CNN’s Smerconish: It’s a ‘Fair Point’ — U.S. Doesn’t ‘Entirely Have Clean Hands’ on Influencing Elections

Monday on CNN’s “New Day,” network weekend host Michael Smerconish acknowledged that despite complaints from Americans decrying Russia alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election, the United States doesn’t “have clean hands” when it comes to the same sort of behavior.

Smerconish referenced a guest that appeared on his program Saturday pointing out the United States’ has attempted to influence other countries’ elections on 61 different occasions since World War II.

“I happened to have a guest on my program Saturday, an academic name Dov Levin,” Smerconish said. “He’s from Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh, who documented on 61 occasions in 80 different nations from the post-World War II era through 2000, we have been involved, not in computer hacking, but in trying to determine the outcome of elections. Now, is there a moral equivalence between us supporting a pro-democracy force when the opposition was communism — I mean, that’s subject to debate. I think it’s a fair point that we don’t entirely have clean hands.”

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