Tag: 2016 election

Inside the Russian effort to target Sanders supporters — and help elect Trump

After Bernie Sanders lost his presidential primary race against Hillary Clinton in 2016, a Twitter account called Red Louisiana News reached out to his supporters to help sway the general election. “Conscious Bernie Sanders supporters already moving towards the best candidate Trump! #Feel the Bern #Vote Trump 2016,” the account tweeted.

The tweet was not actually from Louisiana, according to an analysis by Clemson University researchers. Instead, it was one of thousands of accounts identified as based in Russia, part of a cloaked effort to persuade supporters of the senator from Vermont to elect Trump. “Bernie Sanders says his message resonates with Republicans,” said another Russian tweet.

While much attention has focused on the question of whether the Trump campaign encouraged or conspired with Russia, the effort to target Sanders supporters has been a lesser-noted part of the story. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, in a case filed last year against 13 Russians accused of interfering in the U.S. presidential campaign, said workers at a St. Petersburg facility called the Internet Research Agency were instructed to write social media posts in opposition to Clinton but “to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump.”

View the complete April 12 article by Michael Kranish on The Washington Post website here.

Do Americans think Mueller’s probe is a witch hunt? Depends on how you ask.

Dissecting why a new poll finds more skepticism about the probe than others

On Monday, President Trump tweeted about a new survey finding released earlier in the day. He said that a poll found that “50% of Americans AGREE that Robert Mueller’s investigation is a Witch Hunt.” That claim is in line with the USA Today report. But a close look at the survey and other recent polling suggests it may overstate the public’s skepticism of the Mueller probe.

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

Wow! A Suffolk/USA Today Poll, just out, states, “50% of Americans AGREE that Robert Mueller’s investigation is a Witch Hunt.” @MSNBC Very few think it is legit! We will soon find out?

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Here’s how the question was asked: “President Trump has called the Special Counsel’s investigation a ‘witch hunt’ and said he’s been subjected to more investigations than previous presidents because of politics. Do you agree?”

There are a lot of ways to ask a question such as this, and it’s useful to measure whether Americans share Trump’s skepticism of the Mueller investigation. But this question and its interpretation skirt a couple of best practices for opinion-poll question wording, as highlighted by Monmouth University Polling Institute director Patrick Murray in several tweets.

View the complete March 18 article by Emily Guskin and Scott Clement on The Washington Post website here.

Rick Gates Sought Online Manipulation Plans From Israeli Intelligence Firm for Trump Campaign

Rick Gates, a top Trump campaign aide, expressed interest in an Israeli company’s proposal for a social media manipulation effort in 2016, documents and interviews show. Credit: Damon Winter, The New York Times

WASHINGTON — A top Trump campaign official requested proposals in 2016 from an Israeli company to create fake online identities, to use social media manipulation and to gather intelligence to help defeat Republican primary race opponents and Hillary Clinton, according to interviews and copies of the proposals.

The Trump campaign’s interest in the work began as Russians were escalating their effort to aid Donald J. Trump. Though the Israeli company’s pitches were narrower than Moscow’s interference campaign and appear unconnected, the documents show that a senior Trump aide saw the promise of a disruption effort to swing voters in Mr. Trump’s favor.

The campaign official, Rick Gates, sought one proposal to use bogus personas to target and sway 5,000 delegates to the 2016 Republican National Convention by attacking Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Mr. Trump’s main opponent at the time. Another proposal describes opposition research and “complementary intelligence activities” about Mrs. Clinton and people close to her, according to copies of the proposals obtained by The New York Times and interviews with four people involved in creating the documents.

View the complete October 8 article by Mark Mazzetti, Ronen Bergman, David D. Kirkpatrick and Maggie Haberman on the New York Times website here.

McConnell actually helped cover up Russia’s interference for Trump

A new book reveals how Sen. Mitch McConnell sought to undermine the CIA as it tried to address Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election.

Mitch McConnell, R-KY., 2018. Credit: J. Scott Applewhite, AP

A new book reveals further details of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) attempts to undermine the CIA as it raised alarms about Russian attempts to help Trump in the 2016 election.

Russia directly interfered in the 2016 election to influence the outcome. The Russian regime, at the direction of leader Vladimir Putin, sought to help Trump’s campaign and deny Hillary Clinton the presidency.

And the Trump campaign, at its highest levels, met with Russian operatives as it sought dirt on Clinton.

