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WickedsDesire -> Will Trump confront Russia? (7/6/2017 10:54:09 AM)
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Trump�s latest spin on Russia just left him badly exposed � again
THE MORNING PLUM:
At a news conference in Warsaw on Thursday morning, President Trump tiptoed gingerly up to the edge of acknowledging that Russia did indeed try to sabotage the 2016 election. Our intelligence agencies have long insisted that Russia engaged in active, multifaceted efforts to tip the election to Trump. While declining to fully endorse the conclusion that Russia did meddle in our democracy, Trump did manage to simultaneously blame it on Barack Obama’s failure to act in the face of it.
Which gives rise to a question: Given this criticism of Obama’s inaction last time, and given that the intelligence community has also concluded that Russia will try to meddle in the next election, too, what does Trump’s administration intend to do about it? Surely Trump does not intend to duplicate a performance on Obama’s part that he derides as feckless, does he?
At the presser, Trump was asked point-blank by NBC reporter Hallie Jackson: “Will you once and for all, yes or no, definitively say that Russia interfered in the 2016 election?”
Well, I think it was Russia, and I think it could have been other people in other countries,” Trump replied. He then excoriated Obama for doing “nothing” in the face of the Obama administration’s own conclusion that Russian meddling was underway. “The reason is, he thought Hillary [Clinton] was going to win,” Trump said. He has tweeted this in the past, but now has said it at a news conference in Eastern Europe.
Pressed again on whether he agreed with the “definitive” conclusion of his own intelligence agencies that Russia did meddle in the election, Trump said: “I think it was Russia,” but added, “I think it was probably others, also.” He said: “Nobody really knows for sure. I remember … how everybody was 100 percent sure that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Guess what — that led to one big mess. They were wrong.”
To be clear, it is of course possible that the intelligence community is getting this one wrong, too. Criticism of Obama’s well-documented inaction is also fair game, though it is questionable coming from a messenger who himself has steadily played down the idea of Russian meddling (which, again, the intel community concluded was designed to help him win) for many months. And let’s not forget that during the election, Democrats asked congressional Republican leaders such as Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to present a united front against Russian meddling. They refused, with McConnell questioning whether it even happened.
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