Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

He really is that stupid.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Giving up is unforgivable.

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

In my day, never was longer.

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Their shamelessness is their super power.

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2020 / Foreign Interference Open Thread: The *Other* Friday Doc Dump

Foreign Interference Open Thread: The *Other* Friday Doc Dump

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We report, you decide!

… In an unusual public statement, William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said the three countries were using online disinformation and other means to try to influence voters, stir up disorder and undermine American voters’ confidence in the democratic process…

Foreign adversaries also may try to interfere with U.S. election systems by trying to sabotage the voting process, stealing election data, or calling into question the validity of election results.

“It would be difficult for our adversaries to interfere with or manipulate voting results at scale,” Evanina said…

Evanina said “Kremlin-linked actors” also are trying to “boost President Trump’s candidacy via social media and Russian television.”

He said his agency assessed that China would prefer that Trump not win re-election, because Beijing regards him as too unpredictable.

He said China has been expanding efforts to influence U.S. politics ahead of the election to try to shape U.S. policy, exert pressure on U.S. politicians it regards as anti-China, and deflect criticism of China.

Evanina said Iran is likely to use online tactics such as spreading disinformation to discredit U.S. institutions and President Trump and to stir up U.S. voters’ discontent…

Many officials who oversee U.S. election technology and outside security experts now worry less about hacking in the elections than about misinformation and logistics such as a shortage of poll workers and slowdowns at the U.S. postal service.

‘The last person Russia wants in office’ –

Reader Interactions

98Comments

  1. 1.

    sdhays

    This may be a bit off topic, but I feel it’s related: A President Ignored – Trump’s outlandish claims increasingly met with a collective shrug.

    More than 3½ years into his presidency, Trump increasingly finds himself minimized and ignored — as many of his more outlandish or false statements are briefly considered and then, just as quickly, dismissed. The slide into partial irrelevance could make it even more difficult for Trump as he seeks reelection as the nation’s leader amid a pandemic and economic collapse.

  2. 2.

    JPL

    Lukashenko won in Belarus with almost 80 percent of the vote with Putin’s help. Of course folks are protesting in the streets, but I doubt much can be done. Autocrats gotta win

  5. 5.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Benw:

    It doesn’t. Putin is either too stupid/crazy to understand this and just wants revenge on the US for the end of the USSR as well as maintaining his grip on power in Russia.

    @JPL:

    But the US is also at the nexus of the global economy. Russia’s economy is already smaller than Italy’s. I don’t see a boom in their future if the US falls. I also can’t imagine a destabilized US will help the global fight against climate change either. Does Putin even believe human-caused climate change is real? He has claimed in the past he does and I’ve read articles that the Russian government thinks that the arctic opening up will benefit Russia (never mind many parts of the world being rendered uninhabitable), but has also said he doesn’t.

    Why, it’s almost like he has no real imagination or vision beyond a narrow set of possibilities and doesn’t give a damn about humanity’s collective future. Or even Russia’s, for that matter

  6. 6.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @JPL:

    It’s also important to note that America isn’t Belarus, despite recent and not so recent events that have degraded our institutions

  7. 7.

    Wakeshift

    @Benw:

     

    if the USA is (was?) the world’s police, what do the world’s crooks want?

     

    This is the alignment with Republicans: shrink/drown/neutralize the enforcement you can, and regulatory capture what you can’t eliminate outright.

    Which and how much of each we are now is left as an exercise for the reader…

  8. 8.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Benw:

    Why is Putin doing this?

    Putin is himself not a perfectly rational actor.  He holds a grudge against the US, dreams of a reunited Soviet Empire he doesn’t possibly have the power to achieve, and ‘weakening the US makes me stronger’ was a religion in the KGB.  There are real benefits to his strategy, mind you.  For example, Russia is a train wreck of a country, and making America look bad reduces public dissatisfaction in his wildly, absurdly corrupt rule.

  9. 9.

    Cameron

    Jesus Christ.  A pre-capitulation conspiracy.  Instead of working to stop Republicans cold, let’s spend our time worrying about what Russia/China/Iran/Gondwana/WTFever are doing.  Sounds like a plan!

