Everyone appears to be freaking out about the secret CIA report about Russia’s attempts to influence the U.S. election. This includes some prominent Republicans and Trump supporters, but Trump swatted away concerns on Sunday. He simply didn’t believe that Russia helped get him elected by various means, including hacking thousands of DNC emails.
Trump woke up early on Monday morning to continue his trail of denial. He fired off a few tweets, in which he wondered aloud why no one warned him about Russian hacking before election. And he created a conspiracy theory about how he’d be accused of conspiracy theories if Hillary Clinton had won the election with the aid of Russian hackers.
Unless you catch "hackers" in the act, it is very hard to determine who was doing the hacking. Why wasn't this brought up before election?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2016
Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and WE tried to play the Russia/CIA card. It would be called conspiracy theory!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2016
There’s one big problem here — both Trump and Clinton received pre-election briefings on Russian interference in the election, according to NBC News:
A senior U.S. intelligence official assured NBC News that cybersecurity and the Russian government’s attempts to interfere in the 2016 election have been briefed to, and discussed extensively with, both parties’ candidates, surrogates and leadership, since mid-August. “To profess not to know at this point is willful misrepresentation,” said the official. “The intelligence community has walked a very thin line in not taking sides, but both candidates have all the information they need to be crystal clear.”
Trump also appears to have no memory of how he stood onstage during a news conference in Florida and very publicly encouraged Russian hackers to target Clinton. He talked about how he hoped they had Clinton’s emails if they hacked her: “If they hacked, they probably have her 33,000 emails. I hope they do.” And then he actually said, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”
Oh, Russia was definitely listening.
(Via NBC News)