Donald Trump would not appear to buy the notion that Russia leaked email correspondences from the Democratic National Committee in order to help him.
"The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails, which should never have been written (stupid), because Putin likes me," the Republican nominee tweeted Monday morning.
"But what we have is a kind of bromance going on between Putin and Trump, which is distinct from this leak." (Clinton campaign chairman John) Podesta added, "Maybe it's simply just a mutual admiration society, I don't know, but it's frightening."
Trump has repeatedly praised the Russian strongman throughout the campaign, including remarking last December that "at least he's a leader," unlike President Barack Obama. But Trump has qualified his own kind words for Putin by reasoning that he has only done so because Putin has praised him.
"Sources are saying the Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of actually Helping Donald Trump," (Clinton campaign manager Robbie Mook) said. "I don't think it is coincidental that these emails are released on the eve of the [Democratic National] Convention."
"And that is disturbing, I think we need to be concerned about that. We also saw last week at the Republican convention that Trump and his allies made changes to the Republican platform to make it more pro-Russian."
Imagine the uproar talk-radio show hosts Laura Ingraham, Alex Jones and Rush Limbaugh would be whipping up now, if Hillary Clinton’s chief campaign manager had been for years a trusted adviser to Ukraine’s Viktor Yanukovych.
The Vladimir Putin satrap leveraged a Donbas mobster background to data with Kremlin backing the pro-democracy Orange Revolution and went on to build a kleptocracy underpinned by Russia’s security services, which likely trained the Ukrainian snipers who slaughtered more than 50 Maidan protesters in 2014.
Imagine, too, that it was the Democrat’s presumptive White House nominee who considered appointing as her running mate a retired three-star general and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency who last December bizarrely — and certainly ill-advisedly — chose to be a feted guest at a 10th anniversary gala in Moscow for Russia Today, the virulently anti-American Kremlin propaganda outlet and cheerleader for the Crimea land-grab of Crimea and Putin’s bombing of U.S.-supported Syrian rebels.