President Donald Trump hasn’t been terribly consistent about much during his two-year political career. But one place where he has never wavered is in his skepticism that Russia actively meddled in the 2016 election.
On Sunday, Trump’s newly minted communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, acknowledged that the boss still isn’t convinced.
“He basically said to me, ‘Hey, you know, this is, maybe they did it, maybe they didn’t do it,'” Scaramucci told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
Trump himself got in on the action later Sunday. “As the phony Russian Witch Hunt continues, two groups are laughing at this excuse for a lost election taking hold, Democrats and Russians!,” Trump tweeted just after 4 p.m. ET.
Here’s the thing: The debate over whether or not Russia engaged in a coordinated and widespread effort to meddle in the 2016 election isn’t a debate. Everyone in a position to know — from the intelligence community to members of Congress on both sides of the aisle — believes that Russia did this.
The FBI, CIA, National Security Agency and Office of the Director of National Intelligence all agree that not only was the meddling the work of the Russians but that it was designed to help Trump’s campaign and hurt Hillary Clinton’s.
Trump’s own CIA director, Mike Pompeo, was definitive on that point at a national security conference in Aspen, Colorado, late last week. “I am confident that the Russians meddled in this election, as is the entire intelligence community,” Pompeo said.
The only person of any prominence who doubts those conclusions is the man sitting in the Oval Office. Trump is on an island, a man apart on the Russia issue. (The people who work for him, like Scaramucci, don’t really count — they are doing and saying what their boss tells them to.)
“Well, I think it was Russia, and I think it could have been other people and other countries,” Trump said at a news conference in Poland earlier this month. “It could have been a lot of people interfered.”
In the first general election debate against Clinton in September 2016, Trump famously/infamously said: “It could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds.”
Trump’s hesitancy to put the blame on Russia is beyond doubt. Why he is so unwilling to do so is a bit murkier — although Scaramucci shed considerable light on the President’s motivations in his Sunday interview with Tapper.
“The mainstream media position on this, that they interfered in the election,” Scaramucci said. “It actually, in his mind, what are you guys suggesting? You’re going to delegitimize his victory?”
And there you have it.
To Trump, any acknowledgment that Russia actively meddled in the 2016 election with the express purpose of helping him to win is the equivalent of saying he didn’t win fair and square and maybe shouldn’t have won at all.
When Trump hears Russia, he sees an attempt to rob him of the single greatest accomplishment in his life — not to mention the best proof point he’s had in his 71 years on earth that he is much, much smarter than the so-called elites.
It is, in his mind, a fundamental attack on not just his presidency but him. They are saying he didn’t win because they can’t accept that he proved them all wrong, Trump thinks to himself.
Which is, of course, bunk.
You can believe that Russia attempted to meddle in the election to benefit Trump AND that he won and is the duly elected President. It’s not an either/or proposition.
The evidence suggests that Russia’s coordinated release of emails gathered by a hack into the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s account played a role in the outcome. How big? It’s virtually impossible to know given the variety of other factors — most notably then-FBI Director James Comey’s decision to re-open the Clinton email server case — that influenced how voters made up their minds.
What Trump seems unable to accept is that no matter what Russia did, he still won. And that he will be President through 2020 no matter if he says that, sure, Russia meddled in our election, or not.
Trump’s blind spot on Russia has caused him a huge amount of problems in his first six months in office as he and his staff twist themselves into pretzels to find alternative explanations for something the intelligence community is unanimous on.
Chalk it up to Trump being his own worst enemy — again.