The establishment media’s heads popped when President Trump’s said Thursday in Poland that countries other than Russia may have been involved<\/b>
\nThe establishment media\u2019s when nuts when President Trump\u2019s said Thursday in Poland that countries other than Russia may have been involved with meddling in the 2016 U. S. election.
In a vacuum, the president saying that he thinks \u201cRussia\u201d meddled in the election, but \u201cit could have been others\u201d too would not cause so much controversy. But with a media so heavily invested in the Russia-Trump narrative leading to multiple misreports, retractions, and resignations, it makes sense that this is what the media would direct its laser focus on.
What they are ignoring, however, is the president\u2019s broader point of questioning then-President Obama\u2019s role as commander in chief during the alleged Russian meddling, which CNN curiously labeled as Trump \u201c blaming\u201d Obama.
From another, perhaps more sober viewpoint, Trump posed a legitimate question for those genuinely concerned about Russian hacking:
Why did [President Obama] do nothing about it? He was told it was Russia by the CIA\u2026 and he did nothing about it\u2026 They said he choked. I don\u2019 t think he choked\u2026 I think what happened was he thought Hillary Clinton was going to win the election and he said let\u2019s not do anything about it. Had he thought the other way, he would have done something about it.\u201d
The president makes a serious allegation about a former president ignoring cyber security breaches \u2014 instead the media ignores and obfuscates by breathlessly reporting his claims that others may have been involved as well. The president\u2019s allegation is not without merit, but Obama\u2019s culpability in the Russian hacking is a question seldom asked, let alone answered.
A Washington Post report revealed that the CIA briefed the Obama White House as early as August 2016 that Russian President Vladamir Putin had ordered the interference of the 2016 election with \u201cthe express purpose of helping elect Donald Trump.\u201d It was not until Oct. 7 that Obama revealed Russia was behind the hacking, and Putin\u2019s role in directly ordering it was not released until December, an entire month after the election.
After Trump\u2019s victory in the 2016 election, the Obama camp\u2019s buyer\u2019s remorse kicked in, with one anonymous senior official saying that they \u201csort of choked.\u201d Another senior official remarked that \u201c [t] he White House was mortified and shocked\u201d after Trump won the election, and a sense of \u201cwow, did we mishandle this\u201d overtook the national security team.
FactCheck.org called President Trump\u2019s claim Obama did nothing \u201cmisleading\u201d Thursday, but the conclusion flies in the face of comments from former high ranking intelligence officials in the Obama Administration.
In May, former acting CIA director under Obama, Micheal Morell, was \u201cstruck\u201d that the administration was concerned enough about hacking to ask the Russians to \u201cstop\u201d but \u201cdid nothing\u201d after the warning had fallen on deaf ears. Obama\u2019s former homeland security director, Jeh Johnson, said the inaction left him with a sense of \u201ccognitive dissonance.\u201d
Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota, in a recent TV appearance, said that the Obama administration \u201cdid think Hillary would win\u201d and that they did not want to be seen as \u201cputting their thumb on the scale.\u201d The Washington Post\u2019s, Aaron Blake, concludes that if Hillary Clinton had won the election Russian meddling would not be a \u201cbig deal today, \u201d but since Trump pulled off a narrow upset, \u201cany number of factors could have tipped the scales.\u201d These comments can lead one to conclude that the Trump-Russia probe is little more than sour grapes in political circles and media outlets, and an attempt to act after the fact.
If Obama had thought Trump was going to win, would that have forced him to protect the country against cyberattacks. Was his inaction to intelligence reports of Russian meddling in the election politically motivated, and perhaps left our election processes vulnerable to foreign adversaries?
These are questions that demand answers from former Obama administration officials. But with an establishment media singularly focused on a narrative rather than journalistic integrity and duty, they are questions that will most likely remain unanswered.
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