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What the Russians saw

Samizdata commenter Niall Kilmartin has sent the following observations about the claim that the Russians “hacked the US election”. – Natalie Solent

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve read quite a bit in the slew of articles kicked off by the Washington Post‘s claim that the Russians ‘hacked the election’ – everything from supportive articles through ridiculing ones, from articles focussed on the mechanics of the Podesta phishing attack – was it actually spear-phishing! – through articles focussed strictly on the politics of it all, or on the comedy of hardened lefties’ new-found faith in anonymous CIA assessments.

One thought occurred immediately to me but I have never seen it raised; understandably never raised by left-wing supporters of the theory, but also never raised by vehement libertarian or right-wing opponents.

The argument is that the Russians hacked both the DNC and the RNC, then revealed their evil Trump-supporting agenda by releasing documents only from the DNC. Let us, just for the sake of argument accept everything up to the comma – that it was the Russians, and they had access to both DNC and RNC servers. (Others have argued intelligently against accepting all that with the unquestioning credence of today’s MSM, or indeed even thinking it likely, but that’s not my point; let us, for now, presume it’s accurate.)

Clinton was the DNC’s candidate. There would of course be evidence of their preference for her on their servers. And since even the BBC’s correspondent could not keep a straight face when reporting her 6 successive coin-toss wins in the Iowa primary, it should be no surprise this evidence included acts beyond what was fair, even by the low public standards of politics, so was damaging to her and to the DNC.

Trump was not the RNC’s candidate. Nor was runner-up Ted Cruz. From early in the race, it became clear it was between these two, with the RNC having a hard time deciding which of them it disliked more. When Trump won, the most insider RNC people were the most openly appalled, right up until the convention. After it, some remained nevertrumpers, and others had grave doubts he could win (the more they were RNC insiders, the more doubts they had). So what would the RNC’s servers have shown?

Hypothesis 1) The RNC ran a fair enough primary process, while publicising all the arguments against Trump (and Cruz) that they had. Occam’s razor makes this the most reasonable hypothesis, since two candidates they disliked became the front-runners early. (Variant Hypothesis: the RNC took seriously Trump’s promise not to run 3rd party if the primary process was fair. They therefore avoided any major unfairness, so they could hold him to his promise after his expected defeat.) After Trump won the nomination, they thought more about down-ballot damage-limitation than about helping him to an improbable (they thought) victory by any shameful-if-exposed tactic.

Hypothesis 2) The RNC cheated but not as much as the DNC, so failed to prevent Trump’s win (perhaps through failing to anticipate it till too late) and in doing so released all possible argument against Trump (as in 1 above) plus knowingly unfair or concocted opposition. If you have a hard time thinking a bunch of professional politicians could ever have run an honest process, you can mix what ratio you like of this with (1).

Hypothesis 3) Hardened lefties who believe that Republicans are evil and stupid may, without inconsistency, insist that the RNC cheated as much or more than the DNC but much more stupidly, so failed to achieve their end of stopping Trump win the Republican nomination, unlike the clever Democratic cheating done by the DNC.

Thus what do the Russian hackers find on the RNC’s servers?

In Variant 1, they find evidence that the RNC is more highminded than the DNC in how it runs primaries, and also that they have put into the public domain everything they know against Trump and every argument they can think of. Revealing this would praise the RNC relative to the DNC, and do no harm to Trump.

In Variant 2, the RNC is not so highminded; some of what they urged against Trump was offered in bad faith. Revealing this leaves the RNC looking bad, but still less corrupt than the DNC, and creates some sympathy for Trump.

In variant 3, the RNC looks as bad as the DNC, and outsider-candidate Trump benefits bigtime in public opinion.

So lets revisit the final part of the sentence above: “The argument is that the Russians hacked both the DNC and the RNC, then revealed their evil Trump-supporting agenda by releasing documents only from the DNC.”

Can anyone correct my impression that even if the first clause were correct, the last would not follow? Why would the hackers find secret anti-Trump information, or evidence of corrupt manipulation for Trump (or indeed, for Cruz)?

