Trump and Republicans May Split On Obamacare Replacement

The honeymoon between Donald Trump and congressional Republicans may be ending. There is widespread disagreement between the president-elect and members of his party on Capitol Hill. At issue is not the viewpoint that Obamacare must go, but how and when to replace it.

The chasm between the two camps is underscored by a weekend interview in which Donald Trump promised that his version of a replacement plan will contain universal health coverage. “We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” Trump told the Washington Post. “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.”

Trump’s promise to expand the healthcare entitlement to cover everyone echoes promises that he made during the campaign to provide coverage for more people. It also puts him at odds with Republicans who oppose the Obamacare mandate and prefer to shrink the government’s role in health insurance. The traditional Republican view is that the government should remove barriers to lowering the cost of health insurance. Economic law dictates that if people want a product, more people will buy it as the price goes down.

Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), who Trump named as his nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, is one of those who have proposed alternative plans in the past. Price’s plan includes tax credits for those who purchase health insurance, a ban on penalties and denials for pre-existing conditions provided the consumer has had continuous insurance coverage, limiting health care deductions for businesses, allowing insurance policies to be sold across state lines and allowing the sale of basic, cheaper plans that would appeal to younger, healthy consumers. Uninsured people with pre-existing conditions could be covered by assigned risk pools.

A second popular Republican approach is the bill introduced by Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) and the Republican Study Committee. This bill shares many aspects of Price’s proposal and has broad Republican support. The bill also includes provisions to make the pricing of healthcare more transparent to consumers.

Because of the close balance of power in the Senate, any hardline Republican bill will be dead on arrival. There are enough Senate Democrats to filibuster a replacement bill that does not have at least a minimum of Democrat support.

“I’m willing to listen to Democrats ideas to this bill, to amendments to this bill as opposed to what they did which was to completely shut the other side out,” Rep. Roe told the Daily Caller.

One idea that may bring Democrats on board is Sen. Bill Cassidy’s proposal to allow states to choose to keep Obamacare exchanges. Cassidy’s proposal embodies the conservative ideal that states should be free to choose what works best for their citizens rather than forcing a top-down, one-size-fits-all, federal dictate.

“The bill that I have put forward would actually give states a choice: if they did nothing they would go into the alternative, that we call the state alternative, but a state could actually choose to stay in Obamacare,” Cassidy told CBS News. “Republicans have always said if you like your insurance, you can keep it -- and we mean it, so if the folks in California or New York really love Obamacare they can keep Obamacare.”

The Republican proposals to replace Obamacare all have one thing in common. The authors of the proposals, Tom Price, Phil Roe and Bill Cassidy, are all medical doctors who have had careers in private practice. They understand the real world implications of the laws that they are writing for both doctors and patients.

Some aspects of Price’s old plan may not survive his job change. “My guess is that Tom Price as head of HHS will approach things vastly different than Tom Price who was introducing legislation that was never going to become law, okay?” commented Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) in Politico.

Nevertheless, many Republicans trust Price’s ability to help shape the debate and influence the new president. “Dr. Price was a leader of our Better Way agenda on health care and helped shape ... much of what the House proposal is,” said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Tex.). “So I feel like we’re heading in the same direction.”

The road to an Obamacare replacement may be a long one. Politico reports that Rep. Price’s confirmation as Secretary of Health and Human Services will not take place until sometime in February.  Much of the grunt work of crafting a replacement bill can’t take place until Price has stepped into his new role in the Trump Administration. 

Originally published on The Resurgent

The idiotic way we buy healthcare

Seven years ago, President Obama and the Democrats said that they had solved the healthcare crisis. Their Affordable Care Act promised universal coverage for the uninsured and lower prices for the rest of us. Their calculations were wrong and Obamacare ended up making America’s healthcare mess even worse.

While there are many problems with the current healthcare system, one seems to stand out among all the rest for its sheer stupidity. The most idiotic thing about the American healthcare system is that when we buy healthcare, we have no idea how much we are buying it for. This problem seems to have been worsened by Obamacare.

Aside from suffering from steadily rising premiums and higher deductibles since the onset of Obamacare, we are being blindsided by unexpected medical bills that come out of nowhere. When we go to the doctor for an office visit or check into a hospital, we have no idea what it will cost.

