A Coordinated Disinformation Campaign!

Another political writer that I have been turning to, is David Frum, Senior Editor at the Atlantic. I suppose it is fair to say that he is right of center, but seems to me to be a very principled conservative. A thinker. Open to evidence. A perceptive and eloquent thinker and writer.

And the evidence (as Kevin Drum reminds us) tells us that yes, Russia did hack the 2016 Election.

But it's the next step of this operation (as detailed by David Frum), that is most important: "How Trump Made Russia's Hacking More Effective." It wasn't just that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee's computers, but that Trump lied about what the DNC emails said during the campaign.

It's almost like the whole thing was a coordinated disinformation campaign! Done in plain sight. We watched it happen. Some of us were so stunned by Trump's buffoonery, that we didn't take his malicious actions seriously. 

Alternatively, Josh Marshall suggests that maybe indeed, it was all buffoonery, that Trump just blundered into supporting the Russian disinformation campaign. Trump's stupidity, and/or indifference to the truth, led him to concoct false tales on the campaign trail, using anything he could to throw mud at Hillary Clinton. And since we know that Trump doesn't know what he doesn't know, and it out-weighs by tons anything he does know, maybe his campaign actually was mixed up with the Russians, but he either didn't care, or just didn't want to know, or just did his best not to see it. And he denies it even now, even after U.S. Intelligence tells us it's so.

Anyway, is all this treason? A candidate wittingly or unwittingly coordinating with a foreign government to interfere with a U.S. Election? I do think Congress should thoroughly investigate. We all need to know. What did Trump know, when did he know it, and was he working with Putin and the Russians? And, oh yeah, just what exactly is Trump hiding on his tax returns? Is he partners with Russia? Does he owe money to Russian Oligarchs? Does Putin have anything on this man? Is he being black-mailed by a foreign power?

Questions! Many questions for the new year in politics!