US officials have announced a surprise development, or at least they are leaking a surprise development to the news reporters, and it is that Russia may be meddling in the 2020 election to hurt Joe Biden and help Donald Trump. Whoa if true! It is like Russia is on the same page with Donald Trump, who was impeached for bribing Ukraine -- the country Russia invaded in 2014 and wants to be part of Russia again, and so does Trump -- to meddle in the 2020 election, to hurt Joe Biden and help Donald Trump!

It's good when Donald Trump and the country where his true allegiance lies ("allegedly") can work so very independently of each other (NO COLLUSION!) for the exact same goals.

The probe comes as senior U.S. officials are warning that Russia's election interference in 2020 could be more brazen than in the 2016 presidential race or the 2018 midterm election.

Part of the inquiry is to determine whether Russia is trying to weaken Biden by promoting controversy over his past involvement in U.S. policy toward Ukraine while his son worked for an energy company there. [...]

"In America, they're using social media and many other tools to inflame social divisions, promote conspiracy theories and sow distrust in our democracy and elections," [National Counterintelligence and Security Center director William] Evanina said in a statement. "As we look ahead to 2020, one thing I can guarantee is they'll keep up their influence campaigns and utilize new vectors of disinformation."

We already knew every bit of this.

The story about how Ukraine is the real collusion is Russian propaganda. The entirely made-up stories about Joe Biden and/or his son Hunter Biden doing supposedly nefarious things in Ukraine are Russian propaganda, and some of the people mama birding that shit down Rudy Giuliani's throat on his foreign adventures are literally tied to the former KGB and the Russian mob. And for the origin of all that shit, look no further than jailbird Paul Manafort, who spent years in Ukraine working for the benefit of Vladimir Putin with some of the same exact characters pushing the Biden stories now (hello, Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash!), and who has apparently been repeating stories exonerating Russia and blaming Ukraine for the 2016 election attacks since the 2016 campaign.

The only silver lining, we guess, is that Trump's officials are telling us this. They've also told Congress this, and they told the American public this during the impeachment hearings.

As Bloomberg suggests above, whatever Russia does in 2020 will probably will be worse than in 2016. They haven't suffered any real consequences for their actions, it's pretty much their only play if they want to exert influence on what America does, and oh yeah, timely reminder, their 2016 campaign worked. Their puppet is in the Oval Office, and though he is an incompetent shitshow, he's still doing everything he can to do unto Putin as he wishes Putin would do unto him.

How bad will it be?

"It's possible that you will see the creation of false documents," [Justice Department national security chief John] Demers said. "They could be mixed in with real information, which would make it very difficult to discern the difference. I worry about that as the next evolution of some of their means."

Officials also expect Russia to continue trying to hack organizations, release embarrassing information and carry out malign social media operations.

False documents. Awesome. And we don't think they just mean the false documents Rudy Giuliani waves around on Fox News.

The difference between now and 2016, though, is that this time, we know it's happening. We figured it out as we went along back then, but nobody really realized the breadth and the scope of what Russia was doing. Now it's more of a question of "What isn't Russia doing to help Trump steal another election?"

And if Joe Biden doesn't get the nomination, you can betcha that Russia's got plans for whomever ultimately gets it, and yes, that includes Bernie Sanders. In 2016, Russia promoted Sanders, but that was part of hurting Hillary Clinton. If Sanders ends up the nominee Democrats choose to go against Trump, just you wait, Sandernistas!

2020 is going to be the worst year ever, but maybe it'll end well, hopefully, but maybe it won't, and that's the extent of our power of positive thinking right now, the end.

[Bloomberg]

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