What's Up With This Russia Thing?

President Trump repeatedly calls the accusations that he or his campaign colluded with elements of the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election "fake news", "made up", and "an excuse for losing an election". To be clear, no one is saying that Russia "hacked the election", that is, actively changed votes or "erased" votes for Secretary Clinton. What has been said, is that several agencies within the intelligence and law enforcement community, including the Director of National Intelligence, representing all 17 agencies, have concluded that Russia attempted to interfere in our presidential election by hacking into the databases of both the Republican and Democratic National Committees, as well as the emails of the Clinton campaign and the election databases of several states. The analysis was high confidence, which means, to us laypersons, that they didn't just pull it out of their asses. This is longer even arguable, despite President Trump's varied and often contradictory statements about their assessment. Trump, without any basis for his statements, has cast doubt on what his combined intelligence agencies have concluded.

Emails and other information obtained by Russian operatives was subsequently leaked via Wikileaks, but only information that was damaging to the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party. All the while this was going on then-candidate Trump, who regularly accuses others of precisely what he is guilty of, was railing about how the election was rigged against him.

Little by little information came to light about Trump campaign officials and advisors who had off the books meetings with Russians and then either lied about it or neglected to report it when required to. Michael Flynn, who was nominated and confirmed as National Security Adviser, despite his loose cannon, conspiracy theorist ways that got him fired as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), not only improperly met with Russian officials, but lied to the FBI about it and received $45,000 from the Russians for a speech, also not reported. Son-in-law Jared Kushner, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former campaign manager Paul Manafort and personal lawyer Michael Cohen all had suspect contact and...you guessed it...lied about it or concealed it. Trump himself denies that he has any business dealings in Russia, but his son Donald Junior is on record as saying that they do a disproportionate amount of business with Russia. And now we find out that Donald Junior took a meeting with a Russian lawyer who gained access to him because she claimed to have some dirt on Clinton. Again, concealed until he found out that the New York Times was going to publish his emails.

And let's not forget that James Comey was fired as FBI Director, Trump yucking it up with the Russian Ambassador the next day about what a "nut job" Comey was, and how his firing took the pressure off with regard to the Russian investigation. As the Deputy Attorney General appointed a special counsel to spearhead the investigation, Trump to took to Twitter to denounce the move as a witch hunt.

And the latest - Trump initially denies bringing up the election interference to Putin, until Tillerson says that he did. Then Trump "pressed" Putin, taking his word that Russia didn't interfere, adding "you know my opinion". How can we believe that Trump was forceful with Putin when Trump has cast doubt on what our own intelligence analysts have concluded? Then Trump announces that he wants to set up a joint "impenetrable" cyber-security unit with Russia , although he backpedaled the next day.

Everything that Trump says reminds me of a little kid who lies, but lies badly, not knowing what a plausible lie sounds like, because no one has ever had the balls to call him on his bullshit before. He accuses, not only his opponents, but the press and even the investigators, of being out to get him; he throws wild accusations around, many which make no sense and are often in the category of "he did it, so it's okay that I did it".

There might be nothing underneath all of this, it might just be the gang that couldn't shoot straight, a bunch of incompetent neophytes. But then again, there's an awful lot of smoke for there not to be a fire.