We read every one of the 3,517 Facebook ads bought by Russians. Their dominant strategy: Sowing racial discord
We read every one of the 3,517 Facebook ads bought by Russians. Their dominant strategy: Sowing racial discord
Nick Penzenstadler, Brad Heath, Jessica Guynn
The Russian company charged with orchestrating a wide-ranging effort to meddle in the 2016 presidential election overwhelmingly focused its barrage of social media advertising on what is arguably America’s rawest political division: race.
The roughly 3,500 Facebook ads were created by the Russian-based Internet Research Agency, which is at the center of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s February indictment of 13 Russians and three companies seeking to influence the election.
While some ads focused on topics as banal as business promotion or Pokémon, the company consistently promoted ads designed to inflame race-related tensions. Some dealt with race directly; others dealt with issues fraught with racial and religious baggage such as ads focused on protests over policing, the debate over a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico and relationships with the Muslim community.
The company continued to hammer racial themes even after the election.
ODAY Network reporters reviewed each of the 3,517 ads, which were released to the public this week for the first time by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The analysis included not just the content of the ads, but also information that revealed the specific audience targeted, when the ad was posted, roughly how many views it received and how much the ad cost to post.
Among the findings:
Of the roughly 3,500 ads published this week, more than half — about 1,950 — made express references to race. Those accounted for 25 million ad impressions — a measure of how many times the spot was pulled from a server for transmission to a device.
At least 25% of the ads centered on issues involving crime and policing, often with a racial connotation. Separate ads, launched simultaneously, would stoke suspicion about how police treat black people in one ad, while another encouraged support for pro-police groups.
Divisive racial ad buys averaged about 44 per month from 2015 through the summer of 2016 before seeing a significant increase in the run-up to Election Day. Between September and November 2016, the number of race-related sports rose to 400.
An additional 900 were posted after the November election through May 2017. Only about 100 of the ads overtly mentioned support for Donald Trump or opposition to Hillary Clinton.
A few dozen referenced questions about the U.S. election process and voting integrity, while a handful mentioned other candidates like Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush. Interactive Graphic: Explaining Russia's Facebook campaign aimed at Americans
Young Mie Kim, a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who published some of the first scientific analysis of social media influence campaigns during the election, said the ads show that the Russians are attempting to destabilize Western Democracy by targeting extreme identity groups.
“Effective polarization can happen when you’re promoting the idea that, ‘I like my group, but I don’t like the other group’ and pushing distance between the two extreme sides,” Kim said. “And we know the Russians targeted extremes and then came back with different negative messages that might not be aimed at converting voters, but suppressing turnout and undermining the Democratic process.”
The most prominent ad — with 1.3 million impressions and 73,000 clicks — illustrates how the influence campaign was executed.
A Facebook page called “Back the Badge,” landed on Oct. 19, 2016, following a summer that saw more than 100 Black Lives Matter protests, NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s national anthem protests in August and protests over the police shootings of Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Oklahoma and Keith Lamont Scott in North Carolina.
The information analyzed by the USA TODAY Network shows the Internet Research Agency paid 110,058 rubles, or $1,785, for the Facebook spot. It targeted 20 to 65-year-olds interested in law enforcement who had already liked pages such as “The Thin Blue,” “Police Wives Unite” and the “Officer Down Memorial Page.”
The very next day, the influence operation paid for an ad depicting two black brothers handcuffed in Colorado for “driving while black.” That ad targeted people interested in Martin Luther King Jr., Malcom X and black history. Within minutes, the Russian company targeted the same group with an ad that said “police brutality has been the most recurring issue over the last several years.”
USC professor Nick Cull, author of The Cold War and the United States Information Agency, says the ad campaign is reminiscent of tactics employed during the Soviet era. His book explored how the KGB tried to disrupt the LA Olympics by faking propaganda from the KKK threatening black athletes.
"Soviet news media always played up U.S. racism, exaggerating the levels of hatred even beyond the horrific levels of the reality in the 1950s," Cull wrote in an email. "It was one reason Eisenhower decided to move on civil rights."
Adam Schiff, the Minority Leader of the House Intelligence Committee, said he made the ads available to the public so that academics could study both the intention and breadth of the targeting.
“These ads broadly sought to pit one American against another by exploiting faults in our society or race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and other deeply cynical thoughts,” Schiff said in an interview with USA TODAY Network. “Americans should take away that the Russians perceive these divisions as vulnerabilities and to a degree can be exploited by a sophisticated campaign.”
