With Congressional Democrats tantruming over redactions, presidential candidates out-virtue-signalling one another in denigration of Trump (for what it is unclear) calling for impeachment (again, for what is unclear) and the liberal media desperate for a distraction from the embarrassment of their two-year harassment in lieu of the main headline – “no collusion, no obstruction;” few if any among the mainstream have noticed (or mentioned) one tiny little detail in the Mueller Report… the ‘confirmed’ interference by Russia in the 2016 US Election took place – knowingly – under President Obama’s watch.
But amid all this sound and fury, something odd happened. The ‘powers-that-be’ at CNN – ground zero for the Trump’s-a-traitorous-Putin-Puppet propaganda – have allowed the publication of an op-ed amid their hallowed pages that casts blame at the anointed one. CNN contributor Scott Jennings – soon to be exiled from every social media platform we suspect – dared to point out that the Mueller report looks bad for Obama.
The partisan warfare over the Mueller report will rage, but one thing cannot be denied: Former President Barack Obama looks just plain bad. On his watch, the Russians meddled in our democracy while his administration did nothing about it.
The Mueller report flatly states that Russia began interfering in American democracy in 2014. Over the next couple of years, the effort blossomed into a robust attempt to interfere in our 2016 presidential election. The Obama administration knew this was going on and yet did nothing. In 2016, Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice told her staff to “stand down” and “knock it off” as they drew up plans to “strike back” against the Russians, according to an account from Michael Isikoff and David Corn in their book “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump”.
Is this some kind of penance on this holy weekend for CNN’s past sins of omission? Perhaps. But Jennings then asked the hard question: Why did Obama go soft on Russia?
My opinion is that it was because he was singularly focused on the nuclear deal with Iran. Obama wanted Putin in the deal, and to stand up to him on election interference would have, in Obama’s estimation, upset that negotiation. This turned out to be a disastrous policy decision.
Obama’s supporters claim he did stand up to Russia by deploying sanctions after the election to punish them for their actions. But, Obama, according to the Washington Post, “approved a modest package… with economic sanctions so narrowly targeted that even those who helped design them describe their impact as largely symbolic.” In other words, a toothless response to a serious incursion.
But don’t just take my word for it that Obama failed. Congressman Adam Schiff, who disgraced himself in this process by claiming collusion when Mueller found that none exists, once said that “the Obama administration should have done a lot more.” The Washington Post reported that a senior Obama administration official said they “sort of choked” in failing to stop the Russian government’s brazen activities. And Obama’s ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, said, “The punishment did not fit the crime” about the weak sanctions rolled out after the 2016 election.
A legitimate question Republicans are asking is whether the potential “collusion” narrative was invented to cover up the Obama administration’s failures. Two years have been spent fomenting the idea that Russia only interfered because it had a willing, colluding partner: Trump. Now that Mueller has popped that balloon, we must ask why this collusion narrative was invented in the first place.
Given Obama’s record on Russia, one operating theory is that his people needed a smokescreen to obscure just how wrong they were. They’ve blamed Trump. They’ve even blamed Mitch McConnell, in some twisted attempt to deflect blame to another branch of government. Joe Biden once claimed McConnellrefused to sign a letter condemning the Russians during the 2016 election. But McConnell’s office counters that the White House asked him to sign a letter urging state electors to accept federal help in securing local elections — and he did. You can read it here.
I guess if I had failed to stop Russia from marching into Crimea, making a mess in Syria, and hacking our democracy I’d be looking to blame someone else, too.
But the Mueller report makes it clear that the Russian interference failure was Obama’s alone. He was the commander-in-chief when all of this happened. In 2010, he and Eric Holder, his Attorney General, declined to prosecute Julian Assange, who then went on to help Russia hack the Democratic National Committee’s emails in 2016. He arguably chose to prioritize his relationship with Putin vis-à-vis Iran over pushing back against Russian election interference that had been going on for at least two years.
