Democrats are deeply bothered by the new CIA revelations that Vladimir Putin attempted to influence the presidential election in order to help Trump.
They're right to be upset.
The notion that one of the world's worst dictators hacked the Democratic National Committee in an attempt to boost a candidate's power should be kind of troubling.
But they haven't typically been upset about such things in the past when they benefit Democrats.
Take, for example, Barack Obama.
Go all the way back to March 2012, when Obama met with Putin's stooge and then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
Obama was caught on a live mic telling Medvedev, quote, on all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this can be solved, but it's important for him to give me space.
And Medvedev said, yes, I understand.
I understand your message about space.
Space for you.
To which Obama said, this is my last election.
After my election, I have more flexibility.
And Medvedev answered genuinely, I understand.
I will transmit to Vladimir.
Democrats were fine with that.
In fact, they then proceeded to spend the rest of the election cycle mocking Mitt Romney for stating that Russia posed the greatest geopolitical threat to the United States.
Obama himself mocked Romney by saying during a debate, quote, the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.
He then handed control of Syria to Putin, and then he followed by doing nothing when Russia invaded Ukraine.
Let's go back a little bit further to 1983.
Senator Teddy Kennedy wanted to run for president, so he sent his friend John Tunney to Moscow.
In Moscow, Tony told the head of the Soviet Union, Yuri Andropov, that he wanted a deal.
According to Forbes, quote, Kennedy's message was simple.
He proposed an unabashed quid pro quo.
Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan.
In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election.
The only real potential threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace in Soviet-American relations, the memo stated.
These issues, according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign.
Apparently Kennedy offered to help Andropov get TV interviews in the U.S., and he offered to visit Moscow.
The deal didn't work out, but Democrats ignored the reports when they finally broke in 2009.
Or check out 1960.
Here's Craig Shirley and Andrew Shirley reporting, quote, In 1960, the Soviets held U-2 pilot Gary Powers after his plane crashed illegally in Russia, and specifically delayed his release until after the presidential elections.
They used Powers as a bargaining chip, and according to Khrushchev himself, it worked.
In his memoirs, the Soviet leader stated, We kept Nixon from being able to claim he could deal with the Russians.
Our ploy made a difference of at least half a million votes, which gave Kennedy the edge he needed.
Democrats complaining about Russian elections interference are breaking with historical president.
It's also worth noting that so are Republicans, who suddenly don't seem to care about Russian involvement so long as it benefits their guy, but the hypocrisy of the Democrats is certainly on full display.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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So over the weekend, the big breaking news, of course, was that the CIA basically suggested that Vladimir Putin, shirtless riding a horse, had decided to hack the U.S.
election.
Not that he hacked the election results, but by hacking the DNC and helping out WikiLeaks by revealing information about Hillary Clinton, that this had made Hillary Clinton president.
Now, the CIA didn't say that.
The CIA didn't say that they made Hillary president.
They said that was Putin's intent, that what Putin wanted out of life was for Hillary Clinton not to be President of the United States.
He wanted Donald Trump to be President of the United States.
Here was the Washington Post's original report.
They said, quote, Intelligence agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the DNC and others, including Hillary's campaign chairman, according to U.S.
officials.
Those officials described the individuals as actors known to the intel community and part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clinton's chances.
NPR seconded that report.
Now here's the thing.
We haven't seen any of that intelligence ourselves, right?
So we can't really gauge whether this intelligence is good or bad or whether it's accurate or not.
So we have to decide between two sources.
The CIA.
Or Donald Trump?
So Donald Trump responded.
The Trump transition team did something that I think is actually really, really stupid.
They released this statement and said, These are two separate issues.
Okay?
Two things can be true at once.
These are two separate issues.
Two things can be true at once.
The Russians tried to hack the DNC in order to help Trump, and Trump would have won anyway.
I think Trump would have won anyway, because the fact is that what actually stopped Trump, if you want to look at the news cycle, what actually hurt Trump was not the WikiLeaks particularly.
It was the Comey investigation, which wasn't based on the WikiLeaks, remember.
The Comey investigation was based on Hillary's email servers, and if she hadn't hidden the emails in the first place, it wouldn't have been an issue.
And it was based on the fact that he found all sorts of Hillary emails on Anthony Weiner's laptop.
Well, Anthony Weiner's laptop wasn't hacked by the Russians.
So it really had, one didn't have anything to do with the other.
Also, if you look at the polls, what you really see is that Hillary was wildly unpopular from the beginning of the election cycle, and she never was able to get out of that funk.
She was never able to break out of that.
It's not the Russians' fault that Hillary Clinton is the worst presidential candidate in the history of American politics.
You can't blame that one on shirtless Vladimir Putin.
