The Briefing Room
General Category => Editorial/Opinion/Blogs => Topic started by: EasyAce on February 21, 2018, 11:38:01 pm
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He may have been willing, but could he really pull it off?
By Jonah Goldberg
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/02/donald-trump-russia-collusion-probably-did-not-happen/ (https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/02/donald-trump-russia-collusion-probably-did-not-happen/)
Despite the indictment of 13 Russian professional social-media pranksters who worked to tip the 2016 election to Donald Trump, I remain somewhere between skeptical and agnostic on the question of whether or not Trump knowingly and secretly colluded with the Russians to win the election . . .
It is President Trump’s character that leads me to think he didn’t do it, at least not in a way the impeachment-hungry mob hopes he did.
Oh, I think he’s morally capable of having done it. As a candidate he publicly called on the Russians to (further) hack Hillary Clinton’s server and release the missing emails. He is the one member of his administration incapable of condemning Russian president Vladimir Putin or his regime. Indeed, his instincts are to hail Putin’s “leadership.â€
Nor do I think Trump surrounded himself during the campaign with people who would have talked him out of collusion (save for then-senator Jeff Sessions). Saying that his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, is not overly scrupulous would be a mind-bending understatement. And Trump’s son Don Jr. has already admitted a) that he met with a Russian emissary and b) that he didn’t care where anti-Clinton dirt came from.
But while they may have been willing to coordinate with the Kremlin, I’m not at all certain they would have been able to pull it off — and keep it a secret. Everything we know about the Trump campaign is that it was a shambolic moveable feast of warring egos, relentless leaks, and summary firings. But we’re supposed to believe that everyone maintained total secrecy about Russian collusion? . . .