A federal grand jury in February indicted 13 individuals accused of working for the Internet Research Agency to produce the ads. The charges related to meddling in the 2016 election, the only election interference case Mueller's office has filed so far.
The indictment included emails from the Russian company's employees that left no doubt that their objectives were “to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” This effort “included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaging Hillary Clinton,” the indictment states.
Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsel, declined comment on the ads this week. An attorney for two of the companies indicted by Mueller did not respond to a request for comment. One of the companies, Concord Management and Consulting, LLC, entered a not-guilty plea on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in D.C.
The USA TODAY Network analysis found that Russians effort first used a raft of viral memes referencing banal American pop culture, like Spongebob Squarepants and Pokémon, to apparently build support behind legitimate-looking connections before deploying the racially-tinged spots.
Hundreds of ads mixed race and policing, with many mimicking Black Lives Matter activists that melded real news events with accusations of abuse by white officers.
That type of subversion only hurts legitimate efforts to calm tensions over policing and hate crimes, said Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Johnson said the Russian ads likely helped to fuel “hateful, xenophobic rhetoric” throughout the 2016 presidential campaign.
“When you’re stoking fear to get a negative action directed at a targeted population based on race, and when a foreign nation uses that fear to subvert and undermine democracy, that’s become a serious problem,” Johnson said. “It’s a warning for technology companies and corporations that private citizens have entrusted with their privacy to receive factual information.”
It’s hard to measure precise impact of the campaign targeting police and their families, but it certainly didn’t help, said Jim Pasco, senior adviser to the president of the National Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest police union.
"There is absolutely no doubt that these ad placements further inflamed tensions in already volatile and already sensitive situations at critical times," Pasco said.
The tech tools have changed, but the themes of disruption have not, said Bret Schafer of the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy, which tracks activity of Russia-linked social media bots and trolls.
Social media is an effective way to target wedge issues because of the ability to micro-target ads, sending messages to confederate flag supporters at the same time as Black Lives Matter sympathizers to stoke divisions, he said.
“They are stirring up the racial pot, while then trying to connect with minority groups and saying: Look at how racist the content is online. They don’t really have to do that because the content online is racist without the Russians, to be very clear,” Schafer said.
He added that it's hard to measure how effective the campaigns were in general. Some of the ads "completely bombed," based on interactions. But stoking racial fears and tensions was often effective.
"Some of the most racist ads put out got the highest levels of engagement,” Schafer said. “It seems that when their messaging went to the extreme on some of these issues, it actually landed the hardest punch.
“If they hit 10% of the time, it's still effective for them,” Schafer said.
Contributing: Jai Agnish, The Bergen (N.J.) Record; Stacey Barchenger, Asbury (N.J.) Park Press, Natalie Alison, The Tennessean; Dave Boucher, The Tennessean; Kevin Crowe; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; Algernon D’Ammassa, The Deming (N.M.) Headlight; Mike Ellis, Anderson Independent Mail; Stacie Galang, Ventura County Star; Greg Holman, Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader; Trevor Hughes, USA TODAY; John Kelly, USA TODAY; Ledyard King, USA TODAY; Laura Mandaro, USA TODAY; John Moses, Farmington (N.M) Daily-Times; Tovah Olsen, Lansing State Journal; Alex Ptachick, USA TODAY; Steve Reilly, USA TODAY; Todd Spangler, Detroit Free Press; Mariah Timms, (Murfreesboro, Tenn.) Daily News Journal; Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY; Dana Williams, Pacific Daily News (Guam); Anna Wolfe, Jackson (Miss.) Clarion Ledger; Amy Wu, Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Journal.
Tags
Who is online
94 visitors
From the article:
How can anyone calling themselves American not be outraged by Russia interference in our election?
There is not doubt Russian trolls spread distention by targeting fringe political groups in the US of A.
So what is the solution for this "meddling"? I don't do social media, so I have no idea of how these ads work. Can't the recipients distinguish between the various types of political propaganda and BS? It's called freedom of speech, and the Democrats and Republicans both do it in spades, both here in the US and employ it in other countries. It's up to the voter to know all sides to an issue or candidate, and it is highly unlikely that the last election was unduly influenced by a few ads
the House intelligence committee have released more than 3,500 Facebook ads that were created or promoted by a Russian internet agency, providing the fullest picture yet of Russia's attempt to sow racial and political division in the United States before and after the 2016 election.
