Trump lost the popular vote by a substantial number (almost 3 million). In essence, he won an electoral victory by a technicality. Nobody is complaining about this, Trump won fair and square by the agreed-upon rules of the game, but he is still very sensitive about this. He is terrified that this fact continue to stay in the public eye because it might delegitimize his electoral college victory. And after all, Mr Trump has a known track record of delegitimizing incumbent Presidents as well as nominees--of both parties! Why else would he make such outrageous statements as "I won by a landslide." The idea that Russian hacking might have played some role in his victory, or that people might believe it did, threatens him.

Now, I am convinced that Trump would have won regardless of what hackers, Russian or otherwise, might have done. Even his critics concede that. But that's not the issue, is it? The real issue is the Russians attempted to interfere with our election, and they are routinely carrying out espionage, industrial snooping, and in essence, training for cyber warfare. This is the question we should be debating, not whether the Russians put Trump in power. This is a national defense issue, not a political one.

However, for Trump, as well as a large part of the Right Wing fantasy machine and outrage factory, (including their apologists right here on this board) even the hint that he might have gotten a little Putin boost must be squelched immediately, with all the indignation at their disposal. And I'm not even bringing up his, and his advisers', business interests in Russia and with their oligarchy. Now THAT's something else altogether.

So a large piece of the Right Wing universe has suddenly rushed to discredit this whole issue, (its all a Liberal Media conspiracy) or to distract us with pointless meanderings about links and websites (see thread below) to the point that traditional GOP sacred cows like our infallible spy agencies and those nasty old Commies are suddenly being gored. As for the substantial number of Republicans who are terrified at these developments and working with Democrats to investigate them, well, they are just being lumped together with the Democrats as Establishment pukes and poor losers.

In short, in order to combat a perceived political threat, Mr Trump and his defenders are ready to sell out their country in a heartbeat just to cover their own miserable jive asses. In other words, they are dealing with this just like they do with AGW. The sad thing is that there is NO threat to the legitimacy of Trump's election. He's just paranoid enough to imagine one, and willing to pay an enormous national security price to make that imaginary threat go away.

And just think, we still have three more weeks before the inauguration. This ride is just getting started.