President-elect Donald Trump is so obsessed with reaffirming his own victory that he seems bent on ignoring a real national security threat and making common cause with a foe of the United States against our own intelligence community and the consensus of the vast majority of Democrats and Republicans on the Hill. His dutiful mouthpiece Sean Spicer demonstrated on Sunday just how irrational the Trump team will become when Trump’s frail ego is involved:
KARL: But what’s the bottom line. Just a yes or no answer. Does President Trump, President-elect Trump, now accept the fact that Russia was behind the DNC hack?
SPICER: Well I think that there’s a report that came out the other day, that got issued on the 29th, that the intelligence community has put out, and while the media played it up as this report about the hacking, what it actually is, if you look through it, and its available online, is a series of recommendations that should be taken, like changing passwords, changing administrative rights.
What it shows is that by all measures the Democratic National Committee had a very lax IT support. Now hacking is wrong by any standards. No one supports anyone hacking into any other entity, legal, domestically, or foreign, or anyone interfering with anything, but the fact of the matter is, what this report really does show is that there’s a need for them to go back in and look at their, what they’re doing IT wise to protect their system.
KARL: Absolutely, but you do see, I have the report too, you do see the headline, Russian malicious cyber activity. It makes it clear, and it names Russia, gives the IP addresses…
SPICER: And then it says, actions take, back up the system. Staff training…
(CROSSTALK)
KARL: Absolutely. But does he accept that Russia was behind this?
SPICER: Well I think, like I said, he has to have the briefing first from the intelligence community next week.
KARL: So he’s still not there yet?
SPICER: It’s not a question of not there yet, Jonathan, it’s a question of getting the information. Everyone in the media wants to jump forward and make a conclusion based off other sourced information, you know anonymous sources that are coming out of the intelligence community, he’s going to do this right.
KARL: This is no longer anonymous, this is
SPICER: It is…
KARL: This is a public statement.
SPICER: What this says is that the DNC had a problem with their IT security and people tried to hack it and they need to do a better job of protecting it…
KARL: The Russians succeeding in hacking… SPICER: But the fact of the matter is, but we’re having part of a conversation. Why aren’t we talking about the influence, other influences on the election? Why aren’t we talking about Hillary Clinton getting debate questions ahead of time? That’s a pretty valid attempt to influence an election. Somebody giving her the debate questions and the answers of an election. No, no, no. It’s not hey. We haven’t, no one’s asking those questions. And the fact is is that everyone wants to talk, make Donald Trump admit to certain things. When are we going to start talking about the other side of this. Which is what did Hillary Clinton do to influence the election? Is she being punished in any way? What are we doing to make sure that people don’t get the debate questions ahead of time, because I can tell you this, if my boss at the time, Reince Priebus, had gotten the debate questions, and handed them off, he would have been driven out of this town on a stake, and Donald Trump would have been vilified. No one wants to ask those questions now.
This is about national security and Spicer is talking about Clinton’s campaign. For Trump the two are linked, and anyone pursuing Russian cyberattacks on the United States is attacking him, his victory. This is disturbing to say the least.
There is something more than a little pathetic in reverting to false talking points about Trump “saving” Sprint jobs (that were “saved” before the election) when asked about Trump’s peculiar relationship with Putin:
KARL: Okay. So I want to ask you something, Donald Trump has had a lot to say about Russia over the past couple of weeks.
SPICER: Right.
KARL: In particular about Vladimir Putin. First he praised Putin for sending him a quote very nice letter saying he thought Putin’s thoughts were quote so correct. Then he agreed with Putin’s mocking of Hillary Clinton, saying it was, so true. And now we saw, most recently, praising Putin’s muted response to these new sanctions saying I always knew he was very smart. Sean, you’re a longtime Republican, party of Reagan, is there something a little strange to you to hear the incoming president offering so many words of praise to the Russian…
SPICER: Well let’s look at what happened, right? The United States says were going to impose these sanctions. Expel people, close down sites, et cetera, call out people by name. The Russian government says were going to retaliate in the equal sense. And then Vladimir Putin says, you know what, I’m actually going to wait until Donald Trump goes. That’s actually good for our country.
So the idea is everyone wants to talk about the tweets he sent. But I would actually focus on the action he’s getting. Donald Trump is not president yet and he’s getting action, successes and wins, both abroad and here at home.
Everything he does right now, he gets — he speaks for the head of Sprint, gets 5,000 jobs moved from abroad. And everyone starts to mock him. Oh, those jobs were already announced. They weren’t. The sales jobs have been a previous announce. These jobs were coming from abroad to America.
And instead of trying to mock him or undermine him, it’s time that people started to give him credit for actually getting things done.
Again, for Trump’s team the concern is about Trump being “mocked,” not about threats to the country. Spicer went on to give a convoluted explanation of Trump’s approach to Russia: The reset failed so Trump will do something new. That something new is being even more deferential to Russia? This is akin to President Obama’s mindset with Iran — predecessors failed to get along, so he would have a new relationship. Unfortunately, that new relationship meant never directly confronting Iran and deluding oneself that Iran wanted normal relations with the United States. Put in Trump terms, instead of “losing” to Russia, Trump would concede the match, for the sake of preserving his gigantic and frail ego.[...]
