The Government said that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election. They didn't say it changed the results.
What the Russian/2016 narrative really was: Americans are too stupid to make up their own minds and fall for propaganda. There has been a four year campaign to condemn every single Trump supporter as some kind of racist, white supremacist Nazi, and it's been big media and big tech (FOX/MSNBC/CNN/YouTube/Facebook/Twitter/NYTimes/etc.) that's literally been pouring petrol on the American people and the world.
Russia really did interfere in that election and you’ve ignored this crucial fact.
How is it possible to draw a causation from the releases to the election outcome? I am curious if there are academic studies to support this claim.
The (GOP-led) senate released a comprehensive report. The head of the FBI gave long testimony. What more do you want?
Read the report here: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/25/745351734/read-senate-intelli... Or the comprehensive wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
Please do not spam non-evidence. It's "an impossibly high bar" for you. But do not call it evidence. I am familiar with the level of information collection that occurs, and I do not view this as a high bar.
Do you mean because Trump demonised mail-in voting for months before the election, and many of his followers believe COVID is a hoax?
If your wife-to-be was having an affair and this was dumped before the wedding day, would you be mad at the hacker, or at your partner? Blaming Russia for showing truth never made any sense to me. Are we to believe that the process has more integrity when we cast our votes with less information?
A lot of people here are talking about interference, which sounds like a very nefarious thing. But in reality, what they mean by 'interference' is just posting on the internet about why one candidate (let's be real, probably Trump) is better.
As a reminder, both of these categories have seen grand jury charges and subsequent guilty pleas by Trump associates. These have often paired nicely with 'lying to prosecutors' charges, which help clarify that they knew they were up to no good...
https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/1886-indictment-giul...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Flynn#Investigations_a...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Manafort#Indictments_and_...
Why would you feel the need to lie about something so clearly untrue? I'm sure you can find a group of people on the internet somewhere that might have made this claim, in the same way that you can find people claiming the earth is flat.
But this fabrication that everyone was claiming Russians hacked the votes is just nonsense.
Don't we see history examples of lots of people falling for propaganda? Germany 1930-s comes to mind.
But baring that, how do you know which side is propaganda? Is it FOX/CNN/MSNBC or is it Newsmax/DailyWire/NYPost/Blaze/Crowder? Which side is the propaganda and which is the capitol T Truth?
It's not always easy, yes. But still critical thinking goes a long way.
Godwin's Law can be used as a tool to suppress valid comparisons. Don't fall for that.
That Trump was elected is a harbinger of American decline, that so many people think his persona, "intellect" and view on leadership are worthy of consideration as leader of this country. It's an indictment of our electoral and voting systems, that any good faith Republicans felt they "had" to vote for such an awful leader in order to avoid the centrism of a Democratic administration.
But I don't think every Trump voter is a racist nazi. I think they were just okay with Trump being an awful human being and a terrible leader, so long as they could prevent poor people from getting health care or acknowledging climate change.
Trump claimed that "Voting machines were not touched" by Russians in the 2016 election. Tanden said that was a "lie." The media massively amplified claims of Russian election hacking that never panned out: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/us/politics/russia-electi.... They played fast-and-loose with terminology, saying that "Russia hacked the 2016 election" when they meant that Russia hacked and leaked DNC emails. (Part of the problem here is that the media has taken to regurgitating Democratic talking points. Saying "Russia hacked the 2016 election" is a clever way for an Democratic activist to describe what happened, but its misleading when that same "hacking" terminology is used by the media.)
Nalder said that, without impeachment, Trump would "rig" the 2020 election: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-08/nadler-sa...
And people believed them. Even as of 2018, 66% of Democrats believed that "Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected President": https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...
I also never really heard many assertions that any of this was significant enough to have likely swayed the election.
The media used the word 'interference' in an exaggerated and nefarious context, and they didn't seem very interested in clearing it up. Election interference--without context--is usually taken to mean vote interference.
Like many things, it isn't an outright lie. But I do think it was misleading. And while you might not have been mislead, enough people were--as evidenced by that poll.
They planned to meet with someone who they believed to be working for the Kremlin in order to get dirt on their opponent.
