“How a Trump presidency could destabilize Europe,” by columnist Anne Applebaum, The Washington Post, July 21 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/how-a-trump-presidency-could-destabilize-europe/2016/07/21/9ec38a20-4f75-11e6-a422-83ab49ed5e6a_story.html):
…we finally have a presidential candidate, Donald Trump, with direct and indirect links to a foreign dictator, Vladimir Putin, whose policies he promotes. And yet it is not secret, it is not a plot, there is no conspiracy. No one has been hypnotized or recruited by foreign intelligence. Just as Marine Le Pen, leader of the French National Front, openly accepts Russian money, the Trump campaign advertises its Russian links and pays no real political price. …
He has also surrounded himself with people whose deep links to the corrupt world of Russian business would normally disqualify them from U.S. politics. He brought in a foreign policy aide, Carter Page, who has long-standing connections to Russian companies, including Gazprom, and has supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine. His campaign manager, Paul Manafort, worked for many years in Ukraine on behalf of Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian president ousted in 2014. …
Russia is clearly participating in the Trump campaign. The theft of material from the Democratic National Committee a few weeks ago was the work of Russian hackers. Russian state media and social media, together with a host of fake websites and Twitter accounts with Russian origins, actively support Trump and are contributing to some of the hysteria on the Internet. …whatever resources Putin wagered on Trump, they are paying off. … Trump has begun repeating arguments identical to those used on Russian state television. These range from doubts about the sovereignty of Ukraine… to doubts about U.S. leadership of the democratic world. …
“Donald Trump, the Siberian Candidate,” by columnist Paul Krugman, The New York Times, July 22 (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/opinion/donald-trump-the-siberian-candidate.html):
If elected, would Donald Trump be Vladimir Putin’s man in the White House? This should be a ludicrous, outrageous question. After all, he must be a patriot – he even wears hats promising to make America great again. But we’re talking about a ludicrous, outrageous candidate. And the Trump campaign’s recent behavior has quite a few foreign policy experts wondering just what kind of hold Mr. Putin has over the Republican nominee, and whether that influence will continue if he wins. I’m not talking about merely admiring Mr. Putin’s performance… I am, instead, talking about indications that Mr. Trump would, in office, actually follow a pro-Putin foreign policy, at the expense of America’s allies and her own self-interest.
… what we’re now seeing from Mr. Trump and his associates goes beyond emulation, and is starting to look like subservience.
First, there was the Ukraine issue – one on which Republican leaders have consistently taken a hard line and criticized Mr. Obama for insufficient action, with John McCain, for example, accusing the president of “weakness.” And the GOP platform was going to include a statement reaffirming this line, but it was watered down to blandness on the insistence of Trump representatives.
…And there are reasons to wonder about Mr. Trump’s own financial interests. … We do know that he has substantial if murky involvement with wealthy Russians and Russian businesses. You might say that these are private actors, not the government – but in Mr. Putin’s crony-capitalist paradise, this is a meaningless distinction. …
“Trump & Putin. Yes, It’s Really a Thing,” by John Marshall, Talking Points Memo, July 23 (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-putin-yes-it-s-really-a-thing):
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 U.S. policies which go back decades through administrations of both parties. …
…The Trump Camp was totally indifferent to the [GOP] platform. …With one big exception: Trump’s team mobilized the nominee’s traditional mix of cajoling and strong-arming on one point: changing the party platform on assistance to Ukraine against Russian military operations in eastern Ukraine. …his team zeroed in on one fairly obscure plank to exert maximum force and it just happens to be the one most important to Putin in terms of U.S. policy. …
There is something between a non-trivial and a substantial amount of circumstantial evidence for a financial relationship between Trump and Putin or a non-tacit alliance between the two men. Even if you draw no adverse conclusions, Trump’s financial empire is heavily leveraged and has a deep reliance on capital infusions from oligarchs and other sources of wealth aligned with Putin. That’s simply not something that can be waved off or ignored.
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