So the question for now is: how much influence did Russia exert in our Presidential election? I listen to and read a wide selection of sources and I have to tell you that there is a common perception that, while our election was not “rigged,” it was most certainly nudged or swayed in the direction that Vladimir Putin wanted it to go: a Trump victory. Our President-elect’s admiring attitude about this vicious, power-hungry demagogue is extremely troubling. I mentioned in an earlier post that, while the Republican Party platform is admirable it was not the product of any input from the Trump campaign but instead put together by a platform committee. The only input from the Trump people, according to a number of sources, was a request to soften the language of how much help we were willing to give Ukraine in maintaining its independence from Russia. The day after the election Trump had an unsupervised half-hour phone chat with Putin, an action with John McCain (bless him!) strongly condemned. Here’s what McCain home state newspaper, the Arizona Republic, had to say:
