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Atlantic
a day ago
- Politics
- Atlantic
Trump's Social-Media Habit Is Getting Weirder
Summer weekends in America are good for lots of things: baseball games, cookouts, farmers' markets, sipping a bev next to a lake. Or, if you're President Donald Trump: crashing out on social media in hopes of distracting the nation from nonstop coverage of his long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. Trump is an inveterate poster, known for his erratic style and late-night tirades. But over the weekend, as the world refused to move on from his administration's bizarre handling of the Epstein files —which has led segments of his base to completely melt down —Trump went on a posting spree that was alarming, even by his own standards. On Sunday alone, Trump posted 33 times on Truth Social, sending off 20 posts between 6:46 and 8:53 p.m. eastern. He demanded that the Washington Commanders and Cleveland Guardians revert to their original names (the Redskins and Indians, respectively), and posted an AI-generated video of Barack Obama being arrested in the Oval Office set to the song 'Y.M.C.A.,' by the Village People. Trump also shared a contextless, grainy video that looks like it was scraped from some viral social-media post. It includes no captions and features 25 stitched-together clips, set to music, of people doing wild or dangerous stunts: A woman appears to catch a charging cobra with her bare hands, a man does a forward flip from one moving skateboard to another, various people contort their bodies in strange ways, a dude stands on the footrests of a moving dirt bike. Even some of Trump's die-hard fans on Truth Social seemed caught off guard by the video, struggling to draw a connection between it and Trump's politics. 'Was expecting a video of you at the end!' one top commenter wrote. (A spokesperson for the White House did not answer my questions about why the commander in chief was posting an extreme-sports highlight reel on Sunday night.) The bizarre video was immediately recognizable to me as the type of garbage that clogs the feeds of many people who still use Facebook, a platform that is filled with inscrutable slop posted by spammers and content farmers. By the early 2020s—before generative-AI images took over —Facebook had already transformed into a vast wasteland of low-quality memes, repurposed videos, and strange pages dedicated to clips like 'Shelter Pit Bull Made His Bed Every Day Until a Family Adopted Him.' This type of content fits in a category that I have taken to calling 'soft-brain scrolling.' It falls somewhere between probably harmless and not nutritious; it's mostly low-quality algorithmic arbitrage that helps click farmers make a buck. Your confused relatives seem to love it. That the account belonging to the president of the United States is now posting to the entire world like a Facebook Uncle, though, is a troubling sign. (It's unclear if Trump does all of the direct publishing himself, though The Washington Post reported last month that aides have been surprised by messages posted to his account in the wee hours of the morning. In the past, he would reportedly dictate and edit his own tweets, down to the odd capitalization of specific words.) He's exhibited milder forms of Facebook Uncle syndrome for years now—even in 2016, Trump would retweet white-supremacist accounts, angrily live-tweet Saturday Night Live, and publicly congratulate himself—but the behavior appears to be getting worse. The best analogue for this moment may be Trump's online raging after the January 6, 2021, insurrection. During this period, Trump was temporarily banned from mainstream platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. He launched Truth Social in 2022 and began making and sharing more extreme posts, including hundreds from accounts promoting QAnon conspiracy theories. In one day in 2022, he reportedly posted 50 separate times—in many cases about how the 2020 election was supposedly stolen. The tone this past weekend felt similar, with Trump posting an AI-generated image of officials from the Obama administration and former FBI Director James Comey in orange prison jumpsuits, arrayed in a Brady Bunch– style grid. The center of the image reads 'The Shady Bunch.' Along the same lines, Trump also posted a caps-laden message to his followers last week, demanding that they move on from the Epstein 'Hoax' and calling it 'bullshit' from the 'Lunatic Left.' He is lashing out, on the defensive, and seemingly unable, or at best unwilling, to control his screen time. Trump has always loved to post, obviously, and even the generative-AI stuff isn't new, exactly. Last year, during his presidential campaign, Trump fully embraced the technology as a propaganda tool, posting and reposting images of himself praying, Taylor Swift fans endorsing him en masse (that was before the real Taylor Swift endorsed his opponent), and AI Kamala Harris speaking in front of a hammer and sickle flag. As the Post reported in its article about Trump's social-media use, in the first four and a half months of this term, Trump 'posted to Truth Social over 2,200 times—more than three times the number of tweets he sent in the same period in 2017.' Unlike the material we saw over the weekend, a lot of Trump's posts during that period were clear political statements and directives. During Trump's tariff vacillations, which caused markets to plummet, he posted on Truth Social that Americans should 