A Question for the Press

We're now into the sixth month of the Trump Administration, and if there is one contentious issue that has driven the opposition, it is the notion that the Trump people "colluded" with Russian interests to affect the 2016 election in favor of President Trump and against Hillary Clinton.

We obviously know now that the Russians tried to do something, confirmed by about three of the alleged 17 intelligence agencies we have.  Who the other 14 are, and why they didn't sign up to the report on Russians trying to affect the election, we don't know, but we're quite comfortable with the fact that the Russians did try, and that they were not successful.  Stipulated.

Even this past day, the leftist press, given the opportunity to ask the president about actually important things in Poland, tried to force him to say that the Russians tried to hack the election.  This, of course, gave President Trump the opportunity to point out that Barack Obama knew about the attempt last year and didn't do squat about it, unless you regard a "stern professorial warning" to be squat.

The pomposity of the left and the press (but I repeat myself) in regard to the Russian hacking is about to be challenged by someone, and though I don't know who else, it will certainly be me and certainly in this column.

We know, or at least can assume by the utter lack of evidence, that there was no speck of collusion between the Trump people and Russian hackers.   Six months into the presidency with a desperate press, you would have seen at least something, and there has been nothing.

But the press is still singing the hacking ditty over and over, which leads to this column.

The Russians tried.  We know that.  They didn't change a vote, and we know that, too.  They have tried to hack pretty much every election since the czar tried to stop George Washington's second term, and we have always known that.  And the press is incensed that they tried to hack the 2016 election, not because it was the Russians but because it robbed them of their sainted Hillary Clinton.

Since they can't admit that last line, they have to claim the high road and say that they're so upset "because the sanctity of our election process is so suspect."

OK, the sanctity is suspect.  But does that mean that, as sensitive as they are about the sanctity of our elections, that they would be equally outraged at domestic attempts to rig the election?

Apparently not.

President Trump has formed a commission to investigate the security of elections in this country, specifically as relates to voter fraud.  This commission has asked each state and the District of Columbia for publicly available voter rolls and registration information -- data that the states give to the party organizations already.

So far, though, 14 states and the DC government have refused to comply.  And CNN has opined that the Commission on Election Integrity is a "sham" designed to suppress Democrat voters.

Let's get this straight.  It is perfectly awful if the Russians try to influence our elections by doing whatever they were trying to do (and failed).  That is terrible, and CNN can go on a months-long rant about it.

But if the president -- this president -- then tries to investigate voter fraud that we know has happened, by examining the voter registration rolls to start looking for duplication, dead voters and non-citizen registration, well, somehow that is not a good thing to do.

It is OK for the Democrat machine in Chicago and Philadelphia and wherever else to gin up phony voters all day without being investigated, and it's OK for the states to decline to give public information to the Federal government to help fix the problem.  It's OK for non-citizens to vote for our leadership.  But it's not OK to investigate.

So here are a couple questions for CNN and the rest of the press.

1.  Dear CNN -- after six months or so of investigating, including the hiring of a special counsel to explore the actions of the president in regard to Russian hacking, zero evidence of any such collusion has appeared.  Yet you continue to support an investigation to "see where it leads."  There is evidence of voter fraud, but you regard the commission set up by the president to investigate it as a "sham."  Why does zero evidence of collusion warrant an investigation, but demonstrable voter fraud does not?

2. Dear CNN and, by extension, the rest of the press -- you are so, so concerned about the integrity of the voting process in this country, to the point that you would repeatedly cry about our elections being suspect due to Russian hacking.  Yet you defend the states -- the only time you ever claim states' rights, we should note -- for holding back information that would help the Federal government identify potentially thousands upon thousands of fraudulent ballots by ineligible, fictitious or dead voters.  So do you actually care about the integrity of the American election system, or are you just being partisan because it was initiated by President Trump?

Let's ask those questions, shall we?

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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