You're making it sound like a witchhunt but it was in fact extremely fishy.
"The investigation found there were over 100 contacts between Trump campaign advisors and individuals affiliated with the Russian government, before and after the election, but the evidence was insufficient to show an illegal conspiracy."[1]
I'd encourage you to at least read through the Wikipedia articles on the Mueller report before shouting "zero evidence" so loudly.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#Russian_interfe...
> The Mueller Report did not find any evidence of collusion, but did find two main efforts by the Russians to interfere in the 2016 presidential campaign.
If you read the report, note that they found multiple cases where people were interested in colluding (e.g. the Trump Tower meeting where they wanted to get dirt from some Russian lawyers) but did not find enough evidence proving intent to bring formal charges, in part because the administration was successfully able to prevent testimony and evidence collection. That’s very different from exoneration.
Mueller himself disagreed with this summary, saying "the attorney general had inadequately portrayed their conclusions" and "the Barr letter "did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance" of the findings of the special counsel investigation that he led. "There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation""[1]
Causing confusion was, of course, the point. It allowed everyone in the President's orbit to say "See? No collusion", knowing that the media would amplify it. Everyone who was already inclined to believe the President would rest assured that this whole thing was a Democratic witchhunt. And when the real report came out later they would disregard it.
Of course when even the redacted report came out, it had some key differences with the summary that Barr wrote:
"The New York Times reported instances in which the Barr letter omitted information and quoted sentence fragments out of context in ways that significantly altered the findings in the report, including:
Omission of words and a full sentence that twice suggested there was knowing and complicit behavior between the Trump campaign and Russians that stopped short of direct coordination, which may constitute conspiracy."[2]
It wasn't just a politically motivated probe. Just because evidence "beyond reasonable doubt" could not be found doesn't mean the crime never happened. And it certainly doesn't mean looking into it was "pysops" or "political hysteria" or "Trump derangement syndrome".
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#Mueller's_react...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#Redacted_report...
Here's Mueller lying to the world to justify a war: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTDO-kuOGTQ
Dirty tricks and psyops. Fooled entire nations, they just need people to swallow it down and they maintain power.
But at the same time you linked me to an NPR article about the initial summary of Mueller report that said "No collusion", which you believed. But then the actual report came out and it said "Quite possibly collusion" and therefore Mueller's a liar? That's some pretty impressive doublethink.
It's clear no amount of evidence matters to you so I won't try any more.
What makes you so sure you aren't the one being psyops-ed by whichever media source you trust?
You hold diametrically opposing opinions simulataneously ("No collusion!" && "Mueller's a liar!") to fit your image of a charismatic leader. You believe in some amorphous "they" who are silently manipulating everyone behind the scenes. These are all classic signs of being psypops-ed.
Many outside of the US political circus viewed the whole Russiagate affair as a joke, independents who don't have strong adherence to any party can see the farce.
Even some of the most ardent journalists who pushed the collusion narrative admitted that they were not practicing real journalism, they called it 'meta-journalism' I'm not joking. They actually said that they don't have time to check facts and counter narratives need to be spun quickly to combat Trump lies... regardless of facts. (Seth Abramson)
I really don't blame people for being so twisted on this. It was 3 years of nonstop misinformation blaring from every major news outlet. The CIA/FBI officials leaking to the media as anon sources should have been a clue, but not everyone is keen to this.
"If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you do read it, you're misinformed." - Twain
Who said anything about a typo?
> Many outside of the US political circus viewed the whole Russiagate affair as a joke
"Many" is a weasel word. Who? Why does their opinion matter? Do they have subject matter expertise?
> Even some of the most ardent journalists
More weasel words. What's an "ardent" journalist?
> Seth Abramson
I don't know who that is, so I had to look him up. He's not a journalist. Wikipedia describes him as a "political columnist". The Atlantic, that bastion of lefty liberalness, called him a "conspiracy theorist".[1]
You still haven't addressed my central point. Either the Mueller report is false. Which means saying "the Mueller report says 'No collusion'" is incorrect, but AG Barr tried to say that nonetheless. Or it's true. Which means there quite possibly was collusion and the media attention was warranted.
You seem to simultaneously believe that the Mueller report said "No collusion" and that's true (and therefore the media are idiots), but also that Mueller's a liar and can't be trusted. Which is it?
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_Abramson#Claims_about_Pre...
You said both of these things. Please explain how they can both be true.
Why would you use quotes when I never said that?
If you didn't imply "Mueller can't be trusted" what did you mean by this comment where you said "Here's Mueller lying to the world": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25381931?
On the other hand, if you agree that Mueller can be trusted please refer to my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25377886 I showed how Mueller disagreed in very strong terms about "no collusion" as a conclusion. And how "no collusion" was the lie (Barr's summary letter) spread widely before the truth (the actual report) could come out.
You're either a troll arguing in bad faith. In which case, I hope you find better things to do with your life. Or you can't see the logical fallacies in your own worldview, which is a sure sign of being brainwashed by your news sources. In that case, I hope you are able to see the truth one day.
Is it as bad as what Trump is doing? No. Is it as bad as what Democrats did in 2000, 2004, and 2016 put together? Well my schadenfreude meter is pretty pegged.
Hillary said the election was fraudulent from day one all the way up to current election.
Or how on October 26, 2020, PBS (hardly a right-wing or conservative news agency), aired a documentary [2] on the problems with the Dominion voting machines showing how you could just copy the QR codes and they could be re-scanned and count as a legitimate vote, no major hacking needed here. Here's an excerpt: -
"J. Alex Halderman:
By analyzing the structure of the Q.R. codes, I have been able to learn that there's nothing that stops an attacker from just duplicating one, and the duplicate would count the same as the original bar code.
Miles O’Brien:
And in late September, another concern came to light. During testing, election workers found half the names of the 21 candidates for Senate intermittently disappeared from screens during the review phase.
Dominion sent out a last-minute software patch.
J. Alex Halderman:
I'm worried that the Georgia system is the technical equivalent to the 737 MAX. They have just made a last-minute software change that might well have unintended consequences and cause even more severe problems on Election Day."
For me, it's the individual states changing their own election laws via unconstitutional methods right before the election. I think that is widespread fraud without a doubt, and those votes need to be audited or discounted.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/27/ted-kennedy-soviet-union-r...
[2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/will-georgias-new-voting-m...
Democrats on the House Judiciary committee released a report claiming that claimed Republicans cheated in the Ohio recount: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/something-rotten-o...
A fun thing about the 2004 theories is that they were based mainly on exit polls showing Kerry won. (Bush was ahead by 2 points in the actual vote.) Today we know that exit polls are probably unreliable and may well underestimate conservative votes.
Just to keep this from noodling, I'll ask directly: are you really claiming that the Democrats seriously challenged the results of the 2004 election?
Jerry Nadler is a tool.
There was Russian hacking, — as best we can tell, that’s where the Podesta emails came from. No one serious alleges that they tampered with the vote tallies, but we can credibly say they swung the election.
“Asset” is frustratingly vague word for Democrats to use, but a lot of the collusion narrative has panned out. The Mueller report revealed that the Trump campaign welcomed Russian interference, stopping just short of alleging outright collusion.
Meanwhile — basically everything Republicans allege now is laughably false, and many are outright calling for a coup.
https://evidence2020.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/strong-evidenc...
Hillary is still going around claiming they stole the election from her.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/26/four-years-later-bitter...