Trump’s election is illegitimate and he is an Illegitimate president, a literal Siberian candidate.
Putin has managed a bloodless coup. How easy it has turned out to take over the mighty superpower United States, and reduce it to a vassal state, without firing a shot, a nuclear missile or mounting an invasion. Like Osama bin Ladin, who never dreamed his 9/11 attack would be as successful it was (essentially 19 hijackers felling an entire country), Putin never imagined his manipulations and machinations into the US election would yield such a result: a puppet President.
The US is defanged as a world power – only China is Russia’s equal on the world stage – and Russia is free to resume its march into the Balkans, toppling other democratic regimes and installing friendlier right-wing autocrats, disrupting NATO and the United Nations (which will likely throw the US if not out altogether then off the Security Council for failing to pay its dues).
Trump’s purge of experienced federal officials and workers - beginning with climate scientists and State Department officials who have worked to promote women’s equality, and likely now intelligence officers who have the audacity to provide unfriendly facts – will set the US up for another 9/11 attack, just as George W Bush’s dismissal of Clinton officials (including Richard Clarke’s) warnings about Osama bin Ladin, and his ignoring (ignorance) of intelligence alerts (FAA issued dozens of warnings about terrorists using commercial aircraft as missiles) up through the August PDB, “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in the US”.
That means that he will likely dismiss the very officials who can help our allies – France and Germany, to begin with who are facing similar intrusion into their elections – fend off another bloodless coup of their democratic regimes, setting into motion a complete disintegration of the European Union and NATO.
Trump has sent messages loud and clear that he intends to only listen to intelligence that (like Bush/Cheney) work to his political advantage.
The result will be that the intelligence officers – who value their jobs – won’t be giving Trump any information he doesn’t want to hear; that foreign allies won’t cooperate on information that could stop another terror attack.
What is also likely is that Putin also has damning information he can hold over Trump (and how much did the Trump campaign actually collude, cooperate with Russian agents and propagandists; Trump certainly played his part in broadcasting and amplifying, even exaggerating the “damning” information from the hacked emails), and use it to blackmail or extort favorable policies – lifting sanctions to start with; turning aside when Russia takes over Ukraine and sets up military bases in Syria.
It is tragic that this report was not revealed before the Election, soon after the Election, before the Electoral College met.
A new election should be held.
Sure it has never happened before. But we have never had a foreign country hack an election before. We’ve never had a candidate who is a foreign agent before.
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