Clinton campaign manager: Russia hacked the DNC and is releasing the emails now to help Trump
POSTED AT 5:01 PM ON JULY 24, 2016 BY ALLAHPUNDIT
Everyone understands what he’s trying to do here. The DNC leak is a fiasco for the party on the eve of the convention, reminding Bernie fans why they hate Hillary Clinton and her establishment lackeys at the moment she was hoping to win them over and unite the party. Robby Mook’s strategy: Change the subject from Clinton and Debbie Wasserman Schultz to two villains outside the party, Trump and Putin. If this is all just a Russian psy op to benefit the Republican nominee, Mook seems to imply, then any lefty who continues to focus their anger on Hillary is not only playing into the GOP’s hands, they’re playing into a foreign power’s hands. You can be a good Democrat or you can be a useful idiot for Russian fascists. That’s his message.
Tapper is appropriately skeptical, demanding direct evidence to support a charge so serious. Mook has none — but he does have circumstantial evidence, starting with the fact that experts really do believe that Russia is responsible for the DNC hack. That story broke big more than a month ago. Not one but two separate Russian natsec agencies, apparently acting independently of each other, made it inside the DNC’s servers and spent months poking around. Is it reasonable to believe that Russian intel would hand over (some of) the contents of the DNC hack to Wikileaks for publication? Well, if they’re going to release stuff stolen from an American political party, it’s not going to be through the Russian embassy. Wikileaks, the world’s most prominent leak launderer, would be a logical place to turn to guarantee maximum publicity for the e-mails. In fact, Wikileaks chief Julian Assange once hosted his own show on Kremlin propaganda network RT. Russia hawks like Joshua Foust and John Schindler have theorized in the past that Wikileaks has a relationship with Russian intelligence, possibly involving infiltration by Russian spies or, as in Schindler’s worst-case scenario, something even more ambitious. (The hacker known as Guccifer 2.0, suspected by many to be a Russian intel op, has said publicly that he gave the DNC material to Wikileaks although many experts are skeptical of that.) Even if you don’t believe the worst accusations of collusion, though, Wikileaks would be an obvious conduit for any intel agency wanting to embarrass an enemy publicly while scrubbing their own fingerprints from the plot.
That much is easy. The leap comes in connecting all of this to Trump, which Mook does by asking cui bono? All we can do is speculate, which is why Tapper’s uncomfortable with him making this charge, but the unpleasant truth is that it’s reasonable to believe that Russia has a rooting interest in this election and that, for once, it’s not rooting for the left. You don’t need to be conspiratorial to suspect that: Trump’s comments about NATO would have given Putin cause to prefer him to Clinton even if they had no other common ground. (Which is saying a lot given that she masterminded the sub-moronic Russian “reset.”) But they do have other common ground, and not just stylistically. Read Bill Kristol’s summary of the overlaps between Team Trump and Team Vladimir. Then read Franklin Foer, who notes that between his politics, his staff decisions, his business interests, and his potential to transform U.S. politics, Trump is Putin’s dream candidate. If Moscow’s not trying to influence the U.S. election to help him, it should be. And maybe it is. Look at it this way: Why hack the DNC and humiliate Democrats before their convention but not do the same to Republicans? There must be old e-mails on the RNC’s servers from during the primaries showing staffers freaking out at the possibility of Trump being nominated. Those e-mails would have given him a black eye if they had been released last week. Is the RNC’s e-mail security that much better than the DNC’s that Russia couldn’t penetrate it (Republicans aren’t known for their technological superiority over Democrats, to put it mildly) or did Russia simply choose not to release what it has from Republicans so as to avoid hurting Trump’s chances? Mook’s spin here may be self-serving, but as the saying goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
Note that none of this means that Russia is acting at Trump’s behest. Not even Mook goes that far. The argument, rather, is that Russia has chosen to be proactive on Trump’s behalf to improve his chances in November whether Trump wants that or not. Paul Manafort, who used to be a lobbyist for Ukraine’s Kremlin-backed president, naturally denies all of it, but then Paul Manafort denies a lot of things that later turn out to be true. And as for Putin, he really can’t lose either way this fall. Even if his favored candidate falters, the winner will be someone who’s happy to be bought. Russian interests have bought her before, after all. Good luck, America.
Commentary: This is double plus good bullshit. It gives the Dems a smokescreen to give the main stream media something to talk about instead of the substance of the emails and something for Trump haters like Allahdouchebag to use to explain why it is so stupid to vote for Trump. Because he is not for Hillary. Oh not him. Not like all the rest of the conservative bloggers and pundits who have so much to lose if Trump wins. It is the perfect story and I bet it gets a lot of play tonight.
