Russians used coal to sow discord among Americans, says Mueller report

“Coal was one of many issues used by the Russian trolls to drive a wedge between American voters, the report says. The group was indicted by Mueller in 2018 for conspiring to influence the election. And a report by the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee found that the trolls also posted about pipelines, fossil fuels, fracking, and climate change between 2015 and 2017.

But the Russians didn’t stick to social media alone. The Internet Research Agency also organized a number of 2016 pro-Trump events in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, the report says. One of the rallies featured a “miners for Trump” poster: “How many PA workers lost their jobs due to Obama’s disruptive policies? Help Mr. Trump fix it.”

They played these fools for their votes and they get left holding the bag.

They're still doing it. No idea if it's a Russian troll per se but we have one guy who says over and over that HRC deserved to lose because she told coal miners she didn't care about them.

See it said on Twitter sometimes too, even at this late date.

Send him this link.

Were the miners who fought Thatcher Russian stooges?

What a timely reference, r5.

In the 80s it wasn't quite as obvious how desperately we need to transition away from fossil fuels. Keeping people tethered to these jobs is suicidal, for us and them.

Who in the FUCK thought "coal is coming back"? Climate change deniers sucking on chili dogs outside the Tastee Freez? Jeebus. When will the desperation to maintain old systems of oppression end? Whatever happened to Elaine Irwin? Is she a Cougar now...?

They believed the republicans were going to save their jobs. At least democrats had a plan to transition to reality.

Can't say I feel sorry for the miners. Obama gave them the opportunity to retrain. Hope Trump's idiotic promises about coal come back to bite him in the ass come election time.

Exactly, Hillary had concrete plans to retrain them but no, it's easier to ignore reality, I guess. It's just going to hurt them more and more with each passing month as coal plants are closing down like nobody's business.

I watched an episode on John Oliver where he was talking about coal miners. When Obama was president they had a job retraining program for these people in West Virginia etc, but most of the people didn't want to move and get a different job somewhere else. Even though they knew working in a coal mine would cause them health problems they wouldn't budge. You can't help stupid!

Here in KY all that lipless lizard Mitch McConnell has to do is promise to save coal and the dumbasses stand in line to suck his old wrinkled cloaca.

This is so horrible. No wonder they turn to opioids. Who can blame them. The repugs saw a little meat left on their bones and scraped it off in 2016.

R12 Well, I say let natural evolution wipe their genes out.

DL called this out first, as usual.

What R12 said.

The "Trump will save coal because it's not going away" factor was one of the more baffling aspects of the 2016 election.

Never thought I'd see such a rush to get black lung.

Can’t think of a dumber group of people. They thought coal was coming back decades after it died and they wanted to get rid of Obamacare. Because insurers are lining up to insure the health of rednecks with no career prospects and black lungs.

They deserve everything they get and worse because Dump also fed right into their racism.

There are plenty of voters who fell for it and still haven't figured it out. What's left is misdirected anger.

[quote]But, hey, it's THE RUSSIANS that caused poor little Hillary to lose the election - those devious Kremlin swine. Oh yeah, and 'Bernie bots' and people who voted for third parties. All their fault.

Those people, most likely non voters or those who threw their vote away will never admit they might have been influenced by propaganda.

[quote]If Russian entities spent $2 million on Facebook ads (or whatever), then how can you possibly believe that it was a greater influence than the $768 million spent by the Clinton campaign? Add in the mainstream media's and Hollywood's constant, day-and-night shilling for Hillary and claims of "Russian influence" look even more absurd.

[quote]The whole Mueller report was never going to show anything. There wasn’t any Russian collusion to help Trump win.

Russian influence was mild at best, the trolls at 4CHAN had more impact than russia

Part of my family comes from a coal region. The romantic attachment to these jobs is strong. There was a horrific mine disaster several years ago, entirely the fault of the unscrupulous owner who worked it long past the point where it was safe, and they still love Trump for protecting king coal. It's what their families have done for generations and they don't want to do anything else. Renewable energy is for sissies.

