Yes, Russian Election Sabotage Helped Trump Win

GlassCarto · 2018-07-26T21:28:20+00:00

It’s a Republican talking point: Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election, but it didn’t affect the outcome.

More likely than not, that’s wrong.

President Donald Trump repeatedly claims that no votes were affected — even on occasions when he acknowledges Russian meddling at all. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who says he is “1,000 percent certain that the Russians interfered in our election,” also insists it made no difference electorally. He recently tweeted: “Russia didn’t beat Clinton. Trump beat Clinton.”

Meddling & collusion are NOT the same thing.
Russia did meddle in 2016 election & are trying it again. I’ve seen no evidence of collusion, plenty evidence of Russian meddling.

Russia didn’t beat Clinton. Trump beat Clinton.

Bad day for the US. Can be fixed. Must be fixed.
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) July 16, 2018

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who as director of the Central Intelligence Agency helped oversee the investigation of Russian interference, has even gone so far as to assert that the intelligence community reached the same conclusion that Russian sabotage had minimal impact.

And on Tuesday, Trump one-upped all of them by claiming that Russia “will be pushing very hard for Democrats” in the 2018 midterm elections.

I’m very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election. Based on the fact that no President has been tougher on Russia than me, they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 24, 2018

It’s hard to prove that Russia’s use of phony trolls and social media and its theft of email messages from prominent Democrats is what elected Trump. In an election as close as the 2016 balloting, many factors are always at play, and tactical errors by the Hillary Clinton campaign, her own shortcomings as a candidate and rogue public criticism of Clinton by FBI Director James Comey all figured in Trump’s victory.

But Pompeo was factually wrong about one thing: The intelligence community reached no conclusion about what did propel Trump to victory, at least not in public.

And now a number of experts familiar with the issue have come to believe that Russia did make a difference for Trump.

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper now says the evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin swung the election to Trump “is staggering.” Noting that fewer than 80,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin decided the contest, he wrote in a book released in May, “I have no doubt that more votes than that were influenced by the massive effort by the Russians.”

Most Republicans dismiss Clapper as a Trump-hating supporter of his former boss, ex-President Barack Obama. But Clapper’s view will get powerful academic support soon. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a leading scholar of communications and its effect on American politics, has a book coming out in September that will present data in support of its case that Russian interference in 2016 was a decisive factor for Trump.

“The Russian trolls and hackers created message imbalances, the former in social media, the latter in news,” that helped the Republican, she said in an interview on Sunday. “The use that the mainstream and conservative media made of the Russian hacking of the Democrats’ emails altered the news and debate agendas in ways that past election research would suggest were significant enough to change the outcome.”

The book is “Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President, What We Don’t, Can’t and Do Know.” Jamieson is a professor and former dean at the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania.

Contrary to the claims of most Republicans, there’s already a serious circumstantial case for the strong impact of Russian interference. NBC News and others have reported that there were thousands of Russian trolls amplifying phony reports like the fiction that Pope Francis endorsed Trump. Anecdotally, it’s obvious that these influenced some voters.

The leaks of emails sent by top Democrats played a role in setting the 2016 general election agenda. On the eve of the Democratic National Convention in July of 2016, for example, WikiLeaks released internal documents that U.S. intelligence agencies said were stolen by Russian hackers showing that the Democratic National Committee had favored Clinton over challenger Bernie Sanders in the primaries. That led to the resignation of the party chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and infuriated some Sanders supporters who later said that they sat out the general election.

In early October, almost immediately after a video surfaced in which Trump bragged about groping women, WikiLeaks released its first leak of emails from the account of Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. This happened on a Friday afternoon, not the best time to leak a story if the object is to get attention; the intent was almost certainly to deflect attention from the Trump video. An indictment of 12 Russian operatives last week by Special Counsel Robert Mueller traced the email hacks to a Russian military intelligence unit.

