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February 2018
Bad news for the MSNBC/ Never Trump crowd, the recently released 37- page indictment of 13 Russian nationals and 3 Russian entities charged with interfering in the 2016 presidential election does not implicate Trump or anyone associated with his campaign. The FBI began the Russian- Trump collusion probe in July 2016, (coincidentally, around the same time that Trump became the official GOP nominee, and just weeks after the FBI received the dubious Christopher Steele dossier), and still zero evidence that anyone involved with Trump worked with the Russians to tilt the campaign in his favor.
Amazingly, pundits on CNN and MSNBC tempered their disappointment by pointing out that Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General, although he stated that there was no allegation that any American colluded with the Russians in their efforts to sway the election, he added “in this indictment”. The fact that numerous pundits would interpret this qualifier as ominously implying that there are more indictments to come, is just further proof that many in the media are desperate to keep hope alive that charges against Trump and/or his campaign will be forthcoming.
Interestingly, the indictment revealed that the “information warfare” conducted by this group of Russian nationals had begun in 2014. Trump did not announce his candidacy until June 2015. Cleary, the Russians did not set out to assist Trump in winning the presidency when, at that time, it was not even established that he would run for the office. Further underscoring this point, according to the indictment, before “early to mid 2016” their efforts were varied, and not necessarily pro-Trump. Their goal appeared to be “ to sow discord in the US political system”. It was not until around the time that Trump won the nomination that their social media platforms, and their various other activities appeared to advocate for a Trump presidency. It’s noteworthy that from the time Trump became the GOP nominee up until the election all of the polls were predicting an easy win for Hillary Clinton.
It’s not far-fetched to believe that the Russians also believed that Clinton would become the next president, and consequently their actual objective was to disrupt our democracy by diminishing the future presidency of Hillary Clinton. Bolstering this speculation is the fact that after Trump won the election their efforts began to turn negative towards Trump. As stated in the indictment, after the election the Russians organized both pro and anti-Trump rallies. Recent tweets by the VP of Advertising and Sales at FaceBook, Ron Goldman, stated that he has seen all of the Russian ads and that he can say “very definitively that swaying the election was “NOT’ the main goal.” He believes that their main objective was to divide our country, which he added has worked quite well.
Many in the media have also appeared to be encouraged that Rosenstein’s statement does not unequivocally refute that the Russians affected the outcome, leading them to be encouraged that this is still an open question. However, upon looking at the numbers it’s hard to believe that this Russian operation could have made any meaningful difference in the end-result. According to the Facebook executive that testified before congress a few months ago, Russian ads totaled $100,000, and only 44% of these ads were seen before the election. Clinton and Trump spent a combined $81 million on Facebook ads. Further, while the annual budget numbers of the Russian operation, listed in the indictment, are somewhat vague, it does say that at its height, a few months before the election, it reached over a million a month – a pittance of the total spent on the 2016 election. According to The Center for Responsive Politics, Clinton and Trump spent a combined $2.65 billion. It’s perplexing that anyone could make a case that the Russians helped elect Trump, based on the information presently known.
What is clear is that a faction of Russian nationals attempted to sow chaos into our political system, and disrupt our democracy. In addition to the information warfare, Russians were behind the hacking of the email accounts of the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign John Podesta, and the hacking of the Democrat National Committee’s emails. Trump has received much criticism for not condemning Russia more vociferously. Trump does need to silence his critics with unequivocal condemnation for this attack on our democracy along with proposing a cyber counterattack. But, contrary to the numerous media outlets claiming that Trump has insisted that Russian interference is ”a hoax”, Trump has acknowledged that Russia meddled into our political process. Rightly so, his pushback is directed at those attempting to delegitimize his presidency, and ultimately have him impeached, by not only saying that the Russians are responsible for his win, but that he and his team colluded with them. This cloud has cast its shadow over Trump and his administration even before the start of his tenure. So, good news for the Russians- their plan, aided and abetted by the mainstream American media, and many on the left, was wildly successful!
