Russian Influence Measured

[barbos]

Thank you for posting that. I was trying to find it to post it myself.

So, Barbos, you are just plain wrong.

No, you are plain wrong.

 

[ZiprHead]

Huh? There's evidence of collusion all over the place.

LOL.

You're concise, well-informed, and thoughtful response is noted.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Thank you for posting that. I was trying to find it to post it myself.

So, Barbos, you are just plain wrong.

No, you are plain wrong.

Piercing comeback. I believe what Zip meant to say was, "you have been conclusively proven to be incorrect." Trump's obstruction did in fact impede Mueller's investigation to the point where he had to conclude that Congress needed to take over from him, because he could neither move forward to indict nor exonerate the President of any wrongdoing.

 

[barbos]

Thank you for posting that. I was trying to find it to post it myself.

So, Barbos, you are just plain wrong.

No, you are plain wrong.

Piercing comeback. I believe what Zip meant to say was, "you have been conclusively proven to be incorrect." Trump's obstruction did in fact impede Mueller's investigation to the point where he had to conclude that Congress needed to take over from him, because he could neither move forward to indict nor exonerate the President of any wrongdoing.

You are truly pathetic.

 

[Trausti]

Huh? There's evidence of collusion all over the place.

LOL.

You're concise, well-informed, and thoughtful response is noted.

Thanks!

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Piercing comeback. I believe what Zip meant to say was, "you have been conclusively proven to be incorrect." Trump's obstruction did in fact impede Mueller's investigation to the point where he had to conclude that Congress needed to take over from him, because he could neither move forward to indict nor exonerate the President of any wrongdoing.

You are truly pathetic.

Irony. Big fan.

 

[barbos]

Piercing comeback. I believe what Zip meant to say was, "you have been conclusively proven to be incorrect." Trump's obstruction did in fact impede Mueller's investigation to the point where he had to conclude that Congress needed to take over from him, because he could neither move forward to indict nor exonerate the President of any wrongdoing.

You are truly pathetic.

Irony. Big fan.

No, no Irony at all. You are just pathetic. In your enormous desire to blame Russia for everything you directly contradict to Mueller report, CNN critters, really everybody, even Steven Colbert. Mueller directly says in his damn report that the Trumps attempts to obstruct justice were unsuccessful he also directly explains why he did indict Trump. Here come you and your stupid shit.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Irony. Big fan.

No, no Irony at all.

Nice. More irony.

In your enormous desire to blame Russia for everything

What?

you directly contradict to Mueller report

I quoted the Mueller report you simpleton.

Mueller directly says in his damn report that the Trumps attempts to obstruct justice were unsuccessful

No, he doesn't. He says, once again (emphasis mine):

We did not make a traditional prosecution decision about these facts, but the evidence we obtained supports several general statements about the President's conduct.

Several features of the conduct we investigated distinguish it from typical obstruction-of-justice cases. First, the investigation concerned the President, and some of his actions, such as firing the FBI director, involved facially lawful acts within his Article II authority, which raises constitutional issues discussed below. At the same time, the President's position as the head of the Executive Branch provided him with unique and powerful means of influencing official proceedings, subordinate officers, and potential witnesses-all of which is relevant to a potential obstruction-of-justice analysis.
...
many of the President's acts directed at witnesses, including discouragement of cooperation with the government and suggestions of possible future pardons, took place in public view.
...
Soon after the firing of Comey and the appointment of the Special Counsel, however, the President became aware that his own conduct was being investigated in an obstruction-of-justice inquiry. At that point, the President engaged in a second phase of conduct, involving public attacks on the investigation, non-public efforts to control it, and efforts in both public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation.

You are likely referring to this quote:

The President's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.

Aside from the qualification "mostly unsuccessful," the rest of the quote clarifies who that refers to:

Comey did not end the investigation of Flynn, which ultimately resulted in Flynn's prosecution and conviction for lying to the FBI. McGahn did not tell the Acting Attorney General that the Special Counsel must be removed, but was instead prepared to resign over the President's order. Lewandowski and Dearborn did not deliver the President's message to Sessions that he should confine the Russia investigation to future election meddling only. And McGahn refused to recede from his recollections about events surrounding the President's direction to have the Special Counsel removed, despite the President's multiple demands that he do so. Consistent with that pattern, the evidence we obtained would not support potential obstruction charges against the President's aides and associates beyond those already filed.

That then notably shifts to a more general obstruction strategy (emphasis mine):

In considering the full scope of the conduct we investigated, the President's actions can be divided into two distinct phases reflecting a possible shift in the President's motives. In the first phase , before the President fired Comey, the President had been assured that the FBI had not opened an investigation of him personally. The President deemed it critically important to make public that he was not under investigation, and he included that information in his termination letter to Comey after other efforts to have that information disclosed were unsuccessful.

Soon after he fired Comey, however, the President became aware that investigators were conducting an obstruction-of-justice inquiry into his own conduct. That awareness marked a significant change in the President's conduct and the start of a second phase of action. The President launched public attacks on the investigation and individuals involved in it who could possess evidence adverse to the President, while in private, the President engaged in a series of targeted efforts to control the investigation. For instance, the President attempted to remove the Special Counsel; he sought to have Attorney General Sessions unrecuse himself and limit the investigation; he sought to prevent public disclosure of information about the June 9, 2016 meeting between Russians and campaign officials; and he used public forums to attack potential witnesses who might offer adverse information and to praise witnesses who declined to cooperate with the government.Judgments about the nature of the President's motives during each phase would be informed by the totality of the evidence.