That said, Trump's statement here is really dumb because instead of him just saying, look, This is something that ought to be investigated, but we won the election fair and square.
There's no evidence that Americans voted for me because they were persuaded by Putin's leaks.
Instead of saying that, instead he goes directly at the CIA and just denies the veracity of the report, which is a really simple-minded way of doing these things.
It's really dumb, because now he's created a rift with the intelligence agencies, who supposedly he's going to be relying on to give him national security updates.
And that's a problem.
First of all, him just dumping out there, these are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
To be accurate, the CIA said that Saddam Hussein was probably pursuing weapons of mass destruction.
They didn't say 100% certainty Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.
Also, he keeps trotting out this fib that this is the biggest Electoral College victory ever.
It's not.
It's 44th out of 54 elections.
So actually it's not a particularly large Electoral College win.
None of that matters.
The bottom line is that he's created a rift with the intel community that's not particularly smart.
It's just not particularly smart.
Kellyanne Conway kind of knows that it's smart, and so she's on national TV trying to walk that back, saying that, no, no, no, you're missing the point.
Trump actually likes the intelligence community.
He respects the intelligence community.
He's going to be president.
You keep saying he respects it, but he's saying he doesn't believe their conclusions.
He's saying specifically he does not believe the conclusion of 17 agencies that Russia was involved in.
The conclusion that this helped him win and Hillary Clinton lose.
That's what he said very clearly.
And then she's lying.
That's not what Trump said.
He didn't say that it was about that.
First of all, the CIA never said that Putin made Hillary Clinton lose.
They said that that was Putin's intent, but they didn't say, here's our elections analysis demonstrating that this was what cost Hillary Clinton the election cycle.
It is going to be a serious rift here.
Here's what Trump actually had to say.
Again, Trump has no evidence, as far as I'm aware, that what the CIA is saying is wrong, that this was not Putin's intent.
He has no, again, I think that all that happened here is that Donald Trump doesn't like the result the CIA is coming up with, and so now he's gonna rip on the CIA.
Whether you believe the CIA or not is irrelevant, actually.
All that matters here is that Donald Trump has no evidence that the CIA is actually wrong.
He's just saying this because he doesn't like the conclusion, which is that Vladimir Putin was trying to help him out.
Which, by the way, was clearly true all the way through the election cycle, okay?
The fact is, we'll get to this in a second, you can see sort of why Vladimir Putin was trying to help him out, but we'll talk about that in a minute.
Here's what Trump said about this whole debacle.
I think it's ridiculous.
I think it's just another excuse.
I don't believe it.
I don't know why.
And I think it's just, you know, they talked about all sorts of things.
Every week it's another excuse.
We had a massive landslide victory, as you know, in the Electoral College.
I guess the final numbers are now at 306, and she, you know, down to a very low number.
No, I don't believe that at all.
Okay, so he's right that the Democrats pushing this is the reason she lost.
That's crap.
But for him to attack the CIA is really dumb.
And you can see why Donald Trump was, why Vladimir Putin would want Donald Trump.
You can.
I mean, let's be frank about this.
This is just the stuff that Trump said during the election about what was happening with Russia.
Here's all of the stuff that Trump said during the election.
I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China.
It could also be lots of other people.
It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, okay?
I don't know Putin.
He said nice things about me.
If we got along well, that would be good.
If Russia and the United States got along well and went after ISIS, that would be good.
But again, he kills journalists that don't agree with him.
Well, I think our country does plenty of killing also, Joe.
There's a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now, Joe.
Okay, so you can see why Vladimir Putin might be a little warm toward this guy, because clearly Trump is pretty warm towards him.
By the way, I do have to say, every time we show a split screen of Hillary Clinton, I'm immensely relieved that I don't have to look at...
Look at her as President of the United States.
That's a wonderful thing.
Can you imagine the horror show that would be?
Woo!
But here's how the Democrats react.
So, Democrats can't just... Here's the thing about Democrats in the media.
They cannot just take the story at face value.
Vladimir Putin wants Trump to be President.
That's probably not good for the United States.
It's not good if Vladimir Putin, who's one of the worst dictators on the planet, a fellow who actually has Soviet-style ambitions, right?
They can't just make the claim that those people wanted Trump to be president and that's bad and Trump is catering to those people.
That would be a legit criticism.
Instead, they have to turn it into, no, no, Hillary actually won.
Hillary actually won if it hadn't been for Vladimir Putin.
If it hadn't been for Putin, then Hillary definitely, definitely would have won.
Here is CNN guest saying that just yesterday.
Bob, if I'm hearing you correctly, you're saying we should have another election?
How would that work?
Is that plausible?
