The Genesis of the Russian Interference Narrative and Who Really Rigged the 2016 Election

With the allegations of Donald Trump's affiliation with Vladimir Putin reaching new heights after his recent meeting with Russia's President, a look back at the genesis of the "Russian involvement" in the 2016 American presidential election and who was really responsible for rigging the election process is certainly timely.

Let's start by looking at this video from the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a meeting that was held in April 2017 to look at Russia's alleged interference in America's democracy.  As background, in case you were not aware, the Center touts itself as an independent, nonpartisan policy and advocacy organization, however, its current leader, Neera Tanden worked for both the Obama and Clinton Administrations and for Hillary Clinton's campaigns.   Since it is highly unlikely that any of my readers will sit through the entire hour-long event, I would ask that you go to the 27 minute 55 second mark where you will hear and exchange with Ms. Jennifer Palmieri, Hillary Clinton's Communications Director for her 2016 presidential campaign:

Question: "You wrote about how our response, how the worst outcome, the best outcome for Putin and the worst outcome for us is apathy, that we end up being "it's just too much, we don't care   because what's happened is a threat to our republic not just a threat to one political party ord one candidate.  Can you take us a little inside to the moment to what was actually going on in the late summer, early fall?" 

Answer: "It was a surreal experience for us and our campaign so I did appreciate that for the press to absorb, in addition to how/what an unconventional – to put it mildly — candidate Trump was and all of the crazy theater that was happening on stage, the idea that behind the stage that the Trump campaign was coordinating with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton was too fantastic for people to, um, for the press to process, to absorb…. and for us it did feel that the whole campaign experience was pretty surreal without Russia.

But then we go back to Brooklyn and hear from the — mostly our sources were other intelligence, with the press that work in the intelligence sphere, and that’s where we heard things and that’s where we learned of the dossier and the other story lines that were swirling about; and just trying to process, how do we  … And along the way the administration during the summer started confirming different pieces of what they were concerned Russia was doing.  And how do you weave that story line into this fight we were trying to have with Donald Trump on the campaign trail?  And that was a really hard thing because we were caught in a Catch-22.   People didn't care about Russia because they'd never heard anybody talk about it.  So, in order to make it an issue, Hillary Clinton needed to talk about it but then if she was talking about that, she's not talking about the economy, she's not hitting Trump on something that we knew voters found compelling.  

And we did finally get to the point on October 7, when the administration came out with a very stunning...as somebody who worked in both the Obama and Clinton Administrations I appreciated how stunning it was for both the Secretary of Homeland Security  and the Director of National Intelligence to put out a statement – a long statement – that said with high confidence that Russia was interfering in the election and they were also directing the timing of the leaks.  And it named the institutions – even named WikiLeaks, dcleaks, and Guccifer – as being Russian-led, and how stunning that was to be that certain and that public and that same day, the Access Hollywood tape came out and that same day, WikiLeaks, I don't believe coincidentally, started their leaks of John Podesta's emails…" (my bold)

Here is the Center for American Progress Action Fund video in its entirety:

Now, let's look at what Ms. Palmieri wrote in a post-election perspective on March 24, 2017 entitled "The Clinton campaign warned you about Russia.  But nobody listened to us" as published in the Washington Post:

"But the sheer spectacle of Trump kept the Russia allegations from getting the attention they would have had with any previous candidate. His unconventional campaign had so disrupted the press-political ecosystem that no one could fathom or absorb that — in addition to all the drama they saw on stage — Russia may have been conspiring with Trump or his allies behind the scenes to win the election for him. Compared with the lawsuits women were filing against Trump for alleged assault or his 3 a.m. tweets attacking a former Miss Universe, the details of who hacked whom seemed less interesting and more complicated. And because nearly everyone was sure that Clinton would win, and that she therefore needed more watchdogging, reporters and analysts were faster to jump on the latest batch of stolen emails or announcement from Comey.

We sought moments for Clinton and Tim Kaine, her running mate, to talk about Russia when we knew they would be on live television and couldn’t be edited. The debates offered the best opportunity, and Clinton took advantage, culminating with her famous line calling Trump Putin’s “puppet ” in the third one. It was tough deciding how much of her time to devote to the issue. We were in a Catch-22: We didn’t want her to talk too much about Russia because it wasn’t what voters were telling us they cared about — and, frankly, it sounded kind of wacky. At the same time, we understood the issue would never rise to the front of voters’ minds if we weren’t driving attention to it. It was already pretty clear they weren’t going to hear much about it in the press." (my bold)

On Wednesday, October 20th, 2016, this exchange occurred during the third and final debate of the 2016 presidential election cycle:

The comments by Ms. Clinton were promptly covered by America's mainstream media as shown here:

The seed was planted and significant parts of the American voting public noticed, particularly those who believed that Hillary Clinton had the God-given right to take control of the Oval Office.  One way or another, Team Hillary was going to cram the Russian narrative down our collective throats.

