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As Hulsker 1856 points out in another forum, this is the same evolving defense conservatives use all the time. Like Republican's evolving claims of Trump's recent statements on Africa and their denial of global climate change:
Right out of the Obfuscator's Handbook:
Step 1: Insist that Russian interference never happened.
Step 2: Concede that interference might have happened, but insist that it was not caused by Russian activity.
Step 3: Concede that the Russians caused the interference. However, insist that it had no effect whatsoever.
There has to be REAL CONSEQUENCES to the media when Trump investigation is over... they wasted our time, public money, and colluded with each other for chasing a unicorn... If the media gets off easy on this, they are allowed to do this every time a champion of the people becomes president...
What should be their punishment? And who should inflict said punishment? And while we're at it, who is the "they" in "the media"? All employees at a media company? Some employees? Just the reporters? The senior staff?
Nothing was made of it, because that is what BOTH countries had been doing for decades AND the media was content with the result of the election.
Obama messed with Russian elections. Bill Clinton messed with Russian elections.
Russia messes with American elections and Obama wins...who cares. Russia messes with American elections and Trump wins and a shh storm ensues.
These tactics are more directly interacting with common people than ever before. Significantly more. Social media and the Internet (particularly recent developments on the Internet of the last decade or so) has changed literally everything about the way people consume information.
It used to be that if you fooled one person...you likely just fooled that person. Now, through social media (and through the power of trusting the stuff your friends are sharing), one person can turn into a few thousand very easily (and very quickly). Especially if it is divisive and confirmatory of some preexisting belief (regardless of whether these beliefs are true or not, or fact-based or not fact-based). This nonsense can spread like wildfire, and eventually can come from what seems to be legitimate sources (often a media company picking up on some Twitter trend or a Twitter comment)...thereby accelerating the spread of and legitimization of this nonsense.
These tactics are certainly not new, I imagine they've been at it for many years (I'd say at least since 2010)...but 2016 was a major inflection point. Especially since we have tracks in the sand of their Internet-based moves.
These new methods coming to light doesn't absolve any past behaviors of other countries against us, or us against other countries...two wrongs have never made a right. But to deny that these methods are not powerful is to deny some very compelling data that says otherwise. Let's try to stay on topic.
Last edited by HockeyMac18; 01-16-2018 at 05:36 PM..
In this video NYT reporter Scott Shane, asks the question, what if the whole Russian collusion story is not true, and that it was a Russian misinformation operation intended to harm candidate Trump?
Sounds like he's stating the obvious, and this is why the Steele/Ohr/Simpson/Jacoby/Priestap FISA surveillance thing is going to put a bunch of Democrats in prison.
So far there is no evidence that our election system was hacked. So....nice strawman there.
No, the strawman is that you and your ilk seem to believe that Putin caused voters in PA, WI, MI, NC, and IA to vote for Trump. There is no collusion. There is no electoral outcome that can be pinned on the Russians. You'll find that out soon enough.
Furthermore, what part of "or outcome affected" did you not understand? That covers the gamut of excuses put forth by Democrats on why this President won. Try to keep up.
The NYT reporter hinted at this all being a Russian misinformation operation because he knew the whole Russian collusion story was about to begin to fall part once, and for all..
The NYT reporter was putting out a cover story for when the Russian collusion is finally proven false.
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