These actions all resulted in Mueller's conclusion, followed by a "road map" to Congress for impeachment (emphasis mine):

Because we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment, we did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President's conduct. The evidence we obtained about the President's actions and intent presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment. At the same time, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.

ETA: Forgot this section (page 157; emphasis mine):

Our investigation found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations. The incidents were often carried out through one-on-one meetings in which the President sought to use his official power outside of usual channels. These actions ranged from efforts to remove the Special Counsel and to reverse the effect of the Attorney General's recusal; to the attempted use of official power to limit the scope of the investigation; to direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony. Viewing the acts collectively can help to illuminate their significance.

 

[scombrid]

They're still fucking around in social media and the right-wing grifters are working with them whether they know it or not. Spring cyanobacteria blooms are happening here in Florida. We had two very wet years that put a lot of nutrients in the water. Then it gets very dry and the water stagnates (I'm oversimplifying for brevity). The algae grow like crazy. It is a real problem. We are having fish kills from dissolved oxygen depletion and some from toxins from the algae. The real solution is better water management and drastic reduction in anthropogenic nutrient inputs into our surface and ground waters. But that isn't happening and the crazies are making it ever harder to take corrective action to improve our waters.

The right wing is screaming on social media that the algae blooms are some sort of agenda-21 plot; an effort to force people off of septic tanks and onto centralized wastewater treatment, deliberately polluting the water to make people dependent on government, government dumping algae in the water for biofuels, etc... There are bot accounts all over that crap promoting the crazy posts, feeding the crazy posts to receptive people, injecting new 'theories' into the debate. You can't have a meeting about water quality and pollution reduction without these fuckwits showing up with their stupid fucking signs and ridiculous 'theories'. They're even showing up at public meetings about water quality to rant about chemtrails and vaccines. I'm sick of Alex Jones, Assange, IRA, The Heartland Institute and all the fucking right wing retards that enable them to thrive. The GOP has been in total control of FL government (Department of Environmental Protection, Water Management Districts, Fish and Game) for a couplen of decades and these folks are blathering about Killary and Agenda-21. Our governors have been Bush,Bush,Crist,Crist,Scott,Scott and now DeSantis. Legislature has been super-majority GOP the whole time. What's Trump done to the EPA? Nope, not a problem. The social media meme says it is KillaryObama and Agenda-21 causing the algae blooms.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

They know it, just as everyone in the Trump occupation knew it (and still knows it). There's something about second and third generation wealth in particular that just rots brains of their amygdalas. I've spent a LOT of time among the 1% in NY and I can count on one hand the number of well-rounded people it generates. The overwhelming majority are self-centered/self-important sociopaths.

Extreme Narcissism doesn't even come close to describing them. The best I've ever seen it depicted is by Tim Heidecker in The Comedy[/i].

 

[barbos]

They say russian troll ads/links may have reached 100 million Americans. Sounds huge, but is it really?
Lets put this number in perspective. Over a course of presidential 1-2 year campaign average american came across russian troll ads 0.3 times.
Obviously it would not work. So it has to be targeted more precisely in order to work. So let say they were able to target 10% which were susceptible to this kind of BS, so it's 3 ads per person - no, still nothing. Need more precision, lets assume trolls limited themselves to idiots in key states, so factor 10 more - 1% and 30 links per idiot in key states. Starting to sound like a lot, but not really. I mean compare to the rest of ads and you will realize that russian troll links would get to idiot couple of times per month.
And don't forget there is no reason to believe that trolls were even able to dispense their ads geographically.

Sorry, but russian trolls did not elect Trump, you did.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

They say russian troll ads/links may have reached 100 million Americans.

Over 125 million, actually and that was just on Facebook. Estimates of how many were reached through all of the numerous platforms are well over 200 million. What a surprise you didn't actually read the thread.

But this clearly stolen bit of propaganda should be interesting:

Sounds huge, but is it really?

Tell us Uncle Barbos! Tell us!

Lets put this number in perspective.

Can't wait.

Over a course of presidential 1-2 year campaign average american came across russian troll ads 0.3 times.

How did you figure that?

Obviously it would not work.

Ahh, you're using the highly scientific approach of "what is or is not obvious to barbos." Gee you're smart.

So it has to be targeted more precisely in order to work.

No shit? If only I had spent some time researching the topic like you did.

So let say they were able to target 10%

Of? I want to make sure we're not all lost within your highly detailed and exhaustive breakdown.

which were susceptible to this kind of BS, so it's 3 ads per person

Just ads now. Ok, so, 3 ads per person.

- no, still nothing.

Wow! Really? Still nothing? That is just so shocking, especially in light of the fact that the actual studies I quoted at length prove that exposure to just ONE facebook post--not an ad, but something organically posted--has the potential of effecting hundreds of thousands, but, ok, you say "still nothing" after just 3 ads and all of this just off the top of your head apparently, so clearly we must all take your analysis as the best unbiased source.

Is there more Uncle Barbos?

Need more precision

Da!

lets assume trolls limited themselves to idiots in key states, so factor 10 more - 1% and 30 links per idiot in key states. Starting to sound like a lot

Gee, it sure does! Is it?

not really. I mean compare to the rest of ads and you will realize that russian troll links would get to idiot couple of times per month.

