A Quote by John Ratcliffe
The narrative often from Democrats and the media is that Republicans don't think the Russians have meddled in our election. They did.
Related Quotes
When there is this giant narrative, when there is a singular story out there like there is right now about the Russians hacking the election so that Donald Trump would win - when the media is pumping it and the Democrats are quoting the media and the media's quoting the Democrats and it's just like a giant blanket thrown all over the country - don't believe the story. It's made up! It is a script. I call the daily soap opera.
The Democrats, because they are the media, still establish the narrative for Washington every day. And whatever that narrative is, the Republicans - for some reason (I think it's force of habit and years and years of conditioning) - still become subservient to whatever that narrative is.
That's because of everything the public interest and the media interest is focused on: What did Donald Trump know and when did he know it? Whether there was cooperation with the Russians. I don't mean to say that's a distraction or we shouldn't follow it up. But the underlying story of the Russians trying to subvert our democracy, both through propaganda, planted stories, manipulation of social media and through direct efforts to infiltrate our state election system, is really an enormously significant event. And it's not over.
Not only did corporate media not condemn leading Democrats' refusal to accept the results of the 2016 election, the media were also super spreaders of wild conspiracy theories about how Trump and Russia colluded to steal the election from Clinton.
It's almost a very rough rule of thumb: when Democrats are able to successfully frame the meaning of an election season around middle-class fears, Democrats win the election; when Republicans are able to successfully frame the meaning of an election season around cultural fears, Republicans win the election.
I don't think anybody can with a straight face say that the Russians did not set out to influence our election, and they did so.
Republicans are afraid to act in accordance with the election results. Republicans seem to be in denial about election results. It's one thing for Democrats to be in denial about the Republican electoral juggernaut, but it's strange that Republicans are in denial about it too.
The Republicans have their splits right after election and Democrats have theirs just before an election.
You have people talk about the media as a coequal branch when talking about Republicans. "You know, Republicans have to overcome the media, and then the Democrats." Wait a minute. Why should anybody have to overcome the media?
Republicans believed that their job was not governing but blocking any idea coming from President Obama and the Democrats, and wiping out Democrats in the 2012 election.
I think that what is true is that the Russians intended to meddle, and they meddled. And it could be another country in the future.
I think Democrats do a lot to talk the talk and don't do a lot to walk the walk on wage gap. I think Democrats like to make this a partisan issue and it's really not a partisan issue. Republicans are for equal pay and obviously have been on the record saying as such, and somehow the Democrats have created a false narrative that we are not for equal pay when in fact there's no truth to that.
I believe that if Democrats - not any one Democrat, and certainly not just me - want to start winning races again, Lujan's statement that the DCCC would fund candidates who oppose abortion rights puts our country in danger and makes it all the more likely that the Republicans will continue to defeat us in election after election.
James Comey had nine interactions with Bob Mueller after the Donald Trump's election. And in none of those, Comey testified, did he express any interest, concern, about what the Russians did, how they did it, how do we prevent it. He continuously has in fact denigrated the whole idea and dismissed that it was the Russians, and apparently hasn't yet accepted the 100-percent consensus of everybody that knows about this that this was a conscious and deliberate effort on their part to attack our democracy.
[Donald Trump] said, "Maybe the Russians could find those [Hillary Clinton's] emails - and if the Russians find 'em, please give them to the media." Well, I don't know how you get there from here, but the media then reported that Trump was encouraging the Russians to hack the Hillary campaign and produce the evidence to the media.
The Republicans didn't get rolled by anybody. Chuck Schumer didn't outsmart Mitch McConnell, and Nancy Pelosi sure as hell did not outsmart Paul Ryan. I don't care what you think of Ryan, he's not an idiot, folks. These people are not dumb. They're not sitting up there thinking, "All we gotta do is be nice to the Democrats and the media."
