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Trump spokesman won’t even try to defend Trump’s latest false tweet

It’s simply not the case that Russian hacking has only become a topic of concern since the election.

Jason Miller, a senior adviser to President-elect Donald Trump looks out from the elevator at Trump Tower, Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2016 in New York. CREDIT: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Jason Miller, a senior adviser to President-elect Donald Trump looks out from the elevator at Trump Tower, Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2016 in New York. CREDIT: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

President-elect Donald Trump obviously has good reason to try and downplay the broad consensus of the intelligence community that Russia used cyberattacks to help him prevail over Hillary Clinton.

But in recent days, Trump has taken to Twitter and used false claims to push the notion that intelligence about Russian hacking has only become a talking point after the election for liberals who want to discredit his expected victory in the Electoral College.

The latest such attempt came Thursday morning when Trump suggested “the White House” didn’t raise concerns about potential Russian interference in the election until after Clinton was defeated.

His claim, however, is false. In October, James Clapper, President Obama’s director of national intelligence, along with Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, issued an unusual joint statement stating that “the U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of emails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations.” The statement was significant news at the time, despite what Trump now says.

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Clinton even discussed Clapper and Johnson’s findings during the final presidential debate, but Trump dismissed her concerns — echoing comments he made during the first debate about how “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds” might actually be the culprit responsible for hacks of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, not Russia.

Since the election, news emerged that the CIA concluded Russian hackers were actually trying to manipulate the election result in Trump’s favor, not just sow chaos. But the intelligence community was pointing the finger at Russian hackers at least a month before Election Day.

Trump knows this, but is spreading disinformation among his more than 17 million Twitter followers anyway. Even Trump spokesman Jason Miller — the same former Ted Cruz staffer who was in the habit of referring to Trump as #SleazyDonald before he started working for Trump in June — can’t defend it.

Trump’s latest false tweet comes about 72 hours after he offered up another doozy.

His question is debunked by his own Twitter account — Trump himself tweeted about Russian hacking in July — and by his most recent news conference, during which he brazenly encouraged Russian hackers to “find” tens of thousands of emails deleted from Hillary Clinton’s server, adding that media coverage would result in the hackers being “rewarded mightily by our press.”