Hey guys, I'm giving a speech to the Libertarian Party in Rhode Island on October the 27th and then November the 3rd with Ron Paul and Lou Rockwell and a bunch of others down there in Lake Jackson.
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We know Al-Qaeda.
Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America and by God we've kicked Vietnam Syndrome once and for all.
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I say it, I say it again.
You've been had.
You've been took.
You've been whose wing?
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw us, and he died.
We ain't killing their army, we're killing them!
We be on CNN like, say our names, say it, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
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It's the great Gareth Porter Gareth Porter the great and Here he is writing at Consortium News the shaky case that Russia Manipulated social media to tip the 2016 election Welcome to show how you doing?
Hi, Scott.
I'm fine.
Glad to be back on your show as always.
Yeah, very happy to have you here you know, it's interesting seems like there are a lot of Of well, I don't know a lot but quite a few some kind of vague number terminology thing of people who are Kind of liberal progressive leftists of some stripe or another but you're not so partisan and not so you know loyal to the Democratic sort of the Democratic Party way of looking at things necessarily who Really just don't believe in this Trump Russia stuff and it's obviously a very trendy thing to believe in on the American political left right now and But so it's always interesting to me when you have people who at least from the most obvious You know basic point of view are arguing against interest here.
You are Arguing against a case Against a right-wing Republican president who we all know that you must detest for any Variety of reasons that might take the rest of the show for you to enumerate and yet when it comes to the worst Accusation against him you go.
Yeah, this isn't right and when the New York Times does their best to You know, first of all accuse the Russians and then you know insinuate that Donald Trump probably, you know is guilty and Working with them to do something or other by way of his people You just pour cold water all over here at Consortium news.com Well, you know, there are a couple of things going on here.
I mean the first thing of course is that The case itself is so transparently weak and so clearly Motivated by the self-interest of the National Security Bureaucracy Aka the deep state if you will that it's difficult for anybody who has any integrity Politically or intellectually to go along with it.
And so I think that's the that's the main point but but beyond that This is this is also I think what you're seeing is a fallout from a longer-term Development in American politics, which is that it's not just you know the populism of the right or whatever you want to call them who supported Trump during the 2016 election that represents a falling away from The major parties, I mean the Democratic Party clearly is riven very deeply by people who are sick and tired of the elite that has dominated it for well over two decades and you know the the credibility of the people who were pushing this line whose interests were on the we're at stake in the putting out this story about Russia threatening to tip the election to Trump those those people have grown Substantially over the last several years last few years particularly and so I think you know, you're seeing potentially here a the basis for a left-right coalition in opposition to The the political elites that have run the country in both but in both parties for for so many decades Well, it seems like maybe a big part of what's going on here, too Is for the people who are genuinely interested in this kind of thing and again?
I'm not particularly partisan or invested in any particular set of politicians or party leaders or what have you But they have been paying attention for you know a few years in a row Well, then they remember a lot of times that America did very provocative things To the Russians that put the Russians, you know on their back heel and then and forced a reaction So, you know, it was George Kennan the Center right the grayest of gray beards who said expanding NATO is going to cause some serious problems And then when the Russians react you're gonna blame them and say that's the reason for NATO But NATO is the reason for the crisis and I'm telling you now that's exactly how it's gonna happen That's exactly how it did.
And so that's kind of a big part of this whole scam is That the Russians have started a new Cold War with us When anybody who really is interested in this stuff and ain't in on, you know Team blue or red knows better than that Yeah, in fact, you know what surprises me more than anything else about this whole The way this issue has shaped up in general is not so much that there's a lot of people who have been doubtful about the credibility of the Hysteria about about a Russian threat to American democracy But that's so many people who should know better have fallen for it.
I think that's really the shocking thing here.
Yeah, seriously All right.
Well, so now let's talk about this New York Times piece Actually already interviewed Joe Laurie about it and I was kind of kicking myself because I didn't have a chance to really review the piece right before I talked to him only a couple days before whatever it was and So I wasn't sure if I could if I really contributed to that interview and set him up to make the best case that he Made even and so today I did have a chance to do that And I reviewed all of it except the part that you really focus on in your article Which is the accusations about the social media messaging and of course all beginning with the presumption Which I don't know if you want to tackle this part or not to start Really here if you want to get to the details with that.
