The Hunter Biden laptop did reek of a Russian operation. It was clearly an attempt to hurt Biden in the 11th hour.
Even if the content is genuine, which everything I've seen appears to be, the story behind it is clearly fabricated in an attempt to launder hacked/stolen data. Unless you believe that Rudy Guiliani is a paragon of honesty.
Anyways, I think it's wrong that the White House attempted to discredit and aggressively remove the content under false pretenses.
At the same time, I think it's important to recognize that the content can be real AND a foreign intelligence campaign at the same time. Russia tried to interfere with the 2017 French election by dumping hacked information[0]; in my opinion, they learned from that failure and realized they needed to launder future leaks so they werent transparently hostile foreign interference. Enter the Hunter Biden laptop.
[0] https://www.csis.org/analysis/successfully-countering-russia...
But 1) Russian had nothing to do with Hunter's laptop and his Jared-Kushner-Roger-Stone level sleaze. A level of sleaze we consider normal because "But them! They do it! They're worse and they hate us." Repubs and Dems both say it about the other and excuse their own. All of it is utterly revolting outside of partisan divides and has led to ever increasing levels of contempt for government and the media covering it. That's a big problem. Bigger?
2) There was no alfa bank server. That one is astonishing that it wasn't a joke from the first 5 seconds of being tried on and tried on it really was. The source of it is interesting, have a look.
3) There were no russian bounties in Afghanistan. Undermining an elected president pursuing a policy with popular support with a lie. And it worked until Biden picked up that policy and took it forward to completion. Wow. Jaw meet floor.
4) The Steele dossier and every story (and everything, including warrants based on it), is a total joke.
So there's 4 occasions where our (entirely valid?) fears were used against us such that our /right/ to forming our own opinion was taken away. And we need to be honest that our revulsion of Trump was also an influence. That same thing tried on Biden would not have passed the sniff test as these should not have. Do we trust democracy or just end it now? I'm going with the former - even when I don't like who gets elected.
Russia couldn't have done that more effectively. Russia has been used as an excuse and a motivation and method to do that. Our fears have been used as a tool. Doesn't make Putin a good guy and neither was Saddam. WMD being a lie didn't make Saddam a better guy either. Same playbook, no?
Do you think Sanders was supported by Russia as was claimed? He had a huge popular support. Maybe he was? Evidence?
I was surprised to learn the FBI never examined the DNC email servers claimed to be hacked by Russia and the contents published by wikileaks. The source has the credibility affected the Alfa bank made-up-story. Maybe it was Russia? Evidence is not what I thought it was. You?
Which is worse for democracy. Russian interference? Or Interference using the fear of it? The second should not be a thing.
This was then promoted to "russian disinformation" and treated as fact far and wide across the media. The New York Post were locked out of their twitter. Links to the post stories about the contents of the laptop were blocked. Even in private messages. Facebook etc did very similar things
What a massive conspiracy theory that all those american spooks, media outlets, silicon valley behemoths had colluded to lie and suppress a story to help their favored candidate. No way they'd do that! Has to be a nutjob consoiracy theory! Must be.
No. All true. No russians spooks involved. Plenty of "former" cia a load of whom, having been caught in the lie still now work for and are paid by cable news. Who obviously don't care about lying to you.
You've got to be able to hold two things in your head at once. A loathing for Trump, that's easy but at the same time as noting there is a very real, very serious problem here that is scary as hell. Much scarier than Trump could ever be.
Imagine your perfect candidate. Imagine their policies, imagine them getting them adopted to improve the country the way /you/ think best.
Now realise they have zero chance, no matter how popular with Americans because your ideal policies don't align with whatever the most powerful CIA & FBI factions are.
The fight for democracy is always happening and always has. Trump is not the existential threat and never has been.
While we're here he's not in putin's pocket and /he/ decided to arm Ukraine against russia and did it where Obama refused. Turns out Alfa bank server was a conspiracy theory, so was the "russian bounties for US servicemen" when he was trying to withdraw from Afghanistan. The steele dossier is an embarrassment beyond reckoning.
Keep right on hating trump and hating putin, I sure do. Just keep your brain operational while you do that.