What the Clinton campaign's tactics did to the voting public was nothing short of brilliant.  By deflecting to the Russia narrative, voters seemed to either ignore or forget this email exchange with John Podesta, Clinton's campaign manager:

...and this one:

...and the controversial events surrounding Clinton's efforts to disengage voters from Bernie Sanders and take control of the DNC's coffers as explained in this excerpt from Donna Brazile's post-election book, "Hacks":

"Right around the time of the convention, the leaked emails revealed Hillary’s campaign was grabbing money from the state parties for its own purposes, leaving the states with very little to support down-ballot races. A Politico story published on May 2, 2016, described the big fund-raising vehicle she had launched through the states the summer before, quoting a vow she had made to rebuild “the party from the ground up … when our state parties are strong, we win. That’s what will happen.”

Yet the states kept less than half of 1 percent of the $82 million they had amassed from the extravagant fund-raisers Hillary’s campaign was holding, just as Gary had described to me when he and I talked in August. When the Politico story described this arrangement as “essentially … money laundering” for the Clinton campaign, Hillary’s people were outraged at being accused of doing something shady. Bernie’s people were angry for their own reasons, saying this was part of a calculated strategy to throw the nomination to Hillary.

I wanted to believe Hillary, who made campaign finance reform part of her platform, but I had made this pledge to Bernie and did not want to disappoint him. I kept asking the party lawyers and the DNC staff to show me the agreements that the party had made for sharing the money they raised, but there was a lot of shuffling of feet and looking the other way.

When I got back from a vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, I at last found the document that described it all: the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.

The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings....

I had to keep my promise to Bernie. I was in agony as I dialed him. Keeping this secret was against everything that I stood for, all that I valued as a woman and as a public servant.

“Hello, senator. I’ve completed my review of the DNC and I did find the cancer,” I said. “But I will not kill the patient."

Bernie took this stoically. He did not yell or express outrage. Instead he asked me what I thought Hillary’s chances were. The polls were unanimous in her winning but what, he wanted to know, was my own assessment?

I had to be frank with him. I did not trust the polls, I said. I told him I had visited states around the country and I found a lack of enthusiasm for her everywhere. I was concerned about the Obama coalition and about millennials.

I urged Bernie to work as hard as he could to bring his supporters into the fold with Hillary, and to campaign with all the heart and hope he could muster. He might find some of her positions too centrist, and her coziness with the financial elites distasteful, but he knew and I knew that the alternative was a person who would put the very future of the country in peril. I knew he heard me. I knew he agreed with me, but I never in my life had felt so tiny and powerless as I did making that call." (my bolds)

So, who is it that really tried to rig the 2016 presidential election in the United States?  Who really interfered with the democratic process and, in a desperate move to win, did whatever they could to  force feed the spectre Russian interference into the public conciousness?

It is pretty obvious that the Clinton campaign's "Russian puppet" seed-planting was highly successful in both Washington and Main Street America where it has divided the voting public even further along party lines and distracted Congress from doing what they were elected to do, run the nation.  It succeeded in getting American voters to forget or ignore the backroom shenanigans that seemed typical of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, particularly deflecting media focus from the Clinton campaign's behind the scenes machinations to destroy the campaign of populist candidate Bernie Sanders by replacing it with Donald Trump's alleged links to Russia and Mr. Putin.  Sadly, in all of this, Main Street America is being manipulated into believing that Russia is the enemy, giving Washington a complete pass on how business is done in America's political capital and, in particular, how the Clinton campaign was willing to win at any cost.

How Facebook Plays Politics

Remember the kerfuffle over the Podesta emails from the 2016 presidential election, the one that started the whole "Russian election interference" scandal?  In light of the recent revelations of the links between Cambridge Analytica, Facebook and its monstrous database and the Trump campaign and the recent apology by Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg, a look back at the Podesta emails shows us a close link between Zuckerberg and the Clinton campaign, links that should have Facebook users questioning Facebook's trustworthiness when it comes to their personal data in this highly politically charged era. Let's look at some of the emails that were exchanged with the Clinton campaign and the highest levels of Facebook's executive team.

Here is an email dated February 20, 2015 from Clinton aide Cheryl Mills regarding the inclusion of Ms. Sandberg in a meeting to discuss gender and leadership by women one hour before a meeting with Hillary Clinton:

Here is an email exchange from May and June 2015 between John Podesta and Sheryl Sandberg, noting that Hillary Clinton came to visit Ms. Sandberg's children:

Here is an email exchange between Sheryl Sandberg and John Podesta dated August 3, 2013 requesting a meeting between Mark Zuckerberg and John Podesta:

Here is an email exchange dated August 7, 2015 between Mark Zuckerberg, John Podesta and Elliot Schrage, Vice President of Marketing and Public Policy at Facebook regarding the meeting between Mark Zuckerberg and John Podesta that was held as requested in the August 3rd email exchange:

Here is an email dated January 2, 2016 from Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's Chief Operating Officer to John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's Campaign Manager:

