This Story Should Dominate the News Until Trump Is Sworn In
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Maybe it's because I grew up at the tail end of the McCarthy Era and in the heart of the Cold War, and maybe because I spent 13 awful days in 1962 waiting for the missiles to fly, and maybe it's because I believe that, Tsarist or Communist or Kleptocracy, Russia behaves in pretty much the same way, but I honestly believe that this should be the only story dominating the news right now.
At least, I think it warrants as much space in our various media as was devoted to the BREAKING NEWS about what John Podesta had for lunch last year. Per The Washington Post:
The statement came from Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who said in an interview with the state-run Interfax news agency that "there were contacts" with the Trump team. "Obviously, we know most of the people from his entourage," Ryabkov said. "We have just begun to consider ways of building dialogue with the future Donald Trump administration and channels we will be using for those purposes," Ryabkov was quoted as saying. Ryabkov provided no further details, and his remarks drew a swift denial from Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks, who said the campaign had "no contact with Russian officials" before Tuesday's election.
Why in Christ's sweet name isn't this thundering through the news cycle right now? Why aren't hundreds of national-security reporters all over it? We have elected a guy who may well have traded what little integrity he has to a vicious autocrat and his thieves-in-law. (Note to anyone who takes exception: This is not "red-baiting" because these crooks are not Red.) We know he can't get a loan from most American banks, so he has to go overseas for a lot of his financing. What banks is he tied into, and are any of those banks tied into the Russian government? Whom does he owe and how much does he owe them? And how do they plan to collect?
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This is a monumental story, and it deserves a full airing before we swear this guy in. And it's only part of the unprecedented tangle of shadowy business dealings that will follow him into office. The president-elect also is the defendant in 75 different lawsuits of assorted kinds. He plans to put his assets into a "blind trust" that will be overseen by…his children. I know a lot of people are charmed by his reluctance to abide by traditional political norms and customs, but this is far beyond that. This is a guy toting a huge amount of baggage into the Oval Office and each piece of it contains a ticking time-bomb.
The Russian business is perilous beyond words. But you can sense even now that our Fourth Estate is pushing it ever so gently in the direction of the same memory hole down which went Nixon's treasonous behavior as regards the Paris Peace Talks and the possibility that the Reagan campaign monkeywrenched the release of the hostages in Iran in 1980. The way this works is that the elite political media decides something is so unthinkable that the children-that's the rest of us-are too delicate to handle it.
Well, kids, the unthinkable already has happened. You might as well cover it as fully as possible.
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