by William Skink

The real story of the 2016 presidential election has finally come into focus for me, and it can be summed up thusly: two malignant narcissists tried to steal the election and Trump’s method won.

Oh, and he’ll do it again in 2020 and it has nothing to do with Russia.

Before getting to the successful method of election theft Trump utilized, let’s take a look at how voters were slyly herded toward Hillary: enter, stage left, the Google and a whistleblower by the name of Robert Epstein (no relation to the murdered pedophile sex trafficker). Here is Epstein describing the Google’s power to manipulate:

Research I have been directing in recent years suggests that Google, Inc., has amassed far more power to control elections—indeed, to control a wide variety of opinions and beliefs—than any company in history has ever had. Google’s search algorithm can easily shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20 percent or more—up to 80 percent in some demographic groups—with virtually no one knowing they are being manipulated, according to experiments I conducted recently with Ronald E. Robertson.

Given that many elections are won by small margins, this gives Google the power, right now, to flip upwards of 25 percent of the national elections worldwide. In the United States, half of our presidential elections have been won by margins under 7.6 percent, and the 2012 election was won by a margin of only 3.9 percent—well within Google’s control.

What we call in our research the Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME) turns out to be one of the largest behavioral effects ever discovered. Our comprehensive new study, just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), includes the results of five experiments we conducted with more than 4,500 participants in two countries. Because SEME is virtually invisible as a form of social influence, because the effect is so large and because there are currently no specific regulations anywhere in the world that would prevent Google from using and abusing this technique, we believe SEME is a serious threat to the democratic system of government.

Last summer Robert Epstein discussed his research with Congress and speculated that the range of votes that could have been steered toward Clinton was between 2.5 million to 10 million:

In July 2019, Epstein presented his research to the Senate Judiciary Committee, claiming that Google could manipulate “upwards of 15 million votes” in 2020 and recommending that Google’s search index be made public.

In a clarification to a question asked by Ted Cruz he also said that “2.6 million is a rock bottom minimum” for how many votes Google might have swung towards Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election, and that “the range is between 2.6 million and up to 10.4 million votes”.

If Epstein’s research is accurate, those dastardly Russians don’t have squat on a potential manipulator like the Google.

But Hillary Clinton is not in the White House. So how did Trump do it? By stopping hundreds of thousands of people from being able to cast a vote.

Making the claim that Trump has stolen one election and will steal another is investigative journalist, Greg Palast. Here is an interview he did recently. I’m going to excerpt a lengthy part of it here, but suggest checking out the link. Here’s Greg Palast speaking with Sabrina Jacobs:

Greg Palast: For the past 20 years, I’ve been an investigative reporter… About half my beat has been on what is sometimes called vote suppression — I simply call it a racist vote theft — that goes on in America. We still have apartheid elections. You had mentioned that back in 2000 when Gore was running against Bush and Bush won the presidency of the United States by just 537 votes, that was in Florida. But what I found out while I was working then with The Guardian, I was in London and I got hold of two computer disks from inside [the office of] the Florida Secretary of State. Her name was Katherine Harris. She was also running the Bush reelection campaign and she had removed, before the election, tens of thousands of black folk from the voter rolls, saying that they were ex-cons, felons who in the state of Florida could not vote. So she removed tens of thousands of people, but not one American outlet said, well, are these really criminals? [Are they] in fact ex-cons? I got the list and exactly none of them were. Zero. None. None at all. They were people like Willie Steen, a Gulf war veteran — unlike our draft-dodging president at the time. And the current draft-dodging president, who couldn’t remember which foot was so bad he couldn’t go to Vietnam. It was the right or the left Donald. 50/50.

So we busted them. They removed all these black people. That’s how a Bush became president. In 2004, we saw Kerry was denied the presidency by stealing it in Ohio. Obama overcame the steal. That’s when I wrote an update to The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Then I did the film, which premiered as a benefit for KPFA, in which I said, in the version that we premiered in Berkeley, that Donald Trump was going to steal this election. But you didn’t listen. No. You bought your party dresses for Hillary’s inauguration. It was all locked up. Forget about it. It’s done and dusted. And I said, but Agent Orange is going to steal this thing. [I told you] exactly how he was going to do it. Here’s the system, called Crosscheck, which is created by a guy named Kris Kobach of Kansas. Just think KKK. Kris Kobach of Kansas came with a system of removing voters who were registered in two states, to prevent people voting in two states, which is a terrible crime. He didn’t catch anyone doing it, but, hey, he has millions of suspects on the list with names like John Jackson, Jose Garcia, David Kim — you get the idea, right?

Sabrina Jacobs: Right. Totally. Now, this is a part of that committee that was put together after Trump was elected, right? Is that what you’re talking about?

Greg Palast: Well, Kobach got him elected… When I was doing this investigation for Rolling Stone and Democracy Now we calculated about 1.1 million people were removed from the voter rolls for being doubly registered. People like, literally, 576 guys named James Brown in Georgia. James Edward Brown was supposed to have been the same guy as James Thomas Brown. James Brown, Jr. was supposed to be the same guy as James Brown, Sr. They all lost their vote. And see, here’s the trick.

Sabrina Jacobs: Wow.

Greg Palast: The trick is that the history of slavery, the Spanish conquest, the history of immigration from China, Korea, and from the East, people come in with common last names. Children of slaves [were given names like] Jackson, Johnson, Black, and Jones. In addition, [they matched minority names like] Garcia, et cetera… 85 of the 100 most common last names in America are minority names, and they used that. Basically, if your first and last name matched someone in another state, you had a very good chance of losing your vote. That’s how Trump won 2016…

In fact, the current version of the film, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, has the updates showing you not just how Trump was going to steal it, but then I go back and show you how he did steal it in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. And now what I want to talk to you about, and what I’m working on now for The Guardian newspapers and a book I’m writing too — in fact, the book’s going to be called, How Trump Stole 2020 — so I’m telling you in advance. Your final warning.

Like Palast said, you’ve been warned.

And none of this has anything to do with Russia. Please remember that.