Donald Trump Jr gets into bed with the Russian bots
Public opinion is still split as to whether Donald Trump Jr was actively conspiring with the Russian government during the election because he was just that evil, or just that stupid. If the increasingly idiotic conspiracy drivel he posts on Twitter is an indication, he might indeed simply be an idiot who doesn’t quite understand what treason is. Today Junior did something which either showed us just how naive and stupid he is, or just how complicit he is with the Russians.
Over the past thirty-six hours Donald Trump Jr has posted four tweets and retweets that used the hashtag #walkaway. It’s supposed to be the official hashtag for the people who are abandoning the Democratic Party in protest of how poorly liberals are treating Donald Trump. As there is no real-world evidence whatsoever that any such movement exists, the whole thing has come off as suspicious at best. Sure enough, it’s turned out to be an easily documented Russian bot conspiracy.
Respected political reporter Dave Weigel did a little digging, and found that the #walkaway hashtag was being driven by Twitter accounts that were either clearly identifiable as bots, or clearly identifiable as newly created fake accounts. It’s long been widely documented that when bots are used in organized fashion to drive a Trump-friendly hashtag on Twitter, those bots are Russian in origin.
So this leaves us with the question: is Donald Trump Jr actively participating in a phony Russian bot-created #walkaway movement because he’s conspiring with the Russians on this sort of thing, or because he’s too stupid to realize it’s a Russian stunt. Perhaps we’re being harsh by questioning Junior’s intelligence, but at this point abject stupidity might be the only defense he has left.