Oh, yeah no, definitely Russia quote-unquote that is the Russian central government had a mission to do this and Used the cutout of this, you know this private internet agency Internet research agency, it's called in order to successfully Manipulate American minds with Facebook and Twitter messages and so forth here Yeah, I think we should start with that premise definitely and you know, looking back on it I think if I had to do it over again, I would have put much more emphasis on the questionable nature of that premise itself I did Certainly suggest by implication and and perhaps by a very short remark at the end that That there's there's reason to doubt that the Russians really tried very hard to do this But I think the emphasis in my piece was certainly on just how feeble the effort was and how far it was from having any conceivably Significant effect on the actual outcome, but I do think that The more I've thought about it the more I see Very strong reason for doubt that there was a firm policy decision on the part of the Kremlin to Try to alter the result of this election in favor of Trump Certainly through the messaging on on Facebook and Twitter.
I just think that to begin with You know, there is just not sufficient evidence that the Internet Research Agency was in fact setting out to to carry out a political mission on behalf of Putin To to help Trump there.
There's so many reasons to doubt that and and you know, one could have written a very different piece Looking at the much broader Aspect political aspect of this and that's not the direction I went I decided to really focus in on the numbers and just How misleading those numbers are but look, I mean the the Internet Research Agency is in fact a privately owned and It's it's a profit-making Organization.
It's aimed at profit and There's a lot of evidence which I could have gone into but didn't To show that that could have been the underlying reason for all of these Facebook posts and Twitter feeds or Twitter Twitter accounts It's like there was obviously this huge consistent effort to promote Trump and destroy Hillary And even you know, it's been remarked upon by just about everybody including in the mainstream media More than half is that right?but a great proportion at least of these posts had nothing to do with politics at all or We're very obscure and nonpartisan or even were posted long after the election was over Absolutely, right.
Yeah in terms of all the D all the detailed data that we have available from Facebook and Twitter both it's clear that Relatively little quite a small percentage and in the case of Twitter was definitely less than 10% of the total content that was Put out by the IRA as I call it in the piece was in fact election related So, you know that that casts a different light on the whole issue I think if you look at it from that point of view Hey real quick the best ways to donate to the show our patreon.com Five bucks a month.
We'll get your keys to the reddit group a dollar per interview We'll get you two free audiobooks from listen and think audio And then if you want to donate at Scott Horton org slash donate anybody who donates 50 bucks gets a signed book and A hundred bucks will get you a QR code silver commodity disc or a lifetime subscription to listen and think audiobooks at listen and think Calm and yes, I take all your digital currencies and all that, too So there you go find out all about that at Scott Horton org slash donate and patreon.com Scott Horton show All right now, so there are a lot of problems with that article and I want to talk about them with you But let's start with really let's go through your piece here and you're debunking on this particular point I mean it really they just take the most expansive interpretation of any number that's ever been cited as to who's been Influenced by these Facebook ads, etc.
Correct, right?
I mean and in fact they do so in a way that is so Sensationalist that it's really quite outrageous.
I mean that you know, I I don't know if I conveyed that Adequately in the way I wrote it but certainly that was my intention to to make it clear that that the the way they talked about the 126 million Americans who were Reached on Facebook by the IRA through 80,000 posts and then took that 126 million and related it to the 137 million people who voted in the election obviously leaving the strong impression that They must have really had a dominant effect on this on this election campaign in terms of their ability to Reach so many people and and you know, if you if you then begin to break down What the actual meaning of the 126 million people is The whole thing falls apart very quickly Yeah, well, okay, so one argument in favor of their interpretation which even they say well jeez, you know We're not saying it made the difference because there's no way to really know that.
Well, yeah, that's true On the other hand, it was a pretty close margin and one of those rare occasions where the popular vote and the Electoral College were at odds there and so You know on the face of it.
It sounds like wow with that razor-thin of a margin In that situation, maybe just a little nudge would have been all it took but yeah, again, it's not invulnerable.
Anyway Let me comment on that because I think it's an important point.
