Political Quotes

“It was almost exactly 2 years ago, as Donald Trump closed in on the Republican nomination, that the Russians began weaponizing stolen emails it had acquired some time earlier. This disclosure of stolen emails was only one vector of the Russian active measures campaign. At the same time, the Russians were engaged in a surreptitious social media campaign and a very overt use of their paid media platforms, like Sputnik and Russia Today, to influence the American electorate. What was this about? Was this new and unprecedented intervention in our affairs merely about choosing one candidate over another in the American Presidential system? Or was there something broader within the Russian aims? {time} 1015 It is certainly true that the Russians had a preferred candidate in Donald Trump. Candidate Trump had talked disparagingly about NATO. He had talked about doing away with sanctions on Russia over its invasion of its neighbor. He had talked about making common cause with Russia in Syria, where our interests are not at all aligned. And most significant, he had talked about doing away with the penalties we had imposed for Russia's invasion of its neighbor, something we never thought would take place in the last century, the remaking of the map of Europe by dint of military force. That is something we thought we would never see in this century. It is certainly true they had a preferred candidate in Donald Trump, for all those reasons.…”