By any definition of the word, this may be Russia's greatest coup since Sputnik.
Last edited Tue Dec 13, 2016, 09:14 AM - Edit history (1)
The result of Putin’s intervention in the American election cannot be downplayed. If Hillary Clinton had garnered just 107,000 more votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, this would have given her the Electoral College and the White House. According to pollster Nate Silver, the Russian intervention contributed to eroding up to three per cent of the swing-state vote from Clinton. That small margin was all it took to decide the election.
By any definition of the word, this may be Russia’s greatest coup since Sputnik. It was a spectacular success—it toppled one political candidate in order to place Moscow’s man in the White House—and no matter what happens next, it has dealt a damaging blow to America and its political institutions.
And there can be no doubt that Trump is Moscow’s man. Throughout the campaign, his pro-Russian policies were his only inflexibly consistent proposals. After winning the Republican nomination, his team asked for only one change to the entire party platform—removing support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia, contradicting almost the whole Republican foreign policy establishment.
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How did we get here? Habituation. Every paragraph in this column would have been laughably unbelievable 18 months ago. Putin interfering in the U.S. election? President Trump? A pro-Russian administration? But when this slowly unfolded, day by day, and inch by inch, we gradually became de-sensitized to the change that Trump has brought to America: campaigning on lies, turning America’s foreign policy on its head, and making the United States a subordinate ally to Russia.
http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/russias-american-coup/
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Response to kpete (Original post)
