{"id":70247,"date":"2017-03-31T21:42:01","date_gmt":"2017-04-01T01:42:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=70247"},"modified":"2017-03-31T21:42:01","modified_gmt":"2017-04-01T01:42:01","slug":"blue-state-blues-the-white-house-loves-the-russia-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=70247","title":{"rendered":"Blue State Blues: The White House Loves the Russia \u2018Scandal\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

by<\/span> JOEL B. POLLAK
\n<\/a>Breitbart.com<\/p>\n

The Trump White House seems quietly to be enjoying the Russia hacking \u201cscandal.\u201d<\/h2>\n

Certainly it\u00a0has its day-to-day frustrations, especially for Sean Spicer, who has to face the press corps and its obsession with meaningless\u00a0minutiae.<\/p>\n

But the joke is on the journalists. They are spending so much time on the non-story that they are missing what President Donald Trump is actually doing. He complains<\/a>\u00a0on Twitter about the coverage, but the truth is that the distraction is very useful.<\/p>\n

The \u201cscandal\u201d is no longer about Russia. Now it is about how\u00a0House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) found information backing up Trump\u2019s claims that his team was under surveillance by the Obama administration.<\/p>\n

Was Nunes approached by whistleblowers who came to his congressional office? Or were the whistleblowers sent by the White House to Nunes?\u00a0It makes no difference at all, but the media think they are onto something\u00a0very important.<\/p>\n

CNN called\u00a0it a \u201ccover-up,\u201d without specifying what, exactly, Nunes was supposed to be \u201ccovering up.\u201d And the answer is: nothing.<\/p>\n

Even if \u2014 for argument\u2019s sake \u2014 the White House had approached Nunes rather than the other way around, the worst that could be said about it is that Nunes behaved like a partisan Republican. If so, he is no more partisan than ranking member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who is abusing his position to launch conspiracy theories against the GOP.<\/p>\n

The core of Schiff\u2019s case, as presented<\/a>\u00a0at the House Intelligence Committee last Monday, is a lie \u2014 namely, the false claim that the Republican Party altered its platform at the behest of Trump aides in order to appease the Russians. As Byron York of the Washington Examiner<\/em> has demonstrated<\/a>, the Republican platform was \u201cwas actually strengthened, not weakened\u201d against Russia.<\/p>\n

Schiff is still pretending that some other evidence will emerge on Trump-Russia ties.\u00a0But the\u00a0idea Russia colluded with the Trump campaign is ludicrous, for three reasons.<\/p>\n

The first is there is no evidence whatsoever to support that claim. Obama\u2019s own James Clapper and Mike Morell even said so \u2014 though it took Trump\u2019s tweets about \u201cwiretapping\u201d to flush them out of hiding.<\/p>\n

Second, the Russians could not have known that Trump would win, and would not have targeted\u00a0Clinton alone<\/em> when it seemed that she could exact punishment\u00a0once she took\u00a0office.<\/p>\n

The third reason\u00a0is that Hillary Rodham Clinton was arguably the most pro-Russian official since Alger Hiss. From the Russian \u201creset,\u201d to giving up\u00a0missile defense, to the one-sided New START treaty, to the uranium giveaway, to the loss of the Middle East, and to the loss of the Crimea\u00a0(which happened on her successor\u2019s watch, while she remained silent), Clinton ran the State Department almost like a\u00a0post-Soviet satellite.<\/p>\n

Indeed, if Donald Trump really wanted to appease Russian President Vladimir Putin, it would be hard to find anything left with which to appease him. The Russians saw Trump\u2019s criticism of NATO as useful, and applauded him. But they\u00a0likely preferred Clinton.<\/p>\n

Already, Trump has been much tougher on Russia than Obama ever was. From blasting Russia<\/a> at the UN Security Council over the eastern Ukraine, to threatening<\/a> to tear up the New START treaty, Trump has\u00a0opposed Putin\u00a0\u2014 and it shows<\/a>.\u00a0Trump foreign policy adviser Sebastian Gorka, formerly of Breitbart News, is also a vociferous critic<\/a> of Russia.<\/p>\n

So the Russia \u201cscandal\u201d is much ado about nothing. But it keeps the media\u00a0distracted\u00a0from what Trump is really\u00a0doing \u2014 such as\u00a0taking a chainsaw<\/a>\u00a0to Obama\u2019s regulations\u00a0\u2014 and it keeps the Democrats from developing an actual message.<\/p>\n

The beauty of it all? Aside from Trump\u2019s tweets, the media and the Democrats are creating this distraction themselves.<\/p>\n

___
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