'BE COOL' and not become 'PANICANS,' an invented term for people who expressed genuine concern that Trump was destroying the economy. (MAGA influencers tried and failed to make that one stick.) Trump also used his account to threaten world leaders. For instance, he lashed out at Colombian President Gustavo Petro over his attempts to block deportation flights. (Petro backed down.) In May, he used the account to admonish Russian President Vladimir Putin, suggesting that 'if it weren't for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia,' and that Putin was 'playing with fire!' His posting in the lead-up to bombing Iran was another example of Trump forcing the world to hang on his every word; eventually, he announced the strike via Truth Social. In all cases, Trump was posting, however maniacally, from a position of power and demonstrating influence. Not so recently. The week that preceded the Truth Social binge on Sunday may very well have been the most frustrating of Trump's second term, not only because the Epstein scandal threatened to tear apart his MAGA coalition, but because Trump could not persuade the usual people to drop the story. As my colleagues Ashley Parker and Jonathan Lemire reported over the weekend, 'the limits of his power over normal allies became evident' as Trump failed to get Rupert Murdoch or The Wall Street Journal 's editor in chief, Emma Tucker, to stop the paper from publishing a story about a lewd 50th-birthday letter that Trump allegedly sent to Epstein. Trump had to deal with frustrations like these during his first term, when he was often checked and handled by career politicians and beset by press leaks from anonymous staffers, and faced constant backlash from the media and Silicon Valley. But Trump's second term has been different. He's surrounded mostly by true believers and sycophants and able to engage somewhat freely in various forms of government dismantling and corruption. Numerous media companies have bowed to Trump or appeared to soften their adversarial stance. At Trump's inauguration, Silicon Valley's most powerful executives stood behind him, offering a tacit show of support for his administration. The vibe had shifted in Trump's favor, and he behaved with impunity. Yet the Epstein case has been a genuine hurdle. Republicans are seemingly desperate to make the story go away, so much so that Speaker Mike Johnson shut the House down early to avoid 'political games' and block any potential votes calling for the release of files pertaining to Epstein. One can tell a lot about how Trump feels about his own power and influence by the way he's posting. There are multiple ways to interpret Trump's weekend posts. The most basic is that Trump's long-standing obsession with AI slop and memes—working in overdrive right now—is a useful propaganda tool. Before he needed a grassroots meme army to provide memes; now polished and bespoke Trump slop is always just a ChatGPT query away, no genuine enthusiasm required. A second reading is to see Trump's affinity for reposting fan art as Executive Cope. Here, the slop is a way for Trump to escape and imagine the world as he'd like it to be. In slop world, Trump is not embattled, getting screamed at by his supporters over what looks to them like a guilty cover-up on behalf of a pedophile. Instead, he's arresting Obama. It's pure fan fiction that depicts Trump having power in a moment when, perhaps, he feels somewhat powerless. A third reading of Trump's Truth Social posts—especially his reposting of strange viral Facebook garbage and angry culture-war stuff railing against 'woke' sports-team names—suggests that these posts aren't part of any kind of strategy or coping mechanism, but examples of a person who is addled and raging at things he feels he has no control over. For years, people have offered anecdotes that Trump behaves online like some isolated, elderly people who have been radicalized by their social-media feeds—in 2017, Stephen Colbert memorably likened Trump to America's first racist grandpa. His recent posting certainly fits this template. And paired with some of Trump's other cognitive stumbles— he seemingly forgot last week that he had appointed Fed Chair Jerome Powell —it all starts to feel more concerning. In this context, Trump's Truth Social page is little more than a rapid-response account that illustrates a world that doesn't actually exist: one in which POTUS looks like a comic-book hero, is universally beloved, and exerts his executive authority to jail or silence anyone who disagrees with him. This sort of revenge fantasy would be sad coming from anyone. That it is coming from the president of the United States, a man obsessed with retribution, who presides over a government that is enthusiastically arresting and jailing immigrants in makeshift camps, is terrifying. All of this points to what my colleague Tom Nichols noted almost exactly one year ago, when Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination: The president 'is emotionally unwell.' In describing Trump's speech that night, Nichols said that his long, often pointless digressions 'were the ramblings of a man who has serious psychological problems. All of it was on display last night: rage, paranoia, pettiness, desolating selfishness.' The same explanation could be applied perfectly to Trump's Truth Social posts over the weekend. Trump called for Senator Adam Schiff to be prosecuted. He appeared pathologically aggrieved—spending part of his Saturday night posting a