Look, I know it's pointless to offer rational arguments to people who (1) are impervious to reason and (2) would never read my blog anyhow, but the whole suggestion that Russia, Hillary Clinton and the Deep State conspired together to create the Steele Dossier and frame Trump makes no sense whatever if you let facts seep into the picture.
FACT: The Russians hacked the DNC server and Hillary's campaign manager's e-mail and turned the contents over to Wikileaks to release in the manner calculated to cause most damage to Hillary Clinton's campaign. It isn't just the FBI and Deep State saying this. The cyber security firm Crowdstrike examined the DNC server and determined that Russian Military Intelligence had hacked it and multiple independent private security firms have confirmed the finding. No one else, let alone anyone with technical competence to make an assessment, has offered any alternative theory as to who the hacker was, much less that the hack was faked. The Mueller indictment has set for the hack in considerable detail and William Barr, Trump's hand-picked Attorney General, accepts this as fact.
And once this is accepted as fact, the rest of the story about Hillary Clinton conspiring with the Russians and the Deep State makes no sense.
The obvious question that gets asked is why Trump's opponents would go to such length to forge the whole dossier and then never use it in the election. The usual answer is as an "insurance policy" just in case he won.
Can we think for about five minutes whether that would make any sense?
Russia's motive would presumably be to weaken the US by undermining our leaders. I would not put it past the Russians to forge documents against Trump even as they were pulling for him in the election. No one expected Trump to win. The best the Russians could hope for was to severely weaken and undermine Hillary before she took office. Conceivably they might forge documents against Trump as an "insurance policy" to weaken him if he came to power. But if that was their plan, it would probably have been wise not to release the documents into the US before the election lest they see the light of day and strengthen Hillary. And since it is clear that what the Russians wanted most was the lifting of sanctions, it would make even more sense for them to hold onto the documents until after that was addressed. If Trump failed to lift sanctions, then by all means unleash the documents against him. And even if he succeeded, the Russians might release the documents anyhow in the interest of weakening and dividing the US. But until a decision was made one way or the other, the Russians would be well advised to make nice with Trump and not undermine him.
The Deep State's motive would presumably be to put their patsy, Hillary, into power instead of Trump, who might drain their swamp. Forging Trump/Russia documents would make sense in that context. Even conspiring with Russia would be conceivable. But it seems awfully far-fetched to think that the Deep State would go to such lengths to forge documents that they never expected to use. To say that the Deep State did use the documents to obtain a warrant to wiretap Carter Page still doesn't make sense. If the goal was to spy on the Trump campaign, why wait until October, late in the election season, and after Page had left the campaign? And what did they gain by spying on Trump and then never releasing any information they learned? Then there is the matter of why the Deep State, after going to such lengths to keep Trump from being elected by forging documents and then concealing them, then threw the election to Trump by announcing two weeks before the election that it was reopening the Clinton investigation. The usual answer is that the FBI intentionally stymied the investigation in order to focus on Trump and that its hand was finally forced at a most inopportune time by agents on the case. But why didn't the FBI then play its trump card -- release the forged documents, or at least reveal the Trump was also under FBI investigation? Why see its scheme failing and respond by not using the insurance policy it had in place in case of failure?
And then there is Hillary Clinton. Her motive was the simplest of all. She wanted to be elected President. As such, she would not be interested in "insurance policies" to be held in reserve in case she lost. She would want to use such things to win. At most, she might hold an "insurance policy" in reserve if her fortunes took an unexpected turn for the worst. And it would be inconceivable that she would conspire with the Russians at the same time they were conspiring against her.
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