Perhaps Trump will be impeached and replaced by Pence. Then at least some might return to the Presdicency.
ReplyDeleteLet's get something straight. There is "zer0.zer0zer0..." public evidence that top-levels of the Russian government had a stated policy to undermine U.S. elections and that they told hackers to go at it.
ReplyDeleteWhat we DO have is plentiful evidence that the Russian government had a policy of forming and funding hacker groups. So, since everything in Russia is quasi-governmental, and the hackers take their general approach from the ATTITUDE of their higher-ups, then it makes sense to say that the "Russians" en masse were behind the toying with the elections.
The analog here in the U.S., where most people are pretty much independent of the government, would be if some group of hackers who went to public school (government funded), and are patriotic (from patriotism inculcated by the curriculum of their schools), and went to colleges (established by the government), and received an education (paid for by government loans and/or partially subsidized by the government either directly or by giving people who donate to colleges a tax write-off) -- if these "independent" hackers were to interfere in some Russian political business.
Would we say that the U.S. Government is behind the hacking because hackers in the U.S. "connected" with the U.S. government were behind the hacking?
We wouldn't. The connection between government and citizens in the U.S. is much weaker than in Russia. But in some ways it is much stronger. The patriotism may be stronger. The willingness to fight in war may be much stronger, since the soldier has a stake in the outcome to maintain his freedom.
So when we add it all up, I think we have a rough balance. American hackers promote American interests, whether they work for the government or not. Russian hackers represent Russian government interests because they receive some funding from their government and the government tries to instill fear of the government in them.
My point: we have cyber-parity with the Russians. It doesn't make sense to go to cyber-war with them over some hacking incidents. Mr. Trump, Savior of America, has it right.
Intelligence services disagree with you
ReplyDeleteYou have your own inside information I.e a bird told you?
All this nonsense and not a trace of information about Obama's sale of Israel down the river. This is a serious imbalance.
ReplyDeleteObama's 25 scandals
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wnd.com/2017/01/what-me-scandals/
I've been extensively researching this. Which publicly revealed intelligence report goes as far as to say they have information, albeit classified information, that Mr. Putin ordered the hacking of the DNC in order to influence U.S. elections. All the reports I've encountered are very careful to couch their assessment in language describing quasi-governmental groups associated with the Kremlin.
ReplyDeleteI think the blog is being forward looking. Mr. Obama's lame-duck nonsense will join him on the dust-heap of history. Let's get with the program. Onward to the inauguration.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-officials-putin-personally-involved-u-s-election-hack-n696146
ReplyDeleteThe headline and content, on the surface, contradict my assertion. I admit that.
ReplyDeleteBut a little deeper digging into the article supports my contention that saying Mr. Putin ordered the hacking is speculation.
First, the information comes from intelligence agencies from other countries. Really? The vaunted U.S. agencies couldn't independently verify the shared intelligence?
But more telling, the language is still mushy: "'high degree of confidence'". Leaving open doubt. Leaving open a way out if real, solid intelligence shows up that the hacking was not ordered from above.
And the kicker: the FBI, before the new information came out, disagreed with the assessment Mr. Putin personally ordered the hacking! Hmm, the more politicized CIA, which holds Mr. Putin ordered the hacking, undoubtedly would share intelligence with the FBI about a foreign power hacking in the U.S. (since the FBI has authority to investigate spying in the U.S., and the CIA does not.) So why would the FBI disagree if the evidence is clear and unassailable?
The author of the article says the new evidence of Mr. Putin's involvement is "solid", and that the term "high level of confidence" means "incontrovertible". I think reasonable people can disagree with that assertion.
To disagree with it you need some evidence - which you have none. You have every right to have contempt for the intelligence services for daring to disagree with Trumps "gut analysis". But to disregard a reasonable concern for truth and convince other's to ignore the Intelligence Services - you need considerably more than what you have stated so far.
ReplyDeleteHard to prove a "negative". To prove that Mr. Putin, or people closely allied with him, did NOT order the hacking to influence the election.
ReplyDeleteThis whole issue is getting absurd. Not one poll, to my knowledge, indicating the hacking influenced the election. If I'm not mistaken, it was people in the U.S. who parsed the emails and published the results and thus contributed the lion's share to any election-influencing that may have occurred.
Also: Just about everyone, including me, and I think Mr. Putin, too, expected Ms. Clinton to win the election. I'm still in shock a little from that morning when I got up after the election and noticed a friend had texted the results.
So the hacking, whoever did it -- let's say Mr. Putin ordered it -- was likely intended to weaken a future President Clinton, not to influence the election.
the Intelligence Community and a number of major Republicans and Democrats disagree with your benign scenario
ReplyDeleteThey also said that there was 100% certainty that there were WMDs in Iraq.
ReplyDeleteTo Quote, "According to the CIA's report, all U.S. intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons. There is little question that Saddam Hussein wants to develop nuclear weapons." Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) - Congressional Record, October 9, 2002
It is one thing to go into a needless and unfunded war with Iraq... Russia is in a whole different league, and nothing has been put forth in the public to prove that this is any different than the WMDs in Iraq.
