All Things Russia & Ukraine

[Peter Brown]

Turns out Putin wants Biden to win.

Weird. I’ve always been told by the fevered minds of NeverTrumper that Trump was a Putin stooge. What!!!!

https://www.rt.com/russia/502806-putin- ... ate-talks/

Putin also appeared to suggest the Kremlin may be more satisfied with a Joe Biden victory than a second term for the incumbent, citing the Democrat challenger’s willingness to discuss arms control agreements. “Biden has publicly said that he is ready to extend New START [Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty] or to sign a new treaty on limiting strategic offensive weapons,” the Russian leader noted. “It is already a key element of our possible cooperation in the future.”

[njbill]

Turns out Putin wants Biden to win.

[CU88]

This is remarkable — a federal judge has ordered DOJ to confer with the WH about its official position on declassification of Russia docs in response to Trump’s tweets.

BuzzFeed is seeking access to the *entire* Mueller report based on Trump’s declassification order via tweet.

https://twitter.com/AndrewDesiderio/sta ... 9295331329

I thought that we were told to act as if the twitter feed from IMPOTUS is "Official WH Policy"?

[CU88]

I don't think that we can assume that Trump won't be able to pressure them into releasing something after all. But, notable here is the coordination between Barr and the GOP. They're not even trying to pretend that the investigation was launched for anything other than politics.

I think Nora Dannehy’s resignation was a big deal, and we will find out later it led Durham to resist. She did the right thing when it was hard and it mattered.


Barr tells Republicans Durham report won't be ready by election

https://www.axios.com/barr-durham-repor ... gn=organic

[Catbird]

This is remarkable — a federal judge has ordered DOJ to confer with the WH about its official position on declassification of Russia docs in response to Trump’s tweets.

BuzzFeed is seeking access to the *entire* Mueller report based on Trump’s declassification order via tweet.

https://twitter.com/AndrewDesiderio/sta ... 9295331329

I thought that we were told to act as if the twitter feed from IMPOTUS is "Official WH Policy"?

This one deserves a cat.

[njbill]

I don't think that we can assume that Trump won't be able to pressure them into releasing something after all. But, notable here is the coordination between Barr and the GOP. They're not even trying to pretend that the investigation was launched for anything other than politics.

I think Nora Dannehy’s resignation was a big deal, and we will find out later it led Durham to resist. She did the right thing when it was hard and it mattered.


Barr tells Republicans Durham report won't be ready by election

https://www.axios.com/barr-durham-repor ... gn=organic

In other words, there will be no Durham report. He gets his walking papers on January 21.

[a fan]

Turns out Putin wants Biden to win.

So now you're telling us that you're so lost in the R's and D's thing that you've decided to believe and cite Vladimir Putin??

Geez dude. You're really outdoing yourself this week......

[Peter Brown]

Turns out Putin wants Biden to win.

So now you're telling us that you're so lost in the R's and D's thing that you've decided to believe and cite Vladimir Putin??

Geez dude. You're really outdoing yourself this week......

Should I instead rely on Joy Reid (D - MSNBC) for her excellent interpretation of all things Vlad? or is she too busy hunting down that mystery 'hacker' who posted homophobic screeds on her blog?

[a fan]

Turns out Putin wants Biden to win.

So now you're telling us that you're so lost in the R's and D's thing that you've decided to believe and cite Vladimir Putin??

Geez dude. You're really outdoing yourself this week......

Should I instead rely on Joy Reid (D - MSNBC) for her excellent interpretation of all things Vlad? or is she too busy hunting down that mystery 'hacker' who posted homophobic screeds on her blog?

Do what every you want, Pete. You're lost at sea. You think the "news" is that Putin wants Biden to win....

.....while not caring that Putin is still messing with us, and we're still trading with him, like the fools that we've become.

[6ftstick]

Turns out Putin wants Biden to win.

So now you're telling us that you're so lost in the R's and D's thing that you've decided to believe and cite Vladimir Putin??

Geez dude. You're really outdoing yourself this week......

Should I instead rely on Joy Reid (D - MSNBC) for her excellent interpretation of all things Vlad? or is she too busy hunting down that mystery 'hacker' who posted homophobic screeds on her blog?

