tbh it was less that there was no truth in the claims that Putin was attempting to fuck with US politics in conjunction with an enthusiastic Trump and more that for a while the most ridiculous maximalist version of this was the go-to explanation for everything bothersome happening in america

Well yes, but what did you expect people to do? Some materialist analysis???

The most frustrating conspiracy theories are the ones that overlap with actual conspiracies

Yeah, past a point it kind of felt like deflection away from the fact that this place does genuinely have cultural issues. That sort of "The fever'll break" mindset re: the right, manifesting in a different way.

Also, I'm sorry but the most absurd stuff people said about Russia meddling was not true, even if a bunch of stuff was true. Like...sorry, a lot of the backlash comes from people literally being accused of being Russian plants for talking against the dnc party line, which was in fact absurd

Not to mention the hypocrisy of the US crying about a relatively minor version of the thing it does constantly to basically every other country

"Only COMRADE PUTIN could convince an American conservative to do a heckin racism!!!" type stuff. It was all over the place

It also didn't help that the people pushing that version of things were the most annoying grift lords of the hashtag resistance.

And in fact this is the stance that Nancy Pelosi still takes

in 2015, Paul Manafort made a deal with Putin to install Trump as US president in exchange for Ukraine. So the evidence that Putin helped install Trump is that he then took his profit, literally months after Trump was out of office

It was to the point people were calling Trump a Russian agent. He's just a very stupid man who lives for flattery.