[gdudeman]

This is incorrect. In one case, Trump won the election by very narrowly winning more popular votes in key states. Those votes could have been influenced by the news.

What the DNC leaks show is also the messiness underbelly of virtually any campaign. You can call it collusion, but I'd say it's the DNC doing their job to try to get an electable candidate on the ballot. The RNC did the same thing - they just failed this time.

Had the Trump team's email leaked in the same way, I suspect the election would have gone the other way.

[cocktailpeanuts]

Parent said:

> And he did this by winning more popular votes in key states

And you said:

> This is incorrect. In one case, Trump won the election by very narrowly winning more popular votes in key states.

What exactly is "incorrect" again? So just because he won by a small margin, that win doesn't count? I don't even like Trump but this is really outrageous. Please take a second to think about what you're saying. I don't even know what you consider as "correct".

[PhantomGremlin]

Had the Trump team's email leaked in the same way, I suspect the election would have gone the other way.

It's hard to conceive of what could be in Trump team email that would be more damaging than some of the things that Trump said that were known before the election. Such as:

"I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters"

and

"Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything."

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. It seems like Trump said something outrageous every other day.

If Trump's email had him directing his underlings to cooperate with the Russians to hack the DNC, then maybe that would have hurt. But maybe that wouldn't have been sufficient. Maybe there would have needed to be a video attachment with Trump saying exactly that? Not just words?

Seriously. Outside of evidence of Trump specifically directing people to cooperate with Russia to commit felonies, what email could have been sufficiently damaging to Trump?

[macintux]

Well, there was the serious allegation of forced rape of an underage (13 I think?) girl. I doubt there'd be any emails in that topic, but I have to think that would have cost him a few votes if verified.

OTOH, the "but Hillary" argument seemed to trump everything else, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[nextstep]

All votes are influenced by the news. That’s how our modern democracy works. You learn about the candidates through a (hopefully free) media and then you cast a vote.

[blackrose]

That's the point -- the CIA, FBI, and NSA determined with "high confidence" [0] that Russia worked to influence us through (among other outlets) the media -- especially social media. It worked, and because of it our votes weren't free.

> Moscow’s influence campaign followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations—such as cyber activity—with overt efforts by Russian Government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or “trolls.”

[0] https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

[Elhana]

Because only "free" US media can influence US citizens... Mark Twain wrote about it long ago in his "Running for Governor"

[nautilus12]

"You can call it collusion, but I'd say its X doing their job." I find this statement totally lacks awareness considering all the accusations of collusion being hurled at the current administration.