Noam Chomsky says Dem Russiagate fixation a 'huge gift' to Trump that may hand him 2020

In an interview with Democracy Now!, left-wing author and progressive philosopher Noam Chomsky criticized the Democrats and their base for "investing everything" in Russiagate, and theorized it might cost them the 2020 election.

In the interview from last week, published on Thursday, Chomsky doesn't just say the focus on Russia was a "huge gift" to Trump, but bashes Democrats for ever thinking otherwise.

"It was pretty obvious at the beginning that you're not going to find anything very serious about Russian interference in elections," he said. "I mean for one thing it's undetectable."

He called into question the very premise. "In the 2016 election the Senate and the House went the same way as the executive, but nobody claims that was Russian interference there," he said. "In fact, Russian interference in the election, if it existed, was very slight."He suggested that Israel's Prime Minister Bejamin Netanyahu speaking to Congress was a bigger impact on elections than "whatever the Russians tried," and added that "anything the Russians might have done is going to be peanuts" in comparison to campaign funding.

While even some on the left might be willing to accept those assessments of the magnitude of Russian threat, such arguments are usually met with the objection that Trump colluded anyway. But Chomsky attacked that precious tenet of the party as well. Watch below. (More after the clip.)

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"As far as Trump collusion with the Russians, that was never going to amount to anything more than minor corruption," he said. "Nothing of any significance."

And that's when he turned on the Democrats.

"The Democrats invested everything in this issue," he said. "Well turned out there was nothing much there."

"They gave Trump a huge gift. In fact they may have handed him the next election," said Chomsky.

Ouch. That's gotta hurt.

You can watch the full ten-minute clip from Democracy Now! via RealClearPolitics.