In July of 2016, at a campaign rally in sunny Florida, Donald
Trump said the following:
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000
emails that are missing…I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our
press.” (Parker & Sanger,
2016)
Essentially, Donald Trump asked Russia to intercede in the U.S. presidential
election on his behalf.
Fast forward to
December 9th, 2016 and the following headline:
Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win
White House
Dropped into the news cycle late
yesterday evening, the Post article says:
“The
CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016
election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine
confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the
matter.” (Entous,
Nakashima, & Miller, 2016). It is becoming increasingly clear that, if
not a willing accomplice in this effort, Trump was, at the very least, a “useful
idiot” in Russian efforts to throw the election to him. But this latter seems
unlikely given the information revealed thus far.
The CIA briefed Senators, Republican and Democrat last September
in a bid by President Obama to build bi-partisan support for a response to this
unprecedented meddling in U.S. politics. Senate Majority Leader, Mitch
McConnell (R-KY), had other thoughts on the matter. McConnell, apparently “raised doubts about the underlying
intelligence”, going on to view any efforts by the Obama administration to
confront Russia on the issue would be “an
act of partisan politics” (Entous
et al., 2016). It’s worth noting that Trump has tapped Mitch McConnell’s
wife, Elaine Chao, for Secretary of Transportation (Peters & Haberman, 2016).
Can you say “Quid pro quo…Clarice”?
Speaking of “quid pro quo”, key Trump appointees to his
administration baced the Trump campaign and the GOP to the tune of nearly $12
million (Gold &
Narayanswamy, 2016). The list is as follows:
·
Education secretary: Betsy DeVos, $1.8 million (contributed
by the DeVos family)
·
Deputy Commerce secretary: Todd Ricketts, $1.3
million (contributed by his parents)
·
Treasury secretary: Steven Mnuchin, $425,000
· Labor
secretary: Andrew Puzder, $332,000
·
Commerce secretary: Wilbur Ross, $200,000
·
Small Business Administration: Linda McMahon, $7.5
million
The take-away here is that Trump
is rewarding those contributed to his campaign and/or have demonstrated the moral
bankruptcy necessary to enable Trump’s narcissistic tendencies by telling him
only what he wants to hear.
With Trump already using his
prospective office to benefit his and his children’s corporate interests; the appointment
of big money donors and sycophants to his administration, and possible collusion
with Russian intelligence assets in the Russian disinformation campaign that
aided in his election, the Trump kleptocracy is well underway.
References