  10. 10.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    There are real benefits to his strategy, mind you.  For example, Russia is a train wreck of a country, and making America look bad reduces public dissatisfaction in his wildly, absurdly corrupt rule.

    True. But those are also short-term benefits. Climate change is coming for us all and destroying a country with an advanced economy such as ours, armed with a large nuclear arsenal, is honestly a recipe for disaster if it succeeds. Putin and others like him are basically dooming humanity to a hell-scape.

    In your opinion, does he understand this and just does not care? I mean, the way the Earth is warming, he’ll probably live long enough to see the truly catastrophic effects

  13. 13.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Wakeshift:

    The report said that China at least would prefer Biden to win. It naturally follows they would seek to boost him if only to have a more rational actor in charge, correct?

    WE HAVE TO VOTE.

    WE HAVE TO WIN.

    Seconded!

  15. 15.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @germy:

    Isn’t it too late to file in practically every state at this point? I guess a fear could be they would try to encourage lefties to boycott the election. However, I can’t imagine that message will resonate with a lot of people beyond those who would not have voted for Biden in the first place

  16. 16.

    Parfigliano

    They think we are stupid.  The voting system is a train wreck but we are supposed to believe that the ONE thing foreign govts cant do is change vote totals/results.  The thing that counts most.

     

    I call bullshit.

  17. 17.

    lollipopguild

    @germy: Anyone who would vote for the MPP is not going to vote for Biden anyway. What these folks crave is attention. They might actually pull a few people away from trump.

  19. 19.

    MattF

    Putin thinks stirring things up presents opportunities for him that wouldn’t be there otherwise. Russia, on its own, is a physically large mid-tier country, a eurasian Brazil– but Russians believe they can outsmart anyone, so creating turmoil in otherwise powerful societies will give them opportunities to exploit.

  22. 22.

    debbie

    @sdhays:

    Not at all surprising, considering he hit the 20,000-lie mark back in mid-July (per WaPo).

    I just heard a couple of kids and teachers from that Georgia high school have been diagnosed with COVID. I’m looking forward to Kemp’s mea culpa. /

    ETA: Six students and three teachers. Principal is closing the school for two days.

  25. 25.

    Geminid

    @germy: I hope West, Turner et al form their new party, and stop crying about how the Democrats need to earn their their votes. There are not that many of them, for all the noise they make. The Left reminds me of a cup of cappuccino that’s all foam.

  26. 26.

    debbie

    @Benw:

    Are you kidding? Since the end of the Soviet Union, he has dreamed of bringing American down a couple of thousand pegs.

  27. 27.

    Wakeshift

    @MattF:

    “…outsmart…”

    Again, this is the overlap in ‘thinking’ with Repub leadership:

    Those suckers agree to be bound by rules and norms and the common good. I can ignore that, and personally win.

    But it never lasts.

    We must push back. There’s more of us!

  29. 29.

    Another Scott

    @debbie:

    https://www.wonkette.com/crowded-georgia-school-now-a-veritable-coronafest

    “At this time, we know there were six students and three staff members who were in school for at least some time last week who have since reported to us that they have tested positive,” says a letter from North Paulding High School Principal Gabe Carmona to parents Saturday. A spokesman for the Paulding County School District gave a copy of the letter to the AJC.[…]

    The letter to parents does not include information on whether any other students or staff who were exposed have to quarantine or whether any classrooms will be closed. “Our custodial staff continues to thoroughly clean and disinfect the school building daily, and especially affected areas,” the letter says.

    Angie Franks said both her nephews who attend the school have tested positive for COVID-19. One came home from school Monday unable to smell, she said in an interview with the AJC. His mother took him for testing and the results the next day showed him positive, Franks said. By then, his brother was exhibiting symptoms and was also tested. His positive results were returned Wednesday.

    The students are quarantining at home, but both went to school Monday. Franks said the boys’ father notified the school on Tuesday and Wednesday after getting their test results.

