Trump And GOP Are Blatantly Encouraging Foreign Dictators To Hack The 2020 Election
It looks like Donald Trump and the leadership of the GOP are encouraging other countries to hack our upcoming 2020 election.
Donald Trump is sucking up to dictators, strongman oligarchs, and autocrats around the world, while Mitch McConnell is using political brute force to prevent individual states from hardening their election systems. Why?
Looking at the entire picture in context, consider Karl Marxâs favorite question: âWho benefits?â
Who benefits when the leaders of countries with sophisticated internet hacking capabilities (North Korea, Saudi Arabia) and no democratic oversight are told by Trump that as long as heâs in office he has their backs?
Might Trump and McConnell hope theyâll intervene in our election to keep in power a political party that now disdains democracy and a free press, and embraces dictatorial behavior like calling for the imprisonment of Trumpâs political rivals, and of individuals in the intelligence agencies who have investigated him and the GOP?
Who benefits when countries with world-class internet hacking capabilities and less-than-democratic (Russia) or highly corrupted and oligarch-dependent (Netanyahu, Duterte, Modi) leaders become âgood friendsâ of Trump and/or help Trump build or brand properties in their countries?
Might they intervene in our election directly or indirectly to keep in power an administration that both openly disdains the concept of âliberal democracyâ and disrespects leaders of the largely European countries that practice it?
Why would Trump joke with Putin in front of the world about the possibility of Russians hacking American voting systems in the 2020 election? Is he expecting it, or just hoping for it?
Who benefits when mostly âredâ states keep their voting systemsâ defenses down and continue to use 17-year-old technology running on Windows XP operating systems?
Who benefits when McConnell, Pence and Trump work together to make sure that, as CBS News reported this year, âTens of thousands of voting machines in the United States [will continue to be] vulnerable to hackingâ by refusing to fund upgrades?
Who benefits when repeated Democratic Party efforts to harden voting systems are blocked by Republican governors?
Thereâs no ideological argument to be made for America having easily hacked voting systems; itâs not something that conservatives like George Will or liberals like Robert Reich would reasonably disagree about.
So what could possibly be motivating Mitch McConnell and the Republicans in the Senate, other than the hope that hackers will produce another âred shiftâ miracle for them?
We already know that the GOP and their partisans on the Supreme Court have done and are doing everything they can to make it hard for Americansâparticularly those with darker pigmented skinâto vote or otherwise participate in the political arena.
But thatâs probably not enough to guarantee the reelection of a man as reviled and unpopular as Trump, and thus keep the parade of corporatist-friendly right-wing judges moving through the Senate into lifetime appointments on the federal bench. They need moreâa little help from their friends.
Republicans have been caught manipulating voter rolls; engaging in now-legalized âpoliticalâ gerrymandering that magically corresponds to race; running ads in social media filled with deception and outright lies; encouraging right-wing violence; and threatening treason charges against American law enforcement officials whoâve investigated foreign manipulation of our elections.
But itâs not working so far. Democratsâparticularly progressive Democratsâwere the big winners in the 2018 midterms. The GOP needs more help from their friends if theyâre to reelect Trump and hold the Senate.
Reagan turned the GOP into the Party of the Billionaires, complete with a phony âsupply-sideâ and âtrickle-downâ story about fantasy economics to sell their merger of state and corporation. But by the end of the Clinton administration, most Americans had figured out Reaganâs and the GOPâs scam and, since 2002, thereâs been a curious âred shiftâ disconnect between exit poll results and the reported totals from hackable voting machines.
There arenât enough really rich Americans to win elections, so Lee Atwater and his business partners Roger Stone and Paul Manafort helped Reagan and Bush bring in the white racist vote. But even with all the American racists, Trump and McConnell must think they need foreign help again.
Jerry Falwell Jr. (and his pool boy?), Franklin Graham, and other multimillionaire âChristianâ hustlers brought in the people televangelists have exploited for a generation. But are there enough religiously gullible voters to tip the election to Trump and McConnell? They seem to think not.
Add the homophobes, the xenophobes, the religious bigots, and sexually insecure white men (from incels to gun fanatics), and the GOP may have almost enough votes to win a national electionâbut theyâre still haunted by Trump losing the last electionâs popular vote by 3 million; plus, they no longer have Scott Walker and Rick Snyder to throw Wisconsinites and Michiganders off the voting rolls just before the election.
Trump and the GOP will still need a little help from their overseas friends, just as Trump Jr. reached out to or tried to take help from the Russians, Saudis and Emiratis in 2016. They (and Trumpâs American billionaire backers) benefited more from what President Carter correctly called Trumpâs âillegitimateâ presidency than anybody else in the world.
Which is why Trump and McConnell are working as hard as they can to make sure those foreign oligarchs and autocrats know how much theyâll appreciate that help, should it be forthcoming.
All they need is a little help from their friends, and theyâre making sure their friends know in advance who will benefit.
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Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment and more than 25 other books in print. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute.
This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.