When first writing about the Russia! Russia! Russia! hysteria right after the Presidential election, I made mention of the fact that this wasn’t the first time that foreign powers had interfered with a US election, but in the two plus years since then, there has been barely a mention of that in the media, as if the Russian interference in the 2016 election was some sort of singular event, unprecedented in history.
Nope.
In 2012, both the Obama and Romney campaigns were under continuous cyber assault during election, with the National Republican Congressional Committee hardest hit.
CIA Director Mike Pompeo stated last year that Russians interfered in the 2012 elections as well as previous ones.
In 2008, China hacked the computer systems of both the Obama and McCain campaigns.
The Obama Administration was not exactly gung ho about doing anything to prevent Russian hacking. It rejected an attempt to “create an executive-branch task force to battle Russia’s covert information operations…” But as I’ve noted, there has been a history of exactly this sort of interference, long before Trump made his live TV request to Russia, “Russia if you’re listening…”
Believe it or not, much of the Russia collusion conspiracy theory rests on this joke.
With that kind of history, one can only wonder why the Obama administration took such a lackadaisical approach to foreign powers “hacking” US elections, and why that’s Trump’s problem?
With the Mueller investigation rumored to be near its close, a healthy reminder is required of a few things I’ve previously mentioned:
No collusion. As I’ve predicted for the past two years, I’m still sticking by my prediction that the Mueller Investigation will not show any collusion between Trump or the Trump campaign and Russia to “hack” the election.
However I don’t think that Mueller would actually wrap up the investigation unless he felt he had something that he could put in a report that would provide fodder for the original purpose of the investigation: Impeaching Trump. Based on the theory that a 70 plus year old billionaire is bound to have done something, there will probably be some slim reed the Democrats and never-Trumpers can grasp. It probably wouldn’t be considered anything like an impeachable offense in an earlier age, but we’re still in the midst of hysteria so anything goes.
I would like to think that the Mueller investigation coming to a close would put to bed this nonsense conspiracy theory, but I suspect that the media will seamlessly move to a lot of other brand new phony conspiracy theories.
Mike Street Station 