Medical care is the only commodity that we buy in such an insane fashion. Can you imagine going to your local car dealership and signing a contract to buy a new car without knowing how much it would cost or even what kind of car you’d be driving home? Not many people would be willing to take such a deal, but we do it every time we step into a doctor’s office.

When we go to the doctor, all most of us know for sure is that we’ll be paying the insurance copayment. My copay has gone from $20 for an office visit a few years ago to $35 today. In addition to higher copays, my PPO also makes me pay a share of many tests and procedures through deductibles and coinsurance. With my HMO from years past, I only had to pay the copayment for most services.

Not once, but twice in the past two years I have had large bills come from out of the blue for tests that doctors had ordered for members of my family that were denied by the insurance company. In both cases, I took the bills to the doctor to ask them to appeal the insurance company’s denial. In both cases, the doctors said that lab was only supposed to bill the insurance company, not their patients, for the tests in question.

This seems to represent something of a scam. The doctors order tests that aren’t universally recognized and approved and then the lab bills the insurance company. If the insurance company doesn’t pay for the questionable test, apparently the lab takes the loss rather than billing the patient. Occasionally, a bill for thousands of dollars for a test for a routine health condition slips through the cracks to the patient, but normally the patients never know how much money the insurance company is paying out on their behalf unless they actually look at those Explanation of Benefits forms that normally go straight from the mail to the trash.

A third of medical tests are considered unnecessary according to a paper in the Journal of American Medicine. This mountain of needless testing costs hundreds of millions of dollars. When the insurance companies are billed for these expensive tests, it translates in to higher premiums.

Even when you try to find out how much your healthcare costs, you might still be surprised. When I went in for a colonoscopy two years ago, I paid the doctor and the hospital in advance. I thought that this would eliminate any problems with the billing.

Since I had already paid for the procedure, it came as quite a surprise when I started getting more bills in the mail, again for more than a thousand dollars, a few weeks later. After spending countless hours on the phone getting the runaround between the insurance company, the hospital and the doctor’s office, I traced the problem to a diagnostic code that had been entered incorrectly. The confusion was over whether the scan was medically necessary or preventive care. Under the ACA, preventive care was covered at a higher rate than a procedure that is needed for an actual existing health reason. Go figure that one out.

Even after finding the problem, it took many more hours on the phone to get it corrected. Total time to resolve the issue was about six months. Many people probably would have simply paid these bills when they received them and couldn’t get them dismissed immediately. Alternatively, many others might have ignored the bills and suffered credit damage as a result. I have to wonder how many people are paying outlandish medical bills that they don’t really owe.

Some uncertainty in medicine is legitimate. It is possible to go into a hospital and have real, unexpected complications that make your stay more expensive. However, there shouldn’t be any fear of going in for a routine doctor visit and coming out with thousands of dollars for routine and unnecessary tests, even when you have insurance. The price of a colonoscopy shouldn’t double because you have a medical problem that requires you to get a colonoscopy.

There are many problems with the health care system and Obamacare, but one of the biggest is the lack of transparency in pricing. Patients should have an idea how much they will owe before they commit to a procedure. Too often now, cost is never considered by the doctor and never known by the patient. At least not until the bills start showing up in the mail.

To take it a step further, patients should be able to compare the rates of various doctors and hospitals. With any other commodity, if you want the best you’d better be prepared to pay a little extra. If you desperately need a procedure, but don’t have much money, you might prefer a safe, but less prestigious hospital or clinic. Before you pooh-pooh this idea, consider that medical tourism is already gaining in popularity as people travel to countries with better doctors, advanced treatments that may not be approved at home or less expensive care.

In short, health care reform needs to reintroduce real competition and markets. People can’t make intelligent decisions if they have no information about what a transaction will cost them. The illusion that their copayment is their only cost for care is leading to wasteful practices, large bills and inefficient medical care. Give patients the information to make good healthcare choices and the freedom to choose.

Trump dossier author was known to US government

The author of the explosive Trump dossier is reportedly a former British intelligence agent who also worked with the US government. The Wall Street Journal claims to have identified the dossier’s author as a man with a reputable background in the intelligence community and “no political axe to grind.”

