How Trump Made Russia's Hacking More Effective

It was the president-elect’s hyperbolic characterizations of the pilfered material that turned routine documents into the stuff of scandal.

“It’s all just an attempt to delegitimize Donald Trump.” That’s the argument you hear from Trump supporters each time new information comes to light about how hard Russian spy services worked to damage Hillary Clinton. You heard it again on Thursday.

The Trump supporters are 100 percent right: The information is delegitimizing. The president-elect of the United States reportedly owes his office in considerable part to illegal clandestine activities in his favor conducted by a hostile, foreign spy service. It’s hard to imagine a crisis of presidential legitimacy more extreme than that. But that’s no argument against airing this information. It’s precisely why the information must be aired.

Vladimir Putin took a fearful risk. If the Electoral College had taken a slightly different bounce on November 8, Putin would now be facing an enraged President-elect Hillary Clinton. Putin had every reason to expect that he probably would end up facing a President Clinton. Yet he took the gamble anyway, apparently doing something none of his Soviet predecessors had ever dared to do: mount a clandestine espionage and disinformation campaign on behalf of one candidate for U.S. president, and against another.

The word “clandestine” is the key term here. In every election, foreign governments have their preferred candidates. It was no secret in 2004 that America’s French and German allies hoped George W. Bush would lose, or that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu felt the same way about President Obama in 2012. Those allies made their wishes known through the familiar and lawful method of grumbling to sympathetic American journalists about the awfulness of the incumbent administration. What they did not do was organize their spy agencies to break the law of the United States. But that is evidently what Russia did—and it seems to have worked.

Obama pledged today that before he leaves office, the American people will learn more fully how the Russians did it.

This will be important to know. But there is something else important to keep in mind.

The content of the Russian-hacked emails was actually remarkably unexplosive. Probably the biggest news was that Hillary Clinton had expressed herself in favor of a hemispheric common market in speeches to Wall Street executives. Otherwise, we learned from them that some people at the Democratic National Committee favored a lifelong Democrat for their party’s nomination over a socialist interloper who had joined the party for his own convenience. We learned that many Democrats, including Chelsea Clinton, disapproved of the ethical shortcomings of some of the people in Bill Clinton’s inner circle. We learned that Hillary Clinton acknowledged differences between her “public and private” positions on some issues. None of this even remotely corroborated Donald Trump’s wild characterizations of the Russian-hacked, Wikileaks-published material.

Without Trump’s own willingness to make false claims and misuse Russian-provided information, the Wikileaks material would have deflated of its own boringness. The Russian-hacked material did damage because, and only because, Russia found a willing accomplice in the person of Donald J. Trump.

Many questions remain about how the Russian spy services did what they did. That includes Putin’s motives for ordering the operation. But on issues from Crimea to Syria to NATO to the breakup of the European Union, Trump’s publicly expressed views align with Putin’s wishes.

Over Trump’s motives for collaborating so full-throatedly with Russian espionage, there hangs a greater and more disturbing mystery—a mystery that Trump seems in no hurry to dispel. And maybe he is wise to leave the mystery in place: as delegitimizing as it is, it’s very possible the truth would be even worse.   

DAVID FRUM is a senior editor at The Atlantic and the chairman of Policy Exchange. In 2001-2002, he was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush.

A pivot to the default position: Attacking silence. Dude you're turning into a one trick pony! SAD!

In the meantime you didn't address one bit of the GOP hypocrisy on this segment. Neither did SG. Lofton says he's OK with government involvement in the free market because he's not a typical conservative. But if I cared to use the search feature, I'd bet my Obama phone that he was calling Barack a socialist back in the day...just a hunch. 

I don't have to attack silence. I just have address what you guys are actually saying or have said (amazingly the same as Rush, Hannity and any garden variety dope over at Fox)

Obama bailout of auto sector = Socialism

Trump saving 700 jobs via crony capitalism at tax payers expense = STRONG LEADER!!!

They are going to love the free range Paul Ryan gets to gut Medicare. While all these rubes are shouting about Hillary, they are slowly working on dismantling one of our most important safety nets for seniors. Trump supporters will be doctor shopping with vouchers all while their prostates are protruding out of their asses. They deserve it...the rest of us do not.

Trump said during his entire campaign that Hillary was "crooked" because of her alleged (never found guilty) inability to handle classified material. Then has Petraeus in the running for Secretary of State, who actually pled guilty and is currently still on probation...for mishandling classified material.

Trump and his cohorts bemoaned Hillary's speaking engagements with Goldman Sachs. But guess who Trump's Secretary of Treasury is? Steve Mnuchin from Goldman Sachs.

Trump's charges against Hillary in regards to "crony capitalism" was core in his campaign as well. It should also be noted that this is a fundamental aspect of Republican dogma (especially over the last 8 years.) "Let the chips fall where they may." "Government doesn't create jobs." "Government doesn't pick winners and losers." But what is the first thing President elect Trump does, and the majority of Republicans cheer? He works out a "deal" with Carrier, using their parent company's government contracts as leverage. A deal that costs tax payers over 7 million dollars, although we still do not have all the details. Sure sounds like crony capitalism to me.

Trump also has a trillion dollar infrastructure stimulus in the works. They voted against that for 8 years. Want to guess what happens now that Trump is in the driver's seat?

Trump supporters are either acutely unaware of any of this, or simply don't care. My guess is a little bit of both. What I've seen here more than anything is that Trump can say/do anything, even literally change his stance mid sentence. They could care less. More than that are the conservative values they have claimed to hold so dear. None of that apparently matters anymore either. Carrier is a good example. His supporters don't see any hypocrisy on their end or Trump's. And Trump will use it again and again to show what a deal-maker he is and that he kept his campaign promises. None of the facts will matter, not one bit.

I'd say it was the other way around.

Kasich was the only Republican to show backbone and integrity. The rest loathed Trump, but fell in line like cowards rather than possibly alienate any of their constiuents.

He also omitted that the DOW dropped hundreds of points the preceding week on the news of his win. If anything the up/down behavior shows market instability  as a reaction to Trump being the President elect.