February 20, 2020

Intel Official Says Russia Is Trying to Re-Elect Trump

The great thing about Vladimir Putin is that he always looks kind of shifty. That makes it easy to find file photos of him looking kind of shifty.Alexei Druzhinin/TASS via ZUMA

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Last week an intelligence official named Shelby Pierson gave a classified briefing to the House Intelligence Committee. Russia, she said, was already interfering in the 2020 election to try to get Donald Trump re-elected. Shortly thereafter, Trump met in the Oval Office with the acting Director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire, and went ballistic on him. A few days later Trump announced that he was replacing Maguire with Richard Grenell, a loyalist who has no intelligence experience.

White House officials insisted that the timing was just a coincidence.

You betcha. The New York Times reports that Trump was angry because he was afraid Democrats would use this information against him. And I suppose he’s right. Another alternative, of course, would be for Trump to do something about Russian interference, which would neuter any possible Democratic complaints. Apparently, though, that’s out of the question. Don’t you know there’s an election coming up?

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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