The Atlantic: 'Putin's Goal is to Bring Down American Democracy'
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/putin-american-democracy/610570/California_Republic
(1,826 posts)StClone
(11,682 posts)Trump is against vote by mail. This is suspicious. It is as if he knows something about the results if the current system is allowed for the November 2020 election. The article indicates the deep and dangerous Russian probe of each state and what may be the results.
sprinkleeninow
(20,208 posts)All sinister schemes in the pipeline.
elleng
(130,701 posts)Cha
(296,739 posts)among many reasons we have to WIN!
sprinkleeninow
(20,208 posts)Mahalo, Cha. 💛
I'm quite weary presently.
FedEx brought my USPS goodies yesterday, but I'll open them up later today 'cause my get up an' go got up and went.
Pray you and yours are being sustained and encouraged with good health.
💐🌴🌈
Cha
(296,739 posts)I'm weary, too.. maybe tomorrow will be better?
Why would FedEx bring you your USPS goodies?
I wish the same for you and yours!
sprinkleeninow
(20,208 posts)Whatta kookamunga! 🤣
Cha
(296,739 posts)SCantiGOP
(13,862 posts)30 years after the Wall comes down, the old Soviet spymaster finally defeats his enemy by planting an unwitting fool in their midst.
Buckeye_Democrat
(14,852 posts)Trump has been trying to fulfill those wishes too, it seems.
Hekate
(90,523 posts)Rhiannon12866
(204,586 posts)Dziękuję bardzo for posting!
sprinkleeninow
(20,208 posts)Nie ma za co, dobra Pani!
Rhiannon12866
(204,586 posts)Proszę bardzo!
SheltieLover
(57,073 posts)riversedge
(70,040 posts)https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/putin-american-democracy/610570/
...............The sprawling federal bureaucracy has never been particularly adept at the kind of coordination necessary to anticipate a wily adversarys next move. But there is another reason for the governments alarmingly inadequate response: a president who sees attempts to counter the Russia threat as a personal affront.
After McMaster was fired, having made little if any progress on Russia, the director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, took up the cause, installing in his office an election-security adviser named Shelby Pierson. This past February, Pierson briefed Schiffs committee that the Russians were planning to interfere in the upcoming election, and that Trump remained Moscows preferred candidate. Anyone who follows the president on Twitter knows this is a subject that provokes his fury. Indeed, the day after Piersons testimony, the president upbraided Coatss successor, Joseph Maguire, for Piersons assessment. A week later, he fired Maguire and installed in his place the ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, a loyalist with no intelligence experience. Grenell immediately set about confirming the wisdom behind Trumps choice. Three weeks into his tenure, a senior intelligence official in the Office of the DNI informed the Senate that Piersons assessment was mistaken.
Trump had graphically illustrated his recurring message to the intelligence community: He doesnt want to hear warnings about Russian interference. Mark Warner, the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told me, A day doesnt go by that I dont hear from someone in the intelligence community saying, Oh my gosh, were worried about integrity, were worried about morale, were worried about willingness to speak truth to power. I asked Warner whether he could still trust the intelligence about Russia he receivedwhether he has faith that the government will render an accurate portrait of the Russian threat to the upcoming presidential election. As he considered his answer, he leaned toward me. I dont know the answer to that, he replied, and that bothers me.
Vladimir Putin dreams of discrediting the American democratic system, and he will never have a more reliable ally than Donald Trump. A democracy cant defend itself if it cant honestly describe the attacks against it. But the president hasnt just undermined his own countrys defenseshe has actively abetted the adversarys efforts. If Russia wants to tarnish the political process as hopelessly rigged, it has a bombastic amplifier standing behind the seal of the presidency, a man who reflexively depicts his opponents as frauds and any system that produces an outcome he doesnt like as fixed. If Russia wants to spread disinformation, the president continually softens an audience for it, by instructing the public to disregard authoritative journalism as the prevarications of a traitorous elite and by spouting falsehoods on Twitter.
In 2020, Russia might not need to push the U.S. for it to suffer a terrible election-year tumble. Even without interventions from abroad, it is shockingly easy to imagine how a pandemic might provide a pretext for indefinitely delaying an election or how this president, narrowly dispatched at the polls, might refuse to accept defeat. But restraint wouldnt honor Russias tradition of Active Measures. And there may never be a moment quite so ripe for taking the old hashtag out of storage and giving it a triumphalist turn. #DemocracyRIP.