Barack Obama should have described electoral support for Hillary Clinton as a rebuff against Russian President Vladimir Putin during 2016’s presidential campaign season, suggested Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday’s State of the Union.
It was a “very serious mistake,” said Schiff, for Obama to not advise Americans of alleged Russian “hacking and interference” during last year’s election season:
The American people needed to know. And I didn’t think it was enough to tell them after the election, but rather given the seriousness of this, I think the administration needed to call out Russia earlier… [It] was a very serious mistake.
[Obama] should have spoken out to the American people and said, this is what Russia is doing.
Schiff has regularly used innuendo to frame Trump as a conspirator with the Russian state — being compromised or through willful collusion — to subvert American politics. He regularly states as matters of fact — without evidence — that the Russian state “hacked” the email accounts of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton family loyalist John Podesta for the purpose of offering political advantage to Trump via public leaks of politically damaging information regarding the Clintons and the Democrat Party.
Bash did not ask Schiff how such public statements from Obama would have amounted to circumvention of alleged “hacking and interference” directed by the Russian state.
CNN continues to frame the election of Donald Trump to the presidency as a function of alleged “election hacking” directed by the Russian state, claiming that Putin preferred Trump over Clinton. Supporters of Trump are presented as having been duped by “fake news” produced and disseminated by the Russian government. The Trump administration is tarred via implication as illegitimate; a function of malevolent foreign political interference.
Bash presents herself as a politically objective and non-partisan news media figure. CNN similarly presents itself as a politically objective and non-partisan news media outlet, billing itself as “The Most Trusted Name In News.”
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