30 comments to What the Russians saw

  • Mal Reynolds (Serenity)

    Good article. This has been exactly my line of thinking when people who have followed the US election less closely suggest that Russia favoured Trump by only releasing the dirt they had on the DNC. Trump was never the favoured candidate for the RNC. He fought them all every step of the way. How could there possibly be dirt on the RNC on how they manipulated the election FOR Trump?

    Also if there was this sort of dirt on Trump you would have expected the significantly hostile media to have raised it. Trump’s dirt was grabbing pussy. That’s the worst they could find.

  • Alisa

    Niall has certainly gone deeper on this than anyone I’ve seen so far – me, I’m still looking for anyone in the MSM to raise the much-more obvious point in all this: it was not Putin who ran for POTUS, FFS. Show me evidence that Trump asked Putin to hack the DNC emails, and I might begin listening – otherwise, what matters is what the hacking revealed (i.e. DNC cheating in the elections), not who the hacker was.

    BTW, if the CIA does find embarrassing info about Le Pen costing her the coming election, wouldn’t the US be as guilty of interfering in the French democratic process as Putin supposedly is in the American one?

    Strange times indeed.

    (Dear Admin, I can’t seem to be able to embed the link properly…)

  • Plamus

    I do not have a Facebook account, and will not post FB links, so excuse the format, but… this is from a FB link I saw (I think it provides useful context):

    “Jerrod Adee
    December 13 at 2:23am ·
    As someone who both works in enterprise network security and who has actual knowledge of the Russian DNC hack, let me clear up a couple of points that some people seem to be missing.

    1. Russia, China, the Brits (GCHQ mostly), and the U.S. are hacking each other constantly (or trying to at least). Constantly. In the network security field, these attacks are so common, that they all get a special name. APT (or Advanced Persistent Threat).

    2. Everyone who does some form of digital security, and especially intelligence aggregators, do everything they can to record and collate any indicators of compromise (IP Addresses, Malicious file signatures, etc) associated with APTs and they all get added to the company and community blocking schemes at the highest level.

    3. Russia is very interesting from a digital security standpoint because the politics are almost as important as the actions. All of their intelligence services are currently infighting. It’s this constant war to try and be the person who provides good information, and they are competing against each other far more often than they are ever working together and coordinating.

    4. The DNC was hacked. Indicators available to the public show that it was likely a known Russian APT (actually 2 of them, see point #3) that conducted the hack.

    5. The reason the DNC was hacked is because they had virtually no security. I mean, it was as close to negative security as you could get. It took them months to even figure out they had been owned (and it was completely owned, like in full control of their mail-servers owned). And then, when they did figure it out? They /emailed/ fresh passwords to everybody. And were confused by the fact that they were still owned several weeks later.

    (I’ve posted this on enough people’s timelines today that it seems worth just posting on my own.)

    77 Likes16 Comments”

  • Paul Marks

    By constantly saying “the Russians hacked the election” the main-stream-media want to give the population the impression that the Russians hacked the voting machines and changed the result – few people have the time or inclination to read the details of a story, they (including often me) just read the headline. The msm know this.

    Actually there was ballot rigging – but it was all in support of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats (what happened in Detroit, with more people voting in some areas than are on the election rolls, is the tip of the iceberg in many cities). The Trump campaign (and I am certainly not a fan of Mr Trump) was NOT rigging the ballot – and neither was anyone else rigging the ballot for them.

    “But the Russians revealed private information about the DNC and the Clinton Campaign”.

    First there is no evidence that it was “the Russians” – as opposed to (say) Democrat leaks by people who do not like Hillary Clinton and the (Wall Street Credit Bubble linked) Democrat establishment – there are HONEST socialists who do not see the role of government as sending ever more Credit Money (via the Federal Reserve and the other government backed Central Banks) to the richest people on the planet. The Economist magazine and Financial Times newspaper (both sold in the United States) “Socialism for rich people” is not universally popular on the left.