    So much winning…

    On the Russia, China, Iran thing – it’s like the sun rising in the East. We’ve know this for months. The House passed legislation to combat this stuff. Donnie and the GOP Senate don’t much care.

    We have to turn out enough so that their interference, and all the rest, doesn’t matter in the outcome.

    Eyes on the prizes.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  32. 32.

    germy

    Do u tremble at tyrannical Trump but despair at bumbling Biden? The parties of war, Wall St, white supremacy have betrayed us for too long. Here’s an exit strategy breaking out across the US to end the deadly 2-party tailspin. Bring it to your state too! https://t.co/VZc4JunM9a

    — Dr. Jill Stein? (@DrJillStein) August 5, 2020

    And then we can send her money for another recount when they lose?

  34. 34.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    The report said that China at least would prefer Biden to win. 

    And?  You say that like it’s a good thing.  Fuck that.  What matters is who American voters want to win and in enough states to win the Electoral college (and in a fucking landslide because Dump will whine bullshit even about a completely blue map.)

  35. 35.

    J R in WV

    I’m pretty convinced that the pseudo-left wing of American politics is mostly all hired trouble makers working for Russia or China or the Mid-Eastern oil magnates.

    No one wants to destroy America, they just want us too distracted by our own misery to pay attention to the crimes they commit every day upon their own peoples. Mohammed Bone Saw for example.

  38. 38.

    mrmoshpotato

    @J R in WV: “I’m pretty convinced that the pseudo-left wing of American politics is mostly all hired trouble makers working for Russia or China or the Mid-Eastern oil magnates.”

    And also useful idiots.

  40. 40.

    Kent

    @Benw:Why is Putin doing this?
    I don’t see how a destabilized US helps Russia at this point

    A destablized US means no one is around the neighborhood to push back against Putin’s territorial and extra-territorial expansion plans, everywhere from Ukraine to Syria to destabilizing eastern European NATO countries.

  43. 43.

    Benw

    @JPL: which region? Is it because we use the Germany bases to project power into the middle East? No one’s starting a shootin war in Germany

  45. 45.

    Benw

    @Wakeshift: but Putin already has full control and he and his cronies have as more $ then they can ever spend. And the US – even with a sane prez – isn’t about to remove him from power.

    So why not let the US do all the work keeping the world stable, and just roll around in the sweet sweet blood money? If we collapse, his power is more threatened by random bad actors

  46. 46.

    trollhattan

    @Kent:

    IIUC as part of his current trip Pompeo is supposedly headed to Central Europe to sell the idea of energy diversity to reduce reliance on Russian gas and oil. If true, maybe Vlad’s checks have been bouncing.

  48. 48.

    Benw

    @zhena gogolia: right, but a strong US keeping the world (mostly) stable that he knows would never take him out is GOOD for him, not bad, which is what he had pre-Trump

    Also, everyone knows he’s a journalist-murderin dictator, he can’t improve his world rep by trashing the US

  52. 52.

    Benw

    @Kent: ah this is a good point!

    I guess what everyone else like Frankensteinbeck, Gofu and debbie said is probably also true: he’s also a nutter that hates our guts

  53. 53.

    germy

    WASHINGTON (AP) – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday the threats of interference in the U.S. presidential election from Russia and China are not equal, pointing to a more serious risk with Moscow’s efforts to boost President Donald Trump’s reelection bid.

    “They’re not equivalent,” said Pelosi, D-Calif. “Russia is actively 24/7 interfering in our election. They did so in 2016, and they are doing so now.” She urged intelligence agencies to “put more information out there” on the specific nature of the threats.

    An intelligence report last week said Russia was already using a “range of measures” to undercut Trump’s Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, and promote Trump with misinformation on social media. The statement Friday by William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, also said China does not want Trump to win a second term and has accelerated its criticism of the White House, and that Iran is also hoping Trump will lose.

    Pelosi said trying to equate China and Russia on the threat of foreign election interference doesn’t tell the story.

    “The Chinese, they said, prefer Biden – we don’t know that, but that’s what they’re saying, but they’re not really getting involved in the presidential election,” she said.

    Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, said Sunday that the U.S. is taking any threat to U.S. elections seriously. He said that China has engaged in cyberattacks and phishing “with respect to our election infrastructure.”

  54. 54.

    NotMax

    @Benw

    Money is a byproduct. The history of Russia is a history of the powerful operating under a superiority complex.

  55. 55.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Russia is a petrostate, Putin gets a cut of everything there, and consequently Putin is going to act in an manner favorable to fossil-fuel interests. That limits how serious he can get about climate change, and it’s also a reason for him not to want a liberal American government who will lean in to climate mitigation agreements.

  56. 56.

    cain

    It seems like it’s been about 0 days since Glenn Greenwald has not been a dick.

    Pete Buttigieg met Chasten on a dating app when Pete was a big powerful Mayor in his 30s. Chasten was just a childish powerless grad student almost a decade younger. The power differential & age gap made this like assault, consent impossible. Solidarity with Chasten, a survivor.

    https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1292436711742545920

  57. 57.

    Benw

    @debbie: @NotMax: I wonder what power means to him at this point? He can wreck the US as much as he can, but aside from local power grabs, it doesn’t bring him anything more. It’s not like eastern europe is going to sign onto Russian control if the US bails on europe

  58. 58.

    zhena gogolia

    @Benw:

    He’s not entirely rational, as I believe someone said up above. He doesn’t have to be a gibbering idiot like Trump in order to behave strangely. And he does.

  59. 59.

    Wapiti

    @Benw: If the US was effective as a world policeman, there’s a risk that we sanction the hell out of Russia. No access to financial markets. Serious clampdown on money laundering. Seizure of assets in the US. It’s better for the Russian kleptocrats that we remain dysfunctional.

  60. 60.

    oatler.

    @NotMax:

    Remember when Solzhenitsyn defected to the West? We were crowing that at last we’d have a gulag veteran advocating for democracy. Turns out he didn’t want democracy, he wanted to bring back the czars. He would have loved Putin.

  62. 62.

    germy

    @cain:

    I wonder why GG keeps commenting on this issue, rather than on Trump or McConnell or the GOP in general?

    One of the replies to GG’s tweet:

    Sounds like the power differential between you and your spouse. You met him when you were 37 and he was 19. You were a well known attorney at the time you met, getting ready to publish a best selling book and he was playing volleyball on the beach.

    Just applying your standard.

    — david (@sanbrunamo) August 9, 2020

  63. 63.

    germy

    @oatler.:

    They made us read his book in high school.  They were all ready to make him our hero because of… freedom!   But then he kept talking and ruined the game for them.

  64. 64.

    Geminid

    @Benw: Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are vulnerable to direct Russian invasion. Poland could not stop that, and Germany wouldn’t. A U.S. led NATO could, and that’s why our pulling troops out of Germany plays into Putin’s hands. And if he has a free hand, Putin might not have to actually invade. Just foment disorder, and get “invited” in, like the Soviets did in 1939.

  66. 66.

    Fair Economist

    Russia has the threat of near-term collapse in oil markets. Electric cars are already cheaper to own and operate than gas cars, and in a few years they will be cheaper at initial purchase, not just over the lifetime of the car. Combined with active moves to electrify or replace cars in Europe and China, there’s a real possibility of a collapse in the oil business in the 20’s comparable to the collapse in the coal business in the 10’s. (We still mine it in quantity, but all the US coal companies went broke.)

    Even though natural gas will probably be profitable for some time to come, that would put a big hole in Russia’s budgets – and Putin’s assets. So he’s very interested in keeping the US using gasoline as long as possible, and that means Trump, not Biden.

  67. 67.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: One could make the argument that the independence of these countries  is not worth defending, but the worst way to make a change in our commitments is to back into it by default, which is what trump is doing.

  69. 69.

    Benw

    @Geminid: @Wapiti: good points. It’s also kinda a message from Putin: “anyone even think about trying to police Russia, or stop Russian aggression, and I will cripple you.”

    I’m not sure it’s true that he can actually cripple other democracies, but it’s pretty fucking scary how fast Russia fucked up the US.