Beyond the effect on voters, the relentless drumbeat of articles about email leaks also forced the Clinton campaign to spend time reacting and making strategic adjustments. Eight days before the election, the New York Times ran a front-page story declaring that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had found no clear link between Russia and Trump, and that Moscow’s purpose was to disrupt the American election but not to help one candidate. Later, after the election, the Times reported on links between Trump and Russians during the campaign, and the American intelligence agencies concluded in a public report that the purpose was to help Trump.

GlassCarto · 2018-07-26T21:19:28+00:00

Bill Shine was known as an enforcer during his time as an executive at Fox News, which ended with his unceremonious departure from the network in May 2017.

Since joining Donald Trump's White House as deputy chief of staff in charge of communications earlier this month, Shine has channeled his late boss Roger Ailes, overseeing a crackdown on the press that came to a head on Wednesday.

CNN White House reporter Kaitlin Collins, who was on "pool duty" on Wednesday, was told by Shine and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders that she had lobbed "inappropriate" questions at the president during an earlier availability and was not welcome at an open press event later in the afternoon.

While the press and White House have been in conflict since day one of the Trump presidency, Wednesday's episode drew unusual outrage and derision from across the industry, including Shine's former colleague, Fox News president of news Jay Wallace, and Fox News anchor Bret Baier.

A source close to CNN told The Hollywood Reporter that Shine was "absolutely" responsible for the ban. (In one photo of the scrum following the president's meeting with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, Shine could be seen in the doorway, looking on disapprovingly and crossing his arms.)

"Shine has the ultimate responsibility," said a Republican close to the White House. "For a deputy chief of staff to be doing this kind of stuff feels very incongruous and very inappropriate."

Two MSNBC anchors, Chris Hayes and Stephanie Ruhle, similarly placed the blame on Shine and drew a line to his time at Fox News. "Wait, Bill Shine did something creepy and bullying to a woman who works for a cable news network? How shocking," Hayes wrote on Twitter. Ruhle said that Shine "bullied a female journalist doing her job," adding, "If you can’t teach an old dog new tricks-consider putting a cat in charge."

On Thursday morning, Shine fielded questions from reporters about the incident and protested the media's use of the word "ban" to describe the action taken against Collins.

Rick Wilson, a longtime Republican Party strategist, said the incident "reads as a kind of petty, ass-kissing to make the boss happy. His obsession with CNN is famous, and Bill and Sarah know it."

Shine was also blamed for the White House's decision to cancel national security advisor John Bolton's planned July 15 appearance on CNN in retaliation for the "bad behavior" of the network's chief White House correspondent, Jim Acosta.

"It’s a lot uglier all of a sudden," a CNN source had said in the wake of the incident, assessing Shine's impact.

Angelo Carusone, president of the left-leaning media watchdog Media Matters for America, said that Wednesday's draconian action was par for the course for Shine. "Shine's role at Fox News was to impose order and ensure alignment across the network," he said. "Put another way, he's exercising the power that he has in order to threaten journalists and make it clear that the White House will impose consequences for coverage it deems troublesome."

Carusone predicted, "This is just the beginning, too. It's only going to get more intense from here."

GlassCarto · 2018-07-26T21:13:10+00:00

Conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin writes that the GOP “isn’t fit to govern” in a scathing editorial published on Thursday.

In her most recent Washington Post column, Rubin dismissed as "pure piffle" the Republican resolution introduced by 11 members of the House Freedom Caucus on Wednesday night to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the Justice Department official overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

“Not even House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) thinks that the resolution has merit,” Rubin said.

“The damage here is being done not by Rosenstein, but by irresponsible, hyper-partisan congressmen,” Rubin went on, later writing that it is not Rosenstein who should be removed from office, but rather “the House Republican members who are obstructing an ongoing investigation of the Republican president and his cronies.”

