Whipping up more Russian hysteria on Capitol Hill, Sen. James Lankford (R-Ok.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told ABC’s “This Week’s Co-host Martha Raddatz that he was worried about Russian meddling in November’s Midterm election. Lankford warned Americans “to be very aware that the Russians are trying to interfere in our election” anyway possible “regardless of who the candidate is,” stirring up more paranoia before Democrats try to take back the House and Senate in November. Lankford minced no words warning voters that Russian won’t let up before the Midterm election. Lankford told voters to “be very a war that the Russians are trying to be able to interfere in our elections every other way they can to be able to harvest information and then to be able to use that against our democracy,” Lankford said, offering no proof other than intel assessments.
Everyone knows what happened to the U.S. intelligence community when they swore up-and-down that Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. That same intel community said nothing two years earlier when Osama bin Laden struck the World Trade Center Twin Towers and the Pentagon in the worst terror attack in U.S. history Sept. 11, 2001. Lankford parrots the intel community’s latest obsession, blaming Russia for tampering with the U.S. election. Whether Lankford admits it or not, since the earliest Days of the Cold War, Russia—and the U.S.—have active propaganda and disinformation campaigns aimed at each other’s governments. Propaganda and disinformation campaigns go both ways. Yet since the 2016 election, the intel community bought into former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s disinformation campaign to win the election.
Hillary did her best in the last presidential debate in Las Vegas Oct. 19, 2016 to tag then GOP candidate Donald Trump as a “Putin Puppet.” No one knew then that Hillary paid untold sums of cash to former MI6 agent Christopher Steele to concoct the so-called “dossier” to discredit Trump. Hillary’s paid opposition research said Trump was controlled by the Kremlin, giving Hillary the best chance of winning the Nov. 8 election. When everything backfired, Democrats and the intel community continued the bogus narrative that Russian President Vladimir Putin won Trump the election. Lankford talks about Russian interference but he doesn’t say what effect, if any, the Kremlin had on the 2016 election. Speaking in vague terms, Lankford only says the Russians “are trying to be able to interfere with our election,” not whether or not they had any measurable impact.
It’s easy for the intel community to say that Russia tries to interfere in past-and-future elections. It’s far more difficult to pinpoint what, if any, effect Russian interference has on U.S. elections or anything else. Saying the Russian meddled, now the subject of former FBI Director Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel’s investigation, doesn’t tell you what impact it had on the election. Yes, both the U.S. and Russia meddle in each other’s elections and governments. But the real question is not whether or not they meddle, it’s whether it has any effect. Trump believes the Russians tried to influence the 2016 election but disagrees that they had any measurable effect. If Democrat operatives succeed in whipping up more Russian hysteria, it harms Trump’s attempts to normalize U.S.-Russian relations. Asked by Raddatz whether he has any evidence of Russian interference, Lankford said “no.”
When Hillary was Secretary of State in 2012, she practically caused riots in the Moscow streets, accusing Putin of rigging the election. Yet Congressman and Senators now accuse Russia of interfering with U.S. elections. When asked about facts, Lankford couldn’t offer any proof. “No, the—the Russians are trying to interfere with everyone’s election, and that the part that we lose track of. To them, sowing chaos and sowing uncertainty within our democracy is their key goal,” Lankford told Raddatz, once again, showing the kind of vagueness falling into the realm of rumors and innuendo. Whether the Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee servers or former Hillary Campaign Chairman John Podesta’s email, doesn’t mean that it impacted voters. Whether more bad news hurt Hillary’s chances in 2016 is anyone’s guess. Negative publicity usually doesn’t help presidential candidates.
Russia’s ongoing cyber-warfare program against the U.S. is nothing new, nor is its propaganda and disinformation campaign. So much was made about Russian interference in Facebook and Google, placing phony news stories to advance their preference in the U.S. election. While cyber-security experts say the U.S. is better protected today than in 2016, they also say the Russian misinformation is still a problem. “The thing we’re unprepared for is the influence campaign that Russia has undertaken, the attempt to undermine our democracy, to undermine our power to turn America against themselves and against their institutions,” said cyber-security expert Nilofar Razia. Razi grossly underestimates the American voter, less subject to propaganda and influence than he concludes. Both the U.S. and Russia try to exert as much influence as possible. Whether or not it works is pure speculation.