See, for example, #UniteForAmerica video plea https://youtu.be/0z0iuWh3sek
They then spent the next few years making up conspiracy theories and trying to delegitimize his election. I’d gently suggest that there are no clean hands here, and what Dems did 2016-2019 was sufficiently reprehensible.
I posted a video which calls for exactly that in 2016. It’s a pretty amusing piece of history actually.
To her credit, “Clinton’s team and the Democratic National Committee have steadfastly refused to endorse the efforts spearheaded by a group of electors in Colorado and Washington state.”
NY Mag wrote a piece on the eve of the electoral vote documenting the extent of the harassment campaign, including hundreds of thousands of emails, hate mail, and death threats. Of course it also mentions Russia.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/12/final-push-to-sway-e...
Calling it 70k votes makes it sound small, but its more like 1% of voters. 1% of voters making their mind up based on TRUE stories about inside baseball at the DNC? Unrealistic. I bet 99% of voters couldn't even tell you what the emails were about.
And that's without considering the negative affects of the Democrats attacking Trump for being in bed with Russia, which probably cost him votes too.
Trump made two distinct and unrelated claims in that tweet. One claim was a lie, one was true. You dishonestly pretend there is only one claim. Neera was not addressing the true claim about voting machines being touched.
Trump has a habit of mixing in things he’s not accused of and running on them to acquit him of the things he is accused of. He consistently did it by attacking nonexistent and unprovable accusations of “collusion” (an imprecise term that is not a crime one can be charged for) when the actual investigations, hearings, and findings centered on Russian interference and any of the campaign’s coordination of it. This includes direct communication with Assange as well as the Trump Tower meeting over Magnitsky Act sanctions.
Your NYT article, in opposition to your stated conclusion, addresses infiltration attempts related to voting and voter registry systems, not the DNC hack.
Nadler’s claim is only unbelievable if you memory-hole Trump’s attempt two months ago to start another misinformation and character-smear campaign against Hunter Biden. The impeachment hearings specifically addressed and exposed the early stages of this campaign.
66% of democrats in that poll are wrong, so we agree there.
Using such loose terminology, couldn't you accurately say dozens of nations meddled with the majority of federal US elections in the past 50 years?
If you disagree, what do you think the function of AIPAC is?
Not only are you conveniently ignoring that reality, but you're also ignoring the fact that humans are humans. False information is much more powerful than true information, and "making up your own mind" is simply not possible when you are bombarded with orders of magnitude more false information that has been carefully constructed and self-selected to misinform you and appeal to your emotions.
Stop. Just stop. You're not helping. You're not enlightened. You're part of the problem.
I'd find your comment much more interesting if you actually argued against the OP's point rather than this strawman.
So apparently you believe individuals aren't capable of responsibly enjoying freedom, and thus should concede automomy of thought to the elite for what information they can consume or spread?
Some people can't handle their alchohol, but prohibiting the sale of alcohol didn't solve the probelm. Some individuals have problems, so the way to deal with that is at the individual level. Sorry the solution doesn't scale well. Freedom is great, but it's kind of expensive.
People choose to consume alcohol knowing it will get them drunk. People do not choose to be lied to. A better analogy is saying that the government should not attempt to regulate what companies put in the food they sell, because then I must believe individuals aren't capable of self-determining what is or is not safe for them to eat. Correct: I do not believe in "buyer beware" for food nor for facts.
No, not every site. But just as we have some public forums in the real world (not all, or even most "festering echo-chambers of hatred and racism"), we should have some on the internet.
> Not only are you conveniently ignoring that reality, but you're also ignoring the fact that humans are humans.
This reminds of arguing with objectivists who think that everything they believe flows from "A is A". I do agree that humans are humans, I'm glad we found some common ground here. Presumably you are human as well. But you are not concerned that what you believe is the result of "false information that has been carefully constructed and self-selected to misinform you and appeal to your emotions". It's only other humans who are vulnerable to this, and you need to protect them from it, for their own good.
> Stop. Just stop. You're not helping. You're not enlightened. You're part of the problem.
When you start down this path, you will quickly find yourself amongst a nest of vipers.
You're comparing falsehoods with hate and racism--I don't think that's a fair comparison. YouTube has always had rules around hate speech, and that generally has not been controversial.
