If you told me a week ago that the federal government would release a bunch of official emails related to interference in the 2016 election and President Trump but virtually all of the media wouldn’t give a damn, I’d have assumed you were on drugs.
That’s what happened though. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Friday declassified a slew of internal government communications proving that then-President Obama’s intelligence agencies deliberately blocked the publication of a conclusive assessment that Russia had not manipulated votes in the 2016 election — contradicting the Russian-interference lie aggressively pushed by both Democrats and the dying news media.
As Margot Cleveland wrote this week here, “[T]he email threads declassified last week indicate the [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] … buried the PDB [President’s Daily Brief] to provide the intelligence community cover to issue a contrary assessment concerning Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election — and did so, against the recommendations of a wide array of intelligence professionals.”
At a minimum, that means a former president used American taxpayer dollars to smear his successor, sowing suspicion that Trump’s victory was illegitimate. That is, by definition, a scandal.
If it were Trump who did that to Biden, we would be hearing about this 50 years from now. Instead, the dying media are sweeping it away as a bore.
NPR called it an attempt “at scrutinizing years-old intelligence community conclusions about Russian interference.” The same media operation that talks about “Watergate” like it happened yesterday belittles this from not even 10 years ago as “years-old.”
Axios referred to the “new evidence” in quotes, suggesting it’s only that in name and not because it’s literally new evidence that should appall anyone who cares about the integrity of our elections. Democrats and the media swear they do, so it’s interesting that Axios would diminish the importance of this insane development.
The Washington Post mentioned the emails in passing under the headline, “As MAGA world focuses on Epstein, Trump seeks focus on anything else.” On Friday a New York Times article on Gabbard’s declassified documents led with Democrats’ purported rebuttals, and this week the Times covered the emails seven paragraphs into a story that focused on a silly video Trump posted on social media.
Election interference is only of interest to the media if they can say it was perpetrated by Russia on behalf of Trump, which coincidentally is the permanent Washington bureaucracy’s preferred narrative. Otherwise, they treat it like a report of dry heat in Arizona.
As ever, the media are protecting Democrats from scandal.
