Summer reruns: Intel officials wheel out the old ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ canards about Russia influencing the election for Trump

Summer rerun season has begun, so we shouldn’t be surprised to see the deep-state intelligence officials back, attempting to scare us out of voting for President Trump, because ‘the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming.’ For them, Trump is coming.

It’s a tack so old it’s petrified hardtack.

Never mind that Russia’s President Putin told Tucker Carlson that he preferred Joe Biden as the more predictable candidate.

Never mind that Trump has vowed to end Russia’s Ukraine war swiftly and said he would force Putin to release his U.S. hostage, young Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, imprisoned on phony espionage charges immediately.

Never mind that they’ve tried this twice in the last two elections, seemingly convinced that American voters cannot make up their minds about whom to vote for unless they’ve got a Russian bot in front of them, tugging at their emotions on social media, which is where the interference claims come from. For some authentic foreign interference on elections, Mexico would be a good place to start, having run naked ads and questionable voting registrations to urge Mexicans to vote for Democrats, but Deep State doesn’t pay attention to Mexico.

So here we are. Russia, Russia, Russia, just like the last two elections. The claims that Russia is using AI this time and can imitate Southern accents instead of their usual Boris and Natasha ones is laughable. I’ve heard many Russian diplomats speak with no accent at all, so that argument is so old it’s covered with barnacles.

Start with NBC News:

Russia aims to undermine Biden in November election, intel officials say

The Wall Street Journal:

Russia seeks to boost Trump in 2024 election, U.S. intelligence officials say

Reuters:

US intelligence official indicates that Russia prefers Trump as election victor

Fox News:

Russia interfering in 2024 election to help Trump, US intelligence officials say

Fox, to its credit, ran a skeptical account, despite its headline, along with bonus video commentary from Laura Ingraham at the top of the piece, debunking the whole thrashing effort as setting the stage for delegitimizing President Trump’s likely victory come November.

But for the really useful and entertaining account, go to RT News, the Russian propaganda outlet, which debunks the whole scheme with supported links debunking the nonsense, with the contempt it deserves. They ran a passage from President Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson, describing the chess-playing Russian warlord’s inner thinking, pointing out that he’d much rather have Biden than Trump as president:

Putin has dismissed the idea that he backs a certain faction in US politics. “It is not about the personality of the leader,” he told American journalist Tucker Carlson in February. “It is about the elites’ mindset.” Several days later, however, Putin said that he would prefer to continue dealing with Biden, calling the incumbent US leader “a more experienced and predictable person,” and “a politician of the old sort.”

Back in 2022, we saw that phenomenon up close, that Putin was afraid of Trump and preferred Biden as president, when President Trump’s former Russia advisor and impeachment accuser, Fiona Hill, told a think tank crowd that Trump drove Putin bonkers by demanding that Putin explain every little detail in his dealings with Russia.

In a 2022 piece that was featured on RealClearPolitics, I wrote this:

According to Hill’s ace expert geostrategic analysis, Trump was this moron who so unnerved Putin that he refused to invade Ukraine as a result of it. Biden, by contrast, was a svelte and nimble political power player who was essentially Metternich, so Putin decided to invade and bomb the hell out of Ukraine while Biden was in office, because he was “the right person to engage.”

…and…

Trump forcing Putin to explain every detail to him is bound to have made Putin think that Trump was unpredictable — and hold off on doing anything crazy, for fear of the reaction. When you’ve got a wily operator like Putin afraid of what Trump will do if he does X, Y, or Z, then the smart course for Putin would be to do nothing, not wanting to disturb the beast.

Memo to Deep State operatives who’ve tried this twice before: Putin doesn’t like uncertainty. If Trump is a wild card to him, that keeps him holed up. He doesn’t like surprises. Advantage: America.

It’s as if they’re out of ideas, so they’re wheeling out this miserable lie yet again. They tried this before and got their heads handed to them, their credibility shot, their reputation for political chicanery elevated, their biases naked. These are the same charmers as the ones who signed the “51 intelligence officials” letter claiming Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the earmarks” of a Russian disinformation operation.

Now they expect us to believe them this time? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice …

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