Bush / Cheney & Co. never came right out and said it, but they really, really fertilized the ground for a belief that Saddam Hussein had something to do with the 9/11 attacks. Thinking back to 2002-2004, it wasn't actually that hard to find people who honestly believed this.
Fast forward to today, does anyone else get the sense that a lot of people believe that "the Russians" actually hacked into voting systems and changed "Clinton" votes to "Trump"? I'd love it if an outfit such as Zogby, Quinnipiac, Gallup, Rasmussen, or whomever actually conducted a poll testing such a belief.
Ask yourself how the phraseology of typical #RussiaGate stories in the #MSM might just fertilize the ground around a belief that Russian hackers directly changed votes.