Deeper and darker: Trump's unknown financial connections to Russia may hold the key to ...
TUESDAY, FEB 21, 2017 08:05 AM EST
Deeper and darker: Trump’s unknown financial connections to Russia may hold the key to the widening scandal
Deeper and deeper: Congress wakes up as Trump's ties to Russia look more tangled, and more troubling, than ever
HEATHER DIGBY PARTON
There’s a joke going around about President Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, to the effect that he has the dubious distinction of having been fired by both a Democratic and a Republican administration. But that’s not really very funny when you consider that he was fired by one for his erratic behavior and from the other because he was implicated in a scandal concerning possible connections to the Russian government.
Something has gone very wrong with our system that such a person could come so close to high levels of power in two administrations. But Flynn did. His short tenure and the circumstances of his departure have brought all the questions about Russian involvement in the campaign into the White House, where they cannot be ignored any longer.
I had always tended to believe that Trump probably didn’t really have any personal relationship with Vladimir Putin. Trump is such a serial exaggerator that his allusions to it struck me as hype. His great pleasure in being stroked with Putin’s compliments indicated that Trump didn’t actually know him. It’s also obvious that he truly admires Putin’s strongman leadership style and that’s disturbing enough.
Still, there has been the nagging sense for some time that there’s something off about the way Trump speaks about Putin. It’s obsequious and submissive, which is very uncharacteristic of his normal style and one cannot help but wonder why that is. Trump is not servile toward anyone in this world — except Vladimir Putin. It would be one thing if we could chalk it up as another one of Trump’s weird psychological tics and hope that he isn’t so subject to flattery that he decides to help the Russian leader carve up Europe just to keep his approval. But it seems there’s more to it than that.
The Russian story has been bubbling under the surface for months, of course. The hiring of Paul Manafort, best known in recent years for his career as a lobbyist for pro-Russian Ukraine politicians — and a stranger to American politics since the 1980s — seemed odd. Still, there was no reason for serious suspicion since Manafort had once been partners with Trump’s good friend Roger Stone and had lived in Trump Tower at one time. Anyway, the world of political consultants is very small. So no big deal.
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http://www.salon.com/2017/02/21/deeper-and-darker-trumps-unknown-financial-connections-to-russia-may-hold-the-key-to-the-widening-scandal/
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