This week a 12 count indictment was brought against Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort and his colleague, Rick Gates under the charge of "conspiracy against the United States". I need to let that sink in - aiding a hostile foreign power to attack American Democracy.
Time Magazine's Molly Ball writes:
"Manafort, the court filings charged, laundered tens of millions of dollars and evaded taxes while serving as an unregistered bagman for the political operation of the Russian-aligned Ukrainian strongman Viktor Yanukovych. And then he went to work for Trump"
In addition, a former foreign policy advisor, George Papadopoulos, was flipped and I apparently testifying about Russian contacts during the campaign - did he wear a wire?
It has long been reported that Trump, after his many bankruptcies, could no longer borrow money from American banks and turned to money laundering Russian mafia and oligarchy money through his real estate and golf courses. I think it is safe to expect that Mr Trump swallowed very hard when he found out that investigator Mueller is charging Manafort with money laundering and tax evasion - a sign that he is likely to be investigating Mr Trump himself for the same crimes.
One terrible thing that has happened to our country is that Russia used a very sophisticated disinformation, social media agitation, fake news campaign to disrupt American democracy for the purpose of shaking American's trust in the news, in the political system, in democracy itself, and in each other. Putin has succeeded wildly. (Except he has been exposed by the buffoon he put into the presidency who too simple to know how to keep all of this below the radar - he only operates way, way above the radar - the fool)
The more terrible thing happening to our country is that Russia is still doing it. They flood the media landscape with as much incendiary garbage as possible, inflaming all sides against each other.
Divide and conquer. Russia is doing just that.
The only defense is for Americans to become sophisticated in their filtering of news. A good place to start is snopes.com or fact checker by Glenn Kessler.
There is a lot that the social media giants can do to root out the actual fake news, the Russian bots, and the Russian active measures to disinform and inflame Americans, but ultimately it requires us to be sophisticated in what we are willing to believe.
