Ed. Note: My weekend post on Russia, Vladimir Putin, and Trump – and the worrisome list of financial, policy and personnel connections between them – has been one of if not the most read pieces I’ve ever written for TPM. And there seems to be significant media and reader interest. So I’m republishing it here in toto. I’ll be addressing some critiques, questions and adding some further reporting as the day goes on.
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Over the last year there has been a recurrent refrain about the seeming bromance between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. More seriously, but relatedly, many believe Trump is an admirer and would-be emulator of Putin’s increasingly autocratic and illiberal rule. But there’s quite a bit more to the story. At a minimum, Trump appears to have a deep financial dependence on Russian money from persons close to Putin. And this is matched to a conspicuous solicitousness to Russian foreign policy interests where they come into conflict with US policies which go back decades through administrations of both parties. There is also something between a non-trivial and a substantial amount of evidence suggesting Putin-backed financial support for Trump or a non-tacit alliance between the two men.
Still smarting from his Wednesday night humiliation at the hands of Ted Cruz, Donald Trump is now insisting that had he not come into the arena just before the end of Cruz’s speech, intensified unified Republican delegates would have dragged Cruz from the podium. “I walked in and the arena went crazy. Because there’s great unity in the Republican Party, and people don’t know it. Had I not walked in, I think that audience would have ripped him off the stage. I think I did him a big favor.“
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Over the last year there has been a recurrent refrain about the seeming bromance between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. More seriously, but relatedly, many believe Trump is an admirer and would-be emulator of Putin’s increasingly autocratic and illiberal rule. But there’s quite a bit more to the story. At a minimum, Trump appears to have a deep financial dependence on Russian money from persons close to Putin. And this is matched to a conspicuous solicitousness to Russian foreign policy interests where they come into conflict with US policies which go back decades through administrations of both parties. There is also something between a non-trivial and a substantial amount of evidence suggesting Putin-backed financial support for Trump or a non-tacit alliance between the two men.
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TL;DR … Trump is a lying fraud repeating an endless list of fraudulent horror stories and blood libels meant to induce fear and desire for revenge. The rising police death toll claim is another one of these …
Per the Trump lie factory, the Washington Post notes that these are the average number of police fatalities per year from all forms of attack broken down by presidency …
Donald Trump’s dark, angry law-and-order appeal was a throwback to Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign. Here’s Nixon’s 1968 acceptance speech:
As we look at America, we see cities enveloped in smoke and flame. We hear sirens in the night. We see Americans dying on distant battlefields abroad. We see Americans hating each other; fighting each other; killing each other at home. And as we see and hear these things, millions of Americans cry out in anguish. Did we come all this way for this?
Ohio Republican says he’s now sorry for saying Clinton “should be hanging from a tree.” Licking County Commissioner Duane Flowers said he thought public county board of commissioner meeting were off the record and spoke in a moment of high emotion in response to criticism of Melania Trump’s speech.
If there’s one thing Tierney Sneed and Lauren Fox found while reporting for us in Cleveland that I probably don’t factor in enough in assessing the Trump phenomenon it’s the deep resentment and bitterness Republican Party rank-and-file feel toward their own leaders for not fulfilling the extravagant promises made to them since the 2010 Tea Party revolt. I tend to focus more on the white resentment, race-baiting, and xenophobia that arise from the tectonic social shifts way below the surface. They’re not decoupled from each other, but the promise that Obama would be put in his place (with all the accompanying racial overtones to that notion) and his political and policy agenda expunged from the public record were powerful GOP draws for three election cycles, as detached from political reality as those promises may have been.
You get a strong flavor of that intra-party resentment in Lauren and Tierney’s dispatch from last night. We’ve written before about how the grievances nursed against Obama ultimately came to be redirected at Republican leaders on the Hill, and you certainly saw that with the booing of Mitch McConnell this week when he was on the stage. But their story is a good reminder on that point and captures it well.