Political commentator Mollie Hemingway may have finally put a nail in the coffin conspiracy theory that Russian operatives impacted the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Appearing on Fox News “Special Report with Bret Baier” Hemmingway contrasted the half-billion dollars spent by Bloomberg in the ongoing 2020 race and the paltry couple hundred of thousands of dollars reportedly spent by Russian operatives in 2016 on political ads. Bloomberg, as you may have read, only won America Samoa despite his mind-bending ad expenditure.
Hemingway: I think it is interesting that Bloomberg is out. We had years when people were saying a couple hundred thousand dollars of barely literate Facebook ads from Russians caused Donald Trump to win the election. Here you had a guy spend nearly a billion dollars, and he went nowhere. It’s a humiliating defeat for Michael Bloomberg.
Bret: That is a great point. So Russia influenced the election with $200,000, $300,000 in Facebook ads. And Michael Bloomberg could not get more than 50 delegates with $500 million.
Hemingway: That hurts Bernie’s message too. He likes to say that billionaires control everything. Here, clearly Bloomberg having all this money didn’t do as much for him as having the media and establishment behind him. I would pick media and establishment.
