778 Clinton Russians Trump
Some people express disbelief and ask, “How could anyone (the Russians?) impact the US election?” and then deny any such interference has occurred; or that it is of significance. This line of enquiry is pursued in The Huff.
I have written at length about the issue (blogs 774, 771, 761, 754), and today in the newspaper is yet another article that is of interest:
Hillary Clinton blames Russian hacking for loss as Obama vows response
Furthermore, an article in the NYT sheds light on the issue:
How a Putin Fan Overseas Pushed Pro-Trump Propaganda to Americans
So, frankly, this seems to be the story: Fake news, anti-Clinton conspiracies and pro-Trump propaganda flooded social media, chiefly Facebook. And since many Americans (a majority?) get their news from Facebook (blog 771, 754) ... hey presto, an election is skewered. Nobody (other than probably Hillary Clinton) suggests that these ongoings delivered the election to Trump, at least not on their own ... nevertheless, that they had an impact seems obvious.
But the question being asked all across America is: Shall we just stand by and allow this to have happened without any counter-action? Not if Barak Obama can help it!
Let's be clear, the issue is not so much who benefitted and who lost out due to the Russian's hacking, the issue is: Do we tolerate foreign interference:
Barack Obama says US will respond to Russian hacking of election
President Barack Obama has vowed the US would take action to respond to Russian cyber-attacks intended to interfere with the presidential election, escalating the hacking controversy as his successor, Donald Trump, continued to dismiss the claims of foreign interference. In an interview with NPR News that aired Friday morning, Mr Obama said that following any attempt by a foreign government to impact the integrity of US elections "we need to take action."
I previously made the point that Clinton has to stop blaming the FBI for the untimely publishing of the hacked emails (blog 758), since it was her own doing that provided them with the ammo in the first place (the emails weren't fakes, were they now?) ... however, the important point that is being made here is that FBI director James Comey was disingenuous with the timing of his review of newly discovered emails related to the Clinton investigation:
Hillary Clinton email scandal:
FBI director James Comey's inherently horrible decision
Here is another comment, in the Washington Post:
Another James Comey wild card just got dropped on the 2016 election
Methinks all this is very interesting, but - and I said it before, blog 749 - the final straw that sunk Clinton and lost her the White House, was her "Basket of Deplorables" ... you don't talk like that to people you want to vote for you!
The other thing, of course - as Michael Moore (Trump will win) had said all along - were the voters in the "Rust Belt of America" who believed the Trump propaganda it was the Democrat's trade policies that lost them their (manufacturing-) jobs (it wasn't, dummies ... it was technology, automisation, computerisation and robotisation.)
The rest is history; and just to round off this "greatest enigma of our time" story, allow me to repeat my favourite indulgence: Trump will be in jail within a year!