Most of the ads are issue-based, pushing arguments for and against immigration, LGBT issues and gun rights, among other issues. A large number of them attempt to stoke racial divisions by mentioning police brutality or disparaging the Black Lives Matter movement. Some promote President Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders, who ran against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary. Few, if any, support Clinton.
The release of ads from early 2015 through mid-2017 does not include 80,000 posts that the agency also shared. Some of the ads are partially redacted, part of an effort by Facebook and the committee to protect unsuspecting people whose names or faces were used.
An Associated Press review of the thousands of ads and their data shows how precisely — and sometimes randomly — the agency targeted them.
Some ads designed to appeal to critics of immigration were targeted to users who liked specific Fox News hosts, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, "Old Glory" and the United States Constitution, among other words.
Others were more narrowly targeted. Facebook users within 12 miles of Buffalo, New York, were directed to an event supporting justice for a black woman who died in a county jail. Another ad criticizing a Texas school teacher who lost her job after making racist remarks was aimed at adults living in Cleveland, Baltimore, St. Louis and Ferguson, Missouri.
A pro-patriotism ad created on June 23, 2015 featuring a stylized drawing of a bald eagle was viewed nearly 530,000 times and was clicked on 72,000 times.
Facebook revealed in September that it had discovered the divisive ads, which were paid for in rubles. Ads were still running in July and August of 2017, weeks before Facebook made the effort public.
In February, special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russians of an elaborate plot to disrupt the 2016 presidential election, charging several people associated with the Internet Research Agency with running a huge but hidden social media trolling campaign aimed in part at helping Trump defeat Clinton. The indictment was part of Mueller's larger investigation into Russian intervention in the election and whether Trump's campaign was involved. There has been no evidence that Trump's campaign was in any way associated with the social media effort.
The trove of ads released Thursday appears to back the assertion that the Russians wanted to hurt Clinton. Some spread rumors about her husband, former president Bill Clinton, or promote lies about her. Several depict Clinton behind bars.
Hundreds of the ads ran after the election, continuing the effort to sow discord. A series of ads posted two days after Trump was elected urge his supporters to show up at Trump Tower in Manhattan to respond to the "massive crowds of libtards" who protested him. It targets people within 50 miles of New York City and provides the street address.
That was one of many ads that attempted to set up events — sometimes on opposing sides of an issue.
In May 2017, the fake group "United Muslims of America" ran seven ads promoting two June 3 protests against the war in Syria — one at Trump Tower, the other at the White House. One of those ads targeted people with interests in peace, human rights, feminism and pacifism and those who were "likely to engage with political content (liberal)."
Facebook has said that more than 10 million people in the United States saw the ads, more than half of which ran after the election. Under fire from Congress, the social media giant has pledged improvements to its ad policies and enforcement. Facebook has made it easier to see the origins of ads, is forcing buyers to be more transparent about who they are and has worked to find more fake accounts, among other changes.
.........................................................................
Russian-linked automated Twitter accounts, or bots, retweeted Donald Trump almost half a million times in the final weeks before the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, Twitter told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The 50,000 automated accounts the company determined had ties to Russia sent more than 2 million election-related tweets between September 1 and November 15, 2016.
The company also examined how the bots helped amplify content from what it described as “Russian-linked accounts” including @Wikileaks.
The 50,000 accounts retweeted Wikileaks almost 200,000 times during the ten-week period, Twitter said.
.........................................................................
America needs to get this shit STOPPED NOW ......and for good !
We elect who we want, we dont need or want outside interference again EVER !!
Assuming all that is true, I have but one question:
Would an undecided voter be more influenced by something they saw on facebook or the daily anti-Trump "news" they read daily in the New York Times and/or Washington Post?
Maybe, maybe not, I'd say some of what influences a person is reinforcement of an idea already seeded. (True or false) So repetition and numbers are a factor in decision making.
To many the source isn't as important as the message. And that's the case for some people of all ideologies.
Then they weren't undecided in the first place
An idea does not equal a decision.
i·de·a
Again, this is what you said:
"I'd say some of what influences a person is reinforcement of an idea already seeded. "
That means they already have an opinion, does it not?
Democrats will have you believe that they alone are far too intelligent to fall for propaganda and that right-wingers fall for it all the time.
But why would right-wingers ever vote for Hillary?
They simply never would.