Certainly.
I think they they had a very clever rhetorical Sort of stance that they used in this piece, which is as you said we can't it's can't be proven it can't be disproven whether they tip the balance obviously leaving again the The impression that you know, this was very close and it could have been it might not have been but it might have been and In fact, you know, it wasn't anywhere close to to that kind of an effect as we'll we'll sort of break down in the Context of all these different numbers, but I think the other point but you're talking about what in just in the sense of the Electoral College That he just creamed her by however many points there what I was gonna say is that You you made the point that the victory was was very small a small margin in key states And that's true.
And and at the same time if you think about it what there's no evidence and they presented no evidence that the IRA Targeted their Facebook or Twitter Output in such a way as to focus on those most sensitive parts of the electorate And and in fact, you know, there's every reason to believe that they did no such thing Because if they had I think we would have we would have read about it.
Believe me if somebody would have found out Twitter and or Facebook would have said something about it and That that would have been big news and and all the evidence indicates the opposite there was no targeting at all and in fact You know, one of the interesting points that I make in the piece is that?
There was more content At this moment.
I think it was Twitter The the majority of the content or more of the content came out after The election rather than before So there was there was much more Effort made, you know after the election was finished than there was during the election So, I mean that's one of several reasons to seriously doubt and and I would say to rule out practically the idea that That there was in fact an effort to target things in a way that would have You know made a difference in the election it would have to have done that in order to make a difference in the election and I'll I'll make it clearer why I Say that as we get to the specifics of what these numbers actually mean.
Mm-hmm Well, I mean before we do that just one more thing, which is I guess I don't know if there are numbers about this or not but sure seems like people were so polarized in this election that everybody knew who they opposed more and You know there were fan bases for both I guess Trump had a bigger fan base than Hillary there are a lot of people who certainly opposed him more than they opposed her and vice versa, but Opinions seem pretty made up.
I would say that you know Just guessing it seemed like there would be a lot more swing voters that would even be up for grabs Compared to say, you know Bush carry or or Bush gore or something like that where you can flip a coin over these guys That seems like a fair statement to make yeah, but I'm not sure that that You know, in fact, I don't believe that that would make a stronger case for the idea that the IRA was either intentionally or had the effect of Influencing those people in between at all, you know, in other words that would have required You know targeting again targeting those People who were non-committed uncommitted in the key states or in not just in the states But in the districts where those people were clustered and and again, there's no reason to think that that's what happened yeah, all right, so get further into these numbers here between the most expansive definitions that the I guess Democratic Hawks in Congress and the New York Times use here Well, first of all, you know The the big headline number which was the 126 million compared to a hundred and thirty seven million people who voted is is not the number of people who actually Allegedly read or saw Anything on Facebook that was issued by or content that came out of the IRA in fact As as Facebook itself the General Counsel Facebook Colin stretch has testified before Congress What they were doing was Giving a number to their best estimate of how many people were quote served Unquote now what that means is that theoretically at some point and and bear in mind This is not during the election campaign We're talking about Facebook the numbers have to do with essentially a year and a half period beginning in early 2015 or I think it's February or March 2015 and going through 2017 so You know, this this is a theoretical number of the number of people who might have Been might have had at least one piece of Information from IRA in their Twitter feed at some point during that 17 or 16 book or Twitter talking about Facebook.
Did I say Twitter Twitter?
Go ahead spoke.
Sorry Facebook is what I mean so at some point they might have gotten one at least one piece of Information that was in their Twitter feed during that period during a two-year period That even includes the time after the election to or all just previous.
Absolutely.
Yes It's it's a large part of it was after the election.
Yes, so including time after the election so I guess not that well, but okay that way that argues the other way that for Something a little bit less than two years Sometime within that time frame before the election someone had saw a Facebook post, maybe Well, yeah that it was theoretically possible for them to see it but one of the points that I make in my piece, which I Must say I was I was kind of happy to come across as a researcher Was the admission by a Facebook official?in a post In a post quite separate from the electoral issue from the election issue that only one in ten of the Facebook feed articles or posts is is actually seen by Anybody who is a subscriber to or a member of Facebook?