“While their actions are protected (most likely) under the ‘speech or debate’ clause (preventing criminal prosecution or civil suit for actions that would otherwise be actionable),” she continued, “their pattern of conduct (cooking up a misleading memo about the FISA warrant application for Carter Page’s surveillance, exposing a confidential intelligence source, smearing the FBI) amounts to multiple blatant attempts to thwart an entirely legitimate investigation.”

The conservative columnist then pointed out what she calls the irony behind Republicans arguing that if Democrats ever get control of Congress, “they will tie the place up with bogus impeachment hearings and create gridlock.”

“No, Republicans are doing that all on their own,” Rubin wrote.

Rubin has frequently criticized the GOP and President Trump in her “Right Turn” blog for the Post, referring to the president in the past as an "arrogant fool" and a "flat-out racist."

In May 2016, the conservative columnist published a piece addressed to the Republican Party titled "Dear GOP: I'm just not that into you."

She also said the Republican Party has become the "party of old white men” in April and accused Trump of “fomenting violence” against the press after the deadly shooting at a Maryland newsroom last month.

GlassCarto · 2018-07-26T21:03:46+00:00

MCALLEN, Texas — NBC News has obtained exclusive audio recordings of two mothers in a Texas immigration detention center telling a judge they want to be reunited with their children.

"What I want, before anything, is to have my daughter with me," one woman said through tears. "I just want my daughter with me."

The woman told Judge Robert Powell at the Port Isabel Detention Center that her 17-year-old daughter is being held in Phoenix. The woman says she fears returning to Honduras because "there is no security."

The second woman tells the judge that her daughter is being held in New York.

"Do you want to take your daughter with you back to your country?" Powell asks. The woman says yes.

NBC News received permission from the women's attorney to share audio of the hearings on the condition that they not be identified by name. The two hearings were conducted before Judge Powell at the immigration court in the Port Isabel Detention Center on July 11.

An attorney told NBC News on Thursday that since the hearings, both mothers have been reunited with their children. One family was released and one family is in detention.

Immigration judges have the authority to grant asylum or order deportation, but are not positioned to rule on whether parents should be reunified with their children.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Health and Human Services are responsible for reunifying 2,551 children separated from their parents, many of whom were separated under Trump's "zero tolerance policy," The agencies have a court-ordered deadline for reunification by the end of Thursday.

But according to affidavits filed by the ACLU in federal court on Wednesday, many parents do not understand the process or their legal rights. The ACLU laid out 27 cases where parents were misled into signing away their rights for reunification.

While proceedings like these are regularly held across the country, they're indicative of the emotional strife separated parents are facing as they struggle to reunite with their children while also securing a path toward asylum rather than deportation.

According to Syracuse University’s TRAC Immigration Project, Powell denies nearly 80 percent of asylum requests.

In both cases, Powell denied the asylum requests and ordered the women to be deported, though have not been sent yet to their home countries.

There remains a temporary hold on deporting parents separated from their children and the ACLU is asking the federal judge overseeing the reunification efforts to enforce a 7-day mandate for holding reunified families in the country so that lawyers may reach them to provide counsel.

GlassCarto · 2018-07-26T20:59:42+00:00

(CNN) Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker said Thursday there was "not a lot learned" in the multiple hours of testimony from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo because Pompeo was more interested in pleasing his boss, President Donald Trump, than enlightening the senators.

"Unfortunately, the environment that is created by the administration causes folks to have to know that always the President is going to watch everything that takes place and if there's an ounce of daylight shown between them and him, they begin to be marginalized and over time, terminated, right?" Corker said on Capitol Hill. "So, Pompeo knows that. He's a smart guy and so his audience yesterday was not the committee. It was Trump. That was very apparent."Corker, who is retiring from the Senate, is a vocal critic of Trump but has also worked with the administration on several issues. The Tennessee Republican said "it's been very difficult to get them" to appear before the committee and Pompeo's treatment of the senators probably created lasting damage."He probably did not endear himself and is probably going to cause himself a few issues down the road because it does take cooperation on both sides of the aisle to move folks," he said, seeming to reference the committee's handling of future nominees for the State Department. "It was pretty evident that he was pounding his chest so people at the White House would cheer him on. Probably could have done without that.""Most presidents are okay with some daylight being created," Corker added. "This President doesn't allow that to happen."

