Obama Used NPR To Launder Lies About Trump And Russia

In the waning days of former President Barack Obama’s term, he sat for an hour-long interview with a media ally and planted the seeds of the Russia collusion hoax used to shackle President Donald Trump’s first term.  

Obama used National Public Radio’s (NPR) Steve Inskeep, a host of Morning Edition, to help spread propaganda about Russia.

At the time, viewers didn’t know they were being duped, but with hindsight, it’s easy to spot an obviously nervous Obama setting the hook for the Russia lie — that Trump worked with Russia to steal the election from Obama’s Democrat choice, Hillary Clinton. That lie that cost the U.S. millions of dollars in investigations, led to a bogus impeachment of Trump, sent some Trump associates to jail.

The Russia hoax is a colossal scandal for which no one has been held accountable. That may change with the recent declassification of documents related to the scandal and the announcement of a grand jury investigation this week by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.

On Dec. 10, 2016, NPR posted a story with an unnamed source claiming “Russia intervened in the 2016 election specifically to help Donald Trump win the presidency.”

We know that is not true. A declassified Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) shows Russian President Vladimir Putin didn’t care who won the election and even had reasons to prefer a Clinton win.

It also shows that on Dec. 6, 2016, Obama directed the CIA, FBI, and NSA “to review their work to date on the Russian influence campaign, And to quickly produce the ICA — to include an unclassified version — for release in early January, according to CIA officers involved in producing the ICA.”

Obama knew all this at the time of his Dec. 15, 2016 NPR interview, meaning he lied during the interview.

“Did the Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee and other targets actually affect the results of the election?” Inskeep asked, referring to the July 2016 revelation of leaked internal DNC emails showing it plotted to destroy Bernie Sanders’ presidential ambitions in favor of Hillary Clinton.

“There’s no doubt that [hacking] contributed to an atmosphere in which the only focus for weeks at a time, months at a time, were Hillary’s emails, the Clinton Foundation, political gossip surrounding the DNC,” Obama said. With scandal dominating the news, Obama complained, important issues were not debated.

Then he named the propaganda press outlets that remain ardent supporters of the Russia narrative. Here Obama told the public which media to trust.

“I’m talking about mainstream news coverage. I’m not talking about a whole separate set of issues around fake news,” Obama said. “I’m talking about what was in The New York Times and The Washington Post and on the nightly news and even on NPR, and it meant that the field where I think Hillary’s shown, the field of substance … and how we’re going to deal with major issues like climate change, that wasn’t the field in which the campaign was ultimately decided on.”

Next Obama hinted that the U.S. was ripe for Russian infiltration, saying campaign insults left the country “vulnerable to foreign viruses …manipulation and demagoguery, and that’s something that I’m also going to be thinking a lot about in my afterlife, my post presidency.”

Inskeep knew just where to take the conversation to make the fake connection between Trump and Russia.

“You observed there are contacts between members of Mr. Trump’s staff and Russian officials,” Inskeep said. “You noted that Trump benefited from the hacks. Your spokesman, Josh Earnest, has gone on to say this week that it’s obvious that Trump knew what was going on. To what extent are you suggesting some kind of cooperation between the president elect and Russian officials here?”

This was brilliant propaganda. The information comes out in the question rather than the answer. This way, Obama got to minimize his role in pushing the Russia collusion lie.

“I’m not suggesting cooperation at all,” Obama said. “Keep in mind that those statements are in the context of everyone now acting surprised by the CIA assessment that this was done purposely to improve Trump’s chances. And my only point was that shouldn’t be there as a blockbuster, because that was the worst kept secret in this town. Everybody understood that.”

Obama claimed that after the hack of the DNC emails and of Clinton’s senior advisor’s emails, the news was consistently negative, hurting Clinton and helping Trump.  

Obama again skillfully denied Trump’s involvement while also pointing a finger at him. And he took Trump’s intention to engage in diplomacy with Russian President Vladimir Putin and turned it into something sinister.

“That doesn’t mean that the Trump campaign was coordinating. It just means that they understood what everybody else understood, which was that this was not good for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. And when you combine that with the fact that [Trump] has been very honest about his admiration for Putin, and that he hopes to forge a more cooperative relationship with him … then my only point was we shouldn’t now suddenly act as if this is a huge revelation,” Obama said.

Obama underscored the concept that Russia was infiltrating U.S. elections.

“It is very important that we do not let the inner family argument between Americans — the domestic political differences between Democrats and Republicans — obscure the need for us to stand together, figure out what it is that the Russians are interested in doing in terms of influencing our democratic process and inoculating ourselves from it.”

The most obvious propaganda came after he left the room. Obama came back in and asked to go back on camera to say one more thing about the CIA.

“I think it is worth noting that when it comes to the motivations of the Russians, that there are still a whole range of assessments taking place among the [intelligence] agencies, and so when I receive a final report, that will  be able to, I think, give us a comprehensive and best guess as to those motivations,” Obama said.

“I think you’re stopping short of endorsing the CIA conclusion that the hack is designed to help Donald Trump, as opposed to some other objective,” Inskeep responded

“I think the point I’m making is, is that right now, what you’ve had are CIA leaks, not an official document,” Obama said, adding that he asked for a report on to be released before Jan. 20 — before Trump’s inauguration — so he could present it to the public. He had it by Dec. 22, and the foundation of that report was the bogus Steele dossier.    

Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.