Brian4Liberty
05-26-2017, 12:37 PM
Director Of Center For National Interest Gives Historical Context For Russia Hysteria (http://thefederalist.com/2017/05/26/director-of-center-for-national-interest-gives-historical-context-for-russia-hysteria/)
Ben Domenech interviews Paul Saunders about national security, the intelligence community, and Trump's foreign policy team.
...
Ben Domenech: I feel like one of the things that we have trouble detecting, if we are not fully versed in this type of conversation and this level of discussion between foreign figures, is we see a lot of things that are fairly normal in the Trump era being depicted as huge breaks with normalcy as being, “Oh, this is unprecedented. I can’t believe they would do X, I can’t believe they would do Y.”
This can even take place at a very benign level. We saw the depictions on the internet of all sorts of things that are perfectly normal for a president to do as being unprecedented and as something that should rile people up in various ways.
Whether it’d came to dismissals of certain government officials or something as small as the fact that President Trump put his books on the same bookshelf that President Obama had previously been displaying his books. That type of thing seems to be true of this Russia conversation as well. I’d like to know from your perspective, what actually strikes you as being unprecedented or odd about what the Russians that’s related to our election and what is something that has happened more typically?
Paul Saunders: Well, let me maybe approach that from a slightly different way. I was listening yesterday to the Former CIA Director Mr. Brennan and his testimony. One of the things that I found interesting in his testimony was his statement that he was in touch with the head of one of Russia’s intelligence services to warn that individual that it was a mistake for Russia to interfere in the American political process and it could cause backlash in the United States and prevent any kind of favorable change in the US-Russia relationship.
What I found interesting about that is it made me think to myself so did Director Brennan warned President Obama or Secretary Clinton, then Secretary Clinton, at any point that American efforts to influence Russia’s internal politics might provoke a backlash in Russia? That that might have consequences in the US-Russia relationship and for Russian perspectives on the US-Russia relationship. It’s quite clear from the testimony of others that they felt that Putin was reacting in no small part to that very perception that the United States had been too deeply engaged in Russian politics.
...
Ben Domenech: One of the things that we’ve seen, unfortunately, in a lot of the reports about this is a lack of skepticism when it comes to the reporting that we read. One of the things that I’m sure you’re familiar with as being a long tenured person in Washington is just that whenever you’re reading a story, you should be sure to put the hat on and look at who benefits from this being reported, why is this being reported in a particular way, why is this source not on the record, et cetera.
I feel like one of the things that we’ve seen around this Russian investigation and all the questions related to General Flynn and elsewhere is just an overheated nature of reporting that, basically, attempts to make everything sound important, puts very little context around the actual discussion of what’s going on in the country and presents the viewer or listener with information that is often incomplete or is more designed to benefit the political leanings of the source as opposed to reveal something that we should actually be concerned about. In your own discussions, because I’m sure you’ve had them with friends or colleagues about this sort of thing, what do you do to try to stamp down a little bit and say, “Calm down, this is not as crazy a thing as you’re saying.”?
Paul Saunders: Well, since I follow Russia professionally and often read the Russian media, I’m used to reading the media with a skeptical eye. I wish I didn’t have to apply some of the same analytical processes that I apply in reading the Russian media now to the American media. That’s the reality that we’re living in and certainly whenever you read the Russian media, you’re often focused actually less on what’s being reported and more on who might be behind this story and why and what are they trying to accomplish. Another element on this whole situation which really sticks in my mind goes back to the period of the campaign. One of The New York Times editors, I think his name is Jim Rutenberg, wrote an entire column about how normal standards of journalism should not apply in covering Donald Trump because he represented, from Rutenberg’s perspective, such an unprecedented threat to American democracy.
There are a number of people in the mainstream liberal media who feel that way, who actually don’t believe that they’re obliged to uphold their professional standards because they believed that this is a unique situation. It’s quite remarkable. Going back though to the issue about the analytical process that you have to go through, there was a recent story in The Washington Post about this flap surrounding Congressman Kevin McCarthy’s comments about the president and one of this colleagues in the House. The most remarkable thing to me about that story was the dateline which was Kiev, Ukraine. There’s a story about this recording, of this conversation which supposedly took place when our members of Congress were meeting with officials from Ukraine. This recording leaks, the person who’s writing about it is writing about it from Ukraine but there’s no discussion in the article of what’s the source of this recording, how did The Washington Post get it? That’s unusual.
