My view is Donald Trump won the 2016 election fair and square, without any significant help from the Russian spy services. The discovery of the Epstein network and a sudden groundswell of interest in pedophelia as a topic, had a lot to do with millennials coming of age and assembling a picture of the world. No, sixteen year olds did not vote in 2016, but their concerns were shared by many older and younger people as well.
So am I saying Pizzagate tipped the election? I find that more probable than any story involving Moscow, concocted by the losing political camp. "Pizzagate" is simply code for an existential distrust of the privileged ruling class on the part of youngsters, of the outgoing Boomers especially.
Hostility to the crime family aspects of being in power was a function of increasing financial literacy and a less Victorian, post Freudian attitude towards repressing stories involving pedophelia. Consider how much has trickled out regarding the Epstein network since 2016.
Those seeking a more healing rhetoric, seeking to unify a divided body politic, would probably do well to acknowledge Trump's 2016 victory, even as they continue to emphasize his loss in 2020. That someone as controversial as Trump would only survive four years in office is hardly surprising. His handling of the global pandemic scared a lot of people.
Also, because of the pandemic and all the focus on holding an election regardless, the bureaucrats in charge of running elections had an interest in keeping it transparent. The plan to unearth all kinds of irregularities backfired big time, as we experienced less corruption than usual given the freakish circumstances of needing to implement vote by mail etc. That's my read on 2020: this time Trump lost, also fairly and squarely. In neither case did the Russians play a critical role, but in both cases the DC-based intelligence community (IC) certainly did.
My recollection of the Reagan years was the lid blew off on much of the secret behind the scenes shenanigans perpetrated by said IC. People began to tune in that layer in the bureaucracy as a political actor starting especially in the wake of 911. The way 911 got spun into an attack on Iraq upped that intergenerational distrust that would later boil over in 2016.