You can rant against the mainstream media, but at least there is a modicum of fact checking and research there -- how many independent YouTube sources do the same?
No. No there absolutely is not. The fact that you trust the Legacy Media at all is part of the problem. It's independent analysts who have been the only ones to do any real research.
Viva Frei does a great piece on how the New York Times contradicts their own headlines in their article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmgMu5sefzA
Yes, placing our complete trust in a few major media outlets to accurately report the facts is naive. But believing that individuals with no independent fact checking department or an editor to enforce journalistic standards will somehow be less biased is even more naive.
"The full source material is what keeps journalism honest," said a man who is now in prison somewhere.
The other week I posted the below, which are headlines for the same 3 stories on the same day from CNN and Fox, arguably 2 of the biggest "news" sources in the U.S. These headlines are effectively opinions with the aim of gaslighting their respective audience. It's not healthy.
FOX: Trump touts historic stock market jump as Dow tops 'sacred number,'
CNN: Dow tops 30,000 for the first time ever as Biden transition begins
FOX: Biden's pick for national security adviser defended anti-Trump Steele dossier
CNN: 'The team meets this moment:' Biden introduces top admin nominees
FOX: Happy Thanksgiving! State relaxes gathering limits ahead of holiday
CNN: Doctor fights back tears describing single day of heartbreaking losses
Factually correct speech has its place. But when you're making Youtube videos, podcasts, writing comments, talking with friends, you don't need to be factual. That's not a necessary ingredient to a good conversation.
I have a Youtube channel where I sometimes talk about Space and Biology. I'm not educated in these subjects. No doubt a lot of what I say is factually incorrect. That doesn't mean my speech is misinformation, deceitful, or dangerous.
These things are not the same. When you talk with friends or when you write a comment, you have a limited audience and counter viewpoints are readily available. When you make a video or a podcast, you might have a pretty large audience and no immediate counterpoints. You should do your best to avoid spreading factually wrong statements.
Here's a comment snippet you wrote 3 days ago: "Facebook basically wanted to take monetary sovereignty away from states and give control to private companies.
Are you really doing your 'best to avoid spreading factually wrong statements'? Because I'm sure you have no evidential basis for that statement and therefore promulgating misinformation. Alternatively, we can have YouTube Interns decide what you can and cannot say online.
Regardless, perhaps you should take your own advice?
And it's also fun that you took a comment that basically said "channels with big audiences should care about not saying wrong things" and took it as a support of censorship.
Finally, you took the one example where the evidential basis is exactly there!
- Facebook wanted to create a digital currency, and wanted it to be used by as much people as possible.
- Monetary sovereignty is the capacity of a state to control what currency is used as legal payment, how much of it is issued and how much of is it retired.
- If Libra became widespread in a country under the conditions that Facebook wanted (i.e., the Libra association controlling issuance and retirement), it would complete and (partially or completely) replace the state's currency and therefore the state would not have power to control its own currency, therefore losing monetary sovereignty to the Libra association.
- The Libra association was an association of private companies, QED.
And all of this brings me again to the point of how comments and videos are different. I made a comment, you made a comment, I made another one, and most people reading will watch the different viewpoints. If this was instead YouTube videos with millions of views, a lot of people would see the video title and take it as fact, another group would watch it and wouldn't care or wouldn't have the capacity to search for the opposing viewpoints, and only a minority (I think) would actually see the full debate. That's why I say that the standards should be different if your potential audience is bigger and they're less exposed to other viewpoints.
What is happening with YouTube, is happening with Twitter and Facebook, so your arbitrary distinction between video and text is a distinction without meaning. Twitter was built for off-the-cuff comment-type communication and Facebook was built for sharing posts and content with close relations. And yet the exact same 'curation' is being done there as well. So no, I don't agree there is some magic difference between video and text.
>Finally, you took the one example where the evidential basis is exactly there!
NO it's not. You saying it doesn't make it so. You're impugning a motive on Facebook that you have no evidential support for. But that's not the salient point in this discussion, because your opinion about the level of evidence that you feel you bring to the argument is immaterial to social media 'curation'. What matters is what the minimum-wage, 20-something intern that is making an editorial decision feels about your post.
