Paging Dan Coats.
Donald Trump spent all of last week in damage control mode after the following comment (delivered while standing right next to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki) seemed to suggest the President of the United States is (still) inclined to believe the word of the Kremlin over that of the entire U.S. intelligence community when it comes to Russian meddling in 2016 election:
My people came to me, Dan Coats came to me, some others, they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this, I don’t see any reason why it would be.
The next day, Trump claimed that he meant to say “wouldn’t” rather than “would.” Here’s the clip:
Note that he implicitly blames the rest of us by saying that “it should have been obvious”.
But that couldn’t be further from reality. That is, if there’s anything in the world that is not obvious (and therefore shouldn’t be expected to be seen as such), it’s that Donald Trump trusts the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment of who interfered with the 2016 election. The reason why that shouldn’t be obvious is that Trump has said, on too many occasions to count (literally), that he doubts that assessment.
Trump got immediate pushback on his comments in Helsinki from Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, who said this hours after the Putin press conference:
The U.S. intelligence community has been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy.
On Thursday, following two more epic boondoggles (one of which involved Sarah Huckabee Sanders trying to explain that when Trump said “no” to a question about whether Russia was still targeting the U.S., he was actually responding to a question about whether he would take any more questions, while the other involved the President telling ABC’s Jeff Glor that he in fact does concur with the intelligence community on Russian meddling), Dan Coats literally laughed at the proposition of Putin coming to the White House later this year.
Coats would later apologize, saying this over the weekend:
My admittedly awkward response was in no way meant to be disrespectful or criticize the actions of the president.
Well, he needn’t have said sorry, because on Sunday evening, Trump reversed course again, calling the whole Russian meddling narrative a “hoax”. Here’s the President:
So President Obama knew about Russia before the Election. Why didn’t he do something about it? Why didn’t he tell our campaign? Because it is all a big hoax, that’s why, and he thought Crooked Hillary was going to win!!!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2018
Got that? “It’s all a big hoax” (!!!).
So I guess they’re now drawing straws at 1600 Penn. to decide who has the misfortune of having to go in front of the press and “explain” what Trump “really” meant in that tweet.
https://twitter.com/Diane_7A/status/1019685201969074176
Oh, and for what it’s worth, here is a press release from the US Intelligence Community dated October 7, 2016.
For Immediate Release
DHS Press Office
Contact: 202-282-8010
The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow–the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.
Some states have also recently seen scanning and probing of their election-related systems, which in most cases originated from servers operated by a Russian company. However, we are not now in a position to attribute this activity to the Russian Government. The USIC and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assess that it would be extremely difficult for someone, including a nation-state actor, to alter actual ballot counts or election results by cyber attack or intrusion. This assessment is based on the decentralized nature of our election system in this country and the number of protections state and local election officials have in place. States ensure that voting machines are not connected to the Internet, and there are numerous checks and balances as well as extensive oversight at multiple levels built into our election process.
Nevertheless, DHS continues to urge state and local election officials to be vigilant and seek cybersecurity assistance from DHS. A number of states have already done so. DHS is providing several services to state and local election officials to assist in their cybersecurity. These services include cyber “hygiene” scans of Internet-facing systems, risk and vulnerability assessments, information sharing about cyber incidents, and best practices for securing voter registration databases and addressing potential cyber threats. DHS has convened an Election Infrastructure Cybersecurity Working Group with experts across all levels of government to raise awareness of cybersecurity risks potentially affecting election infrastructure and the elections process. Secretary Johnson and DHS officials are working directly with the National Association of Secretaries of State to offer assistance, share information, and provide additional resources to state and local officials.
# # #
Trump says “It’s all a big hoax”, meaning there was no Russian manipulation of our democracy, and Obama is bad because he should have taken action about something that didn’t happen, according to Trump.
Yep, this was all the black guys fault, all of it. This thing that didn’t happen, well that is today’s lie and tomorrow………………..
“Oh, and for what it’s worth, here is a press release from the US Intelligence Community dated October 7, 2016.”
Great piece of propaganda you inserted there. Here are three facts and two opinions:
Fact 1: the release was drafted by DHS and ODNI. It was not co-authored or signed-off by any of the other 17 NIC agencies. That they all agree with the assessment is simply a lie. But don’t let that get in the way of a rolling story.
Fact 2: if you had bothered to read the latest indictments in detail, and assuming you have even a basic knowledge in this area, it should be abundantly clear that there is nothing related to Guccifer that could not have been initiated from within the US IC and masked to false-flag a Russian penetration.
a. Opinion 1: the release was timed to help Clinton, a far preferable bet for the IC than Trump – as we are now seeing.
b. Opinion 2: this is the same US IC that gave us Iraqi WMD. Personally, I see nothing to choose between the integrity of US spooks and the integrity of the Russian spook Vlad. They’re all congenital liars.
Fact 3: the DNC server hack was conducted at speeds inconsistent with online penetration, pointing instead to internal access. Doubtless by a Russian cleaner, of course.
His national security advisor has pled guilty. Multiple members of his campaign have pled guilty. His campaign advisor is in prison. Recently he stood before the entire world, humbly next to the man who attacked the country, and not only refused to defend the country but refused to acknowledge it was even under attack.
I must say, you Americans continue to educate us on how nationalism should be done. In any other Western country, such a pathetic performance would have had a leader removed before his plane landed back home.
But I suppose this should be the level of analytical sophistication I should expect from someone who believes his own government is more of an enemy to him than a foreign power that is trying to destroy his country.