Good Books!

Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House, by Donna Brazile

I just completed,  Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-Ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House by Donna Brazile as I am watching, mouth agape, the replay of the “Summit in Helsinki”  that took place just a day ago.  Ms. Brazile, a political strategist and commentator, worked on a number of Democratic campaigns and as an aide to Al Gore during his ill-fated 2000 presidential bid.  Her new memoir is a blow by blow account of events that occurred following her reluctant ascension to become the DNC (Democratic National Committee) interim chair in the spring of 2016.  The  DNC was in free-fall following the WikiLeaks e-mail hacks implicating unfair influence by then-chair,  Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (FL) for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Saunders preceding the primaries, and Wasserman-Schultz’s hasty resignation subsequently.  Brazile begins to learn (in real time) how compromised the DNC’s technology is and with help from “patriots techies”  discovers that the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence unit are behind the hacks.  Her relationship with Clinton, Clinton’s campaign personnel as well as the DNC is rocky and in reading this account, I am again reminded how dirty all politics seems to be.  Having said that, there is no doubt in my mind that the election of 2016 was manipulated by Russian forces and with the help of insiders here, the stolen e-mails were weaponized so the dumped information would have maximum deleterious effect for the Democratic candidate.  Ironically, two days ago, Brazile, Chris Christie and Steve Inskeep (NPR) were participating in a round-table discussion on one of the Sunday morning political talk shows denouncing Trump’s recent assertion that the DNC was responsible for its ability to be infiltrated and should be ashamed.  In the end, I suppose Brazile, although marginalized and seeming still angry, feels mildly vindicated by the recent indictment presented by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein this past Friday implicating GRU hackers.  However, like many of the rest of us including politicians on both sides of the aisle, she can’t help but be stunned by the denial of indisputable facts by the President of the United States.  This was a very interesting, revealing and certainly timely read.