Allegations that Russia somehow hacked the U.S. presidential race are being blasted as “total B.S.” and “fake news” engineered to take away the stunning victory of President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump himself tweeted about the controversy Monday, saying: “Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and WE tried to play the Russia/CIA card. It would be called conspiracy theory!”
Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and WE tried to play the Russia/CIA card. It would be called conspiracy theory!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2016
Talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh spent most of his Monday program scorching major media agencies for perpetuating the Russian-hack claim.
“The Washington Post and the New York Times on Russia’s interference in the election is total B.S., and it is the definition of ‘fake news,'” Limbaugh said, labeling both newspapers “the biggest perpetrators of fake news in this country today.”
“They are doing everything they can do to take Trump out,” he explained. “It’s the Democrat Party trying to change the outcome of the election.”
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On Friday, Dec. 9, the Washington Post reported: “The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter.”
But in the same article, it noted: “Intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin ‘directing’ the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks, a second senior U.S. official said. Those actors, according to the official, were ‘one step’ removed from the Russian government, rather than government employees.”
On Sunday, CNN media analyst Brian Stelter wondered concerning Trump’s election: “Is this something of a national emergency? And are journalists afraid to say so because they’re going to sound partisan?”
Reince Priebus, head of the Republican National Committee during the campaign and incoming chief of staff for Donald Trump, told NBC’s Chuck Todd on Sunday there were serious problems with the Post’s claim of Russian hacking.
“The article is based on a lie that the RNC was hacked. So the entire premise of the article is false. The sources are unnamed. And the report was inconclusive,” Priebus said on “Meet the Press.”
The FBI did not corroborate the CIA’s claim of Russian influence.
BizPacReview reported: “A senior FBI counterintelligence official met with Republican and Democrat members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in order to give the bureau’s view of a recent CIA report. The official did not concur with the CIA, frustrating Democrats. … The FBI official was much less convinced of the claims, providing ‘fuzzy’ and ‘ambiguous’ remarks.”
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said Monday the presidential election was “illegitimate” and “tainted.”
As WND is reporting, 10 members of the Electoral College including Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s daughter, Christine, are demanding a briefing from U.S. intelligence officials on any investigations into Trump’s ties to Moscow.
“The Electors require to know from the intelligence community whether there are ongoing investigations into ties between Donald Trump, his campaign or associates, and Russian government interference in the election, the scope of those investigations, how far those investigations may have reached, and who was involved in those investigations,” they wrote in an open letter.
“We further require a briefing on all investigative findings, as these matters directly impact the core factors in our deliberations of whether Mr. Trump is fit to serve as President of the United States.”
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The campaign of Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton jumped on the bandwagon Monday, as Clinton spokesman John Podesta said: “The bipartisan electors’ letter raises very grave issues involving our national security.”
“Electors have a solemn responsibility under the Constitution and we support their efforts to have their questions addressed.”
“Each day that month, our campaign decried the interference of Russia in our campaign and its evident goal of hurting our campaign to aid Donald Trump,” Podesta said. “Despite our protestations, this matter did not receive the attention it deserved by the media in the campaign. We now know that the CIA has determined Russia’s interference in our elections was for the purpose of electing Donald Trump. This should distress every American.”
Limbaugh claimed the fear among those on political left, including the media, is palpable.
“I think I’m looking at abject panic,” he said. “I know I am at the Democrat Party. Abject panic. Childlike fright. First time in the House of Mirrors at the horror show at the state fair. All they see is themselves, and they’re scared to death. And then there’s Trump looking at ’em everywhere they turn in there.”
“I think that people who live and work in Washington are just numbed. I think they are flabbergasted. I think they are gobsmacked. I don’t think they’ve come to grips with what’s happened here. It is such a big deal that an outsider has come in and is gonna run that show. I cannot emphasize enough what an absolute shock this is to these people. They are terrified … they’re thinking that he’ gonna dismantle everything that defines who they are. He’s gonna dismantle everything that produces their standard of living. They are shell-shocked, they are paranoid and they are scared to death. Members of both parties. This is a closed club, this establishment, this collection of elites.”
Limbaugh tied the media’s claims of Russian interference in the U.S. election with the push for recounts by Green Party candidate Jill Stein and many in the Democratic Party.
“This is not a bunch of extremists who are not really part of the Democrat Party mainstream trying to run this recount and trying to intimidate the electors. This is the Democrat Party. There is no fringe in the Democrat Party. They are all extreme, radical leftists, socialists …
“And what you’re seeing, no matter where you look – if it’s Jill Stein, if it’s some of these wackos they find to carry the water on hassling and harassing the electors – it’s mainstream. It is the mainstream of the left, the Democrat Party. It isn’t their fringe. And they are expressly attempting to change the outcome of this election.”
Follow Joe Kovacs on Twitter @JoeKovacsNews