I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. The Russia meddling with the 2016 election has been a bone of #Resistance contention since the election day “upset” that stunned everyone but those across America who saw something in Trump and believed in him.
I wasn’t one of those people; I was among the stunned. Even as I trudged reluctantly to the polls to cast my vote for Trump, I thought Hillary would win even as I fervently hoped and prayed she would not. I was unspeakably joyous when Trump won.
So when the story started to evolve from Trump actively colluding with Russia to secure his victory to “the big story” being Russian “influence” on the election via hacking, social media outlets/bots, and random crazy stories designed to gin up mostly-existing angst, I thought, wait a minute, we’ve moved from Trump being the perpetrator of a potential federal crime to . . . the Obama White House actively doing nothing about Russian “interference” in the 2016 election?
After all, how can Trump be responsible for election tampering of the type alleged if he was just another presidential candidate? He didn’t hold the reigns of power. Obama did.
And we know that Obama knew about Russian interference in our election process; it wasn’t quite as blatant as Obama’s own attempt to meddle in the Israeli election, but he had to have—as president—been made aware. Yet he did nothing.
Perhaps he imagined his whispered, open mic promise of post re-election “flexibility” would soften the Russians as none of his or of his admin’s other attempts had? We can’t know, but it does seem clear that Obama didn’t see a threat from Russian meddling in the 2016 election . . . until Trump won.
After all, it wasn’t until December 2016 that Obama issued (relatively mild) sanctions against Russia for the “meddling,” and the move was clearly more about saving face than about any penalizing or even deterrent message.
So it’s not at all unreasonable for President Trump to question what his predecessor did about the Russian “meddling” that took place under Obama’s watch.
It’s a good question. Given that there has thus far been no “collusion” proven or seriously alleged against President Trump or his team and that the accusations seem to be shifting to some sort of Russian tampering with our elections on Trump’s behalf, it’s not unreasonable to ask what did Obama do about this going on under his nose and on his watch?
President Trump on Saturday reacted to the indictment of 12 Russian military officers “for conspiring to interfere with the 2016 presidential election” by blaming former President Obama and the “deep state.”
Considering that then-GOP presidential candidate Trump, as a private citizen, had no means of interfering in the U. S. election, shouldn’t the onus fall on the sitting president, the one who did have the means of knowing what Russia was up to, the one who after Trump won sanctioned, albeit weakly, Russia for this very offense? It was Obama, after all, who expelled 35 Russian diplomats for election tampering . . . in December 2016.
Ultimately, this all seems to be bubbling to the surface in anticipation of an upcoming U. S. Senate report that will reportedly slam Obama for his failures with regard to Russian interference in the election.
A bipartisan group of senators is expected to slam former President Barack Obama’s administration for its response to Russian election interference in the 2016 presidential election.The Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting an investigation into the government’s response to Russian election meddling, has already criticized the Department of Homeland Security for its “inadequate” defense against the hacking effort.. . . . There had been indications the panel would formally criticize the Obama administration’s response. The committee’s vice chair, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., called the administration’s handling of Russian election interference “flat-footed” during a June 20 hearing on Russian interference in U.S. elections.”Our collective response was inadequate to meet Russia’s escalation,” Warner said, though he noted that he believed President Donald Trump also deserved blame because of his claims as a candidate that the election had been rigged.Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., the committee’s Republican chairman, said during the hearing that Obama officials appeared to be operating “without a playbook.”
Shifting the narrative from vague accusations of Trump campaign collusion (of which no evidence has, to date, been found) to Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election leads to only one culpable—or at the very least naively disinterested—party: Obama.
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