This is my first post on Huffington Post and my one and only political post of 2016. Please read it and actually think about this, because this is serious. I’m a marketing technologist, who works with data, analytics, and many marketing tools that help me research for my clients. I love researching topics and going down rabbit holes to solve clients problems.
With this political season being the most contentious in recent memory, I decided to dive in and read through and research this whole political soap opera, thoroughly. Hopefully, this helps you make some sense out of it all.
Let’s examine “The Russians "hacked" the election” for Trump narrative, shall we?
First off, I did not vote for Donald Trump.
I’m from Missouri, and I’ve voted Democrat most of my life. Jackson County, in Missouri was a blue county for Hillary during this election. I voted for Bill Clinton twice and I voted for Obama. I disliked George W. Bush and Cheney and voted for Kerry and Gore. Keep in mind, I don’t dislike Hillary. But, I’ve taken off my rose-colored liberal glasses and have uncovered some glaring inconsistencies and what appears to be a massive media bias.
Let’s look this scenario objectively.
I’ve read the Wikileaks, the Podesta emails, and the DNC emails. I’ve purposefully researched and spent time outside of my Facebook filter bubble. I’ve spent lots of time on the Reddit sub-reddit, /r/The_Donald, to gain their perspective and I’ve looked at things as objectively as I can.
Let’s begin.
1. The media can legally lie to us.
I’ve done my best to only include mainstream media outlets sources... even though most of them are left-leaning and full of news with an agenda.
Why do I say that?
Well, you may not know this, but Congress repealed the ban on domestic US propaganda with the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012. It was built into the National Defense Authorization Act, and went into effect in July 2013. So keep that in mind, when thinking about the narratives the media keeps telling us.
And that’s why I’ve been very suspect of this fake news narrative. If they can legally lie to us... and then censor “fake news” that differs in opinion to their news, that seems suspect and a bit nefarious, at first glance.
Here's what I think is up. Or just watch this video from Ben Swann. “5 Problems with CIA Claim That Russia Hacked DNC/Podesta emails.” I think it summarizes the evidence or lack thereof pertaining to the Russian hack/leaks as good as I could.
2. Remember when Trump said the DNC was rigging the elections for Hillary?
Here’s CNN’s take on Trump’s claims. “No, the presidential election can't be hacked.” Obama and Clinton laughed at Trump and said empathetically that wasn't possible. And when Clinton won, Trump should not fight the results, calling it horrifying.
On October 24th, Hillary sent this tweet, “Donald Trump refused to say that he’d respect the results of this election. That’s a direct threat to our democracy.”
Obama later went on to say, that 'That doesn't make any sense': Obama responds to Trump's claim that the November election will be 'rigged'.
So, to be clear BEFORE the election, it was preposterous to think that an election could be rigged. That was the narrative. Fair enough?
3. Now the Media is Claiming the Russians Hacked the Elections
The media is claiming the Russians hacked the US elections, not by actually hacking US voting machines, but by leaking DNC emails and John Podesta's emails, Hillary's campaign manager, that shows that the DNC rigged the primaries for Hillary against Bernie. They hacked the VOTERS with evidence that showed Bernie got railroaded.
That's when Debbie Wasserman resigned from the DNC, if you remember.
4. The DNC emails show they robbed Bernie in the Democratic Primaries
The DNC robbed Bernie, but everyone is up in arms that the Russians leaked information that influenced the US election?
BTW, the DNC and Podesta have never stated these emails are fake or fraudulent. In fact, DKIM proved that all of those leaked emails were real, and weren’t manipulated. Domain Keys Identified Mail, or DKIM, is a highly regarded email security system that can be used to independently authenticate the contents and sender of an email that uses it.
My conclusion to this, is this “Russian hacked the election” narrative is a distraction to keep us from talking about the contents of those emails.
Keep reading.
The left is pissed that Trump won. Reading through the leaked DNC emails on Wikileaks, you'd know that the reason Trump is president, is mostly because the DNC propped him up and had their media cronies legitimize his campaign. Why? Because they knew they could beat him.
