As discussed with Rachel Maddow on May 23, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, in his new book, affirms his clear opinion that the Russians swung the 2016 presidential election for Donald Trump. 

In the book, Clapper writes:

By September 2016, we knew that Putin was personally involved in the Russian attack.

He goes on to tell Maddow, “we had very, very solid evidence of that.”

This confirms information contained in a VoxFairfax blog post of April 6, 2018, entitled HOW A MINORITY AND A PROPAGANDA BLITZ ELECTED A PRESIDENT, which contained detailed voting statistics. From the post:

In order to appreciate the thesis that a minority of voters elected the president in 2016 and that voting was influenced by Russia, it is necessary to examine election results and consider them in light of other data concerning propaganda generated by Russia….  The table [below] relates the total population of the United States, the relative population value of the 538 electors, and the 2016 Democratic and Republican popular votes. While 8 million voted for candidates other than those of the two major parties, the focus is on the relationship between popular voting and electoral results of the two major party candidates.

The post concludes:

The 2016 popular and Electoral College voting, together with the information developed about the propaganda blitz by the Russians, certainly puts to rest the idea that American voters were free from influence by ads placed by foreign governments as a naïve, if not incredible, conclusion. The new president’s Electoral College margin of 75 votes arising from a popular vote margin of 190,655 on over 136 million cast in total does not inspire confidence in either the constitutional structure or the nation’s capacity to protect itself from foreign government influence in regard to the electoral process….  Now, the potential to surrender autonomy over the nation’s electoral integrity to foreign influence exacerbates the already contentious civic culture that undergirds political discourse and the dynamics of that process. Without repair and defensive safeguards, political chaos may ensue. 

Categories: Book Review, Issues, National