The Patriot Post® · Need to Know: The Senate Report on Russian Election Influence

On Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee released Volume 2 of its bipartisan report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The Washington Examiner’s Tom Rogan sums up two big problems with the report. First, it “doesn’t tell us much that we didn’t already know,” in part because of heavy redactions. “But the report’s big problem,” says Rogan, “is its failure to recommend retaliation. Instead, it focuses on public service announcements.”

Meanwhile, lefty news-splaining website Vox offers the obvious Democrat slant in its title: “A GOP-led Senate intel committee report states the obvious: Russia favored Trump in 2016.”

That’s a gross misrepresentation for two important reasons that (sigh) we suppose bear repeating. Again.

One: To say Russia “favored” Trump is foolish. Typical Russian practice when interfering in elections is to boost a likely loser in order to weaken the likely winner. Like everyone else on the planet, Moscow’s team assumed Hillary Clinton would prevail and the true objective was to weaken her incoming administration by sowing dissent among the American population. Thanks largely to Clinton and Co., the Kremlin effort succeeded beyond Vladimir Putin’s wildest dreams.

Two: Russian interference didn’t demonstrably change a single vote — whether by persuasion or hacking alteration. Yes, there were a few fake stories seeded by Russian propagandists, but those were hardly more effective than the fake news propagated by the Democrats’ Leftmedia super PAC on a daily basis. That constant stream of dezinformatsiya sways millions of votes. Can you imagine what American elections would look like if the media were simply neutral?