detailed infographic intended to debunk the supposed 'Russia hoax' from an election that happened almost nine years ago. (Propaganda experts say this is an attempt by Trump and his administration to rewrite history.) He posted a fake mug shot of Obama. And, on Sunday morning, he pecked out a 103-word message congratulating himself on his first six months in office. Rage, paranoia, pettiness, and desolating selfishness: Trump appears consumed more and more by an online world that offers him the chance to live out the fantasy of the unilateral power and adulation that he craves. Talking about Trump and social media is complicated because, unlike most users, Trump can post ridiculous things, transform news cycles, and force the world to react to his posts. But lately, his posts are not having the desired effect. It's possible that what observers witnessed this weekend is a tipping point of sorts. Trump's posts, instead of influencing reality, suggest that the president is retreating from it entirely.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump posts fake video of Obama getting arrested
President Trump posted a fake video to Truth Social on Sunday night showing former President Obama being arrested in the Oval Office with the song 'Y.M.C.A.' playing in the background. The video of Obama, which seemed to originate from TikTok before being reposted by the president, appears to be generated by artificial intelligence (AI). It was preceded by a 30-second compilation of real clips from Democratic officials saying the phrase, 'No one is above the law.' In the video, Trump is seen sitting across from his first-term predecessor, grinning as Obama is led away by FBI agents. The Village People song 'Y.M.C.A.' is often played at Trump's campaign rallies. Obama's office declined to comment. The video follows allegations from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard that Obama officials 'manufactured intelligence' that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election. Gabbard said last week in a memo that she was turning over evidence to the Justice Department for possible criminal referrals. Democrats have panned Gabbard's assessment as politically motivated. Trump's video repost comes as the president has attempted to redirect focus from controversy around convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a debate that has roiled conspiracy theorists and split his base. The president often reposts AI-generated or manipulated videos to his Truth Social account. His recent post about Obama appears to draw on a meeting the two men had in the Oval Office in November 2016, The New York Times reported. During his first campaign, Trump famously led calls to jail Hillary Clinton with the chant 'lock her up.' The refrain was thought at the time to be an unusually strident attack on an opponent. Updated at 1:31 p.m. EDT Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Boston Globe
3 days ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Trump posts fake video showing Obama arrest
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The fake video purports to show FBI agents bursting into the meeting, pushing Obama into a kneeling position and putting him in handcuffs as Trump looks on smiling, while the song 'Y.M.C.A.' by the Village People plays. Later, the fake video shows Obama in an orange jumpsuit pacing in a cell. The start of the video shows a compilation of actual footage of Democratic leaders, including Obama and former President Joe Biden, saying, 'no one is above the law.' Advertisement Obama's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the video. Trump regularly reposts AI-generated or mocked-up videos and photographs on his Truth Social account. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said last week that the latest report released by her offices showed a 'treasonous conspiracy in 2016' by top Obama administration officials to harm Trump. She said she would make a criminal referral to the FBI based on recently released documents. Advertisement A link to real video footage from an interview that Gabbard gave to Fox News on Sunday on the subject was also posted to Trump's social media. Democrats have denounced the administration's effort to discredit Obama as politically motivated and riddled with errors, and contradicting previous reviews of the assessment. The latest document, issued last week, did not show Russian manipulation of the election, and instead reinforced the view of intelligence officials who found no evidence that Russia hacked voting systems to change votes. Democrats have cited reports by intelligence agencies and Senate investigators who found that, while Russian hackers probed election systems to see if they could change vote outcomes and extracted voter registration data in at least two states, there was no evidence that they attempted to change votes. The Obama administration's assessment also did not say that Russian hackers manipulated votes. Trump has been trying to change the conversation among his supporters, after the Justice Department walked back its promise to release the full collection of files about Epstein, a multimillionaire financier and convicted sex offender who died in prison in 2019. That decision angered some of the president's most ardent supporters. Some have questioned Trump's judgment on the matter, causing strife within the MAGA movement that powered Trump to two presidential election victories. This article originally appeared in .
