WaPo’s Rubin: Trump’s So Well Integrated with the Russians You Couldn’t Make It Up Except in a Spy Novel
RUSH EXCERPT:
MELBER: "Jennifer?"
RUBIN: "Two things, first of all, there were two trump campaigns that were going on. There was the actual trump campaign that was run by trump and his associates and the campaign by the Russians on trump’s behalf. It was both to undermine our electoral system. And this is said clearly in the indictment, that it was done for the express purpose of helping Donald Trump and disparaging Hillary Clinton. There’s no doubt now who they wanted to win and who they wanted to lose, when you look at this overlap between the two campaigns, the Russian campaign and the official Trump campaign, you also have to add in the money part of this, and that’s what you alluded to, Ari, that it went all the way up to the oligarchs, the same Russian oligarchs who are buying trump properties in the united States. The same rusligarchs who are infiltrating companies that — it is so well integrated you really couldn’t make this up, except in a spy novel. I’ll also point to another date, and that is 2013, that’s when trump went to Russia, he met with oligarchs, the dossier talks about this, he went there, he had meetings with some of the same characters that appear later in that Trump Tower meeting, that was in connection with the miss universe pageant, and these people come back around again. It’s the same cast of characters and you would have to be awfully naive to think that there wasn’t a clear signal on the Russians part, this is the guy, this is the one we want to help, then when they did, they reached out and the Trump campaign was stupid enough to help."
MELBER: "That comes through in the indictment which I spent a lot of time with today. It doesn’t just say they wanted to support trump, it says they also wanted to take out other candidates any way they could with derogatory information, it’s not just trump versus Clinton, they went after Ted Cruz, we had Ted Cruz’s strategist on our show previously and he talked about his view of that, now it’s in an indictment, it’s a lot more serious, so it’s like you were saying, a real Russian interest in not just supporting trump but in taking other candidates out. Jennifer, listen to something Rod Rosenstein said that it was the only part of his rather bombshell press conference, the kind of news no White House wants to get, but there’s one sliver here that Donald Trump seized on, take a listen."
RUBIN: "There is no allegation in this indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity. There is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election."
MELBER: "What’s the significance of that, Jennifer?"
RUBIN: "He says there’s no charge in the indictment. He didn’t say it never existed. He doesn’t say it can’t be shown. First of all, you can never show to a beyond a reasonable doubt whether some of this information influenced people who would have otherwise stayed home or would have otherwise voted for Hillary Clinton. But it’s not alleged in the allegation, it’s not alleged in the indictment. There may well be information, there may well be lots of evidence that there was not only unwitting, but witting participation from the trump campaign. He put out a stupider state of mind — statement, we’re not guilty of collusion, that’s not what Rod Rosenstein said, they’re now grasping at straws, because the plot has been revealed, the overlap is established and now it’s just a matter of knitting those two campaigns, the Trump campaign and the Russian campaign together. That’s why he seized on this, it’s just a flat out lie, but that’s what he’s going with, he’s not been indicted for collusion, he’s not been indicted as someone who was colluding. We’re getting there."
