Russia, Russia, Russia

Can we move on from this nonsense?

The Russians do not want Donald Trump as President. They just want to sow discord, division, and mistrust. They are very successful thanks to the American media. In fact, Russia has started airing Sputnik Radio in the United States by buying up air time on local radio stations. Sputnik Radio is the Soviet-era Voice of Moscow but rebranded.

They can be successful because the American media has been foolish, partisan, and unserious for years. At this point, the American media will not report a story unless there is a Trump angle. CNN went from entertaining theories about blackholes swallowing Malaysian airliners to consulting astrologers about when President Trump might be ousted from office.

The larger issue here is that the media and Democrats, by harping on the Russians, are the very ones undermining faith in the electoral process. The truth is the Electoral College makes it harder to game the system because it must be done on a state by state level. A national popular vote, pushed by Democrats, would actually help the Russians manipulate the election.

Additionally, the Russians are not steering the Democrats towards Bernie Sanders anymore than the Russians steered Republicans towards Donald Trump. The parties’ voters steered towards disruptive candidates because they decided their party leaders had begun ignoring the desires of their voters.

Perhaps the media should be asking why the American voters agree with Russia’s assessment that Trump and Sanders are preferable to a host of more qualified people. Perhaps the media should assess the egos and arrogance of candidates who refuse to drop out of races when they claim they need to do whatever they can to stop another candidate.

The Russians had nothing to do with the American elite losing touch with the American people.

The American elite and their friends in the media own this. It was not the Russians giving Donald Trump billions in free air time on national news networks in 2015 and 2016. That was the American media. It is not the Russians pushing radical ideas like government takeovers of healthcare and industry while claiming our economy actually sucks. That’s the actual Democratic Party.

It was striking that the New York Times rushed that sensational story on Monday morning about the Russians only to have Jake Tapper of CNN singlehandedly undermine the story with credible sources from inside the intelligence community. The five undoubtedly Democrat sources for the New York Times left out that even Democrats on the intelligence community pushed back on the narrative. But it is a narrative that sells to both undermine faith in the President and to hurt Bernie Sanders.

Here is the irony.

For four years, Democrats have told us the Russians wanted Trump, but now it is clear they really like Soviet Sanders. Once Sanders secures the nomination, all the talk about Russia will necessarily have to go away because they will no longer want to hurt Sanders. That obvious shift will cause more obvious distrust in the media. That too will play to the Russians’ advantage.

The most obvious conclusion we should draw about Russian interference in the electoral process is not that the Russians intend to steal our election, but that they intend to and are being quite successful at sabotaging American trust in our press and using our press to sabotage trust in our systems.

But there is one more thing

The Democrats have spent four years telling us Donald Trump is a terrible, rotten person and you’re a terrible, rotten person if you support him. They’re now telling us Bernie Sanders is a terrible, rotten person and he needs to be stopped. But Sanders probably won’t be stopped. The Democrats will rally to him. And they’ll like it. And they’ll continue to tell you that you are a terrible, rotten person for voting for Trump — pay no attention to Soviet Sanders’ record of praising dictators and turning a blind eye to the totalitarian Soviet state.

After four years of unlimited emotional energy denouncing Donald Trump as an authoritarian, it turns out the Democrats are perfectly happy with a Soviet apparatchik and defender of totalitarian despots world wide in charge of the government. He just needs a “D” next to his name and be an actual authoritarian.