Trump vs. Obama re: Russian Interference: Clear Who Sides With Us or With Putin

Obama-Putin Meet in China (September 2016)

(Obama first time says stop interference)

Trump-Putin Meet in Helsinki (July 2018)

(“We did not interfere” Trump believes him)

Time to clear the air of the sustained GOP's mythical BS hype about Obama didn't do anything to stop Russian interference and all the while Trump and many GOPers are in deep denial (e.g., Mitch McConnell to name on biggie).

Most Republicans and some Democrats have criticized the Obama administration for not doing enough to thwart Russian election interference, but is it accurate to claim they did “nothing?”

CNN Fact Checking: While there is evidence that the Obama administration struggled with how to deal with Russia's election meddling, it did make attempts to get Russia to stop, and also to tell the American public about what the Russians were up to. 

Those attempts appear to have had little to no impact on Russia's behavior, and the public did not fully grasp the extent of the meddling until well after the election.

Top Obama administration officials directly issued repeated warnings to Russia to stop their interference in the US election. Obama said he himself told Russian President Vladimir Putin in September 2016 to cut it out, vowing “serious consequences” if he did not.

In October 2016, the IC issued a statement saying it was “confident the Russian government was behind the theft and dissemination of Democratic officials' emails.” Obama’s administration then sought support from bipartisan congressional leaders to send a letter to state governors to urge shoring up of their defenses of election infrastructure.

However, CNN reported in August 2017, that those Obama moves were rebuffed by Republican leaders, who “viewed them as too partisan.”

(I note: That denial including frequently from Trump continues today).

The Obama administration then issued a set of sanctions to punish Russia for its interference that included booting 35 Russian diplomats the US accused of being intelligence officers out of the country.

At the same time, some Democrat in Congress and some former Obama administration officials as well (mostly privately at least) criticized Obama himself for not doing enough to thwart the Russian election interference campaign.

(I note: A key point not discussed but missed is the early depth of it all).

After the election, Obama said during a news conference at the White House that he worried overly that public efforts to draw attention to the interference could be viewed as political interference (to favor Clinton – which it was not) and it “would not necessarily spook the Russians into stopping” (and, that is exactly what happened that history now shows).

Obama said: “We were playing this thing straight — we weren't trying to advantage one side or another other. Just imagine if we had done the opposite. It would have become one more political scrum.”

But for Trump and his allies to call attention to Obama's failings ignores Trump's response to the Russian interference in 2016, too. To wit:

1.  Trump has repeatedly undermines the IC Russian findings.

2.  In Helsinki last year standing alongside Putin, Trump publicly sided with the Russian leader over the intelligence community, touting Putin's denials and saying he didn't in part: “I don’t see any reason why Russia would be responsible.”

(Trump later said he misspoke in grammar structure of that sentence – yeah sure he did).

3.  Trump was reluctant to sign a Russia sanctions bill in 2017 that passed the Senate nearly-unanimously.

4.  Trump slow-walked the implementation of sanctions, arguing that the passage of the legislation was already having an impact on Russian companies.

5.  Republicans and Democrats alike have also worried that several of Trump's foreign policy actions like sowing divisions in the NATO alliance to withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria have benefited Russia.

6.  Now now concerns that the Trump administration is not taking sufficient steps to counter foreign interference in the 2020 election.

7.  While national security officials are working to shore up capabilities to combat different types of foreign interference in the coming presidential election, top Trump administration officials have downplayed the threat and the President has not indicated it is a priority for his administration.

8. For example, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a senior adviser, downplayed any Russian interference as “merely buying some Facebook ads.”

9. The President has repeatedly focused questions about past     and future Russian interference by stressing that the influence campaign did not change any votes, even though officials did not make an assessment of the electoral effect.

10.  During the 2016 campaign, amid reports of Russian interference, Trump called for closer relations between the US and Russia and even publicly encouraged Russia to find and release his rival Hillary Clinton's deleted 30,000 emails and “our media would reward them highly (sic).”

11.  After the Mueller report was released, extensively detailing Russian interference in 2016, Trump did not address those findings.Trump instead claimed exoneration, focusing on the fact that Mueller's investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government in election interference activities.”

DIVE DEEP INTO THE MUELLER REPORT:

1.    Read and Search the full Mueller Report

2.    CNN found 77 Lies and False Assertions in Mueller — Trump Told the Greatest Number

3.    77 Lies that Mueller Called Out

4.    What Trump Associates told the Public vs. What they told Mueller

5.    4 Times Barr twisted and Cherry-picked Mueller

My 2 cents: Whether this post carries any weight with stanch Trump loyalists is of course unknown, but I believe the facts linked above speak volumes – maybe will impact some, hopefully.

Thanks for stopping by.