Vladimir Putin has received quite a bit of blame for influencing the U.S. election, but now a CIA official is claiming the Russian President wanted Hillary Clinton to win.

In the buildup to Nov. 8, new incriminating emails were being released daily showing the Democratic National Committee (DNC) arranged the primary in a way that would shut out candidate Bernie Sanders from the nomination.

The revelations created a sense of mistrust within the Democratic party, which some claim contributed to Clinton’s loss in the Electoral College to President Donald Trump.

The fact nothing incriminating was being released of the Republican National Committee (RNC) caused many on the left to charge that Vladimir Putin was stacking the deck in favor of Trump because he apparently wanted the New York real estate mogul to be in the White House.

However, Mike Baker, a former CIA covert operations officer, cast dispersions on that claim when he recently appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience.

Former CIA agent Mike Baker talks Trump, Obama, world problems Check out this cool episode: https://t.co/k1o39EAbe5 pic.twitter.com/IQeUetrzt2 — Kirk Kopp (@KirKopp04) January 31, 2017

Baker said he “didn’t buy” the idea that Vladimir Putin wanted a Hillary victory because the Russian President would want to go with a “known quantity.”

“Frankly, if Putin sat there and thought, ‘I want to go with what is in Russia’s best interests, I am going to go with a known quantity. I am going to go with Hillary Clinton because I know what I’ve got there.'”

Baker said that Vladimir Putin is “reading and watching the same s**t that everyone else is” and that “same s**t” shows Trump to be someone, who is all over the place.

“It’s not like Putin is going to say, ‘Oh, he likes me, so I’ll just go with that,'” Baker said, adding that Vladimir is “an interesting cat, and he makes these decisions based on what is in his best interests. He is not going to buy in to what’s on the surface; he is going to go with what he knows.”

As far as the hacking was concerned, Baker charged that Vladimir Putin was doing nothing differently from what Josef Stalin did in World War II. “They [Russia] are just trying to create mistrust in democratic institutions.”

The idea that hacking influenced the elections, Baker said, was “ridiculous” because they did not get into voting booths and election machines. They simply exploited a weakness in the DNC’s cybersecurity, something they also tried to do unsuccessfully with the RNC.

And for any charging the former CIA officer had a preference for Trump, Baker said “neither of these candidates were my candidate of choice.” He also criticized Trump for downplaying Russian hacking before he received intel briefings.

“Of course the Russians were meddling,” he added. “It’s what they do. It’s what they’ve always done.” Criticizing intelligence officers, he said, was Trump causing a “self-inflicted wound.”

Still, at the end of the day, Baker said it was “possible, though unlikely” Vladimir Putin preferred Trump as the current U.S. President.

Trump’s refusal to disparage Putin, even recently creating a moral equivalence between Vladimir and the West in his widely publicized Bill O’Reilly interview, has some on guard.

Vladimir Putin Has a Plan for Destroying the West—and It Looks a Lot Like Donald Trump https://t.co/NhUR7mDHo8 pic.twitter.com/EiMB5nawBm — McSpocky™???? (@mcspocky) February 9, 2017

But what do you think, readers? Is the former CIA officer correct? Were the elections not influenced by Russian meddling, and did Vladimir Putin really want Hillary Clinton to win the Presidency? Sound off in the comments section below.

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