The whole Kennedy interview with him doing (even a poor) imitation of political mumbo-jumbo is much more enlightening:Appearing on CNN, [Republican Senator John] Kennedy acknowledged that he was "wrong" to say just a day prior that there weren't definitive answers on who hacked the DNC ahead of the 2016 election. Kennedy claimed he'd misheard a question from Fox News anchor Chris Wallace while appearing on "Fox News Sunday," causing him to answer incorrectly.
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Wallace noted the intelligence community's conclusion in Sunday's interview, but Kennedy pushed back, saying that "it could also be Ukraine."
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"I was answering one of his questions, and he interjected with a statement and asked me to react to it. What I heard Chris say was only Russia tried to interfere in the election, and I answered the question. That’s not what he said," Kennedy said on CNN's "Cuomo Prime Time," noting that Wallace's question focused on DNC servers.
"Chris is right. I was wrong," he said. "The only evidence I have, and I think it’s overwhelming, is that it was Russia who tried to hack the DNC computer. I’ve seen no indication that Ukraine tried to do it."
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But the Louisiana senator doubled down on the unsubstantiated theory that Ukraine may have tried to interfere in other ways, saying that there is “proven and unproven” evidence that both Ukraine and Russia meddled in the election.
The Hill
When Cuomo asks him what proven and unproven evidence exists, he mentions three articles without giving the viewers any indication of what exactly the evidence is in those articles, and also mentions that Poroschenko, who was president of Ukraine at the time, "did not support President Trump."
I think it's important to note here, that whatever a foreign leader feels about a candidate is NOT election interference. "Everybody meddles" is NOT election interference. Covert acts to manipulate the vote - THAT's election interference: eg. hacking the DNC, the RNC, John Podesta, election systems in every state, donating heavily to and using the NRA to get access to US political organizationsd, and running fake Facebook accounts stirring up protests, to name some of the things the Russians did.
When they're not outright lying, the Trump cabal (which, includes Republicans) frames issues in deceptive ways. And now they're reduced to: you can't KNOW who all meddled, as if that somehow negates the Russian campaign to destroy Western alliances with Trump and Republican compliance.
And that got her indignant responses from nearly every Republican on the Committee: No Republican is saying that Russia DIDN'T interfere was their comeback.Nothing could better epitomize the ideal outcome of the Kremlin’s barrage of conflicting narratives, its dezinformatsiya, or disinformation designed to create a false impression that the truth is simply unknowable.
Gone are the days when the GOP dared to confront the Kremlin.
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Fiona Hill, who served as the leading Russia expert on Trump’s National Security Council staff, issued a stark warning during her testimony in the impeachment hearing: “Some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that is being perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”
Daily Beast
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.Last Thursday, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (once a close friend of McCain) launched a probe into former Vice President Joe Biden’s dealings with Ukraine. His efforts were lauded almost instantaneously on the Russian state television program Vesti Nedeli. And lo and behold, that very same day Russian state media announced the alleged beginning by the Ukrainian parliament, or Rada, of an investigation into the Ukrainian energy company Burisma as well as Hunter Biden, who sat on its board, and his father.
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The said “investigation” is in fact merely an audit. Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Ruslan Ryaboshapka has said repeatedly that there are no criminal cases or any other cases initiated against Burisma or Hunter Biden.
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It’s the capitulation to the Kremlin by the virtual entirety of the obsequious GOP that really draws attention now as Trump’s impeachment by the House and trial by the Senate loom on the near horizon.
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The Kremlin, which seized and annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, sees Ukraine as the highly coveted jewel of the post-Soviet region. But Russia’s influence over its largest European neighbor can be restored only by undermining the American involvement. Putin personally pitched in to paint a negative picture of Ukraine, when President Trump inexplicably sought his “guidance” on how to deal with President Volodymyr Zelensky.
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Putin and Trump reportedly have discussed allegations of Ukrainian interference in U.S. elections. In a 2017 Oval Office meeting, Trump told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that he was unconcerned about Moscow’s election interference. At the G20 in June of this year, Trump grinned and playfully wagged his finger as he told Putin: “Don’t meddle in the election."
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The Kremlin has strived continually to drive a wedge between the United States and Ukraine in order to get the country back firmly into Russia’s sphere of influence.
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Russia’s unprecedented interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election has been described, with reason, as “the most successful influence campaign in history, one that will be studied globally for decades,” and it is far from over.
Instead of counteracting Russia’s malign influence, American foreign policy under Trump is seemingly being guided by it and leaders of the Republican Party are doing their best to aid and abet that program.
UPDATE:
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