Quote:
Originally Posted by Zarley
I'm not particularly sure what point you are trying to make here. All I'm saying is that it's far to early to draw conclusions and that many of the claims being made are likely outside the realm of possibility.
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I listen to NPR on my drive to and from work pretty much every day, and this evening they did a segment with Michael Hayden, a former CIA and NSA director, and he's stating that if high ranking officials are willing to go on record, to put their reputations on the line to say that there is "strong evidence" of tampering in the election by Russia, then this is a very serious issue, because they're not going to just throw around accusations like that without very solid evidence.
He's not saying Russia hacked voting machines (if there were voting machine issues at all, I'd more easily believe that they were either outdated and poorly maintained, or if tampering with those happened, it was likely by local officials, not some threat from Russia), and he's not saying that Trump conspired with Putin to win the election. Regardless, if you look at much of the reasoning for why many people wouldn't vote for Clinton, the email issue was a
huge reason, and it was easily the biggest story of the election season, and it just wouldn't go away. I guarantee there are just as many "smoking gun" types of statements from the RNC, if not far worse (given some of the information found in documents from NC that led to their voting rights changes being deemed blatantly racist), but it would be inopportune for Russian interests for Trump and the RNC to be under fire the way that Clinton and the DNC were. They hacked both and then specifically leaked information that would sway the opinions of the electorate in the direction they wanted those opinions to sway.
That a foreign entity can affect our election is terrifying, regardless of the particular candidates involved, and it's an issue that absolutely needs to be thoroughly investigated for the sake of future elections. It will unlikely change anything for this current election, but what about 2 and 4 and 8 years down the road? If Russia is going to attempt to interfere, we as a country need to be aware and do whatever we can to stop it.
And beyond all of these issues, that the President Elect is flat out ignoring the guidance of this country's intelligence community because he's pouting about it is highly disconcerting.
Quote:
Originally Posted by direwolf
Yea, I think the entire planet is gonna miss him. With President Trump you won't get anywhere near the eloquence, intelligence, or thoughtfulness of a guy like Obama. Will Trump even hold any press conferences? He hasn't had one since July and so far he's done everything humanly possible to avoid having to answer questions from reporters. Whether that will change after he's sworn in remains to be seen.
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That press conference was the one in which he suggested that Russia hack Clinton's emails, no less.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us...on-emails.html