Time Magazine
3 days ago
- Politics
- Time Magazine
Trump Envisions Jailing Obama as Tulsi Gabbard Threatens Prosecutions
Donald Trump, who openly campaigned in 2016 against Hillary Clinton on chants of ' lock her up ' but was ultimately persuaded to not pursue her prosecution, now appears to be fantasizing about throwing his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, in jail. And his Administration is actively taking steps in that direction. The current President shared on his Truth Social platform on Sunday a video from TikTok user @neo8171 that starts with a montage of Democratic politicians, including Obama, saying, 'No one is above the law,' to the tune of Luciano Michelini's 'Frolic' (made famous as the theme song of sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm). After about 40 seconds, the soundtrack changes to the Village People's 'Y.M.C.A.,' as apparently AI-generated video depicts Trump and Obama sitting in the Oval Office and FBI officers handcuffing Obama while Trump smiles and laughs. It ends with an AI-generated depiction of Obama pacing around a jail cell. Trump also shared an AI-generated image attributed to X user @sirtemplemount that showed fake mugshots of Obama and officials from his Administration with the words 'The Shady Bunch.' And the President shared a screenshot from X of user @Real_JaredMarsh, who responded to a clip of Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R, Fla.) saying on Fox News that 'there needs to be criminal prosecution and arrests.' Marsh posted, 'I agree with @RepLuna!' alongside an image of men being arrested outside the U.S. Capitol with the words 'Unless this happens, nothing will change' overlaid on the image. Trump's posts come after his Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democrat turned MAGA Republican, on Friday announced that she was turning over evidence of an 'Obama Administration Conspiracy to Subvert Trump's 2016 Victory and Presidency' to the Department of Justice 'for criminal referral.' 'President Obama and his national security cabinet members manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump,' she alleged in a DNI press release. What Tulsi Gabbard claims about Obama officials Gabbard's office declassified a number of documents and released a memo outlining a timeline of alleged information 'manipulated and withheld' by the U.S. Intelligence Community beginning in 2016. In a series of social media posts summarizing her findings, she said the documents 'detail a treasonous conspiracy by officials at the highest levels of the Obama White House to subvert the will of the American people and try to usurp the President from fulfilling his mandate.' The announcement backs Trump's longtime contention that he was the victim of a ' witch hunt,' which the President has previously dubbed the 'Russiagate hoax.' Gabbard's announcement comes after Fox News reported earlier this month that the FBI is investigating its former director James Comey as well as former CIA director John Brennan for possible false statements to Congress after current CIA director John Ratcliffe released a review in June that was critical of a 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment that claimed Russia attempted to influence the 2016 election to help Trump. Intelligence agencies in 2017 had assessed that 'Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.' Gabbard alleges that Obama Administration officials leaked false statements to media outlets and manufactured information for the 2017 assessment. Gabbard's office asserts that there was 'no indication of a Russian threat to directly manipulate the actual vote count,' though the earlier assessment never suggested that. Gabbard's report is based on newly-declassified intelligence assessments and internal communications prior to the 2016 election that assessed that Russia and other foreign adversaries would 'probably not' try to influence the election through cyber means, as well as emails concerning an intelligence assessment at Obama's request after Trump's victory in November 2016 into 'tools Moscow used and actions it took to influence the 2016 election.' The Obama Administration openly accused Russia of trying to influence the election through hacking campaigns, including of the DNC, in October 2016, and it was publicly reported in early 2017 that Obama Administration officials had scrambled to preserve evidence related to the then-ongoing probe of Russian interference and potential coordination with Trump and his associates. 'This was politicized intelligence that was used as the basis for countless smears seeking to delegitimize President Trump's victory, the years-long Mueller investigation, two Congressional impeachments, high level officials being investigated, arrested, and thrown in jail, heightened US-Russia tensions, and more,' Gabbard's office said. 'It's worse than even politicization of intelligence. It was manufactured intelligence that sought to achieve President Obama and his team's objective, which was undermining President Trump's presidency and subverting the will of the American people. So, yes, next week we will be releasing more detailed information about how this took place and the extent to which this information was sought to be hidden,' Gabbard told Fox News on Sunday, in a clip that was also shared by Trump. 