Trumpsteria is even hitting McClatchy

I am hereby suggesting a new portmanteau, mashing up on "Trump" and "hysteria" for "Trumpsteria." Like a wisteria, it will be purplish in its anger, and sometimes in its prose.

Like McClatchy, which I thought at one time knew better than to run speculative-at-best crap like this about Jared Kushner meeting with people who may be, but likely aren't, that close to Vladimir Putin.

First there's this, among the more tenuous statements.

By Election Day, an automated Kremlin cyberattack of unprecedented scale and sophistication had delivered critical and phony news about the Democratic presidential nominee to the Twitter and Facebook accounts of millions of voters. Some investigators suspect the Russians targeted voters in swing states, even in key precincts. 

Russia’s operation used computer commands knowns as “bots” to collect and dramatically heighten the reach of negative or fabricated news about Clinton, including a story in the final days of the campaign accusing her of running a pedophile ring at a Washington pizzeria.

Erm, given that major newspapers have retracted their "17 intelligence sources" stories, and for other reasons, if by "Russia" you mean "Russian government," we still know no such thing.

It gets worse:

One source familiar with Justice's criminal probe said investigators doubt Russian operatives controlling the so-called robotic cyber commands that fetched and distributed fake news stories could have independently "known where to specifically target … to which high-impact states and districts in those states."

So, we have an intelligence operation brilliant enough to distribute fake news stories, or enhance their Google rank, etc., etc., and who have been selected for their cyber-smarts deliberately to target American presidential politics —

BUT, BUT, BUT too dumb to know about the Electoral College and battleground states, and left without guidance from supervisors who would know?

Supposedly, the cyberhandlers behind these bots were even smart enough not just to try to help Trump in the general but also in the Republican primaries. But still dumb!

As for other aspects of that latter link? Clint Watts is ex-FBI. I don't know if he's a BFF of James Comey or not, but it's at least possible. And,  he's clearly otherwise bipartisan foreign policy establishment insider, given stuff like his past association with the Foreign Policy Research Institute. At the same time, CNN says he is NOT known as a cyber expert.

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On another Trumpian relative, Donald Jr., Masha Gessen has the much more factual story. A low-wattage conman was being conned by brighter ones.