Trump aids Russias disinformation campaign
If you want to understand how President Trump should (and won’t) deal with Russia, from its hack of U.S. elections to its role in gas attacks in Syria, I have one suggestion: Go to YouTube and pull up the remarks of former special FBI agent Clint Watts before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week.
Watts is a West Point grad, former Army officer and respected counterterrorism expert with a focus on cybersecurity, as well as a fellow at Philadelphia’s Foreign Policy Research Institute. His hair-raising testimony laid out how Trump abets Moscow’s disinformation schemes to undermine Western democracies (whether wittingly or unwittingly, we still need to learn).
Watts’ bottom line: The United States can’t counteract Moscow’s “active measures” to discredit the United States and its Western allies until the president officially recognizes what Russia is up to — and devises a strategy to deal with it. Instead Trump is playing right into the Kremlin’s hands.
The president was at it again this week, trying to deflect attention from the congressional investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. He alleged — without any evidence — that Susan Rice sought illicit intelligence against his campaign team. He employed the same tactics a month ago with his absurd, baseless tweet, debunked by top intelligence officials, that President Obama tapped Trump Tower during the campaign.
http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/trump-aids-russias-disinformation-mission/
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