There's actually lots of evidence of Trump-Russia collusion

[babylonsister]

https://www.vox.com/2018/6/11/17438386/trump-russia-collusion

There’s actually lots of evidence of Trump-Russia collusion
The untenability of the “no collusion” talking point.
By Matthew Yglesias@[e-mail] Jun 11, 2018, 8:00am EDT

snip//

The collusion in plain sight

Last but by no means least, it’s worth recalling that there’s something fundamentally odd about the entire framing of the collusion question.

The way a political candidate’s relationship to a hostile foreign power would normally be framed is that the discovery of covert collusion would be used as evidence that the candidate harbored a secret desire to repay the foreign power. But in Trump’s case, there was absolutely no secret! Trump quite openly ran on a pro-Russia platform, adopting Russian views on the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine, defending Putin’s character, and vowing to break up the NATO alliance.

It’s of course not illegal for a candidate for office to espouse pro-Russian foreign policy views. But to an extent, there was plenty of “collusion” in plain view throughout 2016 — crimes were committed and Trump openly praised them; he offered pro-Russia policy in exchange for Russian assistance, received the assistance that he sought, and has labored ever since to avoid investigating or punishing Russia’s crimes.

And here, ultimately, is where Paul Ryan’s argument completely falls apart. The speaker says “there’s no evidence of collusion” but also isn’t willing to go full Trump, denounce the investigation as a fraud, and call for its end. Instead, he says, “this is about Russia and what they did and making sure they don’t do it again.” But Trump has always been clear that he doesn’t think Russia did anything wrong, doesn’t want the full details to become known, doesn’t want anyone punished, and has no particular interest in making sure they don’t do it again. And that, itself, is perhaps the most powerful evidence of collusion.

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