Trump and Putin: Are the Russians interfering in American politics?

A Republican presidential candidate tells the press that the authoritarian Putin is a stronger leader than Barrack Obama, praising a dictator and dissing on his own president?

On Friday WikiLeaks released Democratic National Committee emails that effectively put a dim spotlight on Hillary Clinton’s presidential run. Turns out they may have been stolen by the Russians and leaked to embarrass Clinton.

The Russians interfering in our presidential election? A conspiracy to get Trump, Putin’s friend, elected?    

Trump’s special relationship with Putin quietly echoes The Manchurian Candidate. Richard Condon’s thriller – published in 1959 – and later made into an award-winning 1962 movie starring Frank Sinatra as the ultimate American hero, and Lawrence Harvey as the conflicted soul turned traitor, and son of a prominent U.S. political dynasty, brainwashed by the Chinese into serving as an assassin for a vast Communist conspiracy.

Sinatra’s character, Captain Bennett Marco, and Harvey’s character, Raymond Shaw, were members of an Army platoon captured by the North Koreans and then subjected to an advanced form of brainwashing by their captors – leading to a vast conspiracy to use the brainwashed victims to ultimately affect American politics.

Shaw (Harvey) was specifically brainwashed to assassinate a presidential candidate, paving the way for a Communist mole to manipulate the vice presidential candidate – Shaw’s step-father – into the presidency. Shaw’s mother, portrayed by Angela Landsbury, is the Communist agent pulling the strings.

I know it’s a little confusing, and unfortunately, Frank Sinatra doesn’t sing a note.

In recent days, as the Democrats migrate toward their Philadelphia convention, where they will certainly nominate Hillary Clinton, a treasure trove (according to Republicans) of emails, stolen via hacking, from the Democratic National Committee’s computer servers, has magically appeared, ultimately costing Democratic National Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz her job as the leader of the DNC.

They were typical emails – written by staffers and campaign operatives, many of whom surmised that they’d never be seen by the outside world. How naïve. We’ve since learned – thanks to Hillary “Delete” Clinton – that virtually anything written on a computer is subject to hacking, and in this age, nothing is safe from the prying eyes of hackers – or the occasional Russian spy.

The email dump, unfortunately for Wasserman Schultz, revealed that many DNC staffers weren’t exactly even-handed in dealing with the two major presidential candidates: Bernie Sanders and Clinton. It was a message that Sanders repeatedly echoed during the campaign, and it turns out he was right.

Here’s where the Ruskies come in.

Earlier in 2016, it was revealed that the Russians had indeed hacked the DNC. No one knew exactly why, but guess what? Mysteriously, months later, someone gave a whole batch of the DNC emails to WikiLeaks, which on Friday released them to the press.

While it may be difficult to ascertain for certain that Russia and President Vladimir Putin are the culprits, this timely release – on the verge of the Democratic Convention – has many experts surmising that it was indeed the Russians, who could be attempting to influence the presidential election – and it’s probably not Clinton they’re trying to help.

According to the New York Times, up to two separate agencies may have hacked into the DNC’s computer networks. It is unclear how WikiLeaks obtained the emails, but some are surmising that Russian intelligence agencies turned them over, coincidentally just days before the Democratic Convention.

Why? Well, maybe because they were just so boring.

The Russians may just have a friend in Republican Nominee Donald Trump, who in the past year has praised Putin, and telling the faithful that Putin is more of an effective leader than President Obama. That’s like a Giants’ fan insisting the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw throws a meaner fastball that Madison Bumgarner.

In the real world that shouldn’t happen.

Putin has in turned praised Trump as a great businessman. In the past week Trump has also suggested that as president he would might refuse to protect a NATO ally if it were attacked by Russia, demanding first that we insure that that country has paid its NATO bills.

Trump says he can be friends with Putin. Next the two will be playing a Trump golf course.

It’s well known that Trump has spent a considerable amount of his time visiting Russia – when it was still referred to as the Soviet Union – and has appeared often in Russia following the dismantling of the Soviet system in 1989.  He was hoping to build Trump-themed hotels in downtown Moscow. He often talked of his trips to Russia and his hopes of doing business there.

I certainly don’t believe that the Russians turned Donald J. Trump into a Russian mole, who if indeed if elected president of the United States, would bend to the will of Rasputin-like presence of Vladimir Putin and begin serving borscht in the White House dining room.

Why is this important? During the Cold War and after, the United States has always been wary of the Communists, softening its stance somewhat following the Russian Revolution and former President Boris Yeltsin’s then Democratic leanings. But America hardened again when Putin’s created a stranglehold on his country’s leadership, transforming it into an authoritarian state, and then bullying himself back onto the world stage by grabbing the Crimea and threatening former Soviet satellites.

What upset Putin was that several former Soviet satellite nations – Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, all wound up in NATO, because they preferred a Democratic society over an authoritarian one, which is what Putin offered.

By joining NATO, the United States and the other NATO countries would be obligated to help thwart a Russian attack, a promise etched in stone shared by every NATO member and U.S. president since NATO was formed in 1949.

But Mr. Trump says not so fast. If a country like Lithuania doesn’t meet its NATO obligations, it’s on its own. The same with any country that doesn’t pay its bills.

Trump’s stance seems to be an open invitation to Putin to send in the tanks.

It’s all very surreal. Is it conceivable that the Russians would attempt to manipulate the American elections in order to get a president favorable to Russia? I don’t know, but it all seems very suspicious.

However, there is a much easier way for the Russians to get their man. Just offer Trump an opportunity to splash his name in bold letters across the Kremlin.      

By the way, how did The Manchurian Candidate end? Read the book – or watch the movie.