Hillary Clinton was a polarizing figure—although it is possible the rifts between her supporters and her opponents wouldn't have been so pronounced if Trump and/or Putin weren't sowing the seeds of hatred against her.

Clinton will always be remembered as the person who had been tenacious and devoted enough to become the first woman to win the presidential nomination for a major political party in the United States. She will also be remembered for her dogged determination in standing up to a candidate who held her responsible for her husband's sexual transgressions.1 Because of the impact of social media and an unyielding twenty-four-hour news cycle, she was heckled and jeered at while campaigning in a manner that has never occurred in our country in the past. Then Trump riled up his crowds to chant phrases like “Lock her up” and “Crooked Hillary.”² Clinton also stood up to a candidate whose multiple attempts at verbal and physical intimidation during debates were so remarkable they were prominently featured in domestic comedy skits like Saturday Night Live.³

As the campaigning became more brutal and rifts between party members in the United States deepened, Clinton came to represent one of several ideals. Some people vehemently opposed to the election of Trump felt that voting for Clinton wasn't a choice, but more of an obligation because that would ensure he didn't get into office. Others passionately supported her because she was a woman and they wanted to see the first female president of the United States get into office—just as they had seen Barack Obama as the first African American president. Her position would ensure women fought for and maintained equal economic, social, and political rights. Her presidency would stand for our collective evolution, proof that our society had changed. Many people in this camp believed Clinton was a good choice because she had stood her ground for decades in a political environment that was largely dominated by men, and had made tough choices.

There are educated, informed people who didn't like Clinton due to some of the choices that she'd made throughout her career, for example being largely responsible for coining the phrase “super predator”—a myth referring to gangs of bloodthirsty, remorseless (black) kids roaming the streets—and for supporting policies that led to mandatory sentences of life without parole for thousands of teenagers, the majority of whom are still in prison.4 Some held her responsible for what happened at Benghazi, on September 11, 2012, where four Americans were killed in Libya.⁵ Even the Clinton Foundation had become a liability for her. Some Republicans had succeeded in branding it as a corrupt vehicle for donors to curry favor with Secretary of State Clinton. The Clinton Foundation began in 1997 as a way for the Clinton family to raise money for humanitarian work across the globe, and there was no hard evidence presented that it had done otherwise. There were people who had strong political opinions about why they didn't want Hillary Clinton as president.

If you ask the majority of people vehemently opposed to the election of Hillary Clinton, however, they generally parrot the rhetoric Trump spouted during the campaigns, calling her “crooked,” or a “criminal,” and citing the investigations into her email server as evidence.

PUTIN WAS BEHIND HILLARY BASHING

It is becoming well known that the Putin-led Russian influence campaign helped sway public opinion against Clinton, and that some of its primary objectives “were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.”⁶ This information was made public in a declassified report called Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections, a compilation of assessments from the CIA, FBI, and NSA, released in January 2017. US officials said that what was revealed to the public was a declassified version of another “highly classified assessment” that only a small group of people had been briefed on.7

The source of this condemnation was Putin's hatred of Clinton. This hatred stemmed back to 2009, when Clinton had just been appointed secretary of state, and Obama charged her with overseeing his “Russian reset” program, which was established to try and sow some semblance of goodwill between the two countries. Putin didn't trust Clinton from the get-go. He believed she was harder on policies relating to Moscow than other US officials and that she advocated for Russian “regime change” measures that could have ousted him from power.⁸

Russian reset followed on the heels of a threat to Putin's power in 2009, when Putin's elongated term was limited and he became prime minister and relinquished the presidency to Dimitri Medvedev. Putin was hurt when Medvedev veered from the trade Putin schooled him in and when Medvedev expressed himself as a liberal with a penchant for the West and their fun technological gadgets.⁹

In 2011, Putin ran for president again (it would be his third term). He won the election by a landslide, but was accused of rigging the vote.¹⁰ Shortly afterward, Clinton spoke out, saying citizens’ votes should count and that she supported free, fair elections. Subsequently, the most substantial anti-government protests since the fall of the Cold War occurred in Moscow and other cities across Russia.¹¹ Kremlin officials feared they could lead to a revolution. Putin largely blamed the protests on Clinton's remarks. The idea that she had made these statements mainly to serve US agendas had been a belief held by factions in the Kremlin since Russian reset began.¹²

And Putin certainly had it in for Clinton. “He was very upset [with Clinton] and continued to be for the rest of the time that I was in government,” said Michael McFaul, who served as the top Russia official in President Obama's national security council from 2009 to December 2011 and then was US ambassador to Moscow until early 2014. “One could speculate that this is his moment for payback.”¹³

That payback began with Putin's army of hackers, including two units nicknamed after children's stuffed toys, Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, who hacked into the email servers at the DNC and passed off the data to a team of drive-through cyber spies to leak them over the internet. That was only phase one. One of my sources explained that after the hack was publicly attributed to Russia, the actors didn't retreat or go into a shell, as many other operatives would have. Instead they doubled down. This was also what Meyers meant when he said the “Russians didn't hide their tracks and were doing their thing.”14

Phase two was more aggressive. Putin went for the jugular of our electoral system—our electoral databases.