Category: Trump/Russia

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!

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:

Trump still doesn’t believe Russia interfered in the 2016 election.

Trump is not convinced that Russia meddled in the election even through all intelligence executives believe it.

There are two issues:

  1. Did Russia interfere in the 2016 election?  There appears to be no doubt about that unless you’re a Trump supporter.
  2. Did Trump win because of Russian interference?  I would never say that.  We have no idea how many voters were swayed by Russian propaganda.  Trump was elected.  That’s a fact.  No matter what we find out about Russian activities and any possible cooperation from the Trump campaign, he still won.

Here’s an explanation of ways Russia has attacked our elections.

Trump’s attitude makes it hard to prevent future Russian interference. Sad!