    But also there is the basic point that the mainstream media still refuses to discuss what was revealed by the “hacking” (or by the leaking).

    The Democrats generally and the Hill Clinton campaign in particular were revealed to be utterly corrupt – indeed criminal. Yet the media refuse to discuss this (and there is no chance that Hillary Clinton and the others will be arrested and sent to prison – as they should be). Instead we get an endless drum beat of “the Russians hacked the election” implying (designed to give the false impression that) that the Russians hacked voting machines.

    Even the evidence of the hidden cameras of Project Veritas (showing the Clinton campaign people BOASTING of ballot rigging) is ignored. James O’Keefe – typical Russian name, must be working for Mr Putin and the FSB.

  • bob sykes

    I should not be surprised if it turns out that the Russians did hack into both the DNC and RNC servers. However, Assange and other leaders at Wikileaks have repeated said that they got the DNC emails directly from someone at the DNC, without any Russian involvement.

    The hullabaloo over Russia hacking the election (physically impossible, no voting machine was connected to the web) is meant (1) to delegitimize Trump’s Presidency and (2) to deflect attention from the evidence of a possible pedophile ring in Washington, DC.

  • Sam Duncan

    “Even the evidence of the hidden cameras of Project Veritas (showing the Clinton campaign people BOASTING of ballot rigging) is ignored. James O’Keefe – typical Russian name, must be working for Mr Putin and the FSB.”

    Good point, Paul. The Podesta emails aren’t the only evidence of corruption and cynicism on the part of the Democrats.

    And it’s not as if this evidence only began to surface during this election cycle; remember the ACORN videos that made O’Keefe’s name? Or Journolist? If there’s equivalence to be drawn between the DNC and RNC in this area, where’s the Democrat O’Keefe? Where’s the fearless journalist hero uncovering the endemic corruption running rife through the Republican Party? I’m sure it’s not squeaky-clean – they are politicians after all – but can’t help thinking that if there were anything going on even close to what we’ve seen from the Democrats over the last few years, it would never be off the broadcast TV news networks and major newspapapers. There’d be movies about it.

    So what can we conclude?

  • Runcie Balspune

    the Russians hacked the voting machines and changed the result

    Well, if they can hack ordinary pencils in British referendums, then a electronic voting machine with no internet connection would be a piece of p*ss.

  • RRS

    Stuxnet was “hacking.” Actually getting into and affecting the controls of a system. (screw up the centrifuges -withdraw money from accounts)

    Accessing and extracting information from a network falls short of “hacking.”

  • Good piece.

    One additional point. Over the years the GOP has developed a sense that whatever they say or write will be exposed by the MSM. In 1995 Newt’s private phone conversations were broadcast without any major consequences.

    I forget who said it, but during Iran Contra someone pointed out that Ollie North had been issued a shredder, what did they think he’d use it for?

  • bobby b

    The sources, and the willing audiences, of the “it’s the Russians!” cry of rage are limited to those of the left who remain unable to accept what happened.

    They scream it mostly to themselves, agree with each other vociferously, and then cite each other in support.

    The rest of the country – which now includes pretty much everyone who voted for Trump, plus a significant percentage of Hillary voters – merely roll our eyes and wonder when they’ll shut the f**k up.

  • Julie near Chicago

    Paul, Sam, Alisa: Good points!

    . . .

    CLINTON BODY-COUNTS: While the lord knows I put nothing past those two, it seems that charges of murder are made against them whenever a deceased becomes so. If these are all correct, I don’t see when they have time for anything else, like running campaigns or, in Bill’s case, charming the pants off interns and TV watchers everywhere (he had true charisma, unlike some others who are merely accused of it, SNARK).

    . . .

    SIX COIN-TOSS win:

    .

