Former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said Tuesday that if President Donald Trump wins reelection, his second term “will be Moscow’s for the taking.”
The comments came after MSNBC anchor Nicole Wallace asked “with the finding that there was this elaborate and intricate web of connections and contacts between Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016 and Russia … how do we try to protect the country’s national security knowing it’s underway?”
Plouffe said he thinks “the Russia story should make Democrats redouble their efforts and vigilance and understand we’re up against a lot here: Voting in a pandemic, Postal Service delays, a lot of confusion, disinformation, the Russians doing everything they can to have their asset remain in the oval office,” he said.
“So whether its front and center, I don’t know, but I think it should give us all motivation because who knows what a second term will be like,” he said, before adding, “I think we do know — it will be Moscow’s for the taking.”
Wallace then replied, “We will all learn to speak Russian.”
MSNBC still hyping Russia collusion:
“There was this elaborate and intricate web of connections … between Trump’s campaign in 2016 and Russia”
“ [His] second term would be Moscow’s for the taking.”
“We will all learn to speak Russian” pic.twitter.com/ANZSzmENvT
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) August 18, 2020
The Senate Intelligence Committee released the fifth and final volume of its report on the Russia investigation on Tuesday, in which it found that Russia “took advantage” of the Trump team’s “relative inexperience in government, opposition to Obama administration policies, and Trump’s desire to deepen ties with Russia to pursue unofficial channels through which Russia could conduct diplomacy.” However, the report concludes that the Trump-campaign did not “collude” with Russian operatives to win the 2016 election. The committee also found that the FBI gave too much “credence” to the unverified Steele dossier, which was used to obtain a warrant to surveil Trump’s then-national security adviser Carter Page.
Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), a member of the committee, said that the U.S. should now move to focus on future threats to the country.
Plouffe also looked ahead to next week’s Republican National Convention, calling it “far more important” than the Democratic National Convention and questioning if it will be “a series of grievances and insults and white power hours” or if President Trump will “try and make a compelling argument for a second term.”