In Push for 2020 Election Security, Top Official Was Warned: Don’t Tell Trump

[Steel]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/us/politics/russia-2020-election-trump.html

Ms. Nielsen left the Department of Homeland Security early this month after a tumultuous 16-month tenure and tensions with the White House. Officials said she had become increasingly concerned about Russia’s continued activity in the United States during and after the 2018 midterm elections — ranging from its search for new techniques to divide Americans using social media, to experiments by hackers, to rerouting internet traffic and infiltrating power grids.

But in a meeting this year, Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff, made it clear that Mr. Trump still equated any public discussion of malign Russian election activity with questions about the legitimacy of his victory. According to one senior administration official, Mr. Mulvaney said it “wasn’t a great subject and should be kept below his level.”

Even though the Department of Homeland Security has primary responsibility for civilian cyberdefense, Ms. Nielsen eventually gave up on her effort to organize a White House meeting of cabinet secretaries to coordinate a strategy to protect next year’s elections.

[Iknowtoomuch]

Donald Trump is working for Russia, even if he isn't fully aware of it.

[Sableye]

impeach him for failure to secure the US election process. Its no different from court marshaling an incompetent general

[Jaguar]

He's a useful idiot

[elix]

This is failure to live up to his oath of office, an impeachable offense for the President. And by all rights everyone who kept election security quiet and disorganized to keep Trump from hearing about it is an accessory to that failure and should be barred from public office.

The American people deserve to see Trump publicly interfering with his own cabinet's attempts to secure elections from foreign interference that benefits him. If he is going to do it, let him cast that stone and be judged for it. Let conservatives really try and justify to themselves and Democrat-voting family members/friends that they're fine with supporting a President who accepts Russian election meddling when it helps him, and it's fine that democracy takes a back seat to the continuance of imperial Trump rule.

Sure, a sickening percentage of cultists will double down on the new reality that Russia is trying to help balance against Democrat electoral fraud, or whatever shit, but everyone who doesn't snap their brain around an unreality will be shed away and Trump's base would shrink by that much more.

[Jon27]

I am starting to believe that Trump himself didn't directly collude with Russia with intent. Useful idiot really is the feasible explanation. Putin might have been having fits of joy and dancing around the Kremlin like Hugh Grant in Love Actually when he heard an easily manipulated simpleton (who also happens to be a huge racist and classist as well as a hyper-partisan in a time when those issues are threatening American society) was running for President. Perhaps it was a totally one-sided decision to throw all the weight of perhaps the spying superpower behind Trump and the GOP. Because he's just so wilfully ignorant of any of his responsibilities which leaves America a rudderless ship.

[Firgof Umbra]

If a man can be impeached for failing to properly secure a naval vessel, a president can be impeached for failing to properly secure the elections.

Note: impeachment for failing to properly secure a naval vessel is an actual historically recorded and successful impeachment that was specifically considered when the founders created the rules for what impeachment was for and how to go about using it.