I think they place FAR too much importance on some ads on social media, for pete's sake.
No one I have EVER met has been influenced by social media as far as who they vote for goes. Of course, I know people based in reality.
Of course you are absolutely right. Anyone who makes a voting decision based on something they saw on social media is too whimsical to be a real voter. It's kind of like the person that tells you they voted against someone because the candidates kids are in private schools. We would be in real trouble if elections were decided by such people. The democratic party is attempting to do something far worse. They are trying to get people to vote based on "identity" (race, gender or sexual persuasion). They complain now about "Russian intervention because their heavily flawed candidate lost an election they thought was a slam dunk!
Agreed, perhaps we should throw their votes out as they vote, of course I'm not one, are any of you ?
We can't throw out votes. That's a right - a right of American citizens! Not illegal aliens.
Over here we have single issue voters too, but not nearly as many as the democrats have
and on the flip side trumpetts dont care because this time their guy won.
Surprise, I didn't want either as my president and I want his russian meddling shit stopped once and for all. period. No country should be allowed to influence the electing of our leaders.
.....................................................................
And No I never thought trump was stupid enough to let himself be personally involved in anything that would jeopardize his new gain of power. Any "nefarious crap" would have been done by lackeys like flynn.
True again, well whats next ? Maybe doing what we can to stop fake news from russia to at least minimise their influence on social media to whimsical voters ?
Maybe next time, IF trump loses eh ? Cause till then I dont see a problem.....sarc
Who defines "fake news"?
Does facebook get to police itself?
Aside from stopping bots, what do you propose?
Thanks to gerrymandering many votes are being thrown out.
One person, one vote. Screw the electoral college and gerrymandering.
Of course, you only feel that way because your precious Abuela lost. If she had won the EC and lost the popular, there would not be a peep from you.
You can't deny it.
I hate Facebook. Never had an account, never will. Facebook allowed this to happen, because Zuckerberg cares about money more than Americans or America.
Russian propaganda first fed to targeted racists on Facebook was then spread to all social media platforms.
Tokyo Rose and Axis Annie would be proud. The sad part is Americans disseminated Russian propaganda...
understandably so, as it was not marked "Russian propaganda"
who knew ?
The CIA, the FBI, Justice, Homeland Security, Boris, Natasha, Jim, Bob, Vlad and Donald all know now...
It's who knew, not who knows now, JBB. And the answer is all the above except Donald Trump. And you can add at least one more and that was Obama, who also knew there was a fake dossier and knew Trump's campaign was being spied on unless the Intelligence Agencies were not giving him honest daily briefings.
That's what's called whistling by the graveyard and your sort is doing it almost non-stop now.
My sentiments, exactly, even no FB account.
Same here. I don't do any social media crap. I have no use for it. People who want to contact me know how, and vice versa. I don't need social media to share my life with.
Some of us rely upon it for contact with family and childhood friends who no longer live close to us
and thanks to social media I am able to share the latest news and photos concerning here grandchildren and great grandchildren
i have successfully brought together my childhood friends for more than 60 years where we can engage in group chat and reminiscing
so I am grateful to social media like Facebook and Instagram
I don't understand how anyone can say they don't do any social media when they are members of this site. What does Facebook do that this site doesn't do?
"so I am grateful to social media like Facebook and Instagram"
I am glad that you have a use for it, so do millions of other people, or at least think they do. As you say, it works for you, and that is all that matters. Enjoy!
"I don't understand how anyone can say they don't do any social media when they are members of this site"
If you don't understand the difference then ask Perrie what the difference is. I am sure she can explain it well enough for you to understand.
Thank you
I have a Facebook account but my use of it amounts to scrolling through it every few days and ignoring 99.9% of it. I will occasionally say Happy Birthday/Get Well or Happy Anniversary or something similar, but I don't post anything else and I don't get my news from Facebook.
I have too many backstabbing gossip harpies in my family who love to try to use anything that you say against you in the future.
honestly there is little difference - these are both social media sites where you can post updates on family, upload pictures, look at news, comment on articles or on other people's pages etc. You can connect with family and friends or make new friends and interact with each other - both sites have tools that are for these purposes. To all those who say "i don't do social media" - yes you actually do since you just commented on this site.
Well, based on looking at Facebook's privacy policies and looking at this sites privacy policies, I don't see a nickels worth of difference. The only difference I see is we have a much smaller number of members, but the privacy polices look pretty much the same.