'For the American people to have any sense of trust in the integrity of our democratic republic, accountability, action, prosecution, indictments for those who were responsible for trying to steal our democracy is essential for us to make sure that this never happens to our country again.' How Republicans have reacted Fox News called Gabbard's announcement 'a potential blockbuster scandal,' and Trump shared the clip alongside the latter two words in all caps. A number of Trump allies have also supported Gabbard's declassifications and call for prosecutions. 'This is potentially Watergate-esque,' Rep. Pat Fallon (R, Texas) told the right-leaning news network over the weekend. 'Makes Watergate look like amateur hour,' Rep. Pat Harrigan (R, N.C.) posted on X. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt boosted Gabbard's posts on X, writing 'Every American should read this.' White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller said in a post on X that Gabbard 'exposed the startling depths of a seditious coup against the Republic. The forces behind this coup have done and will do anything to protect their grasp on illegal & illegitimate power. Do not underestimate their capabilities or depravities. But WE are stronger.' 'These tyrants are finally being called out for what they've done,' Sen. Mike Lee (R, Utah) posted on X. 'The Russiagate hoax was a far more effective attack on our republic & our elections than any foreign adversary could have managed. Those who sold this lie to the American people became the very same villains they invented,' he added from his official account. 'The corruption runs deep in the Swamp. Thank goodness we have a President and administration committed to truth and accountability,' posted Rep. Troy Nehls (R, Texas). 'EVERYONE involved must be held to account,' Rep. Andy Biggs (R, Ariz.) posted. Added Rep. Greg Steube (R, Fla.): 'This is only the beginning. Much more will be revealed.' How Democrats have reacted Democrats have criticized the report as misleading and politically motivated. Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called the report 'baseless' and an attempt to rehash 'decade-old false claims about the Obama Administration.' 'Few episodes in our nation's history have been investigated as thoroughly as the Intelligence Community's warning in 2016 that Russia was interfering in the election,' Himes said in a statement. 'Every legitimate investigation, including the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee investigation, found no evidence of politicization and endorsed the findings of the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment.' Himes referred to a Republican-led Senate report in 2020 that agreed with the 2017 findings of Russian influence. That report was backed by now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio and found 'no evidence' of collusion between Trump and the Russian government in the 2016 election but did find 'irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling.' There have been several other reviews since 2017 that also backed the assessment. Even the CIA report last month that criticized the 2017 assessment as rushed and potentially biased did not dispute the assessment's conclusion that Russia favored Trump in the 2016 election. Himes also seemed to suggest that the report is an effort to distract from controversy rocking the Trump Administration surrounding Trump's links to convicted sex offender and alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. 'It's a day that ends with 'y' and Donald Trump desperately wants to change the subject,' Himes said in his statement. Himes told CBS News that he doubted any charges against Obama Administration officials would actually come, saying: 'They won't, because there's not a judge in the land—not a single judge—who will treat this with anything other than laughter that will be heard from the Atlantic to the Pacific.' Himes related the outrage Republicans are now ginning up among their supporters over alleged 'treason' to the conspiracy theories Republicans had previously fanned about Epstein before Trump and his Administration told them the case was closed and to move on. 'This is Epstein all over again.' Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Community, told the New York Times: 'This is one more example of the Director of National Intelligence trying to cook the books.' He added that a March Intelligence Community report 'acknowledged that Russia's effort to meddle goes on. That was an assessment under [Gabbard's] watch.' 'Moscow probably believes information operations efforts to influence U.S. elections are advantageous, regardless of whether they affect election outcomes, because reinforcing doubt in the integrity of the U.S. electoral system achieves one of its core objectives,' the annual threat assessment had said. 'It is sadly not surprising that DNI Gabbard, who promised to depoliticize the intelligence community,' Warner said in a statement, 'is once again weaponizing her position to amplify the President's election conspiracy theories.'