Joy Reid is LEFT of Putin

[dislaxxic]

HOW RIC GRENELL AND SIDNEY POWELL HAVE MADE IT EASIER TO PROSECUTE DONALD TRUMP FOR CONSPIRING WITH RUSSIA

..

[cradleandshoot]

HOW RIC GRENELL AND SIDNEY POWELL HAVE MADE IT EASIER TO PROSECUTE DONALD TRUMP FOR CONSPIRING WITH RUSSIA

..

Easier but not practical. Goodness gracious Dis a radical FLP icon such as yourself should already know this. You wanna keep gazing in the rear view mirror. It's time to let the trump chit go and let Biden's DOJ worry about it. Whatsa behind you... is not important anymore. You wanna waste 4 years of Bidens presidency trying to settle old scores. You of all people should be looking forward... not behind. Pull yer head out of yer ass there young man and start looking forward for a change. You could find the only rain cloud on a sunny day there skippy.

[dislaxxic]

A reckoning is coming...watch yer back...

ps: Got a few years on you, "young man"...

If ever a head of state DESERVED a "look back", it's this Con Man. Truth and Reconcile ya know...

..

[CU77]

Many links to sources in the original:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... tions.html

Trump Is Finishing Russia’s Smear Campaign Against America

In 2016, Putin had a plan to discredit U.S. elections. In 2020, Republicans are executing it.

By WILLIAM SALETAN
DEC 11, 2020

Donald Trump’s presidency has been a gift to Russia. He has undermined NATO, withheld military aid to Ukraine, and abandoned America’s commitments to democracy and human rights. He has excused Vladimir Putin’s crimes, yielded to Russian troops in the Middle East, and dismissed Russia’s 2016 election interference as a hoax. Now Trump has been voted out by Americans, but he’s still serving Russia. He’s devoting his final days in office—and suggesting he might devote his post-presidency—to a longstanding Russian objective: destroying faith in U.S. elections.

For weeks, Trump has rejected Joe Biden’s victory as a fraud. In interviews, tweets, speeches, and a campaign rally in Georgia, Trump has accused Democrats of using dead people, undocumented immigrants, and software to manipulate the outcome. These allegations aren’t just lies. They’re replications, almost word for word, of propaganda that was spread by Russia in the United States and adopted by the Trump campaign in 2016. Russia expected Trump to lose that election, and it planned to portray his loss as evidence that American elections were rigged, that the U.S. government was illegitimate, and that the United States wasn’t really a democracy. Now that Trump has lost to Biden, that campaign of slander is underway. But it’s not being driven by Russians. It’s being driven by Republicans.

Russia’s strategy is detailed in three reports: one by the U.S. Intelligence Community, another by special counsel Robert Mueller, and a third by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee. The ultimate goal of the operation wasn’t to elect Trump. It was to spread the idea that “U.S. election results cannot be trusted.” In 2016, Putin’s propagandists used fake Facebook pages and Twitter accounts (“Army of Jesus,” “Secured Borders,” “Tea Party News”) to plant bogus rumors of “voter fraud” in multiple states. They told the same horror stories and used the same trigger words Republicans use now: “rigged,” “dead people,” “illegal aliens,” globalist-controlled voting machines, “tens of thousands of ineligible mail in … votes,” and “voter fraud caught in Philadelphia.”

Trump and his followers parroted this propaganda during the 2016 campaign. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump retweeted fake “#VoterFraud” updates written by Russian operatives. Kellyanne Conway, Brad Parscale, Michael Flynn, and other Trump campaign advisers also retweeted messages from the Russian accounts. When the Russians circulated a false rumor that voting machines were rigged against Trump, he repeated it on Fox News. After the election, when Russian front groups spread the word that “illegals” and “machines” had robbed Trump of the popular vote, he repeated that, too. “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” he declared.

Putin’s original plan, as detailed in the U.S. Intelligence Community’s 2017 report, was to assail Trump’s putative defeat, through Russia’s global media network and pseudo-American front groups, as a fraud. The Russians had even “prepared a Twitter campaign” for election night, with the hashtag “#DemocracyRIP.” The goal was to discredit American democracy and “cripple” the expected new president, Hillary Clinton, by glorifying Trump as “an outsider victimized by a corrupt political establishment and faulty democratic election process.” When Trump won, the Russians popped Champagne and suspended their plan.

