If I had anything to do with the DNC I’d be focused more on cyber security and less on blaming the Russians for my own stupidity.
Yes, it does. It does not present any evidence though, just like the previous report. Lots of assertions. No evidence. Except maybe to show that RT is tied to Russian government. Wow. Now that’s a bombshell conclusion.
I said a while ago that I bet the guilt of this is probably eating Podesta up. Maybe that’s why he has been pushing this Russia hacking narrative.
The political appointees are not the ones who are actually coming up with the raw intelligence, analyzing it, and writing the reports.
The problem with Trump is that he rejects government officials when they take actions or make statements that do not help him but celebrates them and praises their integrity when they take actions or make statements that directly or indirectly hurts his enemies. He basically said Comey and the FBI were all corrupt for recommending against any criminal prosecution of Clinton but praised him and said maybe he wasn’t corrupt after all when Comey sent the letter to Congress saying that the investigation was being partially re-opened to look at Huma’s new Clinton-related emails. Then of course Trump trashed Comey again when Comey later notified Congress that the reviewed emails did not change his recommendation.
That’s not “reasoning” at all. That’s pure opportunism. Trump seems determined to reject any notion, no matter how many U.S. intelligence agencies and officials tell him, that Russia had anything to do with the hacking and Wikileaks releases because he seems afraid it will automatically undermine the legitimacy of his election. He already seems defensive and insecure about losing the popular vote. He doesn’t seem to realize that despite Putin saying “wonderful” things about him, these developments and now the report give him the perfect opportunity to distance himself from Putin and embrace the bipartisan concern and anger over the hacking. There isn’t a strong constituency in the U.S. that wants to embrace Russia, so he has little to fear about alienating key U.S. supporters by taking a harder line against Putin.
The released unclassified report does not address whether Russia’s efforts to influence the election were successful and it is likely no report ever will since there are too many variables to ever conclude that with any confidence. Trump can turn this into a win-win by embracing the report and intelligence agency conclusions, changing his embrace of Putin and Russia, and simply ignoring whether the issue of whether Russia did in fact influence the election.
Rather than bite on your loaded question, let me ask you one: Why SHOULDN’T the Russians attempt to influence our election in any way they feel is beneficial to their interests? Or better yet, how naieve do you have to be to think they WOULDN’T try to do that?
There’s a blinding flash of the obvious if I ever saw one. Are you suggesting ANY politician doesn’t do that? At least covertly?
How does one explain the GOP hypocrisy where a huge percentage of Republicans believed that Obama was a Kenyan with absolutely no evidence, but refuse to accept the Russian involvement in our election with the joint statement of all of US intelligence? I’d have to imagine one’s personality would cleave in two trying to keep those two beliefs in one’s head simultaneously.
It summarizes the evidence. For instance, on page 3, the report states that “Russian intelligence accessed elements of multiple state or local electoral boards.”
That was reported extensively back in August/September.
The actual raw intelligence used as evidence for the hacks and routing of the accessed information from Russia to Wikileaks is likely only available in the classified version of the report. If Trump continues to publicly question all of the intelligence agencies’ conclusions, it is possible that Obama might decide to declassify the entire report.
That sounds like the SOP for inside the Beltway. Maybe you could knock Trump for being too much like the rest of our politicians for doing this, but it’s certainly not a flaw unique to him.
It’s an assertion. It is not evidence.
You seem to be pushing something yourself; The fairy tale that it’s just a few bitter Democrats that are behind the reports from the three agencies that produced the report. I can assure you that it’s not just a couple of people who wrote this up, sitting in Podesta’s basement.
I have a both-sides-do-it story for you, if you’re interested.
Again, they’re not going to give you the names and addresses of their intel operatives.
And anyway, we’ve played this game before with the birth certificate;
“Oh, it’s totally 'shopped. You can tell from the pixels”. If they produced evidence to you, it would not be enough, or would be nit-picked to death.
NO AMOUNT of evidence will convince, at this point. Once cannot use logic to argue someone out of a position that they did not use logic to get into in the first place.
Trumps bald-faced assertion (in the absence of ANY evidence) that Russia had nothing to do with the hacks is UNASSAILABLE. Because it is simply not based in facts, logic or the real world.
Trump is more overt about this than any politician I’ve ever seen. Clinton and her campaign championed Comey’s conclusions (and even tried spinning it into a complete exoneration) in his original recommendation to Congress and cried foul when he sent the letter to Congress, but as far as I recall seeing, they never questioned his or the FBI’s basic competence. At most, Clinton and her allies questioned Comey’s wisdom and the appropriateness of sending the letter to Congress, but never claimed that he was simply making things up or that the investigation was rigged as Trump claimed.
Trump seems to like Putin because Putin has said some favorable things about him. If Putin had said negative things about Trump, Trump would probably view him (and by extension Russia itself) as one of the U.S.'s worst enemies. By contrast, following the woefully misguided “reset” in 2009, whether Putin personally complimented Obama or not probably wouldn’t affect Obama’s overall Russia policy. This is best demonstrated by President Duterte of the Philippines insults against Obama. Other than a cancelled meeting, they haven’t affected the U.S. side of U.S.-Philippine relations because Obama likely realizes that the statements of one person, even if the chief executive of another country, likely don’t represent the actual views of the people of that country and are not worth majorly shifting long-standing U.S. policy because of “hurt feelings.”
Back during the Bush administration, there were stories that the Bush White House doctored EPA reports to downplay the significance of / confidence in global warming. Let’s assume, for the sake of discussion, that you believe that story (although feel free to jump in here and correct me if you think it would be impossible for some high-level administration aids to modify a federal agency’s report for political purposes). Isn’t it also possible that the current Obama administration has influenced this intelligence report to play up and oversell the “Russian hacking” narrative? Or was the EPA’s “State of the Environment” report written in Cheney’s basement by a few bitter Republicans?
Not familiar with that report at all… and where did the “stories” that the report was doctored come from? The highest levels of the Democrat establishment?
Possible is irrelevant. It’s possible everyone on this board is an AI, or that I have a family full of albinos living in my basement.
Probability is relevant.
People are going vote based on the sum total of all the information available to them, regardless of how that knowledge came to pass. Granted, some people will never have much to go on, and alot of information will never come to light.
An old saying comes to mind: “Oh! what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!”
Cool. So let’s present none. That’s the ticket.
I wouldn’t want anyone to wallow in ignorance for lack of providing a cite, so here you go.