Time Magazine
3 days ago
- Politics
- Time Magazine
Trump Envisions Jailing Obama
Donald Trump, who openly campaigned in 2016 against Hillary Clinton on chants of 'lock her up' but was ultimately persuaded not to pursue her prosecution, now appears to be fantasizing about throwing his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, in jail. And his Administration is actively taking steps in that direction. The current President shared on his Truth Social platform on Sunday a video from TikTok user @neo8171 that starts with a montage of Democratic politicians, including Obama, saying, 'No one is above the law,' to the tune of Luciano Michelini's 'Frolic' (made famous as the theme song of sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm). After about 40 seconds, the soundtrack changes to the Village People's 'Y.M.C.A.,' as apparently AI-generated video depicts Trump and Obama sitting in the Oval Office, and Federal Bureau of Investigations officers handcuffing Obama while Trump laughs. It ends with an AI-generated depiction of Obama pacing around a jail cell. Trump also shared an AI-generated image attributed to X user @sirtemplemount that showed fake mugshots of Obama and officials from his Administration with the words 'The Shady Bunch.' And the President shared a screenshot from X of user @Real_JaredMarsh, who responded to a clip of Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R, Fla.) saying on Fox News that 'there needs to be criminal prosecution and arrests.' Marsh posted, 'I agree with @RepLuna!' alongside an image of men being arrested outside the U.S. Capitol with the words 'Unless this happens, nothing will change' overlaid on the image. Trump's posts come after his Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democrat turned MAGA Republican, on Friday announced that she was turning over evidence of an 'Obama Administration Conspiracy to Subvert Trump's 2016 Victory and Presidency' to the Department of Justice 'for criminal referral.' 'President Obama and his national security cabinet members manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump,' she alleged in a DNI press release. What Tulsi Gabbard claims about Obama officials Gabbard's office declassified a number of documents and released a memo outlining a timeline of alleged information 'manipulated and withheld' by the U.S. Intelligence Community beginning in 2016. In a series of social media posts summarizing her findings, she said the documents 'detail a treasonous conspiracy by officials at the highest levels of the Obama White House to subvert the will of the American people and try to usurp the President from fulfilling his mandate.' The announcement backs Trump's longtime contention that he was the victim of a 'witch hunt,' which the President has previously dubbed the 'Russiagate hoax.' Gabbard's announcement comes after Fox News reported earlier this month that the FBI is investigating its former director James Comey as well as former CIA director John Brennan for possible false statements to Congress after current CIA director John Ratcliffe released a review in June that was critical of a 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment that claimed Russia attempted to influence the 2016 election to help Trump. Intelligence agencies in 2017 had assessed that 'Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.' Gabbard alleges that Obama Administration officials leaked false statements to media outlets and manufactured information for the 2017 assessment. Gabbard's office asserts that there was 'no indication of a Russian threat to directly manipulate the actual vote count,' though the earlier assessment never suggested that. Gabbard's report is based on newly-declassified intelligence assessments and internal communications prior to the 2016 election that assessed that Russia and other foreign adversaries would 'probably not' try to influence the election through cyber means, as well as emails concerning an intelligence assessment at Obama's request after Trump's victory in November 2016 into 'tools Moscow used and actions it took to influence the 2016 election.' The Obama Administration openly accused Russia of trying to influence the election through hacking campaigns, including of the DNC, in October 2016, and it was publicly reported in early 2017 that Obama Administration officials had scrambled to preserve evidence related to the then-ongoing probe of Russian interference and potential coordination with Trump and his associates. 'This was politicized intelligence that was used as the basis for countless smears seeking to delegitimize President Trump's victory, the years-long Mueller investigation, two Congressional impeachments, high level officials being investigated, arrested, and thrown in jail, heightened US-Russia tensions, and more,' Gabbard's office said. 'It's worse than even politicization of intelligence. It was manufactured intelligence that sought to achieve President Obama and his team's objective, which was undermining President Trump's presidency and subverting the will of the American people. So, yes, next week we will be releasing more detailed information about how this took place and the extent to which this information was sought to be hidden,' Gabbard told Fox News on Sunday, in a clip that was also shared by Trump. 