If we had millions of members like Facebook then those 3rd party would be more interested in us. Actually, Facebook is one of the scripts that runs on this site. You don't see it, but it's here.
Its clear from this story that the Russians were most concerned with destabilizing the US political system, and in that they succeeded. Look at what this minuscule ad buy has done to the Democrats on in this country. They've lost their collective minds and done more damage to the body politic than Putin could have ever hoped for.
Well done Democrats, you've become Putin's most effective agents of espionage.
It was not any Democrats those illegal Russian Troll Farms were trying to get elected during our 2016 elections...
The gop is doing all it can to stop the investigations into Russian meddling because it was the gop witch profited.
It's obvious that there was no real Russian meddling in the election. There is zero evidence it changed even one vote.
Reality check Gregger! It's an established fact that Russia meddled in the election, and the idea that it could not possibly have changed a single vote is utterly ridiculous. Now, back to your alternative reality, here, take a donut with you.
Off topic "BF"
It is? Think about who you voted for in the November 2016 election. Is there anything that would have made you vote for the other person?
What has the GOP done specifically to stop ANY of the Russian investigations?
Well, to begin with, Nunes shut the gop congressional investigation down without investigating Russia...
Incorrect. Nunes recused himself from the Russia investigation
I get it. The Russian meddling changed votes and that can not be proven untrue.
You see, in the real world of justice, there has to be proof that the Russians were able to change votes, not evidence they weren't able to change votes. Sorry to inform you Lenny, but there is no evidence the Russians were able to change a single vote.
That you know of. Another funny quirk of the legal system is that prosecutors don't reveal what evidence they collected to the public.
LOL. It would be great if he had actually done so rather than merely claiming to do so.
I know liberal voters who didn't vote for Clinton based on targeted Russian propaganda they received online...
One just confessed to me the other day that he, "Fell for it', which he now regrets knowing that it was Russia.
Conaway says he'll keep running Russia probe even with Nunes cleared by ethics inquiry
The prosecutor doesn't have anything to do with that. The Intelligence Agencies have already told us they didn't change any votes. The prosecutor's job was to see if there was any collusion and it should have been just that, see if there was any collusion, not just Trump, but any collusion at all from anyone, but that's not what it has turned out to be, which it really never was that in the first place, it was and is a concerted effort to deny the voters of this country their choice of president of the United States of America, something that happens in Third World Countries, like Hillary said.
That's why we have to defeat the Democrats, who have been hijacked by the Left, who have one objective and one objective only and that is to turn this country into a Third World Country.
Gosh, and all along liberals have been telling us how smart and educated they are.
Guess not all of them!
LOL~!
"If American social media does not regulate itself regulation will be imposed upon American social media".
That is a quote attributed to JBB a member of The New Talkers. Folks are fed up with goddamn Russians.
It is not a question if Vlad Putin's Troll Army illegally interfered in our elections. Butt, will they pay legally?
Well, you know there are list of questionable sources anyone can choose to look at and decide whether something is true or not or even if the list itself is accurate. We can't prevent anyone for falling for fake news or even fake sites other than have the government come in and tell us what we can listen to or read. Now that is Orwellian and I don't really trust the government so much these days with all the corruption that has become so evident recently.
True This is where some personal responsibility enters in. Why would you trust this source is a great first question I ask myself. If I question the source, I question what the source says and need more personal verification before committing it to what it said before I consider it reality based.
Thanks for the decent reply Steve. Most people don't do that. I have been guilty, especially when I first started getting involved in this Social Media here of trusting sources that were way too biased in their opinions and often completely incorrect. Steve, you won't find many here who will admit that, but the average American Citizen doesn't vet their sources anywhere near the vetting that you, I and all the others on this site do.
We all know practically every source there seems to be and we all know where they stand in their articles and programs. I've come to realize almost all sources are biased, but that doesn't mean all biased sources are incorrect in their reporting or articles. Even the most biased sometimes gets it right.
Still we are polarized in own beliefs and choose the sites or other means of getting our information and ignore the possibility of the information possibly not being correct. And what's even worst, when the information is correct, we choose sides based on our own biased beliefs, supporting the information if it is our side who produced it and criticizing the information if it is the other side produced it.
It's seems to be pretty difficult to accept facts.
Good observation and very true. About a year ago I saw a documentary on "Changing people's minds" it was very enlightening.