The Journal report cited “people familiar with the matter” in identifying Christopher Steele of London as the dossier’s author. Steele is currently the director and co-founder of Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd., a firm founded in 2009 that specializes in investigation and analysis for high-level business clients.

Steele and Orbis co-director Christopher Burrows are veterans of MI-6, the British intelligence service, where they used diplomatic covers, such as Mr. Burrows role as a counselor in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, for their intelligence work.

The 35 -page dossier consists of information researched by Orbis under contract to Trump opponents in both the Democratic and Republican parties. It is made up of a series of unsigned memos that date to the last half of 2016. Much of the information in the memos is difficult to prove, but some claims, such as the one that Trump attorney Michael Cohen met with Russian agents in Prague during the campaign, can be investigated. So far, the FBI has found no evidence of such a meeting and Cohen denies ever traveling to the Czech Republic.

Mr. Steele was also responsible for passing the dossier along to law enforcement agencies and US officials familiar with him say that he has a good reputation based on previous cooperation with the US. “He’s a meticulous professional, and there are no questions about his integrity,” one U.S. official who has worked with Steele told Yahoo News. “The information he provided me [about Russia] was valuable and useful.”

In a statement, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was more cautious. Clapper expressed his “profound dismay” to President-elect Trump that the dossier was “widely circulated in recent months among the media, members of Congress and Congressional staff.” Clapper said he emphasized that “this document is not a U.S. Intelligence Community product. … The IC [the Intelligence Community] has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable, and we did not rely upon it in any way for our conclusions.  However, part of our obligation is to ensure that policymakers are provided with the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security.”

Both Trump and the Kremlin deny that the information is the dossier is accurate. In a press conference, Trump called the memos “fake news,” but did acknowledge, “I think it was Russia [behind the DNC hacking].”

Originally published on The Resurgent

Kompromat: The new Russian buzzword

There is a new Russian word that is suddenly in vogue. If you haven’t heard it yet… Well, you’re about to. “Kompromat” may be destined to be one of 2017’s words of the year.

Russian words have entered the English vernacular in the past. Beyond “vodka,” there were “glasnost” and “perestroika” from the days Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, for example. The Russian words for “openness” and “restructuring” were buzzwords during Gorbachev’s attempt during the 1980s to remake the Soviet Union in order to save it. Students of military history know the word “maskirovka,” the Russian term for a military deception. “Kompromat” is a word that may contain elements of all three of these familiar words. It might also include vodka.

Kompromat is defined by NPR as “compromising material used to discredit rivals in politics or business or just settle personal scores.” In English, the term is roughly equivalent to “getting the dirt” on someone or “blackmail materials.” In the Russian usage, kompromat could be used for blackmail or it could simply be released to destroy someone’s reputation and career.

One example of the use of kompromat is the 1999 scandal involving Yuri Skuratov. Skuratov, Russia’s top prosecutor, had started an investigation of corruption in the Kremlin when a video showing him in a naked romp with two equally naked young women, neither of which was his wife, was broadcast on Russian television and eventually cost Skuratov his job. NPR notes that the scandal included a press conference by the man who was then head of the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB, Vladimir Putin.

This brings us to an English slang phrase: the “honey trap.” If you’ve ever read spy novels, you may be familiar with the term for using an attractive woman of loose morals to compromise a man who is the target of an intelligence agency. The “honey” typically seduces her target while her colleagues gather embarrassing pictures and videos to use for blackmail.

According to the Irish Times, during the Soviet era, most Eastern bloc hotels that catered to foreign travelers were equipped with rooms that were bugged to capture guests in compromising situations. One former Cold War hotel that was operated by Intourist, the Soviet tourism agency, in Estonia has even set up a museum that shows how the KGB spied on guests.

One such guest was Joseph Alsop, an American newspaper columnist who visited Moscow in 1957. Alsop became the victim of a gay honey trap after meeting a man at a party. The man turned out to be a KGB operative. After the pair had sex, the KGB blackmailed Alsop by threatening to release pictures of the act and ruining Alsop’s reputation if he didn’t cooperate by becoming an “agent of influence” for the Soviets. Instead, Alsop told the story to the US Embassy and hastily left the country.