    1. Quick search shows lots of results assuming it happened as advertised: Crooked dealings, rigged Iowa caucus. Nay-sayers: I read one a long time ago, can’t find it now, but there actually are at least a few. I see Media Matters is one such; ugh, I assure you that if M-M says water’s wet, that’s proof positive that it’s dry, so I haven’t read their piece. On the other hand, I quote Snopes on this below (3).

    .

    2. Almost all these allegations of wrongdoing seem predicated on the theory that if something is “statistically unlikely,” the claim that it happened is almost certainly false.

    What doo-dah! It’s statistically unlikely that an airliner would crash over Roseland, Indiana. In fact, it had never happened until it did — on 10/31/94: thus, up until the crash the odds of its happening were 0, —> depending on the factors one uses in determining the (mathematical) probability. Trend line of such crashes: flat at 0, until sudden spike to 100%. [If one knew ALL the causative factors and included them in the statistical analysis, going back to The Beginning, the odds would calculate out to 100%, at least if one believes in a strict cause-and-effect Universe, given a starting anomaly or a cyclic Time.] In the instant case, the common idea is that six winning tosses* are so unlikely that they just can’t have happened.

    *(By the way, several mentions of “six coin-tosses in a row.” I have no idea of the origin of the “in a row” claim.)

    It’s also extremely unlikely that any particular real live person would have ever been born … yet here we ghostly, unattached spirits all are. I don’t understand how an immaterial thing can be pressing computer keys, but we seem to be doing it.

    .

    3. Apparently, winning a delegate in Iowa’s DNC caucuses is rare but not unheard-of. Snopes has a thorough discussion of what it claims are the facts, and yes, I know that Snopes is being more and more widely regarded as “in the tank” for the left. Personally, I’m not 100% sure that it is so, at least not dishonestly. Make up your own mind. (You will anyway, even without my permish, heh-heh-heh. 😉 )

    http://www.snopes.com/iowa-caucus-coin-toss/

    Snopes begins:

    * * *

    Fickle and Timed

    Iowa’s quirky caucus conventions drew national attention over the involvement of literal coin tosses to allocate votes between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.

    Kim LaCapria [writer] Updated: Feb 04, 2016

    .-[Screenshot, Twitter]-

    Claim: During the Iowa caucuses, delegates are sometimes awarded through coin tosses, and Hillary Clinton won six coin tosses in the 2016 caucuses (awarding her a narrow victory).

    MIXTURE

    WHAT’S TRUE: Under rare conditions, Iowa caucus rules call for a coin toss to determine to which candidate delegates are awarded.

    WHAT’S Undetermined: Whether Hillary Clinton won six out of six (or seven) coin tosses in Iowa in 2016; how many coin tosses occurred; the specific breakdown of coin toss results.

    Example: [Screenshots–J.] : [Collected via e-mail, Twitter, and Facebook, February 2016]

    [SNIP — but the report is very interesting, and links to various sources such as The Des Moines Register, which was there on the scene, FWIW. Of course, I believe nothing anymore, so maybe the paper was itself in the tank for Shrill. And Des Moines is librul territory, or so ’tis said.]

    * * *

  • George

    President Obama and Congress have promised retaliation. If I was Putin, I would demand proof, including official statements by the CIA, FBI, and NSA.

    First it was the popular vote,then it was the Electoral College, now it’s the Russians. Next week, who knows. Anything but looking at their anointed, but deeply flawed, candidate and her incompetent campaign.

  • Julie, the BBC reporter, who was on the spot in the hall on the day in question, reported (as unchallengeable fact) that six (exactly six, no more no less, was the impression given) of the Iowa delegates had required to be assigned by flipping a coin under the rules (because the votes were so close IIRC), and that Hillary had won all of them (hence ‘six in a row’). I watched that broadcast at the time and vividly recall his explicit mocking disbelief, joking that with luck like that “she should play the lottery”. This is my oldest source for that particular event. I several times saw it referenced by US sources who would not have got it from the BBC. I never once saw it controverted or disputed – which doesn’t mean it wasn’t, but I’d be surprised that the Hillary campaign, with every motive to assert her wins were plausible, and every advantage in sympathetic media coverage, could not have disputed it emphatically if that were in their power.