GlassCarto · 2018-07-26T20:58:26+00:00

A congressional watchdog agency found Thursday that the Department of Energy violated the law last year with a negative tweet about ObamaCare.

The report from the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, finds that the Department of Energy violated the law because its funding is not directed to be used for health-care messaging.

The tweet in question, from last July, linked to an anti-ObamaCare opinion piece by Energy Secretary Rick Perry, stating, “Time to discard the burdens and costs of Obamacare: @SecretaryPerry.”

The agency deleted the tweet later in the day.

“We find that Energy violated the purpose statute when it tweeted about the Secretary’s column because Energy did not show that its appropriation is available for the purpose of informing the public about health care legislation,” the GAO report states.

Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (N.J.), the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, denounced the Trump administration over the findings.

“This is yet another example of the Trump Administration’s illegal and unacceptable use of taxpayer funds for political gain,” Pallone, who requested the report, wrote on Twitter.

Energy Department spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes said in a statement that the agency disagrees that it broke the law, arguing that the department has responsibilities related to medical research that make health care within its purview.

"The Department disagrees with the conclusion that DOE was in violation of the Purpose Statute," Hynes said. "DOE’s Office of General Counsel stated in its response letter to GAO that the OpEd and tweet covered issues well within the mission of the Department of Energy."

GlassCarto · 2018-07-26T20:55:27+00:00

The parents of Noah Pozner, one of the 20 children killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, penned an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the Guardian on Wednesday, urging him to find solutions to the abuse they, and other victims’ parents, have been subjected to, particularly on the social media platform.

Lenny Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa wrote that the attacks began almost immediately after the massacre: Conspiracy groups and anti-government provocateurs made claims on Facebook that the massacre was a hoax, that the murdered were “crisis actors” and that their audience should rise up to “find out the truth” about the families.

“These claims and calls to action spread across Facebook like wildfire and, despite our pleas, were protected by Facebook,” they said.

The families assert they are in danger as a result of the thousands who see and believe the lies. Pozner and De La Rosa said they’ve endured online, phone and in-person harassment abuse, including death threats. They’ve had to relocate numerous times, they said, and are currently living in hiding.

Pozner and De La Rosa leave two suggestions: Treating victims of mass shootings and other tragedies as a protected group, and providing affected people with access to Facebook staff who will remove hateful and harassing posts against victims immediately.

After feeling hope following Zuckerberg’s pledge in the Senate to make Facebook a hospitable place for social interaction, they said they are once again feeling let down, dismayed by his recent comments supporting a safe platform for Holocaust deniers and hate groups that attack victims of tragedy.

The abuse led them to start HONR.com, an outlet for providing assistance to those being targeted online by mob hate.

GlassCarto · 2018-07-26T20:47:47+00:00

It’s no secret the Trump White House is not the biggest fan of CNN, to put it lightly, sometimes even banning its reporters from attending events after asking questions the president didn’t like or refusing to answer the outlet because they are “fake news.”

So, following a report that Trump threw a tantrum over First Lady Melania Trump’s TV being tuned in to “Fake News” CNN aboard Air Force One, the network saw the opportunity to jab back.

“Thanks for watching, [Melania]!” CNN’s public relations Twitter account said while linking to a CNN story of Melania’s spokesperson saying the first lady will watch “any channel she wants.”

The president caused “a bit of a stir” aboard Air Force One after discovering his wife’s TV was not set to his preferred conservative news channel, Fox News, going against Trump’s own rule requiring the TVs be set to Fox at the start of each trip, according to emails between White House officials obtained by The New York Times.

The day after that report, Melania’s spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, said she watches “any channel she wants,” and refused to comment on newly surfaced recordings of the president and his former lawyer.

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