Now the plan has been revived. But this time, Putin doesn’t have to execute it, because Trump and the GOP are doing that for him. Almost every day—and on some days, almost every hour—Trump denounces the election as “rigged” and “fixed,” with “late night ballot ‘dumps,’ ” “massive evidence of widespread fraud,” and votes secretly manipulated “through machines.” On Saturday, at his rally in Georgia, Trump claimed that Democrats had “stuffed the ballot boxes” with votes from “dead people” and “illegal aliens.” He called it “the largest fraud in the history of our country,” and he urged Americans to reject Biden. “You can’t ever accept when they steal and rig and rob,” Trump told his followers. On Thursday, he said Biden would be “an illegitimate president,” and he quoted a supporter who called the election a “coup.”

Trump’s lawyers and political allies are peddling the same message. “This election was stolen by the socialists engaging in extraordinary voter fraud,” Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama asserted last week. Others, such as Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, have suggested the same thing. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida said the ballot counts reported for Biden were no more credible than those reported for “Bashar al-Assad and Kim Jong-il.” In an interview on Fox News, Gaetz added: “Those Dominion software systems? They changed more votes than Vladimir Putin ever did.”

Gaetz and Brooks aren’t Russian agents. Nor is Trump. They’re just reckless, cynical fools playing their roles in Putin’s game. The next step in Trump’s service to Moscow might be a Trump media empire that lambastes the United States as a fake democracy. That’s what some American intelligence experts predicted in 2016: a “Trump television and social media venture” that would wage “an ongoing battle to tarnish the legitimacy of the electoral system.” Trump won that year, so the post-election smear campaign against American democracy didn’t happen. It’s happening now.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Many links to sources in the original:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... tions.html

Trump Is Finishing Russia’s Smear Campaign Against America

In 2016, Putin had a plan to discredit U.S. elections. In 2020, Republicans are executing it.

By WILLIAM SALETAN
DEC 11, 2020

Donald Trump’s presidency has been a gift to Russia. He has undermined NATO, withheld military aid to Ukraine, and abandoned America’s commitments to democracy and human rights. He has excused Vladimir Putin’s crimes, yielded to Russian troops in the Middle East, and dismissed Russia’s 2016 election interference as a hoax. Now Trump has been voted out by Americans, but he’s still serving Russia. He’s devoting his final days in office—and suggesting he might devote his post-presidency—to a longstanding Russian objective: destroying faith in U.S. elections.

For weeks, Trump has rejected Joe Biden’s victory as a fraud. In interviews, tweets, speeches, and a campaign rally in Georgia, Trump has accused Democrats of using dead people, undocumented immigrants, and software to manipulate the outcome. These allegations aren’t just lies. They’re replications, almost word for word, of propaganda that was spread by Russia in the United States and adopted by the Trump campaign in 2016. Russia expected Trump to lose that election, and it planned to portray his loss as evidence that American elections were rigged, that the U.S. government was illegitimate, and that the United States wasn’t really a democracy. Now that Trump has lost to Biden, that campaign of slander is underway. But it’s not being driven by Russians. It’s being driven by Republicans.

Russia’s strategy is detailed in three reports: one by the U.S. Intelligence Community, another by special counsel Robert Mueller, and a third by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee. The ultimate goal of the operation wasn’t to elect Trump. It was to spread the idea that “U.S. election results cannot be trusted.” In 2016, Putin’s propagandists used fake Facebook pages and Twitter accounts (“Army of Jesus,” “Secured Borders,” “Tea Party News”) to plant bogus rumors of “voter fraud” in multiple states. They told the same horror stories and used the same trigger words Republicans use now: “rigged,” “dead people,” “illegal aliens,” globalist-controlled voting machines, “tens of thousands of ineligible mail in … votes,” and “voter fraud caught in Philadelphia.”

Trump and his followers parroted this propaganda during the 2016 campaign. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump retweeted fake “#VoterFraud” updates written by Russian operatives. Kellyanne Conway, Brad Parscale, Michael Flynn, and other Trump campaign advisers also retweeted messages from the Russian accounts. When the Russians circulated a false rumor that voting machines were rigged against Trump, he repeated it on Fox News. After the election, when Russian front groups spread the word that “illegals” and “machines” had robbed Trump of the popular vote, he repeated that, too. “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” he declared.