You need to function on the basis of the best information you have available. Trump seems to feel there is no need for the Intelligence Community because his gut feeling is superior because it never made the mistake about WMD in Iraq.
ReplyDeleteWhat is Trump's basis for disparaging the Intelligence Agencies? Apparently he can't accept that Russia might have tried to give him a few extra votes and maybe succeeded. It is only his weak ego - not that he has superior sources or better logic.
Ok. Let's agree the highest levels of the Russian government ordered the hacking, and managed the distribution of the hacked emails.
ReplyDeleteWhy don't we now investigate the DNC? Were there people who hated Ms. Clinton and thus left the DNC servers vulnerable to hacking? Maybe there were people who hated Ms. Clinton and actively fed the Russians passwords.
I mean, we could spend our whole lives investigating and debating this. Or, we can get on with the business of Making America Great Again.
Or it could possibly(even probably) be that, as President-Elect, he now gets full intelligence briefings at the highest security level, and thus has seen the "evidence" that these intelligence agencies are building this on, and how thin and politically motivated it is.
ReplyDeleteYes he does have inside sources. Quite literally. As President-Elect he is now allowed to, even required to, look behind the curtain.
WMD in Iraq was not based on best information, as various reports of said, it was an almost entirely fabricated fiction based on extremely thin and circumstantial information. It was a dialogue that was pushed forward because of a political desire to find causus bellum with Iraq.
Whether or not Trump is stroking his ego or going from a critical view of the information before him we cannot know for, as with Iraqi WMDs, we the public are not being given the evidence, only the supposedly irrefutable conclusions.
you are basically saying in a murder case we should not be concerned with a person being murdered but rather that when the victim fell after being shot his cell phone broke and perhaps if he had gotten a shock proof case it would not have been damaged?!
ReplyDeleteSo Trump says, let's ignore everything which minimizes my election results - even if it means ignoring the deliberate infiltration of America's computer system = after all how can we make America great by thinking about reality?"
if Preseident elect Trump can base rejection of Intelligence reports solely on how much it hurts his ego - I can surely base my conclusions on what the Intelligence Agencies say.
ReplyDeleteThere is no evidence that Trump has any insider information. If he does it is highly irresponsible for him to withhold it from the Intelligence Agencies.
Last time I checked Trump and the Intelligence Agencies were supposed to be on the same side!
Exactly. We had a candidate for the Democratic Party with a laissez faire attitude towards security as indicated by Benghazi and by her private email server. And also indicated by her failure to secure the DNC servers while she had a leadership position there. Yes, she was done in by the hacking. But it was like she was asking for it. And it was hardly the straw that broke the camel's back. It was "Camel down!" because of many other factors.
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, reality must be ignored to make America great again. The challenge is so great -- just consider the National Debt -- that we have to put on blinders and just plow ahead.
This alleged Russian hacking ruckus should be relegated back to what the intelligence community terms "chatter".
Forward: march towards prosperity and peace.
I wish you realized what you sound like - it is not your normal rational commonsense self
ReplyDeleteJoe Orlow enthusiastically says that "reality must be ignored to make America great again". Incredible!!!!
A mirror is in order here.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that you respond off-topic, a bit hysterically and personal when people disagree with you about Trump should give you some pause, and hopefully reconsideration on how you're approaching this. No one wants to see Daat Torah become like Yudels Take. Well, many people do - but that's not what I, Joe Orlow, or your regular readers want.
I actually borrowed it from my modus operandi of running my own life. I've been in serious financial straits several times in the past decade or so. Only by ignoring the reality, creating a plan of action, breaking the plan of action into steps, and intensely focusing on each step, one at at a time, was I able to somehow dig myself out. That's what this country needs. Not distractions.
ReplyDeletethere are two types of people in the world - one type views what I say as normative and commonsense and the other group views it as hysterical and biased - there is no middle ground unfortunately
ReplyDeleteIn other words ignore facts and keep busy?! What if your plan is wrong - how do you find out if you ignore reality?
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to Trump, do you only respond on-topic and without personal attacks?
ReplyDeleteIn certain situations, there is no good plan. A country trillions in debt; and the rate of debt growth is speeding up. At some point, in my own life, I come up for air, and check if the plan is working, but to focus on the reality all the time would be catastrophic.
ReplyDeleteA friend told me a similar idea by Tisha B'Av. All year around, we numb ourselves to the reality that the Bais Ha'Mikdash is destroyed. It is taught that any year the B"H is not rebuilt, had it been standing that year, it would be fitting for it to be destroyed. A harsh reality.
One day a year, on Tisha B'Av, we allow ourselves to feel the reality. That day is a reality check: someone who doesn't feel the loss keenly on that day, may want to work on himself to sensitive himself.
So: we can replay, over and over, the last political year leading up to the election, how vicious it was, and who said what to whom, who did in the next one, who is responsible for the debt and the weak economy, etc., etc. or we can start working on building up the strength of the nation and begin the process of making America great again.