Donald Trump is almost certainly working on behalf of Russian President Vladimir Putin, claimed three former high-ranking members of the U.S. government who serve now as surrogates for Hillary Clinton.
The jury is still out on whether Trump even knows he’s doing it, they added.
Former CIA deputy Director Michael Morell told reporters Friday that it’s telling that Trump refuses to connect Moscow to WikiLeaks’ recent hacking of the Democratic National Committee and its alleged hack of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
“He simply refuses to acknowledge the role,” Morell said, adding, “it even gets worse than him simply not acknowledging it. In my mind, he’s actually cheering it on. He’s reading from WikiLeaks material at his rally to the point of parroting now-debunked disinformation.”
Trump drew criticism in July for suggesting Moscow should help the U.S. find Hillary Clinton’s missing State Department emails.
“[The Russians] probably have her 33,000 emails that she lost and deleted. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press,” Trump said.
What’s worse than leaning on the WikiLeaks hacks, Morell added, is the fact the GOP nominee seems to be doing Putin’s bidding.
“[I]t’s … terrifying to me that Trump doesn’t get what Putin is trying to do here,” he said, adding “Putin’s found an unwitting agent in Donald Trump. Everything that I’ve seen since then simply reinforces that idea in my mind. Trump continues to play to Putin’s hand almost every single day in the support that he gives for what Putin’s doing around the world and at home.”
“I think that Trump’s motivation here to play into Putin’s hands is driven by one thing for sure and one thing that I’m deeply concerned about,” Morell said. “The thing that I’m sure about is that Trump is cozying up to Putin because Putin has played him like a fiddle. Putin has figured out what makes Donald Trump tick and he’s playing to it. And Donald Trump is responding. I am absolutely certain of that.”
Matt Olsen, the former head of the National Counterterrorism Center, concurred.
“I agree … that Putin has found an unwitting ally and an unwitting agent in Trump,” he told reporters.
Olsen added, “Most officials, members of Congress regardless of party affiliation, understand the seriousness of this threat. That’s also a concern because to this day, Donald Trump has continued to insist that Russians not be blamed for the attack when he says that it could have been anybody.
“He doesn’t have credibility on that point, and I think he may be the only person outside of the Kremlin who’s continuing to deploy that particular talking point. This is not new for Trump to use these kind of talking points. He’s done it repeatedly on a number of fronts,” he said.
Olsen also alleged that Trump’s repeated claim that President Obama and Clinton are responsible for creating the Islamic State is a Kremlin talking point.
Further, he said, “Trump has been promoting the notion that Russia is fighting ISIS in Syria, saying that, ‘Moscow is bombing the hell out of ISIS.'”
“And that’s exactly, again, what the Kremlin is maintaining, even though it’s abundantly clear to those of us, former government officials, folks in the government, that Russia has really no serious interest in taking out ISIS,” Olsen said. “They’ve been doing, in fact, whatever they can to prop up Assad in Syria.”
James Rubin, the former U.S. assistant secretary of state for public affairs under Bill Clinton, added his voice to the chorus.
“[Trump] has adopted Putin’s talking points,” he said. “And when issues have come up of Putin’s crack downs inside Russia, on journalists, on others, he’s defended Putin rather than condemn him. The first understanding of what is the national interest is to know what’s good for the United States, and Mr. Trump doesn’t seem to understand that.”
The remarks Friday from Morell, Olsen and Rubin come as Clinton’s team continues to suggest that WikiLeaks, the Trump campaign and Kremlin are conspiring together to sway the presidential election.
