The president tries to distract his followers with revisionist history about the Russia investigation.
the Trump administration made its latest and most comically desperate attempt to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, when Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard claimed that she had unearthed bombshell proof of a Barack Obama–era plot to invent the conclusion that Russia had intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump. Soon after, Trump’s Truth Social account circulated an AI video depicting Obama being led off to prison. The message to his followers was that this scandal, not the other scandal involving a certain wealthy sex offender, was the one to focus on.
This message contains multiple levels of dishonesty. On the surface, the effort to draw attention away from Epstein is glaring. Below that lies the wild claim that Obama or his top officials might somehow be charged with crimes. And the fantasy of prosecutions rests on yet another ludicrous claim: that Russia did not attempt to help Trump win in 2016. The president has managed to open a debate over whether the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia helped Trump was a crime, when in reality it was not even a mistake.
Last Wednesday, Gabbard claimed that she’d found “irrefutable evidence” that Obama and his aides had concocted a “contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win.” Trump has insisted for nine years that Russia did not intervene on his behalf, and through sheer force of repetition has turned this into something close to official Republican Party dogma.
The Obama administration and the CIA adamantly deny any political motive behind their conclusion that Russia was trying to help Trump win.
