President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Lost in all of the politicization of this is that Julian Assange keeps insisting that he did not obtain the stuff that Wikileaks made public from the Russians. I have no idea if he is telling the truth. But I don't discount the likelihood that there is a sordid story without clear lines behind the leaked e-mails.

Also, the Podesta e-mail account was a gmail account. And whoever gained access, probably did it with a phishing e-mail (that looked like it came from Gmail) that he fell for, clicking on their link. If you are in politics, with all of the dirtiness and BS you engage in, and you are leaving all of your sensitive correspondence on a google server in a gmail account, a part of me says you deserve it when the stuff gets exposed that way. It's even worse if you handed whoever got access the keys to your account because you were so unsophisticated that you didn't recognize a phishing e-mail.

Before the election there were all kinds of entities waging propaganda campaigns using all kinds of methods. Industry groups, labor unions, religious groups, all kinds of PACs, etc. representing all kinds of interests. That is what happens in a society that allows the free flow of information. It's incumbent upon people to filter things for themselves and make what they want of the things they see. That is the way it has always been -- in a free society. Let's say that Russia made a concerted effort to influence opinion here. Let's say it was an actual propaganda campaign that goes beyond the leaked e-mails. For me, it would be no better or worse than the thousands of other entities with an interest trying to change people's opinions -- many that I personally think have crummy motives and are dishonest in what they do to try to influence people. It is absolute hysteria to do "the Russians!" thing. It's also disingenuous. This is what many countries do. They wage propaganda wars to try to advance their interests. The U.S. has been meddling with other countries' politics and elections for more than a century, and we have done way worse things than releasing someone's real e-mails (if this was state sponsored): we have outright sponsored coups when democratically-elected leaders we didn't want won, and we have assassinated politicians we found unfriendly.

If there is / was any evidence that Russia tampered with the actual voting in our election, it would be one thing. Then I could understand this level of outrage. But that isn't the case as far as any of us know, and all we are getting is something that serves no purpose except to try to delegitimize Trump under the guise of something else.

For his part, I think Trump is handling it in a bungling way. At the same time, what is he supposed to do, delegitimize his win? And for what purpose? Unless the actual vote was tampered with, he won the election. Some people who are grasping at this need to wrap their heads around it.