It's Sunday, which means Donald J. Trump's once-campaign-now-transition has dispatched his team of flying howler monkeys to the Sunday shows, where they will perch up in the rafters and shriek factless statements at the moderators and the cameras until there's enough footage for a show and everyone can go back home for a round of stiff morning drinks.
On the agenda today: Several shrieking monkeys explaining Donald J. Trump's thinking on the Russian efforts to install him, der pumpkinfuhrer, as president. Top monkey Reince Priebus was on hand to once again declare that his pumpkinfuhrer still, even now, simply doesn't "accept the conclusion" of the collected intelligence communities of the United States government.
"I think he would accept the conclusion if these intelligence professionals would get together, put out a report and show the American people they’re actually on the same page as opposed to third parties through The Washington Post,” Priebus said on “Fox News Sunday.” “We haven’t heard from Comey. ... I think that these guys should be straight with the American people and come out and say it. I don’t think they’re been clear about it."
So all that needs to happen in order for Trump to finally acknowledge Russia's unprecedented efforts to pick themselves a preferred american president is a "report." Donald Trump only believes things given to him in "report" form. Intelligence briefings? Nope. Intelligence heads stating their conclusions directly to his face? No. Put it on a sheet of paper Donald Trump doesn't intend to read or get the hell out.
It was up to adviser Kellyanne Conway, however, to connect the dots that Priebus wouldn't dare connect. Priebus says Trump still doesn't believe Russia was meddling in the election. Conway hints that maybe President Obama is the real problem here.
“It does seem to be a political response at this point, because it seems like the president is under pressure from Team Hillary who can’t accept the election results.”
When “Face the Nation” moderator John Dickerson asked for Conway to clarify whether she was asserting that Mr. Obama was responding to the Russian cyberattacks purely for political purposes and not for national security reasons, she replied “John, what I’m saying is the president-elect respects the ability of president - the right of President Obama to do whatever he wants.”
“But it’s very clear that President Obama could have quote ‘retaliated’ months ago, if they were actually concerned about this quote ‘affecting’ the election,” Conway continues. “Whatever his motives are, whatever his action is, we’ll respect it as Americans. That doesn’t mean that new President Trump will agree with it.”
Indeed, from what we know the President Trump reaction to Russian hacking will be a rapid curtailment of Russian sanctions, a bowing to Russian demands in Syria, a new American foreign policy position that well maybe certain parts of Ukraine have belonged to Russia all along, and obsequious kowtowing to the Russian leader from President-Elect Insult Comic.
Come January, will the new president's team declare that Russian hacking was a figment of our imaginations—and that in order to restore proper relations with the country, we will be purging the intelligence officials who dreamed it up? Will Trump install a new team of intelligence officials, under Flynn, that will report more pleasing things?
Of course. When in doubt, believe the autocrat. His team isn't broadcasting open distrust of the American government and the previous American president simply to fill a little Sunday air time. They are patiently explaining the new reality that will soon be subsuming the last. It will require a lot of changes, you see. There will be a lot of work to do.