"SO HOW DID TRUMP CHEAT???"

It's a popular question.

But ultimately I believe that corporate media (who I have complained about endlessly) bears this burden, but also social media (who I have not complained about nearly as much, because it's been well-covered.) First of all, why do I not think Trump cheated?

Because I can't conceive of a way he could have done this. And the thing that's always made me good at the security part of my job is I that I have a very devious mind.

The problem is that Trump did well in all the states.

I'm glad that, Rolling Stone led @maddow and @marceelias to focusing attention on the GOP plans to disrupt election certification.

But I think there's more to it than simple refusal to certify, and there's a danger in assuming that's all this is.
msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/… They tried this in 2020, and 2022. Was the scale smaller? Yes. But these efforts didn't fail do to lack of scale. They failed because there was no "there" there. There was no basis on which to refuse to certify.

I'm stuck on the parallels between Thiel collecting voter data from Facebook in 2016 and Musk collecting voter data from online advertising in 2024.

Russians claimed they used Cambridge Analytica data to microtarget people to swing the election. For the most part, people don't put a lot of credence into this view. That they attempted, in broad terms, it is well-established. But the details aren't known and most people knee-jerk discount the notion that it could have had an effect.

What is Trump's 2024 coup plan?

We already know quite a lot.

We know they have a plan (a _secret_ plan) because they brag about it.

https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1816573433741795598

We also know that because NYT wrote an article about this "unprecedented" effort.

They're putting a massive effort (bigger than last time) into dealing with losing.
nytimes.com/2024/07/13/us/…

I love a conspiracy theory as much as anybody, but please hold off on your "staged" "false flag" bullshit and let's just wait and find out what actually happened.

Too. Soon. On the other hand, I am willing to look at things that can be rationally observed. In the primary video out there, the women just above Trump's right elbow begins to drop at the same time he reaches for his ear, before almost anyone else reacts.

Is anybody seeing any left-wing ads?

Is anybody seeing any ads for anything that's NOT a right-wing topic-pushing ad?

Example. Under the replies to a @MuellerSheWrote posting, these are all of the ads I found:





I got so tired of saying that Musk purchased Twitter to turn it into a propaganda platform that I stopped saying it. Plus everybody knows it now.

But, as one of the frogs, it's gotten a lot hotter in here without me noticing. This isn't normal.

Since Stephanopoulos brought up the ABC news poll, I thought it was worth revisiting who does their polling.

It's Langer Research, a well-known and well-respected polling company that's also used by CBS, Pew Research, and others. In 2019, Langer hired a literal Russian propagandist into their senior staff. She was trained in Russia's Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In other words, she was trained in propaganda by the Russian government.

I really thought early on that Weiss was less of a pure political hack than Durham, but increasingly his prosecution is turning into every bit the clown show that Durham's was. The progression was different. Durham packed his filings with obviously false propaganda right from the start — allegations that were the heart of right-wing propaganda, but were never charged.

This probably isn't an original observation but... a side effect of AI use by law firms is that our judicial system will be overwhelmed by AI-generated content volume. The fundamental problem is the assymetry of "AI" (at present): Large language models can automate generating content, but can't automate reading and analyzing it.

So the number and size of filings will increase.

So last November, NYT did an experiment. It was described in a subscriber-only newsletter.

The results were (to me) unsurprising. But also very disturbing. The "experiment" was a pretty blunt instrument. And the results were not at all surprising. It's almost like they asked about "evil" vs "not evil", and in that sense it seems pretty pointless. But that's not what disturbed me.

A superthread of all my thoughts on ballot removal in the past couple of months. Starting with this take, that I _think_ was overly optimistic. But I DO still think it's possible.

And I think the reasons WHY they SHOULD do this still hold.

https://twitter.com/thomasafine/status/1744846211301974424

I ended up (and am still at) a more pessimistic view, but apparently not as pessimistic as most people. I _still_ don't think it'll be 9-0 to overturn ballot removal.

https://twitter.com/thomasafine/status/1755924094896202192

By 2013, Maria Butina had already wormed her way into NRA culture. By 2014 she was in Indianopolis (and South Dakota?) for an NRA conference where she'd met with several NRA leaders, as well as members of Congress. In 2015 she was asked Trump a question at a press conference. In 2018 she was (officially) identified as a Russian agent. By which time she'd "interfaced" with numerous members of Congress. We knew FOR SURE at that time that Russia was targeting members of Congress. Republican members of Congress.

Let's do a brief timeline on the Biden/Shokin allegations.

Keep in mind Shokin was removed in February 2016.

The earliest whiff I've found even vaguely related is in Peter Schweizer's Secret Empires book, published in March of 2018. Schweizer in a broad hand-wavey way says that the Burisma investigation coming to an end seems weird. He never mentions Shokin, or a bribe, and focuses on 2017.

Who released the photo — instead of the full video — to the press? Assuming Bowman is being truthful, I suspect the video will back his story.

The body language of figuring out a confusing sign on an unfamiliar door is very different than maliciously pulling an alarm. But there's something funny going on about the signage, and I'm honestly not sure who is faking us out here.

https://twitter.com/MattBruenig/status/1708305191575900440

I have never seen the right-wing and/or Russian propaganda networks go as hard in on rewriting history as I am seeing this past week with Shokin.

Jon Solomon and the Murdoch rags are leading the charge, providing every possible out-of-context fact that they can spin their way. One angle is covered in this this thread, which exposes that what @nypost claimed was praise for Shokin was really praise for NABU, and anti-corrupt group that Shokin tried to block, which only existed because of corruption from people like Shokin.

https://twitter.com/thomasafine/status/1702031861864874065

My God Grassley is embracing the Science Fiction Double Feature Bribery Scheme. Why do I call it a Science Fiction Double Feature Bribery Scheme?

Because to make it work, Biden would have to have BOTH a time machine AND a mind control ray.

And even with both of these in hand, you can't construct a sensible plot that would fit into only a single movie.

Fucking Republicans.

Let me remind you that Trump was impeached for:
1. Attempting to extort a foreign leader into interfering in a U.S. election (which by the way would have give Putin leverage over Zelensky in Ukraine).
2. Orchestrating a coup to overturn an election. Republicans don't even have a clue exactly what they're going to impeach Biden for, but they'll move forward anyway.

Seriously.

Not. A. Fucking. Clue.

To fully appreciate the latest embarrassing debacle at Spoutible, you have to give the context of going all the way back to January, which is when, according to Bouzy, they began using @detectify to scan their website. You have to go back that far, because in February, when Spoutible was released to the public, it was revealed that the software was based on some shady 89 dollar Russian software thing.

AND the software was exposing users' personal data to the public.

What the fuck?

https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1669393498389512192

I found a "news report" that claims that Mykola Lisin's wife just died. It seems like it is entirely based on (their interpretation) of his newsmax statement. They don't even have her name. "Mykola Lisin wife".

The report is at snbc13 dot com but I'm not linking to shit.

It's a massive failure of U.S. media that we are even talking about this.

The core premise (that Shokin removal was a corrupt Biden move) is provably false and always has been.

https://twitter.com/NoLieWithBTC/status/1669336202959257603

By the time Biden asked Ukraine to remove him, so had over a hundred members of Ukraine's parliament, 25,000 citizens (in a petition), (at least) two US ambassadors, and the EU ambassador. Before Biden threatened to withhold aid, EU had threatened to withhold $1.2B.

Thunder. I'm surrounded.