eric a blair wrote:
-virtually everyone in the trump campaign has ties to Russia/FSU in some way. That's just bizarre.
Not really. It's a part of statecraft. The goal is to influence policy, which was accomplished.
- The Republican platform was revised to permit Russia to expand into Ukraine.
- It looks like Trump was/is ready to drop a long list of current Russian sanctions in the U.S.
- It looks like Trump was ready to argue for the UN sanctions to be dropped.
Was this all some kind of carefully constructed Trump conspiracy? No. Given the murky financial links Trump has with Russian money, he's likely richer for it, and therefore quite indifferent about being manipulated.