Roger Ailes may not be around, but someone is clearly handing out the daily talking points. There’s Trump …
And Devin Nunes …
“Why do they want an independent commission? Because they want to continue the narrative that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are best friends, and that’s the reason that he won, because Hillary Clinton would have never lost on her own; it had to be someone else’s fault.”
And now, Vladimir Putin.
Russia's President Vladimir Putin has dismissed allegations of Russian meddling in last year's U.S. presidential election as "fiction" invented by Democrats to divert the blame for their defeat.
Was Putin laughing when he said it? The interview doesn’t say, but he should be laughing. Now the question is: Which one of them handed out the script?
[Putin] argued that trying to influence the U.S. vote would make no sense for Moscow as a U.S. president can't unilaterally shape policies.
"Russia has never engaged in that, we don't need it and it makes no sense to do it," he said. "Presidents come and go, but policies don't change. You know why? Because the power of bureaucracy is very strong."
Compare the above with statements from former director of national intelligence James Clapper.
"There's been a long history of interference going back to the Soviet era in our elections, but never, ever has there been a case of the aggressiveness and direct actions that the Russians took and their conduct of a multifaceted campaign to interfere with our election," he told CNN's Chris Cuomo Tuesday on "New Day."
Putin, Trump, and their little buddy Nunes are all trying to make the same false analogy that “believing in Russian interference means you’re mad about the election outcome.” But 17 separate intelligence agencies all came to same conclusion: Russia hacked into emails. And a joint statement issued a month before the election by DHS and ODNI makes it clear which side of this argument is a “fiction.”
The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow—the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.
In trying to get back to the “this is all about the election” argument, the Republicans—and Republican associate Putin—are going back to an argument that was debunked well before the election was even held. But then they’ve already run through leaks, unmasking, and a line of distractions that goes from personal insults to a swarm of tomahawk missiles.
So maybe they’re starting over again. From the top ...
