[newacct583]

Trump didn't start that "conversation". "Fake News" was a term originally intended to reflect the false "news-like" advertisements that were being purchased on social media (primarily Facebook, and primarily targetting conservative users). Trump appropriated it as a way to label unflattering news coverage from mainstream sources.

[pyronik19]

Hardly just unflattering, MSM pushed the "Russia" narrative for 3 years and there was literally nothing there. Hard to call that anything other than fake news. In fact its looking more and more like the actions from the Obama admin were likely highly corrupt and there will likely people going to jail. Just recently the media has been reporting that Trump called the virus a "hoax", which was a complete lie.

[hraedon]

Mueller went out of his way to say that his investigation did not exonerate Trump, and realistically the only reason more people did not go to jail (and a lot of people went to jail, including one of Trump's campaign managers) is because key players were successful in obstructing justice.

Like, you can be skeptical of the idea that the Russian interference was decisive in the election without dismissing the very real lawbreaking that happened.

[coffexx]

> Mueller went out of his way to say that his investigation did not exonerate Trump

I think it was inappropriate for him to stress this, and that it undermined his legitimacy and the legitimacy of the investigation. It isn't the job of an investigator to "exonerate" people that havn't been charged or prosecuted for a crime.

As far as I can tell all these comments did was validate his supporters beliefs that the investigation was a politically motivated attack, and simultaneously served as a psychological "out" for his detractors that were convinced he was in cahoots with Putin to undermine the country. Widening the divide between 2 sets of people that really ought to reconcile.

Disclaimer: I am not american, so this is an outsiders perspective.

[hraedon]

What alternative did he have? The president's hand-picked AG had released an extremely misleading "summary" of Mueller's findings, which the president was using to claim total exoneration.

Trump's supporters would have taken any action beyond cowed silence as evidence of a "politically motivated attack," because that's been the president's messaging. The investigation itself was characterized as "politically motivated messaging," despite having been started under Trump by Trump appointees.

Mueller isn't responsible for "widening the divide," and there was nothing he could do to heal it while living up to his mandate. The president, or at least the president's team, did a lot of illegal things during the election. You don't meaningfully hold them to account or heal "the divide" by falsely exonerating the president.

[mhucka]

Here are some facts about the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election:

1. A total of 34 individuals and 3 companies were indicted by Mueller's investigators. A total of 8 have pleaded guilty to or been convicted of felonies, including 5 Trump associates and campaign officials. Here's a Wall Street Journal article about the convictions: https://www.wsj.com/articles/mueller-indictments-whos-who-15... Also, here's a long Wikipedia article about the whole investigation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Counsel_investigation_...

2. When the Mueller report was about to be released, Attorney General Barr wrote a memo to Congress that purported to summarize the principal conclusions. Trump and Republican supporters seized on this to claim Trump was exonerated. In fact, Mueller explicitly stated that he did not exonerate Trump. Further, in a subsequent letter of his own, Mueller stated that Barr's memo "did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance" of the investigation. (Washington Post article here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/muell...)

3. A bipartisan report from the US Senate affirms the findings by US Intelligence agencies about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Here's a Wall Street Journal article: https://www.wsj.com/articles/senate-report-affirms-u-s-intel...

There are many more findings, but I tried to be concise in response to the specific claim that there is "nothing there".

When the investigation began and Mueller was appointed, Republicans praised him. (C.f. Fox News article: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/robert-mueller-appointment-...). Now they claim the investigation was either unlawful, or that FBI investigators were criminals, or similar. One does not need to take my or anyone else's word for what Mueller's team reported. You can get the redacted report from the government or even Amazon, and read it for yourself. You can also get the Senate committee's report from the government and read it for yourself. It is clear to me (and should be clear to anyone who has read the report or followed the story) that it is a flat-out lie to say there is "nothing there", and that Trump supporters have shifted from welcoming a fair investigation into Russian interference to attacking the investigators. And that's where we are now.

[free_rms]

We had 2 billion-dollar campaigns operating for a year.

Russia had some paid shit posters and a 100k Facebook ad spend.

Blaming Russia is just a cop-out. No need to hold ourselves accountable, it was those damn Russians!

[alwayseasy]

So you just go on hn to answer without reading the posts you answer to?

[mytherin]

I'm curious what you mean by "literally nothing there", considering dozens of people have been charged and found guilty/jailed with crimes relating to the investigation, many of which were part of the Trump administration or working closely together with them [1]. Paul Manafort, the chairman of Donald Trumps' 2016 campaign is currently serving a 7.5 year prison sentence relating to this investigation.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2018/dec/...

[llcoolv]

> Paul Manafort, the chairman of Donald Trumps' 2016 campaign is currently serving a 7.5 year prison sentence relating to this investigation.

"He was convicted on five counts of tax fraud, one of the four counts of failing to disclose his foreign bank accounts, and two counts of bank fraud."

So, he was convicted of tax fraud and bureaucratic discrepencies. While factually related to the investigation, none of these charges has nothing to do with what the investigation was about.

[newacct583]

I don't know the source you're quoting, but it's pure spin. The tax fraud and reporting violation were in direct service to the need to hide his foreign payments from Russian interests. You're also forgetting his guilty pleas for failing to register as a foreign agent (Russia again) and witness tampering (which is criminal obstruction of justice!).

This is all directly related to his work for Russia and Russian interests, in exactly the same way that Al Capone's famous tax evasion conviction was the result of his operation of a criminal organization.

[llcoolv]

Apologies, the source is wikipedia's page on Paul Manafort[1]. Also the article says he was involved with Yanukovich, not with Putin, but still in the worst case this is in the equivalent to the Biden-Poroshenko tape[2].

Tax fraud rendering you guilty of all the bad things you were ever accused of is not really sound logic. Also, I am not really defending Manaford - tbh after reading more on him, this whole Ukrainian foray seems to be one of his lesser offenses. But for example in the case of Flynn/Trump where prosecutors were taped discussing how they need to "find him guilty of anything or provoke him to cross the law", there is no doubt of bias.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Manafort

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lA3oOo1oZc

[newacct583]

> Tax fraud rendering you guilty of all the bad things you were ever accused of is not really sound logic.

The contention above was that there was "literally nothing to" Russian interference in the 2016 election. Manafort's convictions for activities related to his attempts to hide his Russian influence is clear evidence to the contrary.

I don't see anyone saying this makes Manafort guilty of "all the bad things he was ever accused of". But it makes him guilty of hiding Russian influence in the 2016 election, which was the point to be demonstrated.

[mytherin]

Interesting, didn't know about that. Thanks for the info.

Then perhaps you can give me some more clarification:

* What about the Russian troll farms running fake pro-Trump social media accounts?

* What about the hacking of Clinton's email server and strategic release of those emails right before the election (even though the e-mails ended up containing nothing incriminating)?

* What about the many people lying/obstructing justice that were investigated? Why were so many people caught lying if there was nothing to hide?

Honestly curious, I'm not from the US so I don't have a horse in the race and I don't know that much about the investigation, but it seems to be quite obvious something fishy is going on there. Whether or not Trump's team was personally involved is another matter, but it seems obvious Russia meddled in the election extensively to assist Trump in winning. That alone seems quite alarming to me.

It also feels like you are defending it primarily because it happened to someone on your team, and you would not be defending it if the situation were reversed and, say, Clinton was assisted by China or something like this, even if she had no part to play in the assistance.

[llcoolv]

* What about the Russian troll farms running fake pro-Trump social media accounts?

Until there is no hard evidence, those troll farms are conspiracy theories. Besides, these days the left press is so ridiculously biased that NYT, Guardian, etc could easily qualify as troll farms.

* What about the hacking of Clinton's email server and strategic release of those emails right before the election (even though the e-mails ended up containing nothing incriminating)?

You mean the "e-mail server" (lol) which was "hosted" at her bedroom? You do realise that here of all places there is probably the highest number of people to see how ridiculous this is.

* What about the many people lying/obstructing justice that were investigated? Why were so many people caught lying if there was nothing to hide?

There is always something to hide, the question is were they guilty of what they were accused or not. Also after this appeared:

'What is our goal?' one of the notes dated January 24 2017 - the day of the interview - read. 'Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?'

I would not give too much credibility to those investigators.

1. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8271953/Unsealed-me...

[mytherin]

* Until there is no hard evidence, those troll farms are conspiracy theories.

As far as I see reading about the report, there were multiple indictments made against several Russian entities and nationals for online campaigns supporting Donald Trump [1]. They were (obviously) not prosecuted, but the evidence is there, otherwise there would be no indictments.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com.au/mueller-indicts-russians-...

* Besides, these days the left press is so ridiculously biased that NYT, Guardian, etc could easily qualify as troll farms.

This feels to me like you are not diversifying your news sources at all, and are only reading biased right-wing news and using that to feed your existing biases. The left wing media is not anymore biased than the right wing media, and there exists a scale of bias on both sides (there exists both ridiculously biased left wing media and ridiculously biased right wing media and everything in between).

I suggest you diversify where you get your news from to get a clearer picture of the world. Try to keep more of an open mind. Nothing good comes from blindly following one side or the other - both sides have plenty of good and plenty of criminals.

* You mean the "e-mail server" (lol) which was "hosted" at her bedroom? You do realise that here of all places there is probably the highest number of people to see how ridiculous this is.

Plenty of people have a private e-mail server at home for one reason or the other. This was blown up way out of proportion. Partisanship has heavily clouded your judgement here.

* There is always something to hide, the question is were they guilty of what they were accused or not. Also after this appeared:

* 'What is our goal?' one of the notes dated January 24 2017 - the day of the interview - read. 'Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?'

* I would not give too much credibility to those investigators.

This seems like a conspiracy theory to me. Weren't the investigators Republicans themselves?

[llcoolv]

Yet another post, that is 100% factually correct and still gets downvoted into oblivion by the leftist bots. LOL.

[jtbayly]

I'd say Trump appropriated it to point out how untrustworthy the "real" news is. And he was and is right about that in general, even if he's often wrong.

[pbhjpbhj]

Hmm, Trump's use seems to entirely have been to label things that are true that he wants [his supporters] to deny are true? Someone levels a factual criticism against him, they get thrown out and he says it's "fake news".

Worse, for me in the UK, his success got adopted by UK Tories, now we also have a people in positions of power who just dodge hard questions and where possible exclude press as punishment. People in power who lie and aren't held to account. It's diabolical -- but by subverting the rule of law they're able to continue.