Russia vs Trump, Sessions, Hillary and Wasserman-Shultz

Who is Winning in the Russian Collusion Scandal?
The View from the Middle

Oh, what a tangled web someone is weaving. It seems that there is another shoe to drop every day on the Russian collusion scandal here in America. I think it started with the Wikileaks release of the DNC emails. We may never know for sure if the Russians were involved, but it certainly wouldn’t shock me if they were. And the big losers in this piece of the scandal were Hillary Clinton, John Podesta and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Then there was the Russian dossier. This dossier was so salacious and uncorroborated that most of the media passed over this story until BuzzFeed released it in its entirety in January. Even though most, if not all, of this file was pure fiction, the big loser was Donald Trump.
And let’s not forget the outreach by Russian Ambassador Kislyak to Jeff Sessions. These were hardly shocking meetings. One was a handshake in front of hundreds of witnesses, but this forced Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from the Russian investigation after he was appointed Trump’s Attorney General.
We certainly can’t leave out Donald Trump Jr.’s 20 minute meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with supposed connections to the Kremlin. Donald Jr. left this meeting early and no action was ever taken as a result of this little powwow, but real damage was done to Don Jr. and Paul Manafort.
And now we have the boomerang effect of the Russian dossier story that doesn’t focus on the contents of the dossier itself, but on who paid for it. The big losers in this saga are Hillary Clinton, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the Podesta brothers.
So let’s list the losers in the Russian collusion scandal – Donald Trump, Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump Jr, Paul Manafort, Hillary Clinton, John and Tony Podesta, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and might I add the American people and our entire democratic system. Neither party nor gender has been able to avoid the stigma of this narrative. So is anyone winning the Russian corruption story? Yes, Vladimir Putin!
I have heard the talking heads claim that they could read Putin’s mind and are absolutely sure that he preferred Donald Trump to win the Presidency. Let me give you an alternative theory. Putin, like 99% of Americans (according to the Princeton Election Consortium), thought that Hillary Clinton was going to win the 2016 election. And given her policy positions, he probably would have preferred her to win. What Putin really wanted was a damaged American President and a weakened confidence in our Democratic system. And we are giving it to him on a silver platter.
There are at least two visible Russian strategies that support my theory. First, virtually all of these contacts, from Kislyak to Veselnitskaya to the Russian officials who approached Christopher Steele (of the Russian dossier), were initiated by the Russians. Does this sound like a coincidence or a plan? Second, the major aspects of the scandal, the Wikileaks email acquisition and release and the Russian dossier, were both two sided swords. They could be used to incriminate operatives on both sides of the political spectrum. This is not just a plan; it’s a sinister plot.
In my opinion, both of our political parties and our boneheaded lame stream media have been and continue to be “played”. Putin was counting on their lesser angels (greed, thirst for power, hypocrisy and hate) and bated them with the most tempting morsels of depraved innuendo he could find. And when he couldn’t “find” anything, he just made it up. He has worked both sides of our political fence, pitting each against the other, while he sat back and enjoyed the chaos he has created.
Why would he do this? First, he just hates America and what it stands for. Second, he needed to distract his people from the ravages of an anemic Russia economy and his stalled promise to reunite the old Soviet Union. Despite all his failures, his approval rating in Russia is still over 80%. And part of that popularity just might be that his people know exactly what he is doing to us, and they love it!
When are we going to learn? When we abandon all respect for each other (and I accuse both sides of this) we stop listening to each other and begin to demonize real and rational concerns of good, patriotic Americans who love this country. There are real and meaningful compromises that can be made on Healthcare, Immigration, Taxes and even abortion if we start listening to each other. Our parties must give up their strategies of “I can’t hear you” and “Resist everything” and look for the areas on which we agree. Freedom, equality of opportunity and individual responsibility are good places to start, or else we will continue to play checkers while Putin plays chess with our heads!!