'For the American people to have any sense of trust in the integrity of our democratic republic, accountability, action, prosecution, indictments for those who were responsible for trying to steal our democracy is essential for us to make sure that this never happens to our country again.' How Republicans have reacted Fox News called Gabbard's announcement 'a potential blockbuster scandal,' and Trump shared the clip alongside the latter two words in all caps. A number of Trump allies have also supported Gabbard's declassifications and call for prosecutions. 'This is potentially Watergate-esque,' Rep. Pat Fallon (R, Texas) told the right-leaning news network over the weekend. 'Makes Watergate look like amateur hour,' Rep. Pat Harrigan (R, N.C.) posted on X. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt boosted Gabbard's posts on X, writing 'Every American should read this.' White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller said in a post on X that Gabbard 'exposed the startling depths of a seditious coup against the Republic. The forces behind this coup have done and will do anything to protect their grasp on illegal & illegitimate power. Do not underestimate their capabilities or depravities. But WE are stronger.' 'These tyrants are finally being called out for what they've done,' Sen. Mike Lee (R, Utah) posted on X. 'The Russiagate hoax was a far more effective attack on our republic & our elections than any foreign adversary could have managed. Those who sold this lie to the American people became the very same villains they invented,' he added from his official account. 'The corruption runs deep in the Swamp. Thank goodness we have a President and administration committed to truth and accountability,' posted Rep. Troy Nehls (R, Texas). 'EVERYONE involved must be held to account,' Rep. Andy Biggs (R, Ariz.) posted. Added Rep. Greg Steube (R, Fla.): 'This is only the beginning. Much more will be revealed.' How Democrats have reacted Democrats have criticized the report as misleading and politically motivated. Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called the report 'baseless' and an attempt to rehash 'decade-old false claims about the Obama Administration.' 'Few episodes in our nation's history have been investigated as thoroughly as the Intelligence Community's warning in 2016 that Russia was interfering in the election,' Himes said in a statement. 'Every legitimate investigation, including the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee investigation, found no evidence of politicization and endorsed the findings of the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment.' Himes referred to a Republican-led Senate report in 2020 that agreed with the 2017 findings of Russian influence. That report was backed by now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio and found 'no evidence' of collusion between Trump and the Russian government in the 2016 election but did find 'irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling.' There have been several other reviews since 2017 that also backed the assessment. Even the CIA report last month that criticized the 2017 assessment as rushed and potentially biased did not dispute the assessment's conclusion that Russia favored Trump in the 2016 election. Himes also seemed to suggest that the report is an effort to distract from controversy rocking the Trump Administration surrounding Trump's links to convicted sex offender and alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. 'It's a day that ends with 'y' and Donald Trump desperately wants to change the subject,' Himes said in his statement. Himes told CBS News that he doubted any charges against Obama Administration officials would actually come, saying: 'They won't, because there's not a judge in the land—not a single judge—who will treat this with anything other than laughter that will be heard from the Atlantic to the Pacific.' Himes related the outrage Republicans are now ginning up among their supporters over alleged 'treason' to the conspiracy theories Republicans had previously fanned about Epstein before Trump and his Administration told them the case was closed and to move on. 'This is Epstein all over again.' Read More: Why Trump Can't Put Out the Epstein Fire He Helped Ignite Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Community, told the New York Times: 'This is one more example of the Director of National Intelligence trying to cook the books.' He added that a March Intelligence Community report 'acknowledged that Russia's effort to meddle goes on. That was an assessment under [Gabbard's] watch.' 'Moscow probably believes information operations efforts to influence U.S. elections are advantageous, regardless of whether they affect election outcomes, because reinforcing doubt in the integrity of the U.S. electoral system achieves one of its core objectives,' the annual threat assessment had said. 'It is sadly not surprising that DNI Gabbard, who promised to depoliticize the intelligence community,' Warner said in a statement, 'is once again weaponizing her position to amplify the President's election conspiracy theories.'
