If Russia did attempt to sway the Presidential Election, what could have been their motivation? Did they all think that Trump would cede Alaska back to Russia? Did they think Hillary would imposes sanctions against Russia?
With all due respect, but where have you been for the last three years? This has been discussed to death on every available media outlet available to mankind.
As I understand it, their larger long-term motive is to destabilize American democracy and reduce the confidence of the American population in American institutions and government.
I haven’t seen it in Highlights Magazine.
Oct 2018: “The Timbertoes And The Russian Ambassador”. Same issue: “Goofus Gets Elected”
I can’t imagine how a blow hard narcissistic conman with no experience becoming the US president could throw confusion into global institutions. It’s baffling really.
Gallant reports contacts from foreign powers offering stolen intel to the FBI.
Goofus agrees to take a meeting and tries to pretend its about orphans.
Hey, you can’t take my poor joke and turn it into better jokes!
Hillary was a pretty hawkish person. Trump was much less savvy about geopolitics and possibly easier to take advantage of. Made sense for Moscow to favor Trump.
Incidentally, if future elections feature a hawkish Republican vs. a dovish Democrat, I’d expect Russia to back the Democrat.
We tried to make it into a worse joke, but it just couldn’t be done.
That hurts, man.
They would rather have someone incompetent than competent in charge of the US. It makes sense. They view us as a strategic rival. Would they rather have someone who has 30 years of government and foreign policy experience who has served as Top Diplomat in the US for multiple years as well as at the highest level of government, or someone whose primary skill was marketing in charge of what they see as their chief rival? This is a no-brainer. It has served them very well. The US has essentially ceded Syria to the Russians. Venezuela is another spectacularly failed American venture. Putin has essentially severed Crimea from Ukraine and Donetsk oblast is de facto Russian and there has been no real outcry from the Trump administration. Since Trump took over, Russia has positioned itself as the regional strongman of the Middle East, with billions of dollars in arms sales to the UAE, strengthening relations with the Saudis, investment in Qatar, oil and gas deals with both sides in Libya and even Lebanese arms deals. Basically, they are being seen in the ME as the people that get things done and it has seriously eroded American soft power there. Shoot, even Israel has had more meetings and calls with Putin over the last year than with Trump. We are in very real danger of completely ceding power in the ME to Russia and the Trump administration doesn’t even seem to realize it, let alone formulate a coherent policy to deal with the situation, which is pretty much exactly what Russia wants.
What has happened to the US over the last 3 years?
We’re hated by our traditional allies. Our traditional allies have turned to Germany and away from America for leadership of the free world.
A century of soft power in global affairs is going to waste. The state department is running on less than a skeleton crew. We’re ending programs and closing facilities designed to increase American influence around the world. We’ve lost countless, invaluable human leadership and connections that the US has spent a century, countless careers, and lots of money building up. Our influence of the world has declined incredibly in just three years.
We’ve had the credibility of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies attacked and discredited, especially in regards to foreign influence and cyberwarfare in our country.
We’ve deliberately weakened our election security (not only did the Republicans stonewall election security reform and budget increases, but they actually voted to decrease security funding) so that foreign agents can more freely interfere in our future elections.
We’ve changed our foreign policy to be far more pro-Russia than it was before, or that it would’ve been under Hillary. When Trump became the nominee, the GOP quietly added to their platform legitimacy to the Russian seizing of the Crimea.
We’re not enforcing sanctions and other legal controls on Russia, and no one is holding the executive accountable for doing this. Congress has sent a clear message - with some sanctions bills receiving unanimous support - but these have simply gone unenforced with no consequences.
We’ve pulled out of arms limitations agreements rather than punishing Russia for their violation of those agreements, essentially rewarding their behavior in acting towards a new strategic arms race.
We’ve seen a massive push to use Russia’s firehose of falsehoods propoganda model on the US to undermine confidence in actual legitimate news sources and to boost confidence in foreign-backed propoganda and fake news.
We’ve done nothing at all to punish Russia for their cyberwarfare against us and influence in the 2016 and 2018 elections. Our president is willing to insult and make demands of our traditional allies, but is completely subservient to Vladimir Putin. The one person in the world he seems to be unwilling to criticize.
In general, pretty much every action of this executive serves to weaken America’s standing in the world, America’s global power, and status as leader of the free world, and to weaken trust in her institutions.
If this all wasn’t basically the greatest intelligence operation in history, then it’s a mighty big coincidence that it looks exactly like that. Russia, with an economy smaller than Italy, has managed to do more damage in 3 years to the power and standing of the United States than the Soviet Union managed to do in 50 years of the cold war. Historians of the future will marvel at it - one of the world’s greatest empires undone by a clever old ex-KGB officer.
Basically, Russia isn’t a superpower anymore. They want everyone (especially Russians) to THINK they are, though. So, how do you do that? Well, you do that by weakening the lone superpower, as well as get yourself in the spotlight, internationally, doing stuff. So, I think it’s a combination here…Russia needs to weaken the US, and one way to do that is to interfere in our elections, pretty much the heart of our democracy. If they also manage to gain some influence with the person/party they help in, well, that’s good, but the key is to weaken the US and also to muddy the waters and cause internal strife. This gives Russia some breathing room, takes some of the pressure off of them (perhaps) and also spotlights that they still matter, that they are still a power. So, from Putin’s perspective, it’s a win/win/WIN! No, they didn’t expect the US to cede back Alaska, though they might have hoped for the sanctions to be eased. But whether they were or not, it wasn’t the key to why they did what they did…and continue to do what they continue to do. And they aren’t the only ones doing this. This board focuses on Russia, but ignores the fact that China is not only doing this in the US as well, but in a lot of our allies political systems too, and also putting pressure on many of our companies to toe the Chinese line. They are doing it for much the same reason though…because it weakens us and strengthens them.
If you can get internal factions fighting each other for the cost of a few Facebook memes you spend the few thousand.
And if you can get the side you are attacking the elections to benefit to constantly and ridiculously downplay your actions then all the better!
If a country is so fragile that memes are its undoing something went wrong far sooner then the meddling. Fixing that is too hard though so let’s focus and cry about another country doing what we do.
We know already that it was not just memes, but it can be explainable for living under the sea.
The saddest thing about all of this is how willing so many Americans are to turn a blind eye to another country attacking us simply because it help their side. George Washington and the other founding fathers are turning over in their graves right now at how far the right has fallen in this country.
If you can’t handle MiGs, don’t fly in MiG Alley. 
So, IOW, because it benefits your side AKA “make teh Libruls head essplode, hyuk hyuk!” it’s all good. Okay. :dubious: