David Frum: How Trump Made Russia's Hacking More Effective

[babylonsister]

How Trump Made Russia's Hacking More Effective

It was the president-elect’s hyperbolic characterizations of the pilfered material that turned routine documents into the stuff of scandal.

David Frum
Dec 29, 2016 Politics


“It’s all just an attempt to delegitimize Donald Trump.” That’s the argument you hear from Trump supporters each time new information comes to light about how hard Russian spy services worked to damage Hillary Clinton. You heard it again on Thursday.

The Trump supporters are 100 percent right: The information is delegitimizing. The president-elect of the United States reportedly owes his office in considerable part to illegal clandestine activities in his favor conducted by a hostile, foreign spy service. It’s hard to imagine a crisis of presidential legitimacy more extreme than that. But that’s no argument against airing this information. It’s precisely why the information must be aired.

snip//

Without Trump’s own willingness to make false claims and misuse Russian-provided information, the Wikileaks material would have deflated of its own boringness. The Russian-hacked material did damage because, and only because, Russia found a willing accomplice in the person of Donald J. Trump.

Many questions remain about how the Russian spy services did what they did. That includes Putin’s motives for ordering the operation. But on issues from Crimea to Syria to NATO to the breakup of the European Union, Trump’s publicly expressed views align with Putin’s wishes.

Over Trump’s motives for collaborating so full-throatedly with Russian espionage, there hangs a greater and more disturbing mystery—a mystery that Trump seems in no hurry to dispel. And maybe he is wise to leave the mystery in place: as delegitimizing as it is, it’s very possible the truth would be even worse.

[eShirl]

1. He's right.

[Gothmog]

2. Frum is correrct

Trump used the Russian material and is still defending putin

[Alekzander]

3. Just wondering; do you believe if the hacked material was released & Trump did not

use it & instead did as Marco Rubio said, ignore it because it could be us next time it would not have done damage. I believe that it would not have been as damaging also if the media had not been so eager & complicit to go with it daily or whenever there was new material leaked.

"The Russian-hacked material did damage because, and only because, Russia found a willing accomplice in the person of Donald J. Trump."

The reason for the question is because many including some on the left say it was the "content" itself that was so damaging because of what it showed from the DNC.

[hedda_foil]

4. Link?