Is Trump hiding something?

This column makes the case that Trump is either hiding something or totally naive because he is unwilling to defend us against Russian election interference.

I certainly think it’s plausible that he owes the Russians money. I was skeptical about the “pee tape” in the Steele dossier because I didn’t think Trump would be so dumb. After the porn star and the playmate, the tape concept seems more plausible.

I don’t think he’s naive. I think he’s hiding something.

Whatever the reason, he is doing Putin’s bidding and undermining our country. Sad!

Fact checking Trump’s latest nonsense

Trump rants about everyone but Russia. He’ll blame anyone but Russia – why?

Here are fact checks from the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Trump is never going to grow up. Sad!

Russian bots are still at it

Russian bots are still sowing discord in the US. Russia wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t working. I would call their positions pro-Trump since they align with his interests.

After the Parkland shooting, they posted anti-gun control messages. They’re even pushing the conspiracy theory that the shooting never happened. Here’s another article on pro-gun bots.

Russian bots also promoted the release of the Nunes memo.

Here’s another article on that.

Russian bots retweeted Trump 500,000 times in the weeks before the election. Sad!

How much did Russian interference affect the 2016 election?

We’ll never know how much Russian meddling affected the 2016 election. It’s hard to quantify.

Here’s a column from 538 which thinks that other things caused the outcome more than Russia.

Here’s a contrary view from a column on CNN . The author states that Trump’s margins in the states that put him over the top was so small that Russian meddling made the difference.

Russia must have thought their activities made a difference because they continue to use social media to support Trump. Sad!

We don’t know if the election results were impacted by Russian meddling

Trump says “The results of the election were not impacted” by the Russian efforts.

We don’t know that. We have no idea how many, if any, votes were affected by it. Because the impact cannot be determined, I accept the results. Trump won. I will not say that he would have won without Russian help because we will never know if that’s true or not. The Russians must think they got good results because they have continued meddling through social media and will likely meddle in the 2018 elections since Trump will not try to stop them.

Trump says “The Trump campaign did nothing wrong – no collusion.”

How can he say the campaign did nothing wrong? Two people have admitted guilt and two more have been indicted. Nobody in his campaign was charged in the new indictments but he can’t make a blanket statement about the entire campaign.

There was no collusion with the Russians indicted in the campaign. The overall collusion issue is still open while Mueller completes his investigation (if Trump and the Republicans let him).

Trump is correct when he says “Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014” but that isn’t relevant to the 2016 election.

Here’s the Washington Post’s opinion.

update August 1, 2018:

“The Trump team is running a disinformation campaign about Russian interference”

Covers: Atomic Power

The original version (as “The Great Atomic Power”) was by the Louvin Brothers from 1962 during the height of concerns about nuclear war. Uncle Tupelo covered it in 1992.

Covers: Suspicious Minds

Mark James, the song’s author, recorded it in 1968. Elvis Presley covered it very successfully in 1969 with the same producer and a very similar arrangement.

The Fine Young Cannibals covered it in 1985 and Dwight Yoakam recorded it in 1992.

Covers: Big Road Blues

Tommy Johnson’s original recording was made in 1928. Big Maceo recorded it in 1945. Bonnie Raitt covered it on her first album in 1971. Her version is closer to Tommy Johnson’s.

David Bromberg covered it for his 2020 album Big Road.

Covers: Sin City

The Flying Burrito Brothers recorded the original version in 1969. Uncle Tupelo covered it in 1990 but their acoustic version was not released until a reissue of No Depression in 2003. Dwight Yoakam covered it in 1988 with k.d. lang. Beck and Emmylou Harris recorded it on the 1999 Gram Parsons tribute Return of the Grievous Angel.

Did your representative get contributions from the NRA?

This great tool from the Washington Post can be used to see if your House of Senate representatives received money from the NRA.