In other words, you know if you get Let's say 20 or 25 Facebook feeds What's the right term posts in your Facebook feed your newsfeed then on average you might see?
Two or three two or three possibly so, you know, if you get ten, then you might see one And and if you get less than ten, it's possible on average that you don't see any of Any of that content at all?
I mean you might miss it completely, you know You might see it only on alternative days or once a once a week or something like that So the reality is much less exciting than the way It might appear from that figure of 126 million How much influence are we really supposed to think that any one post has over the way people think about these things?
You know what I mean?
Oh gee ever since I saw a cartoon of Bernie Sanders with big muscles that now has me beginning to question Hillary Clinton and her political experience, you know first of all, of course the 126 million Is a figure that is a theoretical figure derived from an assumption about How often people will have shared a post?
If they saw it and they use the figure of 29 million as the basis for that now that 29 million Is still a theoretical figure as far as I'm concerned.
I think that they That's that's the number of people that they think could have actually Seen it But but they they can't they can't say that in fact that that many saw it now you have to break that down further And say what proportion of?the 80,000 posts that are at stake here remember 80,000 posts that theoretically are said to have come from the IRA during this entire let's call it two-year one half to two-year period and The the answer is that you know We don't know how many what percentage of that 80,000 is actually election related It could be a very small probably less than 10% was the election related So and at least at first so much of it was anti Trump stuff that They tried to not go so far as to accuse them of trying to help Trump they said well they're just trying to undermine our democracy and be disruptive and make us lose faith and all these kinds of platitudes because There was just as much Propaganda going the other way Right and that was truth of Twitter, of course as well that that was the same same thing We'll get to Twitter in a second, but go ahead, but but anyway Again, we don't have that information, but it's fair to assume That only a small proportion of the 80,000 posts were actually electoral related and again Remember that the majority of these were posts that were were put on the internet in the newsfeed by IRA In in a period other than the electoral the campaign itself from September 1st through November 7th so so you begin to see a much much different picture here if you really break it down that way and What I what I really want one more thing before you really want to is The larger context to you say all this would it even if you take them at their highest estimates you're talking about four Ten-thousandths of the total content of Facebook feeds over this time.
So some of these numbers I don't know 80,000 sounds like a big number.
But yeah, no, it's not that's nothing compared to the deluge of You know quality and nonsense and kittens and God knows what going through your Facebook feed every day Absolutely, and that that's really kind of the punchline of this but but Scott I want to make an important announcement on your show And that is that in fact I have since I published this piece.
I have gone further into the testimony before Congress by Facebook and There's a there's a figure that I missed in my research before I wrote the piece and before was published that was mentioned by Colin Stretch the council general general counsel, excuse me of Facebook in his testimony and the actual figure of the total content that that Facebook put on the internet in in the news feeds in the news feeds of all of the Subscribers to Facebook members of Facebook 210 million roughly At that point was prepare yourself for this Well over these are his his own quoted quoted words well over 33 trillion 33 trillion Let me repeat that one more time well over 33 trillion pieces of news feed that were put on the internet to the 210 million Now now that is supposed to be the entire You know all all of the people who subscribe to news feeds from from Facebook during period so you're saying Relatively speaking.
This is like one Hillary tear compared to the Atlantic Ocean Exactly.
That's almost precisely the way I have pictured it in my own mind It's like a thimble full of water in the ocean Exactly yeah good times.
All right.
Well very persuasive I feel so persuaded did Putin send you wait.
Okay.
Let's talk about Twitter now.
Yeah Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah, this one.
This one is not so spectacular in terms of the numbers It's about three thousand eight hundred and fourteen Twitter accounts that Twitter says In their testimony were believed to be associated or were said to be associated with the IRA and and these three hundred three thousand eight hundred fourteen Twitter accounts Interacted with 1.4 million Americans, that's what that's what Shannon Mazzetti quote from Twitter And they are correct in Reporting that's what Twitter actually said that that these Twitter accounts three thousand eight hundred fourteen interacted with 1.4 million Americans, but again There is their catches here when you begin to ask the question.
Okay, how much of this was election related?
