So, the Left whines and throws a tantrum about Trump-Russia collusion. They think that the Trump campaign and the Kremlin conspired to tilt the 2016 election. There is zero evidence to support such a ludicrous claim. Now, was there Russian interference to screw around with our elections that wasn’t part of some Russia-Trump scheme? Yes. But this isn’t new. We’ve done it. The U.S. did it frequently during the Cold War.
The fact that the Russians were the ones who tried to interfere, badly, using troll farms and fake social media pages doesn’t dissuade liberals to come down from the Trump-Russia collusion nonsense, so this myth will continue to be propped up by their allies in the media, despite their operation not being some massive feat. The social media front was a mere six-figure expenditure to Facebook. Still, liberals think this constitutes a virtual Pearl Harbor or 9/11-style attack. It’s not. Better still, is their hypocrisy over all of this. They rail about Russian interference tactics, but then tried to test them out during the Alabama special election. Gee—I wonder what the goal was.
As the saying goes, if double didn’t exist, the Left wouldn’t have any. In the Alabama Senate election, which was held to fill the vacancy left by Jeff Sessions, who resigned to become Attorney General, liberals copied the deceptive tactics, creating fake social media pages to spread disinformation. The New York Timeswrote about these activities, which centered on the billionaire co-founder of Linkedin, Reid Hoffman, for being one of the main funders of these activities. Hoffman apologized after Christmas for being part of these operations…sort of (via WaPo):
Internet billionaire Reid Hoffman apologized Wednesday for funding a group linked to a “highly disturbing” effort that spread disinformation during last year’s Alabama special election for U.S. Senate, but he said he was not aware that his money was being used for that purpose.
Hoffman’s statement is his first acknowledgment of his ties to a campaign that adopted tactics similar to those deployed by Russian operatives during the 2016 presidential election. In Alabama, the Hoffman-funded group allegedly used Facebook and Twitter to undermine support for Republican Roy Moore and boost Democrat Doug Jones, who narrowly won the race. Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn and an early Facebook investor, expressed support for a federal investigation into what happened, echoing Jones’s position from last week.
Hoffman named a group he funded, American Engagement Technologies, or AET, as being involved in an effort to spread disinformation targeting Moore. Hoffman invested $750,000 in the organization, some of which covered its work in Alabama, according to a person close to the matter but not authorized to discuss Hoffman’s spending.
The statement left key facts unaddressed, including a full accounting of everyone who crafted and executed the campaign. The effort was the subject of a presentation in September to a group of liberal-leaning technology experts who met in downtown Washington to discuss electoral tactics, according to one of the attendees and documents from the meeting obtained by The Washington Post. This person spoke on the condition of anonymity because those at the gathering were required to sign nondisclosure agreements.
In his statement, Hoffman said: “I find the tactics that have been recently reported highly disturbing. For that reason, I am embarrassed by my failure to track AET — the organization I did support — more diligently as it made its own decisions to perhaps fund projects that I would reject.”
I mean, take what you will from that. The Left is so horrified by these Russian deception tactics of spreading disinformation that they’re copying them to be used in our elections is, well, I guess typical behavior of the Democratic Party.
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