I doubt the Russians needed to do anything with the Evangelical movement. As Free Clark points out many times in his dissections of the Left Behind books, the premillennial dispensationalists within the conservative Evangelical community have a long history here in the US and that they want the Apocalypse. And they’ll vote for candidates who they are will help usher it in.
With that Lester Holt aside, it seems that racism, not Russia, made your FIL vote for Trump.
I am mostly in the 2 camp, occasionally swinging to 3. 4 is incorrect, imho.
For the Clinton voters: How did George Soros get you to vote for Clinton?
By influencing the primaries enough that he voted for Trump and not for his actual first choice, Rubio. Elections are neither a one-day nor a one-step process; pressure groups, propagandists, money… try to affect every step, every day.
I think we are getting a glimpse at the future of ‘warfare’. Managing the news and social media to influence talking points and then actions.
To echo what others have said, the Russians did not influence every voter, just enough voters. Those misleading and/or downright wrong Facebook posts that smear Hillary and other Democrats are often the product of Russian bot farms. They know how to trigger certain people into sharing their political smears much like a virus replicates itself inside its host. Most people don’t research Facebook memes for accuracy, it’s more like “hey, this meme reinforces my existing prejudices! Let’s hit the share button!” Enough people get exposed to dozens if not hundreds of memes, all you’ve got to do is exploit the gullibility and bigotry of enough people and you flip the election.
The not so funny thing for me is the enormous feeling of déjà vu, or maybe déjà lu, that I get from a lot of the Russia-financed propaganda (anyone who thinks they don’t try to get a hand inside every populist puppet they can find, or create them when one won’t come up by itself, is hereby offered some oceanfront property in Arizona).
The basic playbook is the exact same they were using with ETA, with PCE, with… in the 1970s and 1980s. I have seen posters in Barcelona, rumors in the US, bus sides in the UK, which I saw in Pamplona, Tudela, Logroño, Bilbao, thirty years before and in different languages. Which ones last five minutes and which ones get reinforced depends on the initial response, but they’re not even analyzing the target beforehand in order to choose which darts to throw at it: they just throw the same darts they already have, and reuse those that appear to stick. They know which stones are humans likely to stumble on, and hey, when you’re dealing with a fresh batch of humans you can just reuse the same old rocks.
He didn’t - 8 years of George W Bush and Dick Cheney pretty much ruined Republicans for life from my perspective.
Trump Voter: “The Russians didn’t make me vote Trump, 16 years of Bush and Obama pretty much ruined establishment pols for life from my perspective”
You’re welcome.
Did the Russians attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election through online social media propaganda? YES
Did the Russians hack and publish actual emails of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic party? YES Were these emails fabricated? Not ever claimed by any party
Did people change their votes or decide to not vote based upon the actions of the Russian hacking and propaganda campaigns? NO ONE KNOWS OR HAS ADMITTED THAT THEY DID THIS NOR CAN ANYONE DETERMINE IF IT HAD AN ACTUAL IMPACT ON THE OUTCOME OF THE ELECTION
The Obama administration should have anticipated that such things were occurring and should have taken action. The Trump administration knows that such things happened and should be taking action to prevent such things from happening again.
Obama was in a tough spot because he didn’t want to come across as fucking with the process himself. IIRC he did make it known, but the party led by the turtle fella wasn’t interested. Meanwhile, candidate Trump himself was appealing to Russia during press conferences.
In at least one fundamental way – a lot of things that your father in law knows or thinks he knows about Trump and Clinton are the result of Russian activity.
But they need those things to happen again.
Yes, Donald isn’t going to hit the same kind of inside straight he pulled in '16. He needs close votes and controversy about “fraud” in all the battleground states to make the final outcome as murky as possible in the minds of as many as possible.
It depends on what kind of candidate comes out of the Democratic field. If Democrats end up voting for a modern-day equivalent of George McGovern such as Bernie Sanders, I think Trump could win outright. If, OTOH, he faces Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, or someone stronger (not sure who else would be at this point), then Trump’s already in danger of losing not only the popular vote but the electoral vote count as well.
I suspect that the back-up plan by the GOP will be to start casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election sometime between the conventions and the debates. Imagine that during the live TV debate, with 75-100 million viewers, Trump has a captive audience and instead of debating issues, the main debate topic could be the legitimacy of the election itself, with Trump repeatedly pointing at Harris or Biden and screaming “This election is a sham! You guys are stealing this country away from ‘real’ American and we’re not gonna let that happen without a fight.”
If the lie is told often enough, people will begin to believe it. This is also why you don’t impeach until the country is already ready to make that happen. I only see that if there’s a major economic meltdown.
And that kind of argument would be far less effectively made if they had taken steps to button down (or is it batten down) election security. And it won’t just be the Russians this time. You leave the door open, particularly in so public a fashion, and even you can’t control who comes in. The Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, the Iranians, the Israelis, the freakin’ Albanians, for Pete’s sake, a 400 pound guy in his parent’s basement. Chaos maximized.
It has not, however, triggered you into actually addressing the issue. Are you waiting for a statement in large bold underlined blinking red text…?