There is no other political narrative from the 2016 presidential election more consequential than the dubious claims of Trump-Russia collusion. Despite numerous investigations disproving these allegations — including the Mueller report — the left remained resolute in its refusal to accept the legitimacy of Hillary Clinton's electoral defeat.
Perhaps it's a defense mechanism or just a reflection of just how low leftists are willing to go to undermine Republican presidents. Regardless, millions of dollars were wasted investigating claims that Obama officials all testified that there was never any empirical evidence linking Trump and Russia.
Not only has it been made clear that the entire Trump-Russia collusion story was bogus, but newly released evidence also shows that, contrary to popular belief, Russia wanted Hillary Clinton to be elected president.
Not that this matters to the Democrats or the media. In fact, despite everything, they are still pushing the whole Trump-Russia conspiracy theory.
On Monday, Nancy Pelosi went on MSNBC and claimed, without evidence, that Vladimir Putin was blackmailing Trump with “something financial." Similarly, Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) chimed in with the claim that “Every election, it seems, the Republicans are used… either wittingly or unwittingly by Russian intelligence to try to interfere in the election.”
It's not just elected Democrats pushing this absurd narrative either. It's clear that the media has taken its marching orders from the party and has joined in.
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"It is time to move beyond the political spin offered by GOP propagandists and Internet trolls and acknowledge that Trump and the MAGA movement are today active assets of Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin, as essential to Russia’s future global ambitions as that country’s own armed forces," writes David Rothkopf at the Daily Beast.
According to New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait, "Trump has finally remade Republicans into Putin’s playthings."
I can't say for sure whether these claims reflect a serious belief or just desperate narratives from Biden's supporters who realize that they need a miracle to prevent Trump from winning in November and figure resurrecting the Trump-Russia narrative might work.
I can't see it being any more effective than Biden's "Bidenomics" messaging, which failed miserably. I can't even give them high marks for effort because rehashing up these old claims not only comes across as desperate but also as incredibly lazy because there's no evidence to back them up.
So why are they doing this? A recent post on Public by Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag gives us a likely explanation. According to the post, "By casting Trump and MAGA Republicans as aligned with a hostile foreign power, it is easier to justify unethical and illegal behaviors to persecute them."
It makes perfect sense, doesn't it?
"At the same time, it’s not clear that the Russia conspiracy theory still has the power it had from 2017 to 2020, which raises the question of why Democrats are still using it," they continued.
The answer may be that the Democrats do not feel they have much else to run on in 2024. Trump is ahead in the polls, and Democrats’ fears that he and other Republicans will completely ban abortion appear to have subsided. Biden and the Democrats got almost everything they wanted on climate change.
As such, the Russia conspiracy theory signifies the emptiness or nihilism of the Democratic party. It has achieved the agenda it set out to achieve on everything from health care to climate change to LGBT rights. It has now little left to advocate for beyond demonizing its political opponents as Putin’s puppets.
That pretty much hits the nail on the head.
