Today I had a blast of lucidity about Russia’s involvement and I wasn’t dropping acid.
Here are some starting facts that I’ve absorbed over the last few weeks:
- Putin was angry at Clinton for her perceived meddling in his election.
- Putin wants to discredit the west and open democracy in general in order to make conditions in Russia under his rule look good - a sort of “all forms of government are bad, so don’t complain about how bad you have it here.” (even in the US elections are “rigged” so its normal for Russian elections to be rigged)
- Trump owed russian oligarchs for bailing him out of bankruptcy with dirty money (remember when Manafort totally biffed the denial that Trump had connections to oligarchs) and putin had a blackmail file on him as part of his strategy for keeping oligarchs in line.
- Russia did not expect Trump to win, Putin only wanted Trump to be a wrecking ball in the US system in order to make Clinton a weak president and stir up trouble in europe to weaken NATO.
So, given all that, here’s what I think happened:
Russia colluded with Trump to boost his campaign. Putin probably used a combination of the blackmail file and debt forgiveness to get Trump to cooperate. It wasn’t a hard sell since Trump didn’t expect to win, he was happy to take the free money and whatever chaos Russia could stir up on the Clinton side (remember when Trump called for Russia to hack her “missing” 30,000 emails).
Some hardcore republicans got in on the action because they also wanted Clinton to be a weak president (republicans had already committed to “investigating” Clinton for her entire term). That’s how Sessions went from being a massive Russian hawk to being almost lovey-dovey with the Russians.. They even agreed to modify the GOP platform to oppose arming ukrainian forces fighting russian irregulars.
The republicans did all that because they did not expect to win. They figured they had nothing to lose and so some lip-service that they could take back anytime they wanted to was a small price to pay for help fucking over clinton and the rest of the democrats. Since they didn’t expect Trump to win they were also kinda sloppy about covering their tracks — nobody investigates the losers, instead they just get forgotten.
Then Trump won and shit got real.
That’s why Flynn and Sessions both lied about what would otherwise have been totally plausible contacts with Russians - panic. When someone is freaked out about getting caught, they just deny, deny, deny. Even when the denying makes it look suspicious, they still deny because they feel like any sort of partial confirmation might open them up to getting caught. Basically they are bad liars.
Its also why Trump is constantly yelling that anything to do with Russia is fake news, he’s not smart enough to do anything more sophisticated than deny, deny, deny. And its why he won’t release his tax returns, they would reveal his (prior) indebtedness to Russian money.
It also means that Putin’s got a whole different level of blackmail material on Trump than just golden showers and mob money. He’s got his side of the bargain he made to boost Trump’s campaign. Its not just impeachment material, its high treason material and not just Trump but all those people around him like Flynn, Manafort, Sessions, Roger Stone (who knew about the podesta email leak ahead of time) and maybe even McConnell (who tried to squash the russia investigation back in september).
So, that’s my conspiracy theory. I think its better than the average conspiracy theory, but I’m obviously biased. I’m probably deluding myself, but it sure feels like the truth because it explains so much and as best I can tell it doesn’t have any gaping holes.
