That time China interfered with U.S. elections…


The following is a news analysis

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]et me be clear: Do I think it’s possible Russia tried to influence the outcome of our elections? Absolutely. In fact, I consider it quite likely. Not because of the unsubstantiated conclusions made in the press, but because intelligence officials I trust tell me that Russia and other nations have attempted to influence our elections for decades, the same way we’ve often dabbled in influencing foreign elections.

However, the disproportionate media and political attention paid to Russia’s alleged efforts in 2016—and to the Russia threat generally—smacks of politics and propaganda. For example, top former Obama intel sources tell me they consider N. Korea, by far, the biggest foreign threat to the U.S. today. But N. Korea is barely mentioned in news reports. These intel officials put Iran and China next on the threat list—both, again, rarely discussed on the news, relative to Russia. The intel experts also mention ISIS and Islamist extremist terrorism as higher on the list than Russia.

Further, when it comes to election-tampering, some intel sources consider China to be a more egregious, proven offender. If you’ve watched politics a little while, you may remember the scandal broken by The Washington Post in 1996. The Post reported evidence of China directing contributions to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) during the presidential contest between Bill Clinton and Republican Bob Dole—a violation of U.S. law. Eventually, Taiwan-born Maria Hsia, a fundraiser for Clinton Vice President Al Gore, was convicted of illegal campaign fundraising; Taiwan-born Charlie Trie was convicted of improperly attempting to give large donations to the Clinton’s legal defense fund; Taiwan-born Johnny Chung was convicted of violating election law after making large donations to the DNC (which were later returned); and Chinese-born John Huang—a DNC fundraiser and Commerce Department official in the Clinton administration—was convicted of campaign finance fraud.

Ways the U.S. has interfered with elections in other nations

More recently, Obama administration officials reported China has conducted extensive cyber-attacks against the U.S., amounting to billions of dollars in costs in terms of stolen information and destroyed computer networks. But the Obama administration took no actions against China.

Attempted interference in our elections is a serious matter no matter who commits it. But when the media and political response is asymmetric, it makes sense to pay attention to your cognitive dissonance. There’s reason to suspect a narrative is being placed before the public for ulterior motives.[hr]

For more on these topics, pre-order my new book: “The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think and How You Vote.”[hr]


Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

9 thoughts on “That time China interfered with U.S. elections…”

  1. There is always partisan strategizing accompanying out rage over in the action connected to politics. The thing that makes this different in the eyes of many, is the appearance of collusion on the part of those Who now make up the current administration. Election tampering by foreign entities is bad enough, but the use of that tampering, by candidates, as a campaign tool, is more than just tampering.

    1. If that evidence of “using it as a campaign tool” is presented and proven. Right now its just endless rhetoric and accusation. Need to get to the truth in a non-partisan way if that is even possible any more. Corp Media or MainSreatMedia as it is called reports in lock step and has a singular vision relegating it useless. Opposition media has it own biases, leaving those who search out truth to dig into blogs and outside sources unable to even trust google searches at times as social media & search engines also have their biases.

    2. After much investigation there is still no evidence of this so-called “collusion”, only rumors from anonymous sources trumpeted to the heavens by biased media. Nor has anyone presented any logical argument why Russia would want to help Trump. Putin would certainly prefer the weakest, most corruptible U,S. leader, and Hillary was that. For the right price President Hillary might have given Russia ALL of our uranium, .But it must be the seriousness of the charge, not the evidence that is important, Speaking of serious charges, maybe it is time to discuss the mounting evidence that an outgoing Administration used U.S. intelligence resources to spy on political opponents and committed or encouraged the illegal release of classified information.

    3. And yet there isn’t one single example of your conspiracy theory actually happening. Don’t you think that the rabid mainstream media would publicize it?

      1. Perhaps you haven’t been paying attention, but the release of classified information into the open is a felony offense, and appears to have been done to damage the current administration. That info could have only come from within US intel agencies. There is also growing evidence day by day that the Trump campaign ‘did’ have their communications gathered by US intel agencies. I can think of no other election in US history where that occurred. So there’s more than a little evidence to support Ms. Attkisson’s conjecture.

        To answer your question though, ‘No’, the MSM will not publish anything RE. this ‘conspiracy theory’ because it does not support the narrative of their liberal ideology or the agenda of the DNC. They will however publish story after story about collusion between Trump and Russia regarding the last election for which we the public have not been given a ‘smidgen’ of evidence to support. And no, the opinions of the same US intel agencies noted above does not constitute evidence of anything.

  2. Wyatt Coleman had a moment of clarity there, when he referred to “partisan strategizing accompanying outrage…” Sharyl Attkisson identified the asymmetric response not only of politicians, but also of MEDIA. Now everyone understands why politicians are motivated by partisan strategizing, but why should the Media be characterized by partisan strategizing? They never tire of telling us that they are disinterested and objective, just reporting the news. The Media’s selective hyperventilating over Russia, and crickets chirping over China is another example of mainstream media driving a Democrat narrative. That’s why both Media and Democrats are so exercised over Russia “deploying a deluge of disinformation,” Russia is cutting in on their Turf.

  3. Of course Russia tried to weaken Hillary during the campaign. Putin expected Hillary to win. Most odds makers gave her between 60 and 87 percent probability of winning before election day. Putin wanted her weakened before taking office. Putin would still have preferred someone who would block and sabotage US energy production [Hillary} in the name of global warming as against someone who would rev up US production [Trump] and crush the price of the commodity which supports his kleptocracy. Trump is a disaster for Putin. Trump will talk softly to and about Putin and cut him off at the knees economically by increasing hydrocarbon production. Trump will try to avoid military confrontation while rebuilding military capacity.

  4. When Democrats are caught red-handed, their line is “Everybody does it!” When it’s baseless accusations about their opponents, it’s “The seriousness of the charge demands investigation!”

    From what we’ve seen, there is far more damning evidence about Democrats vis-a-vis Russia, from Obama promises to them before the 2012 election and withdrawing missile defense from Europe, to Hillary facilitating Russian control over a good share of US uranium, to Podesta’s business ties to Russia, far more extensive than Trump’s. When Russia was communist, Democrats were even sweeter toward them. Democrat hypocrisy and lies are sickening.

Scroll to Top