I did not make a distinction between video and text, I made a distinction based on audiences and availability of counterpoints. I used those examples because they were the ones that the parent comment used. I do not know why you're talking about video and text.
> What matters is what the minimum-wage, 20-something intern that is making an editorial decision feels about your post.
And at what point did I say I was in favor of social media curation? I said people should try to avoid saying wrong things in their own content when that content has a large audience with counterpoints not readily visible.
It's simply not tech's place to be making these calls. It's arrogance and hubris and it's going to lead to a backlash.
It is techs responsibility to moderate the forums they operate
Let's listen to everything. Hell, let's go outside and talk to each other again! This continual lockdown has deeply hurt our ability to actually communicate with one another in any meaningful way.
We're viewing the world through a straw.
Once there's a viable vaccine, sure. I don't disagree about your point of the damage the lockdown has done, but USA governments and citizens haven't locked down consistently enough to provide the intended results.
This is so ridiculous. I think you mean we need to have the information so if an individual wants to verify, they can and if they can spend the energy and rigor to know the research/data. Please stop requiring individuals to verify truth. Truth has always been escorted by authorities with checks and balances. Reputable media is an authority of similar civic responsibility.
Next time you buy a measuring tape, you're gonna sound ridiculous to ask for a NIST certificate at Home Depot.
No one is taking away right to assemble in public. Twitter is a publisher with no quality checks in place.
I am pointing out the difference between traditional media and internet media. One has checks and balances, and the other is wild wild west.
- Time to publish, it’s not instant like the internet
- Allows people to editorialize and review, even if they allow publishing
- Allow critics to voice their opinions before the book blows up
I’m in no way saying we need to have a CCP level control over what gets published or not, but I am just pointing out the virality of social media that didn’t exist before the internet.
You can make many arguments around it, the fact is that the internet fundamentally changed the way conspiracy theories propagate.
Even if controversial books are published, someone is going to a bookstore and buying it. There are reviews on ebooks. There is so much discussion. No such thing is exists in echo chambers.
Yes indeed. The Internet, as well as some other more modern communication technologies, has greatly optimized the proliferation and psychological impact of the echo chambers.
Suppose two long paths leading home are filled with people.
Path one is a park filled with people reading various physical copies of books, one of whom looks up from their copy of Mein Kampf to say something threatening to you.
Path two is filled with innocuous-looking people, all glued to the screens of essentially the same model of smartphone. One of them looks up from their device just long enough to tell you, "Samy is my hero."
Which path do you take and why?
Do we?
Let's address this on two levels: First do we really expect people to evaluate the facts relevant to who they choose to vote for? I mean on the one hand, the system does this, yes. But not because we have any particular amount of faith that everyone is ready to bear the responsibility. Instead, we're resigned to the fact that all the other options are worse. I mean the founders absolutely didn't trust the people to evaluate their leadership, unless you were willing to restrict the definition of "people" to "white male landowners".
Hell, even more, the constitution as written (and federalist 68 explicitly) suggested that the people themselves shouldn't select the president, but only select representatives who ultimately do the selection. The justification for this was that said representatives would hopefully be more capable than the average individual of weighing all of the requirements of the office.
So the founders certainly didn't share your faith. Nor, even today, does the constitution itself. Ultimately though, having a well informed populace is very different from having a kritarchy, and having reputable media is necessary for a well informed populace.
If you're bombarded with two contradictory pieces of information (which I'd argue is in many cases the explicitly strategy of some of the media), you either need to be an expert on the topic, or your only approach is to trust people. Like, are you really saying we expect the average American to be able to evaluate the facts relevant to economic policy? Nobel prize winners disagree!
But that's just the first layer. There's a second layer here:
At this point we're no longer talking about the political participation of voting. That's already happened. The votes are in. What we're talking about is asking people to evaluate the facts of obscure election law that's in most cases never been tested. The average American isn't a constitutional Judge. But, to use your word, the president has asked unelected judges to directly overrule the will of the people literally dozens of times. That's kritarchy (or just raw authoritarianism, your choice). The actual experts, the judges, have resoundingly said no. Like, among the experts, there is no controversy here. And yet the conspiracy theory persists. Why is that?
