In comments to reporters on Saturday, President-elect Donald Trump maintained his skepticism about whether or not the Russian government was behind the hacks into the Democratic National Committee. In his remarks, Trump went further than he’s previously ventured in explaining his reasons for doubting the official U.S. intelligence assessment and suggested that he had information that contradicted the allegations.
“I just want them to be sure because it’s a pretty serious charge,” Trump said. “If you look at the weapons of mass destruction, that was a disaster, and they were wrong. So I want them to be sure. I think it’s unfair if they don’t know.”
It’s fascinating that the media and the Democrats have such a problem with this approach. Ten years ago, all they could talk about was how George W. Bush had lied us into the Iraq War. More recently than that, we’ve seen President Obama blame the intelligence services for his failure to stunt the growth of the Islamic State. And just weeks ago, all the liberals were talking about how the FBI deliberately threw the election to Trump. But when it comes to these hacks, we’re expected to take everything we hear as the gospel truth. Interesting.
Trump said there was more uncertainty regarding the hackers than the Obama administration was letting on.
“I know a lot about hacking,” he said. “And hacking is a very hard thing to prove. So it could be somebody else. And I also know things that other people don’t know, and so they cannot be sure of the situation.”
Pressed on what information he might be privy to, Trump said, “You’ll find out on Tuesday or Wednesday.”
The president-elect also expressed grave doubts about the security of digital information.
“It’s very important, if you have something really important, write it out and have it delivered by courier, the old-fashioned way, because I’ll tell you what, no computer is safe,” Trump said. “I have a boy who’s 10 years old; he can do anything with a computer. You want something to really go without detection, write it out and have it sent by courier.”
All the little liberals on social media are holding these remarks up for mockery, but he’s absolutely right. And it’s just like the supposed infallibility of our intelligence agencies. We’re deluding ourselves into thinking that it’s all very secure and airtight, even when we can’t go a month without some major information breach. Trump sounds like he wants to go back to the frontier days, but he’s really just pointing out how vulnerable our cyber-systems are.
We’re so accustomed to political BS-talk that we still can’t handle it when Trump speaks the plain, common-sense truth.
Well, some of us, anyway.