    My memory is that this was the first of several statistically-implausible coin toss wins and high-card draws in Democratic primaries situations, but I think I learned of later examples only via non-MSM secondary reporting.

    As the rules were that Bernie and Hillary should have equal likelihood of such wins, the interesting figure is not just Iowa but the ratio of random-assign delegates each won. However I note that dishonest manipulation is compatible with allowing some Bernie wins in a range of situations. Iowa was the first primary and very close, whereas dishonesty could safely pretend to be honest in a winner-take-all state where Hillary was ahead. Thus win sequences might need to be weighted with an estimate of their political necessity for a true assessment. So it could be quite a research project to come up with a diagnostic implausibility figure, but the raw figure would be of interest. I’m more interested in using my very limited time to estimate how many votes were fraudulently cast, but would be interested if anyone did the research on this one.

    “It’s statistically unlikely that an airliner would crash over Roseland, Indiana. In fact, it had never happened until it did…”

    That’s not comparable. If a plane crashes, then it is certain to crash on a given spot which (away from an airport) is unlikely to have been the site of an earlier crash. Given that the primaries included some too-close-to-call/ random assign delegates, Hillary had a 1/64 chance of winning the first 6 and and the overall probability of this being the first of two then three then more such winning streaks for her is lower still. As Guildenstern says to Rosencrantz* when a similar situation arises in ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead’, “I would want to look at your coin”. But I agree that 1/64 is well short of monkeys-and-Shakespeare unbelievableness. Had it not been Hillary, we might just about have believed it – but it was, so we rationally doubt. 🙂

    ( * In the play text, it is character ‘Guil’ who says this to character ‘Ros’. In a production, the audience never know which one is which, as Stoppard intended, so it would be more in the spirit of the play to write ‘As one of Guildenstern and Rosencrantz says to the other …’. )

  • Umbriel

    The election was most certainly not “hacked”. The DNC’s expectation of privacy was. I see only a hair-splitting difference between the release of their e-mails and the release of the Trump “pussy-gate” video. Admissibility in court would be one thing, but embarrassing revelations are a given in elections, and I don’t believe any impropriety in how such information was obtained can or should be expected to negate its content in the public’s mind. Would we be having anything like this conversation about that video if Trump had lost, even if it had been recorded illegally? I think not. He said what he said, regardless of what wrongs were involved in its revelation.

    Disclaimer: I voted Libertarian.

  • Paul Marks

    Lots of good comments.

    Sadly the mainstream media (and the education system – the schools and colleges) do their “best” (i.e. their moral worst) to keep such things away from people, especially the young.

    Both the education system and the msm are part of the “Big Lie” – they claim their role is to expose the truth and enlighten the mind. In reality their role is to cover-up the truth and to befuddle the mind.

  • Richard Thomas

    Julie, I’ve liked Snopes since he first popped up as a fresh-faced newbie on alt.folklore.urban back in the early 90s but it’s clear his site has become infested by the terminally left-wing. I’d be hesitant to cite it for anything beyond Craig Shergold stories these days.

  • Richard Thomas

    Julie, if you want evidence, just look for the page on the claim that Carter halted immigration for a class of people entering the US just as Trump wants to do. They walk you through all the stuff that shows that this was, indeed, completely the case and then end up saying “But he did it for different reasons” and slap a “mixture” on it.

    http://www.snopes.com/jimmy-carter-banned-iranian-immigrants/

    Classical use of a strawman argument.

    Edit: I notice that the writer is, in fact, the same person as your quoted example. So….

  • Richard Thomas

    I should point out that this is not information I got from any particular place. I actually was searching for more details about Carter’s actions when I ran across it. Googling now, the sheer amount of stuff decrying Snopes’ site and this lady in particular is jaw-dropping.

    George, perhaps Putin has crossed Obama’s bright red line. If I was Putin, I’d broadcast 10 minutes of me laughing hysterically.