Boy, that sounds like just a little bit of times per month and a whole lot of idiocy.

And don't forget there is no reason to believe that trolls were even able to dispense their ads geographically.

Oh, we won't forget that, because, I mean, you said it and you're an expert and have clearly done in depth studies on everything involved so it must be a fact that we have no reason to believe anything at all, I guess. Gee, golly, wow, Uncle Barbos! You sure do got the thinks down smartlike.

Sorry, but russian trolls did not elect Trump, you did.

After that extensive, scientific breakdown, how could anyone possibly come to any other conclusion? Thanks Uncle Barbos! Once again the assertion of any kind of operating brain stem has bested us all!

 

[scombrid]

They say russian troll ads/links may have reached 100 million Americans. Sounds huge, but is it really?
Lets put this number in perspective. Over a course of presidential 1-2 year campaign average american came across russian troll ads 0.3 times.
Obviously it would not work. So it has to be targeted more precisely in order to work. So let say they were able to target 10% which were susceptible to this kind of BS, so it's 3 ads per person - no, still nothing. Need more precision, lets assume trolls limited themselves to idiots in key states, so factor 10 more - 1% and 30 links per idiot in key states. Starting to sound like a lot, but not really. I mean compare to the rest of ads and you will realize that russian troll links would get to idiot couple of times per month.
And don't forget there is no reason to believe that trolls were even able to dispense their ads geographically.

Sorry, but russian trolls did not elect Trump, you did.

0.3 times?

There was a bot camped out on our local surfing forum from early 2016 through February 2017. It posted everything Phil Rockstroh wrote during the time in an obvious attempt to divide up the liberals. It also linked to various glyphosate/GMO conspiracy pieces among a lot of other activity.

Several far right forum regulars were sucked in hard by NewsPunch/YourNewsWire and Russia Today with frequent copy/pastes of articles and fake news from those and similar sources.

They also linked to fake social media accounts like "TennCons" which was Russians pretending to be a conservative couple in Tennessee.

Were aren't talking advertisements.

No, the Russians didn't elect Trump but they were clearly on his team and had plenty of useful idiots and grifters like Alex Jones and Mike Adams of 'Natural News' helping them.

We have people in South Florida now that are fighting against septic to sewer conversion because 'Agenda 21'. Guess who is floating around in that debate and keeping the pedal to the metal on the disinformation front?

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

No, the Russians didn't elect Trump

Actually, that's not been determined yet. What I have presented itt proves that their operation alone could in fact have resulted in Trump taking the WH.

The studies I've posted all noted that they were not given full access to the data from the various platforms; data that would better address the question of exactly how much more influential the Russian attack turned out to be.

But even without that additional data, they were able to determine a massive scale of influence, which, when tied to the other studies (like the Facebook one that affected some 700,000 users and the UCSD study that affected 61,000,000 users specifically in regard to political/voting outcomes) easily showed that the Russian "information warfare" could very easily have resulted in a 40,000 vote differential in key "blue" states (i.e., exactly what happened), through a combination of black voter suppression and white voter polarization, particularly among rural whites (i.e., exactly what happened).

40,000 votes, in fact, would be at the low end of the influence threshold. Once again, from the UCSD study (emphasis mine):

[W]e used a group-level process to study the validated voting behaviour of 6.3 million users matched to publicly available voter records...The effect of social transmission on real-world voting was greater than the direct effect of the messages themselves...Our results suggest that the Facebook social message increased turnout directly by about 60,000 voters and indirectly through social contagion by another 280,000 voters, for a total of 340,000 additional votes... However, this estimate does not include the effect of the treatment on Facebook users who were registered to vote but who we could not match because of nicknames, typographical errors, and so on...This means it is possible that more of the 0.60% growth in turnout between 2006 and 2010 might have been caused by a single message on Facebook.

340,000 (or more) actual, validated votes were caused by just one message on Facebook. If a single clandestine message (like the one used in the study) could cause such a dramatic turnout in actual votes cast, then not only could easily account for increased white voter turnout, but it could also easily account for the suppression of voters like we saw among black males in particular.

Again, the exact two groups that were the biggest targets of the IRA troll farms (black "activist" males and alt-right rural whites) are the exact two groups that caused the vote differential in the first place.

And by the same kinds of small percentages noted in the studies that nevertheless were the exact razor thin outcomes in the three key states that lost Clinton the WH.

Let me put it this way, there are several scenarios that contributed in various ways to Trump being in the WH, but this scenario was unquestionably a significant factor no matter what other aspects may have also contributed.

And keep in mind that it began as early as 2013, at least in the planning and setting up the infrastructure stage. The actual cyber attack element began in 2014, long before Trump (or Clinton) officially announced.

So the groundwork was being laid long before the primaries even started. And the Sanders's campaign was the first to be weaponized against Clinton. One of the biggest issues that Nate Silver noted after the election was the impact of the unusually high numbers of undecideds late in the game. There were something like 20%at one point late in the game (indeed, Silver famously pointed out that had the election been held in early October, Clinton would have won the EC hands down):

And then it was the undecideds that were susceptible to things like the Comey letter and buttery males and Wikileaks, etc. As Silver put it:

Trump won voters who decided in the last week of the campaign by a 59-30 margin in Wisconsin, 55-38 in Florida, 54-37 in Pennsylvania and 50-39 in Michigan, according to exit polls, which was enough to flip the outcome of those four states and their 75 combined electoral votes.

