Let's clear something up once and for all: We have no idea what impact the Russian operations had on our election.
Why? Because it's impossible to get inside voters' brains.
Let's say you went to a grassroots pro-Trump rally and little did you know it was organized by a Russian intelligence operation. At that rally, you were convinced: Trump's the candidate for you.
Or let's say you saw anti-Hillary tweets coming from what looked like an official local GOP Twitter handle, but it was actually being operated out of St. Petersburg ...
We're never ever going to be able to measure the impact of all of these interactions. The US government is never going to say: Here's how this changed things.
To suggest it had no impact is ludicrous.
Trump and Pence and others in his administration keep repeating that Russian interference had no impact on the outcome. That's simply not true.
The Intelligence Community has said that it has found no evidence that actual votes were tampered with, which is an entirely separate issue.
When Trump says (as he just tweeted today), "The results of the election were not impacted" ... he downplays the significance of what did happen. Why guard against something if it had no impact?
"He railed that the intelligence couldn’t be trusted and scoffed at the suggestion that his candidacy had been propelled by forces other than his own strategy, message and charisma." washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/…