  • Julie near Chicago

    Niall, in your discussion above about plane crashes and Shrillenanigans, you quote from my comment, quite correctly:

    “It’s statistically unlikely that an airliner would crash over Roseland, Indiana. In fact, it had never happened until it did…”

    To this you reply,

    That’s not comparable.

    But I was addressing a much more general issue, which is the general fact that the statistical probability that X will or won’t happen is no proof that X will or won’t happen. The best it tells you is where the smart money goes in the bet. So the fact that it is statistically improbable that Shrill would win 6 coin tosses out of six or seven tosses made is no proof that it didn’t happen; merely that it’s “unlikely” in that it’s counterintuitive given the appearance, let alone the actual fact, of low statistical “likelihood” (= probability).

    This confusion in thinking is made all the time (although I doubt that you in particular make it very often *g*), and it drives me nuts — as do so very many things…. 🙁 It’s one of the main practical reasons behind our belief that legally, the accused should always be presumed innocent “until proven guilty.”

    .

    The location of the crash (whether over, near to, or far from a suitable landing strip) isn’t germane to my point, either, so I allowed myself to write, probably inaccurately, that the crash occurred over Roselawn, rather than near Roselawn. I say “probably inaccurately,” because if we are going to get down to the fine details, it’s possible for all I know that the soybean field that was the site of the crash was in fact in incorporated Roselawn; or even if not, perhaps in Roselawn Township, if Indiana has townships like Illinois’.

    As to the rest of your comment, it’s interesting and informative as usual, and I thank you for making it. :>)

    . . .

    Richard, thanks for your comments on Snopes; I will take a look at the Carter piece. If I had more than a mere few hundred years left to live, I’d investigate the life out of the (reportedly Jewish) Mikkelsons.

    I first heard Snopes’s reputation questioned by an intelligent, well-educated libertarian-conservative Californian of the computer-techie type who also happens to be Catholic, probably 10 years or more ago; he’d decided there was “a faint whiff of anti-Semitism” about some of the stuff there. Again, for all I know his nose knew. ;>)

    Who’s Craig Shergold?

  • JB

    3 Points:

    1) RNC Servers were NOT hacked. At least according to news reports.

    http://www.wsj.com/articles/republican-national-committee-security-foiled-russian-hackers-1481850043

    2) I find it incredibly rich that the Obama Administration, the DNC, the MSN and the entire left complex are so up in arms at a foreign government involving itself in our (I’m American) presidential election. It is not too far back for me to have a clear memory that (a) Obama’s administration made loud pronouncements of consequences during the run up to the Brexit vote if the UK had the temerity to not vote in his preferred way and (b) the DNC (and behind the scenes Obama) rather obnoxiously and blatantly actively supported the opposition to Netanyahu is Israel’s last election.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/23/eu-referendum-what-the-world-is-saying—britains-historic-decis/

    http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2016/12/16/flashback-that-time-the-obama-administration-spent-hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars-to-defeat-benjamin-netanyahu-n2260711

    3) Let’s accept for the sake of argument that the Russians hacked every server in the US and that all of the released information was part of some nefarious Russian plot to elect Trump. No one has credibly (or even remotely credibly) argued that (a) the Russians were able to actually hack voting machines and change vote totals or (b) that ANY OF THE INFORMATION RELEASED WAS FALSE. So the left’s argument is basically that “the hacked information revealed about our candidate exposed her to be so repugnant that it caused her to lose the election. Therefore, she ….” what? should have been installed anyway?

    I feel like I have woken up in crazy town.

  • Thailover

    Not only that, but NOTHING about the “Russian hacking” claim makes the slightest bit of sense.

