Dear Editor:
“In assessing Donald Trump’s presidential victory, Americans continue to look away from this election’s most alarming story: the successful effort by a hostile foreign power to manipulate public opinion before the vote,” Eric Chenoweth, co-director of the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe, wrote in his Washington Post op-ed on November 25. “Most significantly, U.S. intelligence agencies have affirmed that the Russian government directed the illegal hacking of private e-mail accounts of the Democratic National Committee and prominent individuals. The e-mails were then released by WikiLeaks, which has benefited financially from a Russian state propaganda arm, used Russian operatives for security and made clear an intent to harm the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.”
“On October 7, WikiLeaks began near daily dumps from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s e-mail account, generating a month of largely negative reporting on Clinton, her campaign staff, her husband and their foundation,” Mr. Chenoweth noted. ”With some exceptions, there was little news in the e-mail beyond political gossip and things the media had covered before, now revisited from a seemingly ‘hidden’ viewpoint.”
It is particularly disturbing that among those who choose to look away from the Russian government’s active interference in our elections are Americans of Ukrainian descent. Some, like Myron Kuropas (“Lesia Got it Right,” November 20), seem to have accepted indiscriminately the flood of negative reporting on Mrs. Clinton, to suppress their impression that Mr. Trump is “a narcissistic, vulgar oaf, hardly a person to serve as president of the greatest country in the world” and help justify their support of the GOP presidential candidate. “New disclosures from the FBI, more dirt about the Clinton Foundation, the Soros involvement and Zenon Zawada’s letter in The Ukrainian Weekly finally turned me around,” Dr. Kuropas wrote.
Instead of carping about “how Trump is a Russian lover or useful idiot,” in spite of Mr. Trump’s repeated praise of Vladimir Putin or his desire to lift sanctions against Moscow and even to concede Russia’s right to treat its post-Soviet neighbors as part of its sphere of influence, Dr. Kuropas thinks it would be smarter for Ukrainian Americans to contact their congressmen and members of the Trump administration and tell them about their concerns regarding Russia. “Emphasize how Russia’s behavior is a danger to the United States and the free world, not just Ukraine,” he suggests. Fair enough. Let’s emphasize how Russia’s interference in our elections is a danger to the United States and the free world.
Arlington, Va.