This statement stands in direct opposition to the primary founding principals of liberal democracy.
You call to "stop requiring individuals to verify truth" can be phrased in another, more honest way: support specific organisations to decide where the truth lies. For simple facts - the current temperature, the price of petrol at the pump, the energy content of a portion of a given food - this works. For disputed facts - nearly anything related to SARS2, nearly anything related to climate, nearly anything related to nuclear power, nearly anything related to migration, the veracity and validity of identity politics, the absence or presence of "systemic" racism - this patently fails since the gatekeeper gets to impose its own views on the public. When that gatekeeper happens to be the 500lbs gorilla in the field that means the public has to do exactly what you decry to be ridiculous: they have to go check whether the presented facts are true or just the result of the gatekeeper projecting its opinions, a task made harder by that gatekeeper - the 500lbs gorilla - blocking opposing views from its platform.
On your measuring tape comparison I can state that measuring tapes sold in e.g. the Netherlands clearly state that they are not to be used for trading purposes ("niet voor handelsdoeleinden") since they are not officially calibrated. Just like scales, pumps and other measuring equipment measuring tapes/sticks/etc. used for trading purposes need to be calibrated, get stamped that they are, complete with a calibration expiry date. So, yes, if it really matters you do ask for a calibrated measuring device.
Let me decide for me. I'm not outsourcing thinking to YouTube interns.
This idea that certain ideas are dangerous and must be suppressed is the mark of every insecure tyranny. Secure beliefs don't need to be propped up with censorship, and a belief isn't secure, it's because it's just not adequately backed up by facts.
I think it's fair to say that Republicans are somewhat more likely to believe in false information, but Democrats believe plenty of incorrect things as well. And I'd rather have a broken marketplace than one where Democrats just get to decide what's true.
Especially when its taken just 5 minutes for the perceived guard rails to evaporate! We're not talking about "the earth is flat" here. We are talking about Hunter Biden emails that still nobody has proven are inauthentic. We're talking about election fraud allegations which are the subject of ongoing court cases for god's sake. Even if I'm amenable to "fact checking" something like "Obama was born in Kenya" I'm sure as hell not going to support Google deciding something is true or untrue before the courts do.
Except we're not. Guiliani said in one of the few courts that asked for an oral argument that it wasn't a fraud case[1]. Fraud requires specific proof which he/they do not have.
This is PR/fund raising disguised as comical legal filings.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/us/politics/trump-giulian...
So is it misleading to call it fraud? Or are you just nitpicking? Depends on who you ask.
Does a case really count as "ongoing" if it gets dismissed pretty much as soon as the judge finishes reading the plaintiff's complaint?
Editing to make this a bit clearer:
As a matter of principle, do you believe Google staff (or their outsourced contractors) can and should pre-judge the outcomes of US court cases? I ask about principles because it's very easy to focus on the specific details of these particular cases, and the fact it's your political enemy pursuing them. But that may not be true next time, and certainly won't be true every time.
I've replied in more detail to your other comment which said much the same thing.
The mods on this site make similar decisions every single day, but I've never seen you post about that. Why shouldn't youtube have the same ability to moderate their site as Hacker News?
As another left-leaning person who has also had this experience recently, and who is rather disturbed by the delusions and hypocrisy from “my team”, I’ve noticed that your posts lately seem to do an excellent job of offering a more complete picture. Often, completing the picture involves clarifying the right-leaning viewpoint. It’s unfortunate that you usually get downvoted for it, even when you aren’t inserting your own opinion and stating things that are objectively true.
Just curious, has the combination of the bad behavior by many on the left in conjunction with receiving additional context from the right, pushed you towards the center or even the right? Or are you merely trying to act as more of an ambassador for Republican views?
Have they been proven to be authentic?
Censorship is why you didn't already know this. It should have been major news, being the headline story everywhere for a week. It passed by here quietly, on Hacker News, and was quickly flagged.
You're left with an incomplete view of the world that is very misleading. People everywhere are using this warped view of reality to make world-changing decisions.
