Tag: Election 2016

Putin Said to Be Source of Trump’s Bogus Ukrainian Conspiracy Theory

Jon Ponder
Putin, left, with Hungarian Strongman Viktor Orban

Every conspiracy theory has a source. More often than not, however, the source is impossible to track down. Not so with Trump’s pet theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 election.

The source of that thoroughly disproved assertion was Trump’s handler, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. Putin first mentioned it in public during a news conference with right-wing Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, in 2017:

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Slight Majority Favors Ditching Electoral College

Buck Banks

53%

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that “53% of Americans support a move to a popular vote, while 43% believe the country should continue to elect its presidents using the Electoral College. … But an overwhelming 78% of those who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 believe the country should adopt a national popular vote… And an equally overwhelming 74% of those who voted for Donald Trump say the existing system should stay in place.”

Parents of Korean War Veterans Have Notably Longer Life Spans

Trish

101 to 110

Average age of the parents of Korean War veterans, who Trump claimed repeatedly came up to him on the 2016 campaign trail, begging him to bring home their sons’ remains. According to Esquire’s Jack Holmes, “…this is a quintessential Trumpian lie: totally shameless, easily verifiable as false, and rooted in the notion that “many people”—who are never defined further, and who you’ll never be able to find—are telling the president something that he just happens to agree with himself. How many times in this troubled period in our nation’s history have we heard how ‘many people are saying’ something about Donald Trump?”

Half of Republicans Believe Millions Voted Illegally in 2016

Buck Banks

48%

A new HuffPost/YouGov poll finds that 48% of Republicans believe that up to 5 million people voted illegally in the last presidential election ? a claim that President Trump has repeatedly made, even though neither he nor anyone else has produced concrete evidence to show it’s true. Just 17% said they do not believe that claim and 35% said they were unsure.

Clapper: Russia Stole the U.S. Election

Buck Banks

“The Russians have succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.”

— Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, telling Politico that no matter how much President Trump rants about the “Russia hoax,” the 2016 hacking was not only real and aimed at electing Trump but constituted a major victory for a dangerous foreign adversary.

Don Trump Jr. Didn’t Have Secret Service Protection at Time of the Meeting

Trish

MeetingThe latest attempt to blame Obama for Trump’s Russia problem is for Team Trump to claim the Secret Service approved the June 9, 2016 meeting with Don Trump, Jr. Present at that event were Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, son-in-law Jared Kushner, and representatives of the Russian government who offered incriminating information about Hillary Clinton to help Trump win the election.

Aside from the very valid observation that it’s not the job of the Secret Service to green-light who the campaign can meet with, is this pesky detail:

The Secret Secret wasn’t guarding Don Trump, Jr. at the time of the meeting.
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Russians Hacked Election Systems in 39 States

Buck Banks

39

“Russia’s cyberattack on the U.S. electoral system before Donald Trump’s election was far more widespread than has been publicly revealed, including incursions into voter databases and software systems in almost twice as many states as previously reported,” Bloomberg reports. “Details of the wave of attacks, in the summer and fall of 2016, were provided by three people with direct knowledge of the U.S. investigation into the matter. In all, the Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states, one of them said.”

Putin Admits Some Russians Might Have Hacked U.S. Election

Buck Banks

“If they are patriotically minded, they start making their contributions — which are right, from their point of view — to the fight against those who say bad things about Russia.”

— Russian President Vladimir Putin, shifting away from his previous blanket denials of Russian involvement in cyberattacks last year to help the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, denied any state role on Thursday but said that “patriotically minded” private Russian hackers could have been involved, the New York Times reports.