Trump and his advisers continued to dilute the threat from Russia by playing up the threat from Iran and China. At a September campaign rally, the president claimed, again, that Russian interference was a hoax. “What about China? What about other countries? It’s always Russia, Russia, Russia. They’re at it again.” Trump’s deputies were happy to toe that line. Asked in television interviews which country posed the gravest threat to the upcoming election, Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, and his pugnacious attorney general, Bill Barr, each repeated that it was China—not
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