Not really, confirmation bias is a real thing for all human beings. The issue here is that there's a fundamental disagreement about what constitutes a fact. Objectivity in reporting is also subjective, funnily enough. If I consider NPR to be very objective because the dead-pan monotonic voice of the announcer simply says a direct quote from a member of congress, I can talk to a relative who will tell me that same NPR story is biased because they reported on something they don't agree with.
> It was because the media respected its role in society and at least tried to be objective.
There are _plenty_ of news outlets that still respect their role in society. The difference is that 20-30 years ago, there wasn't a deluge of information or misinformation readily available to get those dopamine hits from confirming biases.
Like?
This is great. Is it a quote?
Most Democratic political workers would tell you that Comey and the emails is the #1 factor. It amplified built in brand of Clinton corruption and Comey broke long standing policy at basically the perfect time to do perfect damage.
Sure some of this was amplified by Russia but I don't know a single professional that would say Russia had a larger impact than the emails/Comey.
Sure Russia probably amplified it but it was wall to wall across ALL media a few days before the election - when undecideds are going to vote. And the big damage from the first hit.
The corruption, thinks she is above the rules, tarmac with Lynch etc. That hit really hard with the small slice of swing voters and maybe more importantly reduced turnout from Ds
I don't think anyone who would believe pizza gate would ever vote for Hillary lol e.g. not a swing voter to begin with
I completely agree that Comey bringing it back into the front page played a bigger role but I wouldn’t rule out all of the social media trolling having more than a little influence. It seemed to leave a lot of reporters covering non-stories lest they be accused of bias again.
Reminds me of the exchange between William Roper and Thomas More. After More balked at arresting someone who hasn't broken any laws, Roper stated that he'd "cut down every law in England" to get the Devil. More answered: "And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide"
Once the tech and media conglomerates take the mantle of curation and censorship, it's only a matter of time before you run afoul and get dragged under as well. You feel safe now because you feel they share your political beliefs, but that will change.
We were told that Russia interfered in 2016 elections and helped to elect Trump. Now, we are told that 2020 elections were of the highest integrity. Why wouldn't Russia interfere in 2020 elections? Were they scared of Trump administration? But wait, we were told that Trump was Russian puppet, so they would be scared of him, right? So again, why wouldn't Russia interfere in 2020 elections? Or did Russia interfered in 2020 election, "just as they did in 2016", and elected Biden this time?
In short, Tech Media narrative does not make sense to me. And all censorship eventually fails, just take a look at the Fall of Socialism in the Soviet Union.
I love that you mention Joe Rogan. He's one of the leading Progressives that is bringing up how hypocrticial censorship has in Big Tech.
Everybody knows how absurd censorship has gotten in the last decade –– most noticably since Trump was elected.
Trump clearly has not facilitated a good faith, peaceful transition of power.
And this matters - the 9/11 commission noted that the rushed transition due to Bush v Gore contributed to the intelligence lapses that lead to the attack. And that wasn't even a bad actor harming the transition like we have today.
Dems didn't delay transition of power, but they did spend a huge amount of political capital trying to convince the country that Trump's victory was invalid or fraudulent.
Manafort (plea deal and convictions), Roger Stone (convicted on all counts), Cohen (plead guilty and convicted on multiple counts), Flynn (plead guilty to lying to the FBI, pardoned) are the big names.
All direct associates of Donald Trump, and all their criminality was for his benefit.
The main reason Donald Trump hasn't been charged with anything himself is because he is using the office of the presidency to shield himself. We will soon see if he can survive without a scratch without that shield.
No, they spent a lot of political capital on the idea that Trump was corrupt and aided by foreign powers, basically no Democrats (in national office, at least) seriously advanced the case that Trump's election was either invalid or fraudulent (that his conduct, including conduct after the election, warranted impeachment and removal, yes, but that's a very different case than the election being fraudulent or invalid.)
As a parallel with subordinate offices, Democrats generally think Barr is a bad attorney-general, and his appointment was a result of improper motives, and some have made calls that he should be impeached, but none have claimed his appointment is invalid.
On the other hand, Chad Wolf’s appointment as Acting Secretary of Homeland Security has been described and challenged as invalid (and, in fact, found to be so by courts, invalidating official acts dependent on his appointment to that position.)