They said that because we are constantly making decisions, that a human's brain tends to accumulate enough information about a subject that person feels they can reasonably make a good decision on it, we do. Then we tend to shut off any new information that contradicts our decision so we can move on to other decisions.
.............................................................
When I make a point to people having an opposing point of view on a subject and I want to back up my opinion or belief I always try to find that back up information from a source that I believe is acceptable for the recipients "seemingly" style of ideology.
If I'm making a point to a liberal I look for stuff on MSNBC if the person seems more conservative I look for my info on Fox.
Because like you said, I realize, " we are polarized in own beliefs and choose the sites or other means of getting our information"
I also fight the urge to operate a closed mid myself, Although I admit, it is a constant battle that seems to be increasing with age.
lol
That was a quite sensible comment. There are plenty of news sources that try to be objective and that give the whose and the whats and the wheres and the whys regarding their stories and their sources and their motives., What we are seeing now is a large percent of the commentators on NT who deny everything in the news. When the gop has the Presidency and holds majorities in both houses of Congress and a majority on the Supreme court it seems plain there are not going to be a lot of stories out there complaining about President Hillary Clinton and the Democratic majorities in Congress. The gop owns all government so the gop is in the hot seat. That goes with the territory. So, naturally the gop gets most of the press.
Rightwingers would be squeaking like scalded swamp rats if the situation were reversed and Putin had helped Clinton.
Calm down...have a cup of sweet tea and breathe deeply.
Everything that has been going on by the Left since Trump was elected, is what seems to have been in the ads.
"Firing people up against the Police" ?
"Firing people up against white people" ?
"Firing people up against The Wall" ?
"Firing People up about bad race relations" ?
Remember, the Left is loud when they get something concreted into their heads. Seems the ads were geared more to get folks against Trump, than for him....if you actually read what the article is saying, then looking at what was actually happening in real time.
Not a very Pro Trump thing now was it.
Reading is hard for some people.
And Comprehending what they couldn't read too.
You may try to spin it but that won't work because the facts are that Putin's Troll Army has been indicted by a US Federal Grand Jury for illegally hacking and influencing our American elections in the Fall of 2016 exclusively to illegally sway our presidential election against Democrats and HRC exclusively in Trump's and the gop's favor. So, now please return to the topic of this article which is regarding the anti-American propaganda and false news spread on American social media in Fall of 2016 or else go derail your own articles and bother someone else elsewhere. Thank You, JBB...
No one said they didn't try. Read your own Article JBB. It's what the "Left" has been doing since Trump was elected. I haven't seen anyone on the right wanting to "TAKE DOWN HISTORICAL THINGS", or blamed everyone not "Left" for their fuckups, have you ?
"Pussy Hats" and "Cop Killings" have been great so far huh !
We have a Women that was called to duty in the CIA, and the Fucking "WHITE LIBERAL MEN, and a few "LIBERAL (more white than not) WOMEN", don't want her there.
Is it because she's "White" ?
Is it because "She is a Women" ?
or
is it because "Trump likes "HER""?
Spinning Spinning Spinning Round-n-Round. Don't ya get dizzy doing that? Try selling that BS to Russians...
I'll take that as you are at a loss for words !
"Try selling that BS to Russians..."
Obama, Hillary and Kerry were in the business of selling to and paying our enemies !
Well then, don't take my word for it look it up yourself. The evidence if out there outside your RW bubble...
I always do.
What's your excuse ?
I provided links and sources and evidence. What is your excuse? Do you expect to be believed sans proof?
Do you have proof clearing those Russian trolls indicted in US courts for hacking the DNC and Mrs Clinton?
Many of these people sent money to Russia to support trump. Removed for Sweeping Generalization "BF"
You provided me the "Liberal" play book they are now using to excuse themselves for being "Dinks" !
Off Topic "BF"
Political farce
The farcical accusation that Russian ad manipulated the 2016 election
“The Russians, as far as we know, bought more than $100,000 in Facebook ads between June 2015 and May 2017. A little more than half was spent after last November, when, obviously, Donald Trump had already won.
The scale here is singularly unimpressive. A serious House campaign might spend $100,000 on digital. In a presidential campaign, the amount is a rounding error. The Trump campaign spent around $90 million on digital in 2016. Hillary Clinton employed a considerable digital staff, and announced she was spending $30 million on digital the last month of the campaign alone.