Well, it turns out that that only one that only 15,000 of the tweets that were Issued by the IRA During the the election campaign 15,000 were in any way election related.
That's a Tiny percent of the total tweets in the election.
Of course.
I mean the total tweets in the election were Were just enormous enormous number.
It says here 189 million tweets.
And so that makes eight 100 Thousandths of the estimated total.
That's right.
That's right And and so so in fact this was again, it's not as tiny in relation to the total feed you know into the into the network of Users as in the case of Facebook, but it's pretty damn tiny And and clearly too small to to have had an effect on effect on the election So so I think You know Twitter Twitter does not really make a case and and Shane and Mazetti the New York Times correspondents do not make a case that there's anything about these numbers that really Should should change the picture that was we've already talked about in the case of Facebook.
So that leaves really The most interesting from my point of view the most interesting part of the story which is The idea that there was another mysterious 50,000 accounts that Twitter decided in their research That they identified These these 50,000 accounts with Russia somehow that they were quote associated with Russia or as they put it quote Russia linked unquote and That these 50,000 accounts generated 2.1 million tweets during the election campaign and and that That is supposedly again a Substantial amount which Which they worry might have made a difference, you know in the result So that's that's a challenge which I decided to take up and look more deeply into this And and what I found was two things basically first of all what Twitter did was to use an Extremely as they put it themselves an extremely expansive definition of what they would consider to be a Russia linked or associated with Russia and by the way They never say at any point that this means that there is a suspicion that it's the Russian government behind it They may imply that but they never say it and they don't do that because they don't have any evidence to support it Yeah, I mean and this is huge.
I mean they do this constantly smuggling the KGB Into well a Russian You know Or better a Russian address according to the assertion of some guy who says that that's what the computer says yes, and unfortunately, this has become the coin of the realm in terms of Media coverage of this whole, you know, Russia hysteria hysteria the Russia gate hysteria Yeah, I remember very well and I've written about this I'm sure you probably recall that I wrote a piece a critique of media coverage like CNN New York Times but particularly CNN and the way they suggest imply that any contact between someone linked to Trump during the campaign is evidence of somehow You know suspicious Relationship between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, right?
There was absolutely no evidence whatsoever to which brings me to my next question Which is do you want to keep going about the rest of what's wrong with this article?
You want to leave it with your great article here where you take on this major part of it?
Well, the only other point that I want to make I think I've made my point about the definition Yeah a problem but but the other point is is really equally or more important and that is that if you look carefully at the data that Twitter itself Has put out in their official testimony what you find is that that these accounts Generated about 1% of total election related tweets and a little over half of those were from automated accounts now one of the things that I learned in my research is that And Scott Shane was the source of this in a piece that he wrote more than a year ago now That there is a major Market for Twitter and Facebook accounts that are no longer in use Sold by the tens and hundreds of thousands online and that a big part of this market is Located it's based in Russia now that obviously raises the probability not just the possibility, but the probability that the political campaigns of on both sides of in fact used Facebook accounts that there were purchased on the international market in part in Russia and That would account for the fact that many of the accounts that are regarded as Russia linked You know were in fact accounts that were purchased by the Republicans and Democrats or people working for them Automated accounts that they then used to generate tweets on behalf of their candidate And what we find is that Hillary Clinton got point 62% of her likes and point 55% of her retweets from among the automated accounts that were Included among the Russia linked accounts now that suggests that that's roughly the same proportion of those accounts to all of the all of the accounts that were tweeting on the election, so So I think you have a case here that in fact both and and by the way, I should add that that the Trump Campaign got even more out of it.
They got the figures were like three point six two percent and Forgotten what the other the other one was but they did they did much more on the automated accounts coming from Russia But both both campaigns were clearly using automated accounts that had been purchased from Russia Which I guess only proves that Putin lost control of his plot for a minute there and he started working for Hillary She's very crafty and manipulated him into it.
I guess Sorry, that wasn't really funny.
Hey you guys if you're good libertarians, go ahead and submit articles to the Libertarian Institute.