Putin’s original plan, as detailed in the U.S. Intelligence Community’s 2017 report, was to assail Trump’s putative defeat, through Russia’s global media network and pseudo-American front groups, as a fraud. The Russians had even “prepared a Twitter campaign” for election night, with the hashtag “#DemocracyRIP.” The goal was to discredit American democracy and “cripple” the expected new president, Hillary Clinton, by glorifying Trump as “an outsider victimized by a corrupt political establishment and faulty democratic election process.” When Trump won, the Russians popped Champagne and suspended their plan.

Now the plan has been revived. But this time, Putin doesn’t have to execute it, because Trump and the GOP are doing that for him. Almost every day—and on some days, almost every hour—Trump denounces the election as “rigged” and “fixed,” with “late night ballot ‘dumps,’ ” “massive evidence of widespread fraud,” and votes secretly manipulated “through machines.” On Saturday, at his rally in Georgia, Trump claimed that Democrats had “stuffed the ballot boxes” with votes from “dead people” and “illegal aliens.” He called it “the largest fraud in the history of our country,” and he urged Americans to reject Biden. “You can’t ever accept when they steal and rig and rob,” Trump told his followers. On Thursday, he said Biden would be “an illegitimate president,” and he quoted a supporter who called the election a “coup.”

Trump’s lawyers and political allies are peddling the same message. “This election was stolen by the socialists engaging in extraordinary voter fraud,” Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama asserted last week. Others, such as Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, have suggested the same thing. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida said the ballot counts reported for Biden were no more credible than those reported for “Bashar al-Assad and Kim Jong-il.” In an interview on Fox News, Gaetz added: “Those Dominion software systems? They changed more votes than Vladimir Putin ever did.”

Gaetz and Brooks aren’t Russian agents. Nor is Trump. They’re just reckless, cynical fools playing their roles in Putin’s game. The next step in Trump’s service to Moscow might be a Trump media empire that lambastes the United States as a fake democracy. That’s what some American intelligence experts predicted in 2016: a “Trump television and social media venture” that would wage “an ongoing battle to tarnish the legitimacy of the electoral system.” Trump won that year, so the post-election smear campaign against American democracy didn’t happen. It’s happening now.

You have to remember, standing up to Russia doesn’t matter anymore.

[old salt]

Many links to sources in the original:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... tions.html

Trump Is Finishing Russia’s Smear Campaign Against America

In 2016, Putin had a plan to discredit U.S. elections. In 2020, Republicans are executing it.

By WILLIAM SALETAN
DEC 11, 2020

Donald Trump’s presidency has been a gift to Russia. He has undermined NATO, withheld military aid to Ukraine, and abandoned America’s commitments to democracy and human rights. He has excused Vladimir Putin’s crimes, yielded to Russian troops in the Middle East, and dismissed Russia’s 2016 election interference as a hoax. Now Trump has been voted out by Americans, but he’s still serving Russia. He’s devoting his final days in office—and suggesting he might devote his post-presidency—to a longstanding Russian objective: destroying faith in U.S. elections.

For weeks, Trump has rejected Joe Biden’s victory as a fraud. In interviews, tweets, speeches, and a campaign rally in Georgia, Trump has accused Democrats of using dead people, undocumented immigrants, and software to manipulate the outcome. These allegations aren’t just lies. They’re replications, almost word for word, of propaganda that was spread by Russia in the United States and adopted by the Trump campaign in 2016. Russia expected Trump to lose that election, and it planned to portray his loss as evidence that American elections were rigged, that the U.S. government was illegitimate, and that the United States wasn’t really a democracy. Now that Trump has lost to Biden, that campaign of slander is underway. But it’s not being driven by Russians. It’s being driven by Republicans.

Russia’s strategy is detailed in three reports: one by the U.S. Intelligence Community, another by special counsel Robert Mueller, and a third by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee. The ultimate goal of the operation wasn’t to elect Trump. It was to spread the idea that “U.S. election results cannot be trusted.” In 2016, Putin’s propagandists used fake Facebook pages and Twitter accounts (“Army of Jesus,” “Secured Borders,” “Tea Party News”) to plant bogus rumors of “voter fraud” in multiple states. They told the same horror stories and used the same trigger words Republicans use now: “rigged,” “dead people,” “illegal aliens,” globalist-controlled voting machines, “tens of thousands of ineligible mail in … votes,” and “voter fraud caught in Philadelphia.”