One of the many former Intourist hotels is now the Moscow Ritz Carlton. This is the same hotel that Donald Trump stayed at in 2013 for the Miss Universe pageant and where he allegedly met with Russian prostitutes. It is safe to assume that if Mr. Trump engaged in any sexual hijinks while in Moscow that the FSB has photographic record.

With numerous sexual scandals and rumors already released about Donald Trump, it’s impossible to know what the effect of using an embarrassing video to blackmail or discredit him would be. It’s also impossible to say how holding back such a video while releasing Democrat emails would have affected the election.

There are certain to be further revelations in the unfolding scandal of Russia’s interference with the election. Given the close ties of many Trump appointees to Russia, there may be salacious kompromat on other members of new administration as well.

Originally published in The Resurgent

Obamacare repeal meets bipartisan opposition

The Republican promise to repeal Obamacare is meeting bipartisan opposition. Democrats are protesting the entire idea of repeal. Meanwhile, some Republicans are seeking to delay the repeal or protect some facets of the Affordable Care Act until a replacement can be written.

A core dispute among Republicans is whether Obamacare should be repealed before a replacement bill is ready. Obamacare can’t simply be repealed because it remade the American health care system. Not all of the healthcare eggs that Obamacare scrambled can be unbroken. Removing the law would not restore healthcare to its previous status quo, which was unpopular anyway.

The ultimate solution must take into consideration that an estimated 20 million people are insured under Obamacare. And, believe it or not, some of them even like it. To be politically viable, the Republican plan for repeal and replacement must find more coverage for these Americans.

Democrats contributed to the discussion about how to handle Obamacare with a five-hour talkathon on the Senate floor. The evening bull session among Democrats began at 6:45 p.m. on Monday and lasted into the wee hours of Tuesday morning. The Democrats boiled down their message to what The Hill calls “The Pottery Barn” rule: You break it, you buy it. Ironically, this is the same rule that gave Republicans control of Congress after Democrats passed Obamacare in 2010.

“Get real, [Republicans] don't have a clue what to do next," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in The Hill. "Repeal and run. That's the Republican plan.”

Some Republicans agree that they don’t know what to do next. That is the essence of the debate among Republicans. One faction wants to pass a budget resolution to start the repeal and then follow up with a replacement later. The budget reconciliation is the same trick that Democrats used in passing the original Affordable Care Act to avoid a filibuster by Republicans. The resolution contains language that would direct House and Senate committees to write a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare by Jan. 27.

An amendment introduced by Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) would extend the deadline to craft a replacement law until March 3. Corker is joined by Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) in favoring more time to write the new law.

“This amendment will give the incoming administration more time to outline its priorities after its chief healthcare official assumes office and fully reviews the tools currently at his disposal,” Corker told the Washington Examiner. “By extending the deadline for budget reconciliation instructions until March, Congress and the incoming administration will each have additional time to get the policy right.

Republicans all favor a repeal of Obamacare, but they have not agreed on a replacement. The original bill allows only a few weeks to write a complex bill to restructure the health insurance industry. Corker’s amendment would extend that time to a few months.

In either case, Obamacare will probably not go away instantly. MarketWatch reports that Republicans may delay full repeal for two to four years while the replacement law is written and implemented. At the same time, they will also be working on reforming the tax code, another massive undertaking which will be passed by the same budget resolution tactic.

While the budget reconciliation to repeal Obamacare would be passed by a simple majority vote, subsequent bills to replace it would be subject to cloture votes that require 60 votes. This would allow the 48 Senate Democrats to block bills that Republicans try to pass separately from the budget resolution.

Republicans can’t count on the Democrats to pitch in. “I take (Senate Minority Leader Chuck) Schumer at his word that if we just go ahead and repeal, Democrats won't provide one vote for enacting the replacement," Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told CNN. "So I think we need to actually have a game plan.

One sticking point among Republicans is whether Obamacare’s taxes should be repealed immediately. Bloomberg reports that some Republicans, among them Sen. Cassidy and Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas, believe that the Obamacare taxes should be repealed as part of the tax reform.

The problem, according to Cassidy, is that most Republicans have taken a pledge not to raise taxes. If the Obamacare taxes are repealed immediately, “then you’re in a hole” where Republicans politically cannot enact a new healthcare law because they can’t vote to pay for it.

