Has any Republican presidential contender ever been so cuddly with the Russians?
The gong show that is the 2016 U.S. presidential election continues with the opening of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. The City of Brotherly Love was transformed into the City of Sisterly Hate as demonstrators expressed disdain for nominee-in-waiting Hillary Clinton, while maintaining support for her defeated rival, Senator Bernie Sanders.
Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced she would be resigning at the convention’s end, following revelations that the party sought to spike Sanders’ candidacy. Documents released by Wikileaks not only show that high-ranking DNC officials attempted to derail Sanders by questioning his religious faith, they suggest donors to pro-Clinton PACs were to be rewarded with political appointments.
For their part, Clinton campaign officials are pointing fingers at the Trump campaign — and alleging a conspiracy that extends all the way to Russia. The FBI is now investigating claims that Russian cyberhackers were behind the Wikileaks dump, which could have been timed to disrupt the DNC convention.
One might be tempted to dismiss all this as tinfoil-hat stuff — were it not for the fact that the links between Russia and Trump are just too blatant to ignore.
On the political level, Trump’s platform is very Russia-friendly. Trump repeatedly berates Russia’s rival, China, for “stealing” American jobs. Trump would “renegotiate” NAFTA and other U.S. trade deals. He is highly critical of NATO and has talked of abandoning it. And at the convention, the party’s position on Ukraine notably shifted — eliminating references to arming Ukraine in its ongoing fight with Russia, outraging the party’s foreign policy establishment.
Read the full article on iPolitics.