Trump and his followers parroted this propaganda during the 2016 campaign. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump retweeted fake “#VoterFraud” updates written by Russian operatives. Kellyanne Conway, Brad Parscale, Michael Flynn, and other Trump campaign advisers also retweeted messages from the Russian accounts. When the Russians circulated a false rumor that voting machines were rigged against Trump, he repeated it on Fox News. After the election, when Russian front groups spread the word that “illegals” and “machines” had robbed Trump of the popular vote, he repeated that, too. “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” he declared.

Putin’s original plan, as detailed in the U.S. Intelligence Community’s 2017 report, was to assail Trump’s putative defeat, through Russia’s global media network and pseudo-American front groups, as a fraud. The Russians had even “prepared a Twitter campaign” for election night, with the hashtag “#DemocracyRIP.” The goal was to discredit American democracy and “cripple” the expected new president, Hillary Clinton, by glorifying Trump as “an outsider victimized by a corrupt political establishment and faulty democratic election process.” When Trump won, the Russians popped Champagne and suspended their plan.

...The next step in Trump’s service to Moscow might be a Trump media empire that lambastes the United States as a fake democracy. That’s what some American intelligence experts predicted in 2016: a “Trump television and social media venture” that would wage “an ongoing battle to tarnish the legitimacy of the electoral system.” Trump won that year, so the post-election smear campaign against American democracy didn’t happen. It’s happening now.

You have to remember, standing up to Russia doesn’t matter anymore.

...amazing how often we give the Russians opportunities to be right, but then there's nobody dumber than dumb Americans.
Especially those who let their social media ads influence them.

Our 50 distinguished IC Old Pros really nailed it on the Hunter Biden Russian disinformation campaign.
They've been on a roll since the Berlin Wall fell on them.

By any objective criteria, this part is pure hogwash :
Donald Trump’s presidency has been a gift to Russia. He has undermined NATO, withheld military aid to Ukraine, ...yielded to Russian troops in the Middle East

NATO & Ukraine are both stronger now than when Trump took office.
Russia is pinned down in a quagmire in Syria, stuck between the Turks & Assad.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Many links to sources in the original:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... tions.html

Trump Is Finishing Russia’s Smear Campaign Against America

In 2016, Putin had a plan to discredit U.S. elections. In 2020, Republicans are executing it.

By WILLIAM SALETAN
DEC 11, 2020

Donald Trump’s presidency has been a gift to Russia. He has undermined NATO, withheld military aid to Ukraine, and abandoned America’s commitments to democracy and human rights. He has excused Vladimir Putin’s crimes, yielded to Russian troops in the Middle East, and dismissed Russia’s 2016 election interference as a hoax. Now Trump has been voted out by Americans, but he’s still serving Russia. He’s devoting his final days in office—and suggesting he might devote his post-presidency—to a longstanding Russian objective: destroying faith in U.S. elections.

For weeks, Trump has rejected Joe Biden’s victory as a fraud. In interviews, tweets, speeches, and a campaign rally in Georgia, Trump has accused Democrats of using dead people, undocumented immigrants, and software to manipulate the outcome. These allegations aren’t just lies. They’re replications, almost word for word, of propaganda that was spread by Russia in the United States and adopted by the Trump campaign in 2016. Russia expected Trump to lose that election, and it planned to portray his loss as evidence that American elections were rigged, that the U.S. government was illegitimate, and that the United States wasn’t really a democracy. Now that Trump has lost to Biden, that campaign of slander is underway. But it’s not being driven by Russians. It’s being driven by Republicans.

Russia’s strategy is detailed in three reports: one by the U.S. Intelligence Community, another by special counsel Robert Mueller, and a third by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee. The ultimate goal of the operation wasn’t to elect Trump. It was to spread the idea that “U.S. election results cannot be trusted.” In 2016, Putin’s propagandists used fake Facebook pages and Twitter accounts (“Army of Jesus,” “Secured Borders,” “Tea Party News”) to plant bogus rumors of “voter fraud” in multiple states. They told the same horror stories and used the same trigger words Republicans use now: “rigged,” “dead people,” “illegal aliens,” globalist-controlled voting machines, “tens of thousands of ineligible mail in … votes,” and “voter fraud caught in Philadelphia.”

