https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/us/politics/russian-interference-senate-intelligence-report.html?referringSource=articleShare&fbclid=IwAR15vXa07KaOAq4BFvDG8QzCLp9nUU_IKsMlRbvUhoC4y8M3CDkX1Z5Ab7I

WASHINGTON — American intelligence officials’ determination that Russia interfered in the 2016 p**********l e******n to assist Donald J. Trump’s candidacy was fundamentally sound and untainted by politics, according to a key Republican-led Senate review released on Tuesday. The findings undercut longstanding allegations by Mr. Trump and his allies that the officials were biased against him.

Read it Trumpers but try to wake up first.

By Charlie Warzel

At a string of small “reopen America” protests across the country this week, mask-less citizens proudly flouted social distancing guidance while openly carrying semiautomatic rifles and waving American f**gs and signs with “ironic” swastikas. They organized chants to lock up female Democrat governors and to fire the country’s top infectious disease experts. At one point during protests at the Michigan Capitol, the group’s orchestrated gridlock blocked an ambulance en route to a nearby hospital.

For those who’ve chosen to put their trust in science during the p******c it’s hard to fathom the decision to gather to protest while a deadly v***l pathogen — t***smitted easily by close contact and spread by symptomatic and asymptomatic people alike — ravages the country. But it shouldn’t come as a surprise. This week’s public displays of defiance — a march for the freedom to be infected — are the logical conclusion of the modern far-right’s donor-funded, shock jock-led liberty movement. It was always headed here.

Few demonstrate this movement better than Alex Jones of Infowars — one of the key figures of Saturday’s “You Can’t Close America” rally on the steps of the Capitol building in Austin, Tex. For decades, Mr. Jones has built a thriving media empire harnessing (real and understandable) fear, paranoia and rage, which in turn drive sales of vitamin supplements and prepper gear in his personal store. The Infowars strategy is simple: Instill a deep distrust in all authority, while promoting a seductive, conspiratorial alternate reality in which Mr. Jones, via his outlandish conspiracies, has all the answers. He’s earned the trust of a non-trivial number of Americans, and used it to stoke his ego and his bank account. And he never lets reality get in the way (case in point, holding a stay-at-home order protest in Texas the day after the state announced it would begin efforts to carefully reopen in coming weeks).

Former employees have described Mr. Jones to me as master of manipulating the t***h into a convenient worldview in which Infowars and its listeners are constantly victimized by powerful institutional forces. “We kept saying ‘We’re the underdogs’ — that was our mantra,” one former employee told me in 2017. To make this work, Mr. Jones molds the day’s news into conspiratorial fables.

A novel v***s — about which so much is unknown and where expert opinion is constantly shifting — is a near perfect subject for Infowars to fit the news to its paranoid narrative. Uncertainty over the v***s’s origins in China is a springboard to float unproven theories about bioweapons. Discussions about a v*****e to end the epidemic become conspiracies about billionaire tech leaders pushing population control. Changing epidemiological models that show fewer projected C****-** deaths (because social distancing has worked to slow infections) provide an opening for Mr. Jones to rant about stay-at-home lockdowns. Genuine fears about deeply unfair job losses and economic recession become reckless theories about Democrat-led plans to punish American citizens by driving them into poverty.

Jones’ opportunistic rantings fit neatly into a larger right-wing strategy, which has grown alongside Infowars. Just as Infowars rallies are tied to the media outlet’s financial interest in antigovernment paranoia, a few of this week’s rallies have been underwritten by political organizations with ties to the Republican Party and the Trump administration. Regardless of who’s behind them, the intent is to sow division and attempt to reshape public opinion. As Vox’s Jane Coaston wrote, they’re “designed to pit Republican-v****g areas of states against their Democratic-v****g neighbors, even rural Republicans against urban Republicans.”

It’s important to note that the reopen protests have been generally small (at most, hundreds of people in states of millions of citizens responsibly staying at home) and don’t even reflect the polled opinions of many conservatives. But they fit neatly into a larger campaign playbook and take on outsize importance. They take place frequently in swing states or states with Democratic governors and are plastered across social media, reported in mainstream organizations, openly cheered on by Fox News and right-wing media, and ultimately end up amplified (tacitly or explicitly) by the president. The strategy has worked well in recent years, consolidating support among the Trump base.

It's very obvious that you can't comprehend what you think you read.
You clowns don't know the difference between "signing" a bill with other involved parties and "ratifying" a bill once it passed in both the House and the Senate.
You clowns want so desperately want to blame Clinton for something Chump told you was a "bad deal" but, you clowns can't get it through your thick heads that it was a Republican initiative.
You're sheep!

You refuse to see the point and simply focus on making an issue out of something that has little to no significance to the issue discussed. Go ahead and keep harping on "signed". It makes no difference to me.
The only thing you have proven is that you are an i***t.

It's very obvious that you can't comprehend what you think you read.
You clowns don't know the difference between "signing" a bill with other involved parties and "ratifying" a bill once it passed in both the House and the Senate.
You clowns want so desperately want to blame Clinton for something Chump told you was a "bad deal" but, you clowns can't get it through your thick heads that it was a Republican initiative.
You're sheep!

You refuse to see the point and simply focus on making an issue out of something that has little to no significance to the issue discussed. Go ahead and keep harping on "signed". It makes no difference to me.
The only thing you have proven is that you are an i***t.