Today, Explained - Putin his thumb on the scale

Episode Date: February 25, 2020

Russian interference in U.S. elections could go from Vlad to worse as President Trump sidelines U.S. intelligence agencies. (Transcript here.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Alex Ward has been following the story for Vox. The story starts on February 13th. That's when intelligence officials decided to brief House lawmakers to tell them that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign and that their preference might be, believe it or not, the president, Donald Trump. Now, the person who gave the briefing is someone named Shelby Pearson, an aide to the director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire. And I should mention that when I spoke to a Democratic lawmaker who was in Pearson's briefing, this lawmaker told me that the evidence that at least the Russians had a preference for Trump was, quote unquote, very compelling. Now, what that means is similar to what happened in around 2016, which was when Russian hackers were trying to use social media tools, Facebook, Twitter, et cetera, to influence the election in Trump's favor

by sowing racial divisions, by throwing anti-Hillary Clinton rallies, et cetera. So using very likely similar methods to help Trump defeat whoever the Democratic contender will be in 2020. Which brings us to another part of Pearson's briefing, which is she says the Russians are also trying to help out the campaign of the Democratic frontrunner, Senator Bernie Sanders. Well, it was not clear what role they're going to play.

We were told that Russia and maybe other countries are going to get involved in this campaign. And look, here is the message to Russia, stay out of American elections. So, it's worth noting that Trump was not aware of this briefing. In fact, he learned about it from Republicans who are inside and were hearing the intelligence. And by the way, Republicans expectedly were just bashing the intelligence community

for basically claiming that they were trying to go after Trump and that this was a partisan analysis. Either way, it inspired Republicans to let Trump know about this briefing, and Trump goes off. One senior administration official told CBS News the president, quote, blew his stack when he learned that the House committee, including top Democrats, had been briefed. He is upset that, one, he didn't know that this was happening, two, that he had to learn about it from congressional allies

and not from the intelligence community himself, which, you know, the intelligence community is there to brief and prepare the president. Nobody said it to me at all. Nobody briefed me about that at all. And so Trump was right to be a little bit upset about that, and he summons Joseph McGuire, the director of national intelligence, to his office and dresses him down for doing this briefing without really letting the White House know. So last week, in fact, Friday, we learned that Joseph Maguire has formally resigned from the U.S. government right after Trump basically said, get out, you're fired. On Friday, I actually asked a senior White House official if Trump had really wanted McGuire gone because of this Russia briefing. And this official did not mince words. What the official said was, quote unquote, that's absolutely why.

Anyone from here on out that opposes the president will get fired. And when I went, wait, that bad? The official responded, yep, he's not fucking around. So who does Trump turn to at a moment when he perceives the intelligence leadership to be disloyal? He turns to a staunch ally, someone who has defended him time and time and time again on social media, in print interviews, in TV interviews, etc. A guy named Richard Grinnell, who happens to be the American ambassador to Germany. Watching him up close as the master negotiator today for me just really solidified why I early on wanted to support President Trump. And what the president decides and announces on Twitter is that Grinnell will be the acting director of national intelligence

until he can find someone else to take the job permanently. In fact, we're talking to five different people right now. I think all people that you know, all people that you respect, and I'll make a decision probably over the next week to two weeks. We have some very good people. So not only does Grinnell come in, but he starts clearing house. Last Friday, we learned that a guy named Andrew Hallman, who was the second-ranking official at the Directorate of National Intelligence,

decided to leave. And reports start showing that Grinnell and other people in the White House are looking for disloyal people to the president, quote-unquote, and want them gone. Now, Grinnell can't stay in there forever. He is capped as the acting director, but he can be there enough time, a couple of weeks, to start effectively purging those that the president wants gone. And if you're wondering what it looks like when a president doesn't like being told the truth, when in fact a president is

upset about what it might say about his presidency or what it says about his own beliefs, this is what you get. You get an intelligence community fearful of a president, fearful of briefing Congress, and then having years-long experts completely taken out of our intelligence community, which arguably makes the nation left safe. I should note that over the weekend, CNN reported that our general understanding of that intelligence briefing and what the actual intelligence says might be a bit mistaken. Basically, what they learned is that the intelligence says that the Russians feel they can work with Trump, in effect, make deals with him down the line on issues that roil the U.S.-Russian relationship. That Moscow would have a better working relationship with Washington if Trump were in the White House.

