Picking up on allegations Russian hacking was intended to help Donald Trump win the election, on CBS’s Face the Nation Jamelle Bouie, chief political correspondent for Slate, contended that “if it is true, if we have further verification of this, then what it suggests potentially is that the election was in some sense illegitimate.”
Bouie reflected an eagerness by journalists to discredit Donald Trump, just as they tried to before the election. But even if Vladimir Putin tried to impact the election, that does not mean he succeeded.
The exchange on the December 11 Face the Nation:
JOHN DICKERSON: Jamelle, as Michael points out, that the distinction here on the CIA and what they seem to have found, what’s new here. We heard about Russian involvement potentially while the election was going on, but what seems to be new is that it was targeted to help Donald Trump. That seems to be the new development – that in order to just update people on where things are.
JAMELLE BOUIE, SLATE: Right, exactly. We’ve sort of had to acknowledge and suspicion that the Russian government has been involved in, you know, helping leak documents like and engaging in election interference that way, but that’s different. That’s materially different than the suggestion that, hey, they were doing this specifically to help Donald Trump.
I’m sort of in this place right now where I’m not entirely sure, beyond investigations, beyond sort of serious scrutiny of this, what we do about this, because it really is unprecedented. And if -- if it is true, if we have further verification of this, then what it suggests potentially is that the election was in some sense illegitimate. And I don’t know where you go from there.