Trump and his followers parroted this propaganda during the 2016 campaign. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump retweeted fake “#VoterFraud” updates written by Russian operatives. Kellyanne Conway, Brad Parscale, Michael Flynn, and other Trump campaign advisers also retweeted messages from the Russian accounts. When the Russians circulated a false rumor that voting machines were rigged against Trump, he repeated it on Fox News. After the election, when Russian front groups spread the word that “illegals” and “machines” had robbed Trump of the popular vote, he repeated that, too. “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” he declared.

Putin’s original plan, as detailed in the U.S. Intelligence Community’s 2017 report, was to assail Trump’s putative defeat, through Russia’s global media network and pseudo-American front groups, as a fraud. The Russians had even “prepared a Twitter campaign” for election night, with the hashtag “#DemocracyRIP.” The goal was to discredit American democracy and “cripple” the expected new president, Hillary Clinton, by glorifying Trump as “an outsider victimized by a corrupt political establishment and faulty democratic election process.” When Trump won, the Russians popped Champagne and suspended their plan.

...The next step in Trump’s service to Moscow might be a Trump media empire that lambastes the United States as a fake democracy. That’s what some American intelligence experts predicted in 2016: a “Trump television and social media venture” that would wage “an ongoing battle to tarnish the legitimacy of the electoral system.” Trump won that year, so the post-election smear campaign against American democracy didn’t happen. It’s happening now.

You have to remember, standing up to Russia doesn’t matter anymore.

...amazing how many opportunities we give the Russians opportunities to be right, but then there's nobody dumber than dumb Americans.
Especially those who let their social media ads influence them.

Our 50 distinguished IC Old Pros really nailed it on the Hunter Biden Russian disinformation campaign.
They've been on a roll since the Berlin Wall fell on them.

By any objective criteria, this part is pure hogwash :
Donald Trump’s presidency has been a gift to Russia. He has undermined NATO, withheld military aid to Ukraine, ...yielded to Russian troops in the Middle East

There is nobody as dumb as a dumb American.

[old salt]

Many links to sources in the original:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... tions.html

Trump Is Finishing Russia’s Smear Campaign Against America

In 2016, Putin had a plan to discredit U.S. elections. In 2020, Republicans are executing it.

By WILLIAM SALETAN
DEC 11, 2020

Donald Trump’s presidency has been a gift to Russia. He has undermined NATO, withheld military aid to Ukraine, and abandoned America’s commitments to democracy and human rights. He has excused Vladimir Putin’s crimes, yielded to Russian troops in the Middle East, and dismissed Russia’s 2016 election interference as a hoax. Now Trump has been voted out by Americans, but he’s still serving Russia. He’s devoting his final days in office—and suggesting he might devote his post-presidency—to a longstanding Russian objective: destroying faith in U.S. elections.

For weeks, Trump has rejected Joe Biden’s victory as a fraud. In interviews, tweets, speeches, and a campaign rally in Georgia, Trump has accused Democrats of using dead people, undocumented immigrants, and software to manipulate the outcome. These allegations aren’t just lies. They’re replications, almost word for word, of propaganda that was spread by Russia in the United States and adopted by the Trump campaign in 2016. Russia expected Trump to lose that election, and it planned to portray his loss as evidence that American elections were rigged, that the U.S. government was illegitimate, and that the United States wasn’t really a democracy. Now that Trump has lost to Biden, that campaign of slander is underway. But it’s not being driven by Russians. It’s being driven by Republicans.

Russia’s strategy is detailed in three reports: one by the U.S. Intelligence Community, another by special counsel Robert Mueller, and a third by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee. The ultimate goal of the operation wasn’t to elect Trump. It was to spread the idea that “U.S. election results cannot be trusted.” In 2016, Putin’s propagandists used fake Facebook pages and Twitter accounts (“Army of Jesus,” “Secured Borders,” “Tea Party News”) to plant bogus rumors of “voter fraud” in multiple states. They told the same horror stories and used the same trigger words Republicans use now: “rigged,” “dead people,” “illegal aliens,” globalist-controlled voting machines, “tens of thousands of ineligible mail in … votes,” and “voter fraud caught in Philadelphia.”

