To be clear, whether they are guilty of that or not is irrelevant to the point that people beleive they are, and that can explain a lot of the difference in how they are perceived now.
Ignoring that in favor of narrative where all the Democrats are complete hypocrites is no different than what you were accusing others of in your comment.
If he was engaged in manipulating vote counts, or if he was spreading false information, I would see the problem. But wikileaks for the most part just shared accurate government secrets. You're just using "election meddling" as a negatively connotated buzzword, without supporting how this was negative to the american people.
I also meddled with the election by sharing my opinion on the internet, or at least I attempted to. Does that mean I'm anti-american? What if a foreign person retweeted me, or vice versa? Have I now colluded with foreigners to meddle with the election?
The support of foreigners is not evidence of wrong-doing, and the sharing of information in an attempt to influence an election is not wrongdoing. Free speech includes speech about the elections, in fact that's where it is MOST important.
> if he was spreading false information
https://our.wikileaks.org/Pizzagate
Leading to https://rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/john-pod...
Also implying that Seth Rich was the real leaker and that the DNC had him killed for it.
http://www.fox5dc.com/news/wikileaks-founder-addresses-death...
Here are quotes from the two conspiracy theories you were talking about. Did you even read the articles you linked? he specifically warned in both instances that he did not have damning evidence of either of these things.
> WARNING: This investigation is a Speculative investigation which lacks clear and provable evidence, yet could be interesting should additional evidence be presented.
> We're not saying that Seth Rich's death necessarily is connected to our publications – that's something that needs to be established
Assange is not responsible for the conspiracy theories that other people generate from his information.
This is an extremely dishonest comparison.
Meddling has a negative connotation, so it's probably not useful to continue using that term if trying to discuss this particular issue as something that may not be negative. Tampering has worse connotations, but if you're "meddling" in something, it's implied you're getting involved where you don't belong.
That said, as I noted many people believe it was meddling in this case for numerous reasons (the timing, the specifics of the situation, how it could be perceived as supporting a particular side).
I'm not interested in litigating whether it actually was election tampering/meddling, and I worded my comment specifically to note that. I am interesting in shutting down another line of "Ah, another case of [other group] who are {evil,stupid,hypocrites,wrong} because of [belief] which is wrong because of [contrived example which discounts much of the real reasons people believe that]." It's not constructive to the discussion, does not lead to future useful discussions (and any it does lead to can be reached through far more constructive means), and since the same reasoning can be applied to any response, it's ultimately fruitless. It's pointless and nonconstructive in the same way saying "Trump supporters don't care what he does as long as he sticks it to the Democrats" is.
Edit: Clarified what I meant by my first sentence.
You said that some people make the distinction between "election meddling" and "exposing government actions". What I'm saying is that those two aren't mutually exclusive and you'd be incorrect to make that distinction as a rule.
Anytime you expose government actions on a democratic government you're naturally going to have some amount of influence on the next election, so frankly it seems rather unintelligent to attempt to draw a distinction there. Either unintelligent or dishonest.
"meddling in elections".... pff....
Using this as a justification to omit the governments responsibility in war crimes, people really shouldn't vote for anything associated with your politic platform. And maybe they just didn't. That would actually be an explanation that is far more probable.
