“On November 9, 2016, a sleepless night was ahead of us. And when around 8 a.m. the most important result of our work arrived, we uncorked a tiny bottle of champagne … took one gulp each and looked into each other’s eyes …. We uttered almost in unison: ‘We made America great’.”
An intercepted message from an employee of the Internet Research Agency (IRA) – the Russian agency working with the Kremlin to interfere with and influence the 2016 Election
Sometimes it is amazing to me what is on the front page of our newspapers and what is found on the “inside”. Last night after plowing through the headline stories I came across a story about the “Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence in the US Senate on Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 Election – Volume 2”. This story was on page 3 although I actually read an on-line version of the newspaper. The story really got my attention. It got my attention because I gave it credibility. With the amount of propaganda and disinformation flying around these days I hardly give ANYTHING credibility anymore. As the saying goes, I believe 1% of what I hear, 5% of what I read and only 50% of what I see!! Why do I find this article credible? Because it is BI-PARTISAN. Yes, it’s true that the Committee chair is a Republican and yes, the Republicans control the Senate. But the findings and recommendations of this report are being validated by Republican AND Democratic senators. I took the time to download the report. It’s eighty-three pages long and is heavily redacted in some parts but if you are interested visit https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Report_Volume2.pdf .
The first finding of the Committee is that the IRA and the Kremlin categorically DID seek to influence the election by harming Hillary Clinton’s chances of success and supporting Donald Trump. This assertion is denied by some. Now, before my Trump supporting friends go ballistic let me add that I did NOT find anything in this report that said that President Trump was involved with the IRA although at their request his campaign committee did provide some information about his candidacy. Clinton would probably have done the same. The Kremlin apparently felt that Mr. Trump would be easy to work with and worked towards getting him into office. I should add that in furtherance of that they also worked against his Republican primary election opponents, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush.
But the goals of the IRA and the Kremlin are much more comprehensive than just one election. The Report says that the real goal of the effort is to undermine public faith in our election processes and to sow discord among the American people – to disrupt our society. So they focused (and focus) on divisive issues such as race, immigration and Second Amendment rights, attempting to pit Americans against one another and against their government, or to quote the Report – “…to stoke anger, provoke outrage and protest, push Americans further away from one another, and foment distrust in government institutions.”
Once the IRA obtained their desired result in the 2016 election, they didn’t waste a lot of time celebrating (as noted above it was just a TINY bottle of champagne). The IRA INCREASED their activities after the election by huge amounts. The Report says they “… stepped on the gas.” But it might surprise you how they ramped up their efforts. They began to promote anti-Trump messages – like #Impeach45 and #GunReformNow, while at the same time promoting anti-FBI messages via #ReleaseTheMemo. One of the IRA Facebook sites that has since been taken down REALLY got me. It was called the “Army of Jesus” Facebook page. In the months leading up to the election it contained wholesome Christian messages. And then right before the election it delivered what they call the “payload”. In this case the payload was an article that stated as a fact that Hillary Clinton approved the removal of the word “God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, with no chance for rebuttal.
So, are the Russians winning? I think they certainly have been winning the battles lately – our country is arguably more divided than ever before. I write this while protests and counter-protests are raging in Minneapolis. What should we do?
• Unfortunately, I think we must be very careful about what we hear and what we read. We must consider the source and not make automatically assume something is true or false.
• We need to advocate for the recommendations of the Senate Committee.
• We need to maintain our cool and keep our discussions civil, wherever they occur – whether that be in the op-ed section of the newspaper, in Congress, on the Sunday morning talk shows, on MSNBC, on FOX, in the state legislature, the barber shop or over Thanksgiving dinner with our family – and I might add in the pages of this blog.
And we need to become a little more tolerant of each other. The more divided and polarized we become, the more at risk our society becomes.
Thanks, Craig. It shouldn’t matter whether someone’s candidate or position benefits by external interference. That interference is meant to harm all of us by harming the common purposes of our country.