In response to reports by the CIA and ever other U.S. military and civilian intelligence agency Russians were responsible for hacking the email accounts of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, the Trump transition team released the following statement on December 9.

These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.  The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history.  It’s now time to move on and “Make America Great Again.”

To understand the mindset the president-elect and his minions bring to the oval office, all you have to do is analyze these three sentences.

First, referring to the entire U.S. intelligence community as those “same people” should be cause for alarm.  This statement suggests Trump and his national security team did not learn the major lesson from the disastrous invasion of Iraq.  THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INTELLIGENCE AND THE INTERPRETATION OF INTELLIGENCE.  And a predisposition of how to use intelligence influences the interpretation.

Consider the following.  In 2002, Vice President Cheney sought clarification of an intelligence report which referred to a possible agreement between Niger and Iraq involving the sale of yellowcake uranium.  Yellowcake is a concentrated uranium ore which is an intermediate step in the enrichment of other uranium ores which may be used for nuclear power generation or weapons.   The CIA asked Joseph Wilson who had served as George H. W. Bush’s ambassador to Gabon, Sao Tome and Principe, based on his African network, to check out the assessment.  Wilson was unable to obtain a copy of the supposed agreement and found no evidence of a transfer of yellowcake from Niger to Iraq.  He reported his findings to the U.S. ambassador to Niger and her staff who passed the information along to the CIA.

Wilson’s professional assessment was ignored and President George W. Bush used the unproven sale of yellowcake to the Hussein regime as partial justification for Congressional support of a military response, if needed.  Keep in mind, the Bush administration did not merely ignore Wilson’s report.  His wife Valerie Plame was outed by journalist Robert Novak as a covert CIA officer.  Although no direct link between the Bush administration and Novak was proven, Cheney adviser Scooter Libby was convicted and sentenced to prison for lying to investigators about the security breach associated with Plame’s outing.

So it wasn’t the “same people.”  Maybe it was a typo.  Maybe they meant “some people.” Like then CIA director George Tenet, who assured President Bush on December 12, 2002 the case for WMDs was a “slam dunk.” (Source: Bob Woodward in Plan of Attack)  As we know, the cost of misinterpreting intelligence can be devastating.  One can only imagine the consequences of totally denying intelligence.

Second, the Trump team’s view that 30 days equals “a long time ago” confirms Art of the Deal ghostwriter Tony Schwartz’ assessment, “He has no attention span.”  What are the implications for an administration in which the chief executive is easily bored.  Does he turn to his National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, someone who has ironically mishandled classified information and spread conspiracy theories,  and says, “Just take care of it, Mike.”  What could possibly go wrong.

Third, in the same sentence the Trump team claims a victory of historical proportions.  I would chalk this up to supporter hyperbole except the president-elect has repeated this well-documented falsehood during his “thank you tour.”  To correct the record, “out of 58 presidential elections, the winner has received more electoral votes in 37 contests.”  (Source: NPR Fact Checker)  In Trump World, facts do not matter, even on the most inconsequential matters.

Finally, “Make America Great Again” includes the clarion call of “America First.”  Forget the latter phrase was the rallying cry of U.S. politicians, businessmen and citizens who supported neutrality in response to the German invasion of other European countries at the beginning of World War II. One of the tenets of the America First Committee charter was, “American democracy can be preserved only by keeping out of the European war.”  Isolationism was the order of the day.

During the 2016 campaign, “America First” was also a response to what candidate Trump claimed were efforts by the Clintons to create a new world order which threatened U.S. sovereignty.  As we now know, “America First” depends on who benefits.  Candidate Trump could not wait to get to the bottom of speculation “Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors. (Trump, October 13, 2016, West Palm Beach, FL)”  In contrast, to quote Trump’s latest pawn Al Gore, documentation of Russian cyber attacks on U.S. sovereignty is “an inconvenient truth.”

We were told not to worry.  The campaign was all show.  On the Thursday following the election, Trump told Today Show viewers, “I will be so presidential, you will be so bored.”

That was 35 days ago,  In Trump-speak, that’s what the transition team means when they say it was “a long time ago.”

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP