A Sense of Doubt blog post #3889 - Russiagate: Not a Hoax, Not a Witch Hunt
Quick share because I am behind schedule.
REBECCA WATSON
https://youtu.be/wtCKnQEBok8
Tulsi Gabbard is Lying. Russiagate is True
Every now and then, whenever I talk about political conspiracies, a commenter will say something about “Russiagate.” I’ve never made a video about “Russiagate,” but there are some people who I think are just obsessed with the idea. And when I first noticed a lot of people mentioning it, I thought that maybe I should make a video about it. But the problem is that I had no idea what exactly people were talking about. Some people thought I “believe” in Russiagate, which is stupid. Others were alarmed that I clearly had no idea that Russiagate even happened. Most commenters, on the far-right and the far-left, seemed to agree that it was a dumb conspiracy that liberals believe in. And so, when I recently made a video listing off the conspiracy theories I’ve seen coming from the left, a lot of people were surprised I hadn’t included “Russiagate.” So okay, here’s a video about Russiagate.
As best as I can tell, “Russiagate” means different things to different people, though it all revolves around Russia’s involvement in the 2016 US Presidential election. Specifically, I have seen the word employed to mock liberals who refuse to accept that Hillary Clinton and the Democrats ran a terrible campaign in their first loss to Donald Trump, instead blaming the Russian government for somehow meddling and fixing the election in Trump’s favor. To those on the far right, this was dumb and bad because it dismissed the obvious will of the American people to elect the dumbest person to ever hold public office. To those on the far left, this was dumb and bad because it allowed Democrats to continue to believe that 2016 was just a fluke that they had no real control over, and that they could regain power without changing course or including progressives in their future agenda.
The problem, as I see it, is that everyone is wrong and also correct. You don’t have to choose one or the other: yes, Hillary Clinton ran a terrible campaign. And yes, Russia absolutely without a doubt meddled in the 2016 election and likely helped Trump to victory.
I’ll pause here to point out that to some people (on both the believer and nonbeliever sides), “Russiagate” means that the Russian government literally hacked our voting machines and changed votes from “Clinton” to “Trump.” If a person believes that, then yes, that person believes a conspiracy theory that most assuredly did not happen.
We know that it didn’t happen because we have access to loads of documents from our national intelligence services in which they worry about that happening. The US has been doing this sort of spy versus spy shit with various countries now for decades upon decades. WE would love to manipulate a few elections here and there, and have done so quite happily, so obviously other world superpowers would like to do it to us. So, the Obama administration wisely had people look into it, because they had heard reports from several states that had “recently seen scanning and probing of their election-related systems, which in most cases originated from servers operated by a Russian company.”
So, the U.S. Intelligence Community and the Department of Homeland Security beefed up cybersecurity where needed, and came to the conclusion that “it would be extremely difficult for someone, including a nation-state actor, to alter actual ballot counts or election results by cyber attack or intrusion. This assessment is based on the decentralized nature of our election system in this country and the number of protections state and local election officials have in place. States ensure that voting machines are not connected to the Internet, and there are numerous checks and balances as well as extensive oversight at multiple levels built into our election process.”
After the election, they confirmed that no such Russian vote rigging happened.
But the reason why I’m talking about all of this today is because Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence and member of a weird homophobic cult, has just publicized the document I just mentioned in an attempt to convince the general public that it proves “Russiagate” is a myth. Which, yes, it IS a myth that Russia hacked the election, but as I said, many people think “Russiagate” includes Russia doing anything at all to affect our elections. And as I said, Russia absolutely, without a doubt, interfered in the 2016 elections. And probably the ones before that and the ones after, too, but their efforts in 2016 were distinctly obvious and successful.
Gabbard is using these documents to debunk the actually false “Russiagate” narrative in the hopes that the public will therefore also reject the intelligence report from January of 2017 that conclusively establishes that “Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”
The declassified version of the highly classified document claimed that “We have high confidence in these judgments,” with “we” referring to the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA. They wrote that “When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election, the Russian influence campaign began to focus more on undermining her future presidency.” The campaign “followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations—such as cyber activity—with overt efforts by Russian Government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or “trolls.”
They note that the interference represented a “significant escalation” in Russia’s attempts to manipulate the US elections and warned that their success would lead to similar attempts in the future, in the US and around the world. If you’re wondering why Russia thought it was such a great idea to throw millions of dollars at rightwing grifters like Tim Pool and Dave Rubin ahead of the 2024 election, this document explains it very well: because it works. Funding American morons to tell their large audience of American morons to vote for Donald Trump actually does get Donald Trump elected. No mass hacking of voting machines necessary.
So yes, “Russiagate” is real, depending on how you define “Russiagate.” Vladimir Putin has made many very obvious attempts to influence US elections, and probably a whole bunch of less obvious attempts, too. And it’s very, very important to understand this and to differentiate between “Russia hacking voting machines” and “Russia engaging in a disinformation campaign” to get Trump elected, because Trump and his little lackeys are now trying to cover up that distinction in order to possibly order the arrest of his political rivals.
That’s right: in her completely insane press release on the matter, Gabbard claims that the joint report from the CIA, FBI, and NSA that found clear evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election actually came about because “President Obama and his national security cabinet members manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.” Gabbard directly calls the report “treasonous,” and an “egregious abuse of power and blatant rejection of our Constitution threatens the very foundation and integrity of our democratic republic.” Because, yes, every accusation is truly a confession.
As David Corn points out on Mother Jones, Gabbard’s announcement happened to come at the very same time that Trump is literally posting AI slop videos of Barack Obama being arrested by the FBI and put in prison, and obviously it is set to Trump’s baffling favorite song.
Will Trump actually use this idiotic ruse to send his political rivals to a work camp in El Salvador? Is this “just” a distraction from the fact that Trump refuses to release the Epstein documents? Who knows! Stay tuned to find out what happens next on “The US is Now a Fascist Hellhole, Please Someone Do Something.”
MORE INFORMATION
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/five-reasons-why-the-left-should-care-about-russiagate/
https://www.axios.com/2025/07/24/trump-russiagate-obama-epstein-files
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
- Days ago: MOM = 3754 days ago & DAD = 408 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