There is a difference between acheiving an office by unethical means, or having bad conduct warranting removal from office, on one hand and illegitimately claiming office on the other hand. You are improperly conflating accusations of the former with accusations of the latter.
Crossfire Hurricane wasn't enough of a ruckus?
It came out recently that Eric Swalwell was targeted by a Chinese spy, but cut ties after a 'defensive briefing' by the FBI. Hillary's campaign also received a 'defensive briefing' in 2015 when a foreign government tried to influence her campaign through a campaign associate. Trump's campaign never got one, instead FBI ordered an investigation on the flimsies grounds and outright lies to the FISA courts (and what turned out to be opo-research funded by the Hillary campaign and promulgating actual Russian disinformation)..
And then the next four years had Hillary going around saying explicitly that Trump is not a legitimate president - a claim not challenged by media and echoed by the Democrats. The media itself kept pushing the discredit Steele dossier throughout that time. So I do roll my eyes when political activists in the Democratic party and media are now all about 'election integrity' after what they did to the trust in the system over the last 4 years. And I'm not really worried about Trump bitching on Twitter and putting out lawsuits (as is his right), as some threat to Democracy.
He does not have the right to ask state governors to ignore the election results and appoint electors who will vote for Trump. That is far beyond the legitimate exercise of Trump's rights.
I want you to step back and really consider the reporting on this by taking into context the kind of reporting of the behind-the-scene Trump Administration actions that came out of the media. And given that, I have no idea how you can possibly take this interpretation at face-value.
For the last 4 years, there has been an egregious claim after another, each more bonkers than the next, unverified, stemming from some 'anonymous sources' against Trump that has time and time again proven to be without merit. Every.single.week.
Just recently, a news cycle was devoted to the claim that Trump will barricade himself in the office if Biden wins. Just prior to the election, multiple news cycles were devoted to reporting on Trump destroying postal boxes to prevent mail-in voting. A little before that, Trump was accused of ignoring Russian bounties on American soldiers (another meritless claim that was disavowed by the the Taliban, Russian, American Intelligence and Army with no evidence presented by NYTimes). Again, this occurred every single week for the last 4 years.
And you don't even have an ounce of skepticism of reporting that Trump in a private conversation asked governors to break the law, given how this kind of stuff has been reported, time and time again?
The gaslighting of the last 4 years has been insane and the media is simply incapable of objective straight reporting on Trump. I know how that sounds, but that's what it is.
Whether he should do it is a different question.
The theory here is that the US Constitution, because of wording in Article II ("Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors [...]") that if interpreted hyperspecifically[1] implies that the legislature alone, and not Governor or state law, has the power to appoint electors. That has never been tested in practice.
But regardless, it would still be a state crime to do it. So no, he doesn't have the right.
[1] Obviously the reasonable interpretation of this line is "States decide for themselves how to choose electors", not something that makes assumptions about the structure of state government.
Whether people have the right to request governors to perform illegitimate actions... that probably depends on your definition of "right", and I don't care very much about having that debate.
Being a good person? No one needs to tell you anything again, you got it right the first time.
Democrats have claimed pretty every election for the last 20 years has been stolen, or at least could have been stolen, due to dominion's voting machines having the ability to flip votes undetected. Bev Harris's book Black Box Voting literally came out in 2003.[1]
Now apparently not only was this election the first not to have been stolen, but it's not even a possibility that something like that could happen. Go figure.
https://www.wired.com/story/christchurch-shooter-youtube-rad...
Of course, if YouTube (and others) actually cared about helping, they would change or remove their algorithmic feed, which is the real crux of the problem. But that hits their bottom line more than pulling down individual pieces of content does, so here we are.
> Since September, we've terminated over 8000 channels and thousands of harmful and misleading elections-related videos for violating our existing policies. Over 77% of those removed videos were taken down before they had 100 views.
Yay! Thank you YouTube interns for protecting me from making up my own mind about these dangerous ideas.
I also like that the authoritative sources are ... the same media companies, owned by multinational corporate conglomerates, that are always pushing for deplatforming of independent news sources. No self-serving policies here! Tell me again NYTimes how Philip DeFranco and Joe Rogan are a gateway to the alt-right.