Donald Trump screws up and admits Russia rigged the 2016 election for him
For all his noise and threats and bombast, Donald Trump usually ends up being too clever by half – particularly of late. While railing against a Democratic Senator today, Trump screwed up and flat out admitted that Russia rigged the 2016 presidential election for him.
Donald Trump posted this tweet this afternoon: “Rumor has it that Senator Joe Donnelly of Indiana is paying for Facebook ads for his so-called opponent on the libertarian ticket. Donnelly is trying to steal the election? Isn’t that what Russia did.” To be clear, this is a misrepresentation of the real story in Indiana. In any case, the real upshot here is that Trump just screwed up and admitted that Russia used Facebook ads to rig the election for him. Within the context of the Trump campaign’s voter data arm Cambridge Analytica, this is significant.
Earlier this year Facebook banned Cambridge Analytica after discovering that the company had stolen private user data from fifty million Facebook users. That made it fairly easy to parse that the company may have been using that stolen data to run misleading targeted ads on Trump’s behalf, aimed at tricking vulnerable voters during the 2016 election.
If it can be proven that Cambridge Analytica was working with Russia in any way, there’s your Trump-Russia election collusion. Donald Trump’s tweet appears to acknowledge that Russia was indeed involved in this effort. In other words, this tweet reads like a confession to felony conspiracy against the United States.
