by Norman Halls, contributor
It is obvious with all the talks about Russia in Congress, the media and with the concerns the Trump Administration has with the conclusion in the election. The US intelligence community has unanimously stated that Russia tried to influence the election to help Trump win. On January 11, 2017 Trump said: “As far as hacking, I think it was Russia.” But why are number of key Republicans are sending a message to the leaders of the congressional committees investigating potential Trump campaign collusion with the Russians to impede any further hearings? Do they know something, why are they defending Trump?
We the citizens have a right to find the truth. The investigations must be allowed to continue to find if there is conclusion with Russia before and during the election of 2016.
Did the Trump campaign (or President Donald Trump himself) conspire with the Russian government to interfere in an American presidential election through illegal means? Did the president’s son-in-law intentionally lie about his contact with Russian agents? Were there Federal Elections Commission violations involved? How much contact did members of the Trump campaign have with Russian agents during the campaign and leading up to the Inauguration? In particular, Republicans should be asking themselves this question: Why did Russian President Vladimir Putin so desperately want Trump to win? Putin had to know the risks involved if it was discovered that his government had hacked emails, stolen information and had interfered with the elections in the United States. So he was willing to pay a very high price to ensure that the next president of the United States was Donald J. Trump. Why?
Dominance is Trump’s philosophy in his administration. “The behavior and actions of the Trump administration has raised questions and concerns as how to best it can be characterized. Is Trump a fascist, a populist demagogue, the latest iteration of the imperial presidency, or simply an idiot with an evil chief strategist? The delineations are not simply intellectual nit-picking, but reflect a growing concern that Trump is leading the country (and the world for that matter) down a dangerous road”. Wrote Daniel Kato University of London
The real answer seems to be that Donald Trump really is as naive as he appears to be. If Putin tells him he didn’t meddle, he believes him. If reporters ask him about it, he says what’s on his mind. That shouldn’t make us feel any better about it. The President of the United States isn’t just a complicit tool of Russian plutocratic white supremacist influence. He’s an unwitting one as well. Said David Atkins is a writer, Washington Monthly’s Political
In the January 2017 Atlantic “What Putin Really Wants” by Julia Ioffe writes: “The more immediate is how the Kremlim, despite its limitations, pulled off one of the greatest acts of political sabotage in modern history, turning American democracy against itself. And the more important – for Americans, anyway – is what might still be in store, and how far an emboldened Vladimir Putin is prepared to go in order to get what he wants.” “The original aim was to embarrass and damage Hillary Clinton, to sow dissension, and to show that American democracy is just as corrupt as Russia’s, if not worse. ‘No one believed in Trump, not even a little bit,’ Andrei Soldatov says. (Soldatov a Russian journalist) ‘It was a series of tactical operations. At each moment, the people who were doing this were filled with excitement over how well it was going, and that success pushed them to go even further.”
Facebook assisted Trump in the 2016 election. “What a ridiculous notion, Mark Zuckerberg scoffed shortly after the election, that his social-media company — innocent, well-intentioned Facebook — could have helped Donald Trump‘s win.” We don’t know everything about Facebook’s role in the campaign. What we do know — or certainly ought to know by now — is to not take Facebook at its word. When its information is false, when it is purchased and manipulated to affect the outcome of an election, the effect is enormous. When the information purveyors are associated with a foreign adversary — with a clear interest in the outcome of the American election — we’re into a whole new realm of power.
Would Donald Trump be president today if Facebook didn’t exist? Although there is a long list of reasons for his win, there’s increasing reason to believe the answer is no.” Wrote Margaret Sullivan The Washington Post.
Why aren’t the Republicans asking why Russia backed their party’s candidate for president? “Many questions have arisen in connection with: Did the Trump campaign (or President Donald Trump himself) collude with the Russian government to interfere in an American presidential election through illegal means? Did the president’s son-in-law intentionally lie about his contact with Russian agents? Were there Federal Elections Commission violations involved? How much contact did members of the Trump campaign have with Russian agents during the campaign and leading up to the Inauguration? Those questions will be probed and, presumably, answered in the course of the Justice Department investigation headed up by special counsel Robert Mueller. But one question remains unanswered and may not be in Mueller’s purview. That is: Why? In particular, Republicans should be asking themselves this question: Why did Russian President Vladimir Putin so desperately want Trump to win? Or did he? Putin had to know the risks involved if it was discovered that his government had hacked emails, stolen information and had interfered with the elections in the United States. So he was willing to pay a very high price to ensure that the next president of the United States was Donald J. Trump. Why?” By Katie Packer Beeson, Contributing Editor for Opinion
