The hypocrisy of Obama's exit interview

In his "exit interview" with former Democratic operative and now so-called ABC News Correspondent, George Stephanopoulos, President Obama says:

I underestimated the degree to which, in this new information age, it is possible for misinformation for cyber hacking and so forth to have an impact on our open societies, our open systems, to insinuate themselves into our democratic practices in ways that I think are accelerating. And so part of the reason that I ordered this report was not simply to re-litigate what happened over the last several months, but rather to make sure that we understand this is something that Putin has been doing for quite some time in Europe. ... You know, I think there are a lot of factors going into an election. I think the bottom line is that Donald Trump is gonna be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States of America. And it's not necessarily profitable to sort of try to untangle all the different factors that went into it. The issue here is you have I think the-- the clear example of how, if we're not vigilant foreign countries can have an impact on the political debate in the United States in ways that might not have been true 10, 20, 30 years ago in-- in part because of the way news is transmitted and in part because so many people are skeptical of mainstream news organizations that-- everything's true and everything's false. You know nothing-- nothing is-- is settled. Everything is contested. In that kind of environment, where there's so much skepticism about information that's coming in, we're gonna have to spend a lot more time thinking about how do we protect our democratic process and as I've been saying for years, we're gonna have to spend a lot more time on cyber security. That's one of the reasons why I'd ordered a commission. ... One of the things that I am concerned about is the degree to which we've seen a lot of commentary lately where there were Republicans or pundits or cable commentators who seemed to have more confidence in Vladimir Putin than fellow Americans because those fellow Americans were Democrats.

Well, one thing is "settled" for sure. While it is certainly true that the Russians hacked the DNC, Mr Obama's insinuation that the emails they published were "misinformation" is a bold-faced lie. In my last blog post, I included a link to a post from the tech blog Errata Security that demonstrates beyond the shadow of a doubt that the emails leaked by the Russians were authentic and not tampered with. These emails reveal the intentional and pre-meditated attempts of two consecutive DNC chairwomen, Debbie Wasserman Schulz and Donna Brazile, to influence the outcome of the Democratic primary unfairly in favor of Hillary Clinton.

In other words, regardless of how they obtained the emails, the Russian hackers did not publish "misinformation," but rather genuine, unaltered documents that merely revealed the internal machinations of Democratic operatives as they attempted to rig the election. The American people were, therefore, not misinformed, Mr Obama, but rather simply persuaded by solid evidence about the nature of the activities of one of the parties involved in the election. The problem for the Democrats is not that the Russians disseminated misinformation, but rather that the Democrats in the DNC were so ham-handed that they didn't do an adequate job of covering up the tracks of their own nefarious attempts to place their thumbs on the scale for Hillary.

(As an aside, isn't it interesting how individuals who leak information that Democrats find useful are celebrated as saints -- think Daniel Ellsberg and Deep Throat -- while the leakers of information about Democratic malfeasance -- think the Russian hackers or, say, Linda Tripp -- are vilified unrelentingly?)

In sum, at the very moment when he is expressing concern that misinformation threatens to undermine our democratic processes, Mr Obama is himself engaging in a campaign of misinformation and misdirection to undermine democratically elected Donald Trump, wringing his hands over Russian hackers, while ignoring the hidden malfeasance within his own party that those hackers brought to light.

And, as Obama engages in this bold-faced campaign of misinformation, the lap-dog Stephanopoulos, sits there with nary a hard question coming to mind, nodding gravely in assent and pretending to be impartial. Is it any wonder that Americans have lost all faith in the major news outlets when they are populated by the likes of Stephanopoulos and Brazile?

Mr Obama, if you are truly interested in "protecting our democratic process," then the best place for you to start is by rooting out the corruption in your own party and condemning the incestuous relationship between your party and so many mainstream "news" organizations.

One can hope that this "exit interview" will truly be the last we hear from Obama for some time, but I doubt seriously his vanity will so allow.