“If we don’t like ’em, we can replace them,” Cassidy said. “But we can do it in a way where you overall are lowering tax rates and making the tax code more efficient. There will be enough there for people to win.”

Other Republicans say that the taxes must go immediately. “Repeal it, get rid of it, every single bit of it, don’t keep any of it,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). “That’s all the taxes, all the mandates, all the things that are in this thing that the American people don’t like and that I think have driven up the cost of medicine, hurt economic growth. I think we’ve got to do what we told voters we were going to do.”

A second problem is defunding Planned Parenthood, which will also be part of the budget reconciliation. Pro-abortion Republicans Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski may not vote for the budget bill if it defunds the abortion provider. The loss of their votes could derail the repeal effort.

Corker told CNN that it “doesn’t seem very intelligent” to repeal the law without knowing what is going to replace it. Rand Paul agreed, “I will do everything in my power to have a vote on it the day we repeal Obamacare.”

Nevertheless, the Republican leadership is still pressing for a quick repeal and eventual replacement. “We're not going to do a comprehensive bill,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.). “We are going to do it in a step-by-step basis” with a series of smaller bills.

The direction that the GOP will take will soon be evident. The Senate plans to vote on the budget reconciliation authorizing the repeal of Obamacare this week. 

Originally published on The Resurgent

How Mentally Ill Esteban Santiago Flew His Gun Across the Country… Legally

After Esteban Santiago murdered five people in the Fort Lauderdale airport last week, the obvious question to emerge is how Santiago managed to get a gun through airport security. The question of Santiago’s weapon is two-fold since there are reports that he had shown signs of mental illness as well as the fact that the shooting occurred in an airport, normally considered to be a gun-free zone.

Santiago, an Iraq War veteran who served with the Puerto Rico National Guard, reportedly visited the FBI office in Anchorage, Alaska and complained, according to an FBI spokesman, “that his mind was being controlled by US intelligence agencies. During the interview, Mr. Santiago appeared agitated, incoherent and made disjointed statements. Although, he stated he did not wish to harm anyone, as a result of his erratic behavior, our [FBI] agents contacted local authorities who took custody of Mr. Santiago and transported him a local medical facility for evaluation.”

The spokesman said that Mr. Santiago, who had lived in Alaska for several years and worked there as a security guard and a member of the Alaska National Guard, was not placed on a no-fly list. “During our initial investigation, we found no ties to terrorism. There is currently no indication that Mr. Santiago was working with other individuals when he planned and carried out yesterday’s attack.”

With respect to Santiago’s mental health, a spokesman noted, “There is a federal law with regard to having a gun by somebody who is mentally ill, but the law requires that the person be ‘adjudicated mentally ill,’ which is a difficult standard. This is not someone who would have been prohibited [from owning or possessing a gun] based on the laws that they had. I think that law enforcement acted within the laws that they had. We’re a country of laws and they operated within them.”

There are laws that prevent the mentally ill from possessing guns, but the right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right and due process must be followed to restrict that right. Federal and Alaska law state that firearms ownership and possession are prohibited if a person has been “adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to a mental institution.” Neither seems to have applied to Santiago, whose gun was returned after a mental health screening in connection with his statements at the FBI office according to the Anchorage Daily News.

“Unless there was some sort of a court order requiring involuntary commitment for mental health treatment, under existing gun control legislation, he could not be deprived of his constitutional right to possess a weapon,” Paul Callan, former New York homicide prosecutor told CNN. “People who submit to voluntary mental health treatment don't lose their right to possess firearms under current US law.”

Health care workers are required to notify authorities if they believe a patient may pose a danger to themselves or others. Privacy laws may conflict with this duty to warn, however. With many mass shootings in recent years, the perpetrators have exhibited signs of mental illness before their shooting sprees. Until a law is broken, such as making a threat, people who are mentally ill and potentially dangerous must voluntarily seek treatment.

Since Santiago was not committed or judged to be mentally ill, he had broken no laws and was free to travel. Esteban placed his weapon in a checked bag for his flight to Florida. NBC News reports that the Glock 9mm pistol was in a gun case that was carried in the baggage compartment of the airliners that flew Esteban from Anchorage to Minneapolis and Fort Lauderdale.