I'll grant that Trump saw a situation that was ripe for exploiting and he exploited it, mostly to his benefit. It's what he does best.

R24 Trump is a known con artist that's for sure, just look into trump university.

[quote]And the whole notion that the Kremlin somehow nefariously 'interfered' with the US election via some second-rate troll farm and a few thousand tweets and Facebook posts is fucking laughable.

Coal is dead. Leave it in the ground where it belongs.

Besides, if there's a nuclear apocalypse the next civilization is going to need it eventually.

[quote]Climate change deniers sucking on chili dogs outside the Tastee Freez?

Climate change isn't really a factor. Some of it is environment regulations because most of us want to actually be able to breathe but the largest part is that coal isn't the cheapest alternative. And as long as that remains the case, which it will for the foreseeable future, coal isn't coming back.

Those are all trolls postings r26 .. it explains that in the article at OP. Lol.

Those aren’t real people. Read the article.

Some of this is your fault if you think deplorables use the word “notion” or hyphen words.

Jesus.

R20-r22 is another spin on the classic “his Baden will never leave him”.

That’s just not true. And it’s getting old.

*base

All that coping and pasting of troll posts took a lot of work. It’s weird that any poster on here would be clinging to that fading myth that his base will never move on.

I can't imagine being poor, having a dangerous, back-breaking job & voting for the likes of Donald Trump.

The coal-miners deserve their fate.

[quote] All that coping and pasting of troll posts took a lot of work. It’s weird that any poster on here would be clinging to that fading myth that his base will never move on.

Those posts are not from his base and have nothing to do with his approval rating. What makes you say so?

These threads are in my threadwatcher. It's not hard to find bullshit in political threads. Every single political thread has it.

But you realize now that those are not the genuine sentiments of people in the rust belt but rather a script that they were handed by foreigners as pointed out in the attached article of this thread?

These are genuine sentiments of people who believed, and still believe, the foreign born propaganda sold on social media. Who wants to admit they were conned? No one.

If something is not done, Democratic candidates will suffer from this in 2019/2020. That's the worry.

Not FROM this, BECAUSE of this is what I meant.

This is such a travesty.

What a scam job he’s done on these poor people. Where is the social media outrage for this?

Trump Vowed To Save Coal But U.S.' Largest Mining Basin Remains In Decline

Jfc those poor people were told over and over and over coal is dead. Obama had training programs for them and no one showed up. They wanted the world not to change. They chose to believe lies rather than the truth in front of their faces.

When it comes to Coal Miners and the Companies they work for: Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice- well you know the rest.

You R41 meant fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice you can't get fooled again.

But they still love this snake oil salesmen him I bet. Too much pride. He’ll create a new boogieman next year

I tried to start a thread about similar topics OP. Mine didn't gain traction. I have to visit neighboring states that border Tennessee , and I ended up going through KY and PA. I knew something was the hell off with the people from this region when they failed to acknowledge they got conned.

I had to walk away mid-sentence when one woman ( I think she was from West Virginia) I talked to in Florence was going on about evil Hillary and that somehow Hillary and Obama didn't let the coal mines open back up. When I'm back in Tennessee I know to just shake my head and move on, but when I am in places in Pennsylvania it hurts a bit b/c they should know better.

I've given up trying to talk to Trumpkins. Only like 1 out of 16 are remotely amendable. The others seem to be trying desperate to explain why they are still right and justified in their voting for the insane clown of a President we have. Some of these people just wanted someone to be angry at, and they magically decided Trump was on their team despite evidence to the contrary. When anyone can get that divorced from reality that's fucking SCARY!

The coal supporters that went full MAGA in 2016 will never admit they were duped. They'll argue to the death that it was elitist for the left to expect them to upskill and retrain to become competitive in a new job market. They chose to remain in the past, and we all got stuck with President Pennywise; fuck 'em all! I couldn't care less about capturing their vote in 2020 for the democratic candidate. Democrats need to focus on regaining support from those that abstained from voting for POTUS (or all together) and those that protest voted.

R30, any solid evidence that his base is leaving him? After all that's happened I still haven't seen an ounce of movement from his cultists.