Trump and his followers parroted this propaganda during the 2016 campaign. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump retweeted fake “#VoterFraud” updates written by Russian operatives. Kellyanne Conway, Brad Parscale, Michael Flynn, and other Trump campaign advisers also retweeted messages from the Russian accounts. When the Russians circulated a false rumor that voting machines were rigged against Trump, he repeated it on Fox News. After the election, when Russian front groups spread the word that “illegals” and “machines” had robbed Trump of the popular vote, he repeated that, too. “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” he declared.

Putin’s original plan, as detailed in the U.S. Intelligence Community’s 2017 report, was to assail Trump’s putative defeat, through Russia’s global media network and pseudo-American front groups, as a fraud. The Russians had even “prepared a Twitter campaign” for election night, with the hashtag “#DemocracyRIP.” The goal was to discredit American democracy and “cripple” the expected new president, Hillary Clinton, by glorifying Trump as “an outsider victimized by a corrupt political establishment and faulty democratic election process.” When Trump won, the Russians popped Champagne and suspended their plan.

...The next step in Trump’s service to Moscow might be a Trump media empire that lambastes the United States as a fake democracy. That’s what some American intelligence experts predicted in 2016: a “Trump television and social media venture” that would wage “an ongoing battle to tarnish the legitimacy of the electoral system.” Trump won that year, so the post-election smear campaign against American democracy didn’t happen. It’s happening now.

You have to remember, standing up to Russia doesn’t matter anymore.

...amazing how many opportunities we give the Russians opportunities to be right, but then there's nobody dumber than dumb Americans.
Especially those who let their social media ads influence them.

Our 50 distinguished IC Old Pros really nailed it on the Hunter Biden Russian disinformation campaign.
They've been on a roll since the Berlin Wall fell on them.

By any objective criteria, this part is pure hogwash :
Donald Trump’s presidency has been a gift to Russia. He has undermined NATO, withheld military aid to Ukraine, ...yielded to Russian troops in the Middle East

There is nobody as dumb as a dumb American.

Yes. You prove it daily. Tell us how NATO & Ukraine are weaker now than they were 4 years ago
or how great Putin is doing in Syria, working with Assad & Erdogan.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Many links to sources in the original:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... tions.html

Trump Is Finishing Russia’s Smear Campaign Against America

In 2016, Putin had a plan to discredit U.S. elections. In 2020, Republicans are executing it.

By WILLIAM SALETAN
DEC 11, 2020

Donald Trump’s presidency has been a gift to Russia. He has undermined NATO, withheld military aid to Ukraine, and abandoned America’s commitments to democracy and human rights. He has excused Vladimir Putin’s crimes, yielded to Russian troops in the Middle East, and dismissed Russia’s 2016 election interference as a hoax. Now Trump has been voted out by Americans, but he’s still serving Russia. He’s devoting his final days in office—and suggesting he might devote his post-presidency—to a longstanding Russian objective: destroying faith in U.S. elections.

For weeks, Trump has rejected Joe Biden’s victory as a fraud. In interviews, tweets, speeches, and a campaign rally in Georgia, Trump has accused Democrats of using dead people, undocumented immigrants, and software to manipulate the outcome. These allegations aren’t just lies. They’re replications, almost word for word, of propaganda that was spread by Russia in the United States and adopted by the Trump campaign in 2016. Russia expected Trump to lose that election, and it planned to portray his loss as evidence that American elections were rigged, that the U.S. government was illegitimate, and that the United States wasn’t really a democracy. Now that Trump has lost to Biden, that campaign of slander is underway. But it’s not being driven by Russians. It’s being driven by Republicans.

Russia’s strategy is detailed in three reports: one by the U.S. Intelligence Community, another by special counsel Robert Mueller, and a third by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee. The ultimate goal of the operation wasn’t to elect Trump. It was to spread the idea that “U.S. election results cannot be trusted.” In 2016, Putin’s propagandists used fake Facebook pages and Twitter accounts (“Army of Jesus,” “Secured Borders,” “Tea Party News”) to plant bogus rumors of “voter fraud” in multiple states. They told the same horror stories and used the same trigger words Republicans use now: “rigged,” “dead people,” “illegal aliens,” globalist-controlled voting machines, “tens of thousands of ineligible mail in … votes,” and “voter fraud caught in Philadelphia.”

