The US shut down a Chinese consulate in Houston due to allegations of spying and other misdeeds.\u00a0 Trump has a phone call with Putin and, according to the read out of the call, the topic of Russia paying Taliban fighters in Afghanistan to kill American soldiers, never came up.\u00a0 Nor did the topic of ongoing interference in the upcoming presidential election.\u00a0 Hmm?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bill Evanina, a top US counterintelligence official issued a statement warning that China, Russia and Iran are attempting to interfere with the upcoming 2020 presidential election.\u00a0 \u201cSpecifically, Evanina called out Russia, China and Iran for seeking to interfere in the American democratic process, an effort that includes targeting \u2018the private communications of US political campaigns, candidates and other political targets.\u2019\u201d1<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n With respect to Russia, Evanina said, \u201cRussia\u2019s persistent objective is to weaken the United States and diminish our global role. Using a range of efforts, including internet trolls and other proxies, Russia continues to spread disinformation in the United States that is designed to undermine confidence in our democratic process and denigrate what it sees as an anti-Russia \u2018establishment\u2019 in America.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Given that Trump is doing everything in his power to \u2018diminish our global role,\u2019 I\u2019d say that particular objective is well on its way to being realized.\u00a0 Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords; is pulling out of the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic; pulled out of the Trans Pacific Partnership; pulled out of the Open Skies Treaty; wants to pull a significant number of troops out of Germany; pulled out of Syria; has threatened to pull out of NATO and wants Russia re-admitted to the G7.\u00a0 It would certainly seem like Trump is the best friend Putin could have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With respect to the other part Evanina\u2019s statement, \u201cRussia continues to spread disinformation in the United States that is designed to undermine confidence in our democratic process and denigrate what it sees as an anti-Russia \u2018establishment\u2019 in America.\u201d\u00a0 Once again, it would appear that Trump might be, once again, the best agent that Putin has.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump has been sowing the seeds for months about how the results of this election will be rigged.\u00a0 He has stated repeatedly, with absolutely no basis in fact, that mail-in ballots will be a great source of fraudulent voting.\u00a0 Just think about this \u2013 one of Putin\u2019s primary objective is to undermine the confidence in our electoral process.\u00a0 And we have the President of the United States doing the exact same thing.\u00a0 This is happening in plain sight!<\/p>\n\n\n\n A \u2019real\u2019 president, would address this issue head on and reassure the American people that the government is doing everything in its power to ensure the election is free and fair.\u00a0 He would talk about how that is the bedrock of our democracy.\u00a0 When have you heard this president say anything even closely resembling that?\u00a0 Never?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n He continues to downplay the Russian interference in the 2016 election despite overwhelming intelligence to the contrary.\u00a0\u00a0 And he continues to sow distrust amongst the American people about the upcoming election.\u00a0 You can bet that if he loses the election, there will be loud and unending cries about how the election was fraudulent.\u00a0 This is part of Putin\u2019s playbook.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Remember how Trump claimed that he would have won the popular vote had it not been for 3 to 5 million fraudulent votes.\u00a0 He even appointed a commission to look into that. The commission came up with zero and was disbanded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is unconscionable that the President of the United States is doing everything in his power to sow the seeds of distrust about the upcoming election.\u00a0 It\u2019s crap like this that makes one wonder what the hell is going on between Trump and Russia.\u00a0 There are just too many things that can\u2019t be explained and there are just too many people in Trump\u2019s orbit who have connections to Russia to be a coincidence.\u00a0 Someday, somehow, it will all come to light.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think it will be a happy story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We have had bad presidents before but I\u2019m not sure we have ever had a president who has worked so diligently to undermine the very foundations of our democracy and sow such distrust amongst the American people.\u00a0\u00a0 As America continues to cede its leadership position on the world stage and struggle with the increasing divisive amongst our citizens, Vladimir Putin must be a very happy man!<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The US shut down a Chinese consulate in Houston due to allegations of spying and other misdeeds.\u00a0 Trump has a phone call with Putin and, according to the read out of the call, the topic of Russia paying Taliban fighters in Afghanistan to kill American soldiers, never came up.\u00a0 Nor did the topic of ongoing … Continue reading July 25, 2020<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7FBZO-gV","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bikingwithmike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bikingwithmike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bikingwithmike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bikingwithmike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bikingwithmike.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bikingwithmike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1050,"href":"https:\/\/www.bikingwithmike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions\/1050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bikingwithmike.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bikingwithmike.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bikingwithmike.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}