[1] I wouldn't say "won" but I would say "definitely helped" - there are a large number of other forces that contributed much, much more to the GOP win than Russia.
I mean, come on, a lot of us here know how web sites work. For a major country's spy agency, it would be trivially easy to automate account sign up and posting. Is it that hard to imagine? And when every dumb Joe on the planet is likely to believe the first thing they read that strategically appeals to their emotions? You do the math.
The problem is that you also need the gutted Voting Rights Act, rampant GOP gerrymandering, and the ridiculous favouring of Southern States by the Electoral College to get the win - and those have much more of an effect than a Russian finger on the scales.
Who stands to benefit or avoid harm from such a belief? Arguably the people responsible for the national circumstances that lead the population to vote for someone like Trump.
Growing wealth inequality? No, it's Russia
Questionable foreign wars? No, it's Russia
Massively deprived communities across the states? No, it's Russia
Off-shored working/middle class jobs? No, it's Russia
The Russia narrative is extremely attractive to those whose policies have been very unpopular with a large segment of society. Providing this can be kept up through the Trump presidency than the Democrat (and Republican to some extent) lines do not need to change. More of the same. It is not that people don't like our policies, they were just duped by Russia.
To believe that the effects of certain policies have been just rosy for a large section of Americans, is naive. To try and dismiss their views and blame them for being unknown puppets of Russia, is cruel and wrong.
note: I am not suggestion that Russia were not involved in some way in the US election.
Like Hillary being the worst candidate in a lifetime.
Would a good candidate brag about grabbing pussies, and attack a gold star family?
But hey, email.
There is also no corresponding scrutiny of American "news" outlets and the heavily biased stories that they run with impunity. We really don't have news anymore, it's just partisan entertainment. RT is at least as newsworthy as any of the major US news outlets, and I think quite appropriately focuses on issues of concern to the poorest and least politically empowered Americans.
We've seen similar levels of cognitive dissonance in the UK after Brexit. Russia, Low Information Voters, etc etc. It's all just excuses. Examine your policies and your candidates first.
Let me rewrite your post so it's more honest about where you got your misinformation from:
"Sean Hannity has said that the "Russia won the election" conspiracy theory is the Democrat's equivalent of "Obama was born in Kenya" birthers."
I'll leave it to you to explain why you didn't write that in the first place, and why anyone should ever take your seriously.
Stop right there. This is not the place for that. We all know the who desperately claims that again and again, using those exact same weasel words, and he's a pathological liar, so you embarrass and discredit yourself by parroting him.
Right-oh, king of the internet. I'll do exactly as you command.
Your and Trump's implication is that you're not going to say it yourself (even though you do), so you don't have to prove or defend it or stand by it, and it's not your fault if it's wrong -- the only thing you're saying is that people have said it, but you won't say who, and you won't say where you heard it or if you believe it, and you won't say whether they're full of shit or not, but we're not allowed to question or criticize you because your statement that "people have said" may be literally true in some sense, and you're staying above it all by not talking sides, just reporting what people have said, so it's unfair to shoot you as the messenger if it turns out what "people have said" is wrong.
There is absolutely no value to any sentence beginning with "People have said ..." Trump's words that you're literally parroting are the weaseliest of weasel words, the exact same words he used to self aggrandize and deflect responsibility for lying about a grieving mother in his vicious personal attack on a gold star family.
"She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say. You tell me. But plenty of people have written that. She was extremely quiet. And it looked like she had nothing to say. A lot of people have said that."
"A lot of the people have said that, some people said it was the single best speech ever made in that chamber."
"People have said they’ve never seen this ever before in China."
"When you look at really what’s happened since Charlottesville, a lot of people are saying – and people have actually written – ‘Gee, Trump may have a point.'"
'A lot of people are saying...': How Trump spreads conspiracies and innuendoes
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-lot-of-people-are-...
Following the country’s most deadly mass shooting, Donald Trump was asked to explain what he meant when he said President Obama either does not understand radicalized Muslim terrorists or “he gets it better than anybody understands.”
“Well,” Trump said on the “Today Show” Monday morning, “there are a lot of people that think maybe he doesn’t want to get it. A lot of people think maybe he doesn’t want to know about it. I happen to think that he just doesn’t know what he’s doing, but there are many people that think maybe he doesn’t want to get it. He doesn’t want to see what’s really happening. And that could be.”
In other words, Trump was not directly saying that he believes the president sympathizes with the terrorist who killed at least 49 people in an Orlando nightclub. He was implying that a lot of people are saying that.
At a rally in New Hampshire in September, a man in the audience loudly declared President Obama a Muslim and “not even an American,” then asked Trump to get rid of Muslim “training camps.”
“You know, a lot of people are saying that, and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there,” Trump responded. “We’re going to look at that and plenty of other things.”
“Some people say it’s worse than stupidity. There’s something going on that we don’t know about,” Trump said in Hilton Head. “And you almost think — I’m not saying that, and I’m not a conspiracy person. . . . Half the people in this room are saying it. I’m trying to be — you know, I’m just hoping they’re just stupid people, okay?”
“I’d hate to see something like that get in his way, but a lot of people are talking about it, and I know that even some states are looking at it very strongly, the fact that he was born in Canada and he has had a double passport,” Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post at the time.
“I don’t bring [Foster’s death] up because I don’t know enough to really discuss it,” Trump said in an interview with The Post in May. “I will say there are people who continue to bring it up because they think it was absolutely a murder. I don’t do that because I don’t think it’s fair.”
“Somebody asked me the question the other day, and I said that a lot of people are very skeptical as to what happened and how he died,” Trump said. “I know nothing about it. I don’t think it’s something that, frankly, really, unless some evidence to the contrary of what I have seen comes up, I don’t think that it’s something that should be part of the campaign.”
Sean Hannity has said it. The quote is attributed. My bad for not spending 5 mins to google it first.