Trump, Putin and The Big Hack, David Remnick, "The New Yorker"

[Stuart G]

January 6, 2017

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trump-putin-and-the-big-hack?utm_content=buffer335eb&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
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Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin’s foreign minister, once remarked while on a trip to Berlin in the early days of the Cold War, “The trouble with free elections is that you never know how they will turn out.”

On the morning of November 9th, Molotov’s grandson, Vyacheslav Nikonov, a member of the Russian Duma’s foreign-affairs committee, announced to the parliament, “Three minutes ago, Hillary Clinton conceded defeat in the American Presidential elections. And just this second Donald Trump began his speech as President-elect.” The Duma members cheered and applauded.

In the days to come, there were more declarations of acid satisfaction among the Russian élite. Dmitri Kiselyov, the host of “News of the Week,” a popular current-affairs show on state-controlled television, gloated over Trump’s victory and Barack Obama’s inability to prevent it. Obama, he said, was a “eunuch.” Trump was an “alpha male”—and one who showed mercy to his vanquished rival. “Trump could have put the blonde in prison, as he’d threatened in the televised debates,” Kiselyov said on his show. “On the other hand, it’s nothing new. Trump has left blond women satisfied all his life.” Kiselyov further praised Trump because the concepts of democracy and human rights “are not in his lexicon.” In India, Turkey, Europe, and now the United States, he declared, “the liberal idea is in ruins.”

Vladimir Putin did not showboat, but he, too, made his satisfaction plain. His spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, told reporters that the similarity between Trump and Putin’s “conceptual approach to foreign policy” was “phenomenal.” Trump’s victory was the basis for Russia’s “moderate optimism”; now both sides could discuss how “to clear out the Augean stables in our bilateral relations.”

[Hortensis]

1. " and now the United States, he declared, the liberal idea is in ruins.

We can expect to hear a lot more of this. Much the same is being said in those who rode the orange pumpkin into the upper circles of power. D

Some important victories have encouraged former shadow-dwellers to run before the cameras to crow. But wait until American conservatives find out what that actually means. Liberalism is a large part of their lives and lifelong belief systems. Maybe we should call that "tradical Americanism" instead, the way calling Obamacare the ACA can work magic on attitudes.

[2naSalit]

2. Heard on NPR this morning...

It should be said that Putin has responded to these charges in the past at a press conference a couple of weeks ago. And he really mocked the idea that Russia could have thrown a U.S. election. He said, basically, the Democrats are sore losers and that the information leaked was much more important than how it got out.

SIMON: Lucian, help us understand, are charges like these potentially damaging, or is there an element of pride that they're even accused?

KIM: Yeah. I mean, I don't think they're damaging at all. I think Putin can be quite happy with these results. He had a real problem two years ago after the intervention in Ukraine. Western powers were ignoring and isolating Russia. Obama called the country a regional power. And today, Putin is deciding war and peace in Syria. And, you know, he's being attributed with powers of influencing a U.S. election. So, in some ways, it makes Russia seem much bigger than it really is.

One thing to keep in mind is that Russians have been told, for some time, that they're at war with the West, not really a shooting war but an information war, sort of a struggle for influence. So there's a widespread perception here that Russia is, itself, the victim of a Western conspiracy. So I think you can say, from the Kremlin's perspective, Russia's just giving the West a taste of its own medicine. More broadly speaking, I think this report really doesn't matter very much here in Moscow. People here are waiting for the inauguration of Donald Trump and nothing else really matters.

SIMON: NPR's Moscow correspondent Lucian Kim, thanks so much for being with us.

http://www.npr.org/2017/01/07/508669034/the-view-from-moscow-on-u-s-hacking-accusations