https://amgreatness.com/2018/06/23/russia-meddled-and-almost
Political leaders and journalists are deeply concerned about Russian meddling in U.S. elections. Took ’em long enough.
The Russians have been meddling in U.S. elections for at least 70 years.
In 1948, the Progressive Party—a front for the Soviet-controlled Communist Party—ran former Vice President Henry Wallace as its presidential candidate. Wallace arguably threw the election to President Truman by attacking him, undercutting Republicans’ claims that Truman was “soft” on the Russians.
“President Eisenhower today accused Soviet Premier Nikolai A. Bulganin of meddling in the American election campaign,” the United Press reported on October 21, 1956. Bulganin had suggested that Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson was more likely to get an agreement halting H-bomb tests. That, Eisenhower said, constituted “interference by a foreign nation in our internal affairs . . . in the midst of a national election campaign.”
Historian Bruce Dearstyne reported that the Russian ambassador in 1960 invited Stevenson to the embassy, “plied” him with “drinks, caviar, and fruit,” and offered to back him if he would run for president again. Stevenson rejected the offer.
Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier in 1960, bragged in his memoirs that, “by waiting to release the U-2 pilot Gary Powers until after the American election, we kept Nixon from being able to claim that he could deal with the Russians; our ploy made a difference of at least half a million votes, which gave Kennedy the edge he needed.”