Milbank: Trump and Putin? Some say there’s something going on

PHILADELPHIA — Donald Trump never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like — until now.

He has dabbled in, among other things, the notion that President Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya, that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered and that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the JFK assassination.

But on one topic, Trump is conspicuously incurious: the suggestion that he is complicit in a plan by Vladimir Putin to influence the U.S. election. Consider how Trump might react to the following fact pattern if the candidate involved weren’t “Donald Trump” but — let’s pick a name at random here — “Hillary Clinton”:

The candidate’s real estate empire, unable to borrow from most U.S. banks, gets capital from Russian sources. Such transfers couldn’t occur without Putin’s blessing.

The candidate’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, has worked extensively for pro-Putin oligarchs.

One of the candidate’s foreign policy advisers, Michael Flynn, was filmed sitting with Putin at a Moscow banquet celebrating a Russian propaganda network.

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http://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/milbank-trump-and-putin-some-say-theres-something-going-on/