The DNC propped up three "pied-piper" candidates total through their paid media contacts.
Ben Carson. Ted Cruz, and Trump.
Here’s the PDF attachment, which lays out the whole plan to prop up Carson, Cruz, and Trump, which making the other candidates seems as unelectable as possible through their media directions. Read it. It’s eye-opening.
5. Who REALLY interfered with the Election?
According to the New York Times, the The Clinton Foundation received more than $10m dollars from Saudi Arabia, a place that isn't very kind to women's rights.
Did Saudi Arabia interfere with the election?
The media was working with the DNC to move forward the Clinton agenda. Evidence shows Podesta routinely invited 60+ different mainstream reporters to various private, off the record, dinners.
Did the media interfere with the elections?
Obama told the British people that if they vote Brexit, that they will go to the back of the queue on trade deals.
Did Obama interfere with the British referendum?
George Soros funded organization have been shown to pay for the protests at Trump rallies, the DNC emails and Project Veritas show that they have placed all kinds of people at these protests to stir up trouble during the campaign and Project Veritas proved that the DNC set up provocateurs at Trump rallies. Multiple people got fired that were working with the DNC after that revelation.
Did Soros interfere with our elections?
6. The CIA is notorious for misinformation.
Former CIA director, William Casey, famously said, "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false."
Originally, the Washington Post stated an anonymous CIA official said that the CIA believed that Russia did that hack. Which, was actually a leak. And then the media ran with it.
Now, the Washington Post is saying that the CIA and the FBI are on the same page with these allegations.
A fact to consider, the CIA refused to attend the Congressional briefing this week. Why? Hard to say.
Another fun fact, is that the CIA has been disrupting elections of other countries since it’s inception. Here’s a Washington Post article that outlines so many of these examples that it’s ridiculous.
7. Wikileaks has stated the leaks were from someone INSIDE the DNC.
Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, has stated numerous times that some leaks may have come from Russia, but the Wikileaks leaks were NOT from Russian or another state power. They came from an insider inside the DNC working closely with the Clinton campaign.
Many people on the right, assume that it was Seth Rich, the DNC staffer who got murdered in DC. They called it a robbery, but his wallet and phone on him.
One thing that fueled this rumor, was that Assange and Wikileaks put out a $20,000 reward out for information surrounding Rich’s death.
8. Podesta was phished AND he lost his phone in a taxi.
The Podesta emails were hacked because he was phished and put his Gmail credentials in on a phished site. This is not a top level type of hack.
The email, with the subject line “*Someone has your password,*” greeted Podesta, “Hi John” and then said, “Someone just used your password to try to sign into your Google Account john.podesta@gmail.com.” Then it offered a time stamp and an IP address in “Location: Ukraine.”
“Google stopped this sign-in attempt. You should change your password immediately.” And it then offered a link to change his password.
“This is a legitimate email,” Charles Delevan at the HFA help desk wrote to Podesta’s chief of staff, Sara Latham. “John needs to change his password immediately, and ensure that two-factor authentication is turned on his account.”
9. Podesta lost his phone in a taxi.
Podesta, Hillary’s campaign manager left his phone in a taxi in July of 2015. So, quite likely, It's not the Russians, but gross mismanagement of their personal data and devices.
10. Celebrities are trying to sway the Electoral College voters.
Now we have celebrities creating personalized videos for each elector begging them to "be a hero" and not vote for the democratically elected candidate. This is very dangerous.
Celebrities behind anti-Trump Electoral College push now delivering PERSONALIZED videos to GOP electors:
I’ve even seen top social media influencers share the emails of every single republican state electors on Facebook.
11. Serious Electoral voter intimidation
Some electors say they are getting thousands of emails a day from democrats begging them to change their votes and in some cases, they are receiving death threats.
If you want a civil war, convince these electoral voters to put Hillary in there, because that's how you'll get a civil war. And the left is against guns... and the right hordes guns. You're wanting to circumvent the democratically elected president-elect and do irreparable damage to the Constitution because your candidate didn't win? That's the saltiest shit I've ever seen.