All it really says is that between a Republican candidate and a Democratic candidate, at the moment, Moscow likely assesses that the Republican Trump could be a better partner to work with down the line. So wait, Alex, this is a little confusing. Do we have intelligence that says Russia is interfering with the 2020 presidential election to help President Trump and help Bernie Sanders? Or do we have intelligence that says Russia wouldn't mind Trump winning because clearly Trump is a fan of Vladimir Putin? We do have intelligence that Russia is interfering in the 2020 election. And what it seems to show at the moment is that the Russians are friendly to a Trump presidency and friendly to a Sanders presidency.

But we still do not have really any clear, concrete public evidence that the Russians, through their actions, want Trump in office or Sanders in office. But we can assume if they're friendly to a Trump presidency or a Sanders presidency, that they're going to be interfering to those ends. One could make that case, and that's definitely something intelligence officials are going to look at. The other thing could be, of course, that it would sow divisions, right, between the left and the right, and the Russians would be exploiting the political polarization that exists in the United States. The other reason is to undermine the democratic process. If you're getting people questioning the result of votes maybe for a Republican or votes maybe for a Democrat, then the entire voting structure, the entire legitimacy of the system gets questioned. And so this is a pretty low cost way for the Russians to really harm the United States by hitting at the core of what it means to continue the American democratic experiment.

My takeaway from this whole situation, though, is that Trump is actually attacking the American intelligence community at the exact same time the Russians are attacking the American vote. And this will make it harder for the United States to combat the Russians as they interfere in our election. More with Alex in a minute. I'm Sean Ramos-Firm. This is Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained. Ramp.com slash explained. R-A-M-P dot com slash explained.

Cards issued by Sutton Bank. Member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply. Alex, how bad has the president's relationship with his own intelligence community become? Oh, it's gotten really, really bad. You might remember that really early on, like he equated the intelligence community to Nazis, which was not a good way to start. I think it was disgraceful, disgraceful that the intelligence agencies allowed any information that turned out to be so false and fake out. And that's something that Nazi Germany would have done and did do. And it's really only gotten worse over time. Every morning,

the president's supposed to read his presidential daily brief. And as far as I know from talking to sources and just even seeing the White House's own schedule, the president doesn't get it every day. And in fact, it's been boiled down to the point that Trump just wants like bullet points and pictures on like a couple of pages as opposed to the long lengthy briefing that a president should have to begin his or her day.

And what we're seeing at the moment is now that Trump has been unshackled from the impeachment drama and all that, he's now going after an intelligence community that he feels has been going after him his entire presidency. And it's really culminated in this moment when here are intelligence officials

trying to brief lawmakers, right, their customers, the people they serve, to give them the notification and the information they need to do their jobs. Here's Trump attacking them because it goes against the narrative that he likes. He wants to be able to say, I won the election by myself and I didn't need Russia's help. But instead of working with intelligence officials and law enforcement officials and whoever else in government to safeguard the 2020 election process, he's going after our intelligence community for just speaking truth to power.

Give us a sense of what might be at risk here beyond the 2020 election. What does President Trump see as our biggest threats? And what does the intelligence community see as our biggest threats? Well, I can give you a great example from what happened last year. Top intelligence officials spoke at an annual public event, which is the release of the Worldwide Threats Assessment Report. It's a wonky way of saying, here's what the intelligence community is tracking. Here's what might be bothering the United States down the line. And they put out five points.

One, ISIS still has thousands of fighters in Syria and Iraq. The group has returned to its guerrilla warfare roots while continuing to plot attacks and direct its supporters worldwide. Two, North Korea is unlikely to give up its nuclear program. We currently assess that North Korea will seek to retain its WMD capabilities and is unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capabilities because its leaders ultimately view nuclear weapons as critical to regime survival. Three, Russia will continue to meddle in the 2020 elections. We expect Russia will continue to wage its information war against democracies and to use social media to attempt to divide our societies.

Four, the U.S. will actually be contending with the problems of climate change for years to come. And five, Iran is not moving to gain a nuclear weapon at the moment. And while we do not believe Iran is currently undertaking activities we judge necessary to produce a nuclear device. Iranian officials have publicly threatened to push the boundaries of JCPOA restrictions if Iran does not gain the tangible financial benefits it expected from the deal.

