The weird Russia campaign mind meld
by digby
Now that we know analytics were stolen by Russian hackers in 2016,this is the next big question to be answered:
The Russian hackers, in other words, are the modern equivalents of the Watergate burglars in 1972. The only difference is the technology. The Watergate burglars broke into the Democratic campaign offices to tap phones and steal documents; the Russian hackers used malware and “cloud-based accounts” to achieve the same goal.
Did they share this information with the Trump campaign? If so, the timing is interesting. In October, a few weeks after the hackers broke into the DNC servers, New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman observed a major shift in the way the Trump campaign was spending its advertising budget. Access to Democratic Party data would, of course, have been useful in redirecting that spending. At about the same time, Trump also began using a curious set of conspiratorial slogans and messages, all lifted directly from Russian state television and websites. From Barack Obama “founded ISIS” to Hillary Clinton will start “World War III,” Trump repeated them at his rallies and on his Twitter feed. It was as if he had some reason to believe they would work.
It’s important to stop and acknowledge that the evidence we have does not establish this kind of connection between Russian hackers and the Trump campaign; the Mueller probe needs to continue unimpeded to help determine what happened and what did not. But shared data could explain why Russian state media, the Russian Internet Research Agency and the Trump campaign were all doing the same kinds of things at the same time. Shared data could also explain why Trump appeared to feel so indebted to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, why he wanted to speak to him with no aides present, why he is so reluctant to acknowledge Russian interference. It could even explain why he talks so obsessively and inaccurately about the size of his great electoral victory: because he himself believes that the Russians helped him win. He fears that this would make his presidency illegitimate. Which it would.
It was illegitimate on a number of levels. But people would accept that, barring impeachment, there is nothing to be done about it except challenge him in the next election. George W.Bush faced the same issue in 2000 and if 9/11 hadn't happened he might not have gotten a second term. (As it was in 2004 Ohio barely saved him in the electoral college and he won the popular vote by about the same margin that Hillary Clinton did in 2016.) I guess my point is that if he's worried about his election being seen as illegitimate, well ... yeah. So what? What could we do? It's pure ego that has him acting out about it, if that's what's going on.
But if he did get help from the Russians there's every reason he would want them to help him out again, right? Whether or not Trump colluded before the election, we know for a fact that he's colluding now since he has refused to acknowledge that it happened and won't devote any resources to stopping it from happening again.
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