But those undecideds should never have been so high and a very good argument can be made that the reason there were so many is precisely due to the years-long clandestine Russian warfare, particularly as it pertained to the Dem civil war primaries and the weaponized Sanders campaign.

ETA: Here's a good piece from WaPo: Inside the Russian effort to target Sanders supporters — and help elect Trump.

It also helps explain why Fox News recently held a "town hall" with Sanders.

Snippets:

While much attention has focused on the question of whether the Trump campaign encouraged or conspired with Russia, the effort to target Sanders supporters has been a lesser-noted part of the story. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, in a case filed last year against 13 Russians accused of interfering in the U.S. presidential campaign, said workers at a St. Petersburg facility called the Internet Research Agency were instructed to write social media posts in opposition to Clinton but “to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump.”
...
Sanders told Vermont Public Radio last year that one of his campaign workers figured out what was going on, alerted Clinton campaign officials and told them, “I think these guys are Russians.” But Sanders said he never knew, and he later backed off his suggestion that his staff did. A spokesman referred questions to 2016 campaign manager Jeff Weaver, who said in an interview that Sanders “misspoke a little bit and conflated a few of the facts . . . He did not know, I did not know, none of us knew” that Russia was behind the efforts.

Only recently, with the latest analysis of Twitter data, has the extent of the Russian disinformation campaign been documented on that social media platform.
...
A pair of Clemson University researchers, at the request of The Washington Post, examined English-language tweets identified as coming from Russia, many of which were designed to influence the election. It is impossible to say how many were targeted at Sanders supporters because many don’t include his name. Some 9,000 of the Russian tweets used the word “Bernie,” and those were “liked” 59,281 times and retweeted 61,804 times.
...
But that was only one element of the Russian effort to target Sanders supporters, the researchers said. Many thousands of other tweets, with no direct reference to Sanders, were also designed to appeal to his backers, urging them to do anything but vote for Clinton in the general election.

“I think there is no question that Sanders was central to their strategy. He was clearly used as a mechanism to decrease voter turnout for Hillary Clinton,” said one of the Clemson researchers, Darren Linvill, an associate professor of communications. The tweets examined in the new analysis “give us a much clearer understanding of the tactics they were using. It was certainly a higher volume than people thought.”

The Russian social media strategy underscores a challenge that Sanders faces as he once again seeks the Democratic presidential nomination, this time in a crowded field. Many Sanders supporters believe he was treated unfairly by the Democratic Party and Clinton, a point the Russians sought to capitalize on as they worked to undermine Clinton in the November 2016 election.
...
Russia’s effort to promote Sanders as a way to influence the U.S. election began shortly after he declared his candidacy in the spring of 2015, according to Mueller’s indictment of the 13 Russians. The aim was to defeat or weaken Clinton, who had angered Russian President Vladimir Putin when she was secretary of state.
...
Around the time that Sanders was featured on RT, Russian employees at the Internet Research Agency were given a document explaining how to influence the U.S. election. The workers were told to “use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump — we support them),” according to Mueller’s indictment of the Russians.
...
hen, in July 2016, WikiLeaks released emails from the Democratic National Committee that suggested the party machinery was tilted against Sanders. The DNC computers were later revealed to have been hacked by Russia.

The hack prompted Trump to stoke the divide among Democrats. “Leaked e-mails of DNC show plans to destroy Bernie Sanders,” Trump tweeted July 23, 2016. “ . . . On-line from Wikileakes [sic], really vicious. RIGGED.”

Russian trolls significantly increased their efforts to persuade Sanders supporters to oppose Clinton in the general election. One of their methods was to try to convince African Americans that they couldn’t trust her.
...
Linvill, the Clemson researcher, said the Russians saw Sanders as “just a tool.” “He is a wedge to drive into the Democratic Party,” resulting in lower turnout for Clinton, he said. The tweets suggested either voting for Trump or a third-party candidate such as Green Party nominee Jill Stein, or writing in Sanders’s name.

While it is impossible to show a direct correlation between a Russia-based tweet and someone’s vote in the United States, a post-election survey conducted for Ohio State University documented how false stories spread on social media may have caused a decline in turnout for Clinton. Only 77 percent of those surveyed who had voted for Barack Obama in 2012 supported Clinton in 2016; 10 percent backed Trump, 4 percent voted for third-party candidates, and 8 percent did not vote, according to the YouGov survey.
...
In an effort to demonstrate how inaccurate information makes its way into the mainstream, the survey asked respondents about three demonstrably false articles that had been widely distributed. A quarter of respondents believed the false story that Clinton was in “very poor health,” 10 percent believed that Trump had been endorsed by the pope, and 35 percent (including 20 percent of Obama supporters) believed that Clinton had approved weapons sales to Islamic militants, “including ISIS.”

The Ohio State team concluded in its soon-to-be-published final report that “belief in these fake news stories is very strongly linked to defection from the Democratic ticket by 2012 Obama voters.” Obama voters who recognized all three stories as false voted for Clinton at a rate of 89 percent, while 61 percent who believed one of the false stories voted for her, and 17 percent of those who believed two of the false stories supported Clinton.

