Yes literally everything in Russia is related to trump. It’s well known that everyone in Russia and the rest of the world is obsessed with American elections and trump. It’s all anyone ever talks or thinks about. This station was started on 1973 when trump was a young man in America. Coincidence? I think not

Wikipedia article makes it clear was an uptick in observed/known voice chatter.

That the public might be likely to observe more thoroughly makes it less of a coincidence.

That was around the time russian consulates etc were being booted off and other political turmoil due to changes in the white house residents. Don’t need conspiracy theory to explain this

Would that really be a “conspiracy”?

The so called “russian dossier “ ended up being complete fabrication. Im sure putin would very much like to be as powerful as certain american news sources make him out to be (due to optics). “Fsb rigged the election” is just birther movement of the left

There's far more hard evidence for Russian interference in Brexit and the US far-right - actually the far-right across the West - than there ever was for the birther nonsense.

For example, there's an almost endless wave of this kind of thing:

https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-election-russia-disinfor...

See my reply to sibling thread

No? Much of it remains true, "true enough", or potentially true, unless I missed a blowout news story that invalidates this entire page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steele_dossier#Veracity_and_co...

Incidentally, I feel like I've been seeing a trickle of propaganda over the last few months attempting to outright discredit the dossier. People repeat that it's a "complete fabrication" as if it's a universally agreed-upon fact.

A bunch of speculative research by anonymous third-party sources in a Russian-language paper with little journalistic cachet is your evidence?

We should refrain from ad hominem statements and stick to the merits of the argument. Personally, I agree with GP that Meduza doesn't really inspire confidence in its reporting here.

I mean it’s no cnn with their incredibly high standards i agree ;) also did you notice many links to other sources?

All I see in this article is a bunch of "anonymous Twitter detectives said so-and-so". This does not feel like reputable investigative journalism to me.

I think the truth can be somewhat weirder than whatever the popular narrative is.

For what it's worth, I wonder if Russia is behind some of the libertarian movements of the last couple decades. I remember a decade or so ago, RT was quite fond of giving time to some of my, at the time, favorite libertarian talking heads. I think Russia might have an interest in propagating a more federalist interpretation of the US Constitution. It certainly lines up with the sort of Plutocratic system dominating post-Soviet Russia, and promotes a more isolated American foreign policy.

The real saboteurs of the 2016 election were the tone-deaf Democratic leaders. Supporting a candidate like Clinton in 2016, along with failing to effectively appreciate the threat of a populist like Trump, is really what cost them the election.

Do i think that russian government attempts to make inroads by financing or befriending fringe political movements of their adversaries (same as US does btw)? Absolutely! They’ve definitely had contacts with far right and left groups in the west. Pretty long stretch to directly tipping the election though

I agree though - democratic leadership needs to quit sniffing their own farts and accept some responsibility for a change. The current russian spy mania on the news actually achieves nothing and plays into putins narrative imo

They didn't "rig" the election, that's ridiculous.

What they did do is probably coordinate with the trump campaign what they did do.

You're assuming I'm left wing, or even american

> The so called “russian dossier “ ended up being complete fabrication

If you are referring to thing called the “Russia dossier” (it was about Russia, it wasn't Russian, or called Russian), no, it didn't “end up” being a complete fabrication.

Also, it's not anywhere close to the most solid evidence of the Russian influence campaign around the 2016 election.

> “Fsb rigged the election” is just birther movement of the left

No, it's not. “FSB rigged the election” is a Trumpist straw man to distract from the serious issues around the Russian interference effort and Trump campaign complicity in it, none of which is about rigging elections.