No, because that didn’t happen. If you were following the news the claim actually made is what the intelligence agencies of multiple countries concluded: Russia spent a considerable amount of money _influencing_ the elections with fake news and social media and they supported targeted attacks on Democrats.

There were concerns over attempts to compromise election systems, which again were confirmed by subsequent investigations, but that was reported by the mainstream media in the context of the federal government warning states to be prepared and noting that most attacks had failed and there was no reason to believe the elections would not be reliable.

Here's an example of the type of article that was coming out during this time.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/russia-stole-the-presiden_b_1...

You're absolutely right, Russia very likely did spent time and money attempting to influence the 2016 election, very few would doubt that. What I have issue with is the erasure of the fact that media outlets and mainstream Democrats were absolutely and without a doubt pushing the narrative that Russia "stole" or "hacked" the election, which is very different from attempting to influence.

That piece I posted, of which there are hundreds of similar ones easily perusable quotes:

"[Donald Trump] it turns out, is no more the duly elected president of the United States than I am the world’s most decorated ballerina."

Do you see the issue there? It was a mainstream opinion at the time to believe that despite misguided Americans legally voting him into power, the election was fraudulent and Donald Trump was not the legal president.

I truly believe if the Democrats had exercised more tact in their accusations 4 years prior, we wouldn't have seen the horrific events at the capital by domestic terrorists peddling essentially the same conspiracy theory which had been forced down their throats by centre-left media.

You’re going to claim authoritative representation of American mainstream opinion based on a blog post by a Canadian author who lives in Europe?

More importantly, you’re conflating two very different situations: saying that the Russians _interfered_ with the election is a factual position and random people who are not in power complaining about it or saying that the legitimately elected candidate doesn’t speak for them is very different than the current President baselessly claiming fraud and trying to use his office to get legitimate votes thrown out or request that fake ones be manufactured. Trying to equate the two is simply dishonest.

Here are a lot more representative articles that aren't from a Huffpost opinion piece by a "novelist and photographer"

Clinton says Comey's letter, Russian hackers cost her the election [0]

Russian hackers, Donald Trump, and the 2016 election, explained [1]

Russia and its influence on the presidential election [2]

The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S. [3]

CIA concludes Russia interfered to help Trump win election, say reports [4]

These are consistently and specifically about Russian hacking of Clinton's email servers and about their actions targeting voting infrastructure. They moderate, rather than amplify, any blunt or clickbait language like "Russia hacked the election." There were not widespread claims that the election was outright stolen, and certainly not from the leader of the party. Merely claims that without Russian influence, people would have cast their votes differently.

Remember that Clinton conceded the next day and said outright that "we must accept this result." [5]

There is no one to blame for the big lie that the right wing has swallowed and run with except for the leadership that has fed them those lies over and over and over for years.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-clinton/clinton-says-...

[1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/12/13919702/...

[2] https://www.politifact.com/article/2016/dec/01/russia-and-it...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/us/politics/russia-hack-e...

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/10/cia-conclude...

[5] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/hillary-clin...

There's a big difference between partisans doing that, and an actual president claiming the election is stolen for months, asking his supporters to march on the Capitol to deny the rights of voters to have their vote confirmed, calling state officials to ask them to "find votes", etc.

You said it, they brought all of that to courts, which means it was entirely supported by the full establishment of the party, not just a fringe part of it.

The fact you can't even see the major difference makes me think you are clearly looking at just one side.

But it wasn't a fringe part of it, that's the precise problem.

On May 16, 2017, Nancy Pelosi tweeted "Our election was hijacked. There is no question."

Is Pelosi considered a fringe part of the Democratic Party now?

I think that's an apples-to-oranges comparison (no pun intended).

It would be fairer to compare the Democrats' allegations about Russia to the Republicans' allegations about China, i.e. accusations that Biden is anywhere between a useful-idiot-for to an outright-puppet-of the CCP.

AFAIK the Democrat position has been that, for both elections, the voting/counting mechanisms have withstood targetted attacks by state actors, and in both cases gave overall tallies which correspond to the electorate's choices, within an acceptable margin of error (I'm stopping at the tallies, to avoid the separate debate regarding the electoral college versus the popular vote).

Some Democrats also allege foreign interference with the electorate's choices, through widespread misinformation and propaganda. As an extreme example, fewer people may have voted for Trump if Russian troll farms weren't claiming that Clinton harvests child organs (or whatever Q-adjacent bullshit was spreading around Facebook at the time). It's perfectly consistent to make that claim, whilst also claiming that those lie-induced Trump votes were subsequently collated and counted correctly towards the totals.

AFAIK the Republican-led investigation found the Democrats' position to be essentially correct, that there were targetted attacks on infrastructure, and misinformation/propaganda attacks nudging the electorate towards Trump. No evidence of collusion was found, i.e. that Trump was working for foreign adversaries, or foreign adversaries were working for Trump, or they were coordinating ahead of time. That would (of course) have been even worse, but the lack of (evidence of) such collusion doesn't make the idea of foreign adversaries weaponising US voters for their own ends any more palatable.

In short, choosing positions/policies/rhetoric that is useful to adversaries is not itself criminal; it could simply be naivety or coincidence. Yet knowing that a candidate's positions/policies/rhetoric is useful to adversaries would be pertinent information for voters.

The left didn't storm the capital

>calling state officials to ask them to "find votes"

Fyi, the Washington Post offered an official retraction of that quote recently stating it wasn't based in reality.

You can look at the retraction itself [0] and it says nothing close to "it wasn't based in reality."

What it says is that Trump's actual words were that the state official would "find things that are gonna be unbelievable" and that "[w]hen the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised."

The specific words were a misquote, but there is no doubt from the call itself that Trump was pressuring state officials into supporting his big lie.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/correction-trump-geo...

Trump did plenty of dumb stuff. It bothers me when people misquote him so bad they are practically lie about it because it makes people doubt all of the bad things he really did.

Did Trump do something improper by calling the Governor and pressuring them? Yea. Was it so bad as directly tell them to "find votes"? No.

I agree with you, but you have to recognize that one is just an escalation of the other. Both are terrible, even if Trump being worse. Trump would not have been possible if discourse had not already broken down.

We created a culture where this devolution of discourse was acceptable, and so fewer voters found Trump's rhetoric unacceptable - partially because they heard more and more extreme rhetoric coming from the other side - whether on social media, MSM, or even some far left wing political leaders.

Incidents like when the Bernie Sanders campaign worker SHOT a US GOP senator. ...the reporting on that was extremely asymmetric between GOP and Dem news media.

These sorts of escalations, and the MSM pandering to their base, creates a cycle of hyperbole and misinformation.

We really need to think about how we can get out of this mess and bring the rational majority back to a central forum of discourse.

The (Republican) Senate committee found that there were in fact extensive ties between Russian intelligence and the Trump campaign, and that Russia actively attacked state election infrastructure. And the (Republican) special counsel found that they actively propagandized over social media, and hacked into Democratic campaign and candidate emails, which ended up being the anti-Clinton story leading up to the election.

It's tired and disingenuous at this point to claim that "the left" made this up.

All of that is true! But as I posted above, I don't take any issue with the fact that there was Russian interference in the election, I take issue with mainstream Democrats and media companies jumping to the conclusion that this meant the election was fraudulent.

This HuffPost opinion piece reflects what I'm talking about. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/russia-stole-the-presiden_b_1...

And the supreme court dismissed it, not on merit, but on procedural grounds from what I know.