Why is the White House not angry that a hostile nation used social media propaganda to influence our elections? Inquiring minds on Morning Joe want to know!
"Facebook now says an estimated 126 million people received Russian-backed content on the website during the 2016 election," Mika Brzezinski said. "That's roughly one-third of the nation's population."
She said the revelation was made in prepared testimony by Facebook's general counsel.
"Facebook says some 29 million Americans directly received material from 80,000 posts by 120 fake Russian-backed pages. Alarming new data from Twitter was revealed as well. Two sources told NBC News the company has found almost 37,000 automated accounts linked to Russia that generated election-related material that resulted in nearly 1.5 million tweets that could have appeared in the timelines of some 288 million users," she said.
"So you got possibly 288 million, almost 300 million impressions on Twitter from Russian accounts," Joe Scarborough said.
"And you have Facebook posts seen by 126 million Americans, all to influence a campaign that was won by the barest of margins. The number that fit in a football stadium were the size of the victory, .06% of 126 million. You add 288 million, and maybe that's .01 or .02%."
"We don't know if any of this resulted in people voting for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton and what markets they may have voted or not voted for or against someone," Mike Barnicle said.
"We do know the amazing reach and influence over people who get their news from Facebook or from Twitter -- largely Facebook more than Twitter. It's incredible, the reach and depth of that impact. "
Willie Geist pointed out what Sherlock Holmes would call "the dog that did not bark."
"Missing from the comments we heard out of the White House, including from Sarah Sanders, any signal or sign of outrage about the fact that Russia did what it did in this election," he said.
"You can separate out and say, 'Russia tried to get into our democracy and alter the results of the election and I had nothing to do with it."
"Those can be two thoughts that you have in your head: that I didn't collude, but Russia did attempt to do it. Donald Trump, as we at this table all know, he can't put himself out and admit that perhaps his election was in some way illegitimate because it was influenced by the Russians.
"But everybody, including the White House, should be outraged by all these stories we're seeing."
What they don't discuss is, the Russian strategy wasn't only to get people to vote for Donald Trump. It was to make people too disgusted to vote for Hillary Clinton, and vote instead for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson -- or not at all.