When a foreign country interferes in your election and the outcome is endowed in legitimacy of the government, I don't know how it worked constitutionally, I'm not a lawyer, constitutional lawyer, but I'm deeply disturbed by the fact that the Russians interfered, and I would like to see the evidence, because if the evidence is there, I don't see any other way than to vote again.
I mean, as an American citizen.
Okay, this is crazy towns.
It's crazy towns.
Again, there's no evidence to suggest that Putin actually succeeded, and that's what cost Hillary Clinton the election.
In fact, as Nate Silver points out, if Clinton lost the election because of an event, it was really not having to do with Russia, it was having to do with James Comey of the FBI revealing information about how the investigation was still ongoing or had been reinvigorated like a week and a half before the election.
Here's Nate Silver, the pollster.
He said, quote, there's more evidence late deciding voters broke strongly against Clinton in swing states enough to cost her Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania.
I'll put it like this.
Clinton almost certainly would be president elect if the election had been held October 27th, the day before the Comey letter.
Probably right.
But again, that has to do with the Comey letter.
It doesn't have to do with the Putin hacks.
But the entire left is taking it as though Putin made Trump president, which is absolute nonsense.
There's no evidence for that.
Here's a Time editor, Michael Duffy, and he's making a different argument.
He's suggesting that what's really going on here is that the Russians could be blackmailing Trump, which again, no evidence of this.
We know from the campaign, John, that Democratic e-mails were vacuumed up and leaked.
We don't know exactly how much was vacuumed up from the Republican e-mails, but we now know from the intelligence, the reports about the intelligence community's assessment, that they also got Republican e-mails.
Which means someone, if that's true, and of course the RNC has denied this, but if it's true, and it stands to reason that it may be true, then someone in Moscow or in Russia is holding on to all of those e-mails, too.
And those affect Okay, so again, there's no evidence of this, but the Democrats have to keep pushing and pushing and pushing.
Claire McCaskill, the senator from Missouri, she says that this Russian election interference is a form of warfare, using pretty extreme language here.
now stands in a position to exert some leverage, if it is true, over the future president.
Okay, so again, there's no evidence of this, but the Democrats have to keep pushing and pushing and pushing.
Claire McCaskill, the senator from Missouri, she says that this Russian election interference is a form of warfare, using pretty extreme language here.
How about this issue of Russian involvement in the American elections?
We saw these reports over the weekend.
We've been talking about them of the CIA saying they were trying to tip the scales for Donald Trump.
You've now got these bipartisan calls for an investigation.
You support that?
Yeah, absolutely.
And by the way, this should be not only about protecting us going forward, but this is a form of warfare.
For Vladimir Putin, who is a thug and a bully, and has the friends around the globe that we don't want to be friends with, for him to be trying to impact our elections, that, we have to, there has to be, he has to be held accountable.
Well, some of that's classified, I believe, and I don't think it's something that we can discuss on TV, but I've had briefings just this last week that indicate that this is a very serious issue for the American people to understand, and for Donald Trump to dismiss out of hand the intelligence community's fact-gathering.
Okay, so this is all, you know, it's funny to watch Democrats suddenly hot and bothered about Russia.
As I said earlier, the Democrats didn't care about Russia when it was Barack Obama doing the catering.
Here was the incident I mentioned earlier, Barack Obama, Dmitry Medvedev caught in a hot mic, Obama offering flexibility to Russia in return for their help in the 2012 election.
My last election, yeah.
After my election, I have more flexibility.
I'll tell Vladimir about this.
Okay, so again, it is amazing for the Democrats how they are perfectly willing to have Russia intervene in our election so long as it's Democrats who are working with the Russians.
If it were Trump working with the Russians, it's the end of the world.
Now, Trump makes this point, by the way, and he makes it exactly right.
He tweeted out earlier today, and this is 100% true about this.
Here's what he tweeted.
This is the, uh, there we go.
Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and we tried to play the Russia CIA card, it would be called a conspiracy theory.
That of course is 100% true.
If he tried to do that, everybody would call it a conspiracy theory and say it was nonsense.
Now the entire media are pushing that conspiracy theory.
It's still nonsense.
There's no evidence to suggest that Russia is what won this election for Donald Trump.
They were trying to help.
That is probably true.
They probably hacked the DNC.
That is probably true.
But the idea that they were the deciding factor rather than the American people rejecting Hillary Clinton, I haven't seen evidence of that at all.
Now, one of the things that has happened here is that people like me, Republicans, conservatives, we look at the Democrats and we laugh at them.
Because these are the same people who are saying about Mitt Romney in 2012.
Look at that crazy Mitt Romney, that crazy Romney guy talking about Russia like it's all threatening and stuff.
Look at that crazy Romney fella.
And now here they are saying, oh, the Russians.
Oh, those evil Russians.
