Jophiel wrote:
If Clinton (or Sanders or Rubio or Cruz or Jeb! or basically anyone else) were president and were told that Russia was trying to interfere in our elections, they would tell Putin (via diplomatic channels first) "We know you're doing this, stop it", slap some sort of punitive action on it (sanctions, locked bank accounts, etc), threaten further actions and put the appropriate agencies into gear on securing the systems.
Given that Obama was president when Russian was "trying to interfere with our election(s)" (present tense) and did do exactly that, I'm not sure what the issue is here.
What happened is that Trump won the election, the Left went nuts, and grasped onto that as the reason, and have built it up into this massive thing. Continuing to obsess over it to the exclusion of the fact that we kinda do have to also govern, and that means working with other nations (including Russia).
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We actually have placed sanctions on Russia as a result of their 2016 meddling but Trump is desperate to get Russia out from under those leading to one of the rare events of actual Republican spine where they passed a bipartisan effort to restrict Trump's ability to life them.
That's one interpretation. Again though, what do you think should be happening here? The Russian's didn't do anything more in 2016 than in previous election cycles. The only difference is that
this time the Left decided to make it a "big deal". That's literally it. Absent evidence (any evidence) of some kind of collusion/payback/whatever between the Trump campaign and Russian efforts during the election cycle (which to this day there is still zero), we just have the Russians doing the same thing they always do, and which they are not alone in doing either.
Why the focus on how Trump must behave differently than other past presidents towards Russia because of this?
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The primary issue here is that Trump feels threatened by the plain fact that Russian interference casts a shadow over the legitimacy of his presidency.
You do realize that constantly badgering him to "condemn Russia and Putin for meddling" is entirely about creating this very thing, right? If he does it, then he's admitting that his presidency is the result of Russian meddling and is therefore delegitimized. If he does not, it plays into the narrative that he's somehow secretly on Putin's side, in his pocket, etc.
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I'm not saying "So now we get a do-over" or anything just that history will remember him as the guy who got in at least partially because of hostile interference from Putin.
And that's exactly the angle the narrative is designed to create. What's funny about this is you're ignoring the very same intelligence sources that you earlier bashed Trump for failing to agree with. The same exact source that determined there was Russian meddling in the election
also determined that it wasn't sufficient to have influenced the outcome of the election. Yet, you're gleefully latching on to one half of their determinations, while ignoring the other.
And that's not even half though. The same intelligence report also wrote at length about how long Russia has been doing this, and in how many different ways, and in "support" of which party. I use that term very loosely since I don't think Russia supports either party, but is more about casting fear and uncertainty into the process.
The greatest harm done to us as a result of this wasn't the Russian meddling, but the reaction from the Left. Cause they fell for it.
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So he's more afraid of that and really wants to deny that anything happened then he is willing to step up ,be honest about it and work to prevent it in the future. Putin knows this and is taking full advantage of it.
Putin isn't "taking advantage" of anything. You keep saying stuff like this, as though Putin got something here. What did he get? Nothing. You're putting an enormous amount of weight on stuff that doesn't actually matter at all. Putin "gaining stuff" is things like annexing Crimea and having the US stand by and do nothing. Getting the US to drop its efforts to put missile defense in Eastern Europe (possibly setting up the aforementioned annexation). Getting the US to hand over management of the Syrian conflict (and its chemical weapons) to Russia. These are all tangible gains. And you and I both know which president was in office when they happened.
What Trump is trying to do here is even have the ability to enact any policy
at all with regard to Russia without everyone in the peanut gallery interpreting it in the context of "Russian Meddling". Putin doesn't have to do anything. The Left and the US media are doing all the heavy lifting for him.
If you look objectively at the actual actions the US has taken towards Russia since Trump took office, and set aside your perceptions of "Russian Meddling", you'd conclude that Trump has been much more forceful with Russia than Obama was. Am I the only person who remembers when Romney named Russia as one of our biggest national security threats and Obama laughed about it? I seem to recall some of the members of this forum, in some cases the very same ones today going nuts about Russian Meddling, joining in mocking Romney and Republicans over this back then.
You guys are nothing if not slaves to the media narrative. And with very short memories to boot.
Edited, Jul 19th 2018 7:10pm by gbaji