More Americans than ever believe Russia interfered in our election

More and more Americans are refusing to buy into Trump’s constant lies about Russia.

According to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released this weekend, more Americans now believe Russia interfered in the 2016 election — and believe that Russia specifically interfered to help Trump — than believed that a year ago.

The U.S. intelligence community has clearly found that Russia did in fact interfere with our elections, and that the interference was in fact designed to help Trump.

In June of last year, the new poll found, 53 percent of voters believed that Russia interfered in the election. Now that figure has shot up to 65 percent. And many more Americans — a third more than last year — now specifically believe that Russia’s interference tilted the election in Trump’s favor.

This is the case even though Trump has been lying for over a year now that the investigation into Russian election interference by special counsel Robert Mueller is a “witch hunt” against Trump. On Monday, Trump fired off a new series of tweets that once again repeated this lie.

Mueller isn’t just investigating Trump — he’s also investigating Russian election interference more broadly, and has already filed numerous indictments against Russian officials for their actions.

So when Trump attacks the Mueller probe, he’s also directly attacking the U.S. effort to get to the bottom of Russia’s criminal meddling.

Trump has been defending Russia against accusations that it meddled in the campaign since even before the election. He said during one debate that the email hacks “could have been somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds.”

The new poll also found that Trump’s recent attempts at diplomacy with Russia were a flop with Americans. Only 26 percent approved of how Trump has handled the relationship between the U.S. and Russia.

Part of the new poll was taken before Trump took Putin’s side over his own intelligence community, publicly accepting Putin’s denial that Russia interfered in our elections.

Since then, Trump has been forced several times into reluctantly admitting Russia’s guilt. But he contradicts himself on that reluctant admission every time he attacks the Mueller probe.

And his administration does the same thing when it repeats the lie that the Russia investigation is a “hoax” — an attack that White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders renewed Monday morning.

Even after a year of Trump crying “witch hunt,” however, it’s clear that most Americans aren’t being fooled.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.