Evidence the Russians Won the 2016 Election for Trump

Over time as evidence dribbled out before and after the 2016 election, it seemed increasingly likely that Russian interference was a necessary factor in the president’s election by the electoral college. To be clear, the hypothesis is that Russian dark free speech (propaganda) efforts were necessary, but alone, they were not sufficient. There were multiple other factors, including Clinton herself and her arguably bad campaign, and Comey shafting Clinton twice just before the election by announcing investigations while not announcing the ongoing FBI investigation of the president’s campaign contacts with the Russians.

Also, the evidence cannot conclusively prove that Russian interference tipped the electoral college to the president. That is because the social and personal effects of dark free speech are impossible to quantify in a situation like this, and maybe in all situations. The unconscious human mind can be manipulated with no conscious awareness it happened. That isn't mostly a matter of stupidity or gullibility. It is mostly a matter of evolutionary biology. The human mind is susceptible to dark free speech and there are a some good reasons for that based on what we are from human evolution.[1]

Yeah, whatev, where’s the beef?

It isn’t just one piece of evidence, but a series of things that collectively lead to the conclusion that Russian interference probably gave the president the electoral college. Here’s the beef.

First, Trump is a chronic liar. There is thus no rational reason whatever to give any of his defenses any credibility whatsoever. All of his denials, and all the denials of his family members and felon friends and associates, are set aside as self-serving lies.

Second, there were coincidences compatible with Russian efforts to help the president. For example, the same day the ‘Hollywood Access’ tape where Trump discussed sexually assaulting women came out, Wikileaks dumped a bunch of emails the Russians stole to deflect public attention away from the president’s sex predator history. That was not a coincidence.

Third, Russian mobsters and kleptocrats had bailed the president’s failing businesses out over the years. The president was in debt to Russian crooks and goons. US banks would not loan money to the president because he was a business failure on his own. And, to this day, the president fights tooth, fang and claw to hide as much of his business dealings from congress, investigators and the American people. If there’s nothing to hide, why fight so hard to hide nothing? Why not turn over his tax returns?

Fourth, Mueller indicted 12 Russian agents for interfering with the 2016 election: “The 29-page indictment is the most detailed accusation by the American government to date of the Russian government’s interference in the 2016 election, and it includes a litany of brazen Russian subterfuge operations meant to foment chaos in the months before Election Day.” At least one source saw the evidence that Mueller laid out as strongly suggestive of actual Russian influence on votes: “And this information makes it increasingly difficult to say that the Kremlin's effort to impact the American mind did not succeed. .... We are no longer talking about approximately $100,000 (paid in rubles, no less) of advertising grudgingly disclosed by Facebook, but tens of millions of dollars spent over several years to build a broad, sophisticated system that can influence American opinion.”

Fifth, three states, MI, WI and PA voted for the president by a total of about 70,000 - 90,000 votes between the three of them. Available data shows that (i) Russia targeted MI and WI with ads designed to discourage potential Clinton voters, including blacks, and (ii) black voter turnout dropped compared to the previous election. Paul Manafort shared 2016 polling data with a Russian associate, according to court filing in January of 2019. One source commented: “A number of Russian-linked Facebook ads specifically targeted Michigan and Wisconsin, two states crucial to Donald Trump’s victory last November, according to four sources with direct knowledge of the situation. Some of the Russian ads appeared highly sophisticated in their targeting of key demographic groups in areas of the states that turned out to be pivotal, two of the sources said. The ads employed a series of divisive messages aimed at breaking through the clutter of campaign ads online, including promoting anti-Muslim messages, sources said.”

Sixth, some wonk believes that the effects of Russian interference can be assessed with reasonable accuracy, but Facebook and Twitter won't release the data: “But Sinan Aral, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says that’s misguided. ‘When I read in the newspaper that it’s impossible to know that the Russians changed the results of the election, I vehemently disagree. It is possible to know, with a certain degree of statistical confidence, the likelihood that Russian interference changed the results.’” The matter may not be completely unknowable.

Seventh, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had access to all available US intelligence agency data and he came to this conclusion: “To me, it just exceeds logic and credulity that they didn’t affect the election, and it’s my belief they actually turned it.”

Eighth, Russian Facebook ads were emotion-provoking and reason-destroying, for example:

“Many of the ads, placed by Russians posing as Americans, didn't endorse a specific candidate but spread inflammatory messages on sensitive subjects such as immigration and race to amplify fault lines in American life, targeting users from specific backgrounds and tight races in key states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Virginia.”

Ninth, the Russian effort was multi-pronged: “Facebook says the Internet Research Agency may have reached as many as 126 million people. Separately, Twitter announced that about 1.4 million people may have been in contact with IRA-controlled accounts. The social media aspect of the interference was just one dimension. Cyberattackers also went after political victims in the United States — whose emails and other data were released publicly to embarrass them — and state elections officials and other targets. And there may have been other avenues of interference as well.”

Tenth, even the hyper-partisan GOP-controlled US Senate concluded the Russian interfered with the 2016 election. The evidence of interference had to be bigly overwhelming for republicans to actually admit that. ‘The Russian effort was extensive and sophisticated, and its goals were to undermine public faith in the democratic process, to hurt Secretary Clinton (Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton) and to help Donald Trump,’ Warner (D-VA) said.”

“WASHINGTON — The Senate Intelligence Committee concluded Thursday that election systems in all 50 states were targeted by Russia in 2016, an effort more far-reaching than previously acknowledged and one largely undetected by the states and federal officials at the time. But while the bipartisan report’s warning that the United States remains vulnerable in the next election is clear, its findings were so heavily redacted at the insistence of American intelligence agencies that even some key recommendations for 2020 were blacked out.”

Conclusion

If the kind of evidence that one needs to believe that the Russians threw the electoral college to the president requires something like this from Putin, “Oh, yeah, us Russkies done it. You caught us. We be bad.”, then the president wasn't helped by Russian interference.

But, if one pieces all the evidence together, one can reasonably believe that the Russian threw the electoral college to the president, making him America’s first truly illegitimate president. In my opinion, the chance that the Russian threw the 2016 electoral college to the president is about 95%. Obviously, conclusive proof will never be available. One has to look at the overall evidence and then decide.


Footnote:
1. One reason is that humans need to default into trust to cooperate. Without it, modern civilization would not exist. Another is that the human mind needed only a severely limited data processing bandwidth capacity to survive and eventually build modern civilization. After all, we only needed to out think non-human animals, not be Einsteins as the bare minimum A third is that, because of our severely limited data processing bandwidth, we have no choice in dealing with politics but to use imperfect, usually reality-distorting, shortcuts to try to make sense of a political world that’s far too complicated for conscious comprehension. The problem is greatly exacerbated when demagogues, tyrants and kleptocrats rely on dark free speech to deceive, distract, divide, discourage and stupify (irrationalize) the people.

For millennia, intuitive leaders have recognized the strengths, weaknesses, mode of operation and limits of the human mind. Modern science has come to just begin to explain that stuff with empirical data only in the last 70 years or so, mostly in the last ~30 years. Plato and Aristotle debated the demagogue vs human mind issue in their time (~390 BC). Historical intuitive leaders, e.g., Hitler, Stalin, etc., knew how to exploit the human mind. Apparently most did so with a vengeance. Unless I misunderstand history, most (~97% ?) left a legacy of blood 'n guts 'n misery in their wake.