What's Going on With Putin and Trump and Why It's a Big, Big Deal

[Bill USA]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/what-this-is-really-about

I was just talking to David Kurtz about this and he noted that coverage of the Russia/Trump story has been simultaneously so cursory and outlandish that anything short of ironclad confirmation of Trump's being a Russian spy will seem like a big come-down and hardly worth noting. I have been talking to various cybersecurity experts today to try to get a handle on just what level of confidence we should have in the claims that Russia hacked the DNC servers and then leaked the email cache to Wikileaks to upend the Democratic convention. As David notes, the Russian hacking part of this is so cartoonish and out there that it's simply hard to know what to make of it, other than the fact that Trump is himself such a cartoonish figure that perhaps it all matches up.

So I thought I'd take a moment to explain what I see as a sober, one-step-at-a-time explanation of what questions need to be answered and explored.

For me you start with a series of highly disturbing and dangerous comments by Trump about Russia and NATO. As I noted a couple weeks ago, our relative peaceful and prosperous world is far from the natural or only possible order of things. Things can get bleak very quickly, especially when you're stupid. Trump's comments are far more than highly questionable foreign policy ideas. He seems unable to understand high level geopolitics as anything more than a protection racket with him running for American mob boss. Even if Trump is no more than ignorant, impulsive and stupid, these are highly disturbing intimations of a Trump presidency that should have everyone across the political spectrum taking note and re-evaluating what sort of situation we're dealing with.

But that's not all there is. On top of that you have very high level advisors to Trump who have been deeply immersed in the Putin world of dirty politics and energy concessions that characterizes Putin's Russia and the post-Soviet successor states. Those associations might simply be unsavory if the candidate were an experienced political figure or surrounded by knowledgable advisors. Neither is the case.
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[rjsquirrel]

1. K&R

[agingdem]

4. The leak is to embarrass the DNC but..

it's about the "yuuge" amount of money the Russian oligarchs loaned the walking cheeto...think Russian mob...and what they want for their investment..

[John Poet]

2. Trump is the Manchurian Candidate !

When Putin snaps his fingers, Trump will say 'meow!'

[anamandujano]

3. Putin's personal hand puppet

Rec.