...
More: http://thefederalist.com/2017/05/26/director-of-center-for-national-interest-gives-historical-context-for-russia-hysteria/
Ben Domenech interviews Paul Saunders about national security, the intelligence community, and Trump's foreign policy team.
...
Ben Domenech: I feel like one of the things that we have trouble detecting, if we are not fully versed in this type of conversation and this level of discussion between foreign figures, is we see a lot of things that are fairly normal in the Trump era being depicted as huge breaks with normalcy as being, “Oh, this is unprecedented. I can’t believe they would do X, I can’t believe they would do Y.”
This can even take place at a very benign level. We saw the depictions on the internet of all sorts of things that are perfectly normal for a president to do as being unprecedented and as something that should rile people up in various ways.
Whether it’d came to dismissals of certain government officials or something as small as the fact that President Trump put his books on the same bookshelf that President Obama had previously been displaying his books. That type of thing seems to be true of this Russia conversation as well. I’d like to know from your perspective, what actually strikes you as being unprecedented or odd about what the Russians that’s related to our election and what is something that has happened more typically?
Paul Saunders: Well, let me maybe approach that from a slightly different way. I was listening yesterday to the Former CIA Director Mr. Brennan and his testimony. One of the things that I found interesting in his testimony was his statement that he was in touch with the head of one of Russia’s intelligence services to warn that individual that it was a mistake for Russia to interfere in the American political process and it could cause backlash in the United States and prevent any kind of favorable change in the US-Russia relationship.
What I found interesting about that is it made me think to myself so did Director Brennan warned President Obama or Secretary Clinton, then Secretary Clinton, at any point that American efforts to influence Russia’s internal politics might provoke a backlash in Russia? That that might have consequences in the US-Russia relationship and for Russian perspectives on the US-Russia relationship. It’s quite clear from the testimony of others that they felt that Putin was reacting in no small part to that very perception that the United States had been too deeply engaged in Russian politics.
...
Ben Domenech: One of the things that we’ve seen, unfortunately, in a lot of the reports about this is a lack of skepticism when it comes to the reporting that we read. One of the things that I’m sure you’re familiar with as being a long tenured person in Washington is just that whenever you’re reading a story, you should be sure to put the hat on and look at who benefits from this being reported, why is this being reported in a particular way, why is this source not on the record, et cetera.
I feel like one of the things that we’ve seen around this Russian investigation and all the questions related to General Flynn and elsewhere is just an overheated nature of reporting that, basically, attempts to make everything sound important, puts very little context around the actual discussion of what’s going on in the country and presents the viewer or listener with information that is often incomplete or is more designed to benefit the political leanings of the source as opposed to reveal something that we should actually be concerned about. In your own discussions, because I’m sure you’ve had them with friends or colleagues about this sort of thing, what do you do to try to stamp down a little bit and say, “Calm down, this is not as crazy a thing as you’re saying.”?
Paul Saunders: Well, since I follow Russia professionally and often read the Russian media, I’m used to reading the media with a skeptical eye. I wish I didn’t have to apply some of the same analytical processes that I apply in reading the Russian media now to the American media. That’s the reality that we’re living in and certainly whenever you read the Russian media, you’re often focused actually less on what’s being reported and more on who might be behind this story and why and what are they trying to accomplish. Another element on this whole situation which really sticks in my mind goes back to the period of the campaign. One of The New York Times editors, I think his name is Jim Rutenberg, wrote an entire column about how normal standards of journalism should not apply in covering Donald Trump because he represented, from Rutenberg’s perspective, such an unprecedented threat to American democracy.
There are a number of people in the mainstream liberal media who feel that way, who actually don’t believe that they’re obliged to uphold their professional standards because they believed that this is a unique situation. It’s quite remarkable. Going back though to the issue about the analytical process that you have to go through, there was a recent story in The Washington Post about this flap surrounding Congressman Kevin McCarthy’s comments about the president and one of this colleagues in the House. The most remarkable thing to me about that story was the dateline which was Kiev, Ukraine. There’s a story about this recording, of this conversation which supposedly took place when our members of Congress were meeting with officials from Ukraine. This recording leaks, the person who’s writing about it is writing about it from Ukraine but there’s no discussion in the article of what’s the source of this recording, how did The Washington Post get it? That’s unusual.
...
More: http://thefederalist.com/2017/05/26/director-of-center-for-national-interest-gives-historical-context-for-russia-hysteria/