Can We Examine This Puzzle?

For John, BLUF:  I wonder if there is a belief out there that if President Trump was forced from Office that Mrs Clinton would magically ascend to that place?  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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I admit I am in the "Basket of Deplorables", and thus part of the crowd of the undereducated, so I am confused by this current Susan Rice / Russian Hacking Imbroglio.

First, what is "Hacking the Election"?

1. There is the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Campaign Chairman Leon Penetta.  That is hacking, where the security on the computer is weak and folks just walk in.  If you think it doesn't happen everywhere, you are naive.  We, the US Government, do it all the time.
2. Then there is the theory that the Russians, or whoever,♠ dumped materials to influence voters.  This is a bit more edgy, but it is what the Obama Administration used to do, as did others before it.
3. Finally, there is the actual "hacking" of voting machines or vote counts, in order to change the outcome.♥  We have been assured by competent authority that this did not happen.♦

But, now to the contradictory stories on then Mr Trump and President V Putin, and thus President Obama and Ms Susan Rice.

The Main Stream Media, in an act of mental gymnastics, tell us that (1) Mr Trump and President Putin were working together to swing the election, but that (2) no one "wire tapped"♣ Mr Trump.

My question is, if they didn't do (2), how do they know about (1).★  I would say that they wouldn't know, but also the whole story of Russian meddling represents a logical inconsistency if there was no "wiretapping".

There is, of course, the comment of the late F. Scott Fitzgerald:

The true test of a first-rate mind is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time.

And, Reporter and Author George Orwell gave us the term doublethink in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  I find it interesting that all of a sudden Mr Julian Assange is a Russian stooge.  At one time he was a hero of Democracy, but, alas, he was converted into an enemy for the convenience of the Democratic Party in the United States.
♥  This reminds me of the joke in which Moscow buys a whole bunch of old voting machines from the City of Chicago and in the first election for Mayor of Moscow, the winner is Richard J Daley.
♦  There was a theory going around that Mr George Soros owned a company that had made voting machines for 16 states, but Business Insider debunked that idea.
♣  Or otherwise eavesdropped on Mr Trump or his family or his campaign staff.
★  I am not saying I believe (1), but that even if it were true, the various holdovers from the Obama Administration, from FBI Director James Comey, to DoD Official Evelyn Farkas, to former National Security Advisor Susan Rice would not know anything unless they were spying on Mr Trump, which seems a pretty un-American kind of thing to do.  This is the stuff of novels and movies, and now of real life politics.