Though Donald Trump, our Liar-in-Chief, denies it, Владимир Владимирович Путин (Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin) personally ordered the hacks into our 2016 presidential election.
Worked out pretty well for him, too.
Remember July 2018, in Helsinki, when Trump, standing right next to Putin, said he asked Vlad if Russia hacked into the 2016 election, when HRC got more votes than he did? Trump said he believed Putin’s denial.
Russia’s Dictator-in-Chief was a KGB operative and, as Trump’s former National Security Advisor John Bolton has said, Putin played Trump like a violin.
And Trump has played his base like a violin, as well.
Seems the Russkis are really good in the hacking department, but, as of press time, Trump’s said nothing about it.
Putin’s latest successful spy caper was first reported publicly by Politico: Russian hackers hacked into the Department of Energy, which, among other things, controls lots of information about our nukes.
They also hacked into the Treasury Department (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/17/nuclear-agency-hacked-officials-inform-congress-447855) and https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/17/politics/us-government-hack-extends-beyond-solarwinds/index.html); the Russian hack is by far the biggest one so far, and it’s still going on (https://www.npr.org/2020/12/15/946776718/u-s-scrambles-to-understand-major-computer-hack-but-says-little), and https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/17/politics/us-government-hack-extends-beyond-solarwinds/index.html).
So maybe Putin, a very rich man, maybe even richer than Trump, can help Trump pay for the coronavirus vaccine, since somebody has to pay for it.
Dictator Putin holds a news conference only once a year.
Yesterday, a reporter for the BBC, a Britisher speaking Russian, asked Putin directly if he ordered the poisoning of Alexei Novalny, the dictator’s most visible political opponent.
Sitting next to the BBC reporter was our Moscow-based correspondent, associate solitary reporter Foma Kheroshonsky.
And next to Kheroshonsky was Melody Kenwood, President-elect Biden’s choice to be his Ambassador to Russia; and next to Kenwood was associate solitary reporter Clarence Woodward, Biden’s pick for Ambassador to Germany.
Taking far more anti-Covid precautions than Trump’s ever done, Putin, in his lengthy annual news conference, spoke remotely to the assembled reporters.
When asked whether he ordered the killing of Novalny, Putin cutely responded by saying that if his thugs had wanted to kill Novalny, they would’ve done that, as opposed to “merely" poisoning him. Putin failed to mention that it was only by means of extraordinary efforts that Novalny was medivacced to Germany, where he received superb care, much of which was arranged through Ambassador to Germany-designate Woodward.
It was Woodward who followed up with a question about how many political opponents Putin has treated with his world-renowned kindness (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/03), but Putin dodged that one.
Associate solitary reporter Kenwood, who is much more fluent in Russian than the BBC correspondent, asked Putin pointedly about Russia’s hacking into major US government installations and businesses.
At that point, Putin ridiculed Kenwood, telling her that since she is an American, all the American voters who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 got what they fully deserved.