Pretty much everyone acknowledges Russia’s malicious interference in the 2016 election. While we’re not convinced the interference swayed the election in any meaningful way, we should all be concerned about what happened and about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plans for 2020. Our government, and even our media, will need to be on high alert to counter and deter future Russian interference in our elections.
But battling Putin’s disinformation is harder than it should be, and that’s in part thanks to Democratic spin and media malpractice.
When Democrats pretend Putin’s only goal was and is to elect President Trump, or when they angrily deny that Ukraine’s leaders made any efforts on behalf of Hillary Clinton, they are weakening our ability to battle Putin.
Rep. Will Hurd, a Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, is a rare sober voice in Washington on this topic. Speaking with the Washington Examiner editorial board on Monday, Hurd stressed that the House Intelligence Committee hasn’t put enough focus on preventing 2020 election interference because it has been consumed with political charades.
“What were the Russians trying to do? They were trying to erode trust in our democratic institutions,” he said. “They wanted the American public to question the media, to question whether anyone in government is worth anything. And they’re going to do it again. We haven’t focused on disinformation.”
Here we need to address the campaign of disinformation, or at least misinformation, by Democrats and the national media regarding Ukrainian efforts in 2016. Former presidential adviser Fiona Hill participated in this campaign when she alleged, finger pointed at Republicans, that “some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country, and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did.”
The first part of this isn’t true. Not a single Republican on the Intelligence Committee denies that Russia conducted such a campaign. But the second part is a rhetorical trick — a game of pretend, that anyone who says Ukraine tried to influence the 2016 election is thereby denying Russia’s role or are equating Ukraine’s interference with Russia’s much more extensive and elaborate interference.
The New York Times echoed this same carefully parsed line, setting fire to an assertion that literally no one is making, “that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 election.”
Another example: When Clinton suggests her political rivals are Russian assets, this actually furthers Putin’s aims. “That kind of narrative feeds into what the Russians are trying to do,” Hurd said. “I guarantee you there was a [Russian officer] in Moscow that got a raise when Hillary Clinton said those things about Tulsi [Gabbard] and Bernie Sanders. It continues to perpetuate this lack of trust, and that is the ultimate goal of the Russian government.”
Although Putin must have preferred a Trump victory to the widely expected Clinton victory, he was surely even more thrilled by the Democrats’ reaction, which was to begin working for impeachment even before Trump had taken the inaugural stage. “The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun” was the headline of a Washington Post story that published at 12:19 p.m. on Inauguration Day.
Putin is working hard to make Americans more cynical and skeptical about their government, their institutions, their political parties, and their leaders. When the media and politicians mislead the public about Russia’s aims for political gain, they are only helping Putin achieve his ends.