If tens of thousands of dollars was decisive amid this tsunami of tens of millions, the Russian trolls working somewhere in St. Petersburg should strike out on their own and start a political consultancy or an Internet publishing company. They are geniuses.
It doesn’t appear that much of the Russian material was explicitly advocating for Trump’s election, and some of it wasn’t even right-wing. One Russian Facebook page highlighted discrimination against Muslims. Another promoted anti-police videos for a Black Lives Matter audience. A pro-gay-rights page was called LGBT United.”
Um, I said most, not all. That's not a sweeping generalization.
Thanks. I use that a lot. I'll make sure in the future to bold my "MOST"s.
I dont write stuff to see it disappear or I'd have stayed at Fox...lol
So, what are we supposed to do? Is there going to be a list of kinds of speech we will outlaw on the internet? Will we close the internet off to anyone from another country?
Does anyone care about our concepts of free speech anymore?
Russian hackers and Putin's Troll Army illegally hacked the DNC, seven state's election systems and then used bots to spread misinformation and fake news and Russian State Propaganda to targeted votes in selected swing states in order to illegally influence our American Presidential election. That is not an American free speech issue. This was a crime of epic international proportions. What about this are you incapable of understanding?
We already know they did. The evidence was shown to the grand jury that indicted them for doing so...
The CIA says they did. The FBI says they did. Homeland Security says the did. Whose side are you on?
The DNC was the victim of illegal Russian hacking according to indictments handed down by US courts.
Prove it.
He is a vet, Skirting the CoC [ph]
Correct. As of now we have NO evidence presented to the American people that this ever occurred
the left used to despise the deep state. Now they accept everything they say as gospel truth without any evidence presented to the people
That was yesterday. Here he is today.
Is he really a "dirty cop", or are you just biased because he is investigating your messiah? Would he be a "dirty cop" if he was investigating Hillary? Pretty sure you would be singing his praises at that point.
So, we never, ever criticize the FBI?
You know they have 6 ways to Sunday to get you as Schumer told us. "When the government fears the people, you have Liberty. When the people fear the government, you have tyranny." He's a dirty cop and always has been. A person who will let innocent people rot in prison, knowing they are innocent and then not step forward to reveal the truth is a dirty cop. It took the courts to exonerate them.
And for those who don't know, four innocent men were sent to prison up here in Boston with the full knowledge of the FBI. Why? because they wanted to protect an informant who intentionally gave false testimony against them in a murder case. Revenge was the motive and ya the four were local Mafia guys, but they were innocent of the murder. Along came Mueller and all he cared about was protecting the reputation of the FBI and leaving those guys there until a court overturned the convictions. Two of those guys died in prison.
Here:
"Journalist Kevin Cullen wrote extensively about the FBI’s involvement with Bulger and raised concerns about the old case in a 2011 article in Boston.com after Obama asked Congress to make an exception to allow Mueller to stay on two-extra years beyond the mandated 10 year limit as FBI director.
Cullen said in his story that Mueller who was first an assistant US attorney, “then as the acting US attorney in Boston” had written “letters to the parole and pardons board throughout the 1980s opposing clemency for the four men framed by FBI lies. Of course, Mueller was also in that position while Whitey Bulger was helping the FBI cart off his criminal competitors even as he buried bodies in shallow graves along the Neponset.”
In 2001, those four men, who were convicted in 1965 of Teddy Deegan’s murder were exonerated by the courts. It was discovered that the FBI withheld evidence from the court to protect their informant that would have cleared the men, according to reports . At the time, the bureau buried the truth to protect Vincent “Jimmy’’ Flemmi, their informant, who was the brother of Stevie Flemmi, a partner of Bulger.
Coleen Rowley, a former FBI special agent and former Minneapolis Division legal counsel of the FBI, wrote an Op-Ed in the Huffington Post last year No, Robert Mueller and James Comey Aren’t Heroes stated that when the truth about Bulger “was finally uncovered through intrepid investigative reporting and persistent, honest judges, U.S. taxpayers footed a $100 million court award to the four men framed for murders committed by (the FBI operated) Bulger gang.”
When it's justified, absolutely. I am just not seeing the conspiracy here. Honestly, if anything Comey damaged Clinton far more than he damaged trump. Trump and clinton were both under investigation at the same time, yes? Yes. So why did comey announce to the world that clinton was under investigation but he said nothing about trump at all? I keep hearing how he helped clinton....and if that's help...I would hate to see NOT helping.
