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Trump Goes Down Gabbard's Obama Russian Hoax Rabbit Hole [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-07-20
Tulip Gabbard made an outrageous claim that President Barack Obama along with James Clapper, Obama's Director of National Intelligence, John Brennan, Obama's CIA director, Secretary of State John Kerry, National Security advisor Susan Rice, and Andrew McCabe, the deputy FBI director, all conspired to create a false narrative that the Russians were helping to get Donald Trump elected in 2016.
Trump fired off 9 Truth Social posts about the story. 5 of them article and video links. He's really happy that someone is vindicating his imaginary claim that Russia's known interference in the 2016 election was a hoax.
"... been unequivocally exposed on highest level Election Fraud."
The intense joy he has found in this story, and it is just a story, is upsetting. He should be in jail for asking the Russians for help in getting Hillary Clinton's emails, and then they obliged.
"Keep it coming!!!"
It wasn't just the intelligence community, including the CIA, FBI and NSA that said the Russia interference was real. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a 25 page report on Jan. 9, 2017 detailing it. A bipartisan Senate report in April 2020, 7 months before the election and 9 months before Trump took office, said the same about Russian interference. Trump just loves talking about anything that fits his scenario of persecution.
Gabbard should be facing multiple defamation lawsuits, but gets away with it because of her position. Trump loves what she's doing, but when she gets put under the hot lights, he won't be there to help her. Trump quotes Gabbard so he doesn't have to say it himself.
"... effectively launch a years-long coup against the sitting president of the United States."
Trump was elected in November of 2016. Obama left on January 20th, 2017. That's 2 months. A year-long effort would mean starting in November of 2015. It simply didn't happen.
Even this graphic, which Trump reposted without comment, starts with Trump's election. Gabbard on her X account, reposted it no less than 9 times and has her original post on it pinned to the top of her account.
The ending saying that Russia lacked intent and capability is stupidly wrong. The Russians did want Trump to win in 2016, 2020 and 2024. Everybody knows that except Trump. Or Trump puts on the act that he doesn't know.
The last one is the silliest.
"BLOCKBUSTER SCANDAL"
No exclamation points. Trump thinks that he can blow this out of proportion and make people forget about his birthday letter to Epstein, and all the related Epstein files stories. It's not going to work.
The Senate Intelligence Committee in April of 2020 issued a report of 158 pages that is so heavily redacted that you are looking at black, with some white spaces. Nonetheless, it was a complete rebuke of Trump's claim that the whole Russian interference in the 2016 election was a hoax.
The Senate investigation began 3 years before and issued 4 volumes of information, with the fifth containing the contacts of members of Trump's team and Russian officials.
There was also the Mueller report that launched criminal proceedings against 34 individuals, including seven US citizens, 26 Russian nationals, one Dutch national and three Russian organizations.
The US nationals included Paul Manafort and Mike Flynn, among others, who were on Trump's campaign. They colluded directly helping the Russians run interference.
Trump claimed complete exoneration after Barr issued the 4 page memo about the Muller report to deflect reality. Trump had at least 10 instances detailed in the Mueller report where he could have been charged for obstruction of justice, but wasn't because he was a sitting president.
This is why Gabbard is trying to rewrite history for Trump. Trump should have been charged as soon as he left office, tried and gone to jail. Why wasn't he?
Gabbard has made criminal referrals to the Justice Department over her "findings" and "new documents." The report, issued on Friday, is a hatchet job working on making emails and other communications to come to a already predetermined conclusion.
The only piece of information relevant was a decision not to include in Obama's intelligence briefing that the Russians "did not impact recent U.S. election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure."
Sen. Mark Warner said about Gabbard's report that, "This is one more example of the national intelligence trying to cook the books. We're talking about apples and oranges. The Russians were not successful at manipulating our election infrastructure, nor did we say they were."
He further said that as recently as March, the Russians continue to manipulate public opinion. The report said, "Moscow probably believes information operations efforts influence U.S. elections are advantageous."
"They acknowledged that Russia's effort to meddle goes on. That was an assessment under her watch," added Warner.
Back in 2020, Warner also said, "There is certainly no reason to doubt that the Russians success in 2016 is leading them to try again in 2020, and we must not be caught unprepared." Well, they tried again in 2020, but it was declared a secure and correct election. But, the Russians were once again successful in influencing public opinion and choice of votes. Part of that campaign was actually paying internet influencers to spew their propaganda. They did it again in 2024.
The ODNI issued a statement outlining Gabbard's claims. The report and a memo about the report can be downloaded here.
The statement once again mentioned the Steele Dossier. In it are the high and mighty of Trump's 2016 campaign and Trump himself. While it is continuously described as uncorroborated, it does have many items that have been proven true by other means such as the Mueller report.
Gabbard is attempting to once again try to change public opinion by creating this memo and report to clear Trump of his collusion with the Russians in 2016. There should also be investigations into Trump doing it again in 2020 and 2024. Especially in 2024. That election he won with Russia's help. Once again, internet influencers were paid by the Russians to parrot Russian propaganda and were paid millions for it.
Gabbard's memo seems to just describe Russian efforts at cyber warfare and try to get at voting machines, which were unsuccessful. There is no campaign or conspiracy to frame Donald Trump. The conclusion is made up. The report is heavily redacted to be almost useless and the redactions could be for points that disprove Gabbard's conclusion. I haven't read the 11 page memo completely and only skimmed the report. The consensus is that it's a bunch of garbage by Democrats and the news media.
The timing is suspicious. The memo is undated and the report just says "Approved for Release By The DNI On 17 July 2025." There is no actual date of when the report was completed. I'm going to say this looks like a conspiracy to have something explosive ready to go in order to deflect from a Trump crisis, which Trump is in over the Epstein files and the birthday letter Trump wrote to Epstein in 2003.
This would not be the first time of an example to deflect the news media from coverage of Trump, or to create such a morass that real news doesn't get through. There were reports that Trump has a stash of executive orders to sign, at any time he needs to take over the news cycle, or to send it off in directions that don't involve him.
This Gabbard report and memo and social media posts are a campaign to do just that. Deflect. Republicans and Trump can howl about it without consequences. Gabbard will find that she is now in the crosshairs for making up charges on flimsy evidence. Democrats will call for her removal for abuse of office.
She's made a really big mistake to get back in Trump's good graces after contradicting Trump about Iran building a nuclear bomb.
Trump will pile on the controversy by quoting other people, seeming to be above making wild accusations himself. Then he will find it impossible not to do so. That will hurt him as he makes his own unforced error. Not yet this morning, but he will.
______________________________
Update:
Minutes after posting my story, Trump uses still another Tulsi Gabbard video with a long quote from it.
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