Trump and his followers parroted this propaganda during the 2016 campaign. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump retweeted fake “#VoterFraud” updates written by Russian operatives. Kellyanne Conway, Brad Parscale, Michael Flynn, and other Trump campaign advisers also retweeted messages from the Russian accounts. When the Russians circulated a false rumor that voting machines were rigged against Trump, he repeated it on Fox News. After the election, when Russian front groups spread the word that “illegals” and “machines” had robbed Trump of the popular vote, he repeated that, too. “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” he declared.

Putin’s original plan, as detailed in the U.S. Intelligence Community’s 2017 report, was to assail Trump’s putative defeat, through Russia’s global media network and pseudo-American front groups, as a fraud. The Russians had even “prepared a Twitter campaign” for election night, with the hashtag “#DemocracyRIP.” The goal was to discredit American democracy and “cripple” the expected new president, Hillary Clinton, by glorifying Trump as “an outsider victimized by a corrupt political establishment and faulty democratic election process.” When Trump won, the Russians popped Champagne and suspended their plan.

...The next step in Trump’s service to Moscow might be a Trump media empire that lambastes the United States as a fake democracy. That’s what some American intelligence experts predicted in 2016: a “Trump television and social media venture” that would wage “an ongoing battle to tarnish the legitimacy of the electoral system.” Trump won that year, so the post-election smear campaign against American democracy didn’t happen. It’s happening now.

You have to remember, standing up to Russia doesn’t matter anymore.

...amazing how many opportunities we give the Russians opportunities to be right, but then there's nobody dumber than dumb Americans.
Especially those who let their social media ads influence them.

Our 50 distinguished IC Old Pros really nailed it on the Hunter Biden Russian disinformation campaign.
They've been on a roll since the Berlin Wall fell on them.

By any objective criteria, this part is pure hogwash :
Donald Trump’s presidency has been a gift to Russia. He has undermined NATO, withheld military aid to Ukraine, ...yielded to Russian troops in the Middle East

There is nobody as dumb as a dumb American.

Yes. You prove it daily. Tell us how NATO & Ukraine are weaker now than they were 4 years ago
or how great Putin is doing in Syria, working with Assad & Erdogan.

All that shine can gloss it over. I’ll let you tell us.

[old salt]

Many links to sources in the original:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... tions.html

Trump Is Finishing Russia’s Smear Campaign Against America

In 2016, Putin had a plan to discredit U.S. elections. In 2020, Republicans are executing it.

By WILLIAM SALETAN
DEC 11, 2020

Donald Trump’s presidency has been a gift to Russia. He has undermined NATO, withheld military aid to Ukraine, and abandoned America’s commitments to democracy and human rights. He has excused Vladimir Putin’s crimes, yielded to Russian troops in the Middle East, and dismissed Russia’s 2016 election interference as a hoax. Now Trump has been voted out by Americans, but he’s still serving Russia. He’s devoting his final days in office—and suggesting he might devote his post-presidency—to a longstanding Russian objective: destroying faith in U.S. elections.

You have to remember, standing up to Russia doesn’t matter anymore.

...amazing how many opportunities we give the Russians opportunities to be right, but then there's nobody dumber than dumb Americans.
Especially those who let their social media ads influence them.

Our 50 distinguished IC Old Pros really nailed it on the Hunter Biden Russian disinformation campaign.
They've been on a roll since the Berlin Wall fell on them.

By any objective criteria, this part is pure hogwash :
Donald Trump’s presidency has been a gift to Russia. He has undermined NATO, withheld military aid to Ukraine, ...yielded to Russian troops in the Middle East

There is nobody as dumb as a dumb American.

Yes. You prove it daily. Tell us how NATO & Ukraine are weaker now than they were 4 years ago
or how great Putin is doing in Syria, working with Assad & Erdogan.

All that shine can gloss it over. I’ll let you tell us.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/06/politics ... index.html
https://www.npr.org/2019/12/03/78444427 ... y-spending