CNN: No one cares about Russia

[Neo-Scholastic]

Why do Trump supporters keep deflecting to Hillary's behavior?...She's not the fucking President.

Because if Hillary, Obama and Democrats, with the help of a complicit leftist media and partisan intelligence agents, have been engineering the whole Red Scare with a fake dossier to get a FISA warrant to spy of their political opponent, Trump, then it is clear Trump isn't the problem here.

[The Grand Nudger]

The contortions required to apologize for the emperor must be exhausting.  

"No russia, no russia, billary hussein obama's the russia!"   Meh, that was good enough for trump when vlad said it, why the hell not.  Coincidentally, that's two republican presidents he played like a cheap whistle, out of two.

[DLJ]

Why do Trump supporters keep deflecting to Hillary's behavior?...She's not the fucking President.

Because if Hillary, Obama and Democrats, with the help of a complicit leftist media and partisan intelligence agents, have been engineering the whole Red Scare with a fake dossier to get a FISA warrant to spy of their political opponent, Trump, then it is clear Trump isn't the problem here.

The US has leftist media now? What did I miss?

Or maybe you meant 'leftish'.

[The Grand Nudger]

Anything to the left of mass deportations is "leftist" in america.  I thought everybody knew that?  In any case...I can already see that this is another episode in american history that people with economic anxiety are going to try and shove down the memory hole when it finishes playing itself out.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I didn't post anything about Hillary's behaviour. Just that she had more money to spend, so it's laughable to make the argument that Trump had some kind of advertising advantage because Russia spent a small amount on troll ads.

I'm thinking you might not understand how bot accounts on Facebook might work ... they're free.

Also, I'm curious how you know Russia only spent a "small amount" on troll ads. Do you have some data you might wish to share?

I personally haven't made any argument that Trump had any advertising advantage.

---

Why do Trump supporters keep deflecting to Hillary's behavior?...She's not the fucking President.

Because if Hillary, Obama and Democrats, with the help of a complicit leftist media and partisan intelligence agents, have been engineering the whole Red Scare with a fake dossier to get a FISA warrant to spy of their political opponent, Trump, then it is clear Trump isn't the problem here.

And you have what to go on, exactly? A memo you haven't even read?

In the meantime, we have documented meetings between Trump campaign officials and Russian operatives, meetings attested to by the principals involved.

Forgive my pointing out your selective vision. Show me evidence of your charge, and I'll give it due consideration. Until then, I've read of a couple of Republicans claiming it's a deusie ... I'm sure they aren't biased -- aren't you?

[A Theist]

What strikes me is that they didn't forcibly hack their way into the DNC and Clinton emails. They gained access through a simple phishing scheme. They were basically invited in.

If by "invited in" you mean some person within the DNC opened a viral attachment or inadvertently gave away their credentials, then sure. Phishing schemes aren't direct hacking attacks, but they are still pretty effective at gaining access. What the Russians did after they gained access is certainly forcible hacking. If the Russians had a person within the DNC, they wouldn't have needed the phishing scheme in the first place.

Even with that, there's no evidence that the Russians were able to change the outcome of the election.

No evidence yet, but the investigation is still underway. In the absence of actual vote tampering, the question of whether the outcome of the election was changed by Russian interference is difficult, if not impossible to answer. One could argue that the release of the DNC emails irreparably damaged Clinton, that the fake news posts on Facebook and other social media helped swing votes away from her too. Without that interference, would she have clung on in more swing states? Nobody knows.

But, from what I see, Russian interference in our elections isn't what the media is reporting. That's just a by story to their trying to indict Trump of colluding with Russia. They've messed up so many times that the more important story of Russian interference has stayed in the shadows.

I agree, but it isn't helped by the fact that a number of close associates with Trump are being linked to Russia, so I can't say I'm surprised by the stories. Let's put it this way: if Trump didn't collude with Russia, there sure were a lot of weird connections to Russia throughout his campaign. He did however make some statements on the campaign (and after) about having a better relationship with Russia, so that might explain why. I think that's pretty much all you can say regarding collusion at this point.

1. I don't think I'd go as far to agree that what the Russians did after they gained access amounted to forcible hacking. There's a difference between forcible entry and robbing something by force and using a con scheme to rob something by deceit. They masqueraded as something trusted and took what they wanted by deception. The DNC and Hillary didn't even know they were plundered until everything showed up on WikiLeaks. While the methods were different the end result was still the same, though. One by force. The other by deceit.

2. It could also be more accurately argued that Hillary lost the election because one of the dems'  largest and once loyal voting base broke for Trump, the white blue collar working class in the rust belt and coal states. Some of those states hadn't voted for a Republican president in 30+ years. During her whole campaign she didn't even step one foot in Wisconsin, and lost it. While she focused her message on identity politics, Trump went into those areas and campaigned that he was going to bring back coal and manufacturing jobs. They felt abandoned by the democrats, and these were the same areas that helped elect barack to two terms in the White House. Even now, what message do the democrats have besides resist Trump? Their party is too divided between the far left Bernie / Warren types, the moderate Manchin / [color=#000000]Heitkamp types, and the establishment Shcumer / Pelosi types. The only thing holding them together is, resist Trump. With the economy taking off the way it is now and no real message from the dems I doubt that they're going to do as well in the mid terms as they are hoping. I think that Hillary lost the election because of her poor campaigning.