Perhaps more disturbing, however, is that Sanders is contributing to the misconception that the Russians were just sowing general chaos:

Sanders told Vermont Public Radio last year that the Russians “were playing a really disgusting role because they don’t believe in anything. And all they want to do is sow division in this country, bring people against each other. So what they were saying is — in so many words — is ‘Bernie Sanders is not going to win, so if you are a Bernie Sanders supporter, let me tell you, Hillary Clinton is a criminal, a murderer, a terrible person’ . . . crazy, all of these disgusting things.”

That's a grossly inaccurate--and self-serving--account of what was going on. It is, in fact, Trump's argument (or one of them); that seeks to uphold the integrity of Sanders' campaign, when in fact he was just a useful idiot being used as a cudgel against Clinton.

 

[scombrid]

No, the Russians didn't elect Trump

Actually, that's not been determined yet. What I have presented itt proves that their operation alone could in fact have resulted in Trump taking the WH.

You're right. I shouldn't have made the statement quite that definitively. They did a pretty good job energizing the fringe anti-government folks that probably didn't always vote in the past to get out and vote for what they were and still are convinced of as being their anti-establishment hero. Like you note, a few 10s of 1000s in the right places is all they needed to sway. Thing is, they really just tapped into something the right wing was already doing and is still indulging; they tapped into these conspiracy theories painting the Democrats as the "deep state". Donald was their Birther champion. The right wing was already floating that stuff. The Heartland Institute and Heritage Foundation have been beating the "government is the root of all evil" drum and they have been more than happy to court the most extreme of the militias and "sovereign citizens". The clean water movement in Florida is a great example. The people showing up at the meetings demanding clean water and threatening state fish and game employees are hard core right wingers. They are simultaneously demanding that the government stop development and pollution in south Florida while completely ignoring what Trump has done to the EPA, Department of Interior, NOAA Fisheries...

And keep in mind that it began as early as 2013, at least in the planning and setting up the infrastructure stage. The actual cyber attack element began in 2014, long before Trump (or Clinton) officially announced.

I think that I have rambled about that early start to the disinformation campaign somewhere but I've no idea which thread. Yes, I noticed their presence in 2013 time frame. One showed up at Metabunk in October 2013 going on about chemtrails. Another showed up in 2015 after the Russians shot down that airliner over Ukraine. They tended to gravitate towards anti-vaccine, anti-GMO, and other issues that get the anti-establishment right whipped up. You can sniff some out around here if you pay attention to who 'contributes' to the GMO/glyphosate and vaccine threads.

Example of their continuing effort, they pushed some crazy narratives about that white supremecist murderer that rammed a crowd in Charlottesville via their "news" outlets.

 

[barbos]

100 millions is a drop in an ocean.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Thing is, they really just tapped into something the right wing was already doing and is still indulging; they tapped into these conspiracy theories painting the Democrats as the "deep state". Donald was their Birther champion.

But was he? Or was that, too, something simply orchestrated by Putin? From the endlessly disturbing but also hilarious TrumpTwitterArchive.com we see the first time Trump jumped into the birtherism abyss was on November 18, 2011, at least on Twitter. It's then a nearly relentless onslaught from 2012 onward.

We know Trump has been a target of KGB/Russian Intelligence for decades, actively so in the late eighties when he makes his first trip to Moscow. And it's ALWAYS the same cover story; he's going to build a big skyscraper in Moscow. That never actually happens in spite of repeated attempts since 1987.

As the Politico piece linked above concludes:

By January 1987, Trump was closer to the “prominent person” status of Kryuchkov’s note. Dubinin deemed Trump interesting enough to arrange his trip to Moscow. Another thirtysomething U.S.-based Soviet diplomat, Vitaly Churkin—the future U.N. ambassador—helped put it together. On July 4, 1987, Trump flew to Moscow for the first time, together with Ivana and Lisa Calandra, Ivana’s Italian-American assistant.

Moscow was, Trump wrote, “an extraordinary experience.” The Trumps stayed in Lenin’s suite at the National Hotel, at the bottom of Tverskaya Street, near Red Square. Seventy years earlier, in October 1917, Lenin and his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, had spent a week in room 107. The hotel was linked to the glass-and-concrete Intourist complex next door and was— in effect—under KGB control. The Lenin suite would have been bugged.

Meanwhile, the mausoleum containing the Bolshevik leader’s embalmed corpse was a short walk away. Other Soviet leaders were interred beneath the Kremlin’s wall in a communist pantheon: Stalin, Brezhnev, Andropov—Kryuchkov’s old mentor—and Dzerzhinsky.

According to The Art of the Deal, Trump toured “a half dozen potential sites for a hotel, including several near Red Square.” “I was impressed with the ambition of Soviet officials to make a deal,” he writes. He also visited Leningrad, later St. Petersburg. A photo shows Donald and Ivana standing in Palace Square—he in a suit, she in a red polka dot blouse with a string of pearls. Behind them are the Winter Palace and the state Hermitage museum.

That July the Soviet press wrote enthusiastically about the visit of a foreign celebrity. This was Gabriel García Márquez, the Nobel Prize–winning novelist and journalist. Pravda featured a long conversation between the Colombian guest and Gorbachev. García Márquez spoke of how South Americans, himself included, sympathized with socialism and the USSR. Moscow brought García Márquez over for a film festival.

Trump’s visit appears to have attracted less attention. There is no mention of him in Moscow’s Russian State Library newspaper archive. (Either his visit went unreported or any articles featuring it have been quietly removed.) Press clippings do record a visit by a West German official and an Indian cultural festival.

