Commies! Commies under the bed!

Commies! Commies under the bed! December 10, 2016

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AKremlin_27.06.2008_01.jpg; By NVO (Own work by the original uploader) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

The latest report, from all the usual news sources, is that the CIA believes that Russia intervened in the U.S. election, not just to be a troublemaker in general terms, but specifically in order to help Trump get elected.  See CNN, for instance.  The reason for this?  Per a snipped from the New York Times as quoted by Ann Althouse, because they have evidence that the Russians also hacked Republican systems, but did not release information from those systems.

Now, this lends to all manner of speculation.  Given that Obama’s Mideast policy has essentially given Russia a free hand to build up its power base there, as Russia’s air force aids Assad in his reconquest of rebel-held territory, it’s not been entirely clear to me what the Russians would have found so objectionable about a Clinton presidency.  Althouse also mentions the theory that they didn’t expect Trump to win, even so, and therefore just wanted to weaken Clinton, in that she’d be taking office with a deeply suspicious electorate that voted for her only reluctantly.

And, if you think about it, given Trump’s outsider status, I think there’s a good chance that, had the Russians gotten a hold of a trove of e-mails of Republican insiders, it really wouldn’t have caused any great scandal.  I imagine that there would have been discussions about how to beat back the Trump insurgency, in the same way as many DNC e-mails were about beating back Sanders’ challenge — and to have released these e-mails would have only affirmed Trump supporters’ belief that he was the outsider, fighting for them.  There wouldn’t have been much of any value to that.

But do the Wikileaks releases constitute “intervening” in the election, to use CNN’s phrasing?  The over-the-top reactions that I’m reading — not necessarily among pundits, but, for instance, on the Robert Reich facebook page (and I’m not sure how to link to a specific post) — include claims that Trump treasonously colluded with Russians, and that the election was so compromised by these leaks that we need an immediate re-vote.  Reich himself calls on electors to “take note” of this news in casting their vote.

And yet at the same time, we in the United States “interfere” in foreign elections all the time.  Most recently and notably, Obama himself told voters in the U.K. not to vote for Brexit.  Yes, of course, making a speech, and releasing hacked private e-mail correspondence are not the same thing, but it certainly suggests that there is no grand principle of “thou shalt not interfere in other countries’ elections.”  I suppose, fundamentally, as entertaining as it was to see what the latest Podesta releases were, it seems unlikely to me that particularly many swing state voters were on the fence until they saw the e-mails.

But, on the other hand, Trump’s reply was foolish.  As CNN reports,

“These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” the transition said in a terse, unsigned statement.

“The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.'”

Was the Trump team simply unable to say, “we never wanted nor sought Russian help”?  And do they really need to embarrass themselves by failing to recognize that their Electoral College victor was, in the grand scheme of things, relatively small?

And have you seen the latest on the Trump Secretary of State pick?  Reportedly, according to “sources,” it’ll be the CEO of Exxon Mobil, Rex Tillerson.  Not only is it bizarre to appoint an individual with no government or foreign policy experience whatsoever, Tillerson has such close Russia ties through his business interactions that he was awarded “the Russian Order of Friendship, one of the highest awards the country bestows upon foreign nationals.”  And, at Exxon Mobil, he has been stymied by sanctions against Russia, prompting speculation that, as Secretary of State, Tillerson would lift sanctions so that American oil companies and others can resume business as usual with Russia.

Now, I haven’t been commenting much on Trump’s cabinet picks (and blogging’s been slow lately as I’ve been busy with other work).  Some seem OK-ish, and some a bit concerning, but this one?  Well, I’m really hoping that all those “sources” turn out to be wrong!

UPDATE:  A few more comments:

What does it mean for Russia to have “intervened” in the election?  Reports that ballots were hacked appear, so far as anyone can tell, to be, well, delusional.  Instead, what we’re talking about is the hacking of a gmail account, through relatively unsophisticated techniques, in October, as well as the hacking of the DNC e-mails in July.  So far as I understand, the latter was seen as a more serious “cyberattack” since it was a hack of DNC servers directly.  Anyone who claims that this sequence of events constitutes Russian “interference” and that this warrants a revote, should really think twice.  Foreign entities can do all manner of things that impact how we select our candidates.  What if Putin had created a disinformation-type campaign that said, “Hillary has promised a no-fly zone in Syria.  If she directs the U.S. military to shoot down a Russian plane, she will cause a war”?  Or had simply used its resources to fund videos with rumors about who-knows-what that Hillary has supposedly done?  It’s simply hard to fathom believing that the Podesta hack rises to the level of an “interference” that warrants a re-vote, and yet that’s what people — if nothing else, facebook and news article commenters — are claiming.  And, absent any evidence that Trump asked for, or orchestrated, this leak, it’s further difficult to believe anyone would change their minds.

 

Image:  the Kremlin. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AKremlin_27.06.2008_01.jpg; By NVO (Own work by the original uploader) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons


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