US President-elect Donald Trump just finished meeting with leaders of the United States intelligence community to discuss the influence of Russian hacking on the US election. His statement following the meeting is so absurd and out of touch with reality that there is simply no way to write about it rationally.
Image: Getty
Trump’s primary assertion, that hacking “had absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election”, is so deeply inane that it pains me to even republish it. Even if you enthusiastically voted for Trump, look deep inside yourself and try to imagine a universe in which the hacking and strategic leaking of a party’s emails during a contentious campaign had no effect on the election. Of course it had an effect on the outcome of the election. We all agree that John Podesta and the Democratic National Committee’s emails were hacked and leaked. There is just no plausible way this couldn’t have an effect on the election. It’s not a partisan issue. If you believe even a shred of this, know that Trump is lying to you.
Trump’s statement in full
Trump then talks about the need to prevent cyber attacks. “The methods, tools and tactics we use to keep America safe should not be a public discussion that will benefit those who seek to do us harm,” Trump says. What Trump probably thinks sounds like a shrewd strategy to prevent hacking actually sounds like a chilling and deeply disturbing campaign that could trample people’s rights and leave America in the dark. Trump’s vision of America’s intelligence community is one of increased secrecy and even less accountability to the American public that funds it, it seems. In the same way that Trump says he has a secret plan to defeat the Islamic State, I guess he also has secret plan to prevent hacking by nation states like Russia and China. How do you even respond to something so absurd?
There isn’t much else to say, really. Trump has pretty clearly demonstrated that he’s a clueless pathological liar, so you better strap in for four years of some really awful crap.