous nonsense to distract the media. Embarrassingly, this approach works well. The media dutifully repeats each new lie in a headline and again in the story. Four of five paragraphs down they eventually mention the lack of evidence, long past when most people stopped listening. If spreading new scandals seems counterproductive, it works. As an extreme example, most Americans don’t know about Mueller’s indictments or how many people have already pleaded guilty to conspiracy and lying to investigators.
Yes, that’s right: the majority of Americans polled believe Mueller’s office has not shown us evidence of any illegality. With dozens of accusations and counterclaims to weed through, most people don’t have the time to figure out what’s true. And that was Trump’s goal.
Today is no different. At the G7, Trump held his first solo press conference in over a year. In it, Trump said… well, some really stupid lies. Openly wrong stuff. Honestly, watch the press conference, even though it’s squirmingly awful to see. Trump was a classic bully, just making stuff up so he could attack all those people that scared him. He seemed deranged. The reporters who covered it didn’t push back on his lies, mostly accepting them and moving on. Somewhere later and far away, those lies were characterized as “unproven” or, maybe “demonstrably false.”
‘Reporting’ means finding and telling the truth. That’s a reporter’s number-one job. Everything else is in service to that primary goal. Maybe they forgot that part?
Look, don’t be duped. You’re not a sucker, and you’re not Trump’s stooge. Remember the core things we know so far:
- Russia is driving us apart as a society. They’ve built their media campaign to use social issues to split American society into warring sub-factions. They did that to weaken us internationally, and their work has been successful. It’s hard to tell which groups first touted each of the common litmus-test social issues (abortion, immigration, feminism, equal rights, gun rights, LGBTQ issues, etc.), but it’s interesting how frequently the Russian troll-farms and the Republican party focused on the same small social issues, trying to make them the measure of everything.
- Russia has been interfering in U.S. elections for years, pushing for extreme candidates over mainstream politicians. As with social issues, they don’t favor any specific position, and often promoted fringe candidates from opposite sides. Their goal, again, has been to spread chaos and weaken the U.S. All the Intelligence agencies testified to this under oath.
- Russia interfered in the last presidential election and probably changed the result. Again, all 17 US intelligence agencies testified to this under oath. While many (most?) people on both sides voted based on conviction and principle, the Russian hacking and media campaign was still influential. The presidential results were so close that even the most conservative estimates would make the Russian interference enough to push the election over that edge.
- Trump’s campaign staff conspired with America’s enemies in 2016. We already know Trump’s campaign manager colluded with Russians and Ukrainian agents and lied about it. Donald Trump, Jr. met with agents from Russia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to illegally solicit their help. And he lied about it. Michael Flynn met with Russian agents on behalf of Trump. And he lied about it. Jared Kushner met with Russian and Chinese agents. And he lied about it. And Trump himself, of course, called for Russian interference in his public speeches, later lying that he was only joking. While there is certainly more evidence to be uncovered, prosecutors have already submitted enough evidence and testimony to convince several judges and multiple grand juries that there is probable cause to issue warrants and indictments.
- The Republican party benefited from years of Russian influence. They are in alignment with Russian troll-farm social issues. It seems odd how quickly the GOP dropped all their suspicions about Russian interference in American life. Didn’t the Republican party — the party of Reagan — call Russia the evil empire? Weren’t they defense hawks?
Focus on the important stuff. Sure, pay a little attention to the distractions, but only enough to know how they’re trying to confuse you. There are big, important things happening to the American experiment. Football invitations and ‘immigrants are animals’ just isn’t on the same level as treason.
