It’s bad enough that Donald Trump has nice things to say about Alex Jones, who let’s face it, is a loon. Jones is a 9/11 truther (he calls himself the ‘Founding Father’ of that movement) and believes the Sandy Hook massacre was a well-orchestrated hoax. That last thing the country needs is a respected, albeit a divisive figure, like John Bolton engaging in such nonsense.

Bolton was on Fox News and suggested the Russian hacking was a “false flag” operation and implied the Obama administration was behind it:

“It is not at all clear to me, just viewing this from the outside, that this hacking into the DNC and the RNC computers was not a false flag operation.”

Bolton’s assertion is ridiculous. It is one thing to question the motivation of the Russians, but it is quite another to say the entire thing is a concoction, put together as a big distraction. As I wrote this weekend, people I have spoken to said the conclusion that Russian motivation was to see Donald Trump win is purely a political assessment made by political appointees in the intelligence community. It is not necessarily a conclusion reached by CIA agents themselves.

Bolton then went with the, “We don’t know” defense when asked by Eric Shawn exactly who it was that planted the false flag, but immediately said, “But I believe that intelligence has been politicized in the Obama administration to a very significant degree.”

There is enough going on without people resorting to accusing the Obama administration of engaging nefarious “false flag” plots, even passively, to deflect attention away from criticism of Donald Trump and his relationship with the Kremlin.