Now, all five of those things, the intelligence community believes and assesses. Could be wrong, but that's the general consensus of our professionals in government. The funny thing is, Trump disagrees with all of those things. He believes that ISIS is basically defeated and gone, that he had pacified North Korea

and that they weren't making strides in the nuclear program, that Russia was not going to meddle, and if they did, would not be preferring Trump, that climate change is a hoax, and that Iran was on the way to a nuclear weapon and that's why he withdrew America from the Iran nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions. This led to a big fight to the point that Trump asked top intelligence officials to the Oval Office to basically kind of say, oh, Mr. President, we're totally in alignment with you. We didn't, we

weren't really saying that we disagree, but come on, like that's clearly what happened. It wasn't like, you know, top intelligence officials were pointing the finger at Trump, but implicitly they were because of what Trump's stances are. And what we learned in 2019 is that Trump's foreign policy views are just not based in reality. And I mentioned all this because this year in 2020,

they are not going to give that public assessment again because they're worried about angering Trump. And so the public loses important information. People inside the government will still have that intelligence. But it goes to show that the White House is so scared, our agents, they won't even do a public event about our intelligence anymore. Have you spoken to intelligence agents? Have you heard how they feel about the president, about the administration? Do they feel like they're at war with their own executive? Only a small few because, of course, they're all scared to talk.

And I've talked to a lot of formers. And yeah, they wouldn't say there's a war going on, but this is a really, really tense moment. It is one where they do feel a bit under siege and believe that Trump is making it harder for them to do their jobs. And in fact, somewhat making their jobs obsolete, because if Trump believes one thing and our nation's intelligence apparatus believes another, then there's really no reconciliation. And Trump is unwilling to at least have his mind changed or at least start to engage with the intelligence community because, look, sometimes intelligence gets it wrong and a president's gut can sometimes be more right than, you know, what all the information brings up. But Trump is not willing even to have that kind of conversation. And so the way I think about it

is, you know, if the United States were a car or a bus, right, we're all in it and Trump is driving and he doesn't have a GPS. He has no idea where he's going. He is driving blind. And one way he would actually get directions to help America go where it needs to go is if he got the map, if he got the intelligence. He's not looking at the map. He's not looking at the GPS. He's just driving full speed ahead and frankly blindfolded. And we've all got to hope we get to where we need to go. I think we've known from the jump that President Trump isn't terribly interested in reading long intelligence briefings and paying attention to the details. But are there other people he's currently surrounded by who might be saving him? Fewer and fewer people. So at the beginning, there were some folks who would at least challenge the president's views, whether or not you liked who was challenging him. John Bolton, a national security advisor, way more hawkish than Donald Trump.

H.R. McMaster, before John Bolton, at least tried to walk Trump through kind of every decision he had to make. And that's why Trump wanted him gone, because he was too professorial. Rex Tillerson, the former Secretary of State, Jim Mattis, the former Secretary of Defense, two guys that believed in traditional American foreign policy, who Trump ended up fighting against and pushing out. There are fewer and fewer people now who want to kind of push back on the president. No one is going to tell Trump, hey, you have this wrong, or at least think of it this way. But in the meantime, there's a presidential election hanging in the balance. What does it mean that Donald Trump is openly, according to the official you spoke to and based on his actions with acting DNI Joseph Maguire last week, getting rid of

people who are trying to present impartial evidence and installing a bunch of flunkies. I mean, if there is strong interference in our apparatus was saying, you know, the light is blinking red. The Russians are interfering and they're doing this. And also, I should say that like the Chinese and the Iranians and the North Koreans are in their own way interfering. So it's not just Russia. I think it's clear already. We know this now. We knew before the Russians interfering to what extent, what they exactly want, what exactly they're doing. We might not get that at the moment. We might not get that down the line because the president either doesn't believe the intelligence or doesn't want to believe the intelligence and is putting in people that are more loyal to him than the truth. And what the intelligence community is really missing in this

era is leadership. All the top people are either out or on their way out. Take Trump's first director of national intelligence, Dan Coats. He was forced out partly for that worldwide assessment that we talked about. He gave that briefing. Sue Gordon, who was his deputy, a longtime person in the intelligence community who many thought might actually rise to the top. She was basically pushed out because she adhered more to what the intelligence said than what Trump wanted to hear. McGuire, same kind of thing now.

Andrew Hallman, who was McGuire's number two last week, you know, he resigned. Now, there has always been frustrations with the intelligence community and the executive. I mean, you know, sometimes presidents want certain information brought up to the fore. Bush administration basically said, like, give me the case that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. But more often than not, the intelligence community is apolitical and just continues to go, OK, I may disagree with this White House, but I'm going to give them the best information they have to do their job. People leaving now are basically saying, I can't even do that basic part. The customer, the president, doesn't even want this information. So what the hell am I doing in this job?

Alex Ward is one of the hosts of the World League podcast from Vox. I'm Sean Ramos for MTHIS Today Explained.