According to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, the Trump administration is just fine with any foreign government interfering in the 2020 election the way the Russians did in 2016 to benefit the current president.
During an appearance on “This Week” Sunday, Meadows was asked this question by host George Stephanopoulos:
“The intelligence community put out a stark warning this week about possible foreign interference in our election, Iran, China and Russia. Did the president bring this up with Vladimir Putin in his last phone call? And what is he doing to prevent it?”
The chief of staff responded with standard boilerplate lies for starters, claiming that Trump had already done a great deal to combat interference from other countries in the American democratic process:
“Not only have we seen hundreds of millions of dollars that have been invested but two different legislative actions that this president has signed off on to make sure that election integrity is — is important.
“We’ve got not only the Department of Homeland Security but the intel community, the Department of Justice, and others trying to make sure what we do is — is again that foreign interference in our elections does not happen.”
However, what Meadows said next made it terrifyingly clear that the current administration is all but begging for assistance to help Trump, who is lagging far behind Joe Biden in every poll that has been released:
“Now, there’s a big difference between foreign interference and foreign influence. They continue to try to influence, as everyone does across the globe. We’ve been willing to work with secretaries of states of every — of all 50 states as we look at that and the territories to make sure that their systems have the needed resources for the integrity to be there and so that we can count on that.”
“They continue to try to influence, as everyone does” — Mark Meadows dodges a question about whether Trump brought up election interference during the call he just had with Vladimir Putin (it appears he didn’t and Meadow’s comments suggest he’s open to some help) pic.twitter.com/0rYZJKqezw
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 26, 2020
They don’t want foreign interference, but they’re cool with foreign influence, which is the same damn thing! No matter how you try to parse the language, it’s another nation screwing around with our elections, and it’s an act of war against the United States when it’s done. But instead of warning Putin and other nations of the severe consequences they’ll face if they try to put their thumb on the scales again, this administration is winking and nodding at the idea.
If we want to save what’s left of this nation and our representative democracy, we have to vote in record numbers to toss these traitorous Republican bums out on their asses and never let them hold power again.