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.
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”