Donald Trump refuses to accept that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections to help him win, and that refusal to accept reality is affecting U.S. policy toward Russia at every level, the Washington Post reports in a major article “based on interviews with more than 50 current and former U.S. officials, many of whom had senior roles in the Trump campaign and transition team or have been in high-level positions at the White House or at national security agencies.” (Fifty sources!) Trump’s insecurity or need to please Russian President Vladimir Putin means that even Trump’s daily briefings are affected:
Intelligence officials who brief the president play down information about Russia they fear might displease him, current and former officials said. Plans for the State Department to counter Russian propaganda remain stalled. And while Trump has formed a commission to investigate widely discredited claims of U.S. voter fraud, there is no task force focused on the election peril that security officials regard as a certainty — future Russian attacks.
Trump has never convened a Cabinet-level meeting on Russian interference or what to do about it, administration officials said. Although the issue has been discussed at lower levels at the National Security Council, one former high-ranking Trump administration official said there is an unspoken understanding within the NSC that to raise the matter is to acknowledge its validity, which the president would see as an affront.
As a result, Trump is compounding the success of Russia’s assault on American democracy:
The Russian operation seemed intended to aggravate political polarization and racial tensions and to diminish U.S. influence abroad. The United States’ closest alliances are frayed, and the Oval Office is occupied by a disruptive politician who frequently praises his counterpart in Russia.
“Putin has to believe this was the most successful intelligence operation in the history of Russian or Soviet intelligence,” said Andrew Weiss, a former adviser on Russia in the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations who is now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It has driven the American political system into a crisis that will last years.”
And while foreign affairs and intelligence professionals at lower levels are trying to do their jobs, Trump loyalists at the top can and do get in the way:
Trump’s aversion to the intelligence, and the dilemma that poses for top spies, has created a confusing dissonance on issues related to Russia. The CIA continues to stand by its conclusions about the election, for example, even as the agency’s director, Mike Pompeo, frequently makes comments that seem to diminish or distort those findings.
In October, Pompeo declared the intelligence community had concluded that Russia’s meddling “did not affect the outcome of the election.” In fact, spy agencies intentionally steered clear of addressing that question.
Many of the Post’s sources emphasized that, for Trump, everything is personal and mentioning Russian interference in the election therefore registers as a personal attack, an accusation that he didn’t win the Electoral College on his own strength, and that that’s why he is so averse to acknowledging reality. But this article also makes clear, once again, how much Trump is personally drawn to Putin. And the question always remains: how much collusion was there? What does Russia have on Trump besides its oligarchs being a source of so much of his real estate income—or is that enough to sway him? No matter what’s behind it, though, the Post makes clear that Trump himself, personally, is blocking the United States government from doing what it needs to do to keep Russia from having an even bigger impact on future elections.