Donald Trump’s embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin may be about much, much more than Trump’s admiration for autocrats, blowhards, and anyone who says nice things about Donald Trump. Loyalty to Putin’s Russia may actually be a defining theme of Trump’s candidacy for president of the United States, and Putin’s Russia may be trying to help Trump out—with the leak of Democratic National Committee emails, for instance.
Steve Benen rounds up some of the key points:
* The Washington Post reported overnight, “In the past 24 hours, cybersecurity experts have said that the email cache released by WikiLeaks on Friday appears to have been given to the anti-secrecy group by Russian intelligence.”
* The Washington Post also reported the other day that the Trump campaign, which generally took no interest in the Republican Party’s official platform, took special care to add language about U.S. policy towards Ukraine – a new position that contradicts GOP foreign-policy orthodoxy – that brings the platform in line with the policies of the Russian government. [...]
* Noting Trump’s anti-NATO posture – another break with decades of Republican thought on foreign policy – The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, a center-right observer, noted last week, “Trump is making it clear that, as president, he would allow Russia to advance its hegemonic interests across Europe and the Middle East.”
Josh Marshall, meanwhile, highlights Trump’s financial reliance on Russian money.
After his bankruptcy and business failures roughly a decade ago Trump has had an increasingly difficult time finding sources of capital for new investments. [...] He has steadied and rebuilt his financial empire with a heavy reliance on capital from Russia. At a minimum the Trump organization is receiving lots of investment capital from people close to Vladimir Putin.
So we’ve got a carefully timed leak of Democratic National Committee emails that appears to have originated with Russian intelligence and been laundered through WikiLeaks (which has been tweeting some breathtakingly anti-Semitic stuff), and a Republican candidate with a financial reliance on Russian money whose most specific policy interests appear to involve promoting Putin’s priorities internationally. Oh, and by the way, Trump’s campaign chair, Paul Manafort, was previously a top campaign adviser for a Putin ally in Ukraine. If it was a movie plot, it would seem like a real stretch.
But according to Trump, it’s “the new joke in town.”
