CNN Follows CN by 8 Days on Russiagate Payback Story
November 23, 2020
A week after CN, Cable News Network reported that Donald Trump knows he lost
but is holding out to get back at the Democrats for undermining his
legitimacy with Russiagate.
President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, Oct. 23, 2020. (White House, Tia
Dufour)
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
Last Thursday, CNN posted an article online that began:
"(CNN) - President Donald Trump told an ally that he knows he lost, but that
he is delaying the transition process and is aggressively trying to sow
doubt about the election results in order to get back at Democrats for
questioning the legitimacy of his own election in 2016, especially with the
Russia investigation, a source familiar with the President's thinking told
CNN on Thursday."
The article went on to say that Trump's refusal so far to concede the
election Joe Biden comes in part from his "perceived grievance that Hillary
Clinton and former President Barack Obama undermined his own presidency by
saying Russia interfered in the 2016 election and could have impacted the
outcome, people around him have said."
Eight days earlier on Nov. 10, which was a week after the election,
Consortium News reported:
"Republicans must know that Joe Biden received more votes, in too many
states, and by too wide a margin, for the 2020 election results to be
overturned. Nevertheless, many Republican leaders are still backing Donald
Trump's claim that Biden's election was not legitimate.
After the Democrats played the fabulist Russiagate card to undermine Trump's
legitimacy, they should not be surprised by Republican efforts to undermine
Biden's. This is U.S. politics in a downward spiral.
The same way Trump laid the groundwork during the campaign by questioning
the validity of mail-in voting (which goes back to the American Revolution),
Hillary Clinton laid the groundwork during the 2016 campaign to undermine
Trump by recklessly branding him a "Putin puppet."
That blossomed into four years of full-blown Russiagate, which was meant to
question the validity of Trump's election, undermine his legitimacy and
hamper his ability to act as president.
Now the Republicans are questioning the validity of Biden's election,
undermining his legitimacy and hampering his ability to act as
president-elect, and later as president.
This is tit-for-tat for the Russiagate gambit."
Missing the Point
The reliably pro-Democratic CNN could not resist the opportunity to insult
Trump, as if sticking to the facts about his presidency isn't damning
enough. And it threw a compliment Clinton's way that misses the point.
The CNN story said:
"Trump continues to hold a grudge against those who he claims undercut his
election by pointing to Russian interference efforts, and he has suggested
it is fair game to not recognize Joe Biden as the President-elect, even
though Clinton conceded on election night in 2016 and the Trump transition
was able to begin immediately."
First off, it's journalistic malpractice to speak of "Russian interference
efforts" as if it's a flat fact, when the two core elements of Russiagate-a
conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign and a Russian hack of
Democratic servers-have been debunked by none other than Special Counsel
Robert Mueller and CrowdStrike president Shawn Henry.
The latter's sworn testimony to the House Intelligence Committee admitted to
no evidence that anyone had hacked the servers, and Mueller reported no
evidence of such a conspiracy. In case you missed it:
CNN points out that Clinton conceded, but falsely says on election night.
Her campaign chairman John Podesta addressed the Clinton rally in New York
to say the election wasn't over yet. Clinton only conceded the next morning,
after reportedly a night of throwing things around her hotel room and after
a phone call from Obama.
Trump will leave too, even if he doesn't formally concede, and maybe through
the backdoor. But the point is that though Clinton made the difficult
speech, which Trump refuses to make, she didn't let things lie there.
I predicted three days before the election that if Clinton should lose, she
would leverage blame against Russia to try to overturn the election. And
that is exactly what she and the Democrats did (and for which Trump is now
paying them back for.)
First the Democrats supported electors changing their votes by arguing
Moscow had stolen the election. When that failed they lobbied Congress to
not certify the vote. When that failed, a four-year campaign ensued to
falsely charge Trump, Russia and WikiLeaks for her failure and to undermine
the legitimacy of the 2016 election, just as Trump is doing now to this one.
Of course none of this appears in CNN, which long ago gave up the central
tenet of political journalism: impartiality.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former UN
correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other
newspapers. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London
and began his professional career as a stringer for The New York Times. He
can be reached at joelauria@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx and followed on Twitter
@unjoe .