Maybe I'll run them You can find out all the submission guidelines there at Libertarian Institute org So I did quit Twitter Not because they banned me for a week, but because I've been trying to quit anyway, I've got a lot of book reading done and now I'm writing another one here and So I'm glad to be done with that, but I am still on reddit, but it's a private reddit group Tom Woods convinced me to do it.
He wanted me to do Facebook, but it's on reddit anybody who donates more than $5 a month by way of PayPal or Patreon dot-com slash Scott Horton show or whatever you want send a check you get access to the private reddit group at our Scott Horton show and we got about 90-something people in there now and it's a good little group And so I spend some time in there if you want to check that out Hey, so do you want to talk about some of the rest of what's wrong with this horrible article or you got to go?
You mean in general the non electoral part of the non?
Sorry the non not non electoral but the non Facebook and Twitter part.
Yeah, and I know we've talked about some of this before but not this particular article Well, ask me a question we'll see Well It seems like well sort of like you were saying it Just like in this article It sort of goes that any contact here is all part of one big Onslaught one big policy all of it traces back to Putin and they go on and on about his Personal animus and what they know about how he feels what time of day and all this stuff.
It's kind of crazy But then it really seems and this is I guess the most important part of it, right?
Is that like yeah, but Papadopoulos was nobody and nobody ever really gave him anything at all he got some text messages and nothing ever happened and Carter Page never got his 19 billion dollars for some oil company thing because that wasn't true was just made up and Paul Manafort.
Yeah, he knew some Russians, but he was serving America's interest as a counselor to the government in Kiev and Jeff Sessions.
Yeah, he saw Kislyak twice once in his Senate office Where he's surrounded by retired army officers who are his staff who probably didn't observe an act of high treason and go along with it I mean unless somebody has some evidence of that and another time he met him at a speech or a function Whatever shook his hand for a second You know, Mike Flynn said please veto the Israel resolution for us Asked them for a favor not received instructions from them and they turned his favor down So there's the his collusion with Russia there And so it's all just like Saddam's human shredder and his mobile biological weapons labs at infinitum.
None of it is true There's a lot of accusations, but it really doesn't add up to much unless you start with your conclusion that of course it all does Yeah, and you know I guess you you've got the details of this down and you can you can recite them very well that perhaps better than I could and what I would just add to to that litany of obviously exaggerated or completely false connections made to a plot you know connected with Putin is that you know this this whole business of That was generated by the intelligence community Beginning in 2016 is a toxic combination of bureaucratic in self-interest relating to The the obvious desire to fire up a new Cold War with Russia That's a topic that I intend to write much more about in the future and and so I have a very deep interest in that and of course the the partisan interest in Making sure that Trump was was not going to be legitimate and and I think I've said on your show before That that one of the most interesting Quotes from this whole story is Clapper long after the election making a statement on in an interview with Forgotten whether it's you never mind It's Clapper was the director of National Intelligence the boss over CIA NSA and the rest of them at back when this happened correct was former DNI director of National Intelligence under Obama and He made the statement in an interview that that we That that our statement our intelligence assessment essentially made it made Trump's election illegitimate we we made it we made him an illegitimate president and and that to my mind is an extremely telling quote Very honest as well as indicating the degree to which the intelligence community was indulging in a political act in their January 6th Intelligence assessment, which which I criticized at the time or you know, really soon after that as as a really quite outrageous Intelligence move that Went well beyond the professionalism on the part of Clapper in particular and the rest of the leaders.
So and I think that That there is a record here that speaks of just massive self-interest self-dealing if you will by people in the intelligence community that That really is going to require a lot of historical revisionism in the future Yeah, man, I'll tell you what Alright, thanks Gareth Porter.
Appreciate it, man My pleasure, thanks Scott.
All right, you guys that's Garrett the great check out his book manufactured crisis the truth behind the Iran nuclear scare and Perils of dominance about Vietnam before that he's written 10 million articles You can find him at anti-war comm at truth out org at truth dig and at consortium news Which is where you'll find This one here the shaky case that Russia Manipulated social media to tip the 2016 election All right, y'all.
Thanks find me at Libertarian Institute org at Scott Horton org Anti-war comm and reddit comm slash Scott Horton show Oh, yeah, and read my book fool's errand timed and the war in Afghanistan at fool's errand us
