Trump's takeaway from Russia hacking report: Blame the victim, deny it mattered, suck up to Putin

Here’s what Donald Trump was saying about the report on Russian election hacking rather than expressing concern or, dare I suggest, outrage that a foreign government is implicated in interference with American elections:

• He put the blame on the DNC for being hacked. "Gross negligence by the Democratic National Committee allowed hacking to take place.The Republican National Committee had strong defense!"
• He maintained that there was no evidence the hacking affected the election results, even though the unclassified report said it never made an assessment about the impact on the outcome ("The U.S. Intelligence Community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities, and actions of foreign actors; it does not analyze U.S. political processes or U.S. public opinion"). Trump tweeted: "Intelligence stated very strongly there was absolutely no evidence that hacking affected the election results. Voting machines not touched!"
• He stressed the need to have a good relationship with Russia. "Having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. Only 'stupid' people, or fools, would think that it is bad! We.....

Blaming the victim, check. Denying that it mattered anyway, check. Putin-love, check. Even Trump’s official statement (as opposed to his predictably angry tweets) didn’t do much better, and his top surrogates were out pressing the message that Russian hacking didn’t matter and it was all the DNC’s fault anyway.

Trump’s biggest concern, of course, is insisting that the election in which he lost the popular vote by nearly three million votes wasn’t further tainted by him having benefited from Russian help. Those are some pesky inconvenient details in the way of Trump claiming a mandate, so he’d rather pretend they don’t even exist. But he will always be—and always know in his heart of shriveled hearts that he is—the person elected president despite a historic popular vote loss and with the help of a repressive foreign government.