15 comments:
That's the thing rc. Why do we want to fight with the Russians. They aren't commies anymore. They are Mafia. Trump knows how to do a deal with the Mafia. That is how he poured the concrete and got the towels for his casinos. He knows how to deal with Putin. It is just like dealing with Fat Tony Salerno or Gaspipe or Phil Leonetti.
It is hilarious how the New York Times and PBS and the Washington Post are so worried that we are going to get along with the Russians when that was why they hated Reagan all those years ago. What a bunch of bullshit.
I far prefer Putin to Merkel or the Euroweenies who are turning over there countries to rapist Muslim animals. We can make some deals with Putin. He is a crook. Trump can do crooks.
The Putin=Trump meme is being pushed since this morning by the paid Hillary trolls over at TOP.
This Allahpundit person has gone over the edge it seems. Unchecked hatred will do it.
In other words, #NeverTrump = Hillary2016. They're not even pretending anymore.
It's been interesting watching Greenwald deal with this through his twitter account. It's odd reading him in support of Trump and against the Russian theory.
Yesterday I read some of the Guccifer documents have metadata on them that point to Moscow.
On of the many interesting things about Trump that I like is that he is changing the dynamic of American Foreign Policy. Everything is on the table. Everything has to be in America's interest first. Not the Europeans who like to lecture us. Not the Japs and the Gooks who free load off of us while protesting our military.
The United States has no permanent allies. Only permanent interests. Our first president warned us to avoid foreign entanglements. We don't need to nation build. The Muslims do not want democracy. Why do we need to force it on them. To make the Neocons happy. Fuck that noise. To get oil like the Bushes wanted to do because they suck Saudi dick? Fuck that we got fracking oil coming out of our ass. The world has changed.
Build up the warlords and set them against each other. Arm the Kurds. Arm the Jews. Let them loose. They will sort out the Turks and the ragheads in Iran soon enough. That is how you control them. Mafia politics. It works. That is how the imperialists did it for hundreds of years. We need to go back to shit that works. Not namby pamby Woodrow Wilson one world government crapola.
I thought Hillary reset relations with Putin after W trashed the relationship. Is this another one of those "tell a big enough lie" moments?
Trump can't be Putin because he's Hitler and we all know the Commies and the Narzis hate each other.
Besides, Hillary buttoned up the Russkies with a Reset, so Vlad loves her.
Platonically, of course.
It will, however, be fun to watch the bought and paid for crowd at HotAir twist themselves in knots over this. They're officially the Little Green Footballs of the decade.
I have nothing either for or against the Russkies but wouldn't it be nice if just for once our betters heeded G. Washington's advice to avoid foreign entanglements?
I see Troop beat me to the punch.....the bastard!
We weren't trading with the world then. But even then the Frawgs were allied with us.
And here's why the Demos are going berserk. Even according to CNN, Trump is ahead in battleground states.
Not to mention Ditzy Debbie is getting hit with a class action lawsuit for rigging promaries for Cacklepants.
Feel The Bern.
You have to realize something about Trump. It is all about Money. He doesn't want to stay in NATO because we are getting rooked by the Europeans. We are spending all this cash and we have to listen to their bullshit. Trump wants to pony up the dough or we are going to skate.
The only ones who are worth a shit are the Brits, the Hungarians and the Pollacks. So we can set them up to defend themselves. Put a couple of nukes there to protect them and cut a deal with Putin. Putin is all about the cash. And respect. We can cut deals with them all day long. Hey he wants to be a big macher in Syria? Knock yourself out. In fact we can make it a contest. We can bomb ISIS and they can bomb ISIS and whoever makes the rubble bounce higher with dead towel heads wins a case of vodka. It's a win/win.
The Muzzies are the problem. Not the Russki's. Let's keep our eye on the ball.
Conflict with Russia is yesterdays news.
With a little luck, this could be more fun than SF in '84 and Chiraq in '68.
Trooper York said...
The Muzzies are the problem. Not the Russki's. Let's keep our eye on the ball.
Not hard. After some Syrian murdered a German woman with a machete, we have a bomb killing someone at a music festival.
Another of those damned Canuckistan terrorists, no doubt.
I do think the Russians can be a problem, but their interest is the motherland. They seem to want land as a buffer, rather than say building a wall. But they know how to build walls too.
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