Whenever I finish a book like Russian Roulette, I ask myself the same question: why is anyone still debating whether there was collusion between the Russians and Donald Trump?
Like Collusion, a comprehensive volume by the Guardian’s Luke Harding, this narrative by investigative reporters Michael Isikoff and David Corn leaves the reader nearly overwhelmed by evidence that Trump and Vladimir Putin have been striving to collaborate for years.
It was 2013 when Trump first tweeted that he wanted to be Putin’s “best friend”. Later he told Fox Putin looked “like a great leader”. Putin’s constant goals have been to destroy Nato and the EU. Trump was a big advocate of Brexit, which was a body blow to the EU, and in the 2016 campaign he called Nato “obsolete”. Trump began visiting Moscow in 1987 and his on again, off again effort to build a Trump Tower there continued for three decades – right through the presidential election.
In 2006, Trump became executive producer of a Russian version of The Apprentice. Years later he dismissed the massive evidence that Putin routinely orders the murder of journalists and other dissidents, telling MSNBC: “I haven’t seen that. I don’t know that he has. Have you been able to prove that?”
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