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Credit to Author: Brian Barrett| Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2018 22:29:40 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n On Wednesday, President <\/span>Donald Trump appeared to downplay Russia\u2019s efforts to interfere<\/a> with US democracy for a third time this week.<\/p>\n The first had come during a joint press conference<\/a> with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, a 45-minute exercise in kowtowing to a hostile foreign leader. The second, remarkably, came during the \u201cclarification\u201d of those remarks; on the heels of reading a prepared comment acknowledging Russia\u2019s actions in 2016, Trump improvised, stating that it \u201ccould be other people also. There\u2019s a lot of people out there.\u201d<\/p>\n And then came Wednesday, when a reporter asked Trump before a Cabinet meeting if Russia is still targeting the US. The correct answer, according to repeated warnings from US intelligence officials, is absolutely. Trump said no.<\/p>\n Later in the day, press secretary Sarah Sanders framed the answer differently, suggesting that Trump in fact meant \u201cno more questions.\u201d Given the broader context of his almost pathological resistance to admitting that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, that explanation seems wanting. And even if it\u2019s a correct interpretation, Trump still declined an opportunity to assertively back up the intelligence community he has repeatedly spurned.<\/p>\n "It\u2019s an unprecedented time in our nation\u2019s history."<\/p>\n Clint Watts, Foreign Policy Research Institute<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s denials of Russian interference go back more than two years<\/a>, and have been largely steadfast despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. (It was only after the Putin press conference backlash that he squarely blamed Russia, both in his prepared remarks Tuesday and in an interview with CBS<\/a> that aired Wednesday night).<\/p>\n Meanwhile, every relevant US intelligence agency has said that Russia did interfere and continues to<\/a>. On Friday, director of national intelligence Dan Coats told<\/a> a gathering at the Hudson Institute think tank that the \u201cwarning lights are blinking red again\u201d regarding Russian cyberactivity, invoking pre-9\/11 levels of concern. And at this very moment, alleged Russian spy Maria Butina<\/a> sits in a jail cell<\/a> awaiting trial.<\/p>\n And a New York Times<\/em> story<\/a> late Wednesday night made clear that US intelligence leaders explicitly told Trump that Russia\u2014at Putin's command\u2014had interfered throughout the 2016 election, and showed him irrefutable supporting evidence. He has known this whole time.<\/p>\n All of which is to say that there is no gray area here, other than that which Trump himself creates. And that\u2019s the first problem.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s clear is that whether he believes it or not, what he wants people to hear is that Russia may or may not be culpable. He wants to confuse people,\u201d says Evelyn Farkas, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia\/Ukraine\/Eurasia in the Obama administration. \u201cPresident Trump wants his followers to be uninterested in what he\u2019s doing vis-\u00e0-vis Russia. He wants the people who vote for him to continue voting for him regardless of whether he sells out US security interests to Russia or not.\u201d (Before you dismiss that last part as hyperbole, remember that on Wednesday, Sanders didn\u2019t rule out<\/a> the possibility that the US might let the Kremlin interrogate former ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul.)<\/p>\n But even if the explanation for Trump\u2019s stance lies elsewhere\u2014ego, genuine verbal missteps, willful ignorance\u2014the most important consequence of his refusal to take a hard line against ongoing Russian aggression is that he invites more of it.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re Putin and Russia, the signal is, \u2018Continue what you\u2019re doing. We won\u2019t respond or do anything,\u2019\u201d says Clint Watts, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and author of Messing with the Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians, and Fake News<\/em>.<\/p>\n Watts says that despite all the public attention brought by investigations by Congress and special counsel Robert Mueller, Russia\u2019s influence ops have not scaled back. \u201cThe troll farm is not only still up and running, it expanded.\u201d<\/p>\n The US does have means by which to counteract Russia\u2019s influence and hacking operations, but the lack of guidance from the White House hamstrings the three-letter agencies. In May, national security adviser John Bolton eliminated the role of cybersecurity coordinator<\/a>\u2014the person who would have been charged with formulating a coherent response plan. With Trump not taking Russia seriously, and no one running point at the White House, groups like the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command have taken it upon themselves to create a game plan, as The Washington Post<\/em> recently reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cOn a practical level, not having somebody coordinating from the White House can be a pretty big deal, especially when it comes to cyber,\u201d Farkas says. \u201cIt\u2019s not just about what Russia is doing to interfere in our voting process. It\u2019s also the fact that they\u2019re sitting on the electric grid, that they have an active military doctrine that permits them if necessary to launch attacks on the critical infrastructure<\/a> of their adversaries.\u201d<\/p>\n The lack of White House involvement or concern can also impact funding. Even if money has been allocated to address a problem, it needs a mission and strategy to be spent toward. Look no further than the Global Engagement Center, which has a $120 million budget to combat propaganda\u2014like Russia\u2019s influence efforts\u2014and spent none of it<\/a> under former secretary of state Rex Tillerson. Or look at the intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one has been told they need to take this on as their mission,\u201d says Watts, who regularly briefs both Congress and government agencies about Russian influence efforts. \u201cThere has been no plan put in place. And really it\u2019s been the agencies working independently and around the White House to get this undone. It\u2019s an unprecedented time in our nation\u2019s history.\u201d<\/p>\n And then come the ramifications that will play out well into the future: lowered morale in the intelligence community leading to a brain drain the US can\u2019t afford; frayed relationships with allies who no longer know whose word to trust; the propping up of Putin on the world stage, normalizing and emboldening a country that has actively sought to undermine<\/a> Western democracies for years.<\/p>\n Trump has swatted back reports of Russian influence for so long that it\u2019s easy to grow numb. But think of it as accumulative, rather than repetitive. Each time he declines to denounce Russia, he diminishes US interests and encourages further attacks\u2014whether his handlers walk it back for him or not.<\/p>\n