Dems accelerate election security push after Trump comments (the Russians are coming

Lawmakers had already been compiling a fresh package of bills in the aftermath of special counsel Robert Mueller's findings in the Trump-Russia probe. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats are now pushing ahead with votes because it's part of "what the American people elected us to do."

Even though the nation’s intelligence agencies said from early 2017 that it was clear Russia tried to influence the 2016 election in favor of Trump, Republicans who led both chambers did not move comprehensive legislation to address the issue. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has declined to hold a vote on a Senate election security bill that has bipartisan support.

Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md., among those leading the effort, said Trump’s attitude toward foreign interference was “breathtaking” and, he believes, the president is taking the country in the “opposite direction of where the public wants to go, which is to feel more confident, not less confident” in the vote.

“People should be concerned that we’re going to see another round of attempts to attack our democracy of the kind we saw in ’16,” Sarbanes said in an interview. He said special counsel Mueller’s report, which extensively detailed the Russian interference, flashed a “neon sign” that Russia was “coming again.”

So, the Russians influenced the election in favor of Trump by failing to give Hillary the level of assistance she needed to win?

In reality, as I am sure the author of this screed knows, that is not what the intel assessment was at all. The assessment was that the Russians were attempting to interfere in the electoral process, which is not even close to the author’s claim at all. Yes, Russian bots posted messages on forums meant to influence voters. Yes, bot (not necessarily Russian) messages on forums were 40% pro-Trump. Yes, Russian actors did approach the Trump campaign, sometimes at the behest of the Hillary campaign, to attempt to establish influence. No doubt, these attempts stemmed from their assessment that Hillary was likely to lose, and they wanted to ensure the same level of influence over the American executive branch that they held during the Obama administration. What none of these facts add up to is that Trump in any way cooperated with Russia.

This amounts to another example of how the media takes individual sound bites and weaves them into something that no one ever said, expecting that their audience is too stupid and inattentive to recognize the actual basis of the sound bites. Sadly, a significant portion of their audience is as stupid as the mainstream media judges them to be.

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