RUSH: I think there was a bombshell yesterday in testimony up on Capitol Hill, and this is so far underneath the radar. Let me tell you what happened.
And they want to get to the bottom of how the Russians sabotaged social media. So they called these tech companies and the tech companies sent their lawyers up there. And do you know what the lawyers said? “Top lawyers from Facebook and Twitter said Tuesday that Russian-linked posts and advertisements placed on the social networks after Election Day sought to sow doubt about President Donald Trump’s victory. Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch told a Senate Judiciary panel that content generated by a Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency after Nov. 8 centered on ‘fomenting discord about the validity of [Trump’s] election.'”
Now, folks, that is 180 degrees out of phase with what the conventional thinking is. The conventional thinking is that the Russians wanted Trump to be elected, they were scared to death or whatever of Hillary, and they wanted Trump because Trump’s an idiot, Trump’s a boob, Trump’s blackmailable, whatever the reasons that we’ve been given.
So Facebook and Twitter, what they’re trying to do now is explain why the vast majority of the ads and retweets the Russians were supposed to be behind occurred after the election, not before, and that those ads attempted to undermine Trump, not promote him. This, to me, is a bombshell! And it’s under the radar. Nobody’s reporting it or talking about. A, it doesn’t further the Trump colluded with Russia narrative, number one. Number two, it’s the exact opposite of what these senators wanted, on the Democrat side, to hear.
It’s so odd to have these guys up there saying that Russian ads appeared after the election. It looks to me like they went to great pains to not have to admit that the Russians were trying to undermine Trump until they had to. This is the exact opposite of what everybody has been led to believe. This is actually an amazing bombshell that completely — well, on the surface, it undermines the Trump-Russia collusion narrative. And I’m telling you it is going to be ignored. It’s published in The Politico, but you don’t see any Politico guests, you don’t see these Politico writers on TV today talking about this testimony.
Somebody needs to call Robert Mueller. Somebody needs to call somebody. Somebody needs to call James Comey. Somebody needs to call James Clapper. Somebody needs to call John Brennan at CIA and say, “Did you hear what these lawyers –” this is under-oath testimony. So let’s file this away. I’m gonna put it over here in the remnant Stack and I’m gonna keep it aside. I just want to see how long, if ever, it takes this one to surface.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, I mentioned to you this bombshell. I have the audio. I want you to hear this. This, to me, again, top lawyers from Facebook and Twitter testified before a congressional committee that Russia-linked posts and advertisements placed on Facebook, Twitter, and so forth after Election Day sought to undermine Trump’s victory, to delegitimize it. What makes this a bombshell is that up ’til now everybody — including Facebook and Twitter — has tried to lead us to believe that Trump was colluding with Russia and that Russia was buying ads to try to convince people to vote against Hillary!
In fact, everything is the exact opposite.
Russia was arranging for ads to run on these networks after the election promoting the idea that Trump had colluded, that he had cheated. They were undermining him. Here’s the actual testimony from one of the lawyers, Colin Stretch. This is the Senate Judiciary Committee on Crime and Terrorism, the hearing on social media and Russian meddling in the election. Colin Stretch, the vice president/general counsel for Facebook testifying. Lindsey Grahamnesty with the question: “Did you find activity by foreign actors after the election? What happened after the election?”
STRETCH: Following the election, the activity we’ve seen really continued, uh, in the sense that if you view the activity as a whole, we saw this concerted effort to sow division and discord. In the wake of the election — and now President Trump’s election — we saw a lot of activity directed at fomenting discord about the validity of his election.
And the guy said, “No, no, no. The stuff after the election was trying to undermine him. Oh, no, they were running ads on our network and others and they were trying to sow doubt about his victory.” Why are we just now hearing this? I mean, it literally goes against the grain of every premise associated with this story, and one more. It’s Charlie Rose on PBS last night. His guest is Philip Rucker, who is the chief White House correspondent for Washington Post, and they’re talking about Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling and they had this little back and forth…
ROSE: The general consensus is — uh, correct me if I’m wrong — so far no one has seen hard evidence of collusion.
RUCKER: That’s right. There’s a lot of smoke but there does not appear — as far as we know publicly — to be any direct evidence of collusion. But that’s not to say it doesn’t exist. That’s not to say Mueller hasn’t found something that we just don’t know about.
ROSE: What’s the biggest question about this for you right now?
RUCKER: Frankly, it’s what Mueller knows and what does he have and if there is any harder evidence of collusion.
RUSH: See, I told you! They are so invested in this. They’re so invested in this hoax. They are so convinced that Trump colluded. They believed it for a year. It’s in their bloodstream. It’s in the DNA. So Mueller announces his indictments and he shows his cards on what he has on Manafort and the other guy, and there’s nothing, and what’s this guy’s reaction?
(impression) “Well, frankly, my biggest hope is that Mueller knows — and — and — and does have evidence and is withholding it — uh, harder evidence of collusion. Uh, it doesn’t exist yet. It’s not to say it doesn’t exist, but we haven’t seen it yet. It’s not to say Mueller hasn’t found something, but we don’t know about it. But we really hope he’s got it; he just hasn’t shown it yet.” He sounds like a kid on Christmas morning who has opened everything, and is still convinced the parents have hidden what he really wanted and hounds them for the rest of the day to tell him where it is.
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