Did Putin help elect Trump to restore $500 billion Exxon oil deal killed by sanctions?

[TomCADem]

Nice article from Think Progress and story on Rachel Maddow:

https://thinkprogress.org/putin-helped-trump-exxon-oil-deal-sanctions-6f169c4a4cd0#.41nvb5m70

The “Russian hack news … is delegitimizing,” explained former George W. Bush speech writer David Frum in a recent article. The conservative Frum was famous for authoring Bush’s controversial “axis of evil” speech about the danger posed by Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.

But it appears our democracy and our children have a new axis to worry about: Putin, Trump, and ExxonMobil, whose CEO Rex Tillerson — an extreme Russophile and long-time director of a US-Russian oil company — is Trump’s puzzling choice for Secretary of State.

I say “puzzling” because the long-serving Exxon employee (from age 23!) has no qualifications to be secretary of state — other than a history negotiating major oil deals with countries like Putin’s Russia, which in any sane world would actually disqualify him or at least force a recusal from all State Department dealings with Russia.

But that puzzle disappears if we follow the famous dictum from the Watergate era for uncovering a tangled web of covert campaign acts: “Follow the money.” And perhaps another puzzle is also solved: Why did Putin take such a “fearful risk,” as Frum put it, to “mount a clandestine espionage and disinformation campaign on behalf” of Trump and against Clinton, “when Putin had every reason to expect that he probably would end up facing a President Clinton,” and a tremendous backlash.

[Cha]

1. Make sense to me with all the evidence we have..

[Wellstone ruled]

2. This story surfaced about a month ago.

Appears to be one of Putin's go to things. Notice Kushner is back. Donnies gopher to Putin.

[TheFrenchRazor]

3. beyond a shadow of a doubt. Putin sees trump as a tool he can work with. nt

[2naSalit]

4. Of course he did.

[Lucinda]

5. KNR