Jonathan Chait: “In January, officials at ‘the highest levels of the White House’ were informed that Russia had paid the Taliban a bounty to kill American troops in Afghanistan. Since that time, Trump has held five known phone calls with Vladimir Putin: on March 30, April 9, April 10, April 12, and June 1. The administration has not even claimed to have warned off Russia, let alone taken retaliatory action.”
“The America First, bully-boy president’s shocking passivity in the face of a threat to the troops whose welfare he claims to cherish so dearly has a couple of basic categories of explanation.”
“The first is that he is, in some form or fashion, still in hoc to Putin. Years of courting and flattery seem to have convinced Trump to see Russia’s side of a wide array of issues, from NATO to G7 membership to the alleged threat to Russia posed by countries like Montenegro and Afghanistan. The Mueller investigation found that Putin dangled a secret payoff of several hundred million dollars during the campaign. If he is currently receiving payments from Russian sources now, the public would have no way to know, as Trump has (with broad support from his party) blocked legally required disclosure of his financial information. Trump’s operation to produce a Ukrainian investigation of Joe Biden was financed at least in part by a Russian oligarch.”