I am bemused by the muted attention Donald Trump’s Russian connection is attracting. The media are more agog over emails by Democratic Party staffers suggesting they wanted Bernie Sanders to lose his primary bid.
Surely, it’s more shocking that Russian hackers are meddling in America’s elections?
As expected, the Russians deny they hacked the DNC computers, but FBI investigators have hard evidence that they did. And highly credible sources, such as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, have repeated the charge in public.
Furthermore, it’s the kind of thing the Russians do. They have a history of hacking into computers and releasing embarrassing information to influence democratic elections all over Europe.
And Trump’s top campaign advisor, Paul Manaforte (known as “the torturer’s lobbyist” because of the sinister dictators among his clients) has close business ties to Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian ex-president of the Ukraine.
Listening to public radio in my car yesterday, I was astonished to learn that the Russians have significant investments in Trump’s real estate empire. According to a Washington Post columnist, it was Russian rubles that bailed him out recently, when he encountered financial problems.
Sitting in my den here on Post Lane in Lakeland, Florida, I obviously can’t vouch for any of this. And it sounds like a lurid spy novel rather than real life. But I am prepared to believe lurid things about Trump. Aren’t you?
I believe, for example, that financiers associated with the Mafia bailed him out in one of his frequent financial collapses.
I understand Yanukovich is a mobster, and he is one of the oligarchs who funneled cash into Trump’s coffers. I also understand that Vladimir Putin is head of a Russian “mob” made up of former KGB agents like himself.
And it is common knowledge that Trump worked with Mafia figures in some of his Manhattan developments.
As primary rival Ted Cruz once suggested, Trump could respond to these charges by releasing his tax returns and other financial statements. But he hasn’t.
Why, I wonder, do the media pay so little attention to the horrible possibility of an American presidency controlled by global underworld forces?
Why do they find Hillary Clinton’s inadvertent use of the wrong computer so alarming?
Why is it so shocking that some campaign workers in the DNC made derogatory remarks about one of the party’s primary candidates?
Where is the media’s sense of scale?
