Bear with me on this. The good stuff is at the end.
Anyone with their lights on knows that the presidential election of 2016 was — and has continued to be — a disaster for the United States and the world. The election of the incompetent and corrupt Donald Trump will have damaging repercussions for at least a generation after he is out of office. Our intelligence community as well as the recently concluded Robert Mueller investigation have found that the Russian government engaged in a sweeping and systematic attack on our electoral process for the purpose of putting Trump in office. And they succeeded in this effort.
The Russians are certain to continue their attacks in the 2020 election. Last Friday (April 26) FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that they “…are going to keep adapting and upping their game.” They will be hacking emails, compromising voting machines, flooding social media with bots, trolls, and phony “news” reports and buying paid advertising. U.S. security agencies are working to deter future Russian malign activity, but they are handcuffed by the fact that the Trump administration remains in denial that the Russian interference even happened.
The situation is disturbing enough if you care about our tradition of free and fair elections, but it’s straight up frightening for those who understand that another four years of Donald Trump in the White House will be difficult to recover from, if indeed the damage he does to the republic is not irrevocable.
I posted the above video segment of the PBS NewsHour to show you just how bad it could get. Remember that Donald Trump has a warped worldview: He has come to believe that in dealing with any and all of life’s challenges, if you lose you are a loser. As I said, it’s warped, but there it is. What do you think he will do if he loses the 2020 election? In the runup to the 2016 election he announced that he would only accept the results of the election if he won. There is no reason to think he has changed his position on this, and now he has a powerful ally in Russia to make sure he doesn’t have to face losing. As Thomas Rid says in the video, we need to be prepared for “…a Russian operation that would provide some sort of credible evidence to [Trump’s] claim that the system is rigged, in the heat of the moment on election night and the following days, to sow doubt and create uncertainty in a very fragile moment and thus endanger a peaceful transition…”
You can watch this exchange in the video. Who wants to watch a whole boring “educational TV” news report (?), so scroll ahead to the 5:00 mark and watch for a minute and a half. Then be prepared. You will be seeing and hearing things for the next year and a half. I something on Twitter seems a little “out there,” google it. Find out the truth. Take generalizations with a grain or two of salt.
There is a real enemy at work. Don’t let him beat us twice.