Leonid Volkov: "The king is naked"

“I can’t remain silent any longer and will speak briefly about the painful issue. I understand that American society and the liberal press still cannot reflect and accept Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the election a year ago, stuck somewhere between denial and anger - but then, what ’s happening with the “investigation of Russian interference” is no longer just a disgrace, but some kind of collective eclipse of reason, insanity,” writes the head of Alexei Navalny’s election headquarters on Facebook .

“It’s shameful not even that this is all being considered in high places and making it to the front pages of the media, but that no one - at least from here it seems that no one - will say that “the king has no clothes.”

When “election interference” is being discussed in all seriousness by purchasing $100,000 worth of Facebook advertising (hundreds of times less than the Clinton and Trump campaigns spent on Facebook advertising), when leading political publications show hellish pictures as “evidence,” the most “viral” of which collected as many as 200 thousand views (and the majority - several thousand views; there are also those for whose promotion 500 rubles were spent - not thousands of dollars, not dollars, but rubles!) - well, It’s simply impossible, first of all it’s very shameful. Damn, before the meeting in Astrakhan, we ran ads on social networks with a total reach of about two million impressions (and it cost a couple of tens of thousands of rubles), what are you talking about?

The shame is precisely that no one reputable in the industry and in the media will stand up and very loudly say: “WELL, ENOUGH.” If there was a “Russian trace” somewhere, it certainly wasn’t in these Facebook ads, and drawing attention to them completely ruins all opportunities to seriously understand what actually happened in those elections a year ago.”