Admittedly, I wasn’t following as closely in 16, but I really don’t remember much of this coming from authorities at all. Was it senators and Ms. Clinton herself? Because that is what is happening this year
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I'm not disagreeing with you, I respect your views and feelings and the importance of the issues. But HN's mandate is curious, thoughtful conversation about topics of intellectual interest. When the thread gets reaches this degree of fiery political minutiae, it has left that far behind. In fact it's at the far end of the solution space from ontopicness.