Clapper tells Maddow the president is illegitimate: Trump would not be president if not for Russia

[Hortensis]

33. Laura, Russia didn't dissuade those from voting Democratic.

I live in the rural deep south and it's very...rural deep south down here. Same for Arkansas, where our daughter now raises her family. We've both been told by people that they'd never met a liberal.

Russia especially targeted registered Democrats and independents who normally vote Democrat.

Using social media, they identified and fed personal weaknesses, providing lies to feed things like ignorance, lack of conviction and resentment, and they alarmed and "disillusioned" a small but critical percentage into mostly not voting. We're not angels, and with encouragement constantly fed directly into personal furnaces, some voted third party or Trump our of spite and resentment. Likely most believed they could safely do so because for a year prior the news had been discussing how far ahead we were and how big our wins would be. But they still ultimately made themselves fatally useful idiots.

We'll get Russia eventually. But for now we have to stop this problem by fixing ourselves, and that starts with accepting blame, not making excuses for it. That's an exploitable, fatal weakness.