When you ruminate for a moment on the entire Russian hacking and interference of the U.S. election, it's a real challenge for Republicans officials because as it was happening they must have been feeling uneasy about what was happening but let it ride because they were also the beneficiaries. But now that the election is over, they have to do something about it, but these cyber attacks are inevitably turned toward them.
More on that in a minute, but first, Jeff Greenfield used the word "fantasy"in terms of the electoral college vote doing anything but confirming Donald Trump as president. Democrats have face facts and work through it.
But here's two biggies that should be considered:
1. When Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic primary to Barack Obama in 2008, everyone knew she would be running in 2016 and like clockwork... too telegraphed. After two decades before that had Mrs. Clinton faced attacks and criticism and then her political opponents had 8 years to really focus on the target. The fact is that Mrs. Clinton, though a respected and effective public servant was a deeply flawed candidate, and she failed to come up with 89,000 votes that she needed in WI, MI and PA collectively. John Podesta had nothing adequate to say about the failure in Wisconsin, every panelist agreed on this. Mrs. Clinton should have been there at least ten times. It was a state that Democrats consistently won, yes, but symbolically it was also where the Republican power structure was based with both the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and RNC Chair Reince Priebus being from the state. Ultimately, the loss is on Secretary Clinton - hard, plain and true.
2. Judging from Chuck Todd's change in body language and tone of voice when talking about criticism of the press, he doesn't like it, for understandable reasons because it's on him. And by extension, the media complains about fake news and no agreed upon set of facts, which is scary because of how people will exploit. However, here's the thing - one could argue that fake news came to be when the networks decided to start profiting from news, which gave it an agenda - eyeballs, clicks, comments. Fox News covers political events differently than NBC covers those same events, different from CNN, and then the internet and ad words...
Donald Trump told Chuck Todd once that he got his information "from the shows" which was mocked on "the shows," but isn't that what they want? Ah...but not by our leaders. Well, as Donald Trump has now proven, you can not have it both ways.
Looking into the mirror sometimes can lead to profound insight.
But back to the "thinly-veiled cyber-espionage" as fmr. Sec. Robert Gates described the Russian cyber-attacks. The U.S. intelligence community and Mr. Gates himself confirm that Russian did interfere with our elections and worked against Hillary Clinton in favor of Donald Trump. Instead of eroding confidence in our intelligence agencies through twitter, Donald Trump should have said something to the effect that if that's the case, the Russians will still be sorry for interfering and that he didn't need their help anyway. Bravado a la Trump style but at least it would get everyone on the same page. Actually, everyone is on the same page except the president-elect, which is inexplicable.
What's also inexplicable is that Chairman of the Hillary Clinton campaign John Podesta's had his emails hacked and released on October 7th, got a call from the FBI on the 9th and hasn't heard from them since. Just another reason in a long line of them why FBI Director James Comey has to go.
Between the generals Mr. Trump has nominated for his cabinet and Senate Republicans with no love for Russia, hopefully there will be appropriate action taken in the form of an independent investigation - there has to be one. If we do as Senator Mitch McConnell suggested and do it solely through the intelligence committee, which he chairs then we'll essentially be giving Vladimir Putin as 'a pass' on his actions.
Panel: Katty Kay, BBC America; Yamiche Alcindor, The New York Times, Jeff Greenfield, Politico; Rick Santelli, CNBC
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