No conspiracy

[timelets]

It turns out that to advance a preferred candidate, a foreign power can manipulate our election process even without insider assistance. Traitors need not apply.

I'd be really curious to read the entire Mueller report and see how the whole affair transpired.

upd: it would be useful to know during the election process that a foreign power, rather than anonymous hackers, is behind the manipulation efforts.

Comments

Re: Oh, that guy

[tijd]

It was Trump's rehearsed answer to Megyn Kelly's question that instantly turned Scott Adams into a devoted MAGA fan with wild theories about "three-dimensional chess".

And what did you think of Trump’s famous “Rosie O’Donnell” quip at the first debate when asked about his comments on women? The interviewer’s questions were intended to paint Trump forever as a sexist pig. But Trump quickly and cleverly set the “anchor” as Rosie O’Donnell, a name he could be sure was not popular with his core Republican crowd. And then he casually admitted, without hesitation, that he was sure he had said other bad things about other people as well.
Now do you see how the anchor works? If the idea of “Trump insults women” had been allowed to pair in your mind with the nice women you know and love, you would hate Trump. That jerk is insulting my sister, my mother, and my wife! But Trump never let that happen. At the first moment (and you have to admit he thinks fast) he inserted the Rosie O’Donnell anchor and owned the conversation from that point on. Now he’s not the sexist who sometimes insults women; he’s the straight-talker who won’t hesitate to insult someone who has it coming (in his view).
But it gets better. You probably cringed when Trump kept saying his appearance gave FOX its biggest audience rating. That seemed totally off point for a politician, right? But see what happened.
Apparently FOX chief Roger Ailes called Trump and made peace. And by that I mean Trump owns FOX for the rest of the campaign because his willingness to appear on their network will determine their financial fate.
https://blog.dilbert.com/2015/08/13/clown-genius/

The real story is that Rupert Murdoch called Fox News and demanded the moderators to ask hard questions. They obliged but Roger Ailes coached Trump how to answer them in order to create a good TV spectacle. This was Roger's finest work since he came up with Reagan's line "I will not make age an issue in this campaign..." and Bush's "Read my lips..."

Murdoch was not a fan of Trump’s and especially did not like his stance on immigration. (The antipathy was mutual: “Murdoch’s been very bad to me,” Trump told me in March.) A few days before the first GOP debate on Fox in August 2015, Murdoch called Ailes at home. “This has gone on long enough,” Murdoch said, according to a person briefed on the conversation. Murdoch told Ailes he wanted Fox’s debate moderators — Kelly, Bret Baier, and Chris Wallace — to hammer Trump on a variety of issues. Ailes, understanding the GOP electorate better than most at that point, likely thought it was a bad idea. “Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee,” Ailes told a colleague around this time. But he didn’t fight Murdoch on the debate directive.
http://www.newsweek.com/rupert-murdoch-blames-roger-ailes-donald-trump-495407