- This story just appeared in The NY Times.
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump acknowledged the possibility on Friday that Russia had hacked a variety of American targets, including the Democratic National Committee, after an almost two-hour meeting with the nation’s top intelligence officials.
Mr. Trump asserted that the hacking had no effect on the outcome of the election.
In a statement issued after the president-elect was briefed by senior American intelligence and law enforcement officials, Mr. Trump said: “While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines.”
For months, Mr. Trump had publicly resisted any suggestion that Russia was involved in cyberattacks during the 2016 presidential election and had mocked the intelligence agencies behind assessments on Russian hacking. After Friday’s briefing, he said he had “tremendous respect” for the people who work for American spy agencies.
But just hours before, the president-elect had attributed claims of Russian hacking to embarrassed election-year rivals, calling the storm surrounding the cyberattacks a political witch hunt being carried out by his adversaries, who he said were embarrassed by their loss to him in the election last year.”
He is #PutinsPresident.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Mr. Trump asserted that the hacking had no effect on the outcome of the election.”
Indeed, despite the hacking, Clinton won by 3 million votes.
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2
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2.9. Which is essentially 3 million.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/21/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-popular-vote-final-count/
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Russian hacking is one part of a multi-faceted approach to reach Facebook users during the election that included generating many fake news stories and aggressive trolling. It should all be investigated.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/07/how-samantha-bee-s-full-frontal-tracked-down-russia-s-pro-trump-trolls.html
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There will be no investigating once Trump takes office.
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Yes, you are correct. There is no hope of that. Obama needed to pursue this investigation earlier but delayed it for reasons I don’t understand.
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Obama said he chastised Putin.
Wimp.
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If Obama had intervened, he would have been accused of exactly what the Russians are being accused of, and Trump was masterful at manipulating the narrative. I’m not sure that Obama wasn’t damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.
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Wow, so says the narcissist public school disdaining ignoramus who disdains computers, reading and intelligence briefings. Gee, aintcha glad we have such a leader in the Offal Orifice?
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July 27, 2016. Did Mr. Trump not encourage Russian hacking? http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/politics/donald-trump-russia-clinton-emails.html?_r=0
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I think it would be more reasonable to conclude that releasing hacked DNC emails had some minor effect on the election. There were undoubtedly some Bernie supporters who were so angered by the email content showing DNC swayed things toward Hillary in the primary campaign that they sat out the election or voted 3rd party. I don’t personally know anyone like that. My own 20-something sons (Bernie supporters) hot-footed it to the polls to vote against Trump.
Far more important (IMHO) is that a foreign entity obtained private internal docts from a US political party via illegal hacking, then assured their release by conveying them to wikileaks. For that act alone, retaliation via diplomatic sanctions is justified.
The additional info that they hacked both major parties but released only docts from Dem party seems to show an intent to sway votes toward Reps, tho we can’t know, having not seen the Rep internal docts. However the simple fact of hacking & releasing any internal political party emails during election season is sufficient to justify a major diplomatic wrist-slap– plus a thorough congressional investigation, which hopefully will continue beyond the questioning of Clapper that just occurred.
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The young Bernie supporters were not the ones who stayed home. There were perhaps many “White working class voters” who rightfully concluded she did not have their back. Had they had similar information on the other party and Trump, the Guillotines would need greasing.
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Sending home 35 Russia diplomats is a pathetically weak response
There may be thousands of diplomats here from Russia
They are laughing at us and drinking champagne to toast #Putinspuppet
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It’s all for show. Both parties are part of the new world order plan. (repeating from your earlier post) http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2016/12/a-terrifying-look-at-future.html Masses and the elites.
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Two things and every body knows that I have never been a Hillary troll.
Thing one :
You would have to be born with out a brain stem to believe that in a race separated by 80,000 votes across three moderate sized states., (Kathleen Rice on Long Island won a congressional; race by almost that amount). That the constant drip of negative news did not cause enough voters to stay home or vote for the delusional jackass to cost the election.
I shook my head every day with every revelation and dragged my self to vote for her.. As did many who comment here. Because I fear for everyone including my self. Us New Deal liberals are pathetic.
I can just picture the reaction of the non political who only saw the headlines. .
Thing two :
She should have blown him away. Which is not the same as thing as thing one .
Sorry Diane she and Obama brought this turd on the American people.
I hope they enjoy the inauguration,as they normalize him.
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The Bernie supporters who allowed the low-interest voters in the midwest to believe that Hillary was a corrupt candidate brought Trump to us. This kind of nastiness was done to Obama, too. Remember his “they love their guns” remark. But the press didn’t have the disaffected Hillary voters so delighted to keep promoting all the nasty right wing attacks on Obama and playing right into their hands.
Bernie Sanders himself worked very hard. Since Hillary was nominated, he NEVCER said she was flawed, corrupt, a tool of Wall Street. Only his supporters repeated the ugliness as they said they’d still hold their nose and vote for the corrupt lady. No wonder she didn’t blow away Trump with that kind of faux “support” that twists the knife.
FYI, Joel, if you think that Obama would have lost against Trump because of his pro-Wall Street, pro-Free trade stances then you are deceiving yourself. He had high approval ratings. Hillary lost because enough of the low-interest voters just “knew” from all the false news and the nasty things about how corrupt she was that they heard from Bernie bots that she didn’t deserve their vote.
Those angry Bernie voters couldn’t use him as a model. They don’t even realize what hypocrites they are as they idolize him while essentially calling Bernie a corrupt liar for supporting Hillary UNCONDITIONALLY. Without constantly saying he was supporting this flawed and corrupt lady because well, she’s not Trump. If the majority of his followers would have followed his lead we would not be looking at 4 years of Trump. That’s on every person who bashed her and bashed her so that so many voters knew she was not like Obama, she was WORSE than Obama. More corrupt, more money hungry, more tool of Wall Street. Except she wasn’t. Too bad the most progressive platform in decades didn’t win so that the Bernie voters could get their Trump and say “it’s not my fault that I knew Bernie was lying when he said Hillary wasn’t the corrupt tool I knew she was.”
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