  70. 70.

    Chyron HR

    @cain:

    So apparently Glenn wrote his 2020 election propaganda after Iowa and New Hampshire and was too lazy to go back and see if the Democratic frontrunner changed at any time since then.

  72. 72.

    Mary G

    Putin is a stong cold misogynist too. He and Lavrov made fun of Hillary when she brought the restart  button at the beginning of her SOS term and apparently thought she would’ve been cowed, just given up and gone away. Hillz was just matter of fact, don’t want to work with me, OK, have some painful sanctions instead. He’s been ratfucking us ever since.

  74. 74.

    debbie

    @Benw:

    Try this: Putin has a huge chip on his shoulder. He is still butt hurt over the demise of the KGB. Google the documentary “Putin’s Way” for a review of the man’s history.

  75. 75.

    Steeplejack

    @cain:

    Glenn was a vacationing millionaire in his 40s when he met his teenage husband who was living in poverty and took him home. It makes sense that he’s trying to make that sound the same as a 6-year age diff between two middle-class American white guys.
    pic.twitter.com/pYKVFIHg4c
    — Candice Aiston ? (@CandiceAiston) August 9, 2020

  76. 76.

    Kent

    @germy: Why does anyone still follow or comment on GG?  I certainly don’t waste my time wondering what he is up to.

  77. 77.

    bjacques

    Putin’s in a position that having ratfucked the US, he has to finish the job. While Xi Jinping might consider a second Trump term a great opportunity to lock in the Belt And Road initiative and recapture Taiwan in all but name, there will be other opportunities. Their goals don’t necessarily require a neutralized US.

     

    Iran actually made a couple of overtures over the last couple of decades the US stupidly rebuffed, under Republican Presidents of course.

  78. 78.

    Benw

    @debbie: thanks for the tip!

    I, for one, am glad that the US’s barely functional democracy was exposed because of “butt hurt”. So 2020

    :)

  79. 79.

    zhena gogolia

    @oatler.:

     

    @germy:

    Okay, these are very simple-minded takes on Solzhenitsyn. He was no advocate for democracy, but he was a hero. He gathered the testimony of thousands of victims of the Stalin terror and put them together into a devastating work, The Gulag Archipelago. He probably wouldn’t have had much use for Putin, in fact

    ETA: Okay, I take back the last sentence. I forgot that they overlapped. Solzhenitsyn died in 2008. He was pretty gaga in his last years and fell for it. But that doesn’t obliterate his accomplishment with Ivan Denisovich, First Circle, and Gulag Archipelago.

  80. 80.

    zhena gogolia

    @Benw:

    He couldn’t have done it all by himself, but he expertly leveraged the racism and stupidity and greed of a significant percentage of the population against us.

  82. 82.

    MC

    I remember a line of reasoning, in 2018, that the Russians were just going to use their complete control of our elections to flip every Democratic vote to Republican, and thus we were 100% screwed. Does anyone else remember that?

  85. 85.

    Anne Laurie

    @J R in WV: I’m pretty convinced that the pseudo-left wing of American politics is mostly all hired trouble makers working for Russia or China or the Mid-Eastern oil magnates.

    Certainly some of the Cosplay Socialists are paid foreign agents — although not as many as on the Trump-loving ‘right’.   But IMO most of the ‘true progressive’ leftists are useful idiots, overage adolescents living off their trust funds & their Patreons while they whine about ‘no difference between the two parties.’

    Putin may throw Jill Stein an occasional overseas trip, but I doubt he’s funding Jacobin or whatever the Trapo Dirtbag podcasters are calling themselves these days…

  86. 86.

    J R in WV

    @Anne Laurie:

    Well, on further review, you’re probably correct that lots of the left-wing nut jobs aren’t actually on a Russian payroll, we’ll never know which ones are formal Russian agents and which ones are just playing the game as if.

    Plus, in secret agent games, even if they were being paid by the Russians, they wouldn’t necessarily know where the money was coming from, would they?