If you consider Russian election interference a crisis for our democracy, then you cannot read the Mueller report, adding it to the available public evidence, and conclude anything other than Barack Obama spectacularly failed America. Subsequent investigations of this matter should explore how and why Obama’s White House failed, and whether they invented the collusion narrative to cover up those failures.
As President Trump just commented, this hoax was “…a big, fat, waste of time, energy and money – $30,000,000 to be exact.”
“It is now finally time to turn the tables and bring justice to some very sick and dangerous people who have committed very serious crimes, perhaps even Spying or Treason.
This should never happen again!”
The question is – will CNN follow this ‘racist’ op-ed with some real journalism on who knew what, when and how this farce started? (We will not be holding our breath).
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Or is the entire “Russia, Russia Russia” narrative just an excuse for the MIC to ramp up the trillions and keep Americans servile in fear of the newest/oldest boogeyman.
They always need some enemy to keep American cowards agreeing to our endless wars for “safety and security”….The military, weapons dealers, politicos and MSM thrive on the presence of some boogeyman or other and can create one at their whim— this is the real collusion.
Crimea was part of Russia for centuries, its people speak Russian and they voted to rejoin Russia. Obama “allowing” this (as if he had any say in the matter) was perfectly sensible. Russia didn’t make a mess in Syria. Obama, Hillary and McCain did. Russia stopped it from getting worse by helping Assad retain power instead of letting Sunni jihadis take over. Russia’s insignificant internet trolling didn’t merit serious attention from America. This article has everything bass-ackwards, crediting Obama when he should be faulted and faulting him when he should be credited.
sounds like more BS to me.
I think Obama and Co were the ones meddling in the election, but they want to shift the blame to Russia.
This site and its contributors have chronicled dozens of crimes related to this. The Dems and their MSM co-conspirators rail on and on about the Trump Tower meeting yet I have never heard any of them mention the proven fact the “Russian attorney” was working for Fusion GPS and was only allowed in the country because of State Dept. rule bending machinations.
Unless the Attorney General and the Senate can get something moving there will be no resolution. The reason being that the MSM was a willing, knowing co-conspirator in this whole mess and their only defense keeping them or their crony pols out of jail and being humiliated is their hope the continuing lying on air and in print can somehow obstruct investigation.
It has been oft said the other side accuses their opponents of what they themselves are actually doing. There it is for any with eyes to see.
Were it not for TBP virtually no one would ever see or hear of this. All I have seen thus far is the hysterical, truly unhinged overreach of the MSM that somehow Mueller proved Trump is the Anti-Christ. The Prog-fuque-lite weekend team at FOX has even failed to mention thus far that there is or should be any investigation of the genesis of this largest ever criminal political scandal and the false charges, spying, subversion of the Five Eyes for domestic politics, on and on ad nauseam.
” Why did Obama go soft on Russia?”
Bathhouse Barry says it all.
You know, bowing all over the world, voting “Present”, organizing communities. What a fucking joke.
Bath-house didn’t do shit about Russia because there was no Russian interference. The great irony here is the continued pushing of a lie to justify a non-event. Like Putin stated, it made no difference to Russia who was elected. Trump or Hillary, the Russians would deal with them as they had to.
Tell a lie long enough and everyone will believe it.
“Eric Holder, his Attorney General, declined to prosecute Julian Assange, who then went on to help Russia
HACK the Democratic National Committee’s emails in 2016.”
The friggin DNC was not hacked as Bill Binney proved. It was a download, probably via a thumb drive by Seth Rich.
this article is about changing the narrative & protecting obama & the deep state–
it’s much easier to defend incompetence or bad decision making than it is to defend against criminal activity,which probably occurred all the way up to the oval office–
i’m not surprised to see that it is cnn publishing this but it is surprising to see zerohedge fall for it–
Maybe reparations for the cost of the investigations by those who pushed this false narrative. Those folks love the whole reparations thing.