Somewhat lost in all the understandable focus on the ugly, misogynist "Trump tapes" is the mounting evidence that Russian despot Vladimir "Vlad the Invader" Putin's government is trying to meddle in our elections, presumably to benefit fellow neo- fascist authoritarian Donald "Rump" Trump. Newsweek's top notch reporter Kurt Eichenwald has the latest piece of evidence that involves the ever- viler Putin cats paw WikiLeaks, another Russian- government controlled propaganda mouthpiece (the Sputnik news service), and of course our hero Rump:
I am Sidney Blumenthal. At least, that is what Vladimir Putin—and, somehow, Donald Trump—seem to believe. And that should raise concerns about not only Moscow’s attempts to manipulate this election but also how Trump came to push Russian disinformation to American voters.
An email from Blumenthal—a confidant of Hillary Clinton and a man, second only to George Soros, at the center of conservative conspiracy theories—turned up in the recent document dump by WikiLeaks. At a time when American intelligence believes Russian hackers are trying to interfere with the presidential election, records have been fed recently to WikiLeaks out of multiple organizations of the Democratic Party, raising concerns that the self-proclaimed whistleblower group has become a tool of Putin’s government. But now that I have been brought into the whole mess—and transformed into Blumenthal—there is even more proof that the Russians are not only orchestrating this act of cyberwar but also really, really dumb.Rather than excerpt more of Eichenwald's entertaining takedown of this "really, really dumb" exercise in pro- Rump Russian ratf*cking, please go read the entire piece. You can be sure that Rump will continue to use this discredited piece of election- jiggering bullshit (as he just did in Pennsylvania) because his knuckle- dragging audiences don't know any better, and they don't care. But, for the rest of us, is there any doubt remaining why Putin would want Rump in the Oval Office? If you were trying to weaken and sabotage the United States at home and abroad, wouldn't you want a "President Rump" with his tiny brain and tiny fingers causing havoc?
BONUS: Robert Farley has another take on Russian meddling, as does Charles Pierce.
(Image: We don't want to see or hear the tape of that encounter.)
