MSNBC: On the Russia scandal, Trumps lies start to pile up

[CousinIT]

On Sunday, Kellyanne Conway, who’ll soon be a senior advisor in the Trump White House, elaborated on the same lie, telling CNN’s Jake Tapper, “If you read the full report, [U.S. intelligence officials] make very clear – Mr. Clapper in his testimony made very clear on Thursday under oath – that any attempt, any aspiration to influence our elections failed.”

That’s spectacularly untrue. The report does not say that, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper did not testify to that to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Trump and Conway are telling a plain and demonstrable lie.

What the intelligence does say is that Russia’s alleged cyber-attack did not affect specific vote tallies. In other words, Moscow stole American materials and hatched a propaganda campaign, but Russian agents did not literally hack into voting machines or state election offices to alter the quantitative results.

And while that’s certainly important, Trump, Conway, and their allies have tried to make a leap from “Russia’s attack didn’t include voting machines” to “Russia’s attack didn’t affect the election.”

Even for Trump World, this is ridiculous. According to a ThinkProgress tally, Donald Trump mentioned the WikiLeaks materials 164 times during the month leading up to Election Day. The Republican did this for a pretty obvious reason: Trump thought the information stolen by Russia to help put him in the White House would, in fact, help put him in the White House.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-russia-scandal-trumps-lies-start-pile

[calimary]

1. You'll notice that the trump team is trying to redirect your attention toward some terrible

something-or-other involving voting machines.

Voting machines?

Nobody's talking about voting machines! It hasn't even come up as any kind of major issue in any coverage of the report that I've seen. Voting machines??? This report is talking about something entlrely different than voting machines.

You know what this is? This is a trash can. Picture the villain, running down an alley lined with trash cans, trying to evade the cops. He pushes some of those trash cans over behind him so they fall all over the place and make a lot of noise and get in the way. Look! Look over THERE!

[CousinIT]

5. Russians didn't do anything to voting machines or change votes. They DID

use propaganda and hacked, stolen, manipulatively-released data and fake news stories to influence public opinion against one candidate. And that is much harder to prove than changed votes in a voting machines and much easier to deny. That's why Russia uses such tactics. They've done it elsewhere and now they've done it here. You can't quantify manipulated public opinion that affects how people vote. And in US politics, that is part of every election - propaganda - one candidate trying to smear the other. HOWEVER, when this manipulation of public opinion, propaganda, fake news and stolen data is done by a FOREIGN entity that wants to interfere in our elections, THAT is a national security issue. Whether or not they messed with votes in voting machines or affected the outcome (they did) becomes a secondary issue.

Plausible deniability is an important factor in Russia's manipulation of elections - this is why they don't just hack into voting machines and change votes. They certainly probably could, but they don't. They use propaganda, fake news, they implement actors and puppets inside the US to help them carry it out. They hack into systems of the party they don't want in power, steal their data and feed to media or their favored campaign to use against the undesirable party. That gives them much more plausible deniability than just changing votes in machines.

The reason Trump and his Trumpanzees keep harping on about the voting machines is because they're too stupid to know this or they know it and are trying to create a distraction as well as deny what they KNOW happened.

It's easily denied. And it was designed to be.

[Island Blue]

2. MSNBC is just now beginning to realize

that Lil' Hands Donny Tic-Tac has been lying his ass off?

[Wellstone ruled]

3. Funny how one of the News Media is trying to

shame itself for giving Trump millions of dollars of free Campaign publicity. Hey MSNBC,you must thing most people are down right STUPID and was not aware of your game plan. Haven't watched this POS for a year and feel so much better about it.

[pangaia]

4. The whole thing is a smoke screen for what is really going on.

As said on another OP a blitzkrieg, an all out attack on everything at once and the media is missing it all.