Trump says he believes Ukraine election conspiracy because “Putin told me” reveals former White House official
If you were wondering where Trump and the president’s weirdest conspiracy theory about the 2016 election came from, your first guess is almost certainly the right one.
For some time now the president and his lapdogs have been pushing the baseless accusation that it was actually Ukraine and not Russia that interfered in the 2016 election. In their fabricated version of events, the Ukrainians interfered with the aim of stopping Trump from getting elected. The reality, of course, is that the Kremlin was working around the clock to install Trump in the Oval Office with the understanding that his incompetency and corruption would destabilize the United States, to say nothing of the plausible theory that they have some kind of leverage over him.
But Republican lawmakers aren’t interested in the actual attack on our elections, they are far more interested in pushing their pro-Trump political agenda and have even gone so far as to demand investigations into Ukraine even though our intelligence agencies and the FBI director say there is no evidence that Ukraine took any such action.
Now former White House officials have told The Washington Post that this is a conspiracy theory that comes straight from Moscow. “Putin told me,” President Trump allegedly said in response to questions from his aides about the accusations.
The allegations that the president is being blackmailed, bought by, or otherwise operating as an agent of Russia that have dogged him since day one are continually fuelled by his bizarre and deeply suspicious obsession with absolving Russia of any guilt and shunting it on to someone else — which usually conveniently ended up being one of Russia’s enemies.
“He would say: ‘This is ridiculous. Everyone knows I won the election. The greatest election in the world. The Russians didn’t do anything. The Ukrainians tried to do something,’” one former official said about Trump.
One need not be a geopolitical genius to realize that trusting Vladimir Putin—a man who invades and annexes regions of other countries, executes journalists, brutally oppresses his political opposition, and whose chief strategic goal is the undermining of Western liberal democracies—is something only a fool would do. That said, Trump has a vested interest in smearing Ukraine and sowing confusion in America about the nature of this crucial Eastern European ally.
After all, Trump’s impeachment was kicked off when a whistleblower came forward to reveal that Trump tried to pressure the Ukrainian president into opening a sham investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter ahead of the 2020 election. Now that he’s been exposed, Trump and his GOP lackeys clearly see an advantage to smearing Ukraine so that voters see the country as nothing but a cesspool of corruption out to hurt the United States. Republicans hope this perception will cause Americans to disregard any damaging stories about the president originating in that region. It’s paramount that this not be allowed to happen. Every lie and every conspiracy theory must be confronted and debunked.
