“Disingenuous And Deceptive”: Shep Smith Scolds Kushner For Minimizing Russia’s Campaign Interference

An extremely Shep reaction to the comments made earlier today by Kushner about Russian meddling amounting to “buying some Facebook ads.” It’s true, Kushner came off like a jackhole by glossing over Russia’s hacking of the DNC and John Podesta. Posting dopey memes on Facebook is trivial nonsense, just as he says. Breaking into Americans’ inboxes and weaponizing the contents is not. And the angst Trump’s critics feel about Russiagate has as much to do with the cavalier attitude of Trump’s team about it as it does with what Russia actually did. The campaign didn’t collude or conspire, but notwithstanding Kushner’s lip service today about Russian activities being a “terrible thing,” it often did seem to condone what Moscow was up to. Remember Trump half-jokingly appealing to Russia on the trail to “find” Hillary’s missing emails? Trump repeatedly crowing about how much he loved Wikileaks for publicizing the Podesta emails that Russia had lifted? Trump time and again trying to cover for Putin by insisting that the hacker could have been some fat kid sitting in a basement somewhere, never mind what U.S. intelligence concluded? Rudy Giuliani was still defending the publication of hacked emails as of two days ago, comparing it to the Pentagon Papers. Team Trump palpably didn’t mind that Russia lent a hand in 2016 and there’s no reason to think they’d object to Putin lending a hand again in 2020. Anything to win.-- More...