I said that if Putin was trying to help Trump become president he'd be a fool to expect that being seen as a Trump fan wouldn't create a backlash against Trump for that reason.
The more logical explanation for the leaks of Democratic emails is that Putin wanted Clinton in office, and the obviously Russian-supplied leaks about other Democrats were a taste about what could be done to Clinton herself (remember her poorly secured private email system that she used for classified information while Secretary of State?) once in office if she didn't self-reset relations with Russia again.
That whole Trump-loves-Putin image Russia inspired with Democratic help would push Trump to be more anti-Russian just to negate such charges. That extends to his appointee, eh?
So how's that supposed Putin plan going?
Retired Gen. James Mattis on Thursday cruised toward likely confirmation as Donald Trump's defense secretary, easily prevailing in a Senate vote granting him an exemption to run the Pentagon as a recently retired officer. At his confirmation hearing, he called Russia the nation's No. 1 security threat, accusing its leader of trying to "break" NATO. ...
As he spoke, Trump's choice to run the CIA, Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas, sided with intelligence officials who claim the Kremlin was behind the election cyberattacks, adopting a similarly tough stand against Russia in his confirmation hearing.
Putin the old KGB man didn't anticipate this? Really?
And for more fun for Putin, how do suddenly anti-Russian Democrats oppose Trump efforts to resist Russia after the Democrats have loudly condemned Russia?
Putin hoped to get a compliant Clinton atop a pacifist Democratic base that would be happy to avoid conflict with Russia over anything, while painting the American political system as one that plotted against Trump at every turn and engineered Hillary's win.
Instead, Putin got a Trump win when all the establishment powers were against him and who can't afford to be seen as friendly to Russia. And Putin got a Democratic party suddenly all militant about stopping the dread Russkies from carrying out their diabolical plots.
