The Patriot Post® · 'The Russians Are Coming!'

By Gary Bauer ·
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/68773-the-russians-are-coming-2020-02-22

Thursday night, all the evening news broadcasts led with the same story — Russia is meddling in the 2020 elections to reelect Donald Trump. Here we go again.

Evidently, the House Intelligence Committee, led by Rep. Adam Schiff, got a classified briefing about Russian interference in the 2020 election. Sure enough, someone leaked details of the briefing to The New York Times. Any guesses as to who leaked?

Curiously, the briefing took place last week, but we didn’t hear about it until Thursday when polls showed Trump’s ratings were up. What an odd coincidence.

Predictably, Democrats are claiming that this news justifies their impeachment efforts. As you no doubt recall, Pelosi and Schiff repeatedly said, “We can’t wait until the election. He’s already working with Russia to steal 2020.” This is nonsense.

Let’s go back to the 2016 election. It was not stolen. Period. President Obama assured us that the elections could not be rigged, and we were later told that no votes were altered.

Russia spent $1.25 million a month on social media. In contrast, the Trump and Clinton campaigns spent over a $1 billion. But we’re supposed to believe that Russia’s “drop in the bucket” made all the difference.

And what magical thing did Russia do with that money? It ran memes like this one: “Hillary is a Satan, and her crimes and lies had proved just how evil she is.”

If Hillary’s 30+ years in public life hadn’t already convinced anyone that she was bad news, surely no internet ad would. To believe the minuscule Russian ads cost Hillary the election is delusional.

Here’s more proof that Russia wasn’t helping Trump: After the election, Russia sponsored anti-Trump demonstrations all over the country with the theme “Not My President.” Michael Moore and thousands of other leftists poured into a New York rally that was “sponsored” by Vladimir Putin. They were what the Soviets used to call “useful idiots.”

Unfortunately, the real Russian interference is working. Russia is trying to sow chaos and discord. It is trying to create a pre-Civil War atmosphere in America by making half the country doubt our elections and the legitimacy of our president.

Sadly, the left and its media allies are playing right into Putin’s hands.

Look at His Policies

The idea that Russia prefers America First Trump over Comrade Sanders, who honeymooned in the Soviet Union, is laughable. Just compare the president’s policies to those any Democrat president would follow.

  • Trump has massively increased defense spending. Every Democrat candidate wants to cut it.

  • Trump’s major theme is that America was great, is great, and he wants to make it even greater.

  • The Democrat Party base believes America was evil, is evil, and has done nothing but oppress people all over the world.

  • Trump has successfully pressured NATO allies to boost their defense spending. Putin definitely does not want that.

  • Iran is a major Russian ally. Trump got us out of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Trump’s sanctions are crushing Iran’s economy, and he took out Qassem Soleimani, who regularly went to Russia to meet with Putin.

  • Trump’s policies have made us the leading energy producer in the world, devastating Russia’s budget. Every Democrat wants to ban fracking and gut the American energy industry.

  • Trump gave Ukraine lethal weapons that Barack Obama never would.

No One Is Infallible

God bless the men and women who work in our intelligence agencies. They have protected us from many horrors over the decades. They have also been horribly wrong on many occasions.

As we have also seen, the previous administration appears to have weaponized parts of the intelligence community against the president and those who voted for him.

CIA Director George Tenet, a Clinton holdover, told President George W. Bush that the intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a “slam dunk.” We never found them.

Before that, the intelligence community largely missed the attack on 9/11. With all our best capabilities, we did not see the worst attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor coming our way.

The CIA consistently underestimated the Iranian nuclear program. If it wasn’t for Israeli intelligence, President Trump would not know the true extent of Iran’s cheating.

Just a few months ago, China celebrated the 70th anniversary of the communist takeover of the country. It had a huge military parade in Beijing. U.S. military experts were stunned by what they saw. One official said in response, “We’re no longer in a period of overwhelming American dominance.” How did our intelligence agencies miss that?

My point is simply this: Our intelligences agencies are vital, but they are not infallible.

I believe there are ideologues in those agencies who are being intentionally obtuse in their interpretations of the intelligence. Russia doesn’t care who is elected. Putin is simply trying to damage America with the false narrative that he is deciding our elections.

By the way, there’s not enough space here to remind you of how often over the decades Russia and other nations have managed to infiltrate our intelligence agencies, including at the highest levels.

The Left Is Helping Russia

If you were so filled with anti-American vitriol and wanted to undermine confidence in our constitutional republic, what would you do? Well, you would plant seeds of doubt about America’s basic goodness and institutions.

You would start a narrative that America was founded in 1619, when the first slaves arrived, and not 1776. You would say that America was evil from the start because of slavery.

You would tell the country that the Electoral College was created to suppress minority voters so that America could be ruled by white, rural counties.

You would spread the outrageous lie that our Constitution thought blacks were only partial human beings.

You would tell the country that the Supreme Court, which for decades has done the left’s bidding, is now an illegitimate organization controlled by the radical right, corporate interests, and two justices who harassed women.

You would get multiple states to refuse to cooperate with federal law enforcement agencies trying to remove criminal illegal aliens.

You would constantly berate law enforcement and praise extremists like Colin Kaepernick.

You would tell America’s youth that free-market capitalism is inherently corrupt and Jesus was really a socialist.

In short, if you wanted to undermine the America experiment, you would do what the left is doing every day.

Speaking of 1619…

As we’ve told you, The New York Times has a special project that is being accepted into schools all over the country. It teaches that America was founded in 1619 with the introduction of slavery, and not that the end of slavery began with the beginning of America thanks to the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.

When The New York Times isn’t busy demonizing our founding, what else is it doing? Well, Friday’s front page of America’s “Paper of Record” was filled with the false narrative that Russia is stealing the 2020 election.

Further in you’ll discover that the “Gray Lady,” as the Times is often called, gave over the editorial page to the Taliban.

Sirajuddin Haqqani, a Taliban leader, who has a $10 million bounty on his head and is responsible for the murder of many Americans and countless Afghanis, is being allowed by the left’s flagship newspaper to tell us what his demands are.

That’s what New Yorkers read Friday morning in the city that was attacked on 9/11 because the Taliban allowed Al Qaeda to plot the attacks in Afghanistan.

But according to the left the real threat to America is Donald Trump and Mike Pence.