Last month, I shared insights from a couple writers who’ve been closely tracking the Trump-Russia collusion story about why this tale has seemed so particularly difficult and complicated. As we approach the end of this president’s first year in office, one of them has suggested another important framework for parsing what feels like both a deluge of information and the biggest mystery in the history of the republic. Josh Marshall has identified what he considers the single biggest outstanding question: What’s the relation between Donald Trump’s long-standing financial ties to Russia and the Russian effort to work with the Trump campaign to subvert the 2016 election? In doing so, he raises a subsidiary question that ranks high for me as another “collusion confusion” centerpiece: given Trump’s extensive ties to Russia and their obvious connection to why the Russian government sought to use his candidacy to affect the 2016 election, why did the Russian government make so many attempts to court him through people like George Papadopoulos, or through meetings like the notorious one at Trump Tower involving Don, Jr.? This suggests to Marshall that the situation is not as straightforward as the Russian government having a long-standing understanding with Donald Trump, even as it’s impossible to think that his established involvement in Russian business wasn’t a major reason why Russia embarked on its effort.
Trump’s history with Russia and the Russian government’s “cold call” attempts to collude with the Trump campaign raise another basic point that is so obvious I almost hesitate to raise it: the surreally overdetermined nature of a Russian connection to Trump. I submit that the sheer volume of Russia links in itself is a stumbling block for public comprehension of what has happened. Think about it — even if collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government had not occurred, we would still have a president whose deep and obscure ties to that country would on their own raise serious questions about whether Russia has some form of financial leverage over him. Together with the collusion, though, we’re faced with an unprecedented and overwhelming body of evidence that the president is unduly under the influence of Russia. It is so extraordinary to think that a U.S. president might not place our national interests first and foremost that I think we’re collectively having difficulty accepting facts that are right in front of us.