Really? Explain why Andrew McCabe is gone or why Peter Strozk had to be removed from the Mueller Investigation or why opposition research was doctored to look like intelligence and used to get FISA warrants ???
Honestly, if anything Comey damaged Clinton far more than he damaged trump.
You think the Clinton e-mail investigation was conducted fairly?
I imagine you can't understand why Comey felt the need to announce he was re-opening the Clinton investigation when he did? Right?
The answer to that is that Clinton e-mails, and yes, some were CLASSIFIED, were found on Anthony Weiner's labtop. Had that been fully investigated when it happened, there probably would have been no need for the announcement, at least in Comey's mind. The problem was that Andrew McCabe decided to sit on it without investigating until after the election. When Comey found out, about a month before election day, he realized that he had no idea what was in those e-mails. According to Comey, if he said nothing, and damaging classified info was later found, he would be accused of protecting Clinton so she could win. Thus Comey made another Comey decision.
Trump and clinton were both under investigation at the same time, yes?
NO, According to Comey, the FBI investigation of Russian interference, included the Trump campaign that began in July of 2016, did not include Trump. He told Trump that on 3 occasions and has said it repeatedly since then. I think Iv'e said it here on NT a dozen times. It is at the heart of Trump's problem with Comey because Comey wouldn't make that little detail public.
After reading some of the responses , sounds to me like there are some that are in favor of some form of state controlled censorship( unacceptable) which , the 1st is meant to protect against. and I say that because once a news story is picked up by the news agencies , even if its rumor it becomes protected once reported no matter where it origionates be it conus or non conus , sadly many fail to do their own vetting and discovery.
So when it's proven that Russia DID try to influence our election process, the right falls back on, "well, they didn't actually change any votes!!!". BS. Anyone that has ever once bought a product because of a commercial they saw on the telly proves that votes can be swayed. And if votes cannot be swayed, why all the political campaign adds?
*crickets*
No crickets from me. How many people do you know who changed their vote? How many people have come forward and said publicly they changed their vote? I don't know anyone and I bet no one on this site knows a soul who changed their vote.
Based on what? Like I said, why all the campaign ads if they never change a single vote?
Does anyone care about our concepts of free speech anymore?
Free speech is the freedom to agree or disagree.
Here are some of the tweets, Instagram and Facebook ads.
I've been looking at these tweets, Instagram and Facebook postings and although I know there are many more to look at and I, for one, don't have the time or interest in doing it, but from the postings etc I have viewed, it seems almost all of them are meant to sow racial discord in this country. And I think that was something in this article that was stated.
Examples:
The last two above are basically the same. I guess the ad was posted in two different places.
Let's move on...
Let's move on....
I know this comment is long. I hope it isn't too long to be a comment, but the most common thing I saw as I was looking at these was:
People Who Match: Interests: Black nationalism, Pan-Africanism, Police
misconduct, African-American culture, African-American Civil Rights
Movement (1954-68), African-American history, Black Consciousness
Movement, Martin Luther King III, Stop Police Brutality or Black (Color)
And I didn't pick and choose what I've posted here. And keep in mind I haven't posted but 3 that were after the election. I intend on looking at some of those after the election, but there's no way to fully critique all of these ads by looking at only a few. At the beginning I posted the first 3 listed, then later in this comment I decided it would be better to try and post ads that had similar dates As you can see, the discourse continued after the election.
We can read all about it, but unless we actually put the time and effort into reading them or at least a few of them, we still remain ignorant. For each month they are not in order and you have to look for similar dates. I would have liked them to be more orderly or in a consecutive order by date.
Actually, I had to make several comments and they're pretty long as well.
Go to this link and look at some of them yourselves. If you pay attention, you'll notice postings that have similar start dates are composed of ads that are diametrically opposite of each other, thereby proving the main objective of discourse and mostly racial discourse.
I may put some of the postings that came later, after the election. I put a few in this comment but there are a lot more. I would be willing to bet the discourse continues.
Check them out for yourself.
There are so many duplicates in all of these, it reminds me of going to the pharmacy looking for some medicine for a cold when the whole store only contains a half dozen ingredients, but hundreds of products.
Here some after the election, promoting Donald Trump. No
Enough of that. Only viewing a few, I find there are a tremendous number of duplicates, many rerunning at different dates. If this is what the whole 3500 plus are like, then there's probably not even 500 individual unique ads or whatever they want to call it.