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In reply to the discussion: Report: Russian troll farm included pro-Jill Stein messaging on social media [View all]Igel
(35,191 posts)The Russians were meddling when Trump was at 5% for (R) votes in the early primaries. They were meddling against HRC. Not for Trump.
We've back-dated our thinking, and that's always a bad thing to do if history is about understanding why events happened as they did and looking for causality and motives at the time. It's a fine and glorious thing if the goal of history is commentary on the present, with an eye to making sure people understand why the One True Thinking is really the only one that's true.
If the goal of Putin was to elect Trump, then you have to wonder why, exactly, early on things weren't pro-Trump. Early on they were anti-HRC. And whenever any (R) seemed to be in good shape, anti that particular (R). The goal was chaos. The goal was weakening. And to some extent, the goal was personal against HRC.
Trump support came later. It was there, but the recent report that backdates everything anti-HRC and sees things in stark binary terms, "If you're against HRC it means you were for Trump" doesn't work here any more than it would in saying that the opposition in the '90s to HRC was by Trump supporters trying to get him elected. It's closer in time, to be sure, but scarcely more connected. But now, even anti-(R) support early on, since it helped ding some conservatives, has been re-analyzed as being pro-Trump. Even if there was, actually, nothing pro-Trump at the time. That may have been the effect, but it was hardly the goal at the time. (How do we know? Because if you're pro-Trump, you should actually say something nice about him, right? It's the same kind of flaccid argument made by some about people who only criticize the US: "If you only criticize the US, then obviously you're pro-China." Arguments from silence haven't gained any more credibility in the last few years than they had in the previous 2000.)
(The recent report also had a goal: What was the actions that helped Trump. If an action didn't help Trump, it's not pertinent. That makes it strong fodder for the availability heuristic bias.)