Kushner Dismisses Mueller Report Findings on Russia, Says Hacking Was ‘Just a Few Facebook Ads’
Presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner has publicly weighed in on the Russian social media influence campaign to help Donald Trump win the 2016 election. His verdict: it was no big deal.
More specifically, Kushner told Time White House correspondent Brian Bennett at the Time 100 Summit on Tuesday, the Russian attack documented so thoroughly in the Mueller report amounted to nothing more than “a few Facebook ads.”
Kushner seemed much more interested in pursuing the line that his father-in-law and all of Trump’s defenders have pushed for over two years: the 2016 election result came about because of the awesomeness of their campaign, and mostly the awesomeness of Donald Trump.
“We built a very entrepreneurial campaign and we made a lot of very good decisions along the way, which is what enabled us to be successful,” Kushner told Bennett.
“The whole thing’s just a big distraction for the country,” Kushner went on. “You look at what Russia did, buying some Facebook ads to try to sow dissent, it’s a terrible thing. But I think the investigations and all the speculation that’s happened for the last two years has had a much harsher impact on our democracy than a couple of Facebook ads.”
It is clear at this point that Jared Kushner has not read a single page of the Mueller report, which made it clear that Russia’s efforts involved much, much more than just buying a few Facebook ads.
Bennett then made the point that Russia’s efforts were significantly more extensive than what Kushner claimed. It was not just “a few Facebook ads,” but a sustained campaign of coordinating events to support Trump and stealing and releasing Democratic emails to try and damage Hillary Clinton and her party:
Kushner brushed this off to brag about the campaign’s data operation, then pivoted to talking about having “a great candidate whose message resonated with America…I personally think that what happened is that all these people thought Trump was going to lose, they all predicted Trump was going to lose. They were wrong. The American electorate in this great democratic system chose the opposite.”
This has also been a theme of Trump and his closest allies for over two years: claiming that he so impressed the American people that they gave him an overwhelming victory. When in fact the majority of Americans voted for his opponent, and he only snuck into office through the mechanism of the Electoral College, which is an antimajoritarian tool.
Kushner went on: “We’ve spent two years going through that nonsense [Russia]. The one thing the Mueller report was very conclusive on is there was absolutely no coordination or collusion with the Trump campaign.”
He definitely hasn’t read the Mueller report.
Watch both videos above, via MSNBC.