The KGB’s private dossier on Trump, by contrast, would have gotten larger. The agency’s multipage profile would have been enriched with fresh material, including anything gleaned via eavesdropping.

Nothing came of the trip—at least nothing in terms of business opportunities inside Russia. This pattern of failure would be repeated in Trump’s subsequent trips to Moscow. But Trump flew back to New York with a new sense of strategic direction. For the first time he gave serious indications that he was considering a career in politics. Not as mayor or governor or senator.

Trump was thinking about running for president.

So, at the very least, we have a connection between Russia and the notion of Trump running for President formed right after his first trip to Moscow (almost exactly ten years after the StB--essentially Soviet intelligence in Czechoslovakia--first started tracking he and Ivana, a Czech citizen and likely soviet asset if not agent, based in part on information from these two pieces in the Guardian: Czechoslovakia spied on Donald and Ivana Trump, communist-era files show and Czechoslovakia ramped up spying on Trump in late 1980s, seeking US intel).

So what was happening in late 2011--when Trump first starts his overtly prominent birtherism appropriation? Well, from Medium we have:

2011 — Trump gives deposition: “I don’t know who owns Bayrock” — Trump testified in a deposition that he didn’t know who owned Bayrock, the development company that he’d partnered with on Trump SoHo, even though he had a close relationship with Soviet-born developer Tevfik Arif. “I don’t know who owns Bayrock,” Trump said. “I never really understood who owned Bayrock. I know they’re a developer that’s done quite a bit of work. But I don’t know how they have their ownership broken down.”

July 2011 — Ribbon-cutting for Trump Ocean Club in Panama, lots of Russian buyers — The project, headed by developer Roger Kafif, is the largest building in Central America. The condos are marketed at wealthy from other countries, particularly Russia. Kafif has gone to Moscow (not clear on what year) to pitch condos to Russians.

December 2011 — Mass protests against Putin, which he blamed on Clinton and US.

March 2012 — Putin resumes presidency

October 2012 — Trump offers to donate $5-million if Obama will release college records, passport records

Let's visit that Politico link provided in the original. It's a piece from July of 2016--during the election, iow--titled Why Putin hates Hillary. Snippets:

When mass protests against Russian President Vladimir Putin erupted in Moscow in December 2011, Putin made clear who he thought was really behind them: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

With the protesters accusing Putin of having rigged recent elections, the Russian leader pointed an angry finger at Clinton, who had issued a statement sharply critical of the voting results. “She said they were dishonest and unfair,” Putin fumed in public remarks, saying that Clinton gave “a signal” to demonstrators working “with the support of the U.S. State Department” to undermine his power. “We need to safeguard ourselves from this interference in our internal affairs,” Putin declared.
...
“He was very upset [with Clinton] and continued to be for the rest of the time that I was in government,” said Michael McFaul, who served as the top Russia official in Obama’s national security council from 2009 to December 2011 and then was U.S. ambassador to Moscow until early 2014. “One could speculate that this is his moment for payback.”
...
And while Clintonites realize that few Americans typically pay close attention to the state of U.S.-Russia relations, there are two important caveats. One is the presence of large Polish, Ukrainian and other eastern European populations in Rust Belt states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin, where the Clinton campaign plans to flag stories about Trump and Putin for ethnic media outlets. The other is that voters of all stripes will surely pay attention to serious talk of foreign influence in the election.

This evidently went further back, to 2010:

Behind the scenes, however, Clinton and Putin — who, it soon became clear, was still the real power in the Kremlin — had an uneasy dance. In March 2010, when Clinton visited Russia, Putin summoned her to his luxurious residence outside Moscow. Knowing her fondness for wildlife — elephants, in particular — Putin invited Clinton to a basement trophy room filled with mounted animal heads. (A Clinton aide later described the gesture, though well meaning, as having a Bond villain feel.) Yet when the two emerged for a photo op, Putin launched into a public scolding of Clinton. The slouching Russian rattled off a list of complaints, from a decline in U.S.-Russia trade to the impact that sanctions against Iran and North Korea were having on Russian companies.

Fun. But also note:

But nothing angered Putin as much as Clinton’s statement about Russia’s December 2011 parliamentary elections, which produced widespread allegations of fraud and vote-rigging on behalf of Putin allies. At a conference in Lithuania, Clinton issued a biting statement saying that the Russian people “deserve to have their voices heard and their votes counted, and that means they deserve fair, free transparent elections and leaders who are accountable to them.” Some Obama officials felt the provocative statement went too far.

It certainly provoked Putin, who soon accused his opponents of organizing with State Department money. One former State Department official who worked on Russia issues under Clinton suggests that Putin’s outrage over that statement might have been manufactured, a classic effort by a strongman to tarnish his domestic opposition as foreign puppets. McFaul says he is confident that Putin was genuinely angry.

But that's all Clinton. What about Obama? Well, from Brookings we know:

The US–Russia relationship also emerged as a contentious issue in the run-up to Putin’s re-election as president; in fact it loomed considerably larger in Russia than in the United States. AntiAmericanism became a central theme of Putin’s campaign in reaction to the rise of an unexpected opposition protest movement after the contested December 2011 Duma elections; the movement continued during and after the March presidential elections. Clearly caught unawares by the size and strength of a heterogeneous opposition movement that included everything from communists to liberals to nationalists, the Putin team pointed a finger at nefarious foreign influences out to weaken Russia. It blamed the United States for financing the protests, an accusation that found resonance with Putin’s provincial working-class base. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who had spoken out against vote fraud in the Duma elections, came in for special criticism. Putin accused her of ‘giving a signal’ to opposition leaders, claiming that the US State Department paid protesters to go out into the streets.

