For those who wanted a stronger response from Obama, consider that he absolutely did not want anything that would spin up into a military conflict for both security reasons and because it would be blown up as “Obama’s trying to rig the election by rallying everyone around the flag for him and Hillary”.
Shutting down the spy houses and whatnot may have seemed rather mild, but it was intended as a pointed message to Russia – “we know what you’re up to, and we’re watching”…and he would leave the stronger measures for the next president (Hillary) to handle.
If anything, Obama failed to realize how deeply the Russian corruption had set into our electoral system, and as such he didn’t countenance that Dumblefluck would ever steal the presidency – to say nothing of considering that Dumble would never allow anything that hurt his masters in Moscow to ever come to pass.
BHO, like everyone else in this country, had no idea just how completely crooked and compromised Dumble and his paymasters were, and how rigged the elections truly were.
And the GOP howled POLITICS when told of the plot.
Why?
Donald J. Trump, a 71-year old Twitter troll, made another statesmanlike statement.
So we can now, legitimately, refer to this as the Putin Presidency.
Actually I think he just couldn’t bring himself to believe that there could be 60+ million complete morons in America.
My takeaway from this piece: when seeking to take steps to counter the Russian attack on the 2016 elections, the US government faced constant resistance from GOP officials at the federal and state levels. Apparently they welcomed or were indifferent to Russian interference because it would produce a partisan advantage for the GOP. And what isn’t mentioned is the brazen public encouragement the GOP presidential candidate gave the Russians.
This should be a huge story. We can’t have a two-party political system where only one party adheres to core American and democratic norms.
As a black man, I’m pretty sure he knew.
It pays to remember that, by definition, roughly half the population has an IQ of less than 100.
At what point does an election become invalid?
True, but it shouldn’t have required an IQ higher than 80 or so to see that trump was unfit, unprepared, and utterly unsuitable for the job.
Methinks that tweet is another admission of guilt by the Orange Moron.
Wow, life is a cabaret ol’ chum.
That’s something that I really had to grapple with, following the election: it was shocking how different America-the-reality was from America-the-ideal (though I’m aware that this is only shocking to me as a white person).
The Republicans are the agents of a hostile power.
Neo Confederates don’t give a fuck about that. They’ve been at war with this country from the beginning.
The problem is by NOW, Trump’s base has decided this is a GOOD thing because what this country needs is some authoritarianism. They are deluded freaks who would under the Constitution if it was shoved up their…whatevers.
The Republican leadership refused to help Obama do anything about this, in fact they used threats to prevent him from doing more.
The GOP indifference to/welcoming of the Russian attack should be the bigger story here, I agree. We can assume the Russians will attempt nefarious, democracy-killing attacks on us, but the GOP is here, American. The call is coming from our own house.
Pierce: “It’s at moments like this that I wish [Obama had] never given that speech in Boston in 2004. It froze him into a public persona and a political stance that made even justifiable partisan politics look like base hypocrisy. It is entirely possible that, at what we must now believe was a critical moment (if not the critical moment) of his presidency, the better angels of a president’s nature were the voices he should have avoided at all cost.”
Alas, many voted guided only by fear and hatred and blind belief in 20-plus years of hate radio/Fox News.
My other takeaway is hell with the Republicans and just do the right thing.
I wish PBO had gone public stronger and earlier. Why outsource that decision to Mitch McConnell?
Expect Republicans to be partisan, unpatriotic hacks every step of the way. That’s a given. It’s way past time for Dems to match their intensity and not give any f*cks.
This was an unforgivable assault on our democracy.