Tom's guest today is Donna Brazile. A Democratic political operative for more than 40 years, Ms. Brazile encountered a firestorm of criticism last fall when she published her memoir of the 2016 election, Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-Ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House. Many of her fellow Democrats read the book as a bitter diatribe from a disgruntled member of the old guard.
But perhaps lost in the scrum of discord were Ms. Brazile’s alarming accounts of Russian interference in the electoral process. Yesterday, the Republican Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee affirmed the conclusion of multiple intelligence agencies that the Russians did indeed act to support Donald Trump and discredit Hillary Clinton in the run-up to the US presidential election of 2016.
Two years later -- with a national consensus that Russian hackers successfully targeted and continue to target the American electoral process -- has anything changed? Ms. Brazile assesses the cyber-security of the US political system in a paper she wrote recently for the Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. Marylanders go to the polls next month. Is your vote safe?
Donna Brazile talks with Tom about what she learned from the bruising 2016 campaign, about her efforts to increase cyber-awareness among American voters as the Russian shadow looms over the crucial 2018 mid-term elections, and about the road ahead for Democrats -- and American democracy.
