I know Democrats are just learning about Russian disinformation, but the Russians and Soviets before them did this a lot. Then Democrats didn't care.
We disarmed in the 1990s (in information war) after we won the Cold War and decided to pretend the Russians were victims of Soviet communism, too (recall that when you seek to blame America for bad relations with Russia).
And as the article notes, once Trump became president, Russian disinformation that attacked Clinton turned to harming Trump while sowing discord:
After Trump took office, Russia’s army of trolls began to shift their focus within the United States, according to U.S. intelligence reports. Instead of spreading messages to bolster Trump, they returned to their long-held objective of sowing discord in U.S. society and undermining American global influence. Trump’s presidency and policies became a Russian disinformation target.
So much for the pro-Trump narrative of Russia's online campaign.
As I said early on, Russia assumed Hillary Clinton would win in 2016--they could read our polls and analysis that pointed to inevitable Clinton victory--and were trying to harm her once she won and divide America, discrediting American democracy abroad while doing it--not trying to get Trump elected despite the obvious fact that harming Clinton would by definition help Trump.
The ineffectiveness of President Obama as his administration watched this Russian campaign is clear. But heck, they didn't think it would work so kept quiet.
And complaints that Trump didn't enact the "road map" the Obama administration left to him sounds like an excuse for their own passivity and ignores how Obama "reset" relations with Russia after the late-Bush era Russian invasion of Georgia in August 2008.
It is perhaps natural that a new president thinks they can restore relations with Russia. Which is a fool's errand, really, in the Putin era. But no more proof of collusion in 2017 than in 2009.
Also note that Assange and WikiLeaks are Russian tools. The Left loved him but I was never fooled about his hostility--although it took a while before I found out his Russian ties.
Although the exposure often said nothing to harm us, which led me to wonder if he was actually our guy. Apparently Russia was just misfiring, which should be a lesson too about assumptions that Russia is evil and always competent in propaganda.
And as I've written, I sincerely doubt Russia changed votes with their minuscule and ham-fisted political campaign that was swamped by American political spending during the campaign.
We need to wage this war that Russia wages. But don't inflate it to provide a too-useful excuse for every politician's failure here to persuade voters to the rightness of their message. That kind of reaction serves Russia just as well as their disinformation campaign. I'd suggest that it would make sense for Russia to fund "the Resistance" just as they bolstered the "no nukes" and "peace" movements in the West during the Cold War, but so far it is a self-funded operation. Look for Russia to step in when it wanes, to keep it going.
