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Only blithering idiots believe this narrative.
To begin with, the public has still seen not one single shred of evidence that Russians interfered in the 2016 election in any meaningful way, and, in a post-Iraq invasion world, only idiots believe on faith the unsubstantiated claims made by government agencies about rival governments. We've seen the Mueller report cited as "evidence" of this interference, but the Mueller report contains nothing but assertions, and assertions are not evidence. People have tried to argue with me that Mueller would never make assertions about Russian interference without having seen copious amounts of hard, verifiable evidence, but that is exactly what Mueller did with WMDs as FBI Director in February 2003. Daniel Lazare for Consortium News documents that there are in fact some major plot holes in Mueller's timeline, making it entirely possible that a bogus narrative is being advanced.
So there's no reason to accept on faith that Russian election interference happened in 2016, let alone that there's any risk of it happening in 2020. But even if you do accept the establishment Russia narrative regarding 2016, you can be certain that Moscow won't be interfering in 2020 for Trump's benefit.
New on MoA:
Putin Asks And Trump Delivers --
A List Of All The Good Things Trump Did For Russia https://t.co/6p6NldXfmEpic.twitter.com/uUP0xS8GEXMoon of Alabama (@MoonofA) January 15, 2019
You can be absolutely certain that Russia won't be interfering to re-elect Trump because Trump has proven to be the most hawkish president against Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, by a very wide margin. For all his rhetoric about "getting along with Russia," Trump has greatly escalated tensions with the nuclear superpower by staging a coup in Venezuela, implementing a Nuclear Posture Review with a much more aggressive stance against Russia, withdrawing from the INF treaty, bombing and illegally occupying Syria, arming Ukraine, and many, many other hawkish actions taken against the interests of the Russian Federation which his predecessor Obama never dared to take.
Even if Putin were the brilliant omnipotent mastermind with tentacles in every international affair as he is consistently depicted in western mainstream media, it would make no sense whatsoever for him to help re-elect an administration that has been undermining and threatening Russia at every opportunity. That will not happen.
But of course, this obvious fact will not stop the Russia conspiracy theories, because Russia conspiracy theories have nothing to do with facts. We can expect to see fact-free allegations that Russia is planning to help Trump win in 2020 getting louder and louder as the election grows nearer. We can expect to see these fact-free allegations bolstered and amplified by western government agencies who need to manufacture support for further escalations against Russia, and by the mass media who need ratings.
Or in other words, this conspiracy theory is never going away and we're all doomed. Enjoy! https://t.co/3z5NSk0LaS
Michael Tracey (@mtracey) May 3, 2019
It's so interesting how each mainstream side of this is doing exactly the opposite of what they claim to be doing: Trump claims to want to work with Russia, but in term of action his administration is attacking Russia's interests in many hugely significant ways to an extent that is unprecedented in a post-USSR world. Democrats claim to be opposing Trump's pernicious inclinations, but in practice they fully support all his most pernicious agendas, including the potentially world-ending escalations between two nuclear powers, and including the Venezuela regime change operation which is getting more aggressive by the day. Even the supposedly progressive wing of the Democratic Party has been mostly flowing along with this, with Alexandria Occasio-Cortez reportedly saying "I defer to caucus leadership on how we navigate this" when questioned on Trump's Venezuela coup attempt.
The gap between reality and the dominant narratives about reality is getting wider and wider. Something's going to have to give.
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