There’s this narrative among the media that Russia conspired to hand Donald Trump the presidential election – and even attempted to influence Colorado. We’ve mostly ignored it until a recent Denver Post article provided examples of tweets that “show” that Russian bots or fake identities were responsible for Trump’s victory in Colorado.
Wait.
But Donald Trump didn’t win in Colorado. He lost the state by almost the exact percentage in 2016 that Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney did in 2012 – five percent, give or take a few tenths of a percent.
While it may be true that Russia meddled in the election (we’ll leave that to the experts), how can we be so sure it was on behalf of Trump? In addition to the Trump rallies the Post-identified accounts retweeted, they also retweeted and highlighted the following stories, for example:
- Clinton is cruising in Colorado (would seem to be pro-Hillary, no?)
- No Dakota Pipeline (definitely not pro-Trump)
- Coffman calls for Trump to step aside (How is this pro-Trump? Coffman is a respected elected official.)
- Calling Trump out on an inaccurate statement (not pro-Trump)
- Announcing Hillary’s new ad buy (how does that help Trump again?)
- Trump supporters burning black churches (holy hell, how is this pro-Trump? It was inaccurate, btw)
- Vote Yes on 69 with Bernie Sanders hashtags
Why would Russian bots share these topics if solely shilling for Trump? They wouldn’t. And why would Russia want Trump as President anyway? Hillary is the candidate who brought a reset button to their first meeting as Secretary of State in an attempt to repair the relationship. Trump was always going to be tougher on trade, and less willing to be bullied. What’s the end game for Russia by meddling in our presidential election? And was Trump’s Colorado loss proof that Russia’s Twitter clowns suck at their jobs or that fixing our election results wasn’t the goal at all?
The truth is, there was an organization working to fix Colorado’s elections. The Colorado Democratic establishment conspired to fix its primary election to throw the outcome for Hillary over Bernie. Colorado didn’t need Russia at all. Democrats did that all on their own.
