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Unfair Game: How Trump Won
Al Jazeera ^ | May 21, 2018

Posted on 05/21/2018 7:59:26 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

More than a year after the election of US President Donald Trump, there are still some questions about how this controversial figure managed to become the most powerful man in the world.

While he lost the popular vote to Democratic rival Hillary Clinton by three million votes, he took Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania by a total of 77,000 votes - three key states that carried him to victory.

The spread of fake news disrupted mainstream media and a lack of regard for the truth became more apparent than in any other US presidential campaign.

According to Politifact, an independent fact-checking website, only four percent of Trump's statements during the 2016 campaign were true. False information was constantly circulating, and eventually became self-propagating.

"Conservatives only get their news through Fox News or alternative sites like Breitbart, so that's the only news they see," explains pollster Ben Tulchin. "They only get their news via very slanted sources. And Trump picks up his information from these same news sources ... so the voters say 'I heard that on the news, and I heard that from President Trump, so he must be telling the truth'. There's a silo, and it is hard to break that silo, it's a self re-enforcing cycle of mistruths."

It became increasingly difficult to discern fact from fiction and the traditional press was brushed aside.

"Trump's disregard for making [a] true statement is something a lot of reporters have had trouble dealing with, because we are not used to it. We are not used to politicians or press people just straight-up lying," says Rosie Gray, a journalist for The Atlantic.

Facebook Analytica and the man behind Trump's success

In the shadows of Trump lies an enigmatic billionaire, Robert Mercer, a man who has poured millions of dollars into conservative causes for a decade, including Trump's campaign.

He controls Breitbart News, an ultra-conservative website turned into an alt-right propaganda machine, headed by Steve Bannon, a white nationalist and Trump's former chief strategist.

Mercer's psychometric firm, Cambridge Analytica , obtained big data from Facebook, Google, banks, credit companies, social security and more, to learn all about voters in order to try and change their political opinions and influence the election in Trump's favour.

In the days before the election, using a little-known Facebook feature, "dark posts", Trump's campaign - with the help of Cambridge Analytica - deployed highly manipulative and personalised messages, which could be seen only by the user before disappearing. In the darkness of the web, democracy was trumped by data.

"The idea is that a company or a Facebook page can put out a message for a specific population, and that this message is only visible to that group, it will not appear on their own page," explains mathematician Paul-Olivier Dehaye of PersonalData.IO.

"In an electoral context, it means that candidates can target individuals on Facebook with negative messages against the other candidate, without journalists being aware, because these messages will not appear publicly."

After Trump's election win, two former employees at Cambridge Analytica came forward to say that the firm used the unauthorised Facebook profiles it had claimed it deleted: Christopher Wylie, the former director of research at Cambridge Analytica, and Brittany Kaiser, the former business development director.

On May 2, 2018, SCL Group announced that it was filing for insolvency and closing all of its operations - including its subsidiary, Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica stated that "the siege of media coverage has driven away virtually all of the company's customers and suppliers."

It claimed that it "has been vilified for activities that are legal and widely accepted as a standard component of online advertising in both the political and commercial arenas."

However, the acceptance of this digital strategy is challenged as the manipulation of public opinion becomes clearer. As Trump's campaign strategy opened democracy to new threats, it also drew more attention to data technology's role in politics around the globe.


TOPICS: Heated Discussion
KEYWORDS: 2016; facebook; hillary; trump
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Oh, well if “Politifact” says only 4% of Trumps statements are true, then that must be so.

As we all know, they are the final arbiters of truth.


21 posted on 05/21/2018 8:34:48 AM PDT by Mr. K (No consequence of repealing Obamacare is worse than Obamacare itself.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

95% of so called Journalists are self described Democrats / Liberals / Progressives / Socialists.

Of the remaining 5%, four out of five are Liars.


22 posted on 05/21/2018 8:37:24 AM PDT by Kickass Conservative (The only good Commie is a dead Commie. Cast your Vote Accordingly.)
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To: UCANSEE2
""We are not used to politicians or press people just straight-up lying,""

Ha ha ha HAH HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ha ha ha ha ha !!!!!!!!


23 posted on 05/21/2018 8:39:08 AM PDT by Mr. K (No consequence of repealing Obamacare is worse than Obamacare itself.)
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To: Real Cynic No More

“Id sure like to see an accounting...”

Please ping me if you find one - and I will do likewise.


24 posted on 05/21/2018 8:51:10 AM PDT by jonno (Having an opinion is not the same as having the answer...)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
only four percent of Trump's statements during the 2016 campaign were true.

These kinds of statement from our political enemies bring a smile to my lips.

May they keep on keeping on.

25 posted on 05/21/2018 8:55:41 AM PDT by Balding_Eagle ( The Great Wall of Trump ---- 100% sealing of the border. Coming soon.)
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To: Balding_Eagle

I was visiting my liberal family members in Michigan before the election. No one wanted Hillary. They were Bernie supporters that went for Trump because of what the DNC did to Bernie


26 posted on 05/21/2018 9:00:52 AM PDT by cnsmom
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
…[Trump] took Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania by a total of 77,000 votes - three key states that carried him to victory.

