Why is President Trump constantly being accused of having ties to Russia?

Ed Prince

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Masters degree in politics, worked on a number of political campaigns. 6y

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Why is President Trump constantly being accused of having ties to Russia if relations between the US and Russian couldn't be more strained than they are today?

President Trump is constantly being accused of having ties to Russia because he has. This is not a matter of conjecture or propaganda. They include:

1. Trump has a long financial history with Russia. From 2003 to 2017, people from the former USSR made 86 all-cash purchases — a red flag of potential money laundering — of Trump properties, totaling $109 million.
2. During the campaign, Trump encouraged the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails on July 27, 2016on the very day that Russian intelligence hackers tried to attack Clinton’s personal and campaign servers.
3. According to one estimate, there were 101 contacts between Trump’s team and Russia linked operatives and the Trump team has consistently tried to cover up every single one of them.
4. The Trump campaign had numerous individuals, such as Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and Michael Flynn, with ties to Moscow.
5. By his own admission, Trump fired James Comey to stop the investigation of Russia and then bragged about it to the Russian ambassador and foreign minister while also sharing top-secret information from an ally with them.
6. Trump defended the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.

If it is true, that President Trump is being manipulated/controlled by the Russians, then the current difficulties between the two countries can be explained as the Russians playing the long game.

Consider, the actions the Russians have undertaken and which Trump has excused, denied, ignored, or supported:

1. Invading and annexing parts of the Crimea;
2. Murdering former spies in third-party countries;
3. Interfering in American and European elections;
4. Hacking into election computers;
5. Creating tension between the U.S. and NATO;
6. Facilitating schisms between the American people and its political, journalistic and law enforcement agencies;

The punishment? Tensions have been ratcheted up but nothing particularly serious. Some sanctions (which Trump has only reluctantly supported) have been implemented and while they have hurt the Russian economy somewhat (in the best of circumstances, the Russian economy can best be described as moribund), 60 Russian diplomats have been expelled and some Russian oligarchs have been inconvenienced. These hardly a particularly high price to pay.

The calculus is pretty simple: so long as the Trump administration defends and excuses Russian behavior in general and Vladimir Putin in particular, the Russians are prepared to endure a little short term pain and tension for a lot of long term gain.