12. Oh. but ... "Hillary won the popular vote."
This is true. Hillary DID win the popular vote. Ok. Some Republicans have replied with, “ok, let's take off California... and that is no longer the case.”
Which is a good example of why the electoral college is so important. All you need is one state to be corrupt, and overstuff the ballots to help one candidate get the popular vote, if that were the way elections worked.
But, we are a country of 50 states. People in metropolitan areas aren't the only important ones whose opinions matter. I come from a rural town originally, Butler, Missouri. I now live in Kansas City. I see the benefits and the needs of rural and urban America. I travel the world speaking at events. Everyone’s opinions should be heard and accounted for.
The fact checking site Politifact says that Clinton won 489 counties, while Trump won 2,623 counties.
13. You can’t change the rules AFTER the game.
The Rules of the Game are set in advance. Each state gets an allotted amount of electoral votes. If the popular vote was the rules of the game, then both candidates would have worked strategies accordingly.
You can’t play a game of baseball and lose the game 3-2, but say... “hey, we had 11 hits and they only had 9 hits, so we are technically the winner.” That’s not how the game was set up. To try to change the game afterwards is salty, bad sportsmanship.
14. Hillary didn’t campaign often in some of the key states that she lost.
Did the Russians hack Hillary’s strategy to NOT go campaign in Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin? It was bad data or pure arrogance that made her decide to not actively campaign in those states. And near the end of the campaign, while Trump was doing 3-5 large events in multiple states each day, Hillary would cancel events because of rain.
15. The Electoral College has voted, what happens now?
The left has spent so much time attacking Trump and Trump supporters, that we have to wonder when it will end. It is easy to see how the “Not My President” movement could continue to grow and reach a crescendo on January 20th, 2017.
I’ve seen mentions of many plans to protest the inauguration, including this facebook event, “Protest at the Inauguration: Stand Against Trump, War, Racism and Inequality", which currently has over 10,000 people saying they are committed to protesting the inauguration.
When Bush was elected, I was not happy, but it didn’t make sense to me to hate on Bush supporters and call them names. And to cry that Gore was robbed. I understand how the electoral college works, and why it’s not wise to allow large population centers to control the outcome of the vote. Every citizen’s vote is important, and now, we all understand that more than ever.
Over 90 million Americans refused to vote in the 2016 Presidential election. That’s probably Russia’s fault, too!
16. SOLUTIONS? Voter ID and Blockchain
Voter ID
When you mention Voter ID, some people go up in arms about how racist they think you are for even suggesting such a thing. Well, we have to use an ID to get an airplane. We need to use an ID when we cash a check or deposit a check. We need an ID to pick up packages at UPS, FedEx, or the Post Office. If you get pulled over without an ID, you can get arrested. Why is it such a big deal to have an ID for voting?
Ami Horowitz has a great video where he shows how white liberals really view black voters. And then he interviews African-Americans in East Harlem their thoughts on if they have ID. It’s eye-opening and the folks in East Harlem thought it was racist by the white liberals and quite “ignorant.”
Blockchain
OK, this may seem a bit geeky, but bear with me. Blockchain is the technology that powers bitcoin. A blockchain distributed ledger contains records held in 'blocks'. When a transaction or a vote gets logged, it's either validated or rejected by different nodes (members in the network). After receiving verification, a cryptographically protected block gets added to the chain in a linear, chronological order.
With everyone having a phone, we could eventually move to a system of voting that would be impossible to hack. There is a company called FollowMyVote that aims to do just that someday.
Final Thoughts
Many on the left will continue to spew venom at Trump and his supporters. Maybe this is a result of the participation trophies generation, and the left not knowing how to deal with losing?
America has spoken, they overwhelmingly voted for Trump outside of California, and we should have a peaceful transition of power.
Period.
If you either agree or disagree with this post, feel free to share it or leave a comment below. Or not.
But regardless, love one another. This hate and anger that you are feeling, yet accusing the others of are eating you up. And that’s not healthy.
In the wise words of Rodney King, “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?”
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