WASHINGTON (Rooters agency) – “Outrageous!” “Unheard of!” “Would they dare?!” “Wish we’d thought of it first!” “We did – don’t you remember?”
Reactions throughout the country have been anger at conclusive evidence that a large majority of newspaper publishers believe that the Russian government is trying to influence the outcome of the upcoming presidential election. But there are some variations in the response.
For instance, former Secretary of State and current political saint Happy Gasbagger said, “The thing about swinging elections is, it’s not that easy. In 1970, in Chile, we did the best we could but we lost. So we had to bring in the military a few years later, to correct the voters’ mistakes.”
There are different constraints on election influencing at different times, Gasbagger pointed out. “Right after World War II, we were top dogs and the dollar went a long way, so buying elections in Italy and places like that was easy.
“But then came Vietnam. Maybe Eisenhower made a mistake in canceling the 1956 election instead of trying to buy it first – we’ll never know, but if we had promised a $1000 bribe to every Vietnamese voter in 1956, that would have cost less than we ended up paying for the war.
“By 1970, the war in Vietnam was costing us so much that we couldn’t spare the cash to buy up all the important Chilean political parties, and so Allende got in. Sad.”
Gasbagger is also critical of the Harry Truman administration for not having “thrown a few tens of millions into Guatemala in time to prevent the left winning the election there. Because of that, Eisenhower had to organize the 1954 military overthrow of the Arbenz government. Penny wise and pound foolish, I say.”
Responding to the suggestion that the Russians may be hacking into the computer systems of the presidential candidates, CIA Director John Burner said, “Hacking? Are you kidding? What does that do? It lets you find out where the candidates are, what they say, and what they are thinking.
“Where they are and what they say, you can read in your daily newspaper. As for what they’re thinking – has either of them had a real thought, at least an unpredictable one, in the last three decades?”
White House press secretary Jed Lee Earnest declined to comment on “whether the Russkies are really willing to risk us nuking Moscow to make them behave.” But he did say: “I really doubt that they have enough money to buy more influence than our own business people.”
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