I posted a similar story about Obama in 2014 when he ran the table of swing states in 2012.


So what happened in 2012?

Colorado went 51%-47% for Obama. Denver alone voted 209,759 to 69,755. In a city the size of Denver (pop. 634,265), Romney could only manage less than 70,000 votes?

9 Electoral votes for Obama from a difference of 137,948 votes.

Florida went 50%-49% for Obama. A squeaker. The vote difference was 74,309. Think about all the polling irregularities we heard from Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties, with Republican poll-watchers being kicked out for two hours until the police forced Democrats to let them back in. The vote difference in those three counties alone was 574,033.

29 Electoral votes for Obama from a 74,309 vote difference.

Iowa went 52%-46% for Obama from a 91,927 vote difference. Johnson county had a difference of 26,534 votes, and Linn county had a difference of 20,601 votes. That's half of the state differential right there.

6 Electoral votes for Obama from a 91,927 vote difference.

Virginia went 51%-48% for Obama from a difference of 149,298 votes. Fairfax county had a difference of 87,049 votes. Prince William county had a difference of 28,790 votes. Newport News had a difference of 23,766 votes. Hampton county had a difference of 32,540 votes. These are the heavy blue counties, and they overwhelm the rest of the state.

13 Electoral votes for Obama from 149,298 votes.

Add Ohio's 18 electoral votes from a 166,214 vote difference that came from Cuyahoga county, and it's clear that the election was decided by 1,193,729 suspicious votes from targeted counties in targeted states.


-PJ

27 posted on 05/21/2018 9:08:01 AM PDT by Political Junkie Too (The 1st Amendment gives the People the right to a free press, not CNN the right to the 1st question.)
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To: jazminerose

The author of this doesn’t realize that the reality is to just switch “conservatives” to “liberals”. Then it’d be right on.

It starts with huge assumptions, like a “fact checking site” not be political and that “conservatives” only get new through Fox or Breitbart. It’s just echo chamber nonsense. Starting with bad assumptions means the rest of it is meaningless.


28 posted on 05/21/2018 9:15:31 AM PDT by fuzzylogic (welfare state = sharing consequences of poor moral choices among everybody)
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To: Slingwing

Not tired yet. Trump and the Crimson Tide are making my life very happy right now.


29 posted on 05/21/2018 9:18:54 AM PDT by chesley (What is life but a long dialog with imbeciles? - Pierre Ryckmans)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet; Jim Robinson

Being dragged out from the shadow into the sunlight is destroying a lot of liberal so called think tanks, which meddle in elections in America and around the world.

Go to this link to read about, this former left wing organization that was dragged into the sunlight of truth by what we read and post on Free Republic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCL_Group

This is another example of why we should donate to Free Republic to keep its sunlight of truth going for us.


30 posted on 05/21/2018 9:29:03 AM PDT by Grampa Dave (Democrats aWare having trouble with their MAMA campaign, (Make America Mexico Again), versus MAGA!)
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Comment #31 Removed by Moderator

To: 2ndDivisionVet
According to Politifact, an independent fact-checking website, only four percent of Trump's statements during the 2016 campaign were true.

Funny how a poll about lying is a lie...

32 posted on 05/21/2018 9:35:31 AM PDT by Magnatron
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To: Post5203

What we do here is post articles from different sources (left, center, libertarian, right, radical, etc.) and then we discuss them. If you limit what we can post, issues will slip by us and catch us by surprise.


33 posted on 05/21/2018 9:37:36 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet (You cannot invade the mainland US. There'd be a rifle behind every blade of grass.)
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To: Mr. K
From The Money Pit ?
34 posted on 05/21/2018 9:42:22 AM PDT by Steely Tom ([Seth Rich] == [the Democrat's John Dean])
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Remember how many lefties have told us that Al Jazeera is where you get real news.


35 posted on 05/21/2018 10:41:17 AM PDT by TBP (Progressives lack compassion and tolerance. Their self-aggrandizement is all that matters.)
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To: cardinal4

It was hilarious to me that they were calling Fox News and breitbart biased. Uhhhh helloooooo? WTF do you think CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, the NY Times, the Washington Post, etc are? Most Democrat voters are only getting extremely biased news and that has been the case for DECADES. The Left is just mad that because of Fox and the rise of the internet, they no longer have a total monopoly on news reporting.


36 posted on 05/21/2018 11:51:16 AM PDT by FLT-bird (..)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Actually, Al Jazeera is the Muslim news media. How happy do you think the Muslims are with Trump right now?

Trump has accomplished: Moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. He has improved ties to Israel. He has wiped out ISIS. He ‘might’ have had a part in the ‘regime’ change in Saudi Arabia. He has helped Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi cooperate with Israel, and all protect themselves from Iran. He just kicked out the Iran junk deal from Obama.

Does anybody think the propaganda arm for radical islam, Al Jazeera, would be happy with Donald Trump?


37 posted on 05/22/2018 6:46:46 AM PDT by Pete Dovgan
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