After Trump questioned the integrity of the elections
Russia announces the victory of its mission to question their democracy
Trump supporters gather to protest the election result in Maricopa County, Arizona.
A.F.B.
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About an hour before the first polls opened in the United States on Election Day, a Kremlin news outlet published an interview with the head of Russia's foreign intelligence service, Sergei Naryshkin, which helped orchestrate the Russian attempt to interfere in the 2016 elections. , And has struggled to suppress a smile during his remarks.
"Regardless of who wins, the social crisis in the United States will deepen," Naryshkin said. "Whoever loses will refuse to accept the result, which pushes the radicals to take to the streets."
"This big disagreement will dominate the entire system," he added.
And he continues, "Therefore, this disease will afflict American society, and thus the disease of the American state will continue."
Statement of intent
This statement was more than an expectation of Nareshkin, who took over the leadership of Russia's foreign intelligence service in October 2016 at the height of Russian efforts to sabotage the US elections, and his speech was also a statement of intent.
Russia's goal in 2016 was not just to help US President Donald Trump win the presidency, but to undermine public confidence in the democratic system as a whole, and four years later the president himself says and does things that have the same effect.
Since Election Day, Trump has repeatedly questioned the democratic process, and prematurely declared his victory on Wednesday morning, and the next day he tweeted: "Stop counting," even with regard to the millions of votes that have not been counted and approved.
On Thursday evening, at the White House, Trump said: "It is a corrupt system," which sparked criticism from Republican Senator Mitt Romney, who said that the president's statement "harms the cause of freedom here and around the world."
This is exactly what worries the American experts in Russian propaganda.
Mark Polimropoulos, the official who oversaw the CIA’s operations in Europe and Asia before his retirement in 2019, says: “It seems that the Russians are meeting now and pondering: This goes beyond our wild dreams.”
This sentiment, which the Russians feel, may not last much. The presidential candidate, Joe Biden, pledged to "impose strict, large and permanent restrictions" on any foreign interference in the vote, if he was lucky enough to reach the position of president.
American officials from the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and other agencies have repeatedly testified that Russia is interfering in the 2020 elections, and it appears that the Kremlin has become concerned about the risk of an American violent response. In an assessment published on September 3, the US Department of Homeland Security stated that the Kremlin’s goal is In 2020 it was "undermining public confidence in the electoral process."
Artificial scandal
The Kremlin pursued the same goal in 2016, when it launched a concerted campaign of hacks and disinformation leaks that culminated in the release of stolen emails from the campaign of former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
This time Trump's allies launched their own efforts, with President Rudy Giuliani's attorney playing a pioneering role when he fabricated another email scandal targeting Biden and his son in the weeks leading up to the vote.
The operation was not secret. Giuliani announced this on his YouTube channel, and spoke about sources who told him about the parties that supply Biden’s son with whiskey and cigars, and about the alleged corruption of what he called the "Biden family".
One of these sources was the Ukrainian parliamentarian Andrei Dirkash, a graduate of the main spying academy in Moscow, who was sanctioned by the US government in September as an "active Russian agent." On election day, Giuliani appeared on RT, an English-language channel affiliated with the Kremlin. , To attack Biden and the authority to vote by mail.
Giuliani's appearance on a Russian propaganda tool seemed especially rude and strange on the day Americans went to the polls, but from Moscow's perspective, the scene was partly the point in this regard, says Professor of Russian political warfare at Nebo Haven University in Connecticut, Matthew Schmidt. He also says, "Russia often designs operations that can be easily detected." The goal is that "Russia wants to leave its mark everywhere and portray the American political system as so weak and disorganized that Russia can manipulate it from a distance, using any Something more complicated by a campaign on social media, and a few provocateurs ready for it. ”
Changing the election outcome is not the only purpose of these processes. Rather, what is important is for the world to realize that the voting process is tainted by doubts.
Russian trick
During the 2018 midterm elections, for example, one of the concepts propagated by Russian "malicious influencers" was that Russia had taken control of American voting systems, according to the US Department of Homeland Security's September 3 assessment, another Russian hoax. US law enforcement said it did not find any evidence of vote tampering, whether by foreign or domestic parties.
But Russia is using its ability to manipulate the elections of Western democracies specifically in order to discredit them, as Alex Younger, the former head of Britain's foreign intelligence service, M16, told Time magazine, after his retirement from espionage at the end of September: “Russia feels threatened by the durability Our alliances in the current environment and the quality of our democratic institutions ».
He continues, "It seeks to discredit us, and it uses the intelligence services to achieve this goal."
Polimropoulos made the same impression during his interaction with Russian security officials, and says that they suffer "insecurity and feel the desire to be equal with us", which appears in the way in which they tried to assert even during meetings on counterterrorism and other issues of common concern, that The American system of government is more corrupt than the Russian system.
"It has always been a matter of destroying us, and finding a way to say: The American system is dysfunctional, it is incompetent," Polimropoulos says.
As long as the US president continues to present this message himself, Putin and the intelligence chief can sit down and enjoy the show.
Americans are still suffering from a state of polarization
On election day morning, Americans found themselves in front of a real torrent of opinion poll data indicating the possibility - indeed the possibility - of a blue wave that the country had not seen, since the candidate at the time, and the American president after Barack Obama in 2008 defeated his rival John McCain, or when he ousted Also, the former candidate, and later President Bill Clinton, has the hopes of his rival, Bob Dole.
But when the votes began to appear, and hopes that the blue wave would sweep the scene as quickly as that which occurred in Florida and Texas after their votes were counted, the election results became momentarily blurred, and the basic national facts became clearer.
Once again, the polls showed it wrong, which indicates that America is still deeply polarized, and that few voters can be persuaded.
A lot rarely happens in America and the country does not change much, but in 2020 alone there are many events that did not change much in the national scene, the House of Representatives tried to isolate the President, and the Corona pandemic killed more than 230,000 Americans and infected an untold number, The country endured a historic economic meltdown, and the horrific police action in Minneapolis escalated ethnic divisions in America, sparking protests and civil unrest in cities and towns from coast to coast.
All of these events are uniquely shocking, and have made 2020 especially painful for the American public, yet politically speaking, these seismic events have led to little to no political change.
If we take a look at the polls, in 2016 Donald Trump won 58% of the white vote, and in 2020 he won 57% of the vote, and in 2016 Hillary Clinton won 89% of the black vote, and in 2020 Joe Biden won 87%. In 2016, Clinton won 66% of the Hispanic vote, and in 2020 Joe Biden won 66% of their vote.
Overall margins have adjusted very little - and these slight adjustments could make the difference between win and lose in closely divided swing states - but the overall message was crystal clear, our tribal loyalties remain very strong.
It is worth noting here the role of the Electoral College and the Senate.
The Republican Party almost certainly has lost the popular vote for the sixth time in its last seven presidential elections, yet it has no real reason to believe the Presidency or the Senate is slipping out of its grip.
In fact, it seems that the Republican Party control of the Senate is likely, and the result is a feeling of growing political frustration with the majority of the people, and they have no real path to reform a system they cannot control.
The Republican Party almost certainly has lost the popular vote for the sixth time in its last seven presidential elections, yet it has no real reason to believe that the presidency or the Senate is slipping out of its grasp.
A lot rarely happens in America and the country does not change much, but in 2020 alone there are many events that did not change much in the national scene, the House of Representatives tried to isolate the President, and the Corona pandemic killed more than 230,000 Americans, and infected countless The country endured a historic economic collapse, and the horrific police work in Minneapolis led to the escalation of racial divisions in America.
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