Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), in an op-ed for Fox News, claimed Democrats “ignore reality” when they focus on Russian interference in American elections.
“Ever since the Democratic National Committee server was hacked during the 2016 election campaign, ‘Russian disinformation and interference’ has been the shiny object that Democrats and the mainstream media have used to bamboozle the American people,” Johnson writes. “Because Russia is believed to have exposed the contents of the DNC server, Americans were supposed to focus on the existential threat that ‘Russian election interference’ posed to America — and ignore the anti-Catholic emails and other vile content written by top Democratic operatives and exposed in the incident.”
Johnson claims that this “distraction” was a rousing success.
“In fact, it worked so well, U.S. intelligence agencies received reporting that Russians believed Hillary Clinton approved a plan to ‘stir up a scandal’ tying then-candidate Donald Trump to Russia’s hacking of the DNC server. Unfortunately for Clinton, those efforts fell short, and Americans elected Donald Trump as our 45th president,” he says.
Johnson goes on to accuse “Democrats and accomplices both in the mainstream media and in the permanent bureaucracy called the ‘deep state’ of using their “loathing’ for Trump to generate support for what he denounces as a conspiracy theory despite confirmation from American intelligence agencies that Russian operatives interfered in the 2016 election and are interfering in the current election.
Johnson also scoffed at the warnings from intelligence officials that a report from The New York Post alleging nefarious business dealings on the part of Hunter Biden could be the signs of a Russian disinformation campaign to influence the November 3 election outcome.
“In other words: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Ignore troubling emails that warrant serious inquiry and investigation. Just crown Joe Biden our next president and this all will go away during his administration,” Johnson writes, adding that he “neither deny nor condone any foreign influence on our elections or policies,” pointing to hearings he held in 2015 to examine Russian interference in Eastern Europe.
Despite this, he says “the impact of Russian and other foreign interference on our political system pales by many orders of magnitude next to the way Democrats, deep-state actors and the anti-Trump media have weaponized it.”
“The greatest threats to our democracy are homegrown: the rioters and anarchists; those in the press who have shed any pretense of being unbiased and have publicly chosen sides; deep-state actors who try to undermine the administration of an elected president; and an opposition party that will change every rule and violate every precedent and norm to ensure it never again loses power if it gains total control in November,” he concludes.
Alan is a writer, editor, and news junkie based in New York.