    1. What was hacked? Was it the election itself? Everyone agrees that the election process itself was not hacked. Was it Podesta? Nope, he clicked on a phishing link. Was it Huma’s and Weiner’s shared laptop? Nope, that was confiscated by the FBI after Weiner “sexted” a 15yr old minor. Was it “the media”? No one seems to think so. Was it the DNC? Insiders (wikileaks…) says they received leaks, not hacks, and it’s rumored that it was a DNC employee pissed off about the illegal shenanigans by the media, Slithery’s campaign and the DNC that rigged the Primary against crazy Bernie. The NSA no doubt knows what information was flowing too and from Hillary’s private server, so where is the evidence? Remember, this is from Slithery Clinton herself. The same person who constantly suggested that Trump (a) needs to release his tax forms so we can see what taxes he paid or didn’t pay and (b) he paid no taxes for the past ten years, even though he said he did. Yeah, Slithery is THAT person.

    2. Would “the Russians” want Slithery who “the Russians” brought and sold during the Uranium One fiasco in the office of PODUS, or would they want Trump, Mr. “America First”, who is controlled and beholden to NO ONE, who is perceived as a loose cannon on deck, who has more money than god, and who selected “Mad Dog” Ret Gen Mattis as Sec of Defense? The answer is obvious.

    3. The claim is that the “election was hacked”, but it wasn’t hacked. That the RNC was also hacked, but they weren’t. And that Putin is in tight with Trump, which he isn’t.

    4. The claim is that Slithery’s, the DNC’s, and “the media’s” corruption, collusion and conspiracy to rig the Primary election was exposed by “the Russians” rather than someone domestically. WHO exposed the dirty stinking leftists is misdirection from WHAT was exposed about the dirty stinking leftists. ‘Classic case of shoot the messenger.

  • Thailover

    As I read online the other day, “I haven’t seen the Democrats THIS flustered and angry since we freed their slaves”.
    LOL

    😎

  • Lee Moore

    What actually happened was that the Russians found that the RNC folk hadn’t been rigging the primaries, they’d been telling off colour jokes in their emails about Mexicans, Muslims, and grabbing women inappropriately, which would normally have been gold dust for a smear campaign – but the Russkies discovered that The Donald had already said all that out loud and on camera, so it wasn’t worth the bother releasing them.

  • Jacob

    One MUST assume that all servers are hacked, and ALL the info on the net is publicly known. Hackers from Russia, the CIA, from Israel, China, Iran or Hungary – it does not matter.

    He who ignores this and keeps dirty secrets on the web is an idiot.

    If the hackers, Russian or not, revealed to the US electorate the true nature of their candidates they did a great service to the US.

    The Spanish Falangists in the 1930’ies had an anti-monarchist slogan: “we don’t want idiot kings”. It applies to US Presidents as well.

  • Jacob

    “The Donald had already said all that out loud and on camera”

    Sure. And the electorate did not find it difficult to figure out which candidate was genuine and which a phony.

  • Thailover

    JB the leftists in government ARE insane. They’re used to being Warlocks spinning their web of deceipt and having nearly everyone buy it, no matter how outlandish. And they are STILL able to bamboozle nearly half the population who spend no time online and only watch TV “news” (i.e. propaganda).

    This is EXACTLY why they’re gearing up for a war on what they call “Fake News”, which are really the alternative news medias that DID expose the wikileaks and material from Project Veritas so damning to Slithery, the DNC and “the media”.

    Checkout this bill that passed the Senate and House of Reps and only requires Pres Communist’s signiture. H.R. 6393, read Title 5 specifically.

    (If the link doesn’t work, (it looks a bit hinky), try congress.gov and type in hr 6393 in the long dialog box.)

  • Thailover

    And a word from Bill Whittle, the honorable gentleman on the right on Fake News.
    (youtube video)

  • Richard Thomas

    Julie, Craig Shergold was a little English boy dying of cancer. His wish was to receive postcards. An email began circulating detailing his story and continued to circulate and circulate long after he received treatment, was in remission and had become a young adult. The family found the large constant influx of postcards (around 350 million) to be problematic. The persistence of this email became somewhat legendary though it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Shergold

  • Julie near Chicago

    Richard, thanks for the link. I see that he had surgery at the UVa Med. School, which was successful. :>))