That necessarily had to mean (if true) that it was Obama that ordered such interference and that the plan to do so started before December of 2011. Like a few months before at least, since the plan and its implementation would take some time to iron out and implement.

Do we have any further indication that Trump's birtherism escalation was tied to Putin/Obama? I'm glad I asked. For that we need to get into the "reset":

US Vice President Joe Biden announced Obama’s new policy at the February 2009 Munich Security Conference: ‘It’s time to press the reset button and to revisit the many areas where we can and should be working together with Russia.’6 At the heart of this reset was prudent expectations management, using moderate rhetoric to create a set of achievable goals. The focus was interest-based pragmatism and a restrained policy toward Russia’s neighbours and toward Russia’s internal politics.

From the outset, however, the Russians emphasised that reset was an American construct. ‘“Reset” as a term is not our style, not our language, not our word’, announced Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov just before Putin’s return to the Kremlin, ‘We prefer to talk about continuing the positive trend of recent times.’7 Nevertheless, Moscow responded to Washington’s renewed feelers for two reasons: the change in American policy and the 2008 global financial crisis, which affected Russia far more than its leaders had originally anticipated.
...
From Moscow’s point of view, New START and cooperation on the NDN were viewed as successes, as was Russia’s entry into the WTO, although there is a sizeable protectionist constituency in Russia that opposed WTO accession. However, Russia remains resentful that the United States never took seriously the need to redesign Euro-Atlantic security structures after the Georgia War and largely ignored President Dmitry Medvedev’s 2009 proposal to create a new, legally binding Euro-Atlantic super-treaty, one that American and European officials believe would have restricted NATO’s ability to operate effectively.8 Moreover, Washington’s attempts to improve NATO–Russia cooperation via the NATO–Russia Council found limited support in Moscow. Tensions over the post-Soviet space diminished, but that was largely because of events on the ground, particularly the 2010 election in Ukraine that brought Viktor Yanukovych to power. He moved Ukraine closer to Russia and declared that Kyiv was no longer interested in NATO membership. The Obama administration, unlike the Clinton and Bush administrations, did not prioritise enlarging NATO, particularly to the post-Soviet space. Thus the Kremlin by and large viewed the results of the reset as a necessary American course correction rather than the beginning of a new phase in relations, raising the question of how much Moscow had bought into the reset.

Personal relations played an important part in the reset. In the absence of broad-based institutional ties between the two countries and given the limited number of stakeholders in the bilateral relationship, ties between the two presidents have played a disproportionate role in the relationship over the past two decades. Obama saw an opportunity to engage Russia in a more productive way by appealing to Medvedev as a tech-savvy fellow lawyer from a new generation less burdened by Cold War stereotypes. The personal relationship was crucial on several occasions, including during the most difficult phase of the New START negotiations and in securing Russian agreement to abstain on UNSCR 1973 authorising the use of airpower to establish a no-fly zone over Libya. Russia also became an important player in the G20, when that grouping became a key instrument for dealing with the financial crisis in 2009 and 2010. Although the White House was fully aware that no major foreign-policy decision could be taken without the approval of both Putin and Medvedev, having Medvedev as Obama’s interlocutor did make a difference, especially when it became clear soon after the Libya vote that Putin disapproved. He described the UN resolution as a ‘mediaeval call for a crusade, when someone would call someone to go to a particular place and liberate something’.9 Once Medvedev left the Kremlin for the Russian White House, relationship dynamics were bound to change.

It goes deeper and now we're in late September of 2011 (about one month away from Trump's first birtherism tweet):

After the 24 September 2011 castling announcement that the tandem would switch jobs and Putin would return to the Kremlin, the Obama administration began to adjust. Obama and Putin had had one testy meeting in July 2009 during which the then prime minister enumerated the ways in which he believed that the United States had reneged on previous promises made to Russia. Despite several American attempts to arrange a subsequent meeting between the two, none had taken place.

Foreign Policy sheds a brighter light:

Although the Obama administration was ready to renounce the role of global policeman and other excesses of the Bush era, it still harbored familiar old American prejudices against Russia. Medvedev, for his part, was never powerful enough to oversee a reset. And although Putin wanted a new relationship with the West, it was not the one Obama had in mind.
...
In March 2011, Medvedev and Obama had to reach an agreement on what to do about Libya. The two leaders had similar feelings. Both deeply disliked the Libyan regime and found Muammar al-Qaddafi repulsive. Both had met the Libyan leader and concluded that he had lost touch with reality. Even his son Saif al-Islam, a secular young man who frequently haunted fashionable Moscow nightclubs in the company of Russian oligarchs and models, was ashamed of his eccentric father, who never parted company with his traditional Bedouin tent, even on trips abroad. In the end, Obama and Medvedev agreed that they would not interfere with French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s efforts to oust the Libyan leader.