We got to stop the evil Russians.
They're the ones who are screwing us, the Russians.
And so we say, yeah, you're hypocrites.
OK, the hypocrisy argument works both ways.
If you were really bothered about the Russians in 2012, but now you're totally fine with Russia intervening in our elections.
Let me recommend to you that you take a look at something called basic intellectual honesty.
If your gauge, on the left or the right, if your gauge is good for Trump or bad for Trump is the only thing that matters.
If you're on the left and your only gauge of whether something is positive is whether it is bad for Trump, let me suggest to you that you have no moral center.
Because it turns out Trump takes a lot of variety positions on a lot of different issues and he switches those positions frequently.
And so just because it's bad for Trump doesn't mean that it's good for the country if you're on the left.
And if you think that, you need a different moral center.
And if you're on the right, just because it's good for Trump doesn't mean it's good for the country.
Just because the Russians helped out Trump this time doesn't mean the Russians are our friends, or that this is a good thing, or that this is something that we should be excited about as the Russians are trying to intervene in an American election.
It's not something that's positive.
Foreign countries hacking into American institutions and getting involved is not a good thing for the United States.
Listen, we complained about it when Obama did it to Israel.
Certainly we should complain about it when the Russians do it to us, even if the outcome is something that we would prefer.
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Okay, so, as I say, if your sole gauge of decency is whether it helps Trump or not.
Then you need a different moral center.
You need a different moral center.
And you're seeing Republicans react in a couple of different ways.
You're seeing a lot of Republicans who are close to the Trump team basically saying, we're going to pretend that Vladimir Putin doesn't exist or that he's a nice guy and that he sucks you with his shirt off because he helped our boy.
Jason Miller is a spokesperson for Trump, for the Trump campaign.
He came out and he said this.
He said, what this is, is an attempt to delegitimize President-elect Trump's win.
So there's talk of a bipartisan probe of the Russian hacking, saying it's an attempt to delegitimize President-elect Trump's win.
Or maybe it's just an attempt to look into the fact that we need to strengthen our institutions so that the Russians can't hack us and then reveal information.
It's all fun and games, gang, until it turns out that Vladimir Putin decides that he's going to use the power of the hack against people that we like.
Right, what happens when Donald Trump decides to cross Vladimir Putin over some issue?
And next thing you know, Vladimir Putin has had his lackeys hack into Trump's email, and you're getting the French porn tape people were talking about this entire election cycle, right?
Well, what happens when all that happens is nothing good.
Chuck Todd was on with Reince Priebus, and Reince was doing his usual shilling routine, here's Reince, pretending that nothing is happening with Vladimir Putin, everything is great with Vladimir Putin.
Do you believe, let's just clear this up, do you believe Does the President-elect believe that Russia was trying to muddy up and get involved in the election in 2016?
Number one, you don't know it, I don't know it, and there's been no conclusive or specific report to say otherwise.
So that's the first thing.
The second thing I would tell you is that you don't have any proof that the outcome of the election was changed.
Forget about who did the hacking.
Do you want to know?
Even if someone did the hacking.
No!
Does President-elect Donald Trump want to know?
Does he want to know?
What's specific?
Of course we want to know.
So there's going to be an investigation?
He wants an investigation on Capitol Hill?
Of course.
Listen, I don't know what investigations he wants, but yes, we do want to know.
But what I don't want to do, Chuck, is have a debate with you over an unnamed source that the article said was inconclusive over who hacked and why they hacked.
Look, someone hacked.
We don't like that.
I don't like it.
No one wants it.
We want to protect American interests.
It's America first.
I don't want the DNC hacked.
I don't want anybody hacked.
But I don't know who did the hacking.
That's my point.
Why do you oppose an investigation?
Then why do you oppose an investigation?
Why is Jason Miller out there saying that there shouldn't be any investigation?
You just say you want to know, but then you don't want an investigation.
Intellectually dishonest, and I'm going to call it out when it is intellectually dishonest.
If the left is being intellectually dishonest because suddenly they care that Russia's getting involved in our elections, and they were fine with it in 2012, I'll call that out.
And when the right, which opposed Vladimir Putin's dictatorial nonsense for literally my entire life, now comes out and says, well, you know, we don't really care whether they're hacking, or if they are hacking, maybe it's just a 400-pound guy.
Sure, there were 17 different reports from intelligence agencies suggesting Russian involvement in the hacks, but, you know, no need for an investigation.
Let's not jump the gun.
It's just, it's utter foolishness, and that's a problem for me.
We'll talk more about this, plus more breaking news on Trump's Secretary of State, and Trump did a big interview over the weekend, and we'll talk about some of the things that he said, and we'll get things I like and things I hate, so much more coming up over at DailyWire.com.
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