It is received truth amongst the MAGA faithful that there was never anything at all to Russia’s attempts to influence the 2016 election and that there was absolutely nothing to see in terms of Trump allies connecting with Russian operatives during the campaign.
But, as coincidence would have it, Trump sure acts like someone who fits the description of the character seen in the Mueller Report. Certainly, his general behavior over the last decade reeks of a specific and obvious kind of Russophilia (or, to be more precise, Putinophilia).
Certainly, the Russians think so.
Via Politico, Russia celebrates US foreign policy that now ‘coincides’ with Moscow’s worldview.
The Kremlin on Sunday cheered the shift in U.S. foreign policy under President Donald Trump, saying the American view now “largely coincides” with Russia’s take on geopolitics.
“The new [U.S.] administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations. This largely coincides with our vision,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday in a video published on Telegram.
[…]
Peskov also hailed the U.S. decision to back a United Nations draft resolution that refrained from calling Russia the aggressor in the Ukraine war, calling it something that previously had been “impossible to imagine.”
As James Joyner noted in a post, former Russian president and prime minister and Putin ally, Dmitiri Medvedev, tweeted, “The insolent pig finally got a proper slap down in the Oval Office.”
Unlike some commenters, I don’t think that Trump’s behavior is the result of kompromat. I think Trump simply likes Putin and wishes to emulate him (which is, in my view, actually a worse reality than blackmail). All of the needed components to explain Trump’s behavior are pretty much out in the open (or have been revealed via investigation). I don’t need there to be further motivations to understand what is going on here.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, just because the Steele Dossier did not prove to be accurate does not disprove Trump’s love affair with Putin, nor does it delete the reality of Russia’s 2016 election actions, among other connections between Trump and Russia. It certainly doesn’t change current US foreign policy.
Look, if you are a Trump supporter, you have to at least admit at this point that your guy is actively aligning himself (and our country’s foreign policy) with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. So how long before MAGA stops claiming that the “Russia hoax” was a hoax and just starts a full embrace?
Put another way: why defend Trump from the supposed “Russia hoax” when he is behaving exactly as one would expect him to behave had the “hoax” been real?
And how long before MAGA retcons the “hoax” and starts to agree with us who think it wasn’t a hoax, but not because it was bad for Russia to interfere with our elections and to interact with the Trump campaign, but to embrace it all as a good?
If you voted for Trump (even if you did so reluctantly or for whatever reason), please note this is what you voted for. And please note that there were plenty of warning signs about where we would be headed if he won.
The proof is in the pudding, as the saying goes.
