2016 Postmortem

So, are you telling me Putin would've been content to have finished a closer than previously expected 2nd? (with a $1/2 trillion deal with Exxon on the line).

Sure.

As Trump said himself in Wisconsin (during his victory lap) that he was losing "bigly" in the exit polls - and explained to his wife that he had lost - and he was going to be embarrassed to see the vote tallies coming in - and what was he going to do career-wise.

But what happens? The margin of error is exceeded always in Trump's favor - in 23 of the 25 states contested states with exit polls (the same odds as flipping heads 23 times in 25 flips!!

Would Obama have become the 1st President in history to use the "hot-line" to contact a Russian leader and warn Putin that he wouldn't rule out even a military response if he hacked the election results?? Do you think he would've done that - risk WWIII - even hadn't believed Russia had the ability to hack the vote totals? Would he have done that simply to ward off another Hillary email dump??

Princeton Univ. was asked if the Russians could do this and they said it would child's play for them. The vote tabulators were found to be ultimately connected online (contrary to what Comey said) and the also had cellular connectivity.

The Russians have said they were in contact with the Trump camp throughout - they could have easily indicated which counties and precincts needed to be hacked. And the down ballots were crucial too to maintain control the Senate, which they were likely to lose.

Again, in time, this will leak out. It isn't information the Obama administration was going to be able to just dump on the public and expect everyone to accept - and with our recount system - there wasn't enough time to walk it back - we were basically stuck with this - and the story had to be limited to the obvious intentional hacking of the election the Russians were doing to influence the election and assist Trump. The investigations have been started - and many will be surprised to see that that dossier on Trump is far from the only thing Putin has hanging over his head. He has the collusion of him and his team with the Russians - the most hostile foreign power their is - to steal the Presidential power. TREASON. You can just imagine what sentence a conviction in these circumstances might bring. The name Benedict Arnold would probably be displaced and forgotten in American History overnight.