    Back in 1969, during the anti-Vietnam war movement, I was a college sophomore and hung out with the anti-war folks… left wing girls were free thinkers. One weekend they were going to DC for a meeting and someone invited me along. It was in an apartment in a big old red-brick building down in a shady valley.

    One of the older guys leading things stuck with me. Years later I saw pictures of the leadership of the Communist Party in the US, whatever it was called at the time. There he was… not that it upset me, the Communists were allowed to oppose the war as much as I was, but very interesting, very interesting, a learning experience.

  88. 88.

    NYCMT

    @zhena gogolia: My high school physics teacher Pavel Litvinov was Lev Kopelev’s – Lev Panin’s – son-in-law, and suffered along with and after Ginsburg, Galanskov, Dobrovolsky, and Lashkova. Some years after I graduated, and after I had read Cancer Ward and First Circle (I’d read Gulag and Ivan Denisovich in high school), we sat down to talk turkey about the many, many varied people in the Soviet dissident movement. was not enthusiastic about Solzhenitsyn, and suggested that I read Varlam Shalamov and Brodsky, and to stay away from Solzhenitsyn because his dyspepsia with democratic modernity soiled the virtue of his Nobel.

    I do agree that all of Gulag is a tremendous achievement – not the crappy abridgement sold with the imprimatur of that Canadian psychologist with benzodiazapine addictions and Covid – but the whole thing, a tremendous testimonial to suffering.

  89. 89.

    Anne Laurie

    @germy: I wonder why GG keeps commenting on this issue…

    Did you see MisterMix’s post this morning?  Greenwald & the other Horseshoe Socialists are big mad about their candidate getting ‘outed’ by the college students he was aggressively ‘befriending’, and they have convinced themselves that ‘it’s different for gays’ is a plausible defense.  Except Morse was unlikely to beat Neal in the primary even if he hadn’t been creeping on his students, so…

  93. 93.

    tomtofa

    As to Putin, there are still U.S. financial sanctions in place against many Russian oligarchs, at whose pleasure Putin maintains power (a crime boss survives only as long as his lieutenants support him). If T wins, those sanctions will finally be gone; if Biden wins, not so much.

  94. 94.

    Benw

    @SFAW: u mad bro

    Actually I hate that shit and I’m sorry I snarked back at ya snark. But I was sincere in my comments on this thread til then, why did you snark me?

  95. 95.

    SFAW

    @Benw:

    Because your comments were pretty much one-note, and wrong, and yet you still kept at it — despite the efforts of others to point out that it IS to Putin’s advantage to continue destabilizing the US. Among other things, continued destabilization of the US exacerbates/enhances the destabilization of NATO, which has been one of Putin’s long-term goals. And the “Is it because we use the Germany bases to project power into the middle East? No one’s starting a shootin war in Germany” comment was just silly.

    In addition, your “barely functional democracy” (prior to 2020) was trolling. Unless you seriously believe that, which would be another indicator of less-than-profound thought/analysis. There’s a difference between having cynical, traitorous politicos (e.g., McConnell) use their power to pervert the system, and having the democracy “barely functional.” Note that I said “prior to 2020.” Will democracy collapse this year? I guess it’s possible, but why don’t we wait until November to judge?

  96. 96.

    dopey-o

    @Parfigliano:

    They think we are stupid.  The voting system is a train wreck but we are supposed to believe that the ONE thing foreign govts cant do is change vote totals/results.  The thing that counts most.

    Consider scrambling voter registration databases in Milwaukee, Detroit, Houston etc. Suddenly, a one-hour line to vote becomes a five-hour ordeal. Michigan, Wisconsin and Texas are now solidly Trump states.

    No need to do anything as difficult as changing totals. Just eliminate Democratic voters. Putin sets up multiple teams, asssigns 3 to attack each swing state, and if 75 % of his attacks fail, Trump and Putin still win. Think they wouldn’t try?

    Consider what Trump and Putin stand to lose under a Biden win. All their chips are being pushed to the center of the table.

  97. 97.

    NotMax

    Also I must be the only one who remembers Mr. Cole doing a post admonishing people to eschew use of the F word on the front page, so that should automatically disqualify some of them.

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