According to TSA rules, guns and ammunition are allowed on airliners if they are placed in a checked bag that is hard-sided and kept locked. Passengers cannot carry guns, ammunition or parts of guns such as magazines or clips in the cabin of the airliner. Ammunition can be placed in the same locked container as the gun.

Esteban would have checked his gun case and declared his firearm when he checked in at the airport. He would then have gone through the TSA security screening and traveled unarmed. Baggage claim areas are outside of the secure area of the airport.

Esteban reported left the secure area of the airport and retrieved his gun case at baggage claim upon arrival in Fort Lauderdale. At that point, he took the gun and ammunition out of the case and killed five people.

At this point, it seems that gun laws were followed in the case of Esteban Santiago. The gun was legal, Santiago owned and possessed it legally and he legally transported it across the country.

The failure in Fort Lauderdale seems to the same failure that contributed to so many shootings in the past few years. Law enforcement and the mental health system failed to identify a troubled individual who was in need of treatment. Perhaps instead of calling for more gun control, we should revisit privacy laws that prevent doctors, employers and law enforcement agencies from sharing information about potential killers. Consideration should also be given to reforming commitment laws so that potentially dangerous people can be given treatment without their consent.

Keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill is not a gun control issue. It is a public safety issue. If mass shootings continue unabated, the left’s outcry for more gun control may lead to sweeping laws like those of New York that restrict all gun ownership, rather than sensible laws that target the real problem.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Trump must fire intelligence chiefs if he doesn't believe them

In the 18 months since Donald Trump entered the presidential campaign, there have been many times when it has been appropriate to ask, “Is he serious?” President-elect Trump’s criticism of the US intelligence community’s assessment on Russian interference in the election is such an occasion.

Since the hacking of the Democratic National Committee was revealed last June, Trump has been one of the few prominent national politicians to deny that Russia was involved. At times, his denials included ridiculing and questioning the motives and integrity of American intelligence professionals.

Is Donald Trump serious? Does Trump really believe that the CIA, the FBI and the entire US intelligence community are either faking the evidence that Russia interfered with the election or that they are too incompetent to know the difference between Russian hackers and “14-year-old” as suggested by Julian Assange and tweeted by Donald Trump?

Does Donald Trump, who will be the commander-in-chief of the US military and all its associated intelligence apparatus in two weeks, really trust Assange, an accused rapist and spy, and Vladimir Putin, an ex-KGB agent, more than the total combined opinion of the 17 agencies that comprise the US intelligence community?

If Trump really believes that the US intelligence community is wrong about Russia’s involvement in the hacking and interference with the election, then he has no choice but to clean house within the intelligence community. It would constitute negligence and carelessness for the commander-in-chief to continue to employ and rely on intelligence advisors that he does not trust.

President Trump will have to work with many of the same people who are currently serving under Obama. Trump has already appointed Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) to succeed John Brennan as CIA director, but James Comey, the director of the FBI, is serving a 10-year term that began in 2013. If Donald Trump has no confidence in Director Comey and his agency to correctly and honestly present an assessment on the DNC hacking, how can he consider him reliable on any other issue?

Either Comey and the other members of the intelligence community are honest and competent or they are not. If they fail either test, then it is the president’s duty to replace them with someone who can be trusted to do the job.

My prediction is that no heads in the intelligence community will roll after Jan. 20. The problem is not with the assessment of Russia’s complicity. The problem is with Mr. Trump’s ability to accept bad news.

“Wired” compiled a list of Mr. Trump’s contradictory statements on Russia and the DNC hacking. The list ranges from Trump blaming the DNC for hacking itself to saying the Russians “probably have her 33,000 emails. I hope they do” in June. Last week, Trump claimed to “know things that other people don’t know” and promised to reveal his information. He never did.

Now, after a briefing by intelligence analysts, Trump has issued a statement that neither questions nor confirms the conclusions of the intelligence community. Trump said, “There was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines.” This is an assumption tied to a straw man. There has been no assessment on the effect of the interference and no allegation that voting machines were tampered with.

“I have tremendous respect for the work and service done by the men and women of this [intelligence] community to our great nation,” Trump says in the statement.

I have to wonder if that respect is mutual.

Originally published on The Resurgent