2016 August 7^th

I had begun to believe that Donald J. Trump might be an agent of the Democratic National Committee come to hijack the Republican nomination and then act in a way guaranteed to lose the general election to Hillary Clinton. A good case could be made for that, even now. Trump blew the wheels off his competitors in the primaries. He lost only to Senator Cruz in Wisconsin. He had a powerful appeal to the “poorly educated” as he called them and they adored him. He was on their side. He would bring back those jobs he claimed were lost to bad trade agreements. (They weren’t of course, but the “poorly educated” never stopped to analyze the truth of what Trump told them.)

With a weak field, remember “Bobby” Jindal, Dr. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina? Trump was far better at demonizing and appealing to the xenophobia of the “poorly educated” than any of the other candidates, so he cleaned up; even so, the other candidates in aggregate won more votes that Trump did. In the process Trump has become even more addicted to the cheap applause he can get by appealing to his adoring crowd’s unhappiness with their situation, an unhappiness he encourages at every opportunity.

He wins the nomination in a walk; but by doing so he has alienated (accurate word that) great hunks of the population and a good many principled members of his own party. The notion that he can now begin to heal the rifts and act more presidential appeals to many who view him with suspicion and to date they have seen little change from the self-centered nine year old who won the primaries.

So is Trump an agent of the DNC come to guarantee Hillary Clinton the White House? No, I don’t believe the DNC is that clever.

Trump’s Russian connection is very interesting: Everyone knows about his insistence that Russian would not invade the Ukraine even after they had already done so. We can add to that Trump’s apparent fondness for Putin and Putin’s complimenting of Trump. Trump’s comments about how nice it would be if we could just be friends with Russia. And then there is Michael Morell, Deputy Director of the CIA . Mr. Morell had this to say about Trump and Putin:

 "President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was a career intelligence officer, trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them.” That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. "Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump’s vulnerabilities by complimenting him. He responded just as Mr. Putin had calculated."

Paul Manafort, the head honcho of Trump’s campaign, is an old Russian hand. He had been hired by Vicktor Yanukovych, the Russian leaning Premier of Ukraine, to rehabilitate Yanukovych’s image after the Ukraine parliament kicked him out and he found asylum back in Russia.

Trump’s Russian connection was topped off when the Trump faction at the RNC, meeting to determine the platform content, insisted that any reference to arming Ukraine be removed. This produced quite a stir and particularly when Manafort and the Trump faction denied that they had done any such thing. Unfortunately for them there were a great many witnesses to testify that they had done exactly that.

Who knows, maybe instead of being a mole for the Democrats, Trump is a mole for the Russians.