Sam Stein: Don't think the fact that it started in 2014 really makes a difference here

[demmiblue]

Link to tweet

[octoberlib]

1. Boom! The Russians were probably the ones who convinced him to run .

[herding cats]

3. I was just wondering the same thing below!

[asiliveandbreathe]

7. Bazinga..Boom..

he sure does know to step into it..doesn't he..guess he thinks he picked up where John Gotti left off..Teflon Don....

"where is my Roy Cohn"- (who got Gotti off for a killin') - the POS was livid over sessions recusal from the Russian investigation....

This all coming together.....he thought he had his puppet AG in session...

[herding cats]

2. This was an attempt by Russia to sow chaos.

Once Trump threw his hat in the ring they knew he was their man. He was a perfect candidate to promote to help sow chaos in the US. His election has been proof of that point.

I’m interested now if they ever encourage his running in the first place?

[octoberlib]

9. I read a book by John R. O'Donnell who was an executive at Atlantic City's Trump Plaza Casino until

1990. The book was written in 1991. O'Donnell describes a scene in which Trump gets off a plane from Moscow and the first words out of his mouth were that he wanted to run for President sometime in the future and then he started talking about foreign policy, NATO etc. O'Donnell wrote that it struck him as weird because Trump hated small talk and in all the time he'd spent with Trump he'd never talked about foreign policy or politics. Their conversations were all about money and business. So yes I think he was primed. I think Putin is desperate to have those sanctions lifted and Trump was encouraged to run.

[anarch]

4. and Fuckface started his money-laundering operation for the Russian mob a decade before that

My guess would be he was groomed as an asset for some considerable time before the 2016 election cycle...


Also, not to nitpick, but I'm pretty sure the Russians were engaged in some anti-U.S. activities a bit before 2014.

[Wounded Bear]

5. Good catch, plus wasn't his beauty pageant in Moscow in 2013?

Enquiring minds want to know.

[EarlG]

6. I doesn't matter when it started

The Russians assumed that Hillary would run and wanted to stop her (she was a member of the Obama administration which was not kind to Russian oligarchs); they also wanted to sow chaos. It probably didn't matter to them who the Republican candidate would be when they started this operation.

Turns out they got their dream candidate -- the chaos candidate (now the chaos president). Not only was Trump willing to dismiss and deny their interference, he was -- as I'm sure we will eventually find out -- also willing to collude with them behind the scenes. Maybe the Trump campaign was not involved at the top level of the conspiracy, but it seems clear from everything we've learned so far that they were willing to bite on Russian bait (Carter Page, Papadopolous, the Don Jr./Kushner meeting at Trump Tower, and also likely Cambridge Analytic, etc.) all the way through the campaign.

I guess another interpretation could be, holy shit, they actually recruited Trump to run as part of this operation. If so... holy shit.

[CincyDem]

8. I'm signing up for your "holy shit" option...

...we have assumed that the beginning of this saga was Trump coming down the escalator to announce his candidacy.

What if the real first domino was back at the beauty pageant where someone said "I think we can make this work" and Trump said "if you can show me some progress and give me some confidence in winning by mid-2015 when I have to announce...I'll consider it".

Think of it lie a building - someone else owns it but trump puts his name on it. Someone else owns the presidency but trump agreed to put his name on it for marketing purposes.

IMHO, that's where this is going to land. Trump didn't collude with Russia - he was working for them.

[malaise]

10. This

https://www.npr.org/2017/07/17/537277074/at-the-2013-miss-universe-contest-trump-met-some-of-russias-rich-and-powerful

[maxsolomon]

11. Wait - he's admitting there WAS Rooshin interference?

Is that new? I've never known that he admitted it previously

[moondust]

12. For all we know,

the whole Russian election operation may have entered the planning stages long before Trump announced his candidacy, perhaps during his 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow or whenever the pee-pee tape was made there.

[smirkymonkey]

13. They must have known how easy it would be to manipulate him into making the decision to run and

once the decision was made, they did everything they could to make sure he would win. He owes them "bigly" so they knew he would do their bidding without any push-back.