Transcription
Donald Trump spent last night trying to convince the country that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and then he directed Americans to the White House website and said, "We're putting out the documents." And he accidentally put out a document confirming that Vladimir Putin's Russian government tried to help him win. This is one of the most spectacular self-owns of Trump's six or really 10-year election denial campaign.
During his speech, as I told you earlier, Trump announced the release of newly declassified intelligence documents. "They are going to prove my claims about foreign interference and corruption in 2020 to help Joe Biden and to hurt me." And Trump focused largely on China. And he said to viewers, "Go and read the documents yourself."
I don't know if anybody on Trump's team followed that advice and looked at the documents before they posted them, because inside a National Intelligence Council assessment from August of 2020 is a crystal clear description of what Russia was doing. The assessment says Vladimir Putin and senior Russian officials oversaw an operation involving proxies who were spreading allegations against Joe Biden, against Ukrainian politicians, against Burisma.
And then we get to maybe the most devastating part. The document says that all of these Russian proxies were planning to intensify their operation as the election approached with the goal of engineering a corruption scandal against Biden and the Democratic Party right at the peak of their campaign. Now, ultimately, you you you remember, uh, that Joe Biden won anyway, but their aim, according to the documents Trump released, was to ensure Trump wins and Biden loses.
Think about this. Trump holds a national address. He's going to expose foreign interference that was meant to harm Trump and did harm Trump. He puts out the documents, and the documents say Russia was trying to help Trump. You couldn't script this any better.
And a lot of the names in these documents are very important. One is Andriy Derkach. The Trump administration's own Treasury Department sanctioned him in September of 2020. Trump's Treasury described Derkach as an active Russian agent maintaining close ties to Russian intel for a decade. And Treasury says that Derkach was running an influence campaign covert, built around unsubstantiated allegations about American officials. He promoted doctored recordings meant to damage not Trump, but meant to damage Joe Biden. Konstantin Kilimnik, the Treasury Department identified him as a Russian intelligence agent involved in election influence. And he was working to hurt Joe Biden.
This assessment is not a Democratic campaign document. The US intelligence community during Trump's presidency made these determinations. Derkach was sanctioned by Trump's administration. And now Trump has ordered, uh, has ordered the underlying assessment released.
Now, to be clear, the document doesn't say Russian activity succeeded at changing vote totals or anything like that. Trump lost in 2020, and whatever influence campaign there was didn't succeed. But it establishes that the attempted foreign interference was from Russia to hurt Biden and help Trump.
There's also a big rhetorical trick that is exposed here. Trump takes evidence of foreign influence efforts and cybersecurity vulnerabilities, stolen voter data, and he presents it as proof that votes were actually changed. These are different claims. There may be an active attempt from a foreign party to manipulate public opinion. That's very real. And, and listen, we do that in other countries as well. What Trump always implies is that the 2020 election was stolen through fraudulent votes. They have still presented zero evidence of that, but more importantly, even the influence campaigns were aimed at helping Trump, not at helping Joe Biden.
So, this is remarkable stuff and the opposite of the narrative that Trump has been pushing for 6 years. We really can't understate the stupidity and irony of this. Trump spent 6 years saying, "We've got the evidence. It's going to be released. They were all trying to help Biden." And the only little bits and pieces that Trump publishes show they were trying to help Trump, not Biden.
I hope people are doing what Trump suggested last night, which is go and read the evidence. He wanted the evidence to prove that sinister foreign forces robbed him of the election, but they were trying to put him back in the White House. He says, "You all in America should look at the documents." And we did, and they published stuff that hurts their own cause. You couldn't script a stupider administration. And we need to do something to get beyond this ridiculous narrative. Biden simply won. Trump simply lost.
And then, you know what? Trump came back and won in 2024. And we see it. We see it in that we're in a new war. We see it in that everything is more expensive. We see it in that job creation has declined. He won in 2024. He lost in 2020. It's that simple.
Shopping for a mattress is one of those things that most people put off. Once you finally decide, "We're going to do it," you just start guessing, which is why our sponsor Helix Sleep is such a great way to go. I've been sleeping on a Helix mattress for years at this point. You go to the Helix website, you take a short little sleep quiz, answer a few questions about your body, how do you sleep, what kind of feel do you like, what are you looking for, and they will match you with a model that is built around your preferences, and that's it. It just simplifies mattress shopping. The thing I most like about my Helix mattress is that the whole process was very straightforward. I just answered a few questions, they matched me with a mattress that is what I wanted, and I've had it for years. It's in perfect condition. I'm far from needing to replace it. Go to helixsleep.com/packman for 27% off site-wide, a discount they're only offering to my audience. The link is in the description.