Medvedev’s public speeches on the subject were meticulously prepared, but they were more concerned with Russia’s moral reputation than Libya’s internal politics, which were of little interest to him. His decision was all about cultivating the right image inside Russia as a decisive leader with progressive instincts. Who needed an old, senile Libyan dictator — especially one who, as attested by the files Medvedev had seen on Russian-Libyan cooperation, never paid his debts and cadged new weapons on credit while giving nothing in return. Medvedev cast aside the Russian Foreign Ministry’s pleas to veto the U.N. Security Council resolution for a no-fly zone over Libya. Russia abstained.

The next day Medvedev was surprised to see Putin on TV, speaking out on Libya. As prime minister, Putin rarely mentioned foreign policy. He ritually observed the constitutional norms, according to which foreign policy was the preserve of the head of state.

But visiting a missile factory in Votkinsk in central Russia, Putin described the U.N. resolution as a “medieval call for a crusade” and then delivered a thinly veiled reprimand to Medvedev live on air: “What concerns me most is not the armed intervention itself — armed conflicts are nothing new and will likely continue for a long time, unfortunately. My main concern is the light-mindedness with which decisions to use force are taken in international affairs these days.”

Medvedev was horrified. He really had blundered by not consulting Putin beforehand. But Putin’s outspokenness was an unforgivable humiliation and demanded a response. The question was whether to do it privately or publicly. After reading online comments openly mocking him, Medvedev decided not to call Putin. Instead, having examined his schedule, Medvedev decided that his response would come that same day — during a visit to the OMON, Russia’s special-purpose police unit. “It is entirely unacceptable to use expressions that effectively point the way to a clash of civilizations. The word ‘crusade,’ for instance. We must all remember that such language could make the situation even worse,” he said didactically into the camera....experienced players in Medvedev’s camp knew that their man had made a huge mistake. Though Putin backed down, he did not forget.
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As NATO’s intervention in Libya continued, Medvedev moved on, but Putin seethed. He had a personal acquaintance with Qaddafi, who had visited Moscow, pitched his Bedouin tent right inside the Kremlin, and accompanied Putin to a concert by French singer Mireille Mathieu. The two leaders also had a shared disdain for the West’s hypocrisy. Qaddafi’s talks with Putin had been solely about the Americans, whose true goal, Qaddafi said, was to kill the Libyan leader and establish world domination. Putin valued the Libyan leader’s praise for his own resistance to Washington.
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When it came to Libya, he began to ignore that foreign policy was the prerogative of the president. “They [NATO] talked about a no-fly zone, so why are Gaddafi’s palaces being bombed every night? They say they don’t want to kill him, so why are they bombing him? What are they trying to do? Scare the mice?” he said on television.

When Qaddafi was finally killed in October 2011, Putin was apoplectic..For Putin, Medvedev’s decision not to veto the U.N.’s anti-Libyan resolution was an act of capitulation to Russia’s competitors in the West and thus an act of war against the Russian state.

Qaddafi was killed on October 20, 2011. Trump's first birtherism tweet comes just two days before the one month anniversary and from that point forward, it is Donald Trump that beats the birtherism drum almost exclusively in a relentless appropriation to the point of it going WAY beyond mere obsession as Michelle Obama noted:

Trump pushed the unfounded theory beginning around 2011 that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya, rather than in Hawaii, and was therefore ineligible to be president. The accusations gained steam among some on the right with the help of Trump’s Twitter feed, culminating in repeated calls for Obama to release his birth certificate and his college admissions records. Trump at one point claimed to have seen the president’s birth certificate himself, which he said would back up his claims, although he never released the proof he claimed to have.
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Trump has also spread the false claim that the Obamas are Muslims, a statement that has also been identified by many as a racist dog whistle.

Though then-President Obama poked fun at the conspiracy occasionally, Michelle Obama writes in her book that she worried Trump’s claims would incite violence against her husband and her family.

“The whole thing was crazy and mean-spirited, of course, its underlying bigotry and xenophobia hardly concealed. But it was also dangerous, deliberately meant to stir up the wingnuts and kooks,” she says in the book.

Iow, he used his Twitter feed to spread emotional contagions that triggered "strong-tie" followers, exactly as outlined in the UCSD study.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

100 millions is a drop in an ocean.

It isn't--as, once again, every study I've posted itt has conclusively proved--and it wasn't just 100 million. It was well over 200 million users affected (nearly the entire registered voter population of the US) and the hundreds of millions of times they shared or "liked" such messages over at least a three year period, if not sooner.

Regardless, it does not need to be more massive than 100 m users. Again as the actual studies showed, among just 6.3 million validated voters (ie., voters who actually cast a ballot), approximately 340,000 additional votes cast were the result of those users seeing/sharing/clicking on just one clandestine Facebook post having influenced their strong-tie friends.

Iow, what those 6.3 shared/liked/clicked on directly caused an additional 340,000 of their close friends to actually cast their ballots as well.

Scaling that up to just 100 million would mean upwards of 5.4 million additional votes cast/influenced.

We lost the WH due to a 40,000 vote differential.

 

[barbos]

200 millions is a two drops in an ocean.
and the number I heard on CNN was 100 millions.

If Putin trolls with their tiny ads budget managed to outsmart DNC then maybe DNC should rethink their thinking.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

200 millions is a two drops in an ocean.

Idiotic.

and the number I heard on CNN was 100 millions.

Thus confirming that you didn't actually read the thread and don't know what you're talking about, which, unfortunately for the rest of us never stops you from spewing idiotic sophisms like "200 millions is a two drops in an ocean."