September 22, 2017

This morning, Trump tweeted this:

Even Chris Cillizza knows that's nuts. He told CNN New Day's Alisyn Camerota, "Look, forget
Facebook.

"Every intelligence agency we have had said, yes, we think the Russians sought to influence the election to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton. Now, that's -- unless you think that every intelligence agency is somehow controlled by the media -- that's a really big story."

"Facebook say it came from a Russian troll farm. So they have to be added to the list," Camerota said.

"This is what's difficult here. There is no evidence that this Russia investigation is a hoax," Cillizza said.

"You can say it a million times. You can blame the media for it. There is no evidence there. Is there evidence that Donald Trump or Trump associates colluded with the Russians? We don't have that, he's conflating the two things. But there is no question. No one who knows anything about the story, who has followed the story in any way, shape, or form, can reasonably conclude that this whole thing is a hoax.

"Frankly, it matters because we're talking about a foreign power actively seeking to influence the election. Whether they were successful or not is important but not the central point. That they did it, that this Facebook story shows how widespread it was, how advanced and innovative in terms of using social media it was, that's the point here."

"That is, the president doesn't grasp or doesn't, I guess, believe or like the pernicious effect that Russian troll farms had on the election by creating, yes, fake, the word that he uses, accounts," Camerota said.

"Facebook now says it is bigger than we thought. The scale is bigger. And people believed it. We talked to voters all the time. They believed the fake news that they saw on Facebook. and we know it had an effect on how they voted because they told us that. And that whole element, the president rejects."

I don't know why they're so surprised. On some level, Trump knows his victory is the result of a certain percentage of voters being tricked into voting for him, and he simply can't allow himself to acknowledge that. That's why he's always reminding people "I won the electoral college."

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