What a week it has been! While federal workers continued to struggle with the Trump Shutdown, made all that more real by their first zero-sum paycheck,  two venerable news sources, the New York Times and Washington Post revealed damning evidence that Donald Trump may indeed have a sinister relationship with Russia.

It may be shocking to hear out-loud speculation from the mainstream media that the American president could be a kind of “Manchurian Candidate” for Putin’s Russia, but it can no longer be dismissed as far-fetched.  In fact, with very little effort it is possible to reconstruct one’s very own forensic trail contributing to this alarming conclusion.

As a convenience to our GMD readers and with a quick Google search, I’ve compiled a few handy links for your interest.

Searching “Trump 1987,” yields, among other things, an account from Politico that appeared in 2017. It’s very interesting; reminding us that on his first visit to Moscow, he seems to have been  cosseted by the KGB.  This has probably been mentioned many times before but deserves special attention in light of this weekend’s revelations.

In the same search, I came across a curious piece from the Hollywood Reporter claiming that, in 1988, Trump was angling for Reagan to appoint him ambassador to the Soviet Union.  I offer the link here with no idea how valid the assertion may be.

The New York Times provides an exhaustive timeline of intersections between Trump-world and Russia.  Of course it ends in December 2018, well-before the new bombshells hit, but covering Donald Trump’s indiscretions seems to be a never-ending job.

Another good read comes from New York Magazine, “What if Donald Trump has been a Russian Asset since 1987?”  It even has a pictorial chart!

Exactly how might Trump have given service to Russian handlers over the years, even before reaching the White House suggests some additional data points.  Trump has been a public fountain of misinformation through much of his adult life.

Remember the Central Park Five? What prompted the stingy mogul to invest $85,000. in advertising to gin up hatred for these wrongly accused young African American men and advocate for their execution?  This, from a man who is notoriously un-philanthropic and won’t even pay his bills on time.   Why did he appear to care so uncharacteristically much? 

One can’t help musing that this would have been an ideal way to introduce a future candidate to the hate lobby.

This was followed by accusations that President Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. and the repeated suggestion that, if the accusation was true, his presidency was illegitimate.

He let that insulting calumny hover out there in the hate realm, without an apology, long after it had been effectively debunked.

Then, leading up to the 2016 election, he repeatedly attacked the integrity of the electoral process.  Most people just assumed he was making excuses for why he would most likely lose the election, but what if this was part of Putin’s plan to delegitimize the U.S. democratic process?

Anyway,  it’s quite a pattern; and Trump himself doesn’t display the cunning or even the simple attention necessary to sustain such a prolonged assault on our norms.  It is far more likely that he is simply the corrupt vessel through which Putin has delivered poison to the very roots of American democracy.