Obama Bashing and History Twisting: GOP Diversion Tactics Vis-à-Vis the Facts, Reality & Truth

Modified version today that mimics the 1984 version

This post today is for all the rightwing-conservative Talk Radio, FOX (Hannity, et al), Alex Jones, Roger Stone, and Mark Levin type supporters. 

The following answers you on-going question when you blast across the airwaves 24/7 your hatred for former president Obama. The details below answer your hateful bashing, and is comes from NPR (February 21, 2018):

You all Ask: Why didn't former President Barack Obama stop Russia's campaign of active measures against the 2016 presidential campaign?

Here, I’ll set the scene: Ever since he was elected and even before, Trump has cast the blame on Obama for not acting against the scheme even after his own DOJ and S/C Robert Mueller brought indictments against a batch of Russians and Russians for the role they played.

Fact Check: This story is complex and goes beyond a simple “True or False” grade. One basic notion that is false is the idea the Obama administration took no action — it did. The question that has been asked many times since the presidential election is why it didn't do more.

Private warnings: Among other things, top U.S. intelligence officials — including then-CIA Director John Brennan — privately warned their Russian counterparts not to persist with their active measures. Obama himself told Russian President Vladimir Putin not to interfere in the election. These warnings did not work.

Publicity: Obama administration officials also told reporters on background that Russian intelligence operatives were behind the cyberattacks that led to the release of emails stolen from political figures and institutions. Later, the DNI James Clapper and DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson formally blamed the Russian government in an official statement. Although it wasn't universally accepted (officially that early on in 2016 when discovered), the active measures campaign became a part of the political campaign itself. Trump and opponent Hillary Clinton many times traded barbs about the Russian interference during their 2016 debates.

Trump has gone back and forth about what he accepts and what he doesn't about the nature of the attack.

Sometimes he acknowledges it; other times he has cited the denials he has gotten from Putin, saying: “I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it.”

Trump’s position since the Russian indictments has been that the interference campaign did take place — but that he and his campaign had nothing to do with it. 

On that point, Trump has been consistent when he says: “No collusion.”

Mueller is focused on whether that is so and whether Trump may have broken the law if he tried to frustrate the investigation. More on this below.

So why didn't Obama's administration do more at the first sign of interference? That isn't clear. Some former administration officials who have talked about it publicly have reproached themselves for not acting more aggressively. There also was a long-standing criticism of Obama that his foreign-policy making amounted to endless process with no outcomes — hours of meetings that yielded more meetings but no ultimate action. 

Plus, the relationship between the United States and Russia is multifaceted and often intensely complicated:

1.  Obama scaled back missile defense plans in Europe to placate Moscow.

2.  Obama wanted Russia to play a role in the international agreement under which Iran agreed to restrict its nuclear program — and Putin went along.

3.  Obama spent the end of his presidency trying to bring Russia into a multilateral agreement to end the Syrian civil war, but Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ultimately never committed.

So Obama's team had to manage many spinning plates in addition to the active measures campaign it detected by the middle of 2016. One question Obama may address in his book is why he calibrated his choices in the way he did — whether he looked the other way on election interference to keep open other options elsewhere.

A partisan tightrope: Even former VP Joe Biden complained that the White House wanted Republicans to join in a bipartisan statement announcing and condemning the interference campaign, he also said that GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) wouldn't go along.

However, that didn't stop then-DEM Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) from alluding publicly to the Russian campaign in a letter to then-FBI Director James Comey. 

Comey then wanted to announce the active measures in an op-ed column, as Newsweek reported in March 2017, but two sources with knowledge about that aspect told Newsweek that Obama administration officials blocked the effort by Comey to do that.

There is no way to know what difference it might have made for U.S. officials to have confirmed and condemned the Russian interference in real time during the election and Obama administration officials have said all along that they worried about appearing to put their thumb on the scale for Hillary Clinton. That was also combined with Obama's belief that Clinton would win simply appears to have been: “Let's ride this out until the election is over.”

Thus, he was in the proverbial “Catch-22” spot: The hacking was real, the evidence was mounting (but early in 2016 cycle the depth was not entirely known) and Obama, rightly so, did not want to come across as officially trying to sway the election in Hillary Clinton’s favor by exposing he Russians without hard extensive evidence that could or would or might have made an impact. It was best at the time as he said: “Just ride it out and then take action.”

Key Part:  After the election (December 9, 2016) Obama did order the Intelligence Community (IC) to issue a public report about the Russian scheme.

The IC did on January 6, 2017 when they announced and concluded that Russia's attack was aimed at helping Trump and hurting Clinton.

At that point, Mr. Obama imposed a slate of punitive measures against Moscow.

In addition to imposing the new sanctions, Obama expelled a number of Russian diplomats and closed two Russian diplomatic compounds in Maryland and New York. (But, the GOP and Trump never give him credit for that as they keep up their “Obama bashing campaign.”

Obama himself (on December 16,  2016) said he wasn't convinced that he should have done anything different, saying: “There have been folks out there who suggest somehow if we went out there and made big announcements and thumped our chests about a bunch of stuff that somehow it would potentially spook the Russians. I think it doesn't read the thought process in Russia very well.”

As stated above, the IC did make an assessment about how the active measures campaign affected the 2016 election and did so after the election – which was the fair thing to do. Yet, Trump and his supporters keep saying incorrectly that the report found there was no effect on the election –however, the fact is that the IC report did not even address that question – so the point is moot. DHS officials concluded that the cyberattacks did not tamper with the actual vote tallies – and that’s is good thing to see that the systems are basically tamper-proof.

Here is a short (46 second video clip) from the Trump-Clinton debate on October 19, 2016 discussing the Russian interference and hacking. While Clinton is talking Trump’s expression is priceless:

Who's the puppet???

My 2 cents: I’ll close with that – suffice it to say the GOP Obama bashing on whole is way off – but even the facts as stated above are enough to persuade them otherwise – they have a one-track mind – that is to hate everything about Obama and keep on bashing and erasing him at all costs – and over time, be assured, it will cost us all plenty.

Thanks for stopping by.