3. Yeah but, still, what we may think are weird connections doesn't prove collusion. Look at all the hype surrounding the Nunes memo about FBI abuses and the obama administration using FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. Weird coincidences, sure. Until something's actually proven it's just an interesting set of coincidences as far as I'm concerned.... Trump isn't the first candidate / politician to say that they want to improve relations with Russia. Remember Hillary's reset button that she gave to Lavrov? It was a symbolic gesture that the obama administration wanted to improve relations with Russia.

[FFaith]

I didn't post anything about Hillary's behaviour. Just that she had more money to spend, so it's laughable to make the argument that Trump had some kind of advertising advantage because Russia spent a small amount on troll ads.

I'm thinking you might not understand how bot accounts on Facebook might work ... they're free.

Also, I'm curious how you know Russia only spent a "small amount" on troll ads. Do you have some data you might wish to share?

I personally haven't made any argument that Trump had any advertising advantage.

---

Because if Hillary, Obama and Democrats, with the help of a complicit leftist media and partisan intelligence agents, have been engineering the whole Red Scare with a fake dossier to get a FISA warrant to spy of their political opponent, Trump, then it is clear Trump isn't the problem here.

And you have what to go on, exactly? A memo you haven't even read?

In the meantime, we have documented meetings between Trump campaign officials and Russian operatives, meetings attested to by the principals involved.

Forgive my pointing out your selective vision. Show me evidence of your charge, and I'll give it due consideration. Until then, I've read of a couple of Republicans claiming it's a deusie ... I'm sure they aren't biased -- aren't you?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2...sed-public

Facebook announced that Russia spent $100,000 on 3000 ads. Those are the ads I'm talking about.

[DLJ]

...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2...sed-public

Facebook announced that Russia spent $100,000 on 3000 ads. Those are the ads I'm talking about.

From the article...

"Russian-backed..."
"... accounts linked to Russian operatives..."
"... social media accounts linked to Russia..."

Meaning that they had Russian based IP Addresses. Whoop-de-do.

And why call them "ads"? The examples read like garden variety comments.

btw, would all those non-US-based members of AF who expressed their opinions on the US presidential candidates please report to Robert Mueller's office for interrogation on suspicion of influencing US voters. Shame on you!

[Tiberius]

1. I don't think I'd go as far to agree that what the Russians did after they gained access amounted to forcible hacking. There's a difference between forcible entry and robbing something by force and using a con scheme to rob something by deceit. They masqueraded as something trusted and took what they wanted by deception. The DNC and Hillary didn't even know they were plundered until everything showed up on WikiLeaks. While the methods were different the end result was still the same, though. One by force. The other by deceit.

Gonna risk using an argument from authority here, but, well, I'm a hacker (the good kind). I test the security of systems by trying to hack into them. So I kinda know what I'm talking about. It's very difficult to hack directly into a network from the Internet and gain anything of value. The DNC hack either happened by someone clicking on a malicious link which downloaded and installed malware on their system, or by giving away their credentials, which the hackers then used to breach the network and install malware.

Either way, once the malware is installed, that's forcible hacking. Malware isn't passive, it's active. It purposefully scours the network looking for things to exploit, exploits them, and sends stuff back to its controller. Exploits were certainly used to gain access to the email database.

There's a better writeup on the hack by the company that investigated it: https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-m...committee/

Also, hardly any company has sufficient technology installed to detect that they have been compromised.

2. It could also be more accurately argued that Hillary lost the election because one of the dems'  largest and once loyal voting base broke for Trump, the white blue collar working class in the rust belt and coal states. Some of those states hadn't voted for a Republican president in 30+ years. During her whole campaign she didn't even step one foot in Wisconsin, and lost it. While she focused her message on identity politics, Trump went into those areas and campaigned that he was going to bring back coal and manufacturing jobs. They felt abandoned by the democrats, and these were the same areas that helped elect barack to two terms in the White House. Even now, what message do the democrats have besides resist Trump? Their party is too divided between the far left Bernie / Warren types, the moderate Manchin / [color=#000000]Heitkamp types, and the establishment Shcumer / Pelosi types. The only thing holding them together is, resist Trump. With the economy taking off the way it is now and no real message from the dems I doubt that they're going to do as well in the mid terms as they are hoping. I think that Hillary lost the election because of her poor campaigning.

3. Yeah but, still, what we may think are weird connections doesn't prove collusion. Look at all the hype surrounding the Nunes memo about FBI abuses and the obama administration using FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. Weird coincidences, sure. Until something's actually proven it's just an interesting set of coincidences as far as I'm concerned.... Trump isn't the first candidate / politician to say that they want to improve relations with Russia. Remember Hillary's reset button that she gave to Lavrov? It was a symbolic gesture that the obama administration wanted to improve relations with Russia.

I pretty much agree with everything you said above, except I think you are wrong about the mid-terms, at least the way things have been going, Dems have been flipping Republican seats, or expanding their own margins in currently Democratic seats pretty consistently for a year now. I think the chances of a Democrat controlled House are pretty high, and I think the chances of a Democrat controlled Senate are growing (though currently I think the chances of Republicans holding the Senate are higher).

[Thumpalumpacus]

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2...sed-public

Facebook announced that Russia spent $100,000 on 3000 ads. Those are the ads I'm talking about.

Thanks for the answer. It was clearly money well-spent.