View the complete October 2 article by Oliver Willis on the ShareBlue.com website here.

Advertising totals reveal parties’ positioning in battle for House

Republicans and Democrats are taking starkly different approaches to advertising as they race to win control of the U.S. House, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Many Republicans are looking to outside money to lift them in the airtime wars, and the House GOP’s allied super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, has been this cycle’s dominant spender on television and radio, the documents show.

House Democrats are following a more traditional route. Their campaign arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is outpacing both its allied super PAC, the House Majority PAC, and its rival, the National Republican Congressional Committee — but lags behind the cash-flush GOP super PAC.

View the complete September 16 article by Robert Costa on the Washington Post website here.

Why voting matters: Supreme Court edition

The following article was posted on the Axios website June 28, 2018:

Credit: Robert Alexander, Getty Images

A shift of fewer than 80,000 votes in three states (Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) — or 0.06% of 137 million cast — would not just have made Hillary Clinton president.

The bottom line: Perhaps even more important for the long run, a young liberal Supreme Court might have ruled on America for a generation.<

The WashPost’s Philip Bump did the math about Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin back during the transition: Continue reading “Why voting matters: Supreme Court edition”

Russia favored Trump in 2016, Senate panel says, breaking with House GOP

The following article by Karoun Demirjian was posted on the Washington Post website May 16, 2018:

The Washington Post examines how, more than a year into his presidency, Trump continues to reject evidence that Russia supported his run for the White House. (Dalton Bennett, Thomas LeGro, John Parks, Jesse Mesner-Hage/The Washington Post)

The Senate Intelligence Committee has determined the U.S. intelligence community was correct in assessing Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election with the aim of helping then-candidate Donald Trump, contradicting findings House Republicans reached last month.

“We see no reason to dispute the [intelligence community’s] conclusions,” the committee’s chairman, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), said Wednesday in a joint statement with its vice chair, Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), who added: “Our staff concluded that the … conclusions were accurate and on point. The Russian effort was extensive, sophisticated, and ordered by President Putin himself for the purpose of helping Donald Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton.” Continue reading “Russia favored Trump in 2016, Senate panel says, breaking with House GOP”

Russian interference was a lame effort, we see now, but Americans took the bait

The following article by Leonid Bershidsky of Bloomberg View was posted on the Star Tribune website November 3, 2017:

The trolls didn’t favor one side or the other. They favored exploiting and amplifying weaknesses, and at that, they succeeded easily.

Credit: iStockphoto.com

The Facebook ads placed by a Russian troll farm and released last Wednesday by the U.S. Congress Intelligence Committee show that the Russian propaganda campaign of 2016 did not favor either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

Instead, it mocked and goaded America, holding up a distorted but, in the final analysis, remarkably accurate mirror.

This directly contradicts previous U.S. intelligence community assessments. “We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election,” the intelligence community assessment released in January stated. “Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.” Continue reading “Russian interference was a lame effort, we see now, but Americans took the bait”

The Memo: Trump tries to deepen Dem divisions

The following article by Niall Stanage was posted on the Hill website November 4, 2017:

© Getty

President Trump is trying to foment tensions in the Democratic Party, after new revelations about last year’s primary campaign emerged from Donna Brazile, who served as interim head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

But Democrats in both the pro-Hillary Clinton and pro-Bernie Sanderswings of the party insist that Trump’s interjections will only bring them together.

“Nothing unites the Democratic Party like Trump,” said Tad Devine, who was a senior advisor to Sanders during last year’s primary but was speaking to The Hill in a personal capacity. “If he gets in the middle, it brings us together. If he had a little more patience, he would have let the thing go for a day or two — but he can’t help himself.” Continue reading “The Memo: Trump tries to deepen Dem divisions”

What the Trump dossier says — and what it doesn’t

The following article by Philip Bump was posted on the Washington Post website October 25, 2017:

The Washington Post’s Adam Entous looks at the role that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee played in funding the research that led to a dossier containing allegations about President Trump’s links to Russia. (Video: Bastien Inzaurralde, Patrick Martin/Photo: Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

There are three reasons the “Trump dossier” has been elevated as one of the central points of consideration in the public investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign.

The first is that it involves the characters and language of a John Le Carré novel: a former British intelligence officer communing with shadowy Muscovites identified only by letters and detailing secret meetings in exotic places, hidden payments and illegal agreements to seize the American presidency. Continue reading “What the Trump dossier says — and what it doesn’t”