Monday, December 12, 2016

POLITICS - The Traitors Among Us

There ARE traitors in the United States of America, and they are Republicans.

Like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) who refused to make the American public aware of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence conclusion: Vladimir Putin's government deliberately interfered with America's presidential election at a 'secret' briefings.

Is there any doubt that if this situation had been reversed, a foreign country being caught influencing our Presidential election in favor of Hillary Clinton, that the Republicans would have gone berserk and attacked President Obama, Hillary, and all Democrats?

In the lead-up to Trump's nomination, the GOP was fractured and in disarray (just look at how many candidates they presented).  So now that their despicable candidate Trump has won and they have Congress in their firm grasp, they are not going to risk their position, even to the point of being traitors to the U.S. by allowing a foreign government to hijack our elections.

Just watch.  Russia will get what they really want when Trump drops the U.S. sanctions on Russia that were imposed because of Russian's military intervention in Ukraine.

"Russian efforts to boost Trump campaign jolt political world" by Steve Benen, The MaddowBlog (MSNBC) 12/12/2016

A senior U.S. official, briefed on an intelligence presentation made to members of Congress, told the Post that it's “the consensus view” of the U.S. intelligence community that Russia's alleged crimes had one specific purpose: “Russia's goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected.”

There's been some speculation in recent months that Putin's suspected interference was intended to undermine American democracy in general, casting doubts about the strength of our system and its institutions.  The Washington Post's report indicates that those assessments were incomplete: Russia wanted Donald Trump in the White House, so Russian officials allegedly took a variety of criminal steps to ensure that outcome.

The White House, swayed by the evidence, wanted bipartisan support to pushback against Russian intrusion, and in mid-September, President Obama dispatched counter-terrorism adviser Lisa Monaco, FBI Director James Comey, and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to brief top members of Congress (the “Gang of 12”).  Obama didn't want to be seen as using intelligence for partisan or electoral ends, so he sought a “show of solidarity and bipartisan unity” against foreign manipulation of our democracy.

That didn't happen, in large part because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) refused, raising questions about whether the Republican leader intentionally put his party's interests ahead of the nation's.

Indeed, given the fact that a variety of GOP leaders were made aware of Russia's attempts to hijack the American election for its own purposes, Evan McMullin, an independent presidential candidate and former GOP policy staffer on Capitol Hill, asserted over the weekend, “Republican leaders knew Russia was undermining our democracy during the election and they chose to ignore it.”





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