Remember when President Trump admitted that Russia had meddled in the 2016 presidential election?
That was less than two weeks ago, but our news cycle moves at such a brisk clip it’s easy to forget. There is no denying that on May 30, the same president who has repeatedly denied or downplayed Russia’s interference in American elections tweeted that “I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected.” While Trump apparently thought he was defending himself with that remark — and later retracted it once he realized how it came across — it sure sounded like Trump admitting that Russian meddling happened and conceding that he benefited from it, even if only through a Freudian slip.
Whether Trump likes it or not, his presidency is inextricably linked to his unusual relationship with the Russian government. To learn more about how the Trump-Russia relationship has changed history, Salon reached out to Michael McFaul, a foreign policy adviser to President Barack Obama who served as U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014. McFaul was also briefly in the news after the Helsinki summit last year. When Russian President Vladimir Putin asked Trump to hand over McFaul for questioning on a variety of trumped-up charges, the president reportedly considered doing so. If Trump had the kind of unchecked power he wishes he did, McFaul’s life might have been in danger.
View the complete June 9 article by Matthew Rozsa from Salon on the AlterNet website here.