As I am prone to do, here is a look at how much Facebook contributed to the 2016 election campaign and how much the company has spent on lobbying from Open Secrets:

Here is a look at the top recipients from Facebook's 2016 donations noting the size of the donation to Ms. Clinton's campaign compared to the other recipients:

Here is a screen capture showing how much the company has spent on campaign contributions and lobbying so far in the 2018 election cycle:

Here is a look at how much Mark Zuckerberg has donated to political causes:

Here is a listing showing a very small fraction of Sheryl Sandberg's donations to political causes:

Ms. Sandburg also "bundled" a total of $1,098,545 for Ms. Clinton's campaign as shown here, putting her in the top 1129 elites that directed money towards their favourite candidate for President of the United States:

There is a saying "There is no such thing as a free lunch".  While Facebook users may be convinced that their use of the product is "free", in fact, recent developments show that this is a faulty belief.  The cost of using this "free" product is potential reductions in your privacy and the sharing of your personal information.  The recent links between Facebook data and the 2016 election cycle should teach Facebook users who expose the most personal details of their lives to the Menlo Park, California-based company that, given the company's strong Democratic leanings, there is no guarantee that their personal lives won't be used at some time in the future to help Facebook elect its next preferred candidate.  As I have shown in this posting, with its political connections leaning to the left of the spectrum, unless Facebook changes its ways, it is quite possible that Facebook's users will find their data in the hands of the Democrat's next presidential candidate of choice.

Who Else Does Hillary Blame For Her Loss?

Updated December 2017

Since her loss in November 2016, a loss that shocked the Democratic presidential candidate who seemed to feel that the Oval Office was her birthright, Hillary Clinton has spent substantial time and energy pointing out the external factors that caused her to lose the election.  There's James Comey, the Russians as a whole and Vladimir Putin in particular, WikiLeaks, Donald Trump and his legions of unwashed and sweaty followers and Bernie Sanders and his Bros among others.  A recent interview on NPR with Rachel Martin looks at a rather surprising group of voters who share part of the blame for Ms. Clinton's loss, at least in her own mind.

Here's the key exchange:

Rachel Martin: You mentioned, and you spent time in the book (What Happened) talking about the forces you feel were working against you. You also say sexism was one of them, but you yourself, in the book, acknowledged that a good number of young women didn't vote for you, which is presumably not a sexist choice. They just weren't inspired by your message.

  

Hillary Clinton: I think it's a lot more complicated than that. I did win the women's vote. I didn't win the vote of white women, but I got more white women votes than Barack Obama did. I think it's much more difficult to unpack all of this, and with respect specifically to young women, I do think that for a lot of young women, gender is just not the motivating force that maybe it will be in the future. But then it wasn't. The same way that being African-American was really motivating and exhilarating for black voters. But as I point out in the book — and I think that chapter I wrote on being a woman in politics really will be of interest to a lot of women and men. I talk about a conversation I had with Sheryl Sandberg, who has really helped to put into perspective a lot of research that supports common experiences. And she said, look, the research is absolutely definitive. The more professionally successful a man is, the more likable he is; the more professionally successful a woman is, the less likable she is. And that when women are serving on behalf of someone else, as I was when I was Secretary of State, for example, they are seen favorably. But when they step into the arena and say, wait a minute I think I could do the job, I would like to have that opportunity, their favorabilities goes down. And Sheryl ended this really sobering conversation by saying that women will have no empathy for you, because they will be under tremendous pressure — and I'm talking principally about white women — they will be under tremendous pressure from fathers and husbands and boyfriends and male employers not to vote for "the girl." And we saw a lot of that during the primaries from Sanders supporters, really quite vile attacks online against women who spoke out for me, as I say, one of my biggest support groups, Pantsuit Nation, literally had to become a private site because there was so much sexism directed their way."

Does Ms. Clinton give part of her key demographic, the highly educated and independent women of the new millennium, so little credit that she actually believes that their "fathers, husbands and boyfriends and male employers" have such power over them that they could prevent them from voting for Ms. Clinton in November 2016 in a secret ballot?

All of that said, she does have one point of pride in her performance as stated later in the interview:

"I won more votes for president than anybody in American history besides President Obama."

Given that the U.S. population has grown by between 0.69 percent and 1.67 percent per year since 1960 and that the voting eligible population has risen from 194.3 million in 2000 to 230.6 million in 2016, I'm not sure how much of an accomplishment that really is but if it makes Ms. Clinton feel like she accomplished something to be proud of, then spin away.

Ms. Clinton's grasp on why she lost the 2016 presidential race appears to be tenuous at best and is, perhaps, providing us with all of the evidence that we need to show us how she was not the right candidate for president, despite the fact that she got the majority of the votes.  Unfortunately for the voting public and thanks in large part to the Democrats moves to remove Bernie Sanders from the possible candidates, the pickings for the POTUS were rather slim in the 2016 election cycle.