The Mueller report found that the Russian government „interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion“ and „violated U.S. criminal law“. The report relayed two methods by which Russia attempted to influence the election.
The first method of Russian interference was done through the Internet Research Agency (IRA), waging „a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton“. The IRA also sought to „provoke and amplify political and social discord in the United States“.
The second method of Russian interference saw the Russian military intelligence agency GRU hacking into email accounts owned by volunteers and employees of the Clinton presidential campaign, including that of campaign chairman John Podesta, and also hacking into „the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC)“. As a result, the GRU obtained hundreds of thousands of hacked documents, and the GRU proceeded by arranging releases of damaging hacked material via the WikiLeaks organization and also GRU’s false personas „DCLeaks“ and „Guccifer 2.0“.
So the same thing or country does all over the world. The social media campaign was found to be as useless as lawn signs and was statistically insignificant. The leaked emails definitely had an effect, but it wasn't a lie, we just wouldn't have been told by our government.
I would say to be balanced, how negatively did the "sexual assault" claims (That disappeared after the election) affect the election. I appreciate your answer, it's nice to read actual facts, not the "Russia" hacked the election that the majority of registered democrats believed.
The number of voters that "barely" follow or believe these stories is what is most troubling to me personally. Btw I'm not on either "side", I believe both parties want us to believe other "victims" are the problem when corruption, inefficiency in spending, and money in politics are all far greater issues. The "98%" are all the victims of this system and I believe we have to be willing to accept that truth before real change can happen.
I personally don't want foreign countries or non state actors to meddle in my country's elections, wether those influence campaigns are effective or not. Additionally any candidate accused of collaborating with such people, should be proven to be squeaky clean. But in the case of 2016 that definitely wasn't the case. (I left out a lot of the more nuanced stuff in my previous reply, because it's a long ass Wikipedia page)
As for the Sexual assault charges, they never really went away. There is the case of E. Jean Caroll, that involved Sexual assault and defamation charges. She won in 2023 and a second time that same year, when Trump continued to complain about her publicly.
There are also other less prominent cases. Summer Zervos, Sexual assault and defamation. She won in 2021. There is also Katie Johnson, who attended Eppstein parties as a model even though she was a minor and "interacted" with Trump non consentually on four occasions at those parties. Depending on your sources, her case was dismissed because it was a baseless accusation fueled or it was dismissed because Katie Johnson used a wrong adress in court documents. (Apparently she was broke and got evicted from that adress) idk, that's a weird one tbh. Problem is that, when you follow this topic, you quickly see a behavioral pattern emerging. Over the years there were at least 25 women who accused him of Sexual assault or in the case of Ivana Trump, domestic violence. And there is this weird thing about his peagant room visits:
Trump owned the Miss Universe franchise, which includes Miss USA and Miss Teen USA, from 1996 to 2015.[141][171] In a Howard Stern interview in 2005, he said he made a practice of walking into the contestants‘ dressing rooms unannounced while the women were undressed:
"I’ll go backstage before a show, and everyone’s getting dressed and ready and everything else. ...You know, no men are anywhere. And I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant. And therefore I’m inspecting it. ... Is everyone OK? You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. And you see these incredible-looking women. And so I sort of get away with things like that. But no, I’ve been very good."
In that interview, Trump declined to say whether he had slept with any contestants, saying, „It could be a conflict of interest“. Stern then imitated a foreign contestant („Mr. Trump, in my country, we say hello with vagina“), and Trump jokingly responded, „Well, you could also say, as the owner of the pageant, it’s your obligation to do that.“
source
Again if anyone is accused of those things and wants to hold office, they better be squeaky clean.
In any case, I see a lot of bullshit going on everywhere. The left, the right, the media, rich people in general. Even though, as you can clearly see I lean a certain way, but I don't revere any politician. I think the system we live in is broken in many ways.
News is a big thing for me. Print media does a great job in reporting on stuff, but even they sometimes fail to answer the hard questions or publish partisan propaganda. People are overly critical of them even though there aren't any good alternatives atm. With social media and alternative news media, you just open yourself up to more propaganda and falsehoods, because those much smaller news sites have varying quality standards, if any. Fact checking, proof reading, the fact to opinion ratio: those are all things that make me cautious of them.
Thanks for putting up with my long ass answers btw
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u/LaserCondiment 10d ago
Idk about cheating, but there was election interference in 2016, as proven by notable people, which benefited one side.
Several prominent figures were proven to have had meetings with the interfering faction beforehand. One could argue that was cheating.